(If you’re a Guild member, I kindly ask you to watch back this town hall meeting. It’s an hour, but it’s critical to understand WHY we are here — why Catholic Founders exists at all. We share that plus updates about the Guild).

On May 1st, 2024 (the feast of St. Joseph the Worker), Catholic Founders launched with a simple question: What would Jesus do if He were a CEO? We started with 6 friends and have grown to roughly 270 members.

Here is where we are, why we exist, and where we’re going.

Our 3 Pillars & Ultimate Objective

Some people have asked us what really is Catholic Founders. It can feel hard to explain because we are doing a lot of things, but after praying and thinking about it, we’ve narrowed it down so you can understand.

We have three key pillars in how we serve Catholic entrepreneurs. Those three pillars serve to hold up the roof of our key goals as an organization: To Transform Culture and Make it Catholic (starting with America).

The easiest way to remember our framework is with the acronym SECT: Start, Educate, Convene, Transform.

1. Start (and Grow)

• Beginners Welcome: There are many peer networks for people who have already made it — we are for those too, but we are also open to beginners.

• Embrace Holy Ambition: Desire to build comes from God. Don’t be pusillanimous (small minded). If God is calling you, take the leap.

• Preferred Economy: Buy from each other first. Nationally, and locally when you can.

• Peer Investment: Invest in each other to grow, support each other, and without relying on predatory capital.

• HOW: This objective is served by the mentorship one can get from others in the WhatsApp community, and in part by the tips and advice we share. In the future, we will have a proper curriculum for beginners.

2. Educate

• Theology of Entrepreneurship: Through discovering the stories of people who have actually lived out their faith in their businesses, we can learn from them, formalize the frameworks, and share them with you. When we learn together and share, we can skip decades of struggle and help others start on the right foot from day one.

• Tangible Action: It’s our goal to offer practical advice on how to integrate your faith into your business. Encyclicals are great, but not everyone can translate those into their business.

• HOW: This is done through the weekly podcast, newsletter, group chat, local events, and online guild calls. It’s not just us educating you, it’s us educating each other as we grapple with these challenges.

3. Convene (to Create Unity)

• Protection Against Temptation: In isolation, the devil can control us through fear. True friends can tap us on the shoulder if we’re headed in the wrong direction. With great financial success comes great temptation. It’s critical to have true friends whose key objective is heaven to hold each other accountable.

• Your Tribe of Likeminded Builders: Sometimes we feel judged by fellow Catholics for ‘being too ambitious’ or being ‘greedy’ because we think and talk about building our businesses. If we can’t find community with our fellow Catholics, we’ll often end up finding it with secular entrepreneurs. Those people don’t have heaven as their ultimate goal. And as we all know, we become like the 5 people we spend the most time with.

• Heaven on Earth: Entrepreneurs are stewards of God’s gifts. True community (communion) brings a foretaste of heaven to earth. We are unified to God through the Eucharist, and to each other.

• Local Safety Nets: With a strong network of Catholic builders, we can take bigger swings because we know someone has our back. In tough seasons of business, they have our back.

• HOW: This is primarily served through our local communities. The online community is helpful, but true friendship comes from spending time, in person, 1:1.

The Culminating Objective: Transform the Culture

Once you have a business — and likely some disposable income — you start to gain prestige.

If you know WHY you were given the gift of entrepreneurship through understanding the Theology of entrepreneurship — you now know how you’re called to put those gifts to use.

Finally, if you have your tribe of people who are also in pursuit of heaven, who are also builders — you have community to do things with. And you’re all in pursuit of the same goal.

You’re all called to get to heaven. For you, that path is via a life of multiplying the talents God gave you for the benefit of his kingdom.

Now that you have these things, prestige, knowledge, and communion — you can go out and transform the culture. You can make America Catholic by:

• Funding beautiful art and public statements of faith (e.g., Sacred Heart billboards, Rosary processions).

• Hosting wholesome cultural events (ballroom dancing, orchestras, potlucks).

• Standing up against anti-family policies and make religious holidays central to business culture.

• Paying a family wage and live in close-knit proximity to one another.

And many many other ways.

In addition to sharing WHY we exist, in this call we also shared some key changes for the guild.

Key Changes & Next Steps for the Guild

1. 3 Core Commitments: Going forward we ask every member to:

   • Pray for the Guild daily (at least a Hail Mary. Ideally a decade of the Rosary).

   • Be helpful (mentoring, switching to Catholic suppliers).

   • Help us grow (connect Catholic founders to Oscar).

2. Monthly Office Hours: We’re rolling out several recurring office hours with experts across various fields. AI, sales, marketing, paid ads, hiring, etc.

3. Cohort Onboarding: Group onboarding calls every 1–2 weeks so new members join alongside a peer cohort (will help save Oscar from onboarding every person 1:1).

4. Introducing the Steward Tier for $500/yr: When you support us with this tier, you can request to be added to a curated mastermind of peers in a similar stage and type of business. This will be a group of 5-8 other founders who meet bi-weekly or monthly (upgrade here). This will help us pay Oscar a proper wage and allow us to grow the project further.

5. Upgraded Directory: We’re moving away from our fancy spreadsheet to a real directory (coming soon).

6. WhatsApp Structure: Please stick to designated channels to keep discussion organized.

7. Announcing Our Official Patrons:

   • Our Lady, Queen of Heaven and Earth

   • St. Homobonus (Patron of Entrepreneurs) — Novena runs Nov 4–12.

I saved the best for last. We officially have two primary patrons for the Guild:

Our Lady, Queen of Heaven and Earth. We exist to transform culture, and that title of hers has stuck with me. I can’t get it out of my head.

St. Homobonus, patron of entrepreneurs. We kind of need him. His name literally means “good man.” We don’t know much about his life, and I think that’s the point. Like St. Joseph, he wasn’t glamorous. He was a good man who did good things, and all of us can imitate that.

Pray with us: the Novena to St. Homobonus starts Wednesday, November 4, and ends November 12, the eve of his feast on November 13. Join us in praying for the whole Guild.

Let’s keep building God’s kingdom side by side.

Our Lady, Queen of Heaven and Earth, pray for us.

St. Homobonus, pray for us.

Silas

End of the Road for Free Subscribers

Alright, the rest of this session is exclusively for CF Guild members. If you’d like to join future calls, consider upgrading to a paid membership today.

Subscribe now

The Catholic Founders Guild is an association of Catholic Biz owners who believe that their business is meant to be an extension of God’s will in the world.

If you share this belief, join today! (PS: It’s only $100 a year or $10 a month, so anyone can afford to join)

Read more

I have a feeling some people are going to disagree with today’s take, but I’m fairly certain that this is the correct take on the discussion of AI and whether or not to lay off your employees in instances where you could.

Welcome back to Saintly CEO: the Tuesday morning newsletter for business owners whose first objective is to become a saint.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

• News, Updates, & Upcoming Events

• Feature Content: Catholics Don’t Do Layoffs Because of AI; We Up-skill

• Heavenly Hustlers

[read time: ~10 min | word count 2, 141]

Events:

• Tonight at 6 pm CT we have our first Town Hall. We’ll be sharing some exciting updates and recapping why we exist. This is for Guild members only so if you’re one, check your calendar for the invite (it’s there). If you don’t have it, message Oscar or Karen via admin@catholicfounders.com.

• Support us by copping some merch today. Get them here. 👕

• If you like beautiful buildings, check out last week’s podcast with Erik Bootsma.

• There are local meetups happening in Monterrey, MX (tonight), Charlotte, NC & D.C. (Thursday), Columbus, OH (Sunday), and more coming soon in Nash, Dallas, and Wisconsin. Subscribe to our Luma calendar today.

• Want to host a CF meetup? Let us know and we’ll help you organize it.

Catholics Don’t Do Layoffs Because of AI; We Up-skill

I have recently become AI-pilled. In last week’s issue I mentioned how Hark.com has been a game changer for us both at Catholic Founders and for my recruiting business.

AI Skeptic

In the past I’ve dabbled with some AI tools but never found them particularly useful except for things like taking my client’s job description and turning it into a Roosevelt Talent version of the same JD with our extra information on it. I also used it frequently as a search tool.

But other than that I wasn’t really impressed.

Tools like Lindy and N8N were too hard for me to understand or to get to work reliably.

Then I heard about Instinct and Muse on a podcast. People were saying it was incredible. So, I tried Muse given they cited the fact that Meta had less lag time because they had more compute.

With my first use, I was able to triage emails while holding my baby on a flight. So, it was useful, but not groundbreaking.

A few days later I heard that Hark dropped. A few weeks prior I heard Brett Adcock, the founder, on the My First Million pod speaking about how this thing blew his mind (he built it to serve his use cases). Given I’m a fan of his way of thinking I decided to try it.

Bam.

It felt like I was teleported into the future.

Hark started off by making suggestions on how it could help me. Unsubscribing from hundreds of marketing emails. Managing my calendar better.

It was nice. Felt cool, but then I realized it can actually go around and click things for me as if it were a human.

It really hit me how powerful it was when I asked it to research and create an event for my DC Catholic Founders meetup. I needed the mass time, and a place close by for breakfast. It did that, checked if they accepted OpenTable reservations (they did not). Then it drafted the copy for the Luma event page. I made a few adjustments and it was pretty much ready. I didn’t have an image yet, but I could have Karen do that.

Wait… maybe Hark could do it I thought. So I asked it to make an image. It was not on brand. I said, go find all the other events and make this one match that style. Boom. It was good.

Then I had it go through our database AND my LinkedIn connections and find all the Catholic Founders in DC for me to invite. It drafted emails according to my usual style to almost all of them (in some cases, after finding their emails from Apollo). I then made edits and sent out those invites.

This all took me maybe 45 min. It would have usually taken me 2 ish hours not including the lag time for Karen to make the graphic (time difference).

All this is to say, I was not the most gung-ho on AI. Now I am because I see how much time I can save.

To Replace an Employee or Not?

Fast forward to about a week after I started using Hark, I realized two of my subcontractors could be 100% replaced with Hark if I set it up to run the same tasks on a time I preset or a trigger that I pull.

But I chose not to.

It’s not the right thing. They only work very part time, but they need the work, that’s why they are working for me.

So, instead of replacing them, I am having them scale up their abilities and learn how to use AI to replace their own jobs. And then I’ve instructed them to start thinking out of the box on how they can use Hark to help them do more and help the rest of the team do more.

It will take time to train them up to start taking more agency, but this is exactly the point.

Elevated Work

Most of the tasks these two admin were doing, were wrote, repetitive tasks that I needed done and didn’t want to be doing myself. They were not tasks that required much mental bandwidth other than basic attention to detail to do it well each time.

Now, the key challenge at this junction for me was to decide, am I willing to not be lazy, and put in the time to train them up to do something even better and more valuable for the company?

There are totally other things they can do that are more valuable. I don’t have to look far. The only barrier is my willingness to take this leap. Yes, teaching them some new things to focus on requires a bit of my time, but… it’s good for them.

No longer will it cut it for them to just be doing something an automation an do. They are now required to level up. To push themselves to think more critically about how they can be helpful.

In this process I’ve noticed that when people are treated for so long just like task masters, especially at a such a menial level, their senses begin to dull. This work doesn’t light them up. How could you get excited about typing some things into a spreadsheet or entering details into a database?

Now, the key role I have is to wake them from their stupor and get them thinking critically. Recently Scott Williams from SockReligious came on the pod and shared something similar. He said their blue collar employees who are punching a clock had a very wrote mentality to how they operated. After all, they had been treated like numbers or robots for so long, they stopped thinking critically. But through pushing them and elevating them, they all start getting far more creative about their work.

It’s like starting up an old lawn mower that’s been sitting around for a year or two. It might run a little at first. But to get it to run properly you need to empty out the old gas. Maybe get a new spark plug, and get it kicking. Full power!

It’s not rocket science. It just requires a little bit of effort.

This is where you find yourself.

You can transform the lives of those people working for you. You can be the one to believe in them and mentor them into a higher plane of existence. But will you?

Remember, there are also upsides for you. When you do this, they becoming increasingly valuable to your team because they can do something even more productive. If they have been working with you for some time, you have the added benefit that they have context on how your company operates making it even easier for them to figure out how they can serve.

In the end, you’re also raising their value on the overall talent market. What an amazing thing.

Eventually they may create so much value for you that you can give them a nice raise. Or, if you’re unable they will be able to get a higher paying role at another company, thus allowing them to better provide for their family.

You may also just earn some real loyalty.

But beyond all this, you’ll be doing the right thing in the eyes of Heaven. These are humans deserving of dignity — children of God. They have bills to pay and families to feed.

You’re At a Crossroads

Before my closing remarks, let’s consider some words from Magnifica Humanitas.

