Posts Tagged ‘Community’
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Finding God’s Blessings

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

One of the great joys of what I do (following the God Intersections like Mr. McGoo offering to help business people) is that I get to meet many very cool people thus creating opportunities for God to show up and share His truth.

One of those Intersections was last week when I spent a couple of hours with a new client (Andrew Pinch of www.dandlpress.com ) for our first coaching session.  Andrew was sharing his goals, challenges and vision for the future, basic questions I discuss with all of my clients, when God showed up (or more specifically a God Idea showed up).  We were talking about the reason Andrew’s grandfather had started D & L Press 50 years ago and how the consistent application of that purpose had produced the company that stands today (they grew 80% last year).

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Cooperative Capitalism 102

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

In my previous post I talked about the basics of Cooperative Capitalistic Communities.  These include regular participation in a group with the following characteristics:

  1. Focus on growing your businesses and helping other’s grow theirs
  2. Willingness to practice  transparency
  3. Willingness to engage the Business Purpose and Vision of the Community
  4. Willingness to abide by a consistent set of Community Organizational Principles
  5. Interest in developing and living in a Community of Trust.

The foundational thought of Cooperative Capitalism is collaboration.  I don’t think I have ever met anyone who said they were AGAINST collaboration.  But when we actually sit down and give it a wing it rarely works out.  Why is that?  I believe there are at least 4 difficulties in effective collaboration: (more…)

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Cooperative Capitalism 101

Monday, November 8th, 2010

I define Cooperative Capitalism as a free market concept where communities of business owners join complementary businesses, competitors (I know, I know), suppliers, customers and other businesses for the purpose of developing Trust and living shared Core Values while engaging in each other’s success.  In these challenging economic times, Cooperative Capitalism becomes viable because these communities improve the odds of success for all the members by providing experience, knowledge and encouragement to each other.

The basics of Cooperative Capitalistic Communities (I will try and refrain from the “CCC” acronym) include regular participation in a group with a: (more…)

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This Idea called Cooperative Capitalism

Monday, August 30th, 2010

For most of 2010 God and I have had a running dialogue regarding how to describe what Godintersections.com and Leadership Productivity Forum’s are actually all about. You all have heard me use phrases like:

  1. Finding your way in challenging times using God Intersections
  2. Learning to Trust God with our businesses
  3. Building God’s Economy businesses
  4. Growing success, finding significance.

All true but somehow a little too confining. Particularly when talking to marketplace folks who are not Christians. This year has been fascinating in terms of the dialogue and God Ideas my Intersections have created. So my Current Best Thinking is that we are all about:

  1. Helping marketplace people find their way in business by involving the living God
  2. Working with business leaders to learn, practice and replicate Cooperative Capitalism in our economy

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It’s about Surrender Stupid!

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

No worries, I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about me. The question of the day is “How many more ship sinkings, oil well blow outs, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami’s, stock market meltdowns etc. will it take before I learn to surrender?”.

Surrender to what? Surrender the outcome of my life and business to God! Surrender to Trusting God with my life and business every month, every week, every day and every hour.

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Communities of Hope

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Interesting times we live in.  My wife was laid off again this past month.  My business just experienced its first slow down.  The bills march on and God is still challenging me to trust Him.  Interesting!

Heh, the good news is it only took Glenda and me about 48 hours to work our way through the shock of another lay off.  The first 24 hours was tough, the second a little easier and now we are back to “seeing what God will do”.  And God continues to provide.

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So you want to be Transformed!

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Transforming our lives into it’s best possible version is of great interest to many of us.  We are tired of the same old life, same old pain, same old results.

The million dollar question is “How does transformation happen”?  What is our role in the process?  What is God’s role in the process?

And so we begin (again?).  We search for new knowledge that will jump start the process.  We read books, go to seminars, listen to sermons, pray, read God’s word, serve when we can etc.  We do all this for the purpose, perhaps unspoken, of becoming a better version of ourselves and Jesus Christ.  And after we do all this we find we are incrementally different which we don’t mind but it seemed like a lot of work for such little change.

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Becoming “A Light on the Hill”

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

As I pondered my learnings from 2009 I realized what a rich year it was. God imparted more things to me during 2009 than any previous time I can remember. Things like:

  1. Truth does not need to be defended – God can handle it. My job is to simply love people where they are
  2. God is the Owner, I am the steward of my life and business. Leave the results up to Him and simply do my part
  3. God, as the Owner, will guide my life if I will simply follow the God Intersections
  4. Move our businesses into God’s Economy
  5. Build a Community, it is the new foundation for significance.

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Christmas, Life and Community

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

Well it’s the day after Christmas and all is very quiet around the Miller household. The ladies are shopping, the young men are sleeping and I’m writing. It has been weeks since my last blog. I’ve been kind of blocked and probably lazy.
This week has been interesting and I’m glad to see it behind us:

  1. Sunday we started battling the flu as a family
  2. Tuesday I threw out my back (the pain was worse than any I have ever experienced)
  3. Friday (Christmas) was coming without enough money
  4. I wasn’t feeling much “Joy for the Jesus Season”.

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So I’ve Been Laid Off, Now What?

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

In my last blog I talked about choosing to operate our lives and businesses in God’s Economy. All great stuff until something really difficult hits us forcing us to decide what we REALLY believe.

Well guess what, that something hit the Miller household this last couple of weeks. My wife was laid off. This severed half of our income and all of our health benefits (drat!). And in an instant I was given the opportunity to practice all this stuff I talk about (or should I say preach).

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