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Your business problem may not be a business problem.
The Estherpreneur Podcast examines what most business conversations miss: the condition of the builder behind the business.
Hosted by Edna Harding, Christ-Centered Business Architect and CEO of Favor & Wealth, this show helps founders identify what is actually limiting growth—strategy, structure, sales, leadership, capacity, identity, stewardship, or spiritual misalignment.
We question business advice that produces growth without wisdom, visibility without capacity, revenue without stewardship, and success at the expense of the person carrying it.
Expect biblical truth, practical business strategy, uncomfortable questions, and conversations about sales, money, leadership, spiritual warfare, emotional maturity, and building in obedience to God.
Because sometimes you don't need another strategy.
You need to identify what is actually out of order.
“By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established.” — Proverbs 24:3
Estherpreneur.com | FavorandWealth.com | EsthersOil.org
Edna Harding [00:00:02]:
Well, hello everyone. Thank you for tuning in for another episode of the Estrepreneur Podcast. My name is Edna Harding, nothing but a messenger of hope, life, and truth. And in today's episode, we're going to start with a question for the founders listening today, and that is, have you ever had a season where your company was technically growing, but it felt harder than it should. Anybody where maybe your revenue was coming in, the team was busy, and something still fell off? Decisions took longer, you were pulled into more things than before, and instead of the business feeling lighter as it scaled, it actually felt heavier. All right, where it there was no more joy in it, there was no more peace in it. It felt like a burden. And a lot of times what, what they— founders assume typically in this type of area or this type of situation is that they feel like something is wrong with the strategy.
Edna Harding [00:01:11]:
But often the real issue isn't something, um, related to strategy. It's usually something deeper. And it's because the ecosystem of the company has lost its order. And what that hap— when that, when, when that happens, growth starts feeling like friction instead of fruit. And so today's episode, we're going to discuss that, right? How do we determine whether or not this is really, you know, if it's like all in our head or if truly God is trying to speak to you, if truly God is trying to speak to you about something that he's been trying to get your attention to, which is the model of business that you have right now is no longer aligned with what he's telling you to build. And so today's episode, we're going to focus on this and the scripture that we're going to meditate on this morning before we pray is found in Zechariah chapter 8, verse 12, which is: the seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. So this right here is one of the clearest pictures in scripture of what I call the Seed of Peace business model. Let's pray.
Edna Harding [00:02:40]:
So Father God, we just thank you for this day. We thank you, Lord God, that you're an author of peace, you're an author of order, God. And we just pray, oh God, that as we submit ourselves to you, Holy Spirit, that you will teach us to move boldly and clearly, Lord, into all that you have for us, Lord. May you be everything in our lives that, that just, just speak to us, Lord God. May you be the reason why we live. May you be the reason why we will, Lord God. And we ask, Lord God, that you will have your way, in Jesus' name. Amen.
Edna Harding [00:03:18]:
All right, so this right here, this scripture, it's the— it's the picture of a system where everything is working together the way God designed it. So the seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their due. Okay, so this verse right here is not just describing agriculture. I call it a restored ecosystem, and this ecosystem gives a powerful framework on how healthy organizations scale. So first, let's understand the context behind this scripture. You know, when Zechariah speaks his words, Israel is at this point returning from exile. The nation had experienced collapse, which means their system was broken, their economy was unstable, and their city had to be rebuilt. In other words, they were rebuilding after disruption.
Edna Harding [00:04:22]:
And many founders can relate to this because companies often experience some sort of similar pattern where early growth Happens quickly. And then what happens? Systems break, right? And then the founder becomes the center of everything. Hello, am I preaching to anybody? Because now decisions slow down, operations are straining, and momentum becomes harder to sustain. And what God promises in this passage is not just a blessing, but he actually promises restored order. And what happens is when you order things back according to how he wants to order it, then the fruit will return. Now I want us to look closely at this model. If you're not seeing it, don't worry, guys, I'll make it plain. The sequence Zechariah describes is first seed, then vine, then ground, and then heaven.
Edna Harding [00:05:27]:
And each of these levels represent a layer of the healthy, healthy ecosystem, and the same pattern shows up in healthy businesses. So first, let's start with the seed. What is the seed? Everything begins with the seed, right? Everything. So in a company, the seed is the clarity of direction, right? What is the vision? Of the company, right? What problems are we uniquely solving? Who are we truly serving? What kind of company are we building? Because many organizations struggle because the original seed was never clearly defined, right? And I get it, in this business or in this world, everything is like, let's just move fast, you know, what's that What's that one? Fire, aim, ready, or ready, fire, aim, or something like that. Ready, fire, aim. There was this book that I remember one of my old companies made us read. It's like, just do it, right? But the problem with that is if everyone's doing everything and you don't really have no place to go and, and the seed is confusing, everything downstream becomes harder. But what I love about this is when the seed is strong, when we know exactly what we are being planted for, growth becomes possible.
