No Evidence

I had an awesome day yesterday, yet feel as though I haven't taken anything tangible away from it- only my own knowledge of what went on and how I progressed in my skills and experience.

Basically it was competition, much like a cross between "The Apprentice" and "Dragon's Den". The competition was called FLUX.
I was in a team of six people, all 1st, 2nd and final year business school students from the Butonics Society. We were one team out of 6 in our stream and there were 2 streams, obviously making up a total of 12 teams, all from different disciplines.
Each team was given a real life business scenario and had to work on their business to come up with a way of enforcing change and development.

Ours was a company based in Bristol called Clear Water Revival who deliver ecological and energy efficient leisure pool solutions. This ranges from huge swimming pools, right down to hot tubs and saunas. The twist being that these leisure pools are heated and maintained using the earth's natural resources; wind power, solar power, geothermal energy and biomass.
One of the benefits about this company is that they are the only company that delivers these sorts of pools in the UK- this means they have 100% market share.

So the day consisted of creating a business plan, meeting with business experts for advice on our business plan, revising and making our business plan better, then presenting our business plan in a Dragon's Den style pitch to the Judges and the other teams who then slammed challenging questions back at you.
We won that round, out of six teams the judges picked our group as having the best plan and the best presentation. Brilliant. It was going really well- I was excited, yet for some reason didn't show it like the other lads. As soon as we were announced the winners they all jumped in the air and screamed- I felt obliged to give a little yelp, so managed a slightly delayed "YEAAA!" -but stayed in my seat!

That then meant we had to go head to head against the winning team from the other stream in an elevator pitch. The elevator pitch is when you have under two minutes to sell yourself and your company or product to a professional business person when you meet them "by chance" in an elevator. Our team instigator and leader, Levi, took on the role of entering the elevator and delivering the pitch. He did really well and got across everything he had to- who he was, what his company does, where he is based, what he wanted/needed from the business person in the elevator and why they should invest in him. The only thing he missed out was asking for their business card to be able to arrange a further meeting with them to discuss more- I think that is why we lost against the other group. But I still remain true that we were the better team and should have won the competition and the cash.

I had a real issue with this competition the night before.
How was it benefiting God? -Or was I being totally selfish in wanting to do and win this competition and the cash?
How could I give such a situation to God? Basically I wanted to be the one who benefits at the end of the day, myself and my team- I wanted it to be about me and wanted to just erase God out of it for one day so I didn't have to worry about giving it to him.

But obviously that is impossible and I tried to come up with ways to give it to God...
In the end I just realised that somewhere between being a ruthless and competitive business man, I also had to be compassionate and Christlike in the way I conduct my business and work with other people- as the day went on and got long, this became increasingly difficult as tensions grew and people got tired.
The other way I prepared myself for making sure God was in my business, was through reward and forgiveness- where most businesses' HR will work on a scheme of reward and punishment, I prepared myself to put across a model of forgiveness.
And finally after reading a bit in Romans, I realised that being right with God is not through doing good things- obviously that is how we should be living. But instead it is just by having faith in God. I know I have that faith and so I didn't have to try to be a super Christian in the competition, but just had to remember who my creator and saviour is.

It was a shame we didn't win- like I said, I felt we really should have done- we would have had a press conference today and then be coached for the national final next year.
Hopefully next year though I will be able lead a team into FLUX with a head start.

I just wish I had something to show for myself of the work and effort that went into yesterday, but I feel I have nothing- no evidence.
I guess this will happen again and again in my future as I try new ideas, setting up businesses, or whatever it might be that I get into.
At least now I am prepared for it.