8 Practices for Generosity in Business (and Life)
Wanna talk to you today about generosity. And the reason why I want us to focus on that for this episode is because we always say this podcast and this business exists for impact driven leaders. And one of the things that I've found as a common denominator for leaders that make an impact is that they are generous people. This is a virtue that we want to strive for. And it's also a virtue that like many of the great virtues, you're never there.
Alex Judd:Right? It's never like, oh, I finally figured out generosity or I'm finally grown in the area of generosity. Now what's so cool about this is it's an abundance virtue, meaning that you're never grown, you're always growing. There's never figured it out. It's always figuring it out.
Alex Judd:And so to the degree that we apply our attention and energy to this virtue of generosity, it's an endless and infinite stream of opportunity. And so with that, the way I want to break this down is eight principles. The way within Path for Growth Coaching we always talk about principles is principles are concisely worded statements of truth that transcends circumstance. So what I really wanted to do is to distill, man, what are eight truths that apply to all of us regardless of stage of business, stage of life, regardless of background or belief system? These are eight truths about how reality works that we would be wise to attend to and then to practically think out how do these truths work in my situation, my stage, my business, my life.
Alex Judd:So let's jump into first a definition of generosity. I love this definition. It says generosity is the spirit and action of freely and frequently giving to others. So generosity number one is a spirit. It's something that occurs inside of us, and that internal state comes out of us.
Alex Judd:We all know that if you just have the actions of generosity without the spirit of generosity, it actually feels a lot more like stinginess. Conversely, if you just have the spirit without the action, well, what does James say? I think it's James one twenty two, but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourself. So what we want is we want to simultaneously have the spirit and the action. We should have an internal state of generosity towards others where we're seeing the best of people, where we're seeing opportunities to give, where we're seeing places where needs can be met and problems can be solved if we freely give.
Alex Judd:But then also, that spirit that is internal has to manifest in boots on the ground, roll up your sleeves, get muddy, get dirty, get bloody action. So generosity is the spirit and action of freely. I love that because it conveys a loose script, which so many people, especially in business, need. And frequently, it's not a moment in your day. It's a lifestyle giving to others.
Alex Judd:So that's the definition that we're pulling from as we walk through these eight principles. Let's start with principle number one. Generosity is not less than our finances but it does encompass a great deal more than our finances. So often the minute you hear the word generosity, right, if someone tells you, hey, at church this Sunday, they're talking about generosity, you don't think to yourself, oh, they're talking about freely giving of ourselves. What you think to yourself is they're about to talk about money.
Alex Judd:And that's because generosity does absolutely apply to our finances and it's really, really important. That's gonna be much of how we look at this topic as we walk through the next, seven principles. But the thing that I want us to understand is that all of the principles that we talk about here today are not just about money. I love that framework of time, talent, treasure. So treasure is your money or your resources but so often, man, what's your talent?
Alex Judd:What's your strength? And what would it look like for you to give that away? And for so many of you, you literally say, man, as a leader the most valuable thing that you've got access to is your time. And if that's the case, man what an powerful thing to be outrageously and incomprehensibly generous with your time. And so as we walk through these principles, I put this one first for a very specific purpose.
Alex Judd:I want you to think of these not just as principles that apply to your finances, they do but certainly they also apply to your talents, strengths, your gifts, your wiring and also how you give away your time. Associated with this, I want us to remember that the highest form of generosity, I would say, is sacrificial generosity. The absolute perfect example of this is Christ on the cross. Right? He gave his entire self away sacrificially for us, and that's atonement.
Alex Judd:At one moment, he he solved the entire gap between humanity and God, and now we're able to live in communion with God and live in a state of victory. Right? Sacrificial generosity. We literally just celebrated the holiday where we said, man, that is what we are aiming for. That type of life, that type of impact.