“A society that guarantees employment to only a small fraction of the population, despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to forced inactivity, a lack of responsibility and the absence of daily tasks and stimuli, resulting in human and cultural impoverishment. This creates a paradox of material progress and anthropological regression that undermines the foundations of a just and stable social peace. For this reason, the Church’s Social Doctrine insists that access to work for all must be a high priority for public policies and economic processes, serving as a criterion for evaluating the human quality of any development model. [155]“

Here you are. Standing at a fork in the road.

Which way will you go?

You claim to be Catholic. You claim to do the right thing.

Here — in this moment, the choice is clear.

You can elevate an employee, helping them better themselves and their family.

Or you can hurt them in order to increase your profitability margins a small percentage.

Which way? Which way?

God Bless & Happy Building

~Silas Mähner

Heavenly Hustlers

These are other Catholic business owners. Nominate one (including yourself).

• 🤖 Luca Ambroz is building Exona Lab. Pricing and underwriting software that helps insurers insure AI risk. London, England.

• 🛰️ Danielle Nicholson is building Mira Intel. Drone-based monitoring and predictive analytics for ports, coastal and offshore infrastructure. New York, New York.

• ⚖️ Noel Bagwell is building Counsel & Clarity. Fractional legal counsel and resilience coaching for founders and leaders recovering from setbacks. Nashville, Tennessee.

• 💻 Michael Marinaccio is building Magnitude Consulting. Strategy, design and technology for causes and campaigns, alongside leading the Center for Responsible Technology. Washington, D.C.

• ✝️ JT Parker is building Five Loaves Ministries. A Catholic missionary apostolate that sends missionaries into parishes to form young people and families as disciples. Long Island, New York.

• ⚡ Cary Register is building R(2) Squared Electric. Commercial electrical contracting and backup generator installs for businesses across DFW. Dallas, Texas.

• 🌸 Rebecca Salamone is building Ambition Aligned, a community for ambitious Christian and Catholic women. Boston, Massachusetts

• 💧 Sydney Bui is building Kembali Water, a naturally sourced mountain water to local hospitality venues while eliminating single-use plastic waste, with plans to expand across Southeast Asia. Bali, Indonesia.

🙋‍♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.

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News / Updates:

• Join us for the CF Guild Town Hall! Tuesday, October 27 at 6PM Central Time. Join us for some fun updates and a ‘reintroduction’ to Catholic Founders.

• New in the Guild: a dedicated channel for real estate professionals (people funding, building, advising, designing). Erik (today’s guest) is in there too.

• In-person meetups, open to all Catholic business owners. Don’t miss out! https://luma.com/catholicfounders

In Today’s Issue:

• Intro to the Guest and Topic

• Core Takeaway

• Episode References

• Select Quotes

• Key Moments

First time here? Learn more about our mission. And don’t forget to subscribe.

Today’s Topic & Guest:

Erik Bootsma | Erik Bootsma Architect

Most modern buildings are ugly. And no, it’s not an accident. Modernist ideology has totally infected the elite architecture class. They’re taught to reject everything from the past. Pair that with modern spreadsheet brain — you’re only going to get buildings that last 10, 20, or 30 years.

In the past, not only did our buildings actually look beautiful, but we built them with real materials that would also last. In part, this is because architects used to hold the line and ensure that quality materials were used and because they understood the importance of beautiful buildings that uplift the humans inhabiting and using them.

Without architects holding that line, the PE-guys in vests have taken over and all that matters is ROI. Even in the instances where the buyer is not a spreadsheet brained monkey. If the architect guides the builder, you can steer things in the right direction. Where beauty is present, and it will stand the test of time.

Our guest today, Erik Bootsma, is one of the few architects people call when they want to build something beautiful and built to last. His firm in Richmond, Virginia focuses on Catholic church architecture: new churches, liturgical renovations, monasteries, and recently did work at Benedictine College. For 15+ years he's also been designing Catholic villages, neighborhoods built with the church at the center (if you want to fund this happening, he’s interested in speaking).

As always we covered a wide range of topics, but all things real estate, beauty, faith, how we as business owners can promote beautiful buildings and more.

Let us know your biggest takeaway or favorite moment when you’re done watching.

Core Lesson:

We must relearn how to think generationally.

If we think in modern terms, it becomes impossible to justify spending what we ought on beautiful buildings. If we think generationally, spending a lot on a building so it's built well, and doesn't need to be torn down in 30 years, makes tons of sense.

As Catholics, we must think generationally. It's a manifestation of the virtue of hope in our life.

In the modern mind, everything is fleeting because there is no eternity. It's just this life, so why bother building things that last? That’s why what we build does look like garbage. We don’t expect it to last - we don’t care!!!

As Catholics we should be appalled at this thought. We KNOW there is an eternity, and how we live in this life determines whether we get to participate in that eternity in joy or in suffering and to what extent on each front..

Do NOT give in to the modern fallacy that all things are fleeting. Do the right thing. Build the building well. Do hard things that benefit the next generation. Think generationally.

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

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PS: If you’re interested in building generationally, join the CF Guild — you’ll be in good company! Sign up here

Key Episode References:

• Winston Churchill, "We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us" (House of Commons, 1943)

• St. Charles Borromeo, Instructiones Fabricae et Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae (1577)

• The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30)

• St. Kateri Rosary Walk, Gallup, NM

• Leaving a Legacy: Inheritance, Charity, & Thousand-Year Families

• Ferenc Hörcher, philosophy of European cities (urbs vs. civitas)

Select Quotes:

• "We can't think in ten year, twenty year, thirty year return on investment time like we do at a house." — Erik Bootsma

• "A real community is one that lives and breathes all day, every day." — Erik Bootsma

• "Are you giving them a gift or are you giving them a burden?" — Erik Bootsma

• "You're either gonna spend the money now or you're gonna ask your children and your grandchildren to spend the money." — Erik Bootsma

• "I have never met a priest younger than me who doesn't want to build beautiful stuff and beautiful permanent stuff." — Erik Bootsma

• "You set up a neighborhood around a church and that's how you did it... Even within a larger city, it was a village." — Erik Bootsma

Key Moments: (outline)

• 02:20 – Architects as “executives” rather than just “creatives”

• 03:55 – Discussion on architecture and why so many ugly modern buildings were built

• 07:40 – The true function and purpose of churches

• 11:11 – What constitutes a real, living community

• 11:20 – The concept and vision of Catholic villages

• 13:55 – Favorite project: The Rosary Walk in Gallup, New Mexico

• 16:20 – The spiritual aspect of volunteer labor and building

• 19:30 – Taking on projects that cannot be completed in a single lifetime

• 20:44 – Winston Churchill’s quote: “We shape our buildings and then they shape us”

• 27:24 – How the Church and modern society have fallen into “spreadsheet brain”

• 28:48 – Moving past 10–30 year ROI to embrace true generational thinking

• 30:40 – Building as a gift versus saddling future generations with a burden

• 33:17 – Working with clergy and the mindset shift in younger priests

• 43:17 – Using traditional building materials

• 54:01 – Advice for business owners on long-term community building and investments

• 56:50 – Closing and Rapid Fire

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Today, we are dusting off an old post (with some edits) asking the question, is your desire for efficiency and process killing your customer experience?

Welcome back to Saintly CEO: the Tuesday morning newsletter for business owners whose first objective is to become a saint.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

• News/Updates/Events

• Feature Content: Are SOPs Killing Your Customer Experience?

• Heavenly Hustlers

• Highlights

[read time: ~7 min | word count 1, 548]

Events:

• Guild members: our first-ever Town Hall is next Tuesday, Oct 27, at 6 PM CT. Guild updates, open Q&A, and intros. Bring your wins and your questions. You can also catch the recap of our Oct 13 call on building community across family, parish, and business

• Last week’s pod with Garren DiPasquale: he’s taking on Replit by building human-centered technology.

• Over the weekend, I hosted a CF Breakfast in DC. Check out the next DC event on the 29th. Dallas also has one on the books. Check out all of our upcoming in-person events on our Luma page.

Are Standard Operating Procedures Killing Your Customer Experience?

We’ve all experienced a rigid ‘rule’ that spits in the face of a perfectly human ask. Maybe it’s the restaurant rule allowing only one check only for parties over eight, leaving someone holding the bag (and playing Venmo banker for a week).

Or perhaps it’s being told “no tickets sold after X time,” despite empty seats staring you in the face. These aren’t malicious rules; they’re born from a desire for efficiency.

The restaurant wants to avoid splitting checks chaos; the ticket seller has a system. I get it. Streamlining is the name of the game.

Strict Systems = Short-Sighted

When systems are rigid, they negatively impact the human experience.

That restaurant policy, designed to make the waiter’s life easier, breeds frustration and resentment among your customers. That “no ticket sales after” rule, intended to create order, turns away a paying customer for an arbitrary reason.

It’s a short-sighted victory for process, but a loss in the long run.

Nowadays, the relentless pursuit of operational efficiency is praised. After all, it’s what those private equity guys do.

Shaving seconds here, pinching pennies there—anything to increase that ROI by a few points.

But at what cost?

Sure, short-term profits might be up. But what is the long-term impact on your customers?

Maybe you can justify a few lost customers per year for greater short-term returns overall. If you’re lucky, maybe they don’t even spread the word about poor customer treatment.

Everything appears good on the surface.

Empowered Employees

What is the inverse of this?

Some companies have standard operating procedures, but also understand that rigid rule following doesn’t empower their employees. Sometimes, breaking the rules is the best way to serve your customer.

Imagine a scenario where a staff member says, “You know, usually we can’t do this, but let me see what I can do for you.” This is good customer service — but more than that, it turns the experience into a memorable moment between the business and the customer.

The person on the other side feels seen, understood, and valued. Think about the word-of-mouth marketing that kind of interaction generates. And what was the real cost? Likely not much.

But these little things actually have a great impact because customers who are well-taken care of become your biggest fans.

Building a Culture of Customer Love

When you’re building a family-owned business — focused on longevity and generational success — those genuine customer connections are the compounding interest you truly want to see. If you commit to them, they will commit to you. And that relationship will get stronger every time it goes around. All you have to do is maintain that commitment.

Think how powerful that advantage is compared to a private equity-backed competitor laser-focused on a 3-5 year exit strategy.

They play a game of years. You play a game of generations.

Who do you think is going to win?

This approach isn’t just good for customers; it’s good for your employees too. No longer are they cogs in a machine, robotically following protocols. They learn to think critically, take ownership of situations, and to find creative solutions.

Imagine a crisis situation — which team will perform better? The one that has been beaten into following the rules. Or the one who has been empowered to make decisions on the go?

Love Your Customer: Christian Charity

Ultimately, it all boils down to loving your customer. As Tim Connors said on the podcast in the past, the companies with the highest Net Promoter Scores (NPS) are the ones that love their customers the most.

That sounds a lot like the core idea of Christianity… Charity. Desiring the good of your brother.

Of course, empowering employees to bend the rules isn’t without its challenges. It requires trust, a different kind of training, and a commitment to clear communication about when and how to make those judgment calls.

But don’t forget.

As they learn, they will become more valuable to you and to the world. Perhaps it prepares them for an elevated role. Either way, it’s also loving your employees to help them level up. And you have even more responsibility to your employees than to your customers.

The reward for all this is fiercely loyal customers and engaged employees.

You Choose

You have a choice in front of you. Will you build your company on the foundation of rigid rules aimed at maximizing short-term profits, or will you cultivate a customer-centered culture of trust and service that builds something meant to last the test of time?

God Bless & Happy Building

~Silas Mähner

Heavenly Hustlers

These are other Catholic business owners. Nominate one (including yourself).

• 🎙️ Reagan Stock and Hudson Bonetti are building Better Apps. A software studio behind DebateTV, where AI trained on Thomistic principles judges three-minute debates. Washington, D.C.

• ☀️ Dan Misleh is building Catholic Energies. Helps dioceses, parishes, and schools cut energy costs through efficiency audits, solar, and storage. Washington, D.C.

• 🥔 Matthew Mach is building Fat Thins. Potato chips cooked in 100% beef tallow, with no seed oils. Minneapolis, Minnesota.

• ✝️ Michael Gentile is building The Apostles Fund. Venture philanthropy that brings investor discipline to scaling Catholic evangelization apostolates. Montreal, Quebec.

• 📡 Larry Dunleavy is building Modelithics. RF and microwave simulation models and lab services used by circuit designers in 30 countries. Tampa, Florida.

• 🛍️ Andrew Burow is building Aisles. An app that shows shoppers real-time inventory at nearby local stores. South Bend, Indiana.

• 🌿 Emmalee Banks is building a homeopathy practice offering web consultations worldwide, plus classes and marriage and relationship programs. Quebec, Canada.

🙋‍♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.

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Highlights: Family Business Consortium

This past weekend I attended the Family Business Consortium hosted at CUA. And I highly recommend any of you building family businesses attend their next gathering in April. It was a really impressive group of people, and we had a lot of hard to face conversations about succession planning etc.

Keep an eye out for it here.

Modern life has made it easy to live next to people without ever living with them.

