Saintly CEO: You Don’t Always Have to Go Fast
Pacing And Speed Are Different When God's In Charge. Understand God's Pace For You
Hey everyone, welcome back to another Saintly CEO Monday newsletter! The place you go on Mondays, while you sip your coffee, get some tactical advice to run your business fully in union with your Catholic faith.
Thank you for coming back week after week. Shoutout to our biggest fan, Andreas Widmer.
I was just on his podcast last week, and he told me it’s one of the few newsletters he reads each week. If that isn’t the best endorsement I could ask for, I don’t know what is. Thank you all for reading each week.
Today we’ll be talking about pacing. Timing. Speed.
But first, some events/announcements.
IN TODAY’S ISSUE
News/Events
Feature Content:
[read time: ~6.5 min | word count 1,392]
News / Updates
The YCP Conference was amazing. Stay tuned for more info.
The dinner in Dallas was also amazing! You’ll see pictures at some point.
Our next Nashville meetup is happening on the 28th of April (tentatively). Register here.
We are likely hosting a Columbus meetup in early May. Reach out if you want to influence the mission.
And finally, remember if you know a Catholic who wants to start a business, send them my way. We are looking to invest heavily in helping Catholics refine their ideas, launch their businesses, and get to their first million in revenue.
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You Don’t Always Have to Go Fast
I’m writing this from a Tex-Mex spot in Dallas. I’ve been in Dallas since Wednesday, and the schedule has been relentless: I did the Beatidudes podcast Thursday. Had a few meetings Friday. Recorded three episodes at the YCP conference on Saturday. Somehow kept my own businesses running. And to top it all off, tonight, I’m hosting a Catholic Founders Dinner at Rob Hays’ home.
Why am I giving you a play-by-play? Because these last six months have been an all-out sprint. If you asked my closest friends, they’d say I’m stretched thin. Some might say burned out (I wouldn’t say that).
This pace has forced me to ask myself… How hard should I push? Should I cut everything else out to go all-in on one thing? Should I be dissatisfied with our growth to date?
Endless questions.
Despite the black hole of questions I could ask myself, it started to make some sense once I considered a few of the characteristics of God.
A Theological Framework for Pace
To find peace, I had to recall a few fundamental truths:
God exists outside of time. He isn’t stressed by some arbitrary quarterly deadline.
God doesn’t have a rigid timeline. He isn’t checking a watch to see if you hit a specific objective by age 30 or 50. He doesn’t care about you getting on Forbes 30 under 30.
God wants your presence. He desires your love in the present moment, not your anxiety about the future. Anxiety about the future is a lack of trust in God.
God honors duty. He calls us to fulfill our obligations to our families and our health, not neglect them for the sake of making more money.
When I internalized these, I realized I don’t have to push to an inhuman level. God asks me to work hard, but He does not ask me to ignore the natural signals of stress or burnout. Those act as traffic signals for me. Telling me to go faster, slow down, or stop.
Re-Ordering the Mission
This shift in perspective is already changing my behavior. I am learning to turn down anything that doesn’t serve my primary missions. I’ve categorized them by the Level of Duty:
Justice (The Business): My clients have paid for a service. In justice, they deserve what they paid for. This stays at the top of the list.
Mission (Catholic Founders): This is a calling. It gets as much time as I can spare to keep the weekly and monthly momentum alive.
Legacy (My Dad’s Business): While I’m helping this grow, it isn’t urgent in the same way. I’ve found peace in the fact that I won’t work on it as intensely right now; it’s a slower build.
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Email us your needs -> hire in days -> admin@catholicfounders.com How to Evaluate Your Own Pace
If sprinting is crushing you, or you’re worried you’re not going fast enough, consider these four filters:
1. Type of Venture
If you are building