Alex Judd:Okay, so that's the highest form of generosity. What's interesting is you can get to a stage of business in life where giving away money is good, it's never not gonna be good, but it's not actually sacrificial. What's interesting is I coincide with a lot of CEOs that once you reach a certain dollar number on net worth, it actually doesn't hurt at all to give away money or to write checks. I am in no way demeaning or devaluing the power of writing checks, I think that it's absolutely necessary and so powerful. But what we could actually gain from and grow from recognizing is that man, sometimes the greatest opportunity for growth and generosity might be the greatest area of discomfort.
Alex Judd:So writing that check for a large amount of money to a cause we believe in is good, but maybe we would become more generous and experience the fruit of the virtue of generosity not by just writing the check but also giving our time. And we always say growth and comfort never coexist. So you could ask yourself, man, what's the thing that for me to loosen my grip on it a little bit, it would be a little bit uncomfortable for me? And maybe just ask, is this a season where I'm called to be generous in this area because I really think God can bless that in our lives but then also in our business. Number one, generosity is not less than our finances but it does encompass a great deal more than our finances, also our time and talent.
Alex Judd:Let's go to number two. The primary blockers to generosity are twofold, greed or fear. This is really interesting because in business literature, business lexicon, the way we even talked about virtue and value based business, the thing that is so often focused on is greed as being antithetical to generosity. Without a shadow of a doubt, that is true. Greed is an insatiable need for more.
Alex Judd:I need more and I need it all to be mine. It's the archetypal greedy fat cat that we see in so many Hollywood movies that they just can't stop. They just need more, and the idea of anyone having anything that's quote unquote theirs is almost inconceivable to them. It's just gotta be more, and it's gotta be mine. It's gotta be more.
Alex Judd:It's gotta be mine. That's greed personified, right? But what's interesting is we so disproportionately focus on the topic of greed that I actually think we can become incredibly susceptible, and I'm speaking from personal experience here, to a second equally powerful blocker to generosity. And that blocker is fear. So what is fear?
Alex Judd:A need to hoard out of scarcity and unhealthy independence. So fear can cause us to think, this is all on me. Fear can cause us to say, man, I have to make sure I cover every single basis of what could possibly happen. Fear says I can't afford to give anything away because I need to make sure I am ready for anything and everything. And what's crazy is if you're holding on to everything, hoarding everything, saying I need to keep this so that we are safe, you can't give away anything.
Alex Judd:And what I often see, especially in economic and geopolitically turbulent times like what we're in, it can be so, so, so easy to get into this independent perspective and paradigm of business and leadership that we say, this is all on me. Am I advocating against wise saving and creating a retained earnings account and thinking about how many months of your operating expenses you've got put away in liquid cash that you can access if you need to? No. What is that called? That's called wisdom.
Alex Judd:But you and I both know that it's possible to over index on hoarding and saving that it actually becomes scarcity and fear and instead of trusting on and leaning on God who's the sovereign creator protector sustainer, we actually start trusting and leaning on ourselves and we become in a very toxic way independent. We're not called to be independent ultimately, we're called to be in dependence and so that's why we need to remember that fear can actually be a blocker generosity. Remember this, generosity is not something that we should apply a one day mindset to. Man one day when I reach this stage in my life, when I reach this stage in my business, when I reach this stage in my leadership, when our family gets to this place, one day then we'll be able to be generous. I'll never forget, there was a time a few years ago now where I sat down with a remarkably successful businesswoman.
Alex Judd:I mean this woman had made it in so many ways and not just once, she had made it multiple times in multiple different arenas. And one of the things that stood out to me about her was she had quote unquote made it and she was wildly generous. And I had talked to a couple people about her and one of the things that always came up is man, how freely her and her husband in particular gave their resources away, invested into the community, invested into causes, invested into people, even invested into other businesses. People just said, man, they just have such a spirit of generosity about them. And I had the opportunity to ask this woman this question.
Alex Judd:I said, what is it that gives you the ability to so freely give whenever you have so much today? And what's so cool is here's what she said. She said, you know Alex, we've actually talked about that. And we kind of look at each other and we say, why are we able to do this? And she said, both of us find ourselves being so grateful to God.
