Local business and faith leaders in the Fayetteville area are hoping to help the business community bridge the gap between their business and spiritual lives with the C12 experience. 

For the last six years, Mike Bennett, has co-chaired The North Carolina Triangle’s C12 group chapter. All throughout, Bennett says he has helped empower and guide local business owners to learn new skills, as well as discover best practices for work-life balance. 

The C12 group was founded in 1992 by Buck Jacobs in Tampa, Florida. It is the self-dubbed “nation’s largest network of Christian CEOs, business owners, and executives,” serving businesses with customer bases between 10 and more than 10,000, according to the organization’s website.

Bennett himself is a veteran businessman in the telecommunications industry who started in the infancy of wireless development and continued to the full development of the industry. He has been involved in various startup businesses and was responsible for sales, marketing, site building and customer service in different organizations.

It was after that Bennett found his calling. He spent eight years serving as a missionary in Rome and New Delhi. 

“I came back to the U.S. and was looking for an organization that can help me kind of take my experience in the corporate world and my experience in the faith world and put those together,” Bennett said. 

The C12 groups follow five core tenets, titled the five-point alignment matrix: continually evaluating and aligning growth strategies, financial stewardship, cultural development, and operations within a framework of business as a ministry.

“We help business owners in two ways, basically. One of them is by helping them improve their business skills and knowledge through some formalized business training,” Bennett said. “Then we help them eliminate the space between their faith and the business that they're running. Our goal is to help them see their business as an opportunity to minister to their customers, their employees, their vendors, and their competitors.”

Some of the programs offered through the group include helping businesses with recruiting and training executive talent, along with helping improve business owners’ financial skills.

“Also helping them understand how to put together cash flow projections, making sure they understand their financial statements and the impact of their financials on their business in all areas,” Bennett said. “We tell people that we offer a masters degree in business administration-level training for them in a context of a business forum setting.”

Bennett said the organization has 12 years worth of business curriculum that changes every month. 

“We rotate through that and we cover literally anything that would affect your business,” he said. 

Through C12’s events, entrepreneurs can also discover what work-life balance looks like.

“One of the things that we try to help our members understand is that when you’re dealing with entrepreneurs, especially in a small-to-medium-sized business, burnout is a real possibility for them,” said Bennett. “We try to help them understand work-life balance, that their business is there for them to care for their employees, but also their family.”

Bennett said the group provides formal training on how to find rest. 

“What does that look like to an entrepreneur who has been used to working 70 or 80 hours a week? We encourage them by helping them get on the business side of understanding that you’ve got to build a team that you can delegate to. You have to move past running the business yourself to allowing others to help you run the business. We really focus a lot on that,” shared Bennett.

“Being able to delegate and rely on your employees as a business owner also comes with an understanding of how to treat and manage your team,” Bennett said.

“We help business owners in a way that helps their employees flourish. Working with an employee is not transactional. Relationships are much more than that, they’re not just there to provide you a service. They’re there for you to care for them and help them in all areas of their life.”

Some ways in which businesses can help their employees include offering counseling services or offering to subsidize childcare costs.

“Whatever those things are that help employees manage their life better,” Bennett said.

Bennett said the group also helps members understand the legality regarding religious freedoms in the workplace.

“We help them understand what are your legal boundaries in the workplace, what you can do with your faith from a legal perspective,” Bennett said. “We want them to be good citizens as well.”

Bennett said that helping employees find a better work-life balance could help them understand what workers want from the job.

“What we see now in the workplace, especially after COVID, is that people are looking for much more than just a job,” Bennett said. “They're looking for somebody to care for them. For us, we see it coming from our members. They have lower than average turnover among their workforce, they develop longer term relationships with their workforce. We’re trying to get them to focus on what's best for the employee, understanding that that will help the business and employee long term.”

Drawing on his experience chairing the group’s local chapter, Bennett said the business community in Fayetteville is resilient and that the pandemic has been a significant source of economic downturn. C12 members, however, tend to bounce back.

“About 89 percent of our members outperform their peers in an economic downturn,” Bennett said. “That is a testament to the skills they’re learning. I think from a regional perspective, people are resilient. And I see that bouncing back very well… They've learned very quickly how to adapt and maybe do something a little bit differently than they’ve done before. They are looking to provide a service in a little different way than the one they are used to.”

Bennett added that there is plenty of variety across businesses in the area stating:

“There’s a tremendous amount of diversity in the area. It’s just amazing. It’s been really good having a lot of different perspectives around the C12 table.” 

Coming up this spring, Bennett said the group is going to host a seminar on difficult conversations in the workplace. 

“It’s about how to de-escalate tensions with customers and tense customer situations,” Bennett said.

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The group plans to host the class on May 24-25. You can learn more about the C12 group online at www.joinc12.com.