Is it hard to walk in faith and have peace when it feels like the world is crumbling around you?

Scott Sidler sure faced some of those challenges as the owner of a construction company navigating the COVID pandemic. He shares how years of walking side by side with God laid the foundation for him to have peace and walk in faith during that time.

In this episode of the Leadership Moment, Scott shares some great (and eternal) insights on how to keep your business finances in check and how to trust that God will provide for you. He also shares how his business has been blessed to be a blessing both to charitable organizations and his employees. You won't want to miss this episode!

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Walking faithfully with God can prepare us for the unexpected.
• Faithfully and diligently managing finances and business can yield eternal rewards.
• We can have peace when we remember that God isn't surprised.

LINKS & RESOURCES:

• Austin Historical website: austinhistorical.com
• The Craftsman Blog website: thecraftsmanblog.com
• Learn to repair and restore your own historic windows: TheWindowCourse.com 

Austin Historical, Inc.

2113 S Division Ave., Orlando, FL 32805

(800) 611-2601

Email: Info@AustinHistorical.com

• Austin Historical: LinkedIn
• Scott: LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Pinterest

ABOUT SCOTT SIDLER

Scott Sidler is the founder and CEO of Austin Historical, Inc., a restoration and preservation company based in Orlando, Florida. Scott founded Austin Historical in 2010 when he saw the need for a company dedicated to serve the specific needs of historic building owners across the southeastern US. He is a graduate of Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Vermont where he studied historic preservation and has been restoring historic buildings since the late 1990s. He currently serves on the national board of the Window Preservation Alliance and is Chairman of the Orlando Historic Preservation Board. He is a third generation painter, plasterer, carpenter, master glazier and has a wide breadth of knowledge about historic design and construction techniques.

ABOUT THE LEADERSHIP MOMENT

Scott McClelland of Foundational Missions shares bite-sized insights into leadership, with a focus on the Bible, missions, and ministry. He pulls from a wide variety of sources and always has something to inspire and challenge us to greatness.

✅ Follow to get the show for free: https://leadersmoment.org/follow

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Mentioned in this episode:

Anthologies from the Forefront

Find the entire Anthologies from the Forefront trilogy on Amazon.

Anthologies from the Forefront Trilogy

Welcome to foundational missions, leadership moment.

Join your host Scott McClelland of FX missions.

As he deep dives into the lives of leaders to glean secrets that will

propel today's leaders to new Heights.

Here's Scott,

welcome back to the final part of our

interview with Scott Sigler.

If you haven't caught the previous.

You'll want to do that last time we talked about how diligence and

integrity helps Scott avoid a disaster.

This time.

We're going to talk about how walking in integrity requires faith.

I just want to ask or kind of get you to elaborate a touch on what it

has meant to you to not necessarily to be trustworthy, a trustworthy

integrity, those kinds of things.

We've talked about.

What does it meant to you to be trusting in business?

How has your trust of God informed your approach to business?

It seems like it's a big element in there, but we haven't touched on it directly.

Yeah.

That's a great question because it's an experience that I think has been.

Nerve wracking for some of the folks who work here in the office, especially

in the finance side, because anybody who knows small businesses, like

the cash cashflow doesn't exactly happen exactly as it's supposed to.

Right.

So sometimes that client's like, oh, I forgot to send that

check for $20,000, you know?

Well, just FYI that check for $20,000 was going to pay people salaries next week.

So kind of need that check to come through.

Can we work that out?

And we've had a lot of times where I, you know, I'd come home and talk to my wife or

I'd be at work, looking through the books and I'm like, I don't see how payroll is.

I just don't see how it's going to happen next week.

I know that it's supposed to, and you go, this might come in, but I don't

feel confident on it, but it could.

Yeah.

And maybe I'll sell one of these jobs and they'll send in a

deposit check and that'll help.

But what 11 plus years going on 12 years of our company, I've never missed

a single week of payroll for folks.

We've always had enough.

It's happened several times.

And I had a finance manager for a number of years.

It was like, well, we're going to have to do this.