Edna Harding [00:06:57]:
Okay, now the vine, which is what I call the leadership structure, the vine carries nutrients through the system. So in business, the vine represents the structure or the roles and responsibility within the organization. So who owns the decisions? Who is accountable for the results? Where does authority actually live? Right? When, when leadership structure is unclear, the founder becomes the vine for everything, right? And that's what happens a lot of times with smaller businesses as they grow, as they, you know, hit the $100,000, $250,000, $300,000, $400,000 mark. The founder is still defined for everything, and that's not good because the founder cannot make decisions all the time, right? And you have the founder, and I understand this is why it's challenging because during that stage, typically you don't really have the budget to hire the best of the best talent, right? You don't, because when your budget's that low, you know, most of these higher talent require a higher salary, right? Let's face it. So what do you do when the people that you are not— that you want are not there yet? How do you delegate these decisions, right? There's several ways you can do it. Number one, you could invest in your people where you can hire folks to help equip them with wisdom that you don't have to do. And again, I understand it costs money, But yes, you get what you pay for, right? So you hire a team of people to educate your people and have them learn from your counsel and have them like speak into these individuals and show them the giant inside of them and show them the lion inside of them. Okay, that's one aspect.
Edna Harding [00:09:02]:
The second thing that you could do is you could hire a consultant or wise counsel and you would bring it up to them and you have them make the decisions for you, right? Right. And the third aspect is eliminate more decisions, right? So, which means like some things are not worth pondering, if that makes sense. Like get rid of decisions that are not relevant to your particular mission. Because a lot of times is we tend to add on so many decisions to the founder or the CEO's plate that we get caught up working in the business instead of on the business. Does that make sense? So let's say you do have a structure in place. You need to ask yourself, who owns the decisions? Where does authority actually live? Who has the final say, especially if there's disagreement? And How do you decide on that too, right? Because when the structure, as far as the decision-making structure, is unclear, the founder becomes the vine for everything, and eventually that organization cannot grow beyond the founder's capacity. And what I love about this is healthy vines distribute life throughout the system, which means when you have a healthy leadership structure, it distributes decision authority. Right? So you want to ask yourself the health of your vine.
Edna Harding [00:10:31]:
As far as the decisions, are— would you consider the people that are making decisions healthy? Or are they still caught up in things or challenges in the past, right? What, what are their weaknesses? Should they be deciding on these type of things? And if not, how can you eliminate that bottleneck and give it to someone who can give you wise counsel or who can make sound decisions. You know, I want to make this practical and also spiritual at the same time because, you know, I like to mix both. Guys, when in doubt and you don't really have time to really think about it, just go to God and ask God, Lord, this is a situation I'm facing. What do I do? Pray, listen, and do. Pretty simple. And you don't have to figure out the how and the out, because a lot of us, especially if you're intellectuals like myself, we tend to overcomplicate things and we tend to figure out, like, we need to, like, validate the reasons why we're moving forward with something, and we need, like, 4 or 5, you know, confirmations. The thing about God is when God is accelerating you, you don't have time to have confirmations. When God tells you, you trust him and you believe it and you just do it.
Edna Harding [00:11:57]:
And I know this right here, what I'm saying, is really a challenge for a lot of people, especially us, me included, because we want control. We want to know for sure, especially if we've been burned in the past, especially if we've been— we failed in the past. We want to make sure in our mind we're stewarding it well, but in reality we're not trusting God completely. And that is the part that we need to work on, not just ourselves, but even the leaders that we entrust with the authority to make decisions. Which is why it's so important for me that if I bring on people in my leadership team, that they hear from the Spirit of God. I'll hire anybody else with different religions and different things for like the non-authority type of decisions, but anything that requires some sort of authority are making like decisions for the company, you best believe I'm gonna hire based on their walk with God. All right, and for those of you guys who are in that stage where you're growing and you're, and, and you're, you're, you're growing so fast, it's so important more than ever to surround yourself with people that have the same values for you, with you, and also has the same, um, uh reliance on God as you. I can't emphasize that enough.
Edna Harding [00:13:11]:
And I know this is not what's on business books and, and like consulting type of, um, I don't even know how to say it, like protocol. But as a spirit-led executive advisor, this is what I highly recommend, right? Find people that have the same values of you as you, and find people that is hungry for God like you. Big difference. All right, now let's talk about the ground, which is the operations. The ground determines whether growth can sustain. So in companies, this represents what I call systems and operations. So these are processes, financial discipline, delivery systems, operational clarity. Um, what I love about this is it shows that you need both.
Edna Harding [00:14:02]:
Okay, you can't just have vision but have no systems, because what I found because many founders love vision, but they avoid systems. And it's systems that turn ideas into repeatable revenue. So without strong soil, growth eventually exhausts the organization. So we need to make sure that the systems are able to support these ideas so that it could sustain and it could continue to produce fruit. Even without you there. All right, number 4 is the do, which is divine partnership, right? The final element is do from heaven, okay? And this requires the supernatural. This requires God to move on your behalf. This requires angelic help.
