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SPEAKER_01Today we'll be discussing biblical principles for managing rapid growth in a company. And we're joined by Phil Cohen. Phil is the founder and president of Cohen Architectural Woodworking, which is a commercial woodworking company located in St. James, Missouri. Phil and his wife Jenna, along with a team of talented and dedicated leaders. And several of these are actually Phil and Jenna's children. They lead the company's operations in accordance with Phil's mission of transforming every life we touch by the way we live, the way we treat people, and the beautiful work we produce. In addition to recently being named Missouri's Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration, he has received multiple other awards for excellence. And his company a couple years ago was recognized as the number one fastest growing cabinet manufacturer in the United States. Welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast, Phil. Thanks, Darren. I'm really glad to be here. So number one fastest growing cabinet manufacturer a couple years ago. You went from 35 to 95 employees and 6.4 million in revenue to 11.8 million. Most of it was during a uh what's typically a uh a downtime in construction and manufacturing. So you've seen some incredible rapid growth in your company. Tell us about this uh rapid growth in Cohen architectural wordworking and what led to you researching this concept from a biblical perspective.
SPEAKER_02Well, first, as uh as a faith-based company, I'm I'm a first generation Christian. I came from a totally non-Christian background. I was homeless, strung out on drugs, committed about every evil you can imagine. And I I just started as a really as an experiment to see if the Bible in prayer would work to run a business. And the farther I get into this, I started this in about 2004. In 2013, I invited my leadership team in, and they literally we just were, I just shared the vision with them and talked to them about other companies that were doing it, went around the room and just said, What do you think? And they they said, you know, it looks like it could work, it's working for others, let's try it and see. And so many of uh some of them weren't even Christians at the time, or they weren't very dedicated Christians. We started studying the Bible and praying. And so uh, whenever everything I'm facing, uh I know what kind of person I used to be, and I have no formal training or education, and so I just lean hard on God. I go to the Bible when there's a problem. And so when we were growing so fast back in 2015, that's what I did. I went to the Word of God and I just I don't remember if I Googled or I prayed or what it was, but what the Bible says about a fast-growing organization. And I I found two really, really good examples, and one was in Exodus 18, and the other was in Acts chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01So before we get to into these examples, so at what point when you sat down with your team and said, Let's give this a shot, you know, and do this thing God's way? Like what what size was the company at the time?
SPEAKER_02Um, we were probably at about four million, four or five million dollars, and maybe um I'd say we were maybe at 25 employees.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and this was how many years into the company?
SPEAKER_02It was well, I started, I got my first business license in 1982, but we incorporated and started hiring employees in 2005, and then in two 2013 is when we agreed as a management team to be a faith-based company.
SPEAKER_01And so prior to 2005, was that the time when you were making you were building wooden toys? Or give me give our uh our listeners a sense of of kind of what it was like in those early days.
