Is Starting a Business Too Risky? What Christian Families Get Wrong
The Hidden Risks of Employment Nobody Warns You About
Think staying employed is the safer choice? Here's what nobody tells you about the risks hiding on the employee side of the business world.
Is Starting a Business Too Risky? What Christian Families Get Wrong
When most people think about starting a business, the first thing their brain does is make a list. Not a pros list. A risk list. Losing everything. Damaged relationships. Chasing money at the expense of faith and family. The list is long, and it feels heavy, and for a lot of faithful, hardworking Christian families it becomes the reason the business never gets started.
Is starting a business too risky? It's the right question. But most people only ask it in one direction.
Here's what nobody asks: what are the risks on the other side? If you're weighing the risks of building a business, have you ever stopped to weigh the risks of staying employed? Have you ever mapped out - clearly, honestly - what it costs your family to remain on the side of the business with the least amount of control, mobility, and flexibility?
That's the conversation most people never have. And it's the one that changes everything.
Starting a Business Is Not the Presence of Risk
The false belief underneath the question "isn't it risky?" is that employment is the safe option and entrepreneurship is the risky one. That belief is so widely held that most people never think to question it.
But here is the truth: starting a business is not the presence of risk. Staying employed is not the absence of risk. They are just two different kinds of risk - and nobody ever told you to question which one was actually working against your family.
When you write down the risks of entrepreneurship - the business failing, consuming all your time, damaging your relationships, legal liability - those are real. But look at each one honestly and ask: could this also happen to an employee? Could a job consume all your time? Could staying in the wrong career damage your marriage or your relationship with your kids? Could a company's legal or financial trouble put you at risk?
Every risk on the entrepreneurship list has a version on the employment list. The difference is that most people have never seen the employee column written out.
Starting a business is not the presence of risk. Staying employed is not the absence of risk. They are just two different kinds of risk - and nobody ever told you to question which one was actually working against your family.
So let's look at what actually lives on the employee side.
The Three Risks Hiding Inside Every "Safe" Job
Your income has a ceiling.
You can get a raise. You can move into a higher-paying position. You can go back to school and enter a more skilled market. But raises are incremental and infrequent. Additional education requires an upfront investment of time and capital - not unlike starting a business - and there's still a period before you earn back more than you originally put in. One way or another, there is a ceiling waiting for you.
And that ceiling - whether you think about it consciously or not - is controlling your decisions. It's deciding what your family gets to say yes to and what you have to say no to. It's not really you making those choices. It's your paycheck making them for you.
Your job security is not in your hands.
The security of your family's income - your ability to pay your mortgage, your ability to say yes to what your kids need, your ability to give generously - all of it sits in someone else's hands. A board decision. A budget cut. A new manager who wants to go in a different direction. You didn't do anything wrong. These things just happen. But when they do, you have no control over the outcome.
Your time is not your own.
Your schedule is built around what your employer needs from you - not around what your family needs from you. The hours you work, the days you're available, the flexibility you do or don't have - all of that is determined by someone else's priorities. And when life happens and something comes up, you're forced to choose: do you compromise your position at work, or do you compromise the other areas of your life?
That is not freedom. That is an obligation dressed up as stability.
What JP's Story Reveals About Risk
In 2019, my husband JP and I started building our real estate business together. He was still working as a high school choir director. We had no idea what was coming.
When Covid hit, things shifted in our school district. Enrollment dropped. And JP's position - after years of faithful service - was cut from full-time to 80%. His already modest teaching salary was reduced to 80% of what it was. Through no fault of his own. Because of a board decision.
My response surprised me. I felt relief. Because we had been building something on the side, and I knew what we were building had more upside than any salary ever would. So I told JP: this is the sign. We need to go all in. These shifts in the world of employment just keep happening. 9/11. The 2008 financial crisis. Covid. The pattern is not a coincidence - it's a warning.
We spent the next few years building with the goal of JP leaving teaching completely. When we finally hit that goal and he announced his resignation, his administration shared that the district was about to face another multi-million dollar budget deficit. If JP had stayed, his position would have been reduced to 40% of his original salary. After eighteen years of service.
Forty percent.
The colleagues who stayed weren't bad employees. They weren't unfaithful or lazy. They were simply on the side of the business that had the least amount of control - and when the cuts came, they had no say in what happened to their families' incomes.
I tell this story not to make anyone feel afraid of their job, and not to suggest that everyone needs to walk away from their career tomorrow. I tell it because people often said to us: you started building just at the right time - how did you know? There was no foresight and no luck. Years before any of this, after I left teaching, I was prompted by the Holy Spirit not to go back to work but to build a business instead. We prayed over it. We sought wisdom. And God covered us - not randomly, but in direct response to us doing our part.
Proverbs 22:3 — "The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty."
Prudence is not pessimism. It is wisdom in action. Seeing the pattern of world events - economic crises, global disruptions, industry collapses - and responding wisely is not fear-based decision making. It is exactly what Solomon describes. And Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, had more to say on this subject.
Ecclesiastes 11:2 — "Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land."
Diversified income streams are not a modern financial strategy. They are a Biblical one. Whether you stay employed or build a business - or some combination of both - the wisest counsel in Scripture is to not have all of your family's financial security resting in one place, especially one you don't control.
Which Risk Is Working For Your Family?
This is not a conversation about villainizing employment or making anyone feel guilty for having a career. There are people for whom employment is genuinely the right fit, and there is no shame in that. But if you are someone who feels the pull toward building something - if the idea of creating your own income has been sitting with you and refusing to leave - then you deserve to make that decision with a full picture.
You are not choosing between a risky option and a safe one. You are choosing between two different kinds of risk. The question worth asking is: which set of risks gives my family the most control? Which one allows us to make decisions based on our values instead of our obligations? Which one has a ceiling - and which one doesn't?
The choose-your-hard principle applies here. Both paths require commitment. Both paths carry uncertainty. But only one of them puts you in the position of building something your family actually owns. Is starting a business too risky? Only you can answer that. But now you have both columns in front of you - and you can actually make the decision with your eyes open.
