Seven members of the St. Joseph Business Guild network at the inaugural meeting Oct. 22, 2019, before dinner and a presentation by guild chaplain, Father Byron Hagan. Fifty-five members attended the first meeting. COURTESY LISA MATTSON, MATTSON PHOTOGRAPHY
In spring 2020, freelance graphic artist and web designer Emily Abe was looking for work. While searching online for Catholic-related businesses and nonprofits — her specialty area — one of the first search results was for the St. Joseph Business Guild.
“I looked it up, contacted Roger (Vasko), and the rest is history,” she said.
Abe, 26, a parishioner of Holy Family in St. Louis Park, said she has received a few business leads through the guild, and some people have sought her out because she is a Catholic business owner. She values the guild’s professional development, too, and participates in two subgroups: one set up for women, the other for young adults. The guild is for individuals as well as businesses, she noted.
Guild members are business owners, entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, students and other individuals — businessmen and women committed to helping one another flourish professionally and spiritually, said Vasko, who founded the guild in March 2019. The guild’s ultimate goal is helping Catholics provide for their families, he said. It helps the unemployed and underemployed find jobs, people maneuver through career changes, start a business or find help with one, he said.
Roger Vasko
An experienced business owner himself, Vasko bought his father’s rubbish removal business at 28 and, with his younger brother, expanded its client base sevenfold over 18 years. Besides the Twin Cities, Vasko Rubbish Removal added two central Minnesota markets, in St. Cloud and Mora. “Our business in St. Cloud was built from scratch, from the ground up, and we had 10 trucks when we sold,” Vasko said. Annual revenue for the three locations was about $10 million a year, he said.
Now retired, Vasko said as a small business owner, he was involved in day-to-day operations, including sales and marketing, human resources and managing employees. “I’ve had a lot of nuts and bolts experience operating a business,” he said, with businesses of different sizes.
In just over two years, the North St. Paul-based guild has grown from Vasko and three friends to more than 350 members.
And next year, the guild will assume responsibility for The Catholic Spirit’s 20-year project, the Leading with Faith Awards, which recognizes and honor executives, owners and managers — and others who leverage their sphere of influence — in secular businesses and nonprofits in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis who are motivated by their Catholic faith and express that in the workplace.
Vasko credited the guild’s growth to “a thirst for networking among Catholics.”
“That’s kind of what’s driving it,” he said. “People will join just because they want to meet and network and talk to other Catholics.” One person told Vasko he didn’t care if he made any more money; he just wanted to connect with other Catholics, Vasko said.
Vasko, a parishioner of St. Peter in North St. Paul, said connecting the bonds of faith with business is “very powerful.”
“We’re helping people, and what’s happening is that they’re the ones getting us the new members,” he said. Vasko has mailed brochures as a way to generate interest, but, he said, said the guild doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising.
Abe said she attended an April 29 talk by Bishop Andrew Cozzens, “Building on the Firm Foundation of Jesus to Stand Against the Storms of Secularism.” She recalled hearing about the need for Catholic businesses and Catholic values, and not being afraid to and stand up for those values.
As a business owner, Vasko said it was a priority to treat employees the way he would want to be treated. “And we would try to limit overtime to a reasonable amount,” he said, to make sure employees were there for their families.
Vasko, who attended 6:45 a.m. Mass weekdays at a St. Paul church near his office, said the business donated 10% of its profits to charity.
Members access the guild database for networking information and job boards to find work, employees and mentors. Its business directory also advertises guild businesses. Members can participate in networking events, workshops, talks and other in-person and online events.
“It was just a very inspiring, very encouraging talk,” she said.
Dirk Meyer, 29, a parishioner of St. Peter in Mendota, earned a degree in civil engineering in 2015. For a while, he felt called to something different, and in 2016 served as a missionary with Fellowship of Catholic University Students full-time at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, leading Bible studies, meeting with midshipmen for one-on-one peer mentorship and helping lead retreats.
He worked briefly at Woodbury Options for Women, where one of the owners is a guild member. Learning Meyer’s background, the owner recommended he become part of the guild, where another guild member helped Meyer find a job as a delivery driver for Amazon. He later found his current job at TEKTON Engineering in Northfield, through its owner and guild member, Jeremy Baer.
“(The guild) really helped me to find work that fits my skill set and, also, find a company that has really good values and a really good company culture, too,” he said.
The guild’s spiritual offerings are varied, including Mass, eucharistic adoration and Benediction at many quarterly meetings, spiritual resources on its website, virtual Saturday morning prayer via iBreviary and speakers at quarterly dinner meetings, many of whom address spiritual topics. A recent speaker was Joe Masek, executive director of the Cana Family Institute. The nonprofit institute, which began in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 2012, offers programming to build a strong family life.
Meyer has participated in guild spiritual events such as adoration, Mass and a talk at a parish in northeast Minneapolis about “living our holiness in our work.” In addition to the networking being “super helpful,” he values the community aspect of the guild in “striving to be saints in our daily lives.”
“That’s very apparent,” Meyer said. “And it’s really inspiring to be a part of a group that’s striving after that.”
He also values guild members’ generosity with their time and job leads.
“I would say the guild is much more than just a network and a directory,” Abe said, “even though that in of itself is a powerful thing.” Overall, “it’s a community,” she said.
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