SPEAKER_02Well, in I was I was uh I grew up in Chicago right after World War II in a Jewish family where a lot of Jewish people were hated. And my father was a violent man, he was in and out of mental hospitals, he drank, he took all kinds of drugs. So I I watched my mother attempt suicide several times, and my father was uh extremely abusive, uh, some things that are not even worth talking about. I mean, they're very difficult things fitting in my face and telling me I'd die in a gutter. And so when I was in my teens, I followed in his footsteps, and I was a womanizer and I was homeless and strung out on drugs and violent. And then in my 20s, I had an encounter with God when I was 24. And uh the first thing I did, somebody told me that if I ever wanted to live for God, I'd need to make restitution. And uh when he told me that, I thought it was impossible. But when I met the Lord, that was the first thing I did. I went and I I got on the road and I went to several different states and I paid back everything I'd ever stolen or borrowed. Uh, it left me broke. And then uh moved to uh Tennessee, settled down in Tennessee, started woodworking in a neighbor's pig pen. Um it was really I was so broken uh from all the drugs and all the violence, and uh the next year my father committed suicide that woodworking was just therapy for me. Uh I was making porch swings and birdhouses and wooden trucks with roller skate wheels, and it was just therapeutic. And it was it surprised me that people actually paid me to do it and and kept asking for more. And then uh I was doing that kind of along with a lot of other things. I tried farming and I tried farming and um uh just general carpentry work, manual labor, and then uh our our place was a mess, and uh we had junk all over the place and junk cars, and one day my my wife said, just decide what you want to do with your life and get rid of everything else. And so I decided I want to be a woodworker. And and right around that time, as we were clearing out the junk, I was building a house for one of my neighbors. And uh in those days when you built cabinets, you built it right there in the house. But I asked him, I begged him to let me build the cabinets from my house. And the night that I started building cabinets, I just started crying because I knew that's what God wanted me to do. It just felt right. It was an old uh rough lumber workbench, an old rickety table saw. There was a post in the middle of the basement that you had to stop the table saw when you got halfway through a sheet of plywood and and turn the table saw and cut through it. And so right around that time, I I had met, I was calling other cabinet makers, and I had met somebody over the phone who had been apprenticed by a German cabinet maker, and it just happened that he and I both had the flu at the same time, so we started talking, and he offered to teach me whatever I wanted to learn about cabinet making. So he spent about five years teaching me, and then during that time a lot of doors just started opening up. Uh uh, I was doing uh cabinets for local people, and then I started building cabinets for uh hospitals, local hospitals. In about 1985, I got an opportunity to work for a company in Chattanooga by the name of Bencor that was owned by uh today he's a U.S. Senator, Bob Corker. And that opened up where we started building cabinets for Walmart, which was a great way to raise a family, and we ended up building cabinets for about 850 Walmart stores. Uh, it was kind of a dark time. We were in a in a legalistic religious cult. My journey was more through my work than it was through the church. The churches that we were in at the time were very dark, and uh somehow uh we grew up with our children in the shop. We have nine children, and we all work together. And uh in the mid-90s, I was diagnosed with manic depression, and uh I was told that I had a medical condition, but I understood the Bible enough to know that uh that that I don't think God would give you something that could keep you from having joy and hope. So I just it was kind of an experiment. I didn't know if I had a spiritual problem or a medical problem, but I was anointed with oil and I just attacked it like a spiritual problem. And I started megadosing in the Bible and praying and staying off all night and praying and journaling. And about five years later, I stopped taking medication for medic depression. And then uh we left that religious circle, and then in 2004, I had heard about a man in Ohio, his name was John Beckett, who turned to God in desperation. And uh as we were moving, we were trying to decide if we were going to keep our cabinet business. And uh I I told my family that the only way I would consider continuing woodworking is if we entered this experiment to see if you could actually use the Bible in prayer to run a business. So when we we came up here to where we we are now in St. James, we spent a lot of time praying, holding hands, praying. Uh, when we didn't have work, we do Bible studies. Uh my employees would pray with me. And just gradually, a lot of a lot of it we prayed that God would bring us broken people because that's what I was. And a lot of the people that work for us are broken, they came from broken backgrounds, or they're just out of prison, or they just uh they were former drug addicts. So that's a little bit of the history. Um it's a it's a drama-free workplace. And to our surprise, uh, we're apparently doing some things that right where we're pleasing God and and and getting favor in the marketplace because we've had some phenomenal growth.