We drive to church, drive to work, drive to events, and keep up with friends through group chats.

Suburbia promises independence, but for most Catholic families it delivers isolation. Faith, family, and business were never meant to be lived alone.

So… we put together this special guild topic session. One of our members, Mike Senglaub, joined by researcher and lecturer Joel Vaughn Peddle, started off this call with a presentation.

Mike covered what it would take to rebuild real Catholic community: villages, parish life, guilds, and the parallel (preference) economy that holds them together.

After that we discussed the ways that we have been building community in our own ways locally. Everything from taking over KofC councils to hosting regular potlucks.

End of the Road for Free Subscribers

Alright, the rest of this session is exclusively for CF Guild members. If you’d like to join future calls, consider upgrading to a paid membership today.

Subscribe now

The Catholic Founders Guild is an association of Catholic Biz owners who believe that their business is meant to be an extension of God’s will in the world.

If you share this belief, join today! (PS: It’s only $100 a year or $10 a month, so anyone can afford to join)

Read more

News / Updates:

• Guild Hitting New Heights: We're rapidly scaling past 250+ mission-driven builders. What are you waiting for? Join today so we can build The Kingdom together!

• We have meetups in Dallas and DC this coming Saturday. Open to all Catholic business owners. Register here.

• Reminder for all Guild Members, we will have a Town Hall this coming October 27 at 6PM CT - we hope to see you there to share some updates!

In Today’s Issue:

• Intro to the Guest and Topic

• Core Takeaway

• Episode References

• Select Quotes

• Key Moments

First time here? Learn more about our mission. And don’t forget to subscribe.

Today’s Topic & Guest:

Garren DiPasquale | Artifact

The majority of technology tools we use today, end up forcing us as humans, to conform to them. Why? Why can’t technology form to meet human needs and way of life.

Instead of being forced to learn a new language through coding, what if we could just use our english language, to write websites, and the tech could use that writing as the source ‘code’ — rather than actual code?

This is the idea that Garren is pursuing, and there are some important lessons to consider in there. Check it out.

Thank you Bonaventure Bookkeeping for becoming a sponsor of Catholic Founders - you help us keep Oscar paid… literally.

Now y’all, go sign up with Aaron (Guild member) to make sure he keeps sponsoring this thing 🤣. Thanks y’all!

Core Lesson:

Software should extend human agency and creativity.

Building meaningful tech comes down to a simple choice: you either craft tools that help people accomplish real work and return to their lives, or you build engagement traps that consume their attention. Properly ordered innovation understands human nature, and helps enhance it in some way. This way, people can focus on what actually matters.

I’m in the process of learning how to use hark.com, an AI agent, and it’s showing me that this idea is possible. Now, instead of being crushed with anxiety at all the things I need to do, as soon as I think of an admin task I needed done, I just have hark take care of it. Now the distance between thought and action is much less.

There are many such technologies like this that have not yet been built, we as Catholics ought to be building them. So get out there and do it!

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

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Key Episode References:

• Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical

• Dieter Rams’s Ten Principles of Good Design

• Donald Knuth & Literate Programming

• Daniel Jackson

Select Quotes:

• Our mission really is centered around this question of what happens when you can code in English.” — Garren DiPasquale

• “Never expose your organizational silos... because that’s what you end up seeing in a lot of software is you’re actually experiencing the organizational silos of the company, their subsystems, their subdepartments, and how they’re operated on the backend gets exposed out to you, the end user.” — Garren DiPasquale

• “What kills most good software is not the people coming up with the idea or having the intent for it. What kills it is the actual organization itself, how the organization is structured. It actually just can’t change to match what they’re trying to create or what they’re trying to put out there.” — Garren DiPasquale

• “Yes, it has to work, it has to function, it has to do things, it has to solve a problem, it has to be valuable to the end customer... and if you do all that well, then you might as well make it beautiful too. You might as well exercise some craft.” — Garren DiPasquale

Key Moments: (outline)

• [00:10] Coding in English: Garren introduces the core mission of his company, Artifact, exploring what happens when developers can code using plain English instead of traditional syntax.

• [00:49] Technology and Human Dignity: Garren discusses how Catholic social teaching and papal encyclicals shape a view of technology that serves human dignity rather than shaping humans to fit technology.

• [13:34] The Bauhaus Parallel: Garren draws an analogy between the Arts and Crafts movement’s rejection of “industrial slop” and today’s AI-generated content, advocating for a new Bauhaus movement that marries art and science.

• [17:51] Dieter Rams and Functional Beauty: Discussing Dieter Rams’ design principles, Garren emphasizes that software must first function and solve a problem, but once it does, it should also be beautiful and well-crafted.

• [26:54] Organizational Silos in Software: Garren explains that bad software often exposes a company’s internal organizational silos and bureaucratic friction rather than failing due to poor initial ideas.

• [46:58] Introducing Artifact: Garren explains what Artifact is building—a document-centered repository for intent and the “why/what” of software, distinct from rapid prototyping tools like Replit or Lovable.

• [55:26] The Renaissance of Writing: Garren shares his belief that precise communication and writing will become increasingly critical as natural language becomes the primary interface for building software.

Does Jesus work more miracles when the people around Him have more faith? And how do we get more people to have faith? That’s what we are exploring in today’s issue.

Let’s talk about it.

Welcome back to Saintly CEO: the Tuesday morning newsletter for business owners whose first objective is to become a saint.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

• Updates & Events

• Feature Content: Will We See More Miracles if We Have More Faith?

• Heavenly Hustlers x 8

• Highlights

[read time: ~7 min | word count 1, 581]

Events / Updates:

• Dallas! We’ve got an event for you this Saturday. Register here.

• Nashville! Will we see you tomorrow? Register here.

• DC! Meet me for mass and breakfast on Saturday morning. Register here.

• Check out all our other upcoming events and follow our Luma page.

• Sunday’s Pod, Crosspost with Prosper AND Last week’s Pod with Regina on the role of matriarchs.

• October is the Month of The Rosary. Please, call your mother 🙏 🌹

• Masterminds. We are going to be rolling out curated mastermind groups with peers soon. If you’re interested, please email Oscar@CatholicFounders.com to indicate interest (note: this will cost a bit more than the base membership, but not a lot).

Will We See More Miracles if We Have More Faith?

Do you remember that part of Matthew where he says Jesus “Could do no mighty work there.” That he could only perform a few healings. He “Marveled because of their unbelief.”

On the contrary, there are times where the writers comment on the strong belief of people, followed by a miracle.

Jesus heals the paralytic man when the people bring the man forward — Mark 2:1-12.

The time Jesus heals the centurion’s servant by only a word — Matt 8:5-13

The daughter of the Canaanite woman: “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire” — Matt 15:21-28

That last one is kind of moving honestly.

When you take a moment to just observe this, what do you see? The times belief is strong, He works the miracle. When there is no belief of the surrounding people, fewer miracles take place.

Of course, God is all powerful and could work miracles. But He respects our free will and does not impose anything on us. As Pope Benedict the XVI said the “Church does not impose but freely proposes the Catholic faith, well aware that conversion is the mysterious fruit of the action of the Holy Spirit.”

But for those that believed, He helped them. In some cases it took persistence of the believer.

What about us?

Do we believe enough to receive what we are asking for? Do we really believe He will give it to us?

What would happen if we personally really leaned in. Perhaps that’s the wrong word. What if we fully opened our hearts to Him. No holds barred. Totally open and relinquishing our sense of control. He are a piece of driftwood in God’s ocean. On a journey to wherever He calls us to. And we are there because we chose to allow Him into our life.

Now play that forward.

You, your spouse, your children, your fellow business owners… your employees, your neighbors. Maybe that all leads to more of your customers even becoming true believers.

Imagine your own city. What if thousands of people really believed and they lived like that?

What miracles would begin to happen in your community?

If that belief was carried out, lived — consistently — daily. For years and years. How many others would join you? Thousands becomes tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands.

That’s what I’m talking about.

I’m bringing this up to help you see what’s at stake. Miracles on every corner, in every living room, God’s love overflowing on the streets. Surely that would lead to some gargantuan change in the culture.

Enough change like that, would surely lead to more conversations. Just think about the palpable nature of what a world like that would look like.

When you have that many Catholics, you’re going to need more churches and schools. You’re also going to have a lot of political power. Eventually it becomes the default and makes it more likely that your children stay Catholic.

It also reduces crime, litter, abuse, desperation, homelessness, poverty — because charity is on the move.

People. This is what we have in front of us. It’s within our grasp.

All we need to do is have belief. True, unwavering belief. Belief that God is willing to give us, if we simply ask for it.

Do you ask for it?

Every morning. Is it the first thing you do. “Lord, please give me true belief. May my life be a witness to your goodness Lord. Lord, help me to believe. Lord help my unbelief.”

The only thing standing between you, and a world full of more charity than man has ever seen is the walls of your heart. Tear them down and let God in. Believe.

God Bless & Happy Building

~Silas Mähner

Heavenly Hustlers

These are other Catholic business owners. Nominate one (including yourself).

• 🍔 Kathy and her Husband Patrick Terry founded P. Terry’s Burger Stand. A Texas burger chain built on fresh, quality ingredients. A place you’ll recognize especially if you’re from Austin. It has 37 locations, and this year they made it employee-owned with profit sharing.

• 🎨 Katherine Quan Ahmann is building Design Q Studio. A graphic and packaging design studio creating timeless brands for dioceses, Catholic universities, and ministries. Alexandria, Virginia. She’s a former Mattel packaging designer who earned an M.T.S. at the John Paul II Institute and was managing editor of Communio.

• 🚚 Patrick Noonan is building PLG. A freight brokerage and logistics company moving open-deck, dry van, and project freight. Nashville, Tennessee. He started PLG in 2024 after helping grow MAP Transit from pre-revenue to $24M in under four years.

• ⛓️ Kevin Callahan is building Hopscotch. Think. of it like OpenRouter (auto choose the best LLM for the use case) and, it will make sure you don’t accidentally run up a huge token tab. He worked at Coinbase and Twitter in the past. Now splits time between SF and Toronto.

• ⛪ Nathaniel Gotcher is building Threadneedle Architecture & Design. A classical architecture studio designing sacred spaces and schools that lift the human spirit. Ardmore, Pennsylvania. He was project architect on the award-winning St. Charles Borromeo Seminary chapel, and he’s wanted his own practice since he was 13.

• 🏭 Patrick J. Wolf and Jeff Roman are building the Institute for American Manufacturing & Technology. A research institute giving small and mid-sized manufacturers a voice in U.S. industrial policy. Idaho. Its research covers AI and compute, energy, and manufacturing supply chains.

• 🪵 Josiah Shurtliff is building JMJ Residential Construction. A home remodeling company and Ann Arbor’s go-to deck builder since 2006. Ann Arbor, Michigan. His team does 80+ projects a year, including parish work at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Ypsilanti.

🙋‍♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.

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Highlights: Hark The Herald… AI Bots Sing?

Guys. I am officially AI-agent pilled.

I know we have some AI haters, but please do not unsubscribe 🤣

Last week, I signed up for Hark.com — it’s an AI agent that helps you do… anything. And it’s blowing my mind. I want to encourage everyone, and I mean EVERY ONE of you to try it out.

There is a generous free trial so you can tell if you like it.

I have it plugged into almost everything, and it’s saving me so much time.

So far it has:

• Ordered me DoorDash

• Run a LinkedIn search for Catholic Business owners in DC

• Unsubscribed from hundreds of marketing emails

• Drafted an entire luma event (including the image) (I made minor edits to the copy, and the image was good, matched our style)

• Built me some coded projects that I’ll tell you more about later

• Created a tool to show me if I’m on track to keep my eating out spending on track

• Bought me tickets to a concert

• Booked me two sets of dinner reservations

My mind is thoroughly blown.

A lot of products claim they can do this, but this one actually does it. It actually works.

I have a feeling that in 20 years, we’re going to revere Brett Adcock in a similar way to how we revere Steve Jobs. Go check out Hark.com — and no, I don’t get any referral revenue from this.

News / Updates:

• Last Thursday, we released a podcast episode with Regina Bethencourt of Tenuto on How Women Can Help Build Up Communities To Make the Neighborhoods more Catholic and How She Built an Agency Offering Flexi Work for Moms

• ICYMI, we have built a new niche group for all Catholic Founders working in the Real Estate space. Upgrade to paid today to get access.

In Today’s Issue:

• Intro to the Show

• Core Takeaway

• Episode References

• Select Quotes

• Key Moments

First time here? Learn more about our mission. And don’t forget to subscribe.

Today’s Show:

Andreas Widmer | The Catholic University of America | Prosper Podcast

Rebecca Teti | Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship

Today’s episode is my appearance on Prosper Podcast hosted by Andreas Widmer and Rebecca Teti to kick off their season five, “Yes, but how?”.

