As Christians, our faith should shape every aspect of our work, including the culture of our business. But what happens when it doesn’t?

What does it look like to move from working for profit to working to honor God first? 

In this episode, I talk with Tammy Noble, an entrepreneur who has experienced both cultures: Running it her own way and running it God’s way.

Tammy’s story is one of redemption and restoration, from burnout and broken relationships to a thriving business and restored family relationships all starting from submitting to doing things God’s way.

We discuss what it means to build a business that honors God: Where serving clients and employees comes before profit, integrity guides decisions, and success is measured by meeting the needs of clients.

Tammy shares:

• How making work your mission verses solely a means to make money has changed her business and family life forever
• Why integrity, honesty, and love are foundational to a great business culture
• How surrendering to God is the way to go, He is so much wiser than we are
• Practical ways to serve customers, employees, and community in a way that honors God

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

By shifting from striving for success to serving customers and meeting their needs.

One Challenge from Today:

Before your next business interaction, pause and pray for God’s heart for the person in front of you—then choose one way to serve them today.

More About Tammy Noble

Website: www.noblesolutionist.com 

Business Consulting and Life Coach: tammy@noblesolutionist.com 

More About David Schmidt

Sign up for the RBT Weekly Newsletter for weekly inspiration and Bible verses for business success for you to read, apply, and be inspired by.

Book a call: Get Unstuck and Move Forward

Website: redeemingbusinesstoday.com

LinkedIn

Donate to the Show

So culture is defined as a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize an institutional organization. Interestingly, the sample used for the culture is a corporate culture focused on the bottom line, which is profit. But as Christians, I trust your belief system controls your culture so that is not focused on the bottom line of profit, but focused on people. Because what you do,

says more about your culture than what you say, because you can say one thing and do something completely different. Today, I'm very excited to have with me Tammy Noble, who has had multiple businesses and lived on both sides of the fence, meaning operating her business without God and operating her business with God as the lead. And so I'm excited for you to hear her story and what God is doing in her business today. So Tammy, welcome. yeah, and to start off with, what is it?

Hi.

one way that you have found to honor God in your business that other people may not know about.

Geez, know, just like when we first talked, you know to pick one thing is so hard But if I had to really pick one I would say for me it is You know really using that kingdom culture to actually bring people to Jesus To be his salt and his light and just spread the truth about his love and who he is

Yeah, that's, everybody's different. There's evangelists, pastors, teachers, all that. We're all different and I agree. We're not all hands, fingers, toes, whatever. We are all different. God uses us in different ways and shine how God made you to shine. Tammy, take us a brief overview of what your business was like before you said 2017 running from the world's perspective. What happened to bring you back to God and how, what business is doing today?

So, pre-returning to Christ, my husband and I had a trucking company and we did truck and trailer repairs. In the trucking industry, there is an array of humans that you deal with from day to day. We oftentimes would find ourselves bickering and arguing with customers, cutting corners. We worked a hundred and...

15 to 120 hours, we were business and money focused, taking time away from our marriage, our children, and anything God like. just, we, we were living the world's ways. We were not relying on the Lord to show us how to run things. We were not using our money or our talents to serve Him in any capacity. And

We weren't relying on him, but ourselves, our knowledge and our skill set to literally survive, because we were not thriving. In fact, doing business and living that way and allowing our marriage and our children to come last, it actually caused us to enter into a five year separation, which was horrific. In that five years, we both fell.

Hmm.

back into addiction that we had overcome in our teenage years. Our children were affected tremendously. was affairs had on both ends and it was in the epitome of my addiction. I almost died. And in that, in them dark moments, I didn't remember it at the time, but I cried out to the Lord to that, you know,

if he truly cared about me to save me, to give me another opportunity to forgive me, but to most importantly be there for my children and my husband, if he chose not to save me. And it wasn't the next morning when I woke up that I remembered that. It wasn't for a couple of weeks that I had remembered those moments. And when the Lord finally had reminded me of, you know, those dark moments before I had

passed out and thankfully to him, you know, survived a night of overdosing alone that I just begged him from the bottom of my heart. I'm like, you know, help me to want to be a wife again, help me to want to be a mom again. Cause at that point I, I didn't want to live, you know, I mean, I had begged him to save my life, but I was miserable and I didn't want to go back to a marriage and a business that had taken everything from me.

