“We don’t need to maintain perfect faith… We just need to show integrity toward the faith we do have. And then, through the Lord’s mercy, our mountains are moved.” – Daniel Blomberg
I received the following from a reader and thought it might help someone. So here it goes:
Hi Leslie,
How are you? …I still read your newsletter, and I still share your books with other people at any opportune moment. Hope things are going well for you and your family.
I just wanted to share a journal entry on the subject of rare faith – see below.
We just had a business miracle in April, and it merited a long journal entry—I want to remember this forever. Hope you enjoy it. Feel free to share if you think it could help someone.
Have a wonderful day!
Daniel
Background: We got back to Utah from the Middle East in August 2017. I tried life coaching and loved it, but it soon became clear that the Lord wanted me doing music—a very happy but scary proposition. I did my first songwriting session for a client in April 2018, and in March this year, after 19 months as an entrepreneur and 11 months in music, I was able to provide for my family exclusively through music for the first time.
It has been a grueling time, with way too many trips to the Bishop’s storehouse, lots of help from family, lots of advice to go get a job, and way too much self-doubt.
So after our March miracle, I was determined to keep this going. When the end of April came around and I still hadn’t made nearly enough to pay the bills, failure was just not an emotionally sustainable option.
What happened next is described below.
Journal, 2019-05-01
This is a precious thing that just happened. After March’s wonderful achievement, where we for the first time were able to make more money in the business than we needed to pay the bills, I really wanted to keep this going every month. Partly so we can prove that we are financially ready for the foster-to-adopt process, and partly because I need to know that I can provide for my family through music.
This month, I felt like I should take the time to build an online presence. Allie told me she wanted to build me a website for free! So I wrote some website content. And then Colleen wanted to tell people about me online. So I quickly bought a domain and put out the content, to have a place to send people while waiting for Allie….
Then, I felt like I should start running Facebook ads. So I did. It takes a few weeks to dial those in, so I haven’t seen any specific results from those yet. But I had to put together a business Facebook page to run ads from, and I didn’t want it to have 3 likes and look unprofessional, so I invited pretty much all my friends to like it. It crossed 100 page likes in the first 24 hours, and now has over 300 page likes, in less than two weeks! 🙂
Spending this much time building an online presence meant that I didn’t chase specific results a whole lot. I did read the sequel to The Go-Giver, Go-Givers Sell More, and learned to trust that as we give value to people around us, and not give sales pitches, most of our sales will come from “left field” – the 99% of the Universe that we have no idea about, but which God knows all about.
Come Sunday, which was April 28, I realized that we needed $2,485 more, plus Venmo and PayPal instant transfer fees, to cover April’s bills and buy my ticket to Sweden for Victor and Jessica’s wedding. So Monday morning, I set out to sell that much in services in two days. Technically, I realized I didn’t need $560 of those until May (the rest of the plane ticket), but I had my sights set on the whole sum.
On Saturday night at Allie and Zach’s wedding reception, I had mentioned to my client Greg that I would be going to Sweden for my brother’s wedding if we could swing it, and he had generously offered, without me asking, to prepay $700. That’s why we “only” needed $2485, or $1925 plus $560. I fasted on Sunday for help to achieve this big and worthy goal, for the sake of our family, including our future children.
A key piece of learning had also come on Saturday morning, as I went running with Vinicio. I was in a time crunch, and needed to complete 8 miles in about 90 minutes. I remembered as we ran and talked that Elder Holland teaches:
It’s not the amount of faith we have that is the issue, it’s the integrity we show toward the faith that we do have.
In this way, even partial faith, if shown integrity, is enough to move mountains. This applied to our running. I wasn’t sure the whole time that we would succeed, but I showed integrity to the faith that I did have by keeping running and not giving up. We finished on time. I felt that this principle should also apply to my big sales goal.
On Sunday afternoon, we got a text from Stephen and Emily, who asked if we wanted to come over, last minute. (We later learned Emily had felt a prompting to invite us over, kind of forgotten it, come home from some Church assignment, and her kids said, “We want the Blombergs to come!”)