We get into my whole story, but the heart of this episode is the question we’re always peeling apart on this show: what does it actually mean to do Catholic entrepreneurship? Living your faith through how you run your business – how you treat the human being in front of you, and learning to resign to God’s will when the plan blows up.

We also talked about the interesting patterns I’ve seen in a year of interviewing Catholic founders and how they stand out in making their faith alive.

Core Lesson:

Work is a co-creative act ordered toward sanctification.

Regardless if you’re a religious, a layman, or leading multiple businesses, we are called to be creative and put our talents to use. It might be scary at first, but when we, entrepreneurs, surrender our illusion of control to God, and cooperate with His grace by answering the call of Divine Entrepreneurship, business becomes a primary vehicle for God’s providence and personal growth.

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

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Key Episode References:

• The Life of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

• Praxis

• Interview with Daniel Tataje

• Interview with Tim Busch

Select Quotes:

• “We do need to be entrepreneurs in whatever way God is calling us to. We need to be willing to build. We need to be willing to be creative or generative. Whether you are an employee in another company or you are a religious, there’s always creativity going on.” — Silas Mähner

• “If Jesus were the CEO of any company, it would be a company that does things the right way and it would be more profitable in the long term in all cases—no exceptions to the rule.” — Silas Mähner

• “We have our first calling, which is our universal calling to holiness to get to heaven. Then we have our first vocation, our vocation to either the married life or the religious life. And then we have our secondary vocation, our vocation in the world, which is what are we called to do in our work?” — Silas Mähner

• “God is directing the symphony, and if you make a wrong note, he immediately switches the entire symphony to play in a way that’s still beautiful.” — Andreas Wittmer

• “God never promises us success or excess wealth, but he does promise, ‘I will be with you every step of the way.’” — Silas Mähner

• “The thing that I think is most dangerous for young people is to not have any momentum in their life and to just sit in this fear and dread of what the future holds.” — Silas Mähner

Key Moments: (outline)

• 01:43 – Guest Introduction & Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton

• 03:50 – Career Background: Discover Praxis & Cleantech Recruiting in NYC

• 06:44 – Defining Cleantech & Launching EarthSearch

• 09:17 – Relocating to Nashville & Building Family Life

• 11:26 – Founding Catholic Founders & The Three Levels of Vocation

• 16:01 – Co-Creators in the Workplace: Image & Likeness of God

• 18:09 – Rejecting the Sacred vs. Secular Dichotomy

• 20:06 – Key Patterns of Saintly CEOs

• 25:00 – Resignation to God’s Will & Divine Providence

• 27:40 – Uniqueness, Purpose, and Overcoming Fear

• 32:16 – Decision-Making, Momentum, & The 6-Month Burst Strategy

• 38:21 – Giving God the First Option in Discernment

News / Updates:

• NEW! Real Estate Sub Group. We have just created a Real Estate Sub group inside of the Guild, for all folks involved in real estate. This is a great way for us to collaborate and build beautiful buildings again - to elevate the human soul. Consider this your sign to upgrade to paid!

• Stuck in a business challenge? Read the latest of the Saintly CEO: Grow Your Business Through The Primary Constraint Method

Join the Catholic Founders Guild Today

In Today’s Issue:

• Intro to the Guest and Topic

• Core Takeaway

• Episode References

• Select Quotes

• Key Moments

First time here? Learn more about our mission. And don’t forget to subscribe.

Today’s Topic & Guest:

Regina Bethencourt | Tenuto

In today’s episode we discuss, how to build a workplace where moms can thrive — the Catholic way.

To do this, we enlisted Regina Bethencourt, founder of Tenuto Consulting, a creative marketing agency for mission-driven organizations.

Regina started out in a traditional 9-to-5 PR firm. She watched a pregnant colleague get treated like her baby was a problem to hide, and she knew she could not raise her own children that way. So she left, started freelancing, and built the kind of work she wished existed.

Today Tenuto is a team of eight offering 10, 20, and 30-hour-a-week roles alongside full-time work. Clients still get an attentive, proactive agency. Inside, moms get to be present at home in the season when their children need them most — and still be ready as professionals when that season changes.

From there we go deeper: why women work differently than men, why matriarchs will be the ones to rebuild our neighborhoods, how a husband and wife run a family like a joint venture, and how to build a family brand and legacy your grandchildren will inherit.

Core Lesson:

“Build the work around the vocation, not the other way around.”

Most companies try to fix motherhood by forcing moms to work exactly like men — 40 hours, in an office, pretending nothing at home ever interrupts the day. That does not work, and it is breaking our communities.

Regina’s answer is not lower standards. It is better systems: shift coverage across the week, backups who stay up to speed on every client, and a team culture where everyone knows each other’s children and steps in with charity when life happens. Do that, and flexibility stops being a weakness. It becomes your unfair advantage.

And this is bigger than one agency. If women get work that leaves room for family, they get time back for the neighborhood — for other moms, for the parish, for the human connection we have all lost.

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

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Key Episode References:

• Patrick Lencioni

• St. Edith Stein

• Well-Read Mom

• 2 Timothy 1:7

Select Quotes:

• We need to honor the fact that a parent is bringing up children who are the next generation. ” — Regina Bethencourt

• “We want to redefine how you show up professionally. And it is perfectly professional, for example, to bring a bring an infant into a call who needs to just feel their their mother's body. That is normal, that is professional.”

  — Regina Bethencourt

• “Women can work and have their hands in many different things if we had ways to embrace that part of who a woman is. There would be more time for community, more time for doing things in the neighborhood, building more human connection.” — Regina Bethencourt

• “If the husband and wife see what they are doing in raising their family as a joint venture, as like real business partners, and they say, Okay, this is your salary... That allows me to take risks.” — Regina Bethencourt

• “Creating a family brand... saying, the Bethencourts right? That’s us. We are hardwork. We never say no to a challenge. We... have these value statements that help children even from a very long age, know who they are. They belong to something and there are values there...” — Regina Bethencourt

Key Moments: (outline)

• (00:53) - The Origins of Tenuto

• (03:20) - What Tenuto Is: A creative agency for mission-driven organizations on the outside, flexible work on the inside.

• (04:53) - Vocation, Not Just a Choice: Raising children as a calling from God, not a personal lifestyle preference.

• (05:38) - Parenting as a Public Service: Making the common-good case for honoring mothers and fathers.

• (09:49) - Tenuto Today: In business since 2018, grown since 2022 to a team of eight, full-time and part-time.

• (10:34) - The Unfair Advantage: No recruitment problem and great retention when you offer what moms actually want.

• (11:45) - Running a Part-Time Team: Shift coverage, backups for every client, and planning for maternity leave on a small team.

• (15:28) - Using AI Without Outsourcing Your Thinking: Client knowledge in Claude Projects so anyone can step in.

• (20:18) - Redefining Professional: Why bringing an infant to a call can be normal and professional.

• (21:25) - Matriarchs and Community: Women as the glue of the family, the neighborhood, and the parish.

• (24:15) - Can Community Replace Daycare? Sharing childcare and support so moms do not have to do it all alone.

• (25:09) - The Nanny Share: Five Northern Virginia moms building community-based childcare together.

• (26:42) - The Hard Sacrifices: Losing status and accolades as a mom, and the loneliness of the early years.

• (29:56) - Geography Matters: Why your actual neighborhood, not just your parish or friend group, needs rebuilding.

• (31:32) - Where to Start: Well-Read Mom, mom groups, and older moms inviting younger moms out of the trenches.

• (34:01) - Marriage as a Joint Venture: Husband as the stable foundation in one season, wife in another.

• (36:36) - Legacy After Loss: What her husband’s family learned fleeing Venezuela and losing their social capital.

• (40:17) - Branding Your Family: Giving your children an identity and values to carry into adulthood.

• (41:49) - School as a Second Front: Choosing classical, Catholic, screen-free schools that back up what you teach at home.

• (46:55) - Against Hiding Away: Why we need strong Catholic families in places of power and influence.

• (50:24) - Stay or Go? Discerning where God is calling your family, without choosing complacency or comfort.

• (52:26) - Transform Where You Are: Invite the neighbor over and live the faith visibly.

• (53:08) - Rapid Fire: 2 Timothy 1:7, Patrick Lencioni, St. Edith Stein, and the daily Rosary.

Happy Month of the Holy Rosary!

If you are not already one who prays the rosary, I cannot recommend it enough. Our Lady promises many signal graces to those who do. And there’s no way to get closer to Jesus than through His mother.

Welcome back to Saintly CEO: the Tuesday morning newsletter for business owners whose first objective is to become a saint.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

• Updates/Events

• Feature Content: Constraint Method of Growing Your Biz

• Heavenly Hustlers x 6

• Highlight: Muse.AI

[read time: ~5 min | word count 1, 103]

Events:

• Last week, the author of Leaving a Legacy, Johann Kurtz, did a guild call with us on why Catholics should think about legacy. Check it out (paid members only)

• We just published (late last night) the monthly newsletter for the guild. If you did not get it, ping me or Oscar so we can forward it to you.

• Want to buy a business? Check out our podcast covering the topic with Zach Scardino (Guild Member).

• THE VAULT: This Catholic dentist gives away free care to the poor. Check out the interview.

• Upcoming events in, Nashville, DC, Central WI. Check out all of our in-person events on our Luma page.

The Primary Constraint Method of Growing Your Business

Folks. Today I’m keeping it super brief because it’s 10:16 and I’m just writing this (one of the downsides to having a business that is growing is that I have substantially less time to write this, don’t worry, I’m fixing it).

Alex Hormozi often references a very helpful framework, or methodology of growing a business. In all businesses, there is only ONE thing stopping you from growing. Once you remove that constraint, you’ll run into another one.

What follows is the idea, or mentality that you should focus aggressively on understanding what that one thing is, and then unblocking that bottleneck.

It’s very, very simple but it’s something I have thought about often when I feel stuck.

As we have discussed recently, there are a lot of distractions while running a business. Figuring out what is most important to work on is THE MOST important thing you can do. Followed only by doing that thing.

One note on constraints.

Alex says that there are two primary types of bottlenecks, or constraints. Your biz is either supply-constrained or demand-constrained. Never both at the same time.

Take my business for example. As a headhunter, it takes only a few client reqs (demand) to be so overwhelmed that I’m writing these newsletters at nearly midnight the day before they have to go out.

Then I get so busy focusing on delivering (supply) that I’ll end up having insufficient demand for the service. Of course the demand is out there, I just need to go connect with it.

In the long-run, I believe my primary constraint throughout my businesses lifetime is going to be supply constraint. This gives me clarity to focus on what I really need to focus on — which is finding a way to identify recruiters and train them well, and faster than anyone else can.

Okay folks - that’s all for today. I hope this short framework helps you visualize where you are in your business journey, and that through this, you can figure out where you need to put your focus and effort.

God Bless & Happy Building

~Silas Mähner

BTW: If you’re not familiar with Alex Hormozi’s books, I highly recommend checking them out.

Heavenly Hustlers

These are other Catholic business owners. Nominate one (including yourself).

• 📣 Regina Bethencourt built Tenuto, a marketing agency helping universities and nonprofits increase their cultural influence. The agency is designed by and for moms looking for flexible work. Alexandria, Virginia

Get the other 5 by upgrading to a paid subscription now.

🙋‍♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.

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Highlight: Trying Out Muse by Meta

I recently started using Muse, Meta’s AI assistant because I heard someone raving about it on a podcast. I am now that raving person.

It is getting really really close to being able to do all the things you wish Siri could do. Book restaurants, check your inbox for missed messages, deal with customer service reps. I started using it on a short flight the other day, and in 45 min, I was mind blown at how many things I could get done. Intros made, emails sent, etc.

I heard that Instinct is also very good. And I’ve heard that the Grokbot is also incredibly easy to use.

I encourage people to check out some of these tools every so often. You are not going to have time to test them all, but you can certainly figure out when there are simple tools that will drastically save you time.

BTW, I call mine Pepper bc I hate the name Muse.

In the Catholic entrepreneurship world, there is often a lingering hesitation around the concepts of wealth, status, and legacy. Too many faithful founders swallow the lie that building substantial businesses or amassing wealth is inherently selfish or spiritually dangerous. But as Catholic entrepreneurs called to transform culture through our work, we need a clear, rigorous, and unapologetically Christian framework for what it means to build something that lasts.

That is why we brought Johann Kurtz, author of Leaving a Legacy: Inheritance, Charity, and Thousand-Year Families and founder of the Hancock Club, to speak to the Catholic Founders Guild. Johann’s work offers a crucial defense of multigenerational stewardship and provides practical wisdom on how Christian families can build enduring institutions, steward wealth for the common good, and pass on both faith and responsibility across generations.

Alright, the rest of this session is exclusively for CF Guild members. If you’d like to join future calls, consider upgrading to a paid membership today.

Subscribe now

The Catholic Founders Guild is an association of Catholic Biz owners who believe that their business is meant to be an extension of God’s will in the world.