And he did it. It wasn't overnight, but we jumped back into church. We jumped back into God. went from religion to relationship, really learning what that was instead of just attending church and, you know, doing the honorary read the Bible's, you know, say the Lord's prayer. I did it at check and move on and

Check. Yep, check.

As we really started to journey and getting to know the Lord, we saw amazing transformations, not just in ourselves individually, but as a spouse, as parents, and our family was able to heal. And then it was like, wait, we can apply this to business. Like we have a call on our lives and we're like, preach the word. I'm not a preacher.

Nah, but we're entrepreneurs and we have these talents and my goodness, he has actually given us a stage right in our business and we better not waste that, right? We cannot waste that opportunity. So we really started to dive in with the Lord and each other in his word to say, what does that look like? So yeah, we were a mess pre-Jesus.

But yeah, he fixes us up and takes care of everything. That's neat. God uses us wherever we're at, and that's so neat. I love the change. If you could pick, you probably can't pick one thing. You don't have to pick one thing. But what are a few of the biggest changes that you see, and you stated some already, between running business your own way and running business God's way?

He does.

Honestly, first and foremost, the first thing that we see is that we're actually thriving financially, right? And we're thriving in our marriage and we're thriving in our relationships with our children.

But having that breakthrough in taking God's ways, God's principles of integrity, fairness, just really kingdom culture, right? So God calls us to be him over the world, his ways, right? God's kingdom is his ways, his words, his love. You know, the first thing I think of is if without love, are nothing but noisy gongs. So if I'm treating

My spouse, is technically an employee, at times he's my employer because we swap roles with the different businesses that we have because we have multiple.

That's very interesting.

You know, it's

without love, we're noisy gongs. But how does that translate into how we treat customers? You know, I, one of my businesses is as a business consultant and a life coach. If I am working with somebody who is struggling in sin and I know that they're a Christian, love corrects. So with love, I point out.

You know, if you have this sin in your life and it's a, how can God bless this? So let's address this, you know, let's address the sin. Let's address the root of the sin. and you know, same thing with a customer. I can't go pointing out a customer of our, you know, of our mechanic business. can't point out their wrongdoings, but what I can do is love them anyways. Right? So say I have a truck driver that wants a dump truck repaired.

and he's coming to me belligerent and upset because he's had multiple people take advantage of him and he still has this mechanical problem. Well, I can in love not meet his, his meanness with

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

meanness. I can be patient. I can be loving. I can be kind to say, you know, I'm really sorry that you've been treated this way previously. Let's see what the real issue is.

And even if he continues to be belligerent, to remain calm, cool, and collected. I apologize for the sirens.

Nope, not a big deal. It's part of life.

And

I'll tell you, one of the things that we have found too, in working in an integrity is, if it's something that I can't fix, be honest. If it's something you don't know, be honest. You know, how do we best serve our customers? It's to be honest. And that's a kingdom culture. That's, we're called to not lie. That's in the commandments.

Yep.

So if I want to provide for this customer the best of my ability, sometimes it's to say, I'm not the best one to serve you. Let me send you to somebody else. pride can oftentimes get in the way of doing that. Or fear of lack, right? Pre-God in our marriage, or in our business, we would try to do the best we could, but it wasn't what was best for the customer.

to try to make that meet because we couldn't lose the customer because we needed that paycheck. And, you we looked at our customers as the source, but God is ultimately our source. And when we were able to make that kingdom culture shift in our business specifically, it really changed our mindset on how we were able to look at how we serve our customers, but also how we served our employees.

Mm-hmm.

That's huge. That's big. Yeah.

So, I mean, it can really ooze. It

can really ooze into all aspects of business.

Okay, neat. I know a guy in our area, he's in marketing, graphic marketing, and their mission is to be a blessing to everybody. And he goes, sometimes that blessing is, I can't help you. Our wheel box is here and you're asking us to do something else, but here are two other people who could help you out. so he always wants people to come to him, but sometimes he sends them to somebody else and he is like, that's what we do.

God provides, but I think that was very interesting that you said financially you're doing so much better today than before. I bet you're working not a hundred hours either, a week, yeah.

Yes.

No, we're

working less than 40 hours a week in all five businesses.