SPEAKER_01Wow. You were in that place, you were literally doing business in a pig pen when you were away from God. And and for many of our listeners, w their minds would immediately go to the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, how uh he had squandered his father's inheritance and just literally was in a pig pen. And and it it's it's fascinating that you can be you can be in business, you can be a successful business person, but still be in a pig pen. Uh you know, you don't necessarily need to be uh eating slop and and living on the side of the room. I mean you you were homeless uh indeed, but you know, you still had some things going on, um, and just to see where God has brought you is incredible. And and so now in in 2005, that was when you really said, I'm gonna start doing business God's way, and things just skyrocketed from there. What was that, what has that journey been like?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm not sure that it quite skyrocketed, but it was uh it was just really more of an act of desperation because I didn't know where else to turn. And and even in turning to God, I didn't even know if I knew what I was doing in turning to God. Uh God's you turn to God, it it He moves towards you, uh, even if you don't know what you're doing. So we had some up and down years. Uh there were years when we almost lost our company, and um in 2007, we had lost $126,000. And somebody told me if I didn't get $600,000 on the books in 90 days, that I should close. So my wife and I went out on the road. We drove about 5,000 miles around the country trying to get some orders. And in the process, my wife got pneumonia. But during that time, I also uh it was God's, it was a God encounter that I got to meet John Beckett, uh, the man who God had used to inspire me. And I met him, and uh it's you know, it's one thing when you read about somebody, a man of God, and it's another thing when you're in their presence. And just being in his presence and him praying for me, I got a whole new dimension of what it meant to surrender my life and my business to God. So no, it's been it's not been easy, it's been a lot of ups and downs, but it's like I don't think following God makes it easy. Uh, I mean, you you don't escape trials, but it's just like you know where to turn in your desperation and brokenness.
SPEAKER_01Right. But and there came that point where you really did start to see some significant growth, going from 35 to 95 employees, and then from 6.4 million to 11.8 million. And and because you were wanting to honor God with your business, here's a new a new dimension of business where you're deal where you're you're managing this rapid growth and trying to do that in a God-honoring sort of a way. And you turn to the scriptures. What a great place to turn when you're looking for answers, and you found uh several insightful examples for us. Uh, what would be there there are two of them I think we're going to talk about here. What was that example from the Old Testament that really spoke to you?
SPEAKER_02Well, in the Old Testament was in uh in Exodus 18 when um Jethro visited Moses and he saw how worn out Moses was solving the people's problems. And just to set the stage here, uh the Israelites had been in bondage for 400 years. So they didn't even have a clue what freedom looked like. They didn't know what a godly culture looked like. And Moses had been in the wilderness for 40 years, and so God had been teaching Moses what a godly culture looked like. And so Moses, he knew how to solve problems. And so here comes his father-in-law, and he sees however many million people it was that they were that the problems that he was solving, and his father-in-law said, You're gonna wear yourself out. And he said, So, what you need to do is you need to have people to solve the problems on the lowest level you can. So delegate it down to where people can solve their own problems, and if they can't, then they go on a level up to the next level, and and then if they can't, then they go another level up. And then finally, if there's problems that none of them can solve, then they bring it to you, Moses, or to me. And this specifically, I saw it more as problems in in relationships and culture. So we have a drama-free culture here. We tell people there are four D's that will get you fired, drama defects, drugs, and dishonesty. And there are five C's that we rate you by uh character, competence, culture, the ability to take correction and your commitment. And so you have to continually uh nurture that culture. So, what that told me was that I needed to raise up people who understood the culture and train them to shepherd the culture and then have it on as drive it as many layers down as I could. And then if there was a problem that none of them could solve, then they brought it to me. And then if I couldn't solve it, then I would reach out to my mentors or I'd go into the Word of God. So I also have mentors that are over me that I call when I can't when I'm stuck and can't solve a problem.
SPEAKER_01Because whether you're experiencing this rapid growth as you were at this time, or if you are in a in a position where you're you're basically just kind of treading water as a company, either way, it's easy to be in a reactive mode. And one of the first things to start to slide is that culture that you have that in your case, you actually had put in place many businesses, they haven't put in or really they haven't been intentional about defining the culture they went it to be. And so you saw this this uh propensity in the midst of a uh a significant period of growth that if you had to be very deliberate about preserving the culture, and what were some of the other practical ways that you sought to do this in light of this example from Exodus 18?