If you share this belief, join today! (PS: It’s only $100 a year or $10 a month, so anyone can afford to join)

Read more

Happy Tuesday! I’m here — got this out despite most of my evening being wasted at the first part of Peter Thiel’s lecture on AI.

Welcome back to Saintly CEO: the Tuesday morning newsletter for business owners whose first objective is to become a saint.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

• Updates/Events

• Feature Content: It’s Okay To Hustle

• Heavenly Hustlers x 6

• Highlights: Weekly Mastermind Meetup Structure

[read time: 6.5 min | word count 1, 447]

• Let’s Taco ‘Bout Jesus: A Summer Social is happening tonight in Nashville. Make sure to RSVP and spread the word.

• We featured Zach Scardino for the second time in our latest podcast and we talked about the Catholic Way of Buying A Business.

• We wrapped up meetups last week across Wausau, Dallas, Columbus and Mexico. Check out all of our in-person events on our Luma page.

It’s Okay To Hustle

A lot of Catholics think that hustle culture is not for them. To an extent this is true, but it’s largely dismissive.

The modern word hustle is associated with money, fame, and hot chicks. But that’s not the point of hustle. Hustle is about putting in the work. When a generation that has been misled on what they will find meaning in hustles, they do it for what they perceived to be the real meaning in life.

Rather than a life of reporting to HR Karens1, they want a life of freedom from rules — or at least a life played by their own rules.

The issue is, this life of supposed freedom isn’t freedom if it’s a life of sin. As we all know that’s really slavery to sin.

What’s still true is that hustling is about effort. Just because moderns hustle for the wrong things doesn’t make hustling a bad thing. Certainly it’s not a sinful thing. As with many thing, the purpose and intention also matters.

Now, for those who’s aim in life is a life well-lived according to God’s terms, why shouldn’t you hustle? Do you believe that you’ve inherited truth? Do you believe you have the true faith?

If you do, how are you not at least somewhat stirred to action. It’s a very motivating thing to realize that you are an heir to an eternal kingdom. And that same eternal kingdom is available to each and every man.

You can also consider the fact that you were given a special ability to co-create with God inside the context of marriage, bringing more souls into the world. Paying for those kiddos might be a bit challenging if you’re not hustling on the side a bit. Perhaps things are so tight that more children would feel really hard financially, but with a little bit of hustle, and putting to use those skills God bestowed upon you, you might go be able to be more generous with God and welcome more children.

So, whether your goal is to hustle in order to spread the Gospel others, or to your own offspring, hustle can be — indeed it is, a good thing.

Consider St. Paul. Consider his life. Think about how hard he worked. How many letters he wrote. How much he traveled. Why he was so animated.

He was literally hustling all the time. On top of his ministry, he worked as a tent maker in order that he wouldn’t burden The Church. Sure he didn’t need tons of money because his goal wasn’t a life of comfort. But he had to work during the day, and then use the spare time to spread the Gospel.

In a way, this is a good way for us to see our own business endeavors. We can work to get the amount of money we need, and then allow our business to either fund other activities (our own or those of other passionate people), or to be in themselves a means of evangelizing. This can be done regardless if our businesses are explicitly/externally Catholic or if they are more subtle.

Don’t we all want to be more like St. Paul? At least a bit?

In my mind, one of they key words I’d use to describe St. Paul is a hustler. He was willing to put in the work, regardless of how tired he was. He kept going. Kept evangelizing. Kept pushing the boundaries.

So, if you think that hustling isn’t for you, that we are only called to a simple family life, that we have to have lot’s of leisure time smoking pipe and debating the Filioque with our Eastern Brothers, think again. Of course these are all fine and good things. But it doesn’t change the fact there is a lot of work to do out there in the world. Work that God gave us specific skills to carry out. Through acting, we can affect the world around us and make change.

As a final point, this plays very well with this past Sunday’s reading about the parable of the two sons. One said he’d do the work but didn’t, the other said he wouldn’t do the work, but did. The one who did the will of the father — the one who acted rightly — he’s the one Jesus asked us to be like.

So what’ll it be? Are you going sit around talking about the will of God, or are you going to do it?

God Bless & Happy Building

~Silas Mähner

Heavenly Hustlers

These are other Catholic business owners. Nominate one (including yourself).

• 🎙️ Ethan Stueve is building digital growth engines and media platforms for legacy industries. He’s also a host of the Bropostles Podcast. Wichita, KS

🙋‍♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.

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Highlights: Nashville 1:1 and Group Mass + Breakfast Meetups

In Nashville, we’ve started something that I think would work well for other cities.

Each week, on Thursday morning we meet for 7 am mass at the Cathedral. Afterwards we convene at a nearby coffee shop and spend an hour and a half masterminding each others’ businesses. We separate into groups of 4-6 so it’s not rushed.

We cover a recent win and a challenge + an ask. The group offers feedback with their collective experiential knowledge.

I’d like to see other cities start this too. The reason being, having this weekly cadence helps develop routine. Once it becomes routine, it helps the attendees really get to know each other. The more time we spend together, talking about hard things, the more we will have trust with each other. The more trust we have, the more willing we will be to ask for help and work together to take action in our local communities.

If you’re local to Nashville, and want to get on the recurring invite list, ping us — admin@catholicfounders.com.

If you want to start this in your area, also email us and we’ll help arrange it, and find other attendees to invite.

News / Updates:

• Join us for a weekend retreat + hike for Catholic Founders (gentlemen only) in Chattanooga, TN. Oct 9th and 10th. Register your interest here. (Note, the cost will be $150 for members and $200 for non members)

• 👕 Support the mission by grabbing an official Catholic Founders apparel from our store.

• Register for upcoming events. Check out all of our in-person events on our Luma page. — Columbus, OH | Dallas | Central, WI | Washington DC | NYC | Nashville

• 🎙️Listen to our episode with Scott Williams of Catholic Concepts and SockReligious: How One Founder Encourages Blue Collar Employees To Have Higher Agency

In Today’s Issue:

• Intro to the Guest and Topic

• Core Takeaway

• Episode References

• Select Quotes

• Key Moments

First time here? Learn more about our mission. And don’t forget to subscribe.

Today’s Topic & Guest:

Zach Scardino | Scardino Strategic Partners

In today’s episode we discuss, how to buy a business — the Catholic way.

To do this, we enlisted our friend (and Guild Member) Zach Scardino. An expert in buy-side consulting and business acquisitions at Scardino Strategic Partners.

We have encountered a lot of people who want to buy an existing business rather than build one. It sounds appealing, but going in blind is a recipe for disaster.

Zach breaks down exactly how to build an acquisition thesis, run a coherence test on yourself, and source the best off-market deals (among many other things).

Core Lesson:

You are merging into their lane, not the other way around.

~80% of acquired businesses fail within five years because buyers forget there is a lot of work to do after the purchase. There is also a way to do it well, and a way to not. When you buy a business, don’t just kick down the door and start swinging a bat. Take the first 90 days to learn, observe, and secure the key relationships that made the business valuable in the first place. Maintain the continuity of service, respect the previous owner’s legacy, and integrate yourself into the culture with charity.

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

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Key Episode References:

Famous & Historical Figures

• Marc Andreessen

• David Ogilvy

Bible Passages

• Matthew 16:18

Select Quotes:

• “One of the temptations when somebody acquires a business is to come in and start fixing things. that’s a bad approach. you don’t want to come in swinging the bat.” - Zach Scardino

• “You’re you’re basically doing a SWOT analysis on yourself before you even start looking at the business.”- Zach Scardino

• “People think that it’s like this sexy kind of just very suave thing. This is hard work. And if somebody tells you that this is easy, then they’re doing it wrong.” - Zach Scardino

• “I’m gonna go ahead and say no business runs itself.” - Zach Scardino

• “I’ll say that that coherence test is unfortunately something that is usually skipped when people do a DIY, and anybody who’s looking to do a DIY, don’t skip that coherence test because that is probably the most common point of failure.” - Zach Scardino

• “If you’ve got a business that’s been around forever and revenue has been mostly flat, that’s a red flag.” - Zach Scardino

• “Frankly, structuring the deal is very often a bigger part of the final agreement than the price.” - Zach Scardino

• “When you have acquired the business, the right way to think about it is that you are merging into their lane.” - Zach Scardino

• “It’s better to overestimate your cost exposure to some of this transition than it is to underestimate it.” - Zach Scardino

• “We have an advantage if we understand the nature of every human being; dignified and we’re we’re here to create a business to help employ people so that they can provide for their families.” - Silas Mähner

Key Moments: (outline)

• (00:00) - Intro: Learning the Catholic way to buy a business.

• (00:27) - The Acquisition Thesis: Doing a SWOT analysis on yourself before looking at businesses.

• (04:56) - Sourcing Capital: Using cash value life insurance or family wealth with strings attached to fund your deal.

• (09:59) - Owner vs. Owner-Operator: Understanding that no business runs itself and identifying your management capacity.

• (14:55) - The Coherence Test: Matching business size, financing capability, and your personal income needs.

• (18:10) - Finding the Deal: Why off-market direct outreach heavily beats public business broker listings.

• (24:35) - Flat Revenue is a Red Flag: Analyzing the dangers of slow attrition in long-standing businesses.

• (26:50) - Recasting Financials: Finding true business value by removing owner perks and adding market salaries.

• (31:44) - The Walkaway Price: Knowing your absolute maximum price based on cash flow before making an offer.

• (38:53) - Structuring the Deal: Using seller notes, earnouts, and dividends to align incentives post-closing.

• (45:00) - Merging Into Their Lane: Planning the employee and customer transition before closing the deal.

• (53:15) - The 90-Day Rule: Why you shouldn’t make sweeping changes during your first three months as the new owner.

• (1:00:20) - Outro: How to get in touch with Zach Scardino for buy-side consulting.

Happy Tuesday y’all! It’s been a bit crazy over here so I’ve decided to repost (with minor edits) an old post I made (before we had officially started this newsletter OR the podcast. When we called this a blog (🤣)

Welcome back to Saintly CEO: the Tuesday morning newsletter for business owners whose first objective is to become a saint.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

• Events | Feature Content | 6 Heavenly Hustlers

[read time: ~13 min | word count 2,802]

• First ever Catholic Founders Men’s Retreat in Chattanooga⁩, TN this October 9-10. Hiking, Formation, Fraternity. Register here. Special Discount applies for Guild Members.

• Latest Podcast episode features Scott Williams who built Sock Religious. Learn how he brought manufacturing in-house, and actively applies Catholic Social Teaching to his operations.

• This week meetups are happening across: Dallas, Wasau, and Mexico. Check out all of our in-person events on our Luma page.

Saintly CEO: What Should Employee Benefits Packages Look Like?

We’ve spent a lot of time exploring our divine calling to entrepreneurship. But what about those who are not called into entrepreneurship? Employees — how can we answer our divine calling to them?

So what, then, is our relationship with employees supposed to look like?

We first must acknowledge that without employees, a business cannot function (unless you’re a solopreneur).

Employees are not just laborers or butts in seats; they are human beings deserving of dignity and respect.

As employers, we have a significant role in ensuring that dignity is upheld. Given that humans spend roughly a third of their lives working, it’s crucial to create a healthy work environment, especially from a Catholic perspective.

Just imagine if you had to spend a third of your life in a work environment that constantly pulled you further from your faith by its influence. Not ideal.

Even if our employees are not Catholic, they are human beings who deserve a nurturing and positive work environment.

So — what are the core parts of a healthy working environment? One key aspect is the benefits we provide as employers. While topics like just wages and workplace culture are also critical, today, we’ll focus on employment benefits. (If you believe there are more than 3 core parts, please comment below as we’ll explore each of these topics in the future).

Guiding Principles

As Catholic employers, we must ask ourselves two things.

1. What benefits would we want as employees?

2. What do we have a responsibility to offer based on God’s calling to us?

These two principles should guide our decisions and policies.

Now! Let’s get into the good stuff—the brass tacks. What benefits should I consider? Here are some. Of course, you may have ideas for others to offer, but this is a good starting point.

1. Daily Mass Flexibility: We all need to reach Heaven. Nothing helps us more than receiving The Eucharist. Daily Mass is a huge help in guiding us towards Heaven. On top of this, if our team is well cared for spiritually, if they are nurturing their soul, they are more likely to be practicing virtues. Virtues lead to better treatment of co-workers, customers, family, and even bosses.

2. Taking Off on Holy Days of Obligation: We often take off on secular holidays, so why not for Holy Days of Obligation? If you’re serious about your faith, you’ll attend mass on those days as it is—why shouldn’t your employees?
   
   I’m convinced that this is one of the biggest levers in our cultural war for God.
   
   (Pro-tip: this is also an opportunity to share the details about the Holy Day. i.e., An opportunity for evangelization.)

3. On-Site Child Care: If you employ many people with both parents working, you should consider on-site child care. If they can bring their child with them to work, it saves a trip and another huge expense. If something goes wrong, they are only steps away from being there for their family.
   