Okay, and that's what I've seen other businesses as well going from 10, 15 hours, seven days a week down to around 40 hours or less, know, and paying off all their bills and everything else. Once that shift happens to say, God, you take care of it. And that's what God does.

It is.

You mentioned before in our pre-talk about heart posture, about money versus service. Can you expound upon that?

Well, you know, we're called to be like Jesus. Jesus didn't run around. Yes, he had a job. Yes, he was a carpenter. Yes, you he made money. But when he was called to leave that, it was just doing what he heard and saw the Father doing. And that was to serve people, to love people. I mean, he washed the disciples feet.

Yes.

He served them bread. He said, come away with me and rest. He set the example of going away with the father to rest and to seek the father for strategy, to know what the father is doing. He had to spend time with him. So.

Gosh, how does that translate? It translate for us. It really started with recognizing that we gained hours in a week. And I say gained, supernaturally we had more hours at the end of our day because we started giving God the first of our day. You know, it's like sowing a seed. You know, we didn't just tithe financially. We tithed with our time. We gave the first of our day to the Lord and we got our house in order.

Okay, it's God, spouse, children, then work.

All right. So that kingdom culture, his ways, doing what Jesus did. And if I can have the heart of a servant, like Jesus had the heart of a servant and I look at my businesses, how can I serve not just my customer, but my employees? How can I serve my community? There is again a shift that happens. I am taking my eyes off of myself.

Thank you.

the love of self, my worshipping my problems, worrying about my problems, because when you worry you're worshipping that thing, when you focus on it you're worshipping it. Take my eyes off my junk and put my eyes on Jesus. That shift personally, it again translates into marriage, into family, and into your business. So how can you have the heart of the father and not have a heart to serve others?

Use your business to serve and love on others around you and it not be it can't be about money. When your heart is so full of the father, everything else just falls away and his word says seek first the kingdom and then he not we he adds everything else to that. He adds it. I don't have to worry about where my meals come from. In fact,

Yeah.

If any of your listeners happen to see me on social media, we just had somebody drop off a whole bushel of Roma tomatoes. I don't have to go grocery shopping half the time because he is bringing stuff into my home, into my storehouse, because I am being about his business. And I'm doing that not just in my neighborhood or in my family or in my church, but I'm doing it in my community and in my customers lives and in my employees lives. You can't beat it.

That's neat.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It reminds me of Deuteronomy 28, where God talks about the blessings and cursings to Israel. And in verse two, he says, all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you. It's like for Israelite, the focus was on obeying God, obeying God, following the commandments, doing what he says. He says, all these blessings will overtake you. You can't stop it. They're coming for you.

You really can't beat it.

Yeah!

And that's the blessing of following God. That's so cool. Yes. Yep.

obedience, right? Yeah.

I'll tell you something as I was praying before this, I really felt

kind of just drive this home. How do you know what is obedience? How do you know the father's heart? You have to be in prayer. In prayer, yes, there's different kinds of prayer. Some prayer is going behind the locked doors. Some of it is in your church. Some of it is with your spouse. But that personal relationship moving from a religion to relationship prayer is literally talking to him.

Mm-hmm.

It's talking to him and listening, right? It's having a conversation with God. And a conversation requires not just talking, but listening. The other part is, is we get to know him by being in his word. And as entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs that have a marriage or relationship in children, we tend to put that on the back burner.

and listening. Yep.

But how we the only way you can know God is to be in his word. We don't have to pray and read his word. We get to we get to. That's how you get to know the creator of this or this earth. The creator of you the God that loves your soul.

You can't know him without being with him. He is the word. So I just get in the word and don't look at it as I have to. You get to get to know him by looking for him in every in every passage in every chapter. Get to know his likes and his dislikes, his commands, his heart for you, his heart for your children, for your family, for your nation, for his agenda.

And it just, it oozes out in how you do life.

I totally agree. I've been reading the Bible for many, many years. And it's very interesting that the stages of life that I am in, he brings things out to help me in those different stages of life. And even like the last year, talk about being a business coach and things like that, I'm seeing a lot of business principles through the kings, through Jesus, through Paul, all these things like, wow, we just.

come up with these things and we think they're so smart. And it's like, oh, Jesus did that. You they did that in the Old Testament. know, God told them to do that, you know. So there's so many things in the Bible that we can just learn. And I find more business in the Bible today than I would have five years ago, because that's more my thinking, my realm of what I'm bringing to it. So it's very interesting that God speaks to you wherever you're at. And yes, ask. If you don't...