Alex Judd:That's what she said. She said, we thank God that we gave whenever we had nothing. She said because at that time we would say ma'am we're not making much but with the little that we have, and I think they actually came from a pretty poor state, with the little that we have we're gonna try and give 10%. And she said we're so grateful that we did that then because she said if we didn't have the stomach and the muscles to write the check then, we wouldn't just be able to get to where we are today and write that many commas on a check that we're just giving away. She's like, I wouldn't be able to do it.
Alex Judd:And so she said, it was so important that we built the muscle up over time and we started where we were. And that's so good because especially whenever we're in this small early stage where we don't feel like we're making much and we're not doing much, that's when we can lean into both fear and greed. We can say, I need to protect this as mine right now so that one day I can start to give And her story should stand in direct opposition to that and remind us that no, giving is not a moment in your day, it's also not a stage of your life. Giving and generosity is a lifestyle. Okay number three, true generosity is rooted in a stewardship mindset.
Alex Judd:Here's when I am least generous with the resources in our business. It's when I get this screwed up, twisted ideology that this business is mine And therefore like it all belongs to me. That's messed up. And it's out of that messed up posture and positioning that I'm just quite frankly not a very generous person, not a very generous leader. And I'm not even just talking about generous with my money, although it certainly affects that.
Alex Judd:I'm talking about generous with my time. I'm talking about generous with my energy. I'm talking about generous with my words and my spirit, I'm just not a very generous person. And the reason why is because that's not a stewardship mindset. That's in some ways an unhealthy ultimate ownership mindset, right?
Alex Judd:What we want to preserve and what I believe we're called and challenged to preserve is a stewardship mindset. And here's what a stewardship mindset looks like in the business context. This business is not mine, this business is God that he's given me to manage. What is a steward? A steward is a caretaker.
Alex Judd:And what's so cool is when I start to view this business and all of its associated resource and assets, and then even expand beyond that and say, man, this house, this car, this marriage, my family, all of the resources, our financial portfolio, right, the condo that we rent out, all of that stuff, don't get it twisted. It's not mine. It's not mine at all, right. This is God's that he's given me to manage and why has he given it to me to manage? It's to serve and impact other people.
Alex Judd:So that's so cool because that means that man the reason why I've been given these things is not for me. Rather I've been tasked as the steward, the caretaker, the manager of these things and it's with these things that I am now tasked to love other people. And so the stewardship mindset is man, praise God for all the cool stuff that he blessed me with and the amazing relationships and the time and the talent and the treasure. Praise God for that. Now how do I make sure he gets a return on what he's given me to manage?
Alex Judd:And man, if I'm an effective steward, if I'm an effective investor, let's not even just make it a incremental return, let's make it an exponential return. He who can be trusted with little can be trusted with much. Jesus said that. And so if I can create an exponential return, not just financial but impact return in the lives of other people, return through the lens of a kingdom economy for and through other people, well then the way God has structured the world, praise God for this, is that he trusts you with a little, you create exponential return, you look up and you say, my gosh, I've been trusted with more. And then you create an exponential return.
Alex Judd:You say, my god, I've been trusted with more. Praise God. And that's the benefit and blessing of a stewardship mindset. Okay, let's go to number four. In business, generosity can take many forms.
Alex Judd:So we're particularly talking about business right now. The most common and publicized version of business generosity is generosity to a cause, right? Oh, I gave to help in sex trafficking. Oh, I helped give to the homeless in our community. Or oh, I helped give to support veterans that are looking for a place to work.
Alex Judd:All of those are causes and those are brilliant things to give to, right? That's the most publicized way we exercise generosity in business but I want you to expand your thinking on generosity to three other areas. We have generosity to the team. How are you going above and beyond to bless your team and their families? You want that as a CEO or owner to be on your mind all the time, especially when the business is winning.
Alex Judd:How am I going above and beyond to bless my team and their families? One of the things that I often think of is does the team member think of you as generous? That's good obviously if they think of you as generous. Here's a real cool litmus test question. Does the team member's spouse think of you as generous?