SPEAKER_02Well, let me back up a little bit and set a little bit more of a tone because in 2013, when I met with uh my leaders, I told them about a few companies that had turned to God in desperation. And I said, What if we entered this experiment and we pursue God as hard as we can, whether or not there's a crisis, not to wait for something for some desperation. So we already were in a hard pursuit of God when we went into this growth climb. And so what what it what it meant to me was, well, first of all, we've developed a language around our culture, like I shared with you the four D's and the five C's, and and we have classes. Uh during that time, I think we uh we we established an orientation that now it's a it's a half day of orientation where we tell people, we teach them the story of our company, I tell them my story, and and that way I because we know that people have a story in their heads when they come to work, and this way they will know what story is going on in our company, and they can decide if they want to be part of that story. And one thing I tell people is that if you want to be part of an organization, whether it's a church or a workplace, find out why the leader is there, find out why the owner's in business. And in a few minutes, once you find out why he's in business or she, then you're gonna know just about everything there is to know about what it's like to work there. So just establishing that, and we we have uh uh we establish like a Matthew 18 type of uh culture where if you have a problem with somebody, uh you have to resolve it within 24 hours privately and respectfully. So uh I teach people that uh that a broken relationship is is just as bad as a broken machine, a stalled relationship. Uh you can actually measure that because uh when people aren't getting along, it it holds up production. And I can't bill my customers for when when we argue. So we have a drama-free culture that they have to resolve things within 24 hours. And if they if they can't, if they have a problem, then they come to one of the managers and we start involving more people. And eventually, once uh if there's somebody who won't be reconciled, then they have to go. And we actually have a uh uh a Christian labor attorney who helps us with that if it gets to that place.
SPEAKER_01And I think that's such a great takeaway from Exodus 18 as well, that there are there is so much conflict. I mean, that that's why uh Moses was there in the first place judging all of these cases. Um but the the key there was to delegate the uh the judiciary responsibilities of handling those conflicts and confrontations at really the lowest level. So to empower the people, make sure they understand that if you have a problem, look, this is between you and that person. Why don't you go and settle it and before elevating it to the next level? And certainly don't let that next level be the CEO founder's office, you know, go to your direct line supervisor and and handle it that way.
SPEAKER_02Right. So if they come to me, which they often do when they're new, I'll just say, I don't want to know what the problem is, just go privately and respectfully and resolve it. And then I'll check back with them uh in a in a day or so and I'll say, How did it go? And and again, I don't want to know what it was, I just want to know that they took care of it. Uh so something else that I faced was when we first started, I was I did a lot of mentoring with the really, really broken people in our company. Uh and and uh what I realized I needed to do is is work more mentoring the people who were uh closer to my level of of dedication and maturity and and delegate down to them to help let them help the others, which really works good because we're uh we're outsiders in this community, and a lot of these people that that work together come from inside, they're all they all know. Each other for years. And if you can imagine, a lot of the people that come here, they just got out of prison, or they've just they've been uh I just came out of drug rehab or they've experienced horrendous things in their family. We know a number of people here who have witnessed murders in their families. And so you can imagine the the level, the amount of PTSD uh that people come with. And so if we don't have a drama-free workplace that where things get resolved right away, it could get pretty horrendous around here.
SPEAKER_01And I can only, I'm just thinking about Moses and and certainly our Supreme Court has a backlog of cases they have to deal with. Can you just imagine if there was only one guy that was handling that? I mean, how long would the and and conflicts certainly don't get better over time uh when you just kind of let them sit there in a stack? But being able to put that drama-free uh culture in place, you're you're now uh eliminating this backlog of of conflicts so that it can get dealt with uh in the fastest way possible.
