Ever met a parent, especially new parents? One thing you’d definitely notice is their fierce protectiveness over their baby(is). No matter the race, culture, beliefs or whatever physical attributes, you’d always find that fierce protectiveness around their little ones.
During the last episode of the Premier Edge Podcast, James sat down with Anjel Camenzuli, founder of Warrior 321, a faith-based organisation based in Florida, dedicated to combating human trafficking and protecting children and families.
Their mission is as clear as it is powerful, which is to make Hernando County the safest place for families and the most dangerous place for human traffickers and registered sex offenders.
Also, I found the meaning of their business name so beautiful and intriguing. My first thought was, ‘How did they think that up?! The 321 in ‘Warrior 321’ stands for three nails, two boards, one Saviour, which is such a beautiful reflection of the Christian faith at the heart of everything the organisation does.
The conversation was rooted in child safety and community protection, and it is absolutely worth listening to in full for those reasons alone.
However, I’m sure you’re also wondering what business lesson I’m about to draw from that conversation. Well, I’m about to show you.
Loving something is not the same as paying attention to it
Anjel spoke at length about the responsibility parents carry in a world where so much of a child’s life can happen behind a screen, often in spaces the parent cannot see and was never told about.
She talked about gaming platforms like Roblox, social media apps, and messaging tools that children use freely while parents assume everything is fine. She urged parents to know their children’s passwords, monitor device activity, and have the uncomfortable conversations that are so easy to keep postponing.
She basically said, ‘Do not assume your child is safe, ensure your child is safe’
Now, it’s common to hear business owners refer to their businesses as their ‘babies’, and most of them mean it genuinely. But many business owners do not know how to be careful with their businesses; they do not know to take utmost responsibility for their businesses as they would a child, and this often gives room to perpetrators who would take advantage of the failed system to rip them off.
As business owners, being vigilant over your business is not a suggestion or mere recommendation; it is a duty you owe your business. Your business demands your time and attention in a similar way that a child would demand those resources. This will help you identify loopholes and cracks that may be taken advantage of and guard against such occurrences.
Do not assume that your business is safe, ensure your business is safe. What systems have you put in place to protect your business against theft, fraud, scammers, hackers, infiltration of any sort.
Do you have an inkling of what’s happening in different departments of your business even if you aren’t directly involved with the tasks?
Hoping that a nanny or a school teacher would give your child the same level of vigilance and intentionality required from a parent can be seen as irresponsibility. In the same way, hoping that your team would be just as vigilant as you isn’t a good strategy for business.
Trust is good among team members but that doesn’t take away the place of oversight.
One of the most practical things Anjel encouraged parents to do was to know their children’s passwords; not because the child is untrustworthy, but because trust and oversight can actually work together. You can trust someone completely and still have systems in place to verify that things are going well. In fact, the people who are genuinely trustworthy tend to welcome that kind of accountability rather than resist it.
This is directly applicable to any business owner who manages people, systems, or finances.
Do you have visibility into your accounts? Not a general sense that the numbers are roughly where they should be, but actual regular review of what is coming in and going out.
Do you know who has access to your website backend, your email marketing platform, your customer database? When did you last check that former employees no longer have access to accounts they used when they worked for you?
These are actions that show how precious your business is to you.
Have the Hard Conversations
Another side to this is learning to have the hard conversations that concern your business.
Anjel was very clear on something she said: the conversations that matter most are the ones that feel the most awkward to start. Having conversations with your kids around sexual education, online bullying etc can be an uncomfortable one but is very profitable in protecting them from sexual criminals and strengthening the bond between you two.
This perspective doesn’t change when it comes to your business. It’s very important to have conversations with your team members, including uncomfortable ones around performance, growth, finances, etc.
These conversations do not get easier the longer you wait, instead , the situation almost always gets worse. Having the conversation early will always protect your business and your relationship with your team members where applicable.
It is easy to love your business, most owners do, genuinely and deeply. The harder discipline is the ongoing, consistent, sometimes tedious act of paying attention to it: reviewing the numbers, checking the systems, having the conversations, maintaining the visibility into what is actually happening across every part of the operation.
Anjel’s work exists because it requires them to pay attention to children and protect them from predators. That sort of attention as a business owner is what protects something you have spent years and resources building.
Warrior 321 is such a beautiful initiative and if what they do resonates with you, you can attend the monthly awareness meetings they host and an annual Warrior Walk on the last Saturday of January in Hernando County.
This episode has more lessons for you than I have captured in writing and you really need to listen to the full conversation. Click here to listen to the full episode, and please remember to subscribe to the channel for more business conversations.