“Even before you were formed in your mother’s womb, the Lord had created you for beauty.”

This was a prophetic word spoken over Cheryl Lee, the managing director of Sothys Malaysia. 

Cheryl’s steady climb up the corporate ladder, beginning as a marketer for the distributor of a cosmetics brand to becoming a shareholder of Sothys Malaysia, was therefore no sheer coincidence.

Since young, she had been attracted to the beauty business – from fashion to jewelry, interior design and anything related to the aesthetics. When she was working part time in college, she heard about Sothys at a home party and her heart was set on working for them.

“I wanted to be attached to a brand that not just promises beauty and is superficial but one that really delivers results,” the charismatic Cheryl said.

Called in her teens

As the eldest daughter in her family, Cheryl had to prepare the altar for the family’s worship but she had doubts about the religion as she had been told that if she misbehaved, the goddess would cut off her ears.

“I asked myself, ‘If God is God, why would He do this to me? I’m just a child.’

“One day, I looked up into the sky and said, ‘If there’s really a God and you’re really true, I really want to know who You are’.” Soon after that, her aunt shared the Gospel with her family.

“It was one ear in, one ear out,” Cheryl laughed. “But she planted the seed.”

One day, she went to church. “I can’t remember what happened, but I felt the nudge to go up when they gave the altar call. I went up and there, I felt God’s presence. It was so real to me … I knew He was God and I accepted Jesus as my Saviour,” she shared.

As she was leaving the church, she heard God saying to her: “I will never leave you, I will never forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)

She didn’t even know it was a verse from the Bible, but it resolved all her deep worries about life. “At that moment, I told myself that God is in control.”

Cheryl attended church, but when she started work, she backslid.

“Everything was about my career. God was in my life, but He was shoved aside for 17 years,” Cheryl sighed.

God-centred business

Twelve years ago, the wandering sheep returned to the Father’s side. And things began to “move” at her workplace. From 2006 to 2010, Sothys’ bottomline grew 10 times.

When she returned to God in 2006, the first thing God did was send her to The School of Acts, a training and equipping school for working adults. There, the Lord told her: “You shall ‘super delegate’,” she recalled.

Cheryl obeyed and relinquished much of her work to colleagues and managers, although she was accustomed to long hours, even charting 120,000km on her car every two years for her business.

During that time, as she obeyed God to “super delegate”, her business grew 10 times.

Painful lesson

“One day in 2012, the Lord spoke to me and gave four directives: One was to build character within my organisation and develop relationships within my sphere of influence. He also spoke clearly about managing the business according to biblical principles; and finally, He said, ‘Develop My people’.”

Just when she thought she could rest, God told her that her business would increase six times.

Cheryl didn’t think it was possible, especially after the 10-fold growth, and this seemed to be confirmed when her company faced turmoil instead.

“I almost lost my entire team to a key competitor. Three managers from the four or five outlets and one department head walked out. They were headhunted by my number one key competitor,” she said.

So, instead of growth, her company was shaken by the “betrayal”.

“But I guess through that journey, God taught me a lot about forgiveness, about not allowing all these to stop me,” she reflected.

The experience taught Cheryl that character is foundational – the first instruction in the four directives by God, which led her to implementing the Character First Education programme in the company as part of the staff ’s development.

“The programme has 49 characteristics, all based on biblical principles but there’s a marketplace version which Sothys has adopted,” Cheryl said.

Next, she was led to a book called Business by the Book by her current mentors, her cell leaders at Damansara Utama Methodist Church (DUMC), who are also the national directors of Fellowship of Companies for Christ International (FCCI).

The book explored key topics on ownership and purpose, leadership, finance, human resource, organisation and marketing and planning.

Her company also conducted the MoneyLife programme to teach the staff about financial stewardship. Seeing her business as a platform, much like a “pulpit”, Cheryl also started a workplace Alpha programme in her company.

Office harvest

In two years, about six of Cheryl’s colleagues became Christians. “Some became believers in the process, some were lukewarm believers who had stopped attending church.

Today, all are attending church and have also joined cell groups. Also, most of their kids are attending the Children’s Church programme,” Cheryl enthused.

Does her major shareholder, Sothys France, have any issue with how she runs the company?

“No. I guess it’s because we’ve been running the business pretty well and we’ve been showing results,” she replied.

As she obeyed God’s directive for her to build relationships, she realised that God had shown her a new business model of turning their dealers into business licensee partners.

Through this, Cheryl was able to form deeper relationships with her dealer-partners, getting to know their personal struggles and even sharing the Gospel with and praying for them.

Although she struggled with the slow progress of the promised six-time growth, Cheryl realised that “in God’s perspective, it’s actually all about people. It’s not just the business, the numbers. Firstly, it’s about the lives of His people”.

Develop and release

“One day, God spoke to me. He said, ‘Develop My people and let them go’,” she shared. She struggled hard with God’s instruction as it didn’t make sense for businesses to develop talents and release them.

God then told her: “They are not your people. They are My people.”

Soon after, she attended an FCCI conference and to her amazement, the speaker uttered the exact same words. “Again, it was a confirmation that we’re God’s stewards,” she said.

“And it’s really about God’s will for the person, not mine. God’s will supersedes my will. It’s the same with church planting. You don’t disciple and keep them within; you send them out.”

When it came to dealing with office politics, Cheryl admitted that she was “not good at it” due to her upfront, direct approaches.

“So I said to God, ‘All these fiery darts that come my way, You take charge.’ I’m sure there are (darts) but we’ve been well-shielded,” she laughed.

How does Cheryl balance all her priorities?

She takes a leaf from Jesus’ example in only doing what His Father tells Him.

“What God tells us, we do. It’s not about doing everything. Even in channelling resources, there’s so much need in this world, but it is really hearing from God and channelling it accordingly because unless God builds the house, we build in vain. That’s how we balance time and also manage and steward His resources.”