David English
Hello. I’m David English, and I want to welcome you to another episode of Profiles and Stewardship, where my dad, Bill English, has conversations with business owners about how they integrate their role as a business owner and leader with their faith in Jesus Christ. Today, Bill is talking with Abe Degnan, owner of Degnan Design, Design, Build and remodel into Forest, Wisconsin. In this episode, Abe and Bill talk about a range of issues that Christian business owners face. If you want to hear about how a mature, successful Christian business owner uses his business and his life to glorify God, then this Profiles and Stewardship episode is for you. So grab a coke, sit back, and listen as Bill and Abe talk about what it really means to be a Christian business owner. Now, here’s my dad, Bill English.
Bill English
Thank you, David. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business, and I want to thank you for joining us today. And in this episode, we’re going to be talking with Abe Degman, who is the owner of Daygman Design, Build, and Remodel in DeForest, Wisconsin. Abe grew up in the remodeling in the construction business, working alongside his father in the workshop and on job sites. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee with degrees in architecture and urban planning, and he has earned postgraduate certificates in remodeling and building and remaining in place. I must have said that wrong. I’ll check with you in just a moment, Abe. On that all of them from the National Association of the Home Builders. Abe and his wife Lisa, have six children, both through natural birth and adoption. And he is the past president of the Wisconsin Builders Association, the Madison Area Builders Association, and has received numerous awards for his work in remodeling and service in the Madison area. But more importantly than any of that, abe is a disciple of Jesus Christ, and he is here today to talk about integrating his faith into his work and his business.
Bill English
So, Abe, I want to welcome you to the Bible and business broadcast. How are you doing?
Abe Degnan
Doing great, Bill. It’s great to be here this morning.
Bill English
Thank you. So what was the one certificate I messed up there?
Abe Degnan
That one was the Certified Aging and Place Specialist, and it’s oriented around universal design, around accessibility, specifically about helping people age in their home as they’re growing older and their abilities are changing. But it’s very applicable across a broad range of things.
Bill English
Sure, okay. Yeah. For some reason, I meant to write aging, and in my text I wrote the word gaining, gaining in place. So you have a certificate now I’ve anointed you with the gaining in place, whatever that means.
Abe Degnan
Well, thank you.
Bill English
Like I said, this is unscripted, right? This is totally unscripted. So here we go, abe, let’s start out and let’s take a look at Stewardship. Right? And so Bible and Business, and this series is all about how we integrate our faith into our role as a business owner. And so what scriptures as you think about your role as really a steward of Jesus Christ and all that he’s given you? What scriptures are meaningful to you when it comes to integrating your faith with your role as a business owner?
Abe Degnan
Well, there’s a verse that’s had meaning for me for a long time and it’s one that we need to be careful about. And so I look at Luke, chapter twelve, verses 47 and 48. And in the NIV it says the servant who knows the Master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. That’s a pretty stern warning right there, right? Yeah, but verse 48 goes on to say but the one who does not know and does not and does things deserving. Say that again. The one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows because they don’t know yet. And here’s the part of that verse that most of us know. This is the part that most of us know for everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be asked. And so it’s interesting because you need to read that verse with humility, you need to make sure it’s not done with arrogance. But you also need to take in the full context of the verse in order to appreciate everything it says, don’t you?
Bill English
Yes, you really do. And what it says is that the more light you have from the Lord, the more responsibility you have to follow it.
Abe Degnan
Absolutely. This speaks about the totality of our life, but like many Bible verses, we can attribute multiple meanings and multiple layers of meaning to it. And I think that as business owners and as people who maybe have some means or at least have more means than other people have with regard to money and wealth and maybe even with regard to our ability to influence people and our ability to create things. That part about who has been given much, much will be expected has very personal meaning for us. And we need to use it. But we need to use it with obedience and humility and not with arrogance.
