What If Someone Else Sees It Before You Do?

There are things we know how to do that we don’t always think much about.

You could be the person everyone calls when they need help organizing something. Maybe you know how to make a space feel welcoming, manage details other people overlook, write, plan, create, research, solve problems, work with numbers, or bring order to something that feels all over the place. Or you’re good at explaining things in a way people can actually understand.

Sometimes you’ve been doing something for so long that it doesn’t even seem significant to you anymore.

You just know how to do it.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as I’ve been working on the Business & Entrepreneurship side of Godly Friendships.

Because I think sometimes we can recognize something in another person much faster than we recognize it in ourselves.

That’s one of the things I value about godly friendship.

There are times when another woman can see something in you that you’ve been overlooking. She has watched how you show up, how you help people, how you handle certain situations, or the things that seem to come naturally to you. And because she’s standing outside of you, she may notice what you’ve gotten so used to that you don’t even recognize it anymore.

Sometimes we need women in our lives who can say, “Do you realize you’re really good at this?”

Not because they get to tell us what we’re called to do with it. Not because every strength needs to become a business. But because there is something valuable about having people around us who help us see ourselves more clearly.

We can look at someone else and recognize what she carries while dismissing the same kinds of things in ourselves.

Anybody can do this.

It’s not that big of a deal.

I’ve never been trained for it.

I wouldn’t even know what to do with it.

But what if the first question isn’t whether you can turn it into a business?

What if the first question is simply whether you’ve taken the time to recognize what’s actually there?

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One of the things I’ve realized about myself is that I can take a business idea and start seeing the structure around it.

Someone can tell me what they’re trying to build, and my mind starts going to the pieces.

What’s missing? What needs to happen first? What needs to be organized? What systems would make this work? What are we not thinking about yet? How do we move this from an idea into something that can actually function?

For a long time, I don’t think I understood that as something particularly meaningful. I thought it was just how my brain worked. I didn’t realize that this was one of the gifts God had given me.

I could have insight into a business I personally knew nothing about and still see things the person building it couldn’t see yet. I could ask questions, identify what was missing, help put structure around the idea, and help them develop what they were trying to build.

That’s where I began to understand that I was a midwife.

When I use that word, I mean someone who can come alongside another person who is carrying a vision and help her bring that vision into something tangible. I don’t create the vision for her or take ownership of it. I help her develop it, see what may be missing, put structure around it, and figure out what needs to happen next.

And one of the areas where I help with birthing is business.

Once I understood that, I started looking differently at something I had previously dismissed as just the way my brain works.

I’ve also learned that sometimes recognizing what’s in our hands happens in relationship with other people. Someone else may see a strength we’ve dismissed, ask a question we’ve never thought to ask, or recognize something in us that we’ve treated as ordinary.

That’s part of why friendship and community matter to me as I build this.

I don’t want Godly Friendships to become a place where women are constantly comparing what they have to what another woman has. I want it to be a place where we can recognize, encourage, and make room for the different things God has placed in each of us.

And I’m not saying that everything you’re good at needs to become a business.

I don’t believe that.

Some things may be useful in your job. Some may help you serve your family, church, community, or someone else’s vision. Some may eventually become part of a business. Some may simply be things you enjoy and never need to monetize at all.

But I do think there’s value in recognizing what you have before deciding what you should do with it.

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Is there something that people regularly come to you for?

You’ve wondered if you could do more with it, but you don’t know what “more” would even look like.

Maybe you’ve thought about starting something before, but talked yourself out of it because you didn’t know where to begin.

It could be that you don’t want to start a business at all, but you know there are things you’re capable of doing and you’re trying to understand where they fit.

Or maybe you really don’t know yet.

That’s okay too.

You don’t need a business idea before you’re allowed to start learning about business.

That’s something I want to be very intentional about as I build Business & Entrepreneurship inside Godly Friendships.

I’m not interested in telling every woman that she needs to become an entrepreneur.

I want us to learn how to look at what we already have, understand where it may be useful, learn how business actually works, and then make responsible decisions about what makes sense from there.

I’m also not interested in telling women that if God gave them a gift, they’re supposed to figure out how to make money from it.

Because having something useful doesn’t automatically mean you have a business.

But I feel like it may be worth learning how to find out.

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Business & Entrepreneurship is coming to Godly Friendships this fall, and I’ll be sharing more as I continue building it. But before we get into business ideas, customers, money, marketing, or any of the other things we’re going to learn, I think there’s something worth paying attention to first.

What is already in your hands?