The Saintly CEO: The 4-Step Blueprint to Follow St. Thomas Aquinas' Business Advice
Introducing the D.A.R.E. Framework To Create a Workplace that Connects Man With His Divine Calling
Welcome back to another edition of Saintly CEO.
As always, start your week off with some tactical advice to run your business fully in union with your Catholic faith.
Today we have,
News/Updates
Feature Content (building a connected workplace)
Heavenly Hustlers
Miscellaneous resources
Why should you read? Reading this content will help you transform your business so that you can become an instrument of God’s will in the world—guaranteed.
[read time: ~7 min | word count 1,488]
News / Updates
In SF, this week, Thursday (the 20th), there is a gathering of Catholic founders and investors. I’ll be there. I hope to see you too. Sign up here.
In NYC, on December 16th, we’re hosting our Catholic Founders dinner. Location TBD, and total space available TBD. We could use help pulling this together, so if you have a location or can help sponsor, please reach out. Register here.
Members of the Catholic Founders Guild met up in Texas (Houston and DFW) during Raffaele’s recent visit to the US (join the guild to see pics).
Join the Catholic Founders Guild Today
Get access to all CF Guild online events, the recordings, paywalled content, the CF Guild community/group chat, and CF Guild member directory.
Many members have reported doing business with other CF Guild members within months of joining.
With an annual membership fee of $100, it’s a total no-brainer to join. Consider this an association of Catholic business owners, not a high-commitment community that will sap your time.
Join today for $100 a year or $10 a month.
The 4-Step Blueprint to Follow St. Thomas Aquinas’ Business Advice
In today’s world, many people are not engaged at work. A 2017 Gallup Poll shows around 85% of workers globally are disengaged.
Are you surprised?
Corporate culture treats everyone like a number, and HR does a great job at taking the human out of human resources.
Well, according to St. Thomas Aquinas’ teachings on man’s unity of soul and body in his actions, we can derive some principles that guide how we run our teams — while solving this engagement problem. I’m no Thomist, but I’ll do my best to explain this simply.
A thing is good when it operates in the service of the intended end (goal). When that end is distorted, so is its good.
In the context of human work, our work should bring good to others in the world in order to connect us with God as co-operators in his creation. So, when we bake a loaf of bread with the intention of providing nourishment for our fellow man, we can do it properly.
If we bake the bread only for the purpose of making money, we are not fully connecting to our divine calling.
Stop – think about that a bit.
If you only hired your team as a means to make you money, you’re unable to fulfill the proper end of human work. But, if your company has a mission that is connected to producing a good in the world, they can unite their work, through intention, to the divine calling (at least that’s how I understand this).
Note: This stems from Question 76 in Part I of the Summa.
The best part, when you’re able to create this type of workplace, you’ll also get more productivity out of your team.
To help you do this, we’ve created the D.A.R.E. Framework (not to be confused with the don’t do drugs program). This is a simple, four-part mechanism rooted in timeless Church wisdom — to rebuild your culture, reduce attrition, and align your business with the ethical principles that deliver true, lasting growth.
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Whether you’re hiring for your startup, school, parish, or nonprofit — Verso makes it easy to find mission-aligned talent ready to build the Kingdom.
Visit versojobs.com or book a demo to get started — To the heights. ⛰️The Disaster You’re Paying For: Why Disconnected Labor is Crushing Your Bottom Line
Modern workplaces operate on a lie: that your people are interchangeable commodities. This error — the very thing Laborem Exercens warns us about — is crushing your profit and your mission.
When work becomes mere drudgery, severed from the worker’s inner life, you get:
Ethical Voids: Decisions based on profit, not people.
Sky-High Attrition: The best workers leave looking for meaning.
Low Morale: Employees are “coasting” instead of innovating.
Disconnection is not inevitable. It’s a structure you must dismantle. The Church has always envisioned work as redemptive. As a business owner, you are called to reform these toxic structures and unlock the human potential God put in your staff.
Your Solution: The D.A.R.E. Blueprint
D.A.R.E. is a guide for reconnecting the person to their God-given potential. No complex manual needed. These are the four steps to ensure your business promotes the common good and drives performance.
D – Dignity
The Mandate: Honor every worker as imago Dei (made in the image of God).