SPEAKER_02Right. So you create a momentum in the culture, which it took a while to turn around. Uh in 2007, uh we had a lot of drama here, and uh different people told me that's just the way it is. And I wrote an agonizing prayer one day. I just felt like God was telling me that He can't continue to bless our company with that. And I met with people one-on-one, and uh I asked them, what's the problem? And one of them, his father had died tragically, another one his wife had died. And so a lot of them had good reasons, but they were bringing a lot of drama and a lot of poor workmanship. And I said, Look, I'll give you whatever you need. You need a pastor, you need therapy, whatever, I'll help pay for it, but it's got to change. Well, within a few months, we were down. We had uh I just I was obedient to God, and I just believed that I either we had to get rid of all the drama in the culture or close the company. And uh we were down to three people on the shop floor and a million-dollar backlog. And don't ask me how we made it through, but that's one of the best years we've ever had. And so once you start that, I mean, it takes a while to get that culture going and get that culture momentum going. But once it starts, then you have to maintain it. And then when new people come in, they come into an existing momentum. And I can see too with uh with Moses, you know, those people had been slaves for 400 years. They didn't know what a good culture looked like. So I'm sure Moses had something worse on his hands than what I've had to face. Sure.
SPEAKER_01And then as you were as you were diving into what the word says about biblical principles for managing growth in a company, you also found uh at least one great New Testament example of of how to manage this growth. What was that example of?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that was in Acts chapter six. So in Acts 6, uh so here's this the stage here. The church was growing really fast, and there was some discontent. Uh in the early church, this was before the Gentiles came in. So when uh when people that weren't Jewish came in, it was primarily Jewish people in Jewish families, and so you had the Greeks and you have other people from other nations coming in. A lot of them left their families to come in. Whereas a lot of Jews probably did too, but a lot of them probably brought their families with them. So here are these uh these Greek widows, and their their needs weren't being taken care of. They felt discriminated against. So they came to the apostles and and and they they felt pushed out, and and so they called a meeting of all the believers. So here was the situation. The the apostles said, we we have to stay preaching the word and prayer. And and they weren't trying to build like, I'm gonna promote myself, so I'm gonna hire a bunch of people under me. They were more like this organization is growing so fast, and we have, I don't know how they figured it out, but we have 12 men doing 19 jobs. So they said, we need seven more people. We we just created seven more jobs, and so they're doing 19 jobs, and and uh they they said, look out among yourselves. And that was another principle that I I found. It's it's not can we hire somebody from the outside based on their resume uh or their diploma, but look among yourselves for people who already are loyal and bought into the culture. And just like uh many companies like Southwest Airlines and Chick-fil-A, they hire first for character and then they train them for skills. Uh you you hire people who you take people who first have that soul who are bought into the culture. You don't have to be a Christian to work here, but to be advanced in management, you have to be bought into the culture. And so you want people who are who are bought in, and and and then you give them those those other seven jobs. So now we're back to 12, really 19 people doing 19 jobs rather than 12 doing uh 19 jobs, which it I just realize that in a godly organization, it's it should be one person, one job. So uh in a lot of organizations, you have some people that are doing one and a half or two jobs, and and maybe some people are only doing three-fourths of their job. But I think we need to find ways of just monitoring and being aware that every person comes to work and they're doing one job. And if somebody's doing more than one job, we need to help them. And if somebody's doing less than one job, we need to help them. And so it's the ideal, and and you know, we're in motion all the time, so we're not a machine that just reaches perfection, but the ideal is to constantly monitor and make sure it's one person, one job. And that person is in a job where he's he's moving in his strengths. That's something we also emphasize is we need to find out what are your real strengths and what are you good at.
