hile headlines swarm with stories of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) losing faith during this trying economic time, in the midst, there are leaders who sustain their businesses on godly principles. Though they don’t all have the title officially on their business cards, they reign as Chief Happiness Officers (CHOs). These executives leading such highly successful companies as GloryBee Foods, Chick-fil-A, Prestige Dialysis Clinic and SkyChase Pictures share their operating principles that serve as a model for other Christian businesses.

GloryBee Foods

Richard Turanski turned his beekeeping hobby into money, making honey and selling beekeeping supplies, in 1975. Product diversity abounded in organic and nonorganic food ingredients for bakeries, restaurants and grocery stores, etc. 

At GloryBee Foods, in Oregon, “We sell honey and spice, and everything that’s nice,” Turanski laughs.  

“By the third year, we moved out of my garage and to a warehouse, and sales went to $150,000. Turanski, 65, says that, “at every point, the Lord brought somebody into the business to give me some direction.” That includes his wife of 43 years, Pat.
 
Turanski had a Christian adviser who loaned him money, he says, “until one day, the bank would give me all the money I wanted.” Puzzled execs ask how he prospered without them. He laughs and responds, “I’ve been praying the prayer of Jabez.”

Turanski’s formula for success is hard work, heeding Christian mentors and working his passion. He once worked in a business, buying and selling gold coins but quickly opted out, saying, “I’m just among a bunch of moneychangers.”

GloryBee, a take on the phrase, “Glory be to God,” Turanski explains, soothes the consumer’s ear and nests soothingly in his heart. Turanski is a CHO; honeycombed by supportive family, employees and customers – and sweet profits.

Chick-fil-A

S. Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A, is a CEO who refuses to work on Sundays. Well, not since 1946, the week he toiled in opening his original establishment, the Dwarf House. By the end of that Saturday, he was exhausted and announced he was taking Sunday off – for church, family and rest.

S. Truett Cathy, founder and CEO of Chick-fil-A (in the center) with his sons, Donald "Bubba" Cathy, senior vice president (left), and Dan T. Cathy, president (right).

“Not working on Sundays was the best decision I ever made,” Truett says with a smile.  In 2006, the Atlanta-based restaurant chain, with its savvy cows urging people to “Eat Mor Chikin” surpassed $2 billion in sales.
 

Formula for success: Base your business principles on biblical principles.

“Spending time with our families and resting on Sunday,” Mark Baldwin, a corporate spokesperson, jokes, “we think it makes our food taste better on Monday.”
 
Truett, 88, still serves as the CEO but operates like a CHO, undergirded by his wife of 63 years, Jeannette, three children (two sons, one daughter) who are all in the business. Chick-fil-A enjoys a 97 percent employee-retention rate.

“The great thing about working here,” says Baldwin, “is that you can’t turn a corner without bumping into a smiling face.” At the corporate office, he says, free lunches, a fitness facility, and on-site daycare evokes smiles. But Baldwin says those smiles also season every restaurant, “right down to the 15- and 16-year-olds working behind the cash register because Chick-fil-A’s CHO leads with a people-before-profit attitude.”

While Truett insists that one doesn’t have to be a Christian to work at Chick-fil-A, Truett says his formula for success is to base one’s business principles on biblical principles. He instructs franchisees to operate by that example, adding that, “If you do things right long enough, then you’ll receive the rewards.”

Prestige Dialysis Clinic

Michael Wiley, CEO and founder of Prestige Dialysis Clinic, and his wife Belinda, outside a Maryland hospital.

Michael Wiley, 55, CEO and founder of Prestige Dialysis Clinic, Inc. in Maryland, opened his clinic during a challenging economic time – six months ago. He has worked his passion for nearly 20 years, helping patients with end-stage renal disease to increase their longevity with dignity and quality, and educating the public about chronic disease prevention, including HIV and AIDS. Passion makes Wiley a CHO.

It’s paying off. “Already, Wiley says, “I’m getting proposals from hospitals in Iowa, healthcare organizations in Cameroon, Africa, and correctional facilities in Maryland that want me to extend my clinic’s quality patient care to prisoners.”  