The Principle: Work honors God’s gifts and talents, redeeming through union with Christ.
Your Ultimate Takeaway: View employees as ends, not means. This is your competitive advantage.
A – Autonomy
The Mandate: Empower decision-making and professional growth.
The Principle: Workers must share in decisions affecting their lives, exercising freedom responsibly.
Your Ultimate Takeaway: Don’t micromanage. Instill ownership to spark creativity and personal responsibility.
R – Rest
The Mandate: Balance toil with rest for body and soul.
The Principle: Work must respect human limits, including Sabbath-like pauses.
Your Ultimate Takeaway: You must prevent burnout. Prioritize spiritual and physical well-being over constant, frantic productivity.
E – Engagement
The Mandate: Link every task to community impact and purpose.
The Principle: Labor serves the common good, building solidarity in a “living community.”
Your Ultimate Takeaway: Connect daily tasks to real, visible impact, transforming your business into true service.
Hire Catholic Overseas Talent
In LatAm and the Philippines, there are millions of Catholic remote workers (across all domains) who want to work for ethical bosses.
Often they’re treated as second class citizens or work for organizations that ask them to do questionable things. They reach out to us in search of a Catholic boss.
So, we started ParacleteVA (website coming soon).
With ParacleteVA, we’ll find you vetted, Catholic overseas talent who will help you move your business forward.
How it works: Pay a $500 finders fee when the candidate starts and $500 if you’re still happy with them after 30 days.
To get started reach out to catholicfounders@gmail.com with what you’re looking for and we’ll get started. How to Put D.A.R.E. into Action: Tactical Implementation
Apply D.A.R.E. step-by-step. Don’t try to change everything at once. Start small: pilot just one tactic from each letter this quarter.
D – Dignity: Treat Workers as Partners in Creation
Needs-Based Pay: Aim to pay people what they need for their families. Doing so requires trust between employer and employee, and offers them respect for the work they are doing. This may be challenging for some companies with tight margins, but work your way into it, even if that means increasing your prices.
Individual Recognition: Take the time to recognize the value each employee brings to contribute towards the company’s mission. This is not primarily about financial outcomes. Whatever you spend time recognizing will get more attention from the rest of the team.
Human-Focused Hiring: When hiring, make an effort to understand the candidate’s natural skills and long-term career goals. When a role comes naturally they do better work. When their work moves them closer to their own long-term goals, they accomplish more.
A – Autonomy: Enable Free and Responsible Agents
Train and Release: Don’t hold on to decisions that you can give to your team. Put in the requisite energy to train them so they can have autonomy in their role. It speaks to their soul and it helps you focus on even higher-value items.
Family First: Allow employees the flexibility to meet their family commitments. Family always comes first so find a way to make it work. If they don’t have the ability to attend these duties, they, or their family will come to resent you – eventually leading them to quit.
Front-line Feedback: Learn from your team what they are seeing. Not only will this help you stay connected to the work yourself, it helps you make better decisions. If Jensen Huang, CEO of a $4.6 trillion business does this, I’m pretty sure you should consider this. (As an aside, it should also lead to better products)
R – Rest: Integrate Pauses to Restore the Whole Person
Observe Holy Days: On Sundays and Holy Days, offer a paid day off. It’s for you to worship and celebrate respectively. God comes first. No ifs ands or buts about it.
Scheduled Rest: Regardless if the work is hands-on or mostly mental, having scheduled rest throughout the day prevents your team from burnout. It is also a great reset to ‘slow down’ so they are not making poor decisions.
Check-In on Your Team: From time to time, you should ask your team how they are doing. Sometimes, you’ll notice, but in case you don’t, make it a habit. Their well-being is more important than your bottom line.
Integrate Prayer: Starting the day and meetings with prayer, taking time during the day for the angelus, and other occasions is a great way to rest throughout the day in a way that connects us with our Creator frequently.
E – Engagement: Make Work a Service to Others
Impact Storytelling: Ensure your team understands the impact their work has on the community broadly, as well as on each customer individually. On a regular basis, you can share stats about how many people the work has impacted. The same way you’d share updates on your financials.
Local Supply Chains: Do what you can to bring your supply chain as local as possible and communicate it to the team. This way you deepen the ties with the community.