We went, and had a lovely time. Partway through, Steven and Emily’s new neighbor, Amy, came over. Emily had invited her to come over that day, but not at any specific time. Amy, who had very recently felt that it’s time to pursue her music, was fasting and had just woken up from a nap. As she knelt to conclude her fast, she felt, “You’re not done yet. Go next door.” We talked about her music, and exchanged phone numbers. I had an appointment with her and her husband Tuesday morning, and she will be in Dave’s studio in July! 🙂 Wonderful news, but not any closer to the April goal.
(finished writing on May 10)
Since April 23 had been my one-year anniversary of returning to the music business, I had a 10% discount for all songwriting and production services until the end of April. As Shawna had 9 hours scheduled for May, I asked if she wanted the discount. She sent $688.50 on Tuesday, April 30.
With $1,853 left to reach my goal, and only a few hours left, I decided that the responsible thing to do for the business and my family was to swallow my pride and tell a couple of clients exactly why I needed the money. The foster-to-adopt process requires that families have “a little extra” money, and I felt we could claim that if we paid all our current bills and saved 4% in the business profit account. We did in March—time to achieve that goal again.
So I asked Art, who had scheduled a songwriting coaching session for his stepson for early May, if he would be offended if I asked for a prepayment so I could get it on the books for April. He prepaid $500.
I re-crunched the numbers, reducing for example our food and gas budget posts to actual money spent, not what I thought we needed for a month, and moving the plane ticket purchase to May. All of a sudden, there were only $39 missing. Or $44, if you consider that I had felt prompted to cut the car payment short by $5, even though I really wanted to pay in full.
So, while Kathryn and I were waiting to meet with a member of the stake presidency to renew our Temple recommends, I sent a message to Colleen, who is on a mission with her husband in Côte d’Ivoire, told her we are really close to our revenue goal to qualify for adoption, and offered to do her next song (a $170 value) for $60 if she wanted to prepay.
5 hours before midnight.
No reply, as she would likely be asleep until 11:30pm our time, or so I thought. (I was actually an hour off – Côte d’Ivoire was only 6 hours ahead of us, not 7.)
All things considered, a very successful two days of sales, even though we were still falling short. Kat and I went to bed at 9:30pm, and in our night prayer I thanked Heavenly Father for all the amazing success, and then poured out my heart and asked Him why:
How come we were so close to the goal, but couldn’t just have made $39 or $44 more? What was I supposed to feel and think about this?
After our couple prayer, I said my own prayer and laid down. But I felt like I should call my mother instead of sleeping. (This is significant, as I have felt for years that the Lord wants me to go to bed by 9:30pm.)
So I got up and talked to my mother in Sweden for almost an hour and a half – not much about the business goal, but about anything and everything. Towards the end, I got my answer—gratitude.
I was supposed to feel gratitude about what had just happened.
So after the phone call, I went to bed again, and laid there for a minute just feeling grateful. Then I considered some options. Would Heavenly Father want me to contact Colleen again? I decided to, and sent her a PayPal request for $60 in case she was interested, and then a note in Messenger to please ignore it otherwise. Pretty bold, I guess. By now, it was 11:35pm.
As I wrote the note, I saw that she had just read the previous message. She replied “For sure.” “It’s 5:36 here.” “We’ll get it done in the next 10 min”.
Turns out, she never gets up at 5:30am, but had decided to start the new month with an extra 30 minutes of scripture study – it was already May in Africa, but still April in the U.S. And so, with 8 minutes to spare, $60 arrived in our PayPal account, and the goal was met.
I cried with joy, told my sleepy Kathryn the great news, and went to sleep a very happy man.
We don’t need to maintain perfect faith the whole time. We just need to show integrity toward the faith we do have. And then, through the Lord’s mercy, our mountains are moved.
Daniel Blomberg is a Mindset Mastery Program Participant.
Learn more at www.ProsperTheFamily.com.
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One Response
Wow! I admire Daniel for every small step toward big goals!! And yes, be thankful for everything is a command, I believe. Or at least a very good advice quite often shown in the scriptures. At least being happy is, according to words from elder Holland! And isn’t that about the same thing? Good luck!