Bill English
Yeah, I think you’re really on to something here, Abe. And I want to unpack this a little bit because a lot of people are going to look at this and say, well, to whom much is given? I think much is required. I don’t know if that’s ESV. I have my logos up here, by the way. If you don’t have logos, you need to get logos. Yeah, but anyways, to how much is given, much is required or much is demanded. Most people look at that in the financial sense. You got a lot of money, therefore you owe a lot back to society, you owe a lot back to the people who have less than what you have, right? So to whom much is given, much is required. But you mentioned creativity, you mentioned influence. And there’s probably two or three other layers we could unpack here in terms of our roles as business owners. We have a platform that not a lot of people have. I don’t know if you know this, and I’ll stop talking in a minute. There’s only 6 million businesses in the United States, and only 18,000 of them have 500 or more employees.
Bill English
5.8 million of them have 100 or less employees. And out of those 5.8 million, I estimate, I guesstimate there’s 2 million of them that are Christians and the rest are not believers. And of those 2 million, what is our influence, really? What’s the platform that we have individually, but what’s also the platform that we have? Corporately. So maybe talk about the influence, the ability to create and other things like that as you unpack this first.
Abe Degnan
Well, we have a lot of influence. We have influence on a lot of different ways. We have the influence on our clients. We have the influence on our employees. We have the influence on our vendors and subcontractors, and we have influence through our marketing and advertising. So we have all those different routes and channels and the opportunity and ability to speak. We see it all over the place. We see it with the secular businesses throwing stuff at us all the time. So how do we, as Christians do the same thing in a way that is endearing to the rest of the world and makes people want to know more about Jesus?
Bill English
Yeah. Over a faith radio, carmen and I have talked several times about this notion of what it’s called brand promise, how there’s an increasing segment of our society that wants the people or the corporations that they buy products from to have the same political beliefs that they have. And so when you think about our platform as business owners, how do you look at I really don’t care what your political beliefs are, but how do you look at that notion that an increasing number of your customers might choose you or reject you because of your political or religious beliefs versus just the quality services that you offer?
Abe Degnan
Well, we’re going to try to be apolitical. Frankly, I guess if I can be endearing and if I can be Endearing and promote Christ and find a way to do that while attracting as many people as possible and pushing as few people away as possible and I have half the people wondering if I’m one way and half the people wondering if I’m another way and the people closest to me wondering why they think I’m a lot like them but not quite like them. Then I think I’m doing my job because I think there are certain non negotiables and I have several non negotiables about who I will or will not vote for. But when it comes to the totality of things, neither of the primary parties truly represent the way that I think that Christianity and Jesus would truly represent in a perfect world.
Bill English
Yeah, I’m 100% in agreement with you. The Gospel of Jesus Christ Christianity doesn’t fit neatly into either the liberal or the conservative camp. Both camps have flavors of different parts of Christianity that they emphasize, I don’t think for religious reasons, they just do. But I grew up in one camp, but I have now learned that my allegiance is first to Jesus Christ, and I’m pro church before I’m pro Republican or pro Democrat or even pro any candidate. But our society is going to increasingly push guys like you and me and Gals also, who own businesses to take political stands and to basically publish political beliefs before they’ll do business with us. And I think that that will be one of the areas of persecution that Christian business owners might face down the road.
Abe Degnan
And so far, I suppose what I would try to do is redirect the conversation in a way that serves my purposes. I will answer the questions that I want. I’m going to answer some questions that they didn’t ask me, and I’m going to ignore other things and continue to ignore other things as long as possible and hope that the fairness and attitude that I display will win someone over, even if they would have a political or a party type disagreement with me.
Bill English
Yeah, it’s more important that people come to Jesus Christ than it is that they join a particular political party. It really is. And we need strong Christians in both parties, not just one party or the other. So we’re talking today with Abe Degnan, who is the owner of Degnan Design remodel. No, Design building Remodel. Sorry, I might have gotten that wrong. Here on this Bible and Business Profiles and Stewardship broadcast, I’m giving away several copies of my book, the kindle version of a Christian theology of business ownership. All you have to do is just text the word book to 763-458-3722. That’s 763-458-3722 for your chance to win a copy of the book. Be sure to include your name and where you live, because we’d like to announce that at the close of the broadcast. Thank you for joining us today. So let’s shift gears here, Abe, for just a moment and maybe talk about something that’s another little bit controversial, I guess. Let’s talk about profits. In many parts of our society, profits are considered a bad thing. If you have too much profit, it means you’ve probably oppressed your employees somehow. And the conventional wisdom is that owners who make a lot of money have an obligation to share their profits back to their employees, or to share it through philanthropy, civically and so I’m just curious, how do you view profits in light of your faith in jesus Christ.