Edna Harding [00:14:51]:
This requires things that are outside of your control. And these are things that founders, CEOs, and leaders cannot manufacture. We can't make this happen. We can't make this happen for us. This is where God's favor, God's timing, God's provision, God's unexpected opportunity. This is when that happens. But the pattern in the verse, if you look at it, is the ecosystem was prepared first. What again? What was it again? The vision, the structure, and then the operations, right? The vision, the decision-making, and the operations.
Edna Harding [00:15:30]:
Right? Once the ecosystem is prepared, then heaven supplies what only heaven can provide, because God blesses ordered fields. Now, if you're listening to this and you're still not understanding what I'm saying, I implore you to pause the episode, re-listen again, because I just gave you a wisdom nugget that's going to move your your business forward like 1,000 levels. Okay, get the vision, get clarity on who God called you to, to help, and the vision of how— what he wants you to build. Create a structure, create an authority decision model that honors God's seed or God's vision for you, and also has the same values of you and the same hunger for God and the same dependence for God. Then build the operational systems so that supports that. Then you're going to see heaven's doors and gates open towards you. Does that make sense? Okay. So let me give you 3 practical things that can help you move the needle forward.
Edna Harding [00:16:43]:
So to scale your organization and the vision God gave you, and I'm going to go a little deeper than the usual advice. The first thing you want to do is you want to identify your founder's gravity. What does that mean? Every company has some sort of gravitational pull towards the founder, and you need to be able to discern where the decisions consistently flow back to you, because those moments reveal the true bottleneck of the scale. So instead of delegating the tasks, you want to redesign the decision ownership. So what does that mean? You need to ask yourself, what decisions must leave my desk for this company to grow? What decisions? So for me personally, it's the social media. I gotta stop focusing on social media, LinkedIn, and all this other stuff because that's not helping my company grow. I need to focus on having thought-provoking conversations with the people God called me to work with. Okay, so what, how, so how do I do this, right? Well, I'm glad you asked.
Edna Harding [00:17:54]:
Well, that is why I went ahead and created all my content for 2026, all done, all ready to go, all my blogs, all my social media, including my podcast episodes, which I'm working on now, so that all I have to do is focus on these conversations, right, with these individuals. Do you understand? Then what you do is you build authority structures around those decisions. Not just responsibility, but authority. Who will make decisions on your behalf while you're doing what God is telling you to do, or while you're focusing your efforts on the true, um, 20% that's really going to move results for you, big results for your company. All right. The second thing I want you to do is audit friction, not activity, because a lot of companies measure productivity, but very few measure friction. And friction shows up when teams wait for approvals, when projects stall between departments, when information must pass through this many people to get— I remember in Salesforce, you would have to get approval of the supervisor and the manager, and it's just too much, too much. Like, you gotta stop that.
Edna Harding [00:19:08]:
Okay, remove the friction. Friction slows organizations even when everyone is working hard. So if we remove friction, momentum returns without adding pressure, right? Remove the friction, get rid of the red tape, bottom line. And number 3, you want to create a future table. You know, many founders spend most of their time managing the present, but what scaling companies need to have is you need to have leaders who design the future. So you could call it the future table, just exactly like that, right? 3 questions need to belong there. What must exit in the company 18 months from now? What must stop for the future to become possible? What must be built next? That's it. That's all you talk about, the future.
Edna Harding [00:20:00]:
Don't talk about operational updates. Don't talk about tactical reporting. Only future architecture. So this then keeps the founder from becoming an operator to an architect, right? So instead of a firefighter fighting all the fires, you're focusing on the future. This right here is going to be a game changer for you and your team, I promise you. Okay, so the promise of Zechariah 8:12, let's go back to the scripture. God promises in Zechariah seed growing, vine producing, ground sustaining, and then heaven supplying. This is a picture of what I call peaceful productivity.
Edna Harding [00:20:41]:
No forced growth, no frantic leadership, but systems working together the way they were designed. So for you, my founders and CEOs, the invitation is very simple. Stop trying to force fruit. Stop it. Start stewarding the field, because what you'll find is when the ecosystem is aligned, something powerful begins to happen. The seed grows, the vine produces, the ground yields, and God provides what only God can provide. So here's the question I want to leave with you today, and I hope this really bless you as this blessed me when I was learning this. When your business is out of order, you want to ask yourself, where in your business, okay, might God be inviting you to get rid of or restore order or simplify so that fruit can naturally grow again? You just need to realign your field.
Edna Harding [00:21:46]:
You don't have to push harder. You actually have to make things simpler. Because when that happens, this is when the seed of peace begins to grow. And the seed of the peace is the one that multiplies day by day, from glory to glory. All right, friends, I hope this bless you and encourage you, and I'll talk to you guys next time. Take care. Thanks for joining us this week on Estherpreneur. Make sure to visit our website, favorandwealth.com.
Edna Harding [00:22:18]:
For more information on our services. While you're at it, if you found value in this show, we'd appreciate a rating on iTunes, or if you simply tell a friend about the show, that would help me out too. Also check out my book, The Ugly Side of Sales, available on Amazon, where I share 7 of my secrets on how to win and grow business the right way. Until next time, keep shining.