Alex Judd:And here's why I think that's actually really important to think about is because some people might answer that question and be like, well I don't know, the spouse doesn't really know me. And that might be true, especially if you're a larger company and the spouse might not know you personally, although it would be awesome if they did know you personally. But is your generosity affecting the team member in such a way that they go home and they can't help but be inspired by it and talk about it at the dinner table that night? That's what we're really trying to get to with that question. Generosity to the team.
Alex Judd:Generosity to the customer. Man, it's so cool that whenever you structure your organizational finances well, this is something that fulling management and accounting does so well. We've talked about them on this podcast at length. When you structure your finances well, you're hopefully operating with a degree of margin in your business. And when you're operating with a degree of margin in your business, inevitably, it will happen, sometime in the next couple months, you're going to coincide with a customer that has a need.
Alex Judd:It might be related directly to what your company does. It might also be related to something your company doesn't do, but if you have margin in your business you might be able to say hey we're gonna, our customer that we care about deeply, that we've built a relationship is experiencing a problem. What if we were part of the solution? What if we were able to extend a temporary discount or extend a little bit of a free offering or service for a period of time in hopes of a greater extended relationship? What if we were able to meet them in their time of need and trouble and help ask them, hey what would be supportive right now or do we need to delay your payment right now or something like that.
Alex Judd:If you're running on a hairpin and you're being a poor steward of your organization's finances because they're not organized, it's irresponsible to do this. What's so cool is that if you've organized your finances, you have margin in your finances in a responsible and wise way, you can help meet your customers' needs. And man, when you do that like you're gonna gain lifetime fans of your business, right? And whether that results in more business from them or not is kind of beside the point. It's the right thing to do.
Alex Judd:But what I see is like even if it doesn't result in more business from them, you better believe they're going to be telling that story to their friends. And that's how you start to build a reputation of character. Generosity to the team, generosity to the customer, generosity to the community. One of the Psalms that I focused on last year said, trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
Alex Judd:Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. I love that second phrase there. Dwell in the land. Seek the good of the land that you find yourself in. We live in a virtual environment.
Alex Judd:Many of you have virtual teams, although not all of you that listen to this podcast. And it can be so easy to say, how can I impact the world? And maybe the question to ask is, how can I impact my world? Or with your team to ask, how can we impact our world? There are legitimate pressing needs in the community that you live in.
Alex Judd:What if your business was able to provide service or finances to help solve those problems and meet those needs? What we're not talking about here is, oh man, this is gonna be really good for business because we do this. It might be good for business, but that's not the reason why we're doing it. We're doing it because we have a spirit of action that freely gives towards others. And then finally, generosity to a cause, which is what we already discussed.
Alex Judd:This is saying, man, I'm gonna choose something that there is not a direct line of how it benefits me or us, but it's the right thing to do, so we're going to do it. Generosity to the team, generosity to the customer, generosity to the community, generosity to a cause. Okay, let's go to number five. Generosity to your team is given not earned. And what's really crucial to understand here is that generosity, remember the definition, is the spirit and action of freely and frequently giving to others.
Alex Judd:So we are freely giving. What's important to understand here is that generosity is not this bilateral reciprocal agreement. It's not you did this so I'm going to give you this or it's not I'm going to give you this and out of giving you this, I'm expecting you to give me that. That's more like a contract or a covenant that we're making. I have nothing wrong with contracts.
Alex Judd:I have nothing wrong with, performance based bonuses or rewarding or thing like that. I think you should do those things. And I think it can be really powerful if you do it thoughtfully and in a wise way to have really, really intentional incentive programs for action taken in your business. Just know that's not generosity. And we don't want people to think or get this twisted idea of like the generosity of my leader is entirely dependent on my performance or lack thereof.
Alex Judd:Generosity is given. It's something that you freely give, it's not earned, and therefore we wanna divorce it from performance. We don't wanna say, oh because you did this, I'm gonna give you this. Rather we wanna freely give. And we never want the two to be too interlinked, and it's okay if you incentivize performance, and I would say you should do that.