Bill English
What do you think the Bible has to say about prophets and so forth? I’ll just kind of let you do a stream of thought here for a few minutes.
Abe Degnan
Yeah, sure. I think that first of all, I will say that I’m a capitalist. I’ll start unabashedly with that. I’m a capitalist and I’m a Christian. And I think that with philanthropy it’s important to give people donations for certain things for certain amounts of time. But if you just give money, give money, give money, give money to people without requesting anything in return, they will stay stuck where they’re at. And our mission in life should be to never leave people stuck. As Christians, we should not remain stuck. We should not remain stuck in our sins. We should know that we’re forgiven and we should know that we are not capable of achieving heaven on our own. We don’t earn heaven, we don’t earn salvation. But if all we do is recognize, hey, Jesus died for my sins and I’m forgiven, but then we remain stuck in our sins, does that do any earthly good? Certainly not. And does it do any heavenly good either? It will wear you down. So the same thing goes with regard to philanthropy, right? Because you want to lift people up into something where they can achieve on their own.
Abe Degnan
So as a capitalist, I don’t know if I earn the title of philanthropist yet in our society, but I want people to have jobs. I want people to work. I want people to do things with their life so that they are rewarded. They’re intrinsically rewarded. They’re financially rewarded. They’re earning what they are doing. And they’re able to provide for themselves, provide for their families. They’re able to do things with the money that they earn. And they’re doing something the way that we all want to because it makes us feel good. We feel good about earning money and having a job and achieving things rather than just being given something. And I definitely want to promote that.
Bill English
Work is a gift from God. Our society puts up a value of leisure over work. Well, in one sense. In another sense they put work as another God that you can devote yourselves to. But work is a gift from God and it gives us dignity and purpose. There was work, as you know, I’m sure you know this. Before the fall, before there was sin in the world, there was still work. And I think after all this is said and done, an eternity will still be working. But it’ll be such a pleasure and we won’t have any curses on our work and it’ll just be such a wonderful thing. So I’m actually looking forward to it because I enjoy working. You and I are probably cut from the same cloth. We enjoy getting up in the morning and going to work.
Abe Degnan
I do. And I’ve worked to have balance in that too because I’ve been on the other side of it where I was a workaholic and that I spent too much time at work and I didn’t want downtime. I felt that I was being lazy. If I took downtime and recreation and things like that, or if I just sat and watched a TV show, there is that balance. But how are you going to do it? How are you going to do it? And work is good. Work in the end is good. And there’s plenty of proverbs that tell us about that too.
Bill English
Sure. Well, so for those who are watching, if you want to interact or ask a question, you can always enter a comment either in the Facebook, the LinkedIn or the other Facebook group. I didn’t realize I pushed this to two groups. But you’re always welcome to enter a comment. It’ll show back up here in our chat and then we can interact with Abe that way. And just remember, I’m giving away a copy of my book, a Christian Theology of Business Ownership, giving away several copies for your chance to win. Just text the word book to 763-458-3722. Be sure to include your name in the city where you live. I’d like to announce the winners at the end of the broadcast here. So let’s talk a little bit more about profits here. Where do you think a Christian business owner would go to say, to answer the question, a, are profits biblical? And I’m putting you a little bit on the spot here, and I realize that. And so even I can dialogue, if nothing else, and B, how much profit is too much profit? The second one is a tough one, I know.
Abe Degnan
Yeah. The great thing is, I don’t know that the Bible addresses that second question at all, although I know that you’ve talked about it in your book in certain ways, about planning for the future and about saving enough and then giving away and creating. The thing is it’s interesting because the whole thing is that by spending our money, we create jobs for other people. When other people have jobs, then they spend their money, which then gives a job to another person, another. When you’re using your philanthropic money in a way that helps create and create more. The luxury buildings, the high rise, the $1,000 square foot things that are out there that are three, four, five times as expensive as everything else, is that a good use of money? Is that too much profit? Is the company who built that thing earning too much profit? Well, you know what, if that profit then allows somebody made that profit, which allowed them to spend that luxury money, and then somebody built whatever that structure is and did that, and so then that person has money. So now let’s say that person goes and buys a boat.