Right, right, right!

Yeah.

know what to do in your business or your relationship, ask. He says, if you lack wisdom, ask, I'll give it to you. James 1.5, clear and simple.

People say your net worth is your network. It's like, I know God. I know God and he knows everybody. yeah, it's ultimate counselor, provider, director. He knows what goes on. Question for you. When you start looking at your business and your culture and things like that, I know sometimes, especially in health, when people try to be healthy,

What they stop doing sometimes is more important than what they start doing. Like if you go out and you're eating fast food all the time and you're exercising a lot, you're not getting any healthier. But once you stop putting that fast food aside, then you really start going. When you look at business, is there anything that you see that either you have stopped or you feel that other people should stop to make a bigger impact and to change the direction of your company?

Stop being afraid of man.

Hmm, okay.

and stop judging your success by the dollars in your bank account.

Okay, don't fear a man, don't judge the success by the money you make. Those are very good.

Yeah.

What's the impact you're making?

And where are you making it?

sure you've brought a passage to mind and I don't have time to go into it all, but if you ever read Hebrews 11, it's a great faith chapter. By faith, all these people did all these things and you get to the end. It said by faith, others were tortured, not accepting the release that they might obtain a better resurrection. And then it tells about they wanted about sheep skins and goat skins being desperate, all these things. They were just as faithful as Abraham.

Isaac, Jacob, Noah, David, all these people who conquered kingdoms. And I think too often in our life, we say, my success is because I did all this. Where your success is, do you do what God wants you to do? That's where your success is at.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. For me, how successful am I? I can tell you my bank account's pretty empty, but you know what? All of our businesses are beyond successful because we are making an impact. We are loving those that society says are unlovable, unreachable, unworthy, and

We are meeting them where they are at with truth and integrity. We are keeping honest scales. And when we leave them, even if it wasn't a good business transaction, we still leave them with the love of Jesus. Forgiveness, apologies. If we screwed up, we take accountability. We are always leaving

them with the light in the salt of God. How are we moving?

We are the representative. We may be the only Bible in the only time that person comes, the only person that, geez, Lord forgive me my, give me back my words. We may be the only Bible that that person ever comes across.

We don't waste a moment. We don't beat them over the head with scripture. We let Holy Spirit lead. If they are gay, if they are atheist, I mean, I just got done doing work life coaching, a Wiccan, a wizard, an active practicing wizard, and I still loved him. I was still respectful to him. I still spoke biblical truths.

without beating him over the head using scripture. He knew I was a Christian and I still respected him and treated him as a human. And he left me these words. I never thought working with the Christian would be so fulfilling. You have changed my mind on every church going human I know. You are not all the same. That matters. That matters.

Interesting. Nope, we're not.

Don't be ashamed that you are a Jesus follower. Just let Holy Spirit lead on how you work with each customer, with each employee, and always represent Jesus well. The only way we can do that is to literally mimic what He and the Father do, and that's written in Word.

Yep, absolutely.

Absolutely, very good. Thank you very much, Tammy. One final focusing question. We've talked a lot about a lot of different things. So what is one simple way we can start to apply some of the things that you have talked about this day?

You can literally start after you stop listening to this episode. Go out and see how you can serve someone else. Ask the Lord to show you his heart for the person you're working with, talking to, interacting with.

That is the very first practical thing I can give you.

Very good.

Okay, that's doable. Just ask. Yep, how can I serve? How can I do that?

shift to serving. Yeah, shift to serving with

the Father's heart. You gotta know the Father's heart for that person to best know how to serve them.

Mm-hmm.

Yep, absolutely. Very good. Tammy, thank you so much for your time and encouragement today. And friends, your next steps to put into practice what you've heard is, yeah, check out the show notes. We're gonna put some links and sites in order so you can contact Tammy, learn more about her and her businesses. And then sign up for the newsletter. We have a weekly Bible verse in there that you can meditate upon that's relevant to your business. That's an inspiration for you. So you don't wanna miss that. And friends, that's all we have for now. Trust you've been inspired to redeem your business.

Redeem your time, buy it back, walk worthy of God's great name. Bye for now.