Saintly CEO: Catholic Business Owners, Do These Things to End The Year Well
Some of My Personal Tips For the End of Year / New Year Season Relating to Your Business and Personal Journey as a Founder
If you have not already, please PLEASE fill out our annual reader/listeners survey. It will help us improve as we head into 2026! God Bless you and thank you for your support in 2025. If you’re at all like me, I have a feeling you’re wondering where the heck this year went. Only two and a half weeks left for this year.
Today will be our last Saintly CEO post of the year since we have Christmas next week, and I’m in the middle of moving to Nashville. Plus, I need a bit of time to decompress and think about what next year looks like for Catholic Founders.
Welcome back to Saintly CEO. Every Monday, while you sip your coffee, get some tactical advice to run your business fully in union with your Catholic faith.
Each week you’ll find…
CF News/Updates | Tactical Advice to Run Your Biz Like a Saint | Other Catholic Biz Owners For You to Meet (Heavenly Hustlers) | And Some Misc. Resources
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News / Updates
🍝 Tomorrow we’re hosting a private dinner in NYC for Catholic Biz owners. We are at capacity, but if you are really cool and want to attend, reach out to me directly, and I’ll see if we can make it happen.
🤠 I’m moving to Nashville in January! If you’re based in Nashville, please reach out. I’m looking to make new friends as we get established in what we hope will be our forever city.
🛑 Last issue of Saintly CEO this year. We’ll be back in January.
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19 End of Year Practices: Spiritual, Personal, Business, Relationships, & Financial
The year is ending. Instead of just stumbling along into the new year, let’s bring some intentionality to it. Here are some of the practices I like to do at the end/start of a new year, and some that others have shared with me over the years.
Phase I: Personal & Spiritual Reflection
#1 Review Your Year
Do an annual review. You could do this as a blog post recapping the key events and lessons. You might consider doing a podcast-style discussion with you and your wife or your business partners.
This is the basis for the year, so you can reflect and learn from the year.
Keep in mind, this is helpful on the business front, but it’s also good on the personal side. Your future generations will appreciate it.
#2 Conduct an Energy Audit
For founders, it’s important to understand yourself. Review your past year of activities. Which events gave you energy? Which drained you? Which do you regret?
This requires honesty. Look at your calendar and identify the moments that lit you up versus the ones that dragged you down. Adjust accordingly in the coming year.
#3 Consider Where You Need to Grow Spiritually
The end of the year is a good time to review your spiritual life. Which practices did you lose throughout the year? Which area of your life do you feel is lacking or decaying?
Pray about this and commit to fixing it. Ideally, do this through spiritual direction.
#4 Take Note of the Themes From The Year
Spend time in prayer and contemplation, seeking God’s guidance, while reflecting on the year. Eventually, a theme will likely emerge. This theme could be the thing you struggled with, or the thing you did well. It will teach you something and help you decide what to focus on in the new year.
Just be sure to pray for an open heart to hear God’s guidance.
#5 Consider a Silent Retreat
Silence is going to be critical to identifying the key lessons from the year. I’d highly recommend at least a weekend silent retreat. Time in silence is how we hear God. He’s always speaking to us, but often, we are not listening.
This age-old practice is age-old for a reason.
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If you’re a Catholic or conservative organization looking to cut through the fog, reach out to Verso Jobs to help you today.
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. ⛰️Phase II: Business Health & Strategy
#6 Evaluate Strategic Risk
Are you, or one of your team, a key person that, if hit by a bus tomorrow, could really hurt the business? You have families who rely on you, and you have some plans in place should this happen. Find ways to reduce this risk.
Do you have one client who makes up most of your business? Consider diversifying by landing other similar clients.
#7 Review Your Key Constraints
A business grows through identifying the key constraint and removing that constraint. Identify your business bottlenecks and make plans to fix them.
If you don’t identify the constraint, you might be optimizing the wrong part of the business. Is it operations? Sales? Talent? Find the choke point and focus your efforts there.
#8 Conduct a Client Review
Which clients did you make the most money with? Which ones gave you the most headaches? And which were the easiest?
Determine this so you can find more of the good clients in the coming year, and find a way to release the bad clients. Most people never stop to recognize this, and they keep servicing clients that drain their resources. Fire the bottom 10% to make room for the top 10%.
#9 Check for Vision Drift
Identify if the vision for your team has drifted. Either focusing on the wrong things, or just in need of a reminder as to why we do what we do.
Remember, vision drift is actually natural. As the leader, you need to keep the team focused on the vision.
Phase III: Financial Stewardship
#10 Perform a Financial Review
Did you have lifestyle creep? Do you have a strong handle on the profitability of your business?
Are there areas you can reduce the cost of doing business? Is there room for negotiating down the products you have to procure? Dig into the P&L and see where the leaks are. It’s easy to ignore the small expenses when revenue is flowing, but they add up.
#11 Review Tax Allocations
Are there any last-minute contributions you can make to tax-deferred accounts to reduce the tax burden?
Review this with your CPA before the ball drops. There is often money left on the table simply because founders forget to maximize their tax-advantaged accounts or make necessary capital purchases before year-end.