Abe Degnan
All the people who built that boat, they have jobs because of it. The salesman who sold that boat has a job, the marina where that boat is kept and maintained, there’s jobs there. So there’s things all over the place. You look at how this goes, you look at how it goes, and spending your money is actually what is meant to be done with things. Hoarding the money and doing nothing with it is where then I think that and it goes back to our first verse and risks being sinful to hoard your money and to just build up massive, massive amounts of it rather than spending it and using it to help and support things and to create other jobs.
Bill English
Yeah, no, you’re precisely right. I remember back in the 80s when Congress passed the luxury tax on yachts and the only people that got hurt on that were the people who were making yachts. The average guy and gal on the line lost their job, but the rich didn’t get hurt. They just bought the yachts overseas.
Abe Degnan
Yeah, right.
Bill English
They had the ability to go across national lines, borders, so to speak. And so there is a sense in which you need the rich in order to create jobs for the middle class and the poor. I’ve never been offered a job by a poor man. I’ve only been offered a job by a rich man. But back to the question, where would we go? Here’s where I would go. And you try the song for size and kind of tell me what you think. I would go to the parable of the ten, five and two talents in Matthew 25, where the master gives each of his three servants one five talents, one, two and one one. And he says, Go out and make some money. And he comes back later. And the first servant took five talents and turned it into ten. The second took two and turned it into four. And the third one, as you know, didn’t do anything with it and we won’t talk about him. My point is that in that entire parable, never are the prophets themselves 100% profits. Never are the prophets themselves seen as evil or wrong or unrighteous or anything like that.
Bill English
But what God gave them as their reward was not more money, which is the prosperity gospel today that I think is so damaging to Christianity. He gave them more of his presence, he gave them more of time with Him. But that’s where I think you go to. That’s one of the places you can go to say, hey, no matter how much profits you make, it can be a good thing. It’s really on how it’s used.
Abe Degnan
And so I caught two things about that. So number one, actually, the one talent servant is in reality the servant who hoarded his money. He didn’t have the most, but he hoarded it because he buried it in the ground. But number two, like you said, I think the reward was twofold. They got more responsibility, but they got a closer relationship with their master, as you said, more time with their master. And as a business grows, as long as you don’t live in that workaholic lifestyle and mindset anymore, that is actually one of the things that we get is more time. As we begin to delegate the things that we used to do to the other people that are in our company and grow those people into their roles, we get more time. And that time can be used many different ways and I mentioned even watching TV. But the amount of time that we have to spend with Jesus, to spend at church, to volunteer, to be in prayer or to be in the Bible, all those things, we no longer have the same pressure bearing down on us because we have used our money to buy some time.
Bill English
I want to just use that as a bridge to talk about people and developing people now for a little bit. Because it just seems to me the question that came into my mind while you were speaking was do we, as Christian business owners, is there a model there that those in our company who are responsible for really driving profit, should they get more of our time? Should they be rewarded with more responsibility and that kind of thing? I don’t know. This is just popped into my mind. What are your thoughts on that?
Abe Degnan
Well, let’s see here. One of my philosophies is that just as I want to feel good about the job I do and I want to be rewarded by doing the best that I can, that’s what most of the people, almost everybody that works for you, that’s what they want. They want to do good. They want to do good work. They want to be proud of what they do and they want to be thanked for what they do both by those around them at work and by the clients, the end users as well. And so they want to see that growing those people so that they can get that benefit, get that heartfelt reward and have that meaning in their life is a big deal. So time, how does that relate to time then? What’s your question? That does relate to time with the owner in some respects, but also you need to make sure as the owner that as you lift people up and delegate them and they get the responsibility, that you don’t jump around them and undermine them either. I’ve got 14 people in my company right now and so I have enough people that I have, you know, legitimate departments and department heads and an.org chart that finally works.