   At this point, it’s also important to ask if you can/should pay one person enough to provide for the needs of the entire family so the other parent can stay home with the children. This might be a better solution and will be discussed when we eventually cover Just Wage Theory.

4. First Home Down Payment Assistance: Having a stable home is something that should not be underrated. First, they are not subject to random eviction by a new landlord who might just decide to hike rent to clear people out. Ownership also fosters stewardship more than renting. You are more likely to contribute to your neighborhood and city if you have set roots down.
   
   It also helps them to start building equity for their own futures. Yes, they may end up moving houses eventually, but at least they have started the accumulation of equity versus just paying rent into an endless hole.

5. Comprehensive Insurance: In the present day, this is really a given. However, do not underestimate the value of providing robust health insurance to your employees. Again, as a recruiter, you’d be surprised how many people refuse to take a big promotion because they are in a role with fully covered health insurance—so it goes in your favor for retention.

6. Encouraging Openness to Life: This one falls in the right thing to do camp without a lot of apparent benefit to you as an employer. If you encourage your employees to be open to life and not be worried about taking parental leave, you’re showing your respect for the most important aspect of life and society: the family.
   
   There are even companies that pay their employees a one-time bonus for having children.
   
   Again, put yourself in the shoes of an employee; you want to work somewhere that will understand and encourage you to have a big family and not frown upon you taking parental leave again.

7. Parental Leave: In the same manner, a strong parental leave policy for both mothers and fathers is critical. The family must be respected, and the first few months after childbirth are of great importance to the family. Be generous.

8. Educational Opportunities for Children: Children eventually grow up to enter the workforce. A point of uncertainty in anyone’s growing up is what they will do for work. By allowing the children of your employees to come and learn about the work their parents do, you can help them get exposure to different careers. If you’re able, offering them work opportunities at a young age can help them earn some cash, confidence, and know-how in the workplace. Do not underestimate the feeling of accomplishment from a job well done.
   
   You might even consider using your business connections to help the children of your employees land internships and roles with other businesses in the area. Don’t underestimate the sway you have compared to an average employee. Use your power for good!

9. Family Event Attendance: There’s a soccer game coming up, of course! Find a way to give them off to attend. These moments matter far more than the business.

The hard part is building a culture where everyone understands how to navigate this. Once you do this for one employee, another, perhaps one without children, might complain of unequal treatment. These are the times when you build the culture. You can help them understand that when they are in the same position, you will have the same flexibility for them. Or if they have a different need, they are going to be accommodated while the other individual won’t have a need to do that.

This is the tough stuff! The work is really hard, but if you shape things well, you can build a strong culture.

10. Matching Almsgiving: Some companies make charitable donations, and some match the donations of their employees to different charities—why not match their almsgiving? It’s a small thing, but it also helps them feel good about giving on Sunday.

11. Financial Education: If you want to make a huge impact on your employees’ lives, teach them how to fish instead of handing them the fish all the time. There is a huge financial literacy issue, especially in America. There are probably some really cheap courses on Udemy that you can pay for so they can learn the principles of investing and financial literacy.

12. A Just Wage: You should pay someone a wage that allows them to provide for their family, one that doesn’t require both parents to work. Leaving the raising of children to daycare and schools is, in my opinion, a dangerous thing that risks the core calling we have as married persons, to bring children into the world and raise them in The Faith. Being the reason both parents need to work is not a good look, at least if you can afford to pay better.
    
    Just wage is not in vogue today, with everyone shouting about equal pay, but the truth is, equal pay would only make sense if there were equal needs. There are not.
    
    We see the rising trend of DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids) where people are making huge wages and have no kids; all the while, you’ve got two parents working minimum wage scrapping by. Many of these so-called DINKs are likely the type to complain about inequality while being the primary symbol of it.
    
    Just remember: A just wage is not just what’s acceptable; it’s what you ought to pay that person based on their family’s needs.

13. Continued Education: A main reason people leave a role is for continued learning opportunities. As far as you’re able, you should offer this. It doesn’t always mean ponying up money for another advanced degree. It often means helping find this person’s mentors and allowing them to work on new challenges.
    
    The same theme comes up again: You need to understand your employees on an individual basis so you can know what matters to them. It’s not rocket science (well, unless their interest is rocket science… I’ll leave that in your court); it just takes effort and genuine care for your employees—the same way Jesus cares for each of us individually.

14. Retirement Savings: Again, this is an obvious one, but you have a responsibility to help your employees with it. Part of this comes with financial literacy training, but providing some long-term savings benefits is huge!
    
    I’m not in the position for this yet, so I’m in the theoretical phase, but I love the idea of the employees getting a profit share and upside through the company. If the company does well, we all do well. It aligns the incentives properly.
    
    If you want to go all out, you can develop a pension system, these can be tricky to manage though so you’d want to speak with an expert about that.

15. Annual Leave/PTO: Paid time off for vacation and trips is important. Many studies show that time off actually makes people more productive. However, I don’t want to reduce offering time off to your employees to a ‘productivity hack’ for running your business because it’s more than that.
    
    The truth is, your employees are human (I hope), and the human soul also needs recreation. It’s important to provide them with the space to do that, in some instances, in larger quantities. Again, it’s not about doing the minimum but doing what is right and good for the human soul.

16. Spousal Protections: If we are going to ensure families only need one person working out of the house, we must provide spousal/family protection. This is often in the form of disability insurance, life insurance, and perhaps some of your own out-of-pocket expenses.
    
    Many households maintain both parents working because they are worried about what will happen if one person is laid off or has an accident. This is, in many ways, giving into the temptation of anxiety (in other words, failing to trust in the Lord), but it has some level of credence. Why not remove that temptation by offering explicit spousal protections in the event of something bad happening to the employee?

17. Spiritual Direction: Since our ultimate goal is to get to heaven, we ought to allow our employees to attend spiritual direction. This may mean offering time during the day to attend because priests have tight schedules, or it could mean sponsoring it. If you have a large company, perhaps you can sponsor a priest to provide spiritual direction to all of your employees on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. I’m not sure how this works in practice, but I’m sure if you feel called to it, you’ll find a way with the help of The Spirit.

One final thing I’ll re-highlight is that you shouldn’t underestimate the number of things you can do that only cost you time. As a business owner, you will have access to more doors than most of your employees. Be willing to use that influence to open doors on their behalf where you can. You were not given your position and state in life for only your own benefit. God elevated you here, and you must use that position responsibly and for the benefit of others.

The Moat to Your Business Castle

While these benefits are part of our duty as Catholic employers, they also offer a competitive edge in the business world.

(A word of warning: do not do these things simply for the ‘edge’ it will give you. Do them because they are the right thing to do and because it is a means of respecting human dignity.)

In my experience as a recruiter, I’ve seen candidates choose roles with lower salaries because of the superior benefits offered. In a tight talent market, offering a robust benefits package can help attract top talent.

Once you attract this talent, maintaining these efforts can create a strong reputation. Companies known for treating their employees well often find that more people want to work for them than they can hire. This “talent moat” makes hiring easier and helps retain the best employees.

Benefits are a key ingredient in building a talent attraction and retention machine. By treating our employees with the dignity and respect they deserve, we not only fulfill our moral obligations but also build a stronger, more competitive business.

Theme: We have seen the theme of individuality several times in today’s example. In the same way, God deals with each of us individually, we ought to deal with our employees individually as well.

In summary, Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you in being generous when it comes to providing benefits. Do not do only what is common in the market; do what you believe to be right for your employees—what you believe a Catholic-run business would provide.

God Bless & Happy Building

~Silas Mähner

PS: What did we miss? Any other benefit ideas? Comment below 💭 👇

Heavenly Hustlers

These are other Catholic business owners. Nominate one (including yourself).

Please note: to see the full list of heavenly hustlers, you need to be a paid member. Today, there are 6 in total. The first one is a freebie.

• 🤖 Julien Gustinelli is building LexAi. Custom AI agents that automate complex workflows for businesses. New York, New York

Get the other 5 by upgrading to a paid subscription now.

🙋‍♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.

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On our recent Guild call, we wrestled with this exact question and explored what it actually takes to build a thriving company culture that serves both the business mission and the family unit.

Whether you’re navigating an office mandate or managing a distributed team, this discussion elaborated the real trade-offs behind remote vs. in-person work.

The topic call is a recurring monthly event where we discuss relevant topics about running the business. To join future events, become a member of the Catholic Founders Guild today.

Alright, the rest of this session is exclusively for CF Guild members. If you’d like to join future calls, consider upgrading to a paid membership today.

Subscribe now

The Catholic Founders Guild is an association of Catholic Biz owners who believe that their business is meant to be an extension of God’s will in the world.

If you share this belief, join today! (PS: It’s only $100 a year or $10 a month, so anyone can afford to join)

Read more

News / Updates:

• 👕 Support the mission by grabbing an official Catholic Founders apparel from our store.

• Register for upcoming events. Check out all of our in-person events on our Luma page.

• 🎙️Listen to last week’s episode with Evan Raugust to find out how to stay virtuous while growing an online brand.

In Today’s Issue:

• Intro to the Guest and Topic

• Core Takeaway

• Episode References

• Select Quotes

• Key Moments

First time here? Learn more about our mission. And don’t forget to subscribe.

Today’s Topic & Guest:

Scott Williams | Sock Religious, 4 Marks Printing

Today, we’re joined by the one and only Scott Williams, co-founder of Sock Religious and Four Marks Printing.

If you’ve ever seen those awesome socks with saints on them, you already know his work. What started as a fun side hustle in a spare bedroom has evolved into a massive in-house manufacturing operation.

In our conversation today, Scott walks us through the real-world mechanics of integrating Catholic Social Teaching into a business.

We talk about honoring the dignity of blue-collar workers and shifting away from a mindless “clock-in, clock-out” culture.

We also ended up speaking about the challenges of navigating a business failures when they happen.

And we discussed, one of my favorite topics, legacy and family business.

This is an incredibly insightful episode with a true legend in the Catholic entrepreneurship space.

Core Lesson:

God honors our forward momentum far more than our anxious over-discernment.

Many faithful entrepreneurs get completely paralyzed trying to figure out the perfect, divinely ordained path before making a move.

As Scott points out, God isn’t afraid of us failing. He wants us to put our talents to work, try new things, and trust that He will redirect us if we take a step in the wrong direction.

Experiencing setbacks provides the exact lessons we need to ultimately build resilient ventures that give Him glory.

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

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Key Episode References:

Companies & Organizations

• SEEK (FOCUS)

• SENT Ventures

• Young Catholic Professionals (YCP)

Previous Catholic Founders Episodes

• Episode 34 - Mark Wilson (Ecclesiastical Ventures)

• Episode 21 - Jennifer Baugh (YCP)

• Episode 47 - Johan Kurtz (Leaving a legacy)

People & Podcasts

• Jeff Schiefelbein

• The Catholic Beatidudes Podcast

Scripture, Prayers & Saints

• Matthew 28 (The Great Commission)

• Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25)

• Litany of Humility

• St. Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer

• St. Joseph

Select Quotes:

• “people spend way too much time analyzing whether or not it’s going to work, we can over-analyze and over discern and try to figure out what the right answer is.” - Scott Williams

• “God would appreciate us to go and to try and to take one step forward, even if it isn’t in the right direction, he’d rather us go in the direction we think that he’s calling us to. Versus standing still and not moving.” - Scott Williams

• “I don’t think God is afraid of you failing. And I think sometimes He wants like just because something didn’t work doesn’t mean that wasn’t God’s will at that time.” - Scott Williams

• “I would much rather grow slower and profitably than faster and incur risk and debt at the same time.” - Scott Williams

• “Passing it on to your children is an exit strategy.” - Scott Williams

• “God doesn’t force us to love him. That’s the same thing with like trying to get your kids to take over business.” - Silas Mähner

• “The life of an entrepreneur, you could just continue to do the next thing. There’s not an end to that. And that you have to be disciplined in and figuring out what it means to to be home...” - Scott Williams

• “Are the things we creating helping people to live out that call, to live out their baptismal call?” - Scott Williams
  

Key Moments: (outline)

• (00:24) - Intro: Silas introduces the core theme of co-creation and welcomes Scott Williams to the show.

• (04:33) - The Origins of Sock Religious: Scott shares how a fun side project celebrating feast days turned into a rapidly growing business.

• (08:13) - Going All In: Deciding to transition from diocesan youth ministry work to full-time entrepreneurship in 2019.

• (11:59) - The Evolution into Four Marks Printing: Expanding beyond seasonal socks, acquiring a t-shirt brand, and bringing manufacturing completely in-house.

• (16:17) - Navigating Business Failures: Scott discusses why “Catholic Home Goods” didn’t pan out and the importance of learning when to shut a project down.

• (24:07) - Catholic Social Teaching in Action: How Scott honors the dignity of manual laborers and invites employees to bring their full creative agency to work.