#12 Conduct a Full Asset Review
It’s worth reviewing your assets at the end of the year: Physical, financial, and digital. Were your assets put to good use in the past year? How could they be used better in the coming year?
Are you giving enough to charity? Do you have a digital presence that needs deletion or updating (I update my personal website at least once a year). Ensure your assets are working for you, not gathering dust.
Phase IV: Relationships & Legacy
#13 Write an Ethical Will
I’ve heard of upper-class families, or big-time business executives, writing an annual Ethical Will. It’s similar to a normal will, but focused on addressing the key leaders in the business or the family.
It shares what lessons were learned from the year, what to avoid in the coming year, and other exhortations like that. I personally like the idea of writing a letter to all my future generations with the lessons and exhortations that would follow from those lessons so my future children and grandchildren can read at will.
#14 Hold a Family Meeting
Meet with your family to discuss the year. It’s especially important to include your children so they can reflect on their year and develop the habit for themselves.
Ask them what they want to focus on in the coming year. This helps them create a culture of goal setting and achievement. This would be a great time to talk about the 100-year goal for the family and how we can advance that goal this year.
#15 Do Relationship Maintenance
You may have key friends that you have not spoken with in a long time. This time of year is a good time to either host a party for them to attend (or plan for one later in the year) or to reach out to them directly.
Catch up with them over a phone call. Maintaining relationships and social capital is important for your business, your family, and your ability to carry out projects in the community.
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 admin@catholicfounders.com with what you’re looking for and we’ll get started. Phase V: Planning for the Year Ahead
#16 Hold a Leadership Meeting
Just as you meet with your family, the same thing should be true for your business. Meet with all relevant members of the team to discuss the goals for the coming year.
Some would say this is only meant for leaders, but I honestly think that a lot of these discussions should include your employees, even to the lowest level, so they have a sense of ownership in the company.
#17 Set a Motto For the Coming Year
Based on your reflections, you may have an idea of where you ought to focus in the coming year. Make that your theme. For example, I recall dubbing 2024, the year of Focus (it was).
Importantly, you must find a way to recall this theme throughout the year for maximum effectiveness. Without reminding yourself of the theme or motto, you’ll likely find yourself drifting (although the act of committing to a theme tends to give you a decent subconscious guidance system).
#18 Identify the “One Thing”
Identify the most important thing for you to focus on in the coming 12 months. Similar to the bottleneck question, what is the key thing you can do in the coming 12 months, day in and day out, to drive your business forward?
It’s effectively the 20% of things that help produce 80% of the results. Whatever that is, focus on that and say no to the distractions that detract from that vision. Be it new ideas or small, insignificant product lines.
#19 Set Goals For the Coming Year
This may sound silly and basic, well, it is. Yet, many people do not do a goal-setting exercise. But doing so is critical. People who publicly state their goals are far more likely to achieve them (I forget the exact stats).
So make your goals, and state them publicly. Even if no one checks in on you, it will still help you achieve them.
One time, I stated on Twitter I was going to run 400 miles in a year. By March, I had done something like 15 miles. But because I had a public thread on Twitter, I ended up getting ahead of schedule by mid-year. Then finished the goal sometime in December.
This has been a relatively extensive list. I assume some will resonate with you more than others. Pick the ones that do and do them well. Please prioritize the spiritual ones! I cannot emphasize this enough.
Thank you so much for reading. God bless you! Blessed Advent, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
God Bless & Happy Building
~Silas Mähner
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See you in the Catholic Founders Guild! Heavenly Hustlers
Looking to meet other ambitious Catholic business owners? You’re in the right place.
Meet today’s Heavenly Hustlers.
📈 Brendan Hickey is the founder of FounderGrow. He helps founders grow their sales/revenue. He’s got some solid experience — definitely reach out if you’re looking to grow revenue. Brendan recently joined the Catholic Founders Guild (you should too!)
📊 Josh Garbuio is the Co-Founder of Leo. An AI tool to help you with your digital marketing needs.
👕 Jack Ogle is the Co-Founder of Racct, Inc. A platform that allows you to list products for sale with one picture. They are betting big on the fact that Gen Z likes to buy second-hand.
🎥 Myles Vosylius is a film producer based in Canada, in the process of developing a new film. Reach out to him if you’re at all interested in helping fund his work. Check out his site.
🧴 Maria Tweed is the owner of Dr. Sylma. Currently a skincare brand (soon to be more). She’s a recent joiner of the Catholic Founders Guild as well!
🙋♂️ 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.
Join DOMINUS Lab (tons of resources to help build 1000 Christian Startups)
Events:
Content:
Here is our recent episode with 9 principles to consider when starting a business.
Check out our recent episode with Matthew Harvey Sanders — the man behind the Catholic ChatGPT.
I really liked this recent episode of Hormozi on a variety of topics — including sales and talent.
I re-listened to an old episode of Founders on the large family dynasties. Check it out.
Please, please consider getting this book, “Leaving a Legacy” by Johann Kurtz. We’ll be releasing an episode with him soon, but this book is really good for anyone who cares about doing God’s will in this world and being a true steward.
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.
OFFSHORE TALENT: Hire a Catholic Virtual Assistant through ParacleteVA (email us: dearcfpod@gmail.com)
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