Alex Judd:Just don't put it under the guise of a gift or generosity. A gift is something that is freely given. Number six, healthy generosity is cheerful. Well, this is taken straight from the bible. I believe it's in second Corinthians that it says, each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
Alex Judd:We are called biblically to not be stingy. We're also called to not be hoarders. We already talked about that. We're called not to be greedy. We're not called to be fearful.
Alex Judd:And so what's so cool about this is it puts this sense of onus and agency on the giver. It's not telling you you have to give. In fact, it's telling you if you feel like you're doing it because you have to, you shouldn't be doing it. It says each one must give as he has decided in his heart. So you are looking into your heart and you're prayerfully considering, man, what am I called to give and what can I give cheerfully?
Alex Judd:What's the thing that you can literally have a smile on your face, no holdups, no hangups, no hookups to it, right? But rather you're just saying, I just am delighted to give this. It's not reluctantly. It's not under compulsion. God loves a cheerful giver.
Alex Judd:And it's in that vein that we can reflect on what Jesus said. He said it's more blessed to give than to receive. Blessed is right? It's the good life. It's supremely and distinctively joyful, right?
Alex Judd:So it's more blessed to give than to receive. Now what's interesting here is supremely and distinctively joyful. Makarios, right? This idea of the good life, or from Christian perspective, the successful life. Is it that we are distinctively joyful and out of that we give?
Alex Judd:Or is it that we give and that giving makes us distinctively joyful, makes us blessed? That's a little bit of a conundrum and the way I would answer that question is yes. Is it that man, we are so joyful, we are so abundantly provided for, we are so so blessed that out of that we're going to give. Yes, but then also whenever we give, holy cow, do we see that it's like any time I give I become so joyful, so aware of the abundance around me, blessed? The answer is yes.
Alex Judd:And so I like to think of it as this virtuous circle that my blessing spurs generosity and my generosity spurs blessing. That goes into number seven. Generosity is best received with gratitude and extension. So now we're talking about being the recipient of generosity, which we all are. Whether we know it or not is the question, but we are all the recipients of generosity.
Alex Judd:If you are a team member that works for a generous owner, want you to focus on gratitude and extension. If you are a business owner, I guarantee you in some way, some form, some facet, you are the recipient of generosity. Whether that's people's time, talent, treasure, or something else. And so what do we need to first do? We need to acknowledge it and say man that was incredibly generous of that person.
Alex Judd:Because so often, especially related to people's time, like people can give you time and their time could be worth so much and they just gave it away freely. If we're not careful we don't even acknowledge, man that was an act of supreme generosity. That was the equivalent of them writing a check for $20,000 because they gave me three hours of their time and I didn't even say thank you for it. I didn't even recognize that they were being so generous. So we've got to acknowledge it.
Alex Judd:And then how do you receive it? Gratitude and extension. So here's what I mean by that. Make sure that you say thank you. And I would say, man, there's something really powerful about a thank you note or a thank you letter to really commemorate when you are the recipient of generosity.
Alex Judd:So the first thing you are acknowledging whenever you say thank you is you're saying, I am the beneficiary of this generosity so it's right to say thank you. So you're acknowledging man this is a gift to me. I wanna make sure I say thank you. Number two, what do you wanna do? I want to perpetuate more of this happening in the world so I want to say thank you.
Alex Judd:Here's the deal, and I've actually had conversations with business owners before where they actually took a step. They took a leap to be outrageously generous to their team. And unfortunately I've had calls with them afterwards where I asked, hey man, how'd that go? I know you were super excited about that. And they said, well it a nice internal feeling but I don't know that any of them really noticed.
Alex Judd:Or it didn't seem to move the dial. Or they're just not a very vocal bunch they didn't really say much but I'm just trusting that it made a difference. Here's the deal, if you are the recipient of something that you would like to see more of from your business owner or from a mentor or from a friend like generosity, go out of your way to say thank you. Don't think to yourself like, oh man, they don't need to hear this. Everyone, everyone, everyone benefits from hearing someone take the time to say thank you.