Support Local Charities: If you have any excess or wasted product, give it away to those in need. These programs are done at large companies to make their brand more palatable, but you should be doing them even on a small scale because it’s the right thing to do.
Final D.A.R.E. Checklist: Your Monthly Audit
Do this review every 30 days:
D: Are you respecting every worker’s dignity through fair treatment, or doing the bare minimum?
A: Do your employees have ownership, or are they simply order-takers?
R: Do your policies integrate rest to ensure a rightly-ordered life?
E: Is your work benefitting the community (and do your employees know it)?
If you can say yes to all of these, you’re building a workplace in line with St. Thomas Aquinas’ teachings on connected work.
Take Action This Week
You have the blueprint. Don’t let this be another interesting article you forget.
Test D.A.R.E. this week. Pick one tactic to implement this week. Set a reminder each week to review the outcome and pick which area/tactic to focus on in the coming week.
Please remember, we are not called to build businesses so that we can enrich ourselves. We are called to build businesses that operate in unity with the way God made us. These are some simple tactics to lean into that calling.
God Bless & Happy Building
~Silas Mähner
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Visit saintkolbestudios.com to get started.Heavenly Hustlers
Meet today’s Heavenly Hustlers (other ambitious Catholic business owners building for God).
🏋️♂️ Chris Coll is building up his Catholic 1:1 personal fitness training company — based up in Canada (so I bet his plan involves hockey… eh?)
💰 Francisco J. Lara is a teacher at the Busch School of Business at CUA and runs and co-runs a family office investing in a pretty unique way. Reach out to him, especially if you’re interested in the search fund model.
🛠️ David Michael Phelps is the President at Harmel Academy of the Trades in Michigan. He’s bringing back the trades! Let’s gooo!
🌮 Rogelio Romano, a fellow parishioner at St. Mary’s in Wausau, runs El Tequila Salsa. A restaurant serving authentic Mexican cuisine. I’ll comment, Rogelio has an incredible story of overcoming adversity and is a living example of generosity.
🔍 Adam Gross is a fellow headhunter, also in the sustainability space (mostly alternative fuels). Solid fellow out of Des Moines.
🎥 Matheus Bazzo is building, boldly, lumine.tv. A project using media to help create a Catholic culture in society. I was heavily skeptical before meeting him, but seeing the scale of what he’s built so far, was truly inspiring.
🙋♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.
Big thanks to Catholic Owned for helping us identify some of these Heavenly Hustlers each week. Support other Catholic Owned businesses today! — Get listed today!
Become a Sponsor! Get your message in front of hundreds of Catholic business owners! Reach out today —> Admin@CatholicFounders.com Misc. Resources:
Groups:
Join the Catholic Founders Guild (peer group) $10/month or $100/year
Join We Are Catholic on Vinly — It’s free and there are a ton of great folks there.
Fides Entrepreneurship Group (NYC-Based)
Join DOMINUS Lab (tons of resources to help build 1000 Christian Startups)
Events:
SF meetup, Nov 20th (Title: Catholic Tech Fellowship: Sainthood, Heterodoxy, and Obsession in Silicon Valley)
Content:
The episode with Jeff Schiefelbein plays well into what we said today. Plus Jeff is a fun person to hang out with.
I personally got a LOT of value/enjoyment out of the following podcast episodes:
My First Million: How Alex Hormozi Gets Other People to Build His $100m Empire
Zero To One from How to Take Over The World (only available to his paid subscribers — super worth it btw)
Services:
HIRING: Looking to hire top talent that is also bought into your mission and values? Give the guys at Verso Jobs a shout. Joe and his team are incredible at filling jobs accurately and fast. And they won’t break the bank.
DONE-FOR-YOU PODCAST PRODUCTION: If you want to build trust with future customers, reach out to Saint Kolbe Studios to help you launch a professional podcast. They help from start to finish.
OFFSHORE TALENT: Hire a Catholic Virtual Assistant through ParacleteVA (email us: dearcfpod@gmail.com)
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This article is one of the absolute best things I read in 2025... and again in 2026. I have come back to it multiple times because it perfectly encapsulates thoughts that I have had in my mind but haven't been able to articulate as well as you do. Thank you for this good work!