We'll do this.

It was like, no, I don't have.

It was just happened.

And she's like, there's not enough in there.

I was like, there's not enough in there today, but it's

Monday, payroll's on Thursday.

And lo and behold here it is something would close that

somebody would sign to me.

Like, how do I send you the check?

And you're like, you send it right here.

And it's like, it was a really great faith exercise.

For me.

And for some of the people who worked here that I was like,

that's not how I plan a business.

Like, I'm always making sure the cash flow works that are

receivables, payables are in line.

So we're not doing stupid stuff.

Right.

Like, Hey, I just bought a truck this week.

I will figure it out.

It's like, that's not how we run it as now.

Right.

But it was like, there's always times where there's a cash crunch in

every time that there has been one.

You know, if I'm like, well, we're going to be $10,263 shy, low and

behold, a payment for $10,280 comes in like the day before.

And it's just, it's a fun exercise for me at this point where I start stressing.

And I'm like, you know what, God, I'm not going to stress.

I know you're going to provide that.

They'll still come be like, should we do this?

Like, we've done everything we can.

And now the ball's in his court and he's never missed.

He doesn't miss.

When God and I are playing tennis, he's never like, oh, that one got past me.

I didn't expect that he's always hit it and he's always hit it spot on.

And you know, my time in prayer with him is usually in that praise side of

things is exciting, but also like I get that word from him that he's like, well,

but you didn't need it until Thursday.

So if I gave it to you on Monday, you wouldn't have looked at me.

You'd have been too busy with your business, but on Wednesday

you were paying attention.

We were talking a lot, weren't we?

And sometimes it's just the way to get attention.

And he's like, I know when you need it and I'm not going to give it to

you the day after, but I'm also not going to give it to you the day before.

Right.

And you've been faithful with it.

And because you've been faithful, we can do this.

And from a financial aspect, that's happened.

And then just this year, the COO in our company, we started talking about it.

I was like, you know, we haven't.

Turning the kind of profit that we wanted to early in the year where

like 20, 21, we need to change that we need to do like quarterly.

Rather we have it or not.

Okay.

So we're going to start tithing.

We're going to force that money into a separate account and the

boss of the other 90 and 2021.

After we made that decision in December of last year and this year it has businesses

exploded and profitability has been great.

Found some amazing hires and stuff that I went, you know, sometimes you go,

oh, it's just a good business period.

Just a good quarter, a good year or something like that.

But there's growth and improvement and profitability that I can't explain.

Other than to say that God was like, I've been here for 10 years

waiting for you to say, you're going to give me those first fruits.

Yeah.

I don't need them.

I'm fine.

I want this to be a harvest of righteousness for you and the more

you plant by giving it back to me, the more you're going to harvest.

And so it's allowed us to do some really fun stuff with the money,

from a charitable standpoint, and for our employees for improved benefits

and helping people out, it's been.

Man that I heard someone say that that was the

only time in scripture where God said, test me, you know, related

to what you're talking about.

And I mean, I haven't done the exhaustive research on it, but I think

it's generally true that that's the only time God said, test me on this.

And, and I'll prove myself.

I really applaud your efforts and your stepping up there.

That's a good example.

There's so much more.

And more and more that we can find that God's leading us into to give ourselves

and everything that we touch to him because it's all a stewardship anyway.

Right.

It's been entrusted to us.

So to give it back to them

Yeah, none of it's mine.

Yeah.

We're not going to get.

80 90 years or whatever, and then it goes to place else.

So why am I so tied to all this stuff?

Yeah.

Obviously the nature of materialism is trying to

get us to identify with those kinds of things and what we're growing in

God and realizing that we can trust him with what he's entrusted to us.

He was entrusting it to us in the first place.

I just really applaud your steps of faith there and everything

you're doing in your business.

Obviously, there are more challenges things we don't see.

But we know, and we have confidence and we can trust the one who's called us.

I'm so thankful personally, about the faith really education that

I've gotten in business by following the Lord and being led and.

