Reflecting on This Year of Catholic Founders
Highlights, Key Takeaways, + What We're Excited for in 2026
2025 was a really great year for Catholic Founders. While we didn’t see the same kind of come-up that the guys at TBPN did, we are still pleased.
A few highlights:
We grew from 149 free subs to 566
We grew from 6 to 63 paid subscribers
We hosted 4 dinners (Wausau, SF, Chicago, NYC)
Launched the Podcast and published 43 episodes
Launched Saintly CEO and published 32 issues
Hosted 8 Catholic Founders Guild Calls (I could be missing a few)
I personally met north of 150 Catholic entrepreneurs (I wasn’t going to go count all the meetings from the year)
Suffice to say, through the conversations I have developed some pretty strong opinions on what it means to be a Catholic Founder by this time. I’ll eventually come out with a real guide, but here are the key takeaways that I have for the year. The ones that really stand out to me.
Key Takeaways:
Putting God First is Like a Magic Time Capsule.
Giving God His time first doesn’t subtract from your time (if anything, it adds to it).
Throughout most of the year, I went to mass 3-4 times during the week (+ Sunday), had a ~35 min morning routine on Hallow, maintained 15 min of daily silent prayer, a daily examen, and a daily rosary.
While doing that, my company’s revenue more than doubled. Add to this, I also started carving out 10-20 hours a week for Catholic Founders-related items (meaning I had less time to run my business).
Maybe that’s just because I’m starting the biz and getting it going, but it is pretty wild to me that despite working less, I was able to make double the revenue.
The Transcendentals are Like Magic Conversion Beans.
One of our episodes covered how Mallory Root integrates the transcendentals into how she runs her secular coffee shop. They don’t preach the Gospel or put up images that explicitly indicate their Catholic Faith. However, despite this, they have had about a dozen conversions that are directly tied to the coffee shop.
After this discussion, I started to notice the connection of the transcendentals in most of the other topic areas that we cover (which would make sense because they are part of existence itself, haha).
The takeaway is, when you do things the True, Good, Beautiful, and Unified way, you are going to draw others to the faith. It’s not possible not to, because you’ll be tapping into the spiritual side of every person. I shouldn’t even say you — I should say God. Because when you do this, you’re not doing this — it’s really God through you (as His instrument).
To learn more about the transcendentals, read this post:
Entrepreneurship May Be the Best Way to Draw Closer to God.
When you pursue entrepreneurship with a proper understanding of the truth of our faith, it can be the best way to draw you closer to God. This is done when we recognize His hand in what successes or failures come our way.
When this understanding is cultivated, we’ll notice how often and how intensely He is working in our lives. That creates a sense of closeness. That closeness helps us trust in Him more because we know Him more, the same way we trust our best friend. This is a positive, reinforcing cycle that continues to draw us closer and closer to Him.
Finally, being an entrepreneur, again, when properly understood, means participating in God’s providence for the world around us. When we get out of the way, He uses our position in the world to carry out His will around us — most of the time without us even knowing. This also can cultivate a deep connection with God because each day we need to let go of our will and choose His will.
Favorite Content From The Year:
Finally, here are some of my favorite pieces of content from this past year, in no particular order.
Saintly CEO:
The Podcast:
Join the Catholic Founders Guild!
Finally, if what we are doing resonates with you and you’d like to have a rock solid group of Catholic business owners to bounce ideas off of — to learn from — and to grow with — consider joining the Catholic Founders Guild.
For only $10 a month or $100 a year you can have access to a network of your people (directory and group chat). There are a lot more perks than that but the group is the main thing.
Upgrade to a paid subscription right here on Substack to get started!
I especially liked the way you tied growth to consistency and community instead of just numbers or milestones. It reminded me to look at my own year less as a checklist and more as a series of moments that formed me.