Abe Degnan
But also I’m at the point where I can still have a personal relationship and each month do a one on one appointment with each and every person in my company. I’m at that hybrid point where I want my managers to do the work that belongs to them and I need to be careful in my one on one that I don’t ever undermine the supervisor of the employee I’m talking to. But they do know that I care about them, each and everyone. Individually.
Bill English
Owners staying in their swim lane is really hard. I’ve consulted with a lot of owners, and as a business grows, owners roles necessarily have to become more focused and more narrow because they all want top talent. But when you hire top talent, guess what top talent wants to do? They want to lead. They want to produce. They want to tell the owner, get out of my way. Don’t tell me what to do. I’ll go out and give me the goals, and I’ll go accomplish them. That’s what top talent does. And I’ve seen more business owners just lack the intestinal fortitude and discipline to stay in there, reducing swim lane as their business is growing. And they end up many times with just mediocre talent around them, and then they complain. They kind of witch and moan about how no one can do anything around here but me. Well, it’s because you’re overbearing and you don’t know how to stay in your swim line.
Abe Degnan
Right. I’ll tell you what. Trial and error in school of hard. Knox will teach you that one.
Bill English
Yeah. And that’s why businesses don’t scale, right?
Abe Degnan
And if you have a close enough relationship for your employees to be able to tell you that you have offended them or that you have undermined them, that’s when you know that you’re beginning to go someplace. And if the people just complain and complain to each other and things like that, there’s your dysfunction.
Bill English
No, you’re very right. So, developing people, you have 14 employees, which is a nice growing business. What do you do to develop your employees?
Abe Degnan
Kind of.
Bill English
What are your thoughts on their professional development and how you play a role in that?
Abe Degnan
Well, from a practical standpoint, some of the things that we’ve been working on over the last number of years is that we’ve been documenting stuff. As a company grows, you go from where everything is in the owner’s head, and you’re just telling people stuff. You’re able to keep it all in here. Then you need to start writing stuff down. You write down your scopes of work, things like that. So then you develop habits about how things get done every day in the company. But then finally, you got to take those habits, and you got to document them in writing and say, hey, this is the way that we want it to be done. This is the way that we’re doing it. If we need to tweak something, that documentation is never finished 100%, you’re still tweaking things, but you begin documenting it so that you can recreate it. And that is part of the process of growing people so that they know what to do. They know where their end goal is. They know what they’re responsible for. If there is a reason for a particular way that something needs to get done in a certain way.
Abe Degnan
You document it so that they know. And if there’s three right ways to do something and they’re all about equally efficient and they all achieve the same quality control end result. One guy happens to do it one way, the other does it another way, maybe that’s okay, especially in the world of carpentry the guys in the field and maybe even drawing in the design. And on the other hand, there’s other things within a company that are non negotiable and you got to do them the same single way every time. And so it depends on what type of company you’re in. But those are some of the steps that we’ve taken to at least begin this part of this discussion here.
Bill English
Sure. And are there professional certifications that some of your staff could go get, that if you help pay for that, that would really be a benefit to them?
Abe Degnan
Yeah. So actually there are several different things that we’ve implemented over the last several years. Number one, we do have a profit sharing program, and maybe we’ll talk about that yet about a year and a half ago, instituted an education reimbursement program. Our whole goal is to have some skin in the game here. So we have a couple of requirements with it. One is that the employees are responsible for applying for scholarships. If they are to receive the education reimbursement, they don’t need to win a scholarship, but they need to apply for a scholarship. They need to do some research on their own. They’re also responsible for paying for part of their schooling cost. The company will pay half of it, the employee pays half of it, and then upon successful completion, the company will reimburse them for the other half. So we want them to have some skin in the game here, but we definitely are willing to help with the cash flow end of it as well and make a substantial investment. And then another part of that then is about what type of degree is it going to be for right now, we’re generally paying for like, certifications for associate’s degrees and for a bachelor’s degree.
Abe Degnan
Right now, I don’t need licensed architects in Wisconsin here for what we do. So I’m not paying for a master’s degree, not paying for that type of thing. We’re putting the money where it is most needed. And then we got the continuing education stuff, things like Narrate and Nap for those certifications that you named off about me earlier, too. And my employees have numerous ones of those that are very helpful too.
