Business and Bread: Build your BAM Project with 3 Simple Ingredients

by Bernie Anderson

My name is Bernie Anderson and I have the honor of taking over the BAM blog for the next several weeks. I am a certified business and nonprofit consultant with Growability® – read more in my bio below. 

 

Flour. Water. Salt.

Three of the most basic ingredients imaginable.

Yet, when properly combined, processed, and timed, these three ingredients produce what might be the perfect food: Crusty, soft, sourdough bread with complex flavor and texture.

Yes, I was one of those COVID-shutdown sourdough people. And I’m still at it three and a half years later.

I started simple. Created a starter.

Fed the starter until it was active.

Made a few discard recipes.

Keep that starter alive and flourishing.

I was well over a year in before I started creating actual sourdough loaves without added yeast.

Then I went in deep.

The magic of sourdough is the chemical creation of natural yeast. And it really is a miracle. Flour, water, and salt, mixed with a fermented starter made of a living fungus (yeast) and a living bacterium called lactobacillus. They work together to eat the sugars in the flour. These living creatures basically poop acid – a tasty, savory acid that puts the sour in sourdough. When the fungus and bacteria finish their feast and have suitably relieved themselves, the dough is ready and baking can begin.

The result is a crusty, airy, flavorful loaf of delicious. The complexity of flavor and texture in a loaf of sourdough is a veritable miracle given the simplicity of ingredients.

It’s possible to complicate the recipe. Add sugars and oils, preservatives and shelf stabilizers. But complexified breads are rarely as good as simplified loaves. Three simple ingredients, with time and a specific process, will bring extraordinary results.

 

The simple believe everything, but the clever consider their steps.

Proverbs 15:15

 

Like anything in life worth doing, starting a business is difficult. Starting or running a BAM project adds more complexities. But, one of the biggest stumbling blocks for entrepreneurs is overcomplicating the essentials. You can read thousands of business books, take hundreds of online courses, attend seminars, and even go to University and get an MBA – but the simple ingredients for starting a business stay the same.

And that’s exactly what makes a BAM project both exciting and daunting!

Business done right makes life better for everyone involved, from customer to employees to the community where it lives. Let’s simplify your BAM project by extracting the essential ingredients for starting and running a business anywhere in the world.

Every business, no matter how large or small, simple or complicated, grows from a combination of these three simple ingredients:

• • Leadership
  • Management
  • Marketing

Ingredient 1: Leadership

Leadership is the key ingredient for growth and direction in any organization. Leadership gets a lot of press, and rightly so. It is an essential part of every successful business endeavor. The concept of leadership is broad, as it takes on the ideology and frameworks of various cultures and settings. At its most essential level, leadership has two distinct components:

• Clarify Vision: Your business needs a vision bigger than you. This is the essential fuel for enduring the tough parts that will inevitably come your way. A clear vision for your BAM project gives you the freedom of working with the end in mind.
• Implement Strategy: Vision without a strategy is like a sail without a mast. It’s not useful and might even be a hindrance. An effective strategy allows you to do less and accomplish more. Leadership defines what is essential and eliminates excess. You want your business to grow fruit rather than weeds. A well-implemented strategy is a key leadership task.

Ingredient 2: Management

The second simple ingredient for every business is great management. Many people think about management in the dull terms of operations, Human Resources, IT, and finance. People are at the very center of management. There are two components to great management in a business:

• Empower Teamwork: Business is always a team sport. Lasting growth happens at the speed of community. An empowered team knows how to leverage the tension of unique strengths and personalities to not just “get work done”, but also to live out purpose and calling.
• Equip Managers: If an empowered team is the goal, skilled managers empower their team. Real leadership rests in the ability to make new leaders — and that’s exactly what an equipped manager does. They have the tools, training, and techniques needed to serve both the team and the customer.

Ingredient 3: Marketing

The final critical ingredient for every business is marketing. Marketing must be intentional for it to be effective. BAM leaders should embrace the reality that there are no “unicorns” (or, if there are unicorns, I’m certainly not one of them!) and that marketing is a non-negotiable part of running this business. Once again, they’re two parts to this ingredient.

• Prioritize Customers: I believe the bottom line of any good business is human flourishing. This is especially true for a BAM project. When we add genuine value to people’s lives, they will gladly pay for it! A customer-centric business is a business who has priorities right.
• Automate Sales: More entrepreneurs that I would care to list dread this part. Many people view sales as slimy, smarmy, and even un-Christian. It doesn’t have to be this way. Sales should be personal and generous. It should actually be fun. Automating sales is automating service to your customers. So, if you don’t enjoy the sales process, neither will your customer!

Having the right ingredients never guarantees results.

Bread depends on temperature, humidity, quality of flour, air pressure, along with kneading and folding processes. But every week when I start a new loaf, I weigh the flour, the water, and the salt. It’s what’s needed to build the entire loaf.

Likewise, every business environment depends on variables like market health, seasonality, the global economy, competition, emerging technologies, and more. No matter if you’re just getting started, or if you’ve been running a business for decades, the three essential ingredients you must pull from your pantry shelf are leadership, management, and marketing.

 

Look out for posts through September on each of these three essentials for any business.

>> Read Part 2: Setting a Course: How to Clarify Vision and Implement Strategy for BAM Pioneers

>> Read Part 3: Marketing and Generosity: Sales and Solutions for Human Flourishing

>> Read Part 4: Adding Salt: How to Build and Manage Teams That Work

 

Bernie Anderson is a consultant, coach, and trainer with Growability® Consulting, specializing in non-profit and cross-cultural business and leadership. Check out the Growability® Podcast at all your favorite podcast places. He currently lives in Greenville, SC USA, with his wife of 34 years. Bernie’s career has certainly been a diverse one. He spent 13 years as a pastor and the better portion of 10 years living in Central Asia, while developing entrepreneurial, Christian leaders. Since returning to the US in 2014, he has been a major-gifts fundraiser for an international nonprofit and is currently a certified business and nonprofit consultant with Growability®, where the mission is to equip business and nonprofit leaders to enjoy meaningful work by creating scalable, effective, and generous organizations. For further help for your organization (or his exact sourdough process) feel free to email him bernie@growability.com.

 

 

 

Photo by Franzi Meyer on Unsplash