Don Flow’s dad owned a Volkswagen dealership. When Don finished college, his dad asked if he wanted to join.
Don said yes. But not yet.
First, he went to theology school. He wanted to build his faith foundation before he built anything on top of it. Then he came back and spent four years doing every single job in the dealership. Technician, sales, the lot. He got paid the same as everyone else doing those jobs.
One day, he was on his back working on an exhaust manifold. Rust in his eyes. Hot and frustrated. He thought: I could be in grad school right now. Why am I doing this?
But he knew why. He wanted to feel what his people felt. So that when he led them, he wouldn’t be guessing.
That experience became the foundation of how he ran his business. And the business he built looked different from most.
Fixed prices. No negotiating. One estimate, and if the final bill came in higher, the dealership absorbed it. If they didn’t fix the problem right the first time, you never paid for it again. They’d come pick up your car and return it. 100,000-mile warranty on used cars. Open books. You could see exactly how they arrived at a price.
Long before there were legal caps on financing, Flow capped it himself. His reasoning: your ability to negotiate should not determine the price you pay. Everyone gets the same offer.
People told him he was crazy.
He asked: if this were my neighbour sitting across from me, what would I actually do? And then he did that.
The thing most people miss about work and faith
We tend to treat them like separate rooms in the same house. Faith is what you do on Sunday. Work is what you do Monday through Friday. The two are polite to each other but they don’t really talk.
Don Flow didn’t do that. And neither did the writers of the New Testament.
Colossians 3:23 is pretty clear. Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord, not for people. You’re not just serving your boss. You’re not just serving your customers. You serve the Lord Christ.
That’s not a motivational line. That’s a standard.
If your work is ultimately for God, then mediocre work is a problem. Not just a business problem. A spiritual one.
Francis Schaeffer put it plainly: our opportunity to be heard by the world is directly related to how well we do our work. Non-Christians notice when Christians cut corners. They notice when the person with the fish sticker on their van is the least reliable person on the job site.
That’s not a small thing. Your work is part of your witness. And it’s part of something bigger than witness too.
Think about this. Jesus spent most of his life as a carpenter. Before he preached on hillsides, he made chairs in Nazareth. You can safely assume no wobbly chairs came out of that shop. He brought the same standard to the workshop that he brought to everything else.
That’s the model. Not hustle culture. Not excellence for the sake of your brand.
Excellence as an act of worship
For you as a young entrepreneur, this has real weight.
You’re building something. And what you build will shape the people around you. Your employees learn how to work from you. Your customers learn what to expect from businesses. Your industry shifts, even slightly, because of the standards you set or fail to set.
Every decision you make affects a wide circle. Investors, staff, suppliers, customers. Are you making those decisions to take care of them, or to benefit yourself?
Doing good work is a way of loving the people your business touches. That’s not an abstract idea. It’s a practical, daily choice.
Excellence doesn’t arrive all at once. Eugene Peterson called it “long obedience in the same direction.” It’s built through small decisions, consistently made, over a long time.
But it gets easier when the reason is clear. You’re not chasing excellence to grow your bottom line. You’re not doing it to impress anyone. You’re doing it because what you make, and how you make it, is an offering.
Would you be comfortable laying your work down at God’s feet today?
Watch Session 4 of Faith Driven Entrepreneur here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDJeWyXsU2k
Join the movement: https://faithdrivenentrepreneur.org/
Credit: Faith Driven Entrepreneur