Alex Judd:It's interesting. It was actually not long ago now that someone that I know that has a pretty massive platform, like massive massive platform, had a talk that they gave that was posted on a podcast that I listened to. And the talk was just so good. It was so dialed in. It was so effective.
Alex Judd:It was just, I mean, the person, they are just a master of their craft, and they so clearly worked on this, prepared this, and just crushed it, absolutely crushed it. And I was on a run while I was listening to it and I just thought to myself it would be really good to send them a thank you note just to say thanks for the time that you put into that. I listened to it and it really made an impact on me and it's clear that you really really invested a ton of time to just give this away essentially. And then I had this thought in the back of my head that was like well that person's a really really really big deal. Right?
Alex Judd:Like they are a household name and I'm sure they've got emails flooding in right now and text messages and all that. Who am I to send this message? They don't need to hear from me. But you know I credit this to that post run high and probably a god thing right is I said no I'm actually gonna take the time to send the note. And they'll probably won't reply but I'm gonna send it anyway.
Alex Judd:So it's like later in the evening. I take a moment just to basically say exactly what I just said to you, email it to this person. That night, I wanna say it was within two hours I get a reply back from the person. And I had told them, hey I kind of hesitated to send this because I'm sure you're hearing from so many people but wanted to send it anyway. And they just responded, this means a lot to me, thank you.
Alex Judd:Never hesitate to send an email like this, appreciate you. And to me that was just such a powerful reminder of that proverb, do not withhold good from those to whom it is due. If you see something good, say something good. Be generous with your words. Be generous with the way we commend people.
Alex Judd:We're called to do that and that's what it looks like to freely give. And then finally here's the next point that I want to make on extension and it actually connects to the eighth principle as well. The single best way to say thank you to someone being generous to you is to take responsibility for going out and being generous to others. If someone is exercising generosity with a cheerful heart and you are the recipients, The single best way for you to say thank you is not a thank you note. It's not you telling them thank you, although those are both good and necessary.
Alex Judd:It's you taking it upon yourself to say, man I'm so grateful for what I've been given and now it's on me to go out and generously give. And that actually kind of even sums up the eighth principle. The eighth principle is what we say at the end of every podcast. It's one of our core values at Path4Growth. Strength is for service.
Alex Judd:Why were you blessed with the remarkable talents, time, resources, family, marriage, kiddos, intellect, strength physically, strength creatively that you've been blessed with. Why were you given those things? Were you given them for yourself? No. Right?
Alex Judd:That strength is meant to be spent. It's meant to be given away. You have been made strong so that you can effectively serve and benefit others. And I believe that when you do that, when you give your strength away, others benefit and God is glorified. Well, there you have it.
Alex Judd:Thanks so much for joining us for this episode. If you want any of the information or resources that we mentioned, that's all in the show notes. Hey, before you go, could I ask you for one quick favor? Could you subscribe, rate, and review this podcast episode? Your feedback is what helps our team engage in a sequence of never ending improvement.
Alex Judd:We wanna amplify what's valuable to you and obviously reduce or even remove the things that aren't. Also, you leaving a positive review is what helps us connect with, build trust with, and serve other leaders around the country. So thanks in advance for helping us out on that front. Are you a leader that wants to grow your business in a healthy way, serve people exceptionally well, and glorify God in the process? Go to pathforgrowth.com to get more information about our community of impact driven leaders and schedule a call with our team.
Alex Judd:Hey. Thank you so much to the Path for Growth team, Kyle Cummings and the crew at PodCircle, and the remarkable leaders that are actively engaged in the Path for Growth community. Y'all are the people that make this podcast possible. Y'all know this. We're rooting for you.
Alex Judd:We're praying for you. We wanna see you win. Remember, my strength is not for me. Your strength is not for you. Our strength is for service.
Alex Judd:Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
