Profitability

To my blog followers and those who visit incognito, I'm still here!  I can't believe it's been a little over a month since I last blogged.  It's like life fired a gun and I've been running ever since.

I've continued to live up to my new mantra:  my playing small does not serve the world.  So, I've been doing all I am gifted to do.  When we last spoke, I had just launched my new website:  suzetterhinton.com.  Since that time, I've done some tweaking.  More than two people advised me to establish a unique presence for all my businesses rather than having my one site.  I took this to heart and can proudly introduce three additions to my portfolio:

purposeful-connections.com

Purposeful Connections is my coaching site.  Since launching the site, I have partnered with a woman who knows what her calling is, but heretofore allowed distractions to hinder her progress.  So many of us can identify with that, including myself.  Life happens--this is true--but for those of us who feel the restlessness of that something-more on the inside, there is no rest.  Our dream, our calling, our longing for something meaningful keeps us up at night and interlopes on whatever else competes for our attention.  It's our reason for being.  I'm so glad that God won't allow us to slumber without shaking us from time to time.

Not only am I helping her but she's helping me.  She's putting a demand on my calling.  When I coach her, I feel the energy that goes beyond education, experience or skill.  I feel the energy of my calling and the wisdom that comes up and out and blesses her growth.  There's nothing like it!

odysseyadministrativeservices.com

Odyssey Administrative Services is my virtual administrative and bookkeeping business.  It allows the business-minded me to be expressed.  That part of me that is gifted as well as trained to problem solve, create solutions to administrative problems, partner with home-based and small businesses to handle the paperwork that oftentimes gets pushed aside.   When she was in the third grade and her mother passed, my mom took care of her brother and sister.  She took her meager earnings and managed to feed them and clothe them.  She wasn't taught this through education.  God gave her the wisdom to work with money.  That gift fell to me as well.

Despite my recent efforts to move away from it, bookkeeping always makes room for me.  I now realize that is a gift.  A gift that has often been drained rather than inspired.  I further understand it wasn't that I didn't like bookkeeping or doing administrative clerical work for that matter.  It was simply that I wanted to do it my way.  I needed the room to flow in that gift without being overburdened and undervalued.  I am now working with a company in RTP.   Though I enjoy the atmosphere, the job and the people, I sense there is a strategy at work.  My Wise Self sees it as an opportunity, a pathway to my ultimate goal of working for myself.

odysseymusicconsultants.com

Like Tiger Woods' father put a golf club in his hand and the Williams' sisters father put a tennis racket in theirs, my mom and dad put playing the piano in ours.  My mom and dad recognized our talent early on but my mom was instrumental in landing my first job:  playing for the Junior Choir at my church.  Prior to my taking the job, my elder sister had been the pianist.  "For three years, they've paid your sister $4," she said. "It's time for that to go up."  Despite opposition, my mom stood her ground.  She withstood times when the preacher brought it up in his sermon.  You know, those times when everybody knows it's you that the preacher is talking about.  I chuckle when I think of it.  My mom kept a smile on her face and an "I shall not be moved" in her heart.  This was a guiding principle that served as a foundation for what would later be Odyssey Music Consultants.

To some, this was an atrocity.  How dare she require the church to pay me for a "gift" that I should use freely!  I heard it time and time again.  When I'd return home from an event and I had not been paid, my mom would get on the telephone and find out what happened.  Though she was criticized, I realized something.  My mom held people accountable to their word.  If they said they were going to do it, she expected them to do so.  If they did not, she wouldn't permit me to play for them until they settled up.  What a gift to give to me, to all her children.  For this taught me to respect my talent and to require others to respect it too.

When I consider Matthew 25: 14-30, emphasis on verse 27, it challenges this notion that people should use their talents all willy-nilly.  The servant who buried his talent and only gave his master the exact thing he had been given was reprimanded and called slothful.  The Bible likens the Kingdom of Heaven to this for the master didn't just want his servants to acknowledge their talents but to produce something greater, richer, better.  The Bible calls it profitable.  My mom, in essence, taught us not to be slothful.  Profitability is often mentioned in the New Testament yet the church world of my younger days seemed to frown on it when it came to "working for the Lord."

Nevertheless, Odyssey Music Consultants is my bedrock of profitability.  From 10 years old to now, my gift has made room for me and yes, I have made money with it.  I believe in my heart that God is pleased every time He checks my account.  He knows what he entrusted to my care and applauds what I am doing with it.    

So I say this:  Whatever you have been gifted to do or trained to do, maximize it.  Like me, you can turn what you love to do into a business.  In the words of the Bible, make it profitable.  This let's God know that he can trust us with more.  This, my friends, is a Kingdom principle.