New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

Question

As a former executive, I am considering establishing a consultancy in my field.  I hope to license and adapt some educational and management training materials for use in my consulting.  The entrepreneurs who have developed the materials and methods are not believers, but I would generally not work with them regularly on a daily basis (though there would be times at trade shows, meetings or the like when I would work together with them in a team setting).  How would you recommend approaching the question of whether and to what degree something like this would be unequal yoking?

Answer

Unequal yoking is a critical topic for entrepreneurs and its one that I've made some big mistakes on.  In general, the situation you describe does not sound very troublesome.  Here is a quick framework in order to think about yoking:

• The more time you spend together, the more important the concern
• The more intimate your work relationship, the more important the concern
• The more authority they have over you, the more important the concern
• The more influence they have over you, the more important the concern
• The more their actions affect you, the more important the concern

Partnerships, for example, are particularly troublesome since a business partnership is usually a very intimate relationship where the two parties spend a lot of time together, share many work burdens together, have tremendous influence over one another, and one partner's action can create liability for the other partner.   Business partnerships, therefore, should never be entered into unless the partners are equally yoked and as like-minded as possible.

Employee - employer relationships are much less concerning, but still carry risk and ideally, a customer - vendor relationship or a contractor or outsourced work relationship are much better where you are allowed to make independent decisions, work separately and have little influence over each other.

Here are a few other posts regarding this topic:

• Joint Venture with an Unbeliever
• Planning a Business with Non-Christian Classmates