It can be a little bit unnerving, especially for people who are also

involved in the process who like get, you know, are not maybe holding the CEO

hat or whatever, you know, they can be as you noted a little bit of a challenge,

but thank God that he demonstrates himself in ways that we all can.

Yeah, it would be hard for me being in

business, not being a believer.

I'm sure there's probably ways that could make more money here or there,

but, you know, I want to make an impact.

I'd like to make money, but I'd like to make an impact then.

And honestly, knowing that none of it is a surprise to him.

It gives me that peace because, you know, my perspective is very limited.

I only see just around the corner, whereas Jesus sees the whole road ahead

and knows exactly where we're going.

So, you know, when everybody's like, who could have predict a pandemic?

I know somebody, I mean, he didn't lay it all out for me and tell me,

but he knew what was going to happen.

He knew how this was all going to play out and he knows how it's

going to play out in 2022 and 2023.

So there's a piece for me to knowing that he's got it.

I don't have to worry about all that other stuff.

I just need to worry about what he puts in front of me and handle it the way that he

would in the way of what would Jesus do?

Well, he would do it this way.

He's like dad.

I'm okay.

All I can do.

Deal with, is what I have to deal with.

The sphere of influence that he's given me, the people who I have in my

life, who I get to interact with, I can affect them for change for good, or I

can choose to affect them in a bad way.

I'd rather just make this a much better place to work.

And for clients and employees, there's no reason that work is something

you spend so much time doing.

You better enjoy it.

And the people you work with, life's too short to hire people

you dislike, or to do jobs.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Well, thank God for everything he's doing inside of you guys and with your business,

as you said, touching your clients' lives and especially the change opportunity

that you have with your employees, don't really have time to unpack that

right now, but I want to note it as.

Real and something we should not overlook.

I remember a scripture in James that was very admonishing about doing

right by the people that work for you.

And, you know, the Lord of the Sabbath is listening to their cries, you know,

so we need to make sure that we make the most of all those opportunities.

And our faithful in each and every one.

Thank you so much for your time, Scott.

Let's get some of those links and I'll jot those down if you don't mind.

Yeah.

We're not going to tell my wife about the window course.

Weight is for historic.

I can go ahead and tell

us that.

Uh, so the business, you can visit us@austinhistorical.com.

Okay.

For the blog for content side of things, it's thecraftsmanblog.com.

All of the, you know, social like Facebook is craftsman blog, Instagram,

YouTube, they're all the craftsmen blog.

Okay.

So you can find us on all those.

And if you do have old windows and you want to restore them

yourself, that's thewindowcourse.com

the window course.

That is cool, man.

And I applaud your creativity and, you know, demonstrating value and new ways.

Versus just your credential business.

I think that's very cool.

I hope it continues to do well for us and expand for you guys.

I don't even have historical windows and I'm apprehensive,

so it's gotta be even more.

You know,

I read a book, uh, years ago, that's a classic who moved my cheese.

And it's just a great book for this when you're like, Hey, the markets

move and you can't be like, well, what I do is this you're like, what

you do is not effective anymore.

If you sell buggy whips, you probably have a very small market.

You'd need to move with the market.

And so that's what we did when COVID hit.

What are people doing?

So I think anybody in business who could do that, just pay attention to your market

and the marketing opportunities out there, because your cheese is going to move and

you just need to move with it and find it.

No

question totally agreed on that book.

Completely agreed.

We'll back link to that as well as you've referred to.

Very real stuff right there.

Scott blessings to you and to your family and to your business,

your employees, your customers.

And thanks for being with us very much, man.

Really appreciate

it.

Same to you, Scott is a real pleasure.

All right.

All the best.

All right.

I'm Scott McClelland for your ethics missions, leadership moment to contact me

or us, please do so@ethicsmissions.com.

Thank you for joining Scott with today's leadership moment, we hope

you've apprehended an inspirational nugget or two that when activated in your own

life will be imparted into those you lead.

You may contactScott@scottatethicsmissions.com.

Visit FX missions.com to learn more about how you can grow your own leadership

and engage in missions until next time.