In this episode of The Sharpen Podcast, host Steve Van Diest sits down with Steve Donnigan, founder of A65 Consulting and a fellow member of the Acumen community, to talk about the eight-year journey of building a boutique contract engineering firm that helps medical device companies bring life-changing products to market. Together, they look back on the calculated leap out of a stable engineering job, the brutal test of losing major clients and income during 2020, and the slow, ongoing work of learning to trust God and trust a team rather than trying to do everything alone.
The conversation moves through the real tension points of growth — becoming the bottleneck as a solo contributor, building culture with a fully remote, contract-based engineering team, and raising kids who watched both the highs and the hard years up close. Steve gets candid about what trust actually looks like at four o'clock on a hard Thursday, not just when business is easy, and shares how a book on relaxing into God's sovereignty, a coaching relationship through Acumen, and a weekly accountability group keep him grounded as he looks toward the next chapter of growth.
