From Doubt to Destiny: How Rich Wenzl Built a Business on Faith, Grit, and Trusting God with the Rest

There's a moment many entrepreneurs know all too well — standing in an office, holding a stack of papers, completely fed up, and thinking: That's it. I'm done.

For Rich Wenzl, Founder of Wenzl and Company, Chairman and President of the Institute of Christopher Leaders, founder Divine Mercy 33, that moment wasn't a breakdown. It was a breakthrough — the culmination of years of dreaming, doubting, and finally deciding to act.

But before we get to the business, we have to understand the man. And to understand Rich Wenzl, you have to go back to a small Nebraska town, the type where everyone knows one another (and their business), a young boy reenacting Mass with his sisters in the living room, and a father who gave his children something more durable than money.

A Faith Inherited, Then Almost Lost

Rich grew up deeply embedded in Catholic life. His uncle was a priest. He served at Mass regularly. On Sunday afternoons, the local parish priest would pull him along to festivals, bazaars, and neighboring churches — an informal apprenticeship in community and service that quietly shaped his character.

But life has a way of slowly loosening what we once held tightly. As Rich moved cities for work, climbed the ladder in retail, and built a career, Sunday mornings stopped finding him in a pew. "I can tell you honestly, I don't even know where the Catholic churches are," he reflects about those years. "I never sought them out."

It wasn't a dramatic falling away — it was a gradual drift. The kind that happens when ambition fills the spaces that faith once occupied. He still carried the tradition; he just stopped drawing from the well.

It was marriage, then fatherhood, that began pulling him back. When his first son arrived, something stirred. Rich started driving to the cathedral on Sunday mornings with his boy beside him — not because it was convenient, but because something in him knew it mattered. Slowly, the family came along. And along the way, Rich encountered people through Christopher Leaders who helped him reconnect not just with the practice of faith, but with the power of it.

"My father says to me, 'I didn't give my kids a lot, but I gave them all their high school education and, if they chose to have it, their faith.' And I'm thinking, 'Yeah, well, so what?' But as I've gone through life now, I have learned what my father's words were — so real. The gift I've been given is not only my faith, but truly to understand my faith and my world, and what a difference it has made."

The Decision That Changed Everything

Rich spent years feeling like he was outgrowing every room he walked into. He was consistently pushing harder than those above him, thinking bigger, chasing something just beyond the edge of his job description. He knew he needed to build something of his own — he just kept talking about it instead of doing it.

His friend finally had enough. "I am so tired of hearing you say this," the friend told him. "If you aren't going to do something about it, don't tell me about it anymore. You're either going to run that business or you're not."

That bluntness landed. And when Rich finally reached his own tipping point — papers in hand, completely done — he walked away from his corporate role with something unexpected: wise counsel. An attorney whose office faced Rich's across the river leaned back in his tall chair and said simply, "You see that bridge? Don't burn it." The advice wasn't about caution — it was about integrity. Leave well. Do it right. Trust the timing.

That attorney went on to represent Rich's company, Wenzl Company, for its first 25 years.

And in a twist few could have scripted, the very organization Rich was leaving asked him to stay on — not as an employee, but as a partner of sorts. He transitioned 80% of his energy into their work while quietly building his own business with the remaining 20%. Then 25. Then 30. Then 40. The bridge he didn't burn became a runway.

Three Models, One Lesson: Don't Stop Adapting

Building Wenzl & Company wasn't a straight line to success. It was three business models, years of hard pivots, and more than a few moments of reckoning.

The first model failed completely. The second worked — until it didn't. Running eight or nine people out of the downstairs of his home, Rich would look at the bottom line at year's end and think: We did all this for this?

He dressed for business every single day regardless — necktie on, professional bearing intact, because he believed the posture of professionalism had to come before anyone else believed in what he was building. "I've got to be professional with the people I'm bringing in. I've got to give them the best that they can have."

The third model finally worked — one built around creativity, distinctive branding displays that spoke the brand's language, and a product Rich's team could originate rather than simply replicate. He had found his uniqueness. And God, Rich says, put the right people in his path at the right moments to help him build it.

When Business Demands and Faith Collide

The cleaner version of the faith-and-business story goes like this: believe, work hard, and God rewards. But Rich's story is more honest than that. There were moments when the pressure was crushing — including a major early client dispute over a large order that went sideways, costing Rich not just the relationship but significant money.

He had to hire legal help. He had to face the real possibility that this might unravel. And in that pressure, he did the only thing left to do: he prayed. Deeply. Surrendering what he could no longer control.

"The day that I came back to the office after one of those moments of being deep in prayer — I was being taught, let it go. And it was like that day or the following day, there were orders that came in from unexpected places that I had absolutely no clue how that was going to come about. That was not me. That was not me at all."

That's the rhythm Rich came to know: press hard, do your best, and when you hit the wall, let faith carry what you cannot. Not passivity — faithfulness. There's a real difference.

We have Silent Partners

Rich reminds us that everyone sees how we carry ourselves. We have partners we didn't invite or sign up for. For example, we are all partners with the government. Rich stresses honesty and accuracy. Pay the government correctly, not overpaying or underpaying. Rich has been audited several times over the years, as Wenzl and Company and Christopher Leaders (501c). We all know there is abuse of non profit status so we need to be accurate and clear. Rich approaches these encounters both seriously and with humor. Four agents arrived at his door from the IRS. Rich misheard the one as she mumbled revenue he heard "reverence. He addressed her as "Your Reverence". She corrected - we are not a religious order but a government agency. The point, treat all with respect. :)

The Word Rich Leaves With Every Leader

Ask Rich Wenzl what he'd say to a leader struggling to align faith with the chaos of running a business, and he doesn't soften it with platitudes. He leans in.

"If you feel you're being called to operate a business — to do something that is beyond even yourself at this point in time — draw the confidence from your faith, but do it. Get on with doing it. Don't be so caught up in your initial plan that if it doesn't work, you quit. Start it at whatever level that is, and reevaluate it as you go along. The best evaluator is how did the year end up? Did you earn a profit? Did you accomplish what you set out to do? If not, change it up. Keep changing it up. And trust. Trust, trust, trust."

Rich Wenzl's life isn't a story of someone who had it all figured out from the beginning. It's the story of a boy who loved his faith, a man who drifted from it, and a leader who discovered — through failure, through crisis, through the quiet discipline of getting dressed for work in his own home — that faith and business aren't competing priorities. They are, at their best, the same conversation.

His father gave him faith as an inheritance. Rich spent a lifetime learning what to do with it. The answer, it turns out, is everything.