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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 [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Estrepreneur, a podcast for entrepreneurs and leaders doing business and life God's way. Each week we discuss biblical and practical tips to improve your mind, business, spirit, relationships, and finances. Listen along as I speak with special guests on how to thrive in all aspects of life. Hi, I'm Edna. Like many of you, I wear many hats. I'm a military wife, mother, author, certified John Maxwell business and executive coach, trainer, and founder of Favor and Wealth, where we help the good guys win. So tune in as we bring on the light.
Edna Harding [00:00:41]:
Well, hello everyone. Thank you for tuning in for another episode of the Estherpreneur Podcast. My name is Edna Harding, and nothing but a messenger of hope, life, and truth in the marketplace. In this podcast, we talk about all things business and life God's way. Utilizing timeless wisdom and timely methods. Today, I want to talk to you guys about something every business owner needs to understand, but many entrepreneurs overlook. You guys ready? And it's probably the most important thing, which is profitability. You know, in the previous episodes, hopefully they publish it in the order that I wanted to, that I recorded it, but we talked a little bit about profitability.
Edna Harding [00:01:23]:
and I want you guys to really understand what that means today. So let's just welcome the Holy Spirit into this conversation. Holy Spirit, we pray, oh God, that every word that I have spoken today, oh God, will penetrate deep down into the people's spirits, oh God, so that your word will bring forth fruits in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So we often hear people say that they want to grow their business, right? So more clients, more visibility, more revenue, right? But growth alone is not the goal because a business can grow and still struggle financially. Like I mentioned before, the real goal is profitability, and profit is simply the financial benefit that remains after all expenses are subtracted from revenue. And I know this sounds so basic, but please just bear with me here.
Edna Harding [00:02:16]:
Humor me. In other words, Profit is what is left after your business pays for everything it needs to operate. So revenue is what you bring in and profit is what remains. Before all my experts tune me out, understand guys that I have two audiences, people who are already growing, scaling, maybe profitable and looking to scale, and then you have people who are struggling startups and maybe they haven't been able to create a profit. So just listen in and maybe the Lord will speak to you through this episode regardless if you already are profiting or not, okay? Maybe he's going to teach you how to increase your profits. Who knows, okay? What I love about profitability is it measures how effectively your business produces that return based on the resources you use. And this is important because a business can generate revenue and still not be profitable, okay? So this is, this is a mistake that many entrepreneurs make. Okay.
Edna Harding [00:03:17]:
They assume more sales automatically means more profit, but that's not always true. In fact, this speaks directly to what I call stewardship. Okay. Because in Luke 14:28, which I've said over and over again, it says, suppose one of you wants to build a tower, won't you sit down and estimate the costs? This is the language of business intelligence, right? So a lot of times what people do is they just keep growing, growing, growing, but they don't measure. They don't evaluate before they expand, right? They don't understand their numbers, and profitability is key, right? It's not just about increasing revenue. It's like what's left over after you increase your revenue. So there are 3 ways to increase profitability, and we're going to walk through them today. The first way is to increase revenue.
Edna Harding [00:04:13]:
Obviously, this is the most obvious path. So if you sell more services, sign more clients, or expand your offers, then what happens? Your revenue grows. For example, imagine you add 5 new clients at $200 per month. That's what? An additional $1,000 in revenue. But the important distinction is this. Which is revenue is not the same as profit. So if those clients came through expensive advertising, networking costs, or other marketing efforts that exceeds $1,000, then your revenue increased, but not your profit, right? Which is why simply chasing sales is not always the answer. In fact, what wise business owners and wise voters know is that they evaluate both sides of the equation.
Edna Harding [00:05:00]:
They evaluate both revenue and expenses. Okay, so the second way to increase profitability is what to do is to raise your prices. So price increases, increases, increases directly affect revenue, but they have to be done thoughtfully because if prices increase too quickly or without clear value, you can also lose customers. So strategic pricing requires requires wisdom. What does it do? It involves timing, it involves positioning, and it involves understanding the value you deliver. But here again is additional biblical wisdom. Proverbs 11:1. You guys know what that says? It's, the Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him.
Edna Harding [00:05:46]:
So fair pricing matters, okay? Your pricing should reflect both value and integrity. Okay, so do not charge $15 million if the outcome is only $1,000. And mind you, I've seen this experts charge $25,000 for something that is not worth $25,000. Okay, so just be careful. Okay, just be careful what you guys are doing, but there is a balance, right? The third way, and probably the most powerful way, is to improve profitability by controlling your expenses. So when you lower your expenses, it directly increases profit. And this is where that balance is here. Reducing expenses should never compromise the quality of work.
Edna Harding [00:06:36]:
And this is why I love— I am a big proponent of systems, creating systems, automated systems to help lessen the workload, lessen your time. And I, I could go talk about systems all day and all night. And that's one way for you to lower your expenses is because if you create systems that replace manual labor, guess what, my friends? This will like save you so much time and money. So for example, imagine a restaurant that decides to cut costs by switching from high-quality ingredients to cheap alternatives. Do you think that is a good thing? No, because what it does is you're going to compromise the quality of work, of your work. So how do you keep the same level of quality of your work and still lower expenses? Okay. That is the key. That is the million-dollar question, right? Because eventually customers will notice.
Edna Harding [00:07:26]:
I can tell you certain things, like if you go to the store, right, it's the same price for something little. And I noticed I could tell the difference, right? They're getting more cheap and cheap and cheap with the products that they offer because they're trying to lower costs. But I guess for groceries is a little bit different because people buy it regardless. I'm talking about a product, like you never want to overprice something. It's just not a good thing for you. Okay. In the long run, lower expenses should come from better systems, from efficiency, from wise decision-making, not cutting the very things that make your service valuable. So I want everyone to understand the two types of expenses that every business owner needs to understand.