He and his wife of 27 years, Belinda, work hard maintaining the family and clinic – paying his energetic staff, purchasing medications, and stretching a dollar as if they had five loaves of bread and two fish. Even so, Wiley says, “I’m blessed.”
 
“By believing in the Lord, I’ve gained momentum in my own strength, in my own conviction,” says Wiley, one of the few technicians manning a dialysis clinic in the United States. “He’s a catalyst,” one doctor comments. 
 
“I prayed to have a dialysis clinic. When I didn’t have any money, I was delivered into an existing clinic with equipment, patients and staff. It would have taken me about $200,000-$300,000 to get to that stage. That, to me, is no coincidence; it's God,” Wiley says.

SkyChase Pictures

Andrew Lewis, CEO and founder of SkyChase Pictures.

Look around and one might see a transforming flick written and produced by SkyChase Pictures, LLC, based in Atlanta. The CEO/founder, Andrew Lewis, calls his works “inspiring entertainment,” absent of all the sex, violence and spectacle gore shoved down the throats of audiences everywhere.

Lewis says, “Our position is to present the Gospel in a way that is interesting and relevant to younger audiences, 18-34, to attract young people with a great story.”
 
His film, titled “Black Oasis,” distributed by Vision Video, garnered awards and his target audience. Lewis targets believers and unbelievers. The film is gritty; poignant with a sad ending – the main character rebukes the Gospel – honing a hard point.
 
Lewis, 55, a former CEO of a company that built Apple Macintosh clones, thanks God when he says, “God closed that door.”
 
On a business trip, “flying to San Francisco from Atlanta, looking out the window, the Lord spoke to me. He said, ‘illustrate My Word.’”
 
That was about 10 years ago. Today, Lewis and one of his four daughters, Jennifer, work together creating, writing and directing films.
 
Minus his corporate salary, God’s blessings lead him into opportunities and sustain him. “God advances us through relationships,” says Lewis. “Even in the eleventh hour, he’ll bring someone in your presence to take you forward.” That, and the love and support of his children, and wife of 27 years, Elizabeth, make him a CHO.

His success formula is, “my word is my bond. When I do business in the business world, I operate in excellence by its standards.” But, he stresses, “If someone offered me an opportunity to do a great profitable film that glorified sin, I wouldn’t do it. God’s blessings bring me things that money can’t buy.”

Legacies

These CHOs all say that building Christian lineages, not legacy wealth, comes first. “My primary goal in life,” says Lewis, “is to see my grandchildren raised as Christians.” 
 
They each attribute their successes to God, not themselves. “If I took credit for all that, it would be a travesty,” says Turanski.

Yet these CHOs are not without tribulations. “Christians go through trials too. That’s how we grow,” says Lewis. “But there is a redemptive quality and a healing that a Christian experiences through a trial.”
 
Wiley agrees, describing how he relies on fellow entrepreneurs in his church’s men’s ministry.  They listen to him, counsel him, and pray with him.
 
Turanski says a recent trial caused him much worry. But he laughs and says, “I bring my worries down to my knees and the trial goes to the door of the Lord.”
 
Baldwin moves back to the topic of “people-before-profits.” It results in nurtured, dedicated employees who are motivated to quench problems.
 
An addendum to a CHO’s contract is giving back. Turanski operates Beekeepers for Christ, a missions ministry in Third-World countries. Truett sponsors countless nonprofit events and directs his franchisees to sponsor community efforts.
 
Wiley, advocating for the disenfranchised, uses “scared-straight” tactics to educate youth about the consequences of unhealthy living. He informs others about the consequences of not adhering to prescribed medicines/regiments – information that busy doctors sometimes forget to stress. One dialysis patient remarked, “My doctor didn’t tell me how if I didn’t take that pill, what the end results would be.”
 
Lewis actively seeks budding new talents to nurture in filmmaking. Summing up all the CHOs’ principles, he says, “What you do for others, God will make happen for you.”