Amie Burkholder joined her first Uptick Entrepreneur cohort in 2018 with a home-based business and questions about what came next. Like many early-stage founders, she carried doubts about whether she was truly cut out for entrepreneurship. But throughout that year, God provided clarity and conviction through the guidance of thoughtful leaders, honest assessments, prayer, and intentional community with her new cohort participants. She came to see that her entrepreneurial instincts and creative talents were not accidents, but gifts from God, designed for a purpose far greater than profit. Uptick helped her embrace a new vision: to steward her business as a vehicle for Kingdom impact, using her influence and resources to serve something eternal.
As she walked out of her Uptick experience, she leased an office and began to run her business with confidence as she served clients and built a reputable, successful business based on Kingdom principles. She enjoyed beautiful interactions with clients where faith was a part of conversations, many of which included prayer. She cultivated the employee culture of her business to be about building Kingdom values in every business interaction and allowing the world to watch them live out their faith, making ripples of witness to the kingship of Jesus Christ to everyone they met and served.
Amie was hooked. She continued to stay involved with Uptick, joining task forces and investing back into the program that had invested so much in her. Eventually, the Uptick team identified her as the next leader of the Uptick Entrepreneur cohort. They saw in her the passion to identify, encourage, and train entrepreneurs to see the potential Kingdom impact that they, too, can have on the world and to understand that mindset and dedication can make all the difference in building a business for the Kingdom of God.
God didn’t just speak to Amie through Uptick once. Amie found herself teaching the '23-'24 Uptick Entrepreneur cohort about how to hear God’s voice for business. She was facilitating a session that invited the participants into a time of seeking God’s voice through prophetic prayer. Amie didn’t expect God to speak to her in that session as she set out to minister to others, but that’s exactly what He did.
You have to sell your business within 2 years.
Amie hadn't walked into the year expecting God to say anything of the sort. It was a new step of faith for her, full of fear. Her business was 15 years old at the time when God told her that she was going to sell it. Humanly speaking, it didn’t make a lot of sense, but in obedience, she began the process of obeying God and selling her business. God confirmed His word to her through her relationship with her husband, Nathan. On a trip to visit family shortly after her experience with God, Nathan envisioned his family flourishing in relationship with extended family in another state where their son could enjoy a relationship with his cousins. Once he shared this dream with Amie, she knew that God had already begun to release her from local commitments through selling her business so that they could pursue this new adventure. Amie sold her business, packed up her life, and moved halfway across the country with the vision of family flourishing and re-starting.
Amie still keeps in touch with her friends from her 2018 Uptick cohort. She knows that the relationships she built and the skills she acquired through her experience with Uptick Entrepreneur paved the way for her to follow God in obedience as a leader, as a business owner, and as a mother. Moving to another state, selling a business, and starting a new business all over would be hard for most people, but with all of her training, relationships, and resources, it wasn’t all as scary as Amie had imagined that it would be.
Amie’s personal experience with God, faith, and business continues to fuel the flame she has inside to encourage and lift up other business owners. Amie is currently still leading the Uptick Entrepreneur cohort and she is revisioning, reimagining, and repurposing the experience to better serve its participants in the long run. She would love help from her Uptick network in identifying potential entrepreneurs to participate in the next cohort. If you know of anyone who would be a good fit for the program, please contact Amie Burkholder at amieburkholder@gmail.com.