Edna Harding [00:08:06]:
Okay. It's the fixed expenses. These are costs that remain consistent regardless of how many sales you make. And this includes rent, insurance, equipment leases, or certain subscriptions. There's also expenses often negotiated once and remain stable for months and years, though So that's what those are. But then the second type is what are called variable expenses, which everyone calls that, that these expenses increase as sales increase. So for example, if you produce a product, the ingredient or materials needed to produce it increases as you sell more. So the same is true for time, labor, and delivery costs.
Edna Harding [00:08:39]:
So when you understand these expenses, this will help you identify where money is actually going. Now, wise leaders do not ignore expenses, especially starting out, a lot of entrepreneurs, what they tend to do is they tend to just spend, spend, spend, but they don't keep track of what they've spent so far. I've learned this the hard way with, like, I always tell people, go ahead and start creating your profit and loss statement even though you don't have a lot of income yet. Start getting into that practice. I do that with my clients right now, even at a startup phase, even as they're building, like, I want them to keep track of all their expenses. Okay. You have to measure them, you have to manage them, you have to steward over them, because that's what God wants. He wants us to evaluate how we manage the finances.
Edna Harding [00:09:26]:
We can't ask God to increase us if we don't even know the numbers. Okay, the principle is very clear: God honors wise stewardship, and that means financial stewardship. Okay, so I want to say this: You're probably wondering, okay, well, okay, I understand we can't change fixed expenses, but how about variable expenses? Guys, nowadays with AI technology, with all these lifetime softwares, there are ways for you to cut costs without losing the quality of your service, right? You could, like, for me, in simplicity, like, to make for me so that I am not wasting, because obviously, okay, so software will fail, right? What doesn't fail is wisdom, right? So I know God gave me wisdom. So what I have done And that's really helped me cut my costs so that I'm not spending too much time with the clients is I have recorded a lot of training, a lot of courses, a lot of workbooks, a lot of content so that instead of me trading my time for money, I then just send them the stuff so that they can review it themselves and I don't have to teach them, which then helped me cut my operation costs, right? I can continue to get as many clients and have content galore, right? Training galore, consulting galore. You know, things that— resources galore to help move the needle forward for them, even though I'm not physically there, but they still get the one-on-one component with me, but at the same time, I'm not repeating myself over and over again. If it's something that you repeat on a regular basis, that's probably something you need to record. That's probably something you need to automate. You understand what I'm saying? Like the things that need creative work, keep that to yourself, but everything that's mundane and something that you could automate, something that you can repeat, That's definitely something you want to create a system for.
Edna Harding [00:11:11]:
All right. So let's get practical. Let's talk about 3 simple questions you could reflect on this week, and then we could call it a day. First thing you want to do is you want to know if you know your actual profit, not just your revenue, right? How much did you make last month? How much did you make last year? What was your net profit? Okay. Second, do you understand which expenses are necessary and which ones could be improved? Right? If you don't need it, get rid of it. Like, so for me, for example, I got rid of SayWhat, I got rid of Favicon. There were some softwares that I was using that wasn't really adding a return on investment to my business. It wasn't really helping me, right? So I cut down a lot of stuff.
Edna Harding [00:11:52]:
Even though I have the money, I'm still cutting it down because I want to steward God's resources well. And third is, are you making decisions in your business based on your growth alone? Or based on wise stewardship? It comes down to ask God for wisdom. It's pretty simple, guys. Ask God for wisdom and he will give you wisdom. Because ultimately, my friends, a healthy business is not built on activity. It's built on wisdom. It's built on clarity. It's built on stewardship.
Edna Harding [00:12:18]:
It's built on profitability. When you understand revenue, systems, expenses, profitability, this is when you go from working in your business to working on your business, okay? You need God to guide your decisions, you need God to guide your growth, and you need God to help you become— make your business sustainable. But in order for you to do that, you have to have something to measure, and you have to have something to work to help you measure, right? This is how businesses are not only built, this is how businesses are sustained. Now, if you're completely lost and like, Edna, I have no idea where to start, I have no idea where to begin, Join my Business Unlimited program, guys. I only have a limited, a limited amount of people I can handle because it's still me doing the mentoring. It's still me doing the coaching. I don't have any assistant coaches doing it. I absolutely love what I do.
Edna Harding [00:13:12]:
And so if this is something you're truly serious about, join my program and put down the pride. I don't care if you were rich before and now you're poor. I don't care if you think you're better than everyone else. Guys, put that pride away and just join my program. Stop playing patty cake with the devil. And go ahead and jump all in because the answer you've been waiting for, the answer you've been praying for is right here. You're listening to it right now. You've been listening to this podcast.
Edna Harding [00:13:38]:
God led you to this podcast. You've been following me on LinkedIn. You've been, you know, stop. This is surface level. Like the difference between a smart person and a foolish person is a smart person understands that in a multitude of counselors, there is wisdom. Okay, you need someone counseling you, okay? And you listening to a podcast, you reading a book, that's not counseling. Counseling is you tell me what's going on with you and I'm gonna tell you exactly what to do. That's what counseling is, okay? As you could tell, guys, I'm really passionate about this because I'm tired of seeing people suffer.
Edna Harding [00:14:10]:
I'm tired of seeing people perish because of lack of knowledge. So this is a time for you to go all in and build that thing. And all you need is wisdom, wisdom from God and wisdom from people that God called to help you, all right? Bless you, my friends. Friends, and I'll talk to you soon. Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks for joining us this week on Estrepreneur.
Edna Harding [00:14:34]:
Make sure to visit our website, favorandwealth.com, for more information on our services.
Edna Harding [00:14:40]:
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.