SPEAKER_01You know, I was just as you were saying that, I was thinking about uh many of these job descriptions that are out there where there's always that that item on there about and we'll do all other uh tasks as required by supervisor or something like that. So I just it's kind of that that wild card uh part of the job description. I mean, do you like what do you say to uh to a company leader or any sort of organizational leader uh that that has their, I mean, they need, you know, it's all hands-on deck. Sometimes you don't get to stay in your lane, you know, you need to come over and help out over here. Like how does this one person, one job, uh particularly with um in very early stages of a company, uh, or when there's budget crunches and you know, a couple people just got let go, so now you know, other people have to do twice the work. Um, what what are what is some of the guidance you would have for leaders in those situations?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so it's it's always a target to target that you're shooting for. It's you're never really there. So if you see it as something you're aiming for, uh and it's not one person, one position, it's one person, one job. So, in other words, at the end of the day, the ideal day is that you did one person's worth of work so so that your sleep is sweet at the end of the day. So, another thing is the way they did it was what the other thing that fascinated me was the way they did it was the the the apostles, the leaders weren't taking resumes and taking interviews. They said, look out among yourselves. So another principle that we saw here was we came up with this this idea that there's three ways to be promoted. You can either kiss up and kick down, or you can campaign your way up, or you can serve your way up. And Alan Malale, the the former CEO of Ford, he said he served his way up. He was promoted by his peers. I think it was Alan. Anyways, so we took that concept that there's people, and I tell people when they come, you can kiss up to me all you want. I'm not the one that's going to decide if you get a promotion or a raise. It's it's your peers. And and then there's people we know, plenty of people who come with a great resume and they campaign their way in, but once they're in, they can't do it. So what if you have people where he says he said in Acts to look out among yourselves. And so he asked them to select from among their peers people that they felt like were worthy of being promoted because they had served well. And and so we're going, here is somebody that we would like to see promoted. So there was no jealousy. It wasn't like we're gonna we're gonna promote this person, and other people are jealous. It was actually chosen by those people. And then the next step was they brought them to the leaders, and then the leaders checked them out to make sure that they were a culture fit and that they were fit. And then the final step was they brought them and they laid hands on them and prayed for them. In other words, I think that in front of the entire group they established their role. So let's say that we're looking for an estimator, and uh and we actually did that. We have a man who's a former drug addict who's who's an estimator. We trust him with millions of dollars in our company. But he started out as a laborer on the shop floor, which we do, just about everybody here starts out either as a laborer on the plant floor or as an admin assistant in the office. And so he started at the bottom, and we gradually started seeing his trustworthiness and his character and his talent. And his peers were the ones who wanted to see him come up in the company. And then once we decide that, then we take it before the entire company. And that way everybody can impart that authority and power to him. So we don't just stand up in front of people and say, here is your next whatever, here's your next manager. It's like it's it's a long process where they're chosen from among them. And we that way we get it's a very slow process. I have a belief that you should never do anything that shocks the flock. You shouldn't do something, bring make something happen so sudden that it shocks the people. Uh, that it's all done in a very gentle and respectful way.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. You know, it's Phil, it's so good hearing the scripture, but but then being able to hear the application in a in a real world from a real man of God like yourself and and how what this actually looks like uh you know throughout the week, it I think it's helping a lot of our listeners. I know it's helping me. Acts 6, Exodus 18, there's so much more rich leadership uh teaching there in the Bible, um, particularly about managing rapid growth in a company. Uh Phil, as we wrap it up here, what would be a parting piece of advice you'd like to leave with our leaders today?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think you can take a lot from what I did, but really what the most important thing is when you're uh well, first of all, pursue God as hard as you can. You know, I think if if anything uh from my life I would like people to do is not call Phil Cohen, but say, I can do that too. And and what it is is pursue God as hard as you can, no matter whether there's a crisis or not. And then when you have a problem, turn to God and turn to the Word of God. I mean, you can even Google it and what does the Bible say? And then just start taking notes and get with your team and and start drawing from the scripture and trust the Holy Spirit to lead you.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Well, Phil, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your wisdom and your experience, and may God continue to bless your company and uh the uh what what you've set in place there and what the Lord is doing. We just thank you for your example and uh thanks again for your time today.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Derek.
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