Bryan is a Spirit-filled Christian who sees his business as a ministry. I asked him if he would share his testimony with us to help inspire other Christian men and women who are involved in business.
The gospel is not just about salvation. It’s about the Kingdom of God in the here and now. If we are lulled into a mindset of waiting for Jesus to return to be saved from a world falling apart, we are totally missing the call of the Kingdom. As believers, we are to establish the rule and reign of King Jesus in every sphere of society, including the marketplace, on earth as it is in heaven. This is a journey of seeking His Kingdom and His righteousness first and then, all things being added.
My name is Bryan Elliott. I am an engineer and the CEO of Flo Energy Solutions, an innovative company in mechanical systems for food retail. I’ve been in the business a long time. For years, I did things the world’s way and reaped the world’s rewards. Then, after rededicating my life to God in 2016, I began to envision what it would look like to build a Kingdom company. The results changed my life and the lives of those who work for me and has led to new initiatives in child poverty and most recently, ministry.
A Kingdom Mindset
At the age of 46, I made Jesus the Lord of my life after years of compromise and lukewarm displays of Christianity. A few years later, in 2020, I surrendered everything to the Lord, including my company. God’s Kingdom is a place where He rules and reigns. I made Him the 100% owner of the company. All of my company was God’s. My job was to steward what was already His. (To steward is to serve and lead as sons, according to our Heavenly Father’s agenda.)
The Transformation
In April 2020, Flo Energy Solutions began a deeply spiritual process called Transform Your Business by a ministry called Restoring the Foundations. This process involved addressing generational issues of the founders and key leaders throughout the company’s history, cleansing the land, and addressing ungodly beliefs, hurts, and wounds. It culminated in deliverance from the demonic and the displacement of powers and principalities with the Kingdom of God.
During our time with Transform Your Business, we began to pray as a team for the first time and have continued to pray together until this day. We became an Ekklesia, a place where two or more are gathered together, a church. Prior to this process, I had paid people to pray over my company. Now, the company became a house of prayer, a lighthouse, an apostolic outpost, a place of His presence.
A company rebranding naturally resulted in a symbolic and physical manifestation of the spiritual transformation that had taken place.
We partnered with Glem Dias, a Kingdom leadership and talent strategist to implement a new talent strategy and activate Kingdom values and behaviors in an entirely new way, along with new tools for leading and managing. We also moved to a strategically-led organization, ushering in a new level of discipline and focus. The Kingdom of God is about family, relationships, and people. Therefore, our focus shifted to people! That being the case, we adopted a new name and corporate identity.
Developing a true Kingdom culture began to take hold with more of a “pull” rather than a “push.” Both believers and non-believers could enjoy this life-giving environment, to taste and see that the Lord is good. The Kingdom of God works everywhere. We get to glorify God throughout our lives, including our work! We get to bless the world through the marketplace. Flo also created a Kingdom scorecard to look at success through a different lens. We are blessed to be a blessing.
Flo Kingdom Marketplace Response to COVID Case Study 2020-2021
Derek Schneider interviews CEO Bryan Elliott on “Kingdom Business”
If you are reading this blog in an email, click here to watch the video on our website.
Interestingly, much of this spiritual and organizational shift took place when Toronto, our home base, shut down in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic (potentially one of the most dramatically shut-down cities in the world). It was also a season of great pain for my family in the wake of my eldest daughter’s murder at the age of 21, the near loss of my only remaining daughter, and divorce from an unbelieving spouse who was not interested in my new life as a Jesus-follower. I refused, however, to be deterred. I was determined to live in the Kingdom as a son of God and to lead by example.
I had a deep excitement in my spirit that I could not suppress from the beginning of COVID-19. It drove my company and me forward towards God’s Kingdom. Our vision was to create innovative solutions for a sustainable world through a culture anchored in agape (“Love in Action”). Love is the ultimate mark of maturity, getting to be Jesus on the earth. With that in mind, we set our focus on impacting the business, government, and education spheres of the marketplace through new partnerships and initiatives.
Our story will, hopefully, encourage you as a leader to take steps towards building a Kingdom organization or family in a post-COVID-19 world. Below, I briefly describe how decisions were made, concrete steps were taken, and our transformation timeline through the crisis and plans for future Kingdom changes.
- Created a prophetic intercession prayer team and practiced internal prayer for meetings and key events
- Dedicated a house of prayer within the Flo head office and partnership with other houses of prayer and ministries
- Scheduled a daily 9:00 am prayer huddle with the executive team
- Envisioning with the Holy Spirit as part of a lifestyle and receiving divine downloads, designs, and strategies that we put into practice
- Displayed scriptures Numbers 6:24-26 and Psalm 72:8 on all Flo products
- Implemented Transform your Business (TYB) intervention by Restoring the Foundations Ministry and Ekklesia Excelerator by Transform our World to build transformational culture and Kingdom leadership
- Flo has a future goal of implementing an Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP) or a similar program to provide employees an opportunity to be owners of the company
- For a deeper look at our process, check out this article.
Transformational Leadership
Today, I am operating as a lead pastor and father to Flo as an Ekklesia. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, I met with employees one-on-one to speak into their identity, purpose, and destiny. After Covid, I am sharing individually with employees and letting the discussion be led by the Spirit. I share through my daily blog my Christian journey. The blog is optional for employees to join and has 98% readership, including those who are not believers. Inner healing is a critical element of transformational leadership as living in wholeness and freedom allows for the same to be released in others.
This is not a “religious” push but rather a pull for the Kingdom. The highest form of transformational leadership is to influence and position Flo as a light in the world. Flo understands that transformed people transform. As a Christian company in a country with less than 5% Christians in an anti-God society, we take our calling to be salt and light seriously. In our company, the presence of believing leadership sanctifies those who do not follow Jesus yet, much as a believing spouse sanctifies their household (1 Corinthians 7:14).
Work As Worship
There is no secular or sacred divide for those following Jesus. Our work is a form of worship. Our lifestyle of faith is meant to operate 24/7, not just on Sunday! The journey begins by establishing the Kingdom of God in our hearts, then our families and then our sphere. As the Ekklesia, you get to usher in His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
Whether you have a small business, a large business, a small family, or a big family, a Kingdom mindset is for you. Wherever two or more are gathered! Not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit, He will heal, deliver, transform, and ultimately use you as His hands and feet on earth. It’s all about taking little steps of faith. All God needs is your yielding and your yes, and then the adventure begins.
Bio
Bryan is a serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, author, and creative inventor whose relentless curiosity led to the development of numerous technology patents. As the co-founder and CEO of Flo Energy Solutions, Bryan’s deep-seated personal values—faith, truth, freedom, love, justice, and strong moral character—set the foundation for how Flō does business. He has proudly built a company steeped in these positive values and with a strong purpose to create solutions that are good for food retailers, people, and the environment.
Bryan holds a degree in engineering from the University of New Brunswick. He serves on several Boards of Directors including Transform Our World Canada, is the co-founder and president of M46 Ministries and serves in various advisory roles. Bryan is the co-founder and Chairman of Bee Me Kidz, a non-profit organization that aims to boost self-worth, education, resiliency, and community to school-aged children and their families from lower socio-economic areas.
Additional resources
Related Resources:
How to Hear God's Voice! Spiritual Transformations Unique Gifts Make Winning Teams!