Bill English
Good professional growth is one of the ways that you retain top talent. I know you know this, but professional growth, most talent doesn’t want to leave a business unless they really have to. So once you have good talent on your staff, just by helping them grow professionally and. Really, if you can figure out how, if you were to approach, especially today’s generations and say, how do we help you be a better you, you might have them for a lot longer in your company than what you might otherwise have. Simply because people do often move jobs not just for pay, but for opportunity to grow professionally. Carving out a career path or a growth path for people can be very helpful to them and very helpful to you as the owner.
Abe Degnan
So you just reminded me of what I didn’t touch on yet. So we created our carpentry skills progression and then we created a lead carpenter progression. And there are two things that work in parallel. So the carpentry skills, as the name implies, is about the skills. It’s about what you know how to build. But the lead carpenter progression is about the management and the types of projects that they’re capable of managing the number of people, the level of difficulty of the project, the number of trades and the size of the project whether they’re responsible for projects that are $50 $100,000 or whether they’re responsible for projects that are 300, 500, $800,000, things like that. And so the two things work in parallel because we came to this conclusion about five years ago when I hired someone who was an adult about the same age as me moving into his second career had very little carpentry experience. But he was a manager. He was a people person. He knew how to think. We had to teach him carpentry from the ground up and he has moved very quickly through that. But he had leadership skills. And so he was able to jump very quickly and earn responsibility in certain types of jobs that once he had learned the carpentry skills here he already had the management skills to run the job, put the schedule together, manage all the subcontractors, talk to the homeowners and work with the carpenters that he was supervising.
Abe Degnan
And so it gives these two things. You ratchet it up. You take how much you’re making here and then you take the premium wage for this. You add them together, and boom, you get this. And this is those two levels of growth that go together both ways. Now, the design department is a little more amorphous because those design skills, it’s a little harder to judge. But we work those things in parallel and we say, how is this person and that person similar? To make sure that we’re compensating fairly across departments.
Bill English
That is a great illustration of professional development. It reminds me of an undeniable truth I have about business. And that truth is you hire character and you train skill, right? So you had a guy who had some inherent leadership skills, the inherent character to be a leader and to run your jobs. He just needed to actually know technically what was going on on the job so he could be a better leader. Fabulous. I want to go back. You have a profit sharing program, so I’ll share with you what we do. And then I’d like to just kind of hear how you do it. And those who own businesses, you may just want to take a listen to both of these models and see what you think we like to do. Usually 15% of the free cash flows generated in a quarter or a semiannual or an annual base, some period of time. And it’s not year over year, quarter over quarter growth. It’s just here are the free cash flows. Now, the reason we do free cash flows instead of top line revenue or gross margin is because we want to actually have the cash to pay the bonus.
Bill English
We don’t ever want to have a situation where we have to go out and borrow to pay the bonus. Right? So if there’s no free cash flows in a given time period, then there’s no bonus. It’s 100% variable expense for us. And then we pay it out. We divide the number of hours everybody worked as a single pool and then we divide that into those hours and say, okay, everybody who worked, they get eight cents an hour or they get twelve cents an hour. And so those who worked more get a larger share of that bonus. Those who are full time, we calculated it 40 hours a week, and those who are part time get less of the bonus. But everybody participates. So that’s kind of how we do a profit sharing program. How do you do your profit sharing program?
Abe Degnan
Well, we have parameters in place. Again, so ours is based on profitability, but we do have parameters in place because we’re absolutely if we deem not to have the cash flow, we will not pay it or we will defer it until we can pay it. Because in the state that my company is in, the profitability and the cash flow generally are still pretty closely related. We don’t have huge capital investments on the balance sheet that can impact cash flow in a way that will distort free cash from how the profits align with it. That’s most of the time, right? So ours is aligned to margins and revenues. Ours is related to wages and earnings. And so it is divvied up according to the wages and earnings within the company. Because we have deemed that largely with the way that wages and salaries are within our company. Number one, you work more hours. If you’re a wage earner and you work more hours, you’re going to have a higher level of compensation. But also that the profitability of the company as a whole right now for us is largely, is a lot directional stuff. So those of us who are making the higher level decisions are generally the ones who are impacting the profits greatest.