• (33:24) - Rethinking Growth and Success: Why aiming for slower, debt-free, and profitable growth takes priority over chasing top-line revenue.

• (40:23) - Generational Business: Scott shares his thoughts on legacy, raising entrepreneurial kids, and letting children choose their own paths.

• (45:07) - Work-Life Integration: The crucial discipline of physically and mentally unplugging to be fully present as a father and husband.

• (47:35) - Rapid Fire Questions: Scott shares his favorite scripture passage, saints, devotions, and entrepreneurial inspirations.

• (50:09) - Outro: Silas reflects on the parable of the talents, true stewardship, and why Catholic founders should lean into growth.

Hey everyone! Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to Saintly CEO.

Today, I’m doing things a little different. I’m going to write a bit of a reminder as to why we do what we do. Not only us at Catholic Founders, but all of you… Catholic Founders.

We have a real purpose, and I want to remind you all — and myself.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

• News/Events | Feature Content: Why We Are Here

[read time: ~10 min | word count 2,135]

Events:

Before we start, a few updates and key things to be aware of.

• We’re hosting an exclusive men’s retreat in Chattanooga next month, focused on spiritual reflection and deep brotherhood with fellow Catholic business owners. Limited spots available.

• ARCHIVE: A while back, we had a guy on who bought and sold 5 businesses (all turnarounds). This was his first ever podcast. Check out this episode with Chris Farls of Pittsburgh.

• Two Catholic Meetups happening tonight: South Bend and Nashville. Register if you haven’t. And join one near you. Follow our calendar.

Why Are We Here

Why is such a loaded word. Made even more so in some ways following Simon Sinek’s work on the topic.

Asking the question causes a bit of introspection, and regardless of what Marc Andreessen says, this is a good thing. Especially for people like us, who are almost always on the move doing something, we need to take a moment to recall WHY we’re here.

Who are ‘We’

To be clear, I’m referring to Catholic business owners as a whole, but specifically the people who consider themselves part of Catholic Founders.

A Civilization in Ruins

Look around you.

Society has collapsed to a point that would be unrecognizable to most men of just one or two hundred years ago. Go back a thousand years, and they’d be aghast at what they see.

You might not agree. Just look at our technology you’d say. Modern medicine, etc. Sure, but despite all our technology, we have lost touch with God, and as a result, we’ve lost touch with the invisible things of life.

Honor, glory, chivalry, charity, purity, reputation, magnanimity.

I’m not sure exactly why, perhaps it has to do with our refusal to believe in anything that we can’t explain with a microscope, but we have ceased to believe in all things that we can’t ‘see.’

You can’t see honor. Reputation doesn’t exactly paste well into a spreadsheet. There are no double blind studies about charity.

We have rejected all the ‘invisible’ things in favor of the tangible. No more wonder. No more uncertainty. We’ve got this — we don’t need God.

Our society has crumbled, we’ve gotten what we deserve, because we rejected God. We have been destroyed. Only this time, he didn’t use fire and brimstone, we did it to ourselves.

Here we find ourselves, standing, looking around, inhaling the dust from the ruins. Not ruins of bombs. Ruins of decay. A lack of care led to the decay of the city. Slow and steady, atrophy did her work.

What am I going to do about it?

Each of us must ask ourselves this question. And the place to start is actually prior to this. It’s why. Why am I here now? Why am I in this geography? Why do I have the skills I do? Why do I have the parents I do? Why was I born into this particular socio-economic status?

As Catholics, we all know the answer. God chose for you to be here right now, in these exact circumstances. Ruins and all.

He created your soul exactly at the moment of your conception, with total intention. God doesn’t do things by accident. He is THE Creator. This is what He does. He creates. He doesn’t accident.

He chose for you to be born into this time of history, to your parents, in your geography, with your family network (or lack of), your inheritance (or lack of), and even your interests and your skills. These last two are formed largely by the age of 5. The influences you have at that point are primarily a product of your genetics and your environment. Two things that I don’t think a 5 year old can really do anything to change.

Those skills and interests have led you into the life of a business owner / founder. Do you realize that?

Do you realize, that it’s not an accident He gave you such a strong tendency towards entrepreneurship. Oh, and let’s call entrepreneurship what it really is… Co-Creation using the things of this world.

While we do have agency, when you look at the situation like this, it’s very clear, in a lot of ways we had no choice; becoming a founder was Divinely ordained. God did this to us by nature of our birth, dispositions, etc.

So, what are you going to do with that information? Knowing that God ordained for you to be a co-creator alongside Him, what are you going to do with your life?

Are you going to build a business so you can stack cash, have some extra houses, and buy a yacht to live peacefully? — Or are you going to lean into the good that is being a co-creator?

One Right Choice

Like all things in life, there is only one right choice. God gives us a free will so that we have the opportunity to choose the good thing; His will. Life is that. A choice between our will and God’s will.

With a well formed conscience, each opportunity we have to make a choice is only one of choosing to do the right thing, or choosing not to do good.

Most of you have already made this conscious choice to do the right thing in your lives. But do you understand what it means to choose this? To choose the path of being a co-creator, a steward in God’s magnificent vineyard?

An Agent of Change

Here is where our agency comes into play. We can just do things. We can be a force for good in the world around us. When I say force for good, I should say a force for truth. That’s why we are Catholic and why we want the world to be Catholic; because we have the truth and we want to share it.

The point of your business isn’t to stack chips like you’re at the casino. It’s not to get famous and be idolized by the masses. It is for you to be great. Great so that you can glorify God through your good deeds. The praise of men constantly directed upwards to the only one deserving of praise.

Culture Changers

At the end of the day, there are a lot of people in need of truth. And the world is arguably bleaker than ever. If we want our great grandchildren (our grand children even) to inherit this eternal faith, we should be doing everything we can to rebuild, to correct the lies. We should be changing culture.

Earlier we asked the question why.

Changing culture is the answer.

As Catholics, we have a calling to live out our faith in a way that brings others to know God through our actions. As business owners, we possess influence. Our time, our company policies, how we spend our excess income, the products and services we offer. People generally have respect for business owners.

When you put several of us in a room together, we can go out and make some real change in the world. Show up at city hall with our friends and employees to oppose something. Fund the pro family politician. Commission beautiful art.

We can, and must do things to influence the culture towards God. This is our mission. This is why He called us to be entrepreneurs. We are here to be instruments of His will in the world.

Rebuilders

We can fix the ruins around us. We can rebuild them because we have God and Truth on our side. Family life can once again be possible for our employees based on how we treat them and the benefits we provide, not to mention paying a household wage. The priority of the spiritual life can rein once again through us encouraging and making possible a work life that integrates prayer and allows for daily mass.

Genuine communities can exist when we move our employees close to the office. Then we can deepen our connection with one another, help each other out, have regular barbecues. Hopefully our children can find spouses amongst that cohort as well.

We can make time to raise our boys into men by challenging them and doing things together. They don’t have to be punished for not being more feminine in their local public school where energetic boys are forced into conformity.

Honor and chivalry can once again become part of our lives. Building up a reputation for ourselves, and for our offspring that will help perpetuate the desire to live honorable lives.

The various pillars of society can be rebuilt. We have to be the ones who do it.

A Generational Project

No, they won’t be rebuilt in our lifetimes alone. These pillars are meant to be sturdy fixtures that endure from generation to generation, meaning the next gen will have to take up the tools and continue where we left off. And so will their offspring. Once rebuilt, they will need maintenance. These invisible pillars are in so many ways, the real things that keep society on track. And we are going to rebuild them.

It’s the reason why Catholic Founders as a project exists.

There are many good and honorable Catholic Founders in the world. Many of them don’t have the language to understand and contextualize why they are here. Many still think entrepreneurship is just the way they are called to provide for their family and that’s it. Nothing more.

This is wrong frankly. The forces of evil are out there, lurking and seeking to devour souls. We are the stewards in the vineyard. We must use the Master’s resources to care for and protect those around us — those who cannot help themselves.

Together, we will:

1. Start and grow our businesses. Through this, we’ll be answering the calling to be co-creators alongside God, and we’ll have the things needed to change culture around us: prestige and extra capital.

2. Learn the Theology of Entrepreneurship. In the same way that a person cannot love God until they know God, we cannot do Catholic entrepreneurship until we know how to. This is a key reason why we are content forward.

3. Grow in Unity. Doing things alone and isolated keeps us in risk of being sniped off by the evil one. When you’re isolated, it’s much easier to give into fear. Together however, we become greater than the sum of our parts. We become a wrecking ball to knock down the structures of evil, and rebuild structures of God.

4. Change the Culture. The first three things are all in service of this. We are here to transform the world around us.

It’s not an ego thing. God gave us this calling. Yes, it can be scary. Pride and greed are real temptations, but we know He will provide us the graces needed to stay humble and holy. He called us to be real galvanizers and builders in this particular moment of history, so have confidence. Trust as the Apostles did that the Spirit is in us. God walks with us. And that the devil cannot assail us so long as we stay in the wounds of our Lord.

There are many, many souls to be saved. We have the truth. Let’s go share it with them. Let’s change the culture.

God Bless & Happy Building

~Silas Mähner

News / Updates:

• 🧗🏻Upcoming Men’s Retreat/Hike: We’re finalizing the details of a men’s hike/retreat weekend for Catholic Founders in Chattanooga on the 9th and 10th of October. The cost will probably be around $150-200 to attend (covers lodging and food). Please register if you’re interested (we only have 15 spots).

• 👕 Have you grabbed your own Catholic Founders Shirt from our store? See more of our designs here.

• Register for upcoming events in Tampa Bay, South Bend (Notre Dame), Nashville, Mexico, Columbus, Wisconsin, Dallas, Washington D.C. Check out all of our in-person events on our Luma page.

In Today’s Issue:

• Intro to the Guest and Topic

• Core Takeaway

• Episode References

• Select Quotes

• Key Moments

First time here? Learn more about our mission. And don’t forget to subscribe.

Today’s Topic & Guest:

Evan Raugust | Kingdom Media

Learn how a creator went from ZERO to over 240k YouTube subscribers — in less than two years? 🤯

Today, we get the chance to chop it up with Evan Raugust, the Catholic Mr. Beast.

Evan entered the Church in 2023 after finding Catholic apologists online, and he immediately made it his life’s mission to use the internet to spread the Gospel to as many souls as possible.

Through his own channel and his agency, Kingdom Media, Evan produces high-stakes videos himself (like traveling to where all twelve apostles died) and he helps other creators grow their channels.

He’s helped top creators like Lila Rose, Fr. David Michael Moses, and Brian DeVilla scale their channels to millions of views.

He gives us tons of YouTube growth tactics, how to find market gaps, leveraging the algorithm to get viral reach, and most importantly, his perspective on remaining anchored in virtue, daily prayer, and humility when your job revolves around capturing attention.

It can be a nasty world, and he has clearly spent time figuring out how to navigate it. We’re grateful to have him in the Guild, and to have spent some time with him today for the benefit of all you.

Core Lesson:

If you want to win souls on the internet, bring absolute excellence to the craft and anchor every single upload in daily prayer.

Evan’s perspective is that we should stop burning twenty hours on tiny 10k-view video when that exact same energy could build a million-view home run.

Proper reach happens when your personal competitive advantage lands perfectly in an unserved gap in the market. Lean into the levers you actually possess (sounds like something we’ve said before).

Whatever your advantage and edge is… money, time, raw personality, or production value. Leverage that by dangling the candy of curiosity up front.

This allows you to feed people the good stuff. Deep, life-changing spiritual truths once they’re hooked.

Above all, stop hiding behind false humility.

Bailing on the creator space just to dodge the temptations of money or status simply leaves the battlefield wide open. It’s the same as burying your talent in the sand.

Get in the arena, embrace the daily friction, and let digital entrepreneurship forge real holiness in you.

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

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Key Episode References:

Organizations & Agencies

• Daughters of St. Paul (Media Nuns)

YouTube Channels & Media

• Evan Raugust YouTube Channel

• Evan Raugust’s St. Carlo Acutis Video

• Lila Rose YouTube Channel

• Fr. David Michael Moses YouTube Channel

• Brian DeVilla YouTube Channel

• PrestonPlays

• Lungs of Faith

• Theology of Conversion - Justine Donahue

• Iron Inquisitor

• Jubilee

Saints, Devotions & Prayers

• Litany of Humility

Notable Figures

• Jeff Schiefelbein

Select Quotes:

• “Get in the arena! The guy who’s not in the arena and never has these temptations isn’t better than the guy who does.” - Evan Raugust

• “I’m a big believer that if you just pursue excellence, people will find you.” - Evan Raugust

• “ think about it like you dangle the candy so that you can get them to eat the vegetables.” - Evan Raugust

• “if you’re gonna spend 20 hours making a video, why not spend 20 hours making a video that could get a million views versus 20 hours on a video that’ll get 10,000 views?” - Evan Raugust

• “every single channel under the sun is able to be profitable and be able to make you like a full-time income, even enough to like support a family.” - Evan Raugust

• “I have made it my mission to use the internet to spread the gospel to the most amount of people before I die.” - Evan Raugust

• “I think a lot of Catholics need to recognize that that you can't just slap Catholic on something and and assume that it's gonna be widely adopted. You need to actually be be excellent.” - Silas Mähner

• “I've had some really l low points in my life and my creator journey, and all of them without fail are proportional to the lack of prayer that I have.” - Evan Raugust

• “It's not what's possible for man, it's what's possible for God.” - Evan Raugust

Key Moments: (outline)

• (00:18) - Intro: Silas introduces the podcast mission, newsletter updates, and creator Evan Raugust.

• (03:07) - Catholic Dallas & Mission: Evan shares his background in Dallas and his mission to spread the Gospel online.

• (05:46) - Conversion Journey: How online apologists like Trent Horn and Michael Knowles led Evan to Catholicism in 2023.

• (07:43) - Kingdom Media Agency: How Evan consults and scales YouTube channels from scratch to millions of views.

• (15:30) - YouTube Strategy for Business Owners: Multi-skill demands, short-form vs. long-form, and long-term brand building.

• (22:29) - Hooking Viewers & Spiritual Depth: Why curiosity hooks allow creators to deliver substantial spiritual value.

• (26:28) - How Content Goes Viral: Identifying competitive advantages, market supply gaps, and outlier topics.

• (34:08) - The 5 Growth Levers: Leveraging time, money, personality, creativity, or production value to stand out.

• (43:40) - Living Virtue as a Creator: Overcoming vanity, status, and fame through daily Rosaries, confession, and Adoration.

• (48:38) - Recapturing the Vocation: How trials and time with the Daughters of St. Paul keep work focused as a divine mission.

• (55:46) - Rapid Fire Questions: Evan shares favorite scriptures, inspiring entrepreneurs, daily devotions, and patron saints.

• (1:00:32) - Outro & Practical Reflections: Silas poses three self-reflection questions for business owners.

Hey folks! Happy Tuesday and happy feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary! Today would be a great day to get to daily mass.

I’m pleased to share that our son was born last week Thursday. September 3rd. The feast of St. Gregory the Great. His name is Constantine Gerard Luwaga Mähner. Advice welcome on this post. Thank you for your prayers!

Welcome back to Saintly CEO: the Tuesday morning newsletter for business owners whose first objective is to become a saint.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

• News/Events | Feature Content | 6 Heavenly Hustlers

[read time: ~9 min | word count 1, 889]

Subscribe now

News / Updates / Events:

• 🧗🏻Upcoming Men’s Retreat/Hike: We’re finalizing the details of a men’s hike/retreat weekend for Catholic Founders in Chattanooga on the 9th and 10th of October. The cost will probably be around $150-200 to attend (covers lodging and food). Please register if you’re interested (we only have 15 spots).

• 💰 If you’ve never heard it, check out our past episode with Will O’Brien: Should Catholics Try to Become Billionaires?

• 🤝 For CF Guild members attending the SENT Summit, don’t forget we have a dedicated group chat for you to find other Guild members. Find the link to join inside the WhatsApp community.

• Register for upcoming events in South Bend (Notre Dame), Nashville, Mexico, Columbus, Wisconsin, Dallas, Washington D.C. Check out all of our in-person events on our Luma page.

Farming-Games or High-Intensity Games; Which Are We Playing?

In entrepreneurship, one can categorizing the type of game you’re playing, as a Farming Game, or a High-Intensity Game. When playing the former, Catholics have an advantage over secularists.

A farming game is one that required some amount of effort, consistently, over a long long period of times. At the bare minimum, decades, ideally generations.

High-intensity games

A high-intensity game is one played at a much faster pace. You have to win in a short period of time. The longer it takes, the less likely you are to win.

Generally speaking, building a VC-backed startup is a high-intensity type of game. VCs invested, they want returns, you’re often going up against others, and it’s a race to see who can capture the market first. This naturally occurs often because VCs tend to invest in things that just on the edge but about to become mainstream.

Farming games

Outside of literally using agriculture or literally farming as an example, most mom-and-pop main street businesses are in this low-intensity type of game. You can be intense, but if you’re not the first person to start your HVAC service company, it’s not like you’ll have no market left. There will always be people in search of a new provider. There will always be some attrition from bad service.

To win in this game, you need to be consistent. You need to be in the game longer than everyone else.

Now, being around isn’t sufficient. You need to be good. You need to be better than others, consistently for a long period of time.

Septic cleaning business example

Let’s take the example of a Catholic-owned business I know that cleans out septic tanks. They acquired the business from another person. If I recall, it was just one truck at the time. It’s perhaps one of the least glamorous jobs one could do. But, little by little, they have grown and expanded.

Most of their expansion has come as a result of customers in the area being dissatisfied with their current solution. Lack of reliability, breaking things, overcharging them, etc. Others had been there for longer, but were not consistently virtuous in how they ran their business.

20-years later, this family has now grown to be the largest septic service in the entire region of the state. All because they were consistently good. They were virtuous. They kept their word. They were honest. And they did a good job.

Word starts to get around when you do good things.

Eternal timeline

Outside of just virtue, there is another advantage we have over the secularists.

They think only in terms of this life at most, but usually they think in terms of years, quarters, or maybe even days.

In the recruiting world, it’s very common to see someone have a huge month, and then completely fall off the next. Partially because they lost focus of fore year.

However, for us Catholics, we are not just focused on hitting this coming quarterly earnings target. We are first focused on eternity for our souls. Doing things that benefit our souls — that don’t compromise our spiritual life.

Serving our children

After that, our focus for things we do in this life must be for our children. How can we build something that can help our children to better serve the Lord. I do believe in most cases, people should build businesses to last for a thousand years (or longer). Build them so your family can take them over. This compounding can (and will) lead to your family being able to fund the construction of a new church or school in the future.

If you are too short sighted, how are you any different from the secularists?

Of course, we don’t aim for earthly success of our businesses. We aim to do God’s will fully — which usually means being diligent, virtuous, courageous, humble, etc. If we do those things, it’s pretty likely our businesses will grow.

Sure, one generation can mess it up. Does that mean you shouldn’t try to raise them in a right way? No, you’ve got to give it all you’ve got and keep at it.

Your business isn’t your worth

The key benefit is, you know you’re not building that business for some earthly glory. Your worth doesn’t hinge on the financial success of your business. God will judge you for how hard you tried, and for how much you loved Him and put Him above all else.

We build knowing we can pass it down to our children, where others try and extract the value as fast as possible just to get rich.

Who is going to win in the end?

We both know the answer.

Catholics are mostly playing a farming game

It’s important to recognize, the game we are playing as Catholic Founders is largely a farming game. We are trying to transform the culture around us. This requires a life of acting upon culture, but never enough that it causes us to lose the fight with raising our own families well.

Taking lower profits to pay a living wage. Investing in the beautification of our communities. Contributing to the building of a school or church in our area.

The secularists see their life as the end. When they die, they think it’s all over.

That’s why they need to get rich quick. They need to get retired so they can actually ‘enjoy’ this life.

Sometimes you need high-intensity

It’s worth noting, I’m not saying we should never play high-intensity games. I would contend that far too many Catholics never play at the type of intensity they ought. We cannot use the fact we think in generations to do things poorly — or without attention. Low intensity is not the same as low attention. We must be diligent and focused at what we do.

There will be times when we really need a burst of intensity to accomplish something. Usually this is the case when you start your business and stays the same for the first few years. It doesn’t usually just fall into place.

So. Let’s unite in playing the longest of games — the eternal game. Where we run our lives in a way that serves our vocation. Where our business is run with real virtue day in and day out because that eternal game is front and center in our minds. Let’s do things with genuine focus so that they may be done well.

In doing this, we will build many businesses that a secularist could never build. Because their time preference for money is too short. Not for us. We don’t need to be in a hurry to spend it in this life. For us, it can compound and compound. Serving generation after generation and allowing for greater magnificence to be practiced.

God Bless & Happy Building

~Silas Mähner

Heavenly Hustlers

These are other Catholic business owners. Nominate one (including yourself).

Please note: to see the full list of heavenly hustlers, you need to be a paid member. Today, there are 6 in total. The first one is a freebie.

Get the other 5 by upgrading to a paid subscription now. Discover builders in Colorado, Brazil, Dallas, Nashville, and Wisconsin today!

• 🏢 Alexander Cartwright is building HotelSHIFT to convert old, distressed hotels into affordable housing units without government subsidies. Dallas, Texas

🙋‍♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.

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News / Updates:

• Upcoming Hike: Mark your calendars for a mens weekend retreat/hike for Catholic business owners on October 9th and 10th in Chattanooga (paid event). Pls DM me if interested. More details to follow.

• 👕 The merch store is live.

• Discover future local events by following our Luma calendar.🗓️
  If you wish to lead a meetup in your area, email us at admin@catholicfounders.com.

In Today’s Issue:

• Intro to the Guest and Topic

• Core Takeaway

• Episode References

• Select Quotes

• Key Moments

First time here? Learn more about our mission. And don’t forget to subscribe.

Today’s Show:

Jeff Cassman | Catholic Men of America

A few months ago, I had the privilege of sitting down with Jeff Cassman on the Catholic Men of America podcast. Jeff runs the largest men-only Catholic network in the country, helping thousands of guys with professional development and networking.

We bumping into each other at the Build with Christ event in Atlanta and decided to set up a recording shortly after.

He asked about my origin story covering how I grew up making cabinets in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin and ended up as a recruiter in the renewable energy space working in NYC. Then he asked about taking the leap to launch my firm Roosevelt Talent (formerly called ErthSearch).

And, my favorite topic, what we are doing at Catholic Founders.

Core Lesson:

Entrepreneurship serves as a divine calling to step into our nature as co-creators with God and actively build a more faithful culture.

When you look at the landscape of entrepreneurship today, the mainstream focus is hustle culture. Get rich. Live a flashy life. Or, when you step up a level, to a more ‘sophisticated’ outlook, it’s all about cutting costs, running high margin businesses, doing all the growth hacks etc.

At the end of the day, these depictions, prioritize money over people.

Well, as you know by now, that’s not my view.

Entrepreneurship is an act of co-creation, and is therefore something divine. It can be bastardized. But in it’s purest form, it’s a divine thing.

When we realize this, and lean into it as true, it leads us to a much deeper, richer, understanding of what we are called to do with the skills and energy we have. We have a role to play in making the culture around us a Catholic one.

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

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Key Episode References:

• Famous Persons & Entrepreneurs

  • Tom Monaghan

  • Dominic Taroli

  • Jacob Chiccarelli

  • Marcellino D’Ambrosio

  Organizations, Companies & Platforms

  • Catholic Men of America

  • Earth Search

  • Knights of Columbus

  • Ave Maria University

Select Quotes:

• “I really do believe that quality is is paramount in in this industry.” - Silas Mähner

• “If you believe you are called to be an instrument of God’s will in the world, you belong in the community.”- Silas Mähner

• “The infrastructure of Catholicism in America was not built by people who lacked ambition.” - Silas Mähner

• “Ambition has nothing to do with with greed. It only has to do with greed if you if you pursue it that way.” - Silas Mähner

• “We have an opportunity because nobody else has morality around recognizing that each human has infinite dignity and they deserve to be respected and told the truth.” - Silas Mähner

• “Entrepreneurship is about leaning into what it means to be a co-creator with God.” - Silas Mähner

• “There’s so much time we spend building alone, doing things on our own because we just don’t know where to go.” - Silas Mähner

• “Your soul, everyone’s soul, was created by God specifically at this time in history to your particular parents and your geography.” - Silas Mähner

• “We’re not given entrepreneurial skills for our own benefit, we’re given them to advance God’s kingdom here on earth.” - Silas Mähner

Key Moments: (outline)

• (00:00) Intro: Silas introduces his guest appearance on the Catholic Men of America podcast.

• (02:04) Origin Story: Growing up in Wisconsin, working in a cabinet shop, and moving to New York City.

• (04:14) Launching Earth Search: Taking the leap to start a cleantech recruiting firm focused on genuine human relationships.

• (14:05) The Future of Cleantech: How efficiency and sustainability are transforming manufacturing across all sectors.

• (18:38) Catholic Founders Mission”: Transforming America through Catholic entrepreneurship and deep community influence.

• (24:13) Permission to Build: Overcoming the stigma of ambition and reclaiming the drive to build wealth for good.

• (32:52) AI and Human Dignity: Why the rise of artificial intelligence creates a massive opportunity for human-centric businesses.

• (41:52) Who Belongs in the Guild: Identifying the faithful builders called to join the Catholic Founders community.

• (45:31) The Great Adventure: Discovering your unique secondary vocation and answering God’s specific call to action.

• (48:33) - Outro: The four pillars of the Catholic Founders Guild and final parting thoughts.