Abe Degnan
But the fact is, it also comes down in the end to the carpenters in the field who are in the end the producers and those lead carpenters are well compensated. We have a bottom line. We have a very generous profit sharing program, and there’s a lot of money going out the door getting spread among all of us. And frankly, one of the secrets to that is that as our company has grown, we’ve managed to do so. We’ve grown our company this much, but our overhead has only grown this much. And while we try to keep operating on the same selling margins, therefore we have more money falling into profitability at the bottom line as we grow our revenue. It is a scale thing for sure.
Bill English
Yeah. And it’s an art to scale your opex, your operation expenses, your overhead expenses, to set them up in such a way that they can scale into more and more sales and more and more revenue, more transactions, as it were, without a commensurate rise in the opex. There’s really an art there, and maybe some other time we can talk about that.
Abe Degnan
Yeah, right. I don’t know exactly what the secret is. I know what we’re trying to do. I’m certainly not ready to write a book on it.
Bill English
Well, if you ever want to write a book, I know a guy who knows how to write books. Right. Today we’re talking with Abe Degnan, the president and the owner of degene Design, Build, and Remodel out of DeForest, Wisconsin, which is right near Madison, Wisconsin. And he’s in the remodeling and the construction business. And so Abe, I’d like to just move now along and just kind of ask you more of a broad general question. If you were standing in front of a group of 100 Christian business owners, what would be the top two or three pieces of advice you want to give them? Whether it’s about generating profits or whether it’s about developing their people or philanthropy or even maybe building a panel of trusted advisors that they could work with or maybe about how much do you share with your spouse. Right. About the business. That’s the worthy conversation. So what would be two or three things that pieces of advice that you would give them?
Abe Degnan
Well, let’s see here. I think it would probably circle around being real, being consistent and consistent and integrity go together. Being real means that you’re not just all cheerful all the time, but there’s a parallel to that, which is be a cheerleader. You need to be positive, but you can’t be positive and be fake at the same time. You need to be positive and be real. Because if you’re if you’re just if you’re all up all the time and there’s never anything that is difficult for you and you don’t share any little bits of difficulty in your life, you’re not real. You’re not vulnerable, and you’re not going to build trust because no one is going to be able to connect to you and learn from you. So. But you really have to be the positive cheerleader within your company. You have to be the happy guy, and you have to be consistent. You have to be full of integrity while not. And you need to share the right things at the right time, even the difficult things.
Bill English
Yeah. Okay. So that spouse question, that came to my head and I threw it out there. Your spouse is Lisa, right?
Abe Degnan
Yes.
Bill English
She looks like a delightful person in the photos on your website. How much do you share with her about the business?
Abe Degnan
It’s interesting because she’s not in the business. She never has been. She was a nurse when we got married, and she’s been a stay at home mom for the last 19 years and eleven months or so. People tend to assume with the construction business that your wife does something in the business and she doesn’t. I’m second generation from my father. My mom didn’t do anything in the business. Lisa’s dad was a commercial contractor and his wife, my mother in law. Lisa’s mom was part of that business. And there’s both things that bring challenges. And in the end, if you have someone who’s going to be in the business with you, you need to have them in the business because they’re the right person, not just because they’re your spouse. And so what is that role that they’re going to fulfill? You don’t just throw someone into the bookkeeping and marketing position just because that’s what you need done unless they’re actually good at it. You don’t make someone in charge of your marketing unless they actually want to do it. So Lisa and I, we’ve had ups and downs within our marriage and we’ve had ups and downs within our business.
Abe Degnan
And so there are times that I share very little. There have been times where I have failed to be the cheerleader for my company or to be the leader for my family, and maybe not even a very good dad some of the time, too. But you figure that out, you get over your own baggage. You go out and get the counseling and the therapy that you need in order to figure out how. Then you can turn it around and lead your family, lead your company. Right. How much do Lisa and I share about the company now? At this point? Now we’re in a position where when I have strategic challenges and I have issues where I need to make a decision. I have a leadership team. There are two other people in my company that we meet weekly over lunch, and sometimes we just talk. But most of the time we talk about specific business issues that we need to make decisions on. Some of that I also do with my wife. And some of that some things she doesn’t have a lot of interest in. She’s got other things going on. She is a mom of six kids and there is trauma history in our family because of the adoption.
Abe Degnan
As much as we know we’ve done God’s work and we’ve done the right thing, we’ve done the right thing in every way that affects our biological kids and everything as well. But it has grown us. It has grown me and Lease. It’s grown our marriage, it’s grown our faith in Christ, and it’s grown our two biological kids and our first three kids when we did this international adoption of the three older kids and doubled our family.
Bill English
You got a lot of complexities there. You got a lot of layers there.
Abe Degnan
The thing is, Bill, as I learned things in business, they applied to my family. And as I learned things for my family, they apply to my business. So you got to start somewhere. If you’re a business owner who is stuck and you are stuck with your employees or you are stuck with your marriage, you got to figure out where you’re going to start to get unstuck. Pick one thing. Go get some sales training. Join a peer group. Go to marriage counseling. Go to individual counseling. Go start exercising. Find a holistic practitioner who’s going to work with your mind and body connection so that you start thinking differently than you do right now. If you’re stuck, you got to do something to get unstuck. And that is the biggest thing that my wife and I have learned over the last several years in the adoption process, in the marriage counseling and the parenting. But some of that goes back to a mindset change that I had when I got some awesome sales training ten years ago.
Bill English
Sure. I remember in graduate school, I have an Ma in counseling psychology. I remember that one of my professors advocated if you needed to learn how to parent, just go get dog training. Learn how to train a dog. Okay, if that’s where you want to go. Well, we have been talking with Abe Degnan degnan Build, Design and Remodel out of DeForest, Wisconsin, which is near Madison. Abe, if people want to get a hold of you either for professional services or just personally, how can they get a hold of you?
Abe Degnan
Well, if you want to reach out to me, let’s see, the best way is on our website@degenenddesignbuildremodel.com. Go to our people, go to my biography, and there is a spot right on my biography where you can book a video meeting with me. Or if you’re local to the area here and you want to get together for coffee or lunch, it is right there. You can click, and you can book a meeting with me, and I’ll meet you where we decide. But you can get that video meeting with me at any time, and that is the best way for us to connect.
Bill English
And so what is the geographic range that you’ll work in for remodeling services?
Abe Degnan
We’re mainly within the Dane County area here. We try to be within 30 minutes of where one of my lead carpenters lives and within 45 minutes of our office here. And we found that to give us a great balance as we’ve got lead carpenters in different spots around the county.
Bill English
Okay, beautiful. Well, listen, we need to wrap up today. Abe, I’m so grateful that you joined us today. It’s really been a pleasure to speak with you, and you’re very articulate, and I think you’re very interesting, and so I’m glad that we’ve met and that we’ve had this chance together today.
Abe Degnan
Thanks for all you do. Thanks for being on Faith Radio and thanks for doing this stuff.
Bill English
Oh, you’re welcome. So this Bible and business episode of Profiles and Stewardship with Abe Degnan degnan design, build and remodel out of DeForest, Wisconsin, which is near Madison, Wisconsin. This video will be available on Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube as soon as we’re done. Ironically, nobody texted the word book to the number, so I guess I’ll save those copies and give them away next time when we interview again. We have several more interviews getting scheduled right now, so I hope that you’ll join us the next time that we have a live restream. This is our restream, is the platform we use anyways, but a live stream, a live broadcast of a profile in Stewardship. So until we meet again, thank you for joining me. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business, and I hope you go out and make a great day. Take care.
David English
Thank you for joining Bill and Abe today. I hope you found their conversation to be helpful to you as you grow in your faith in Jesus Christ. If you’d like to talk with Bill, just email him at bill@bibleandbusiness.com. I think you’ll find my dad will be helpful to you in your situation, and I hope you’ll join my dad again for another Bible and Business profiles and Stewardship podcast. So until then, please go out and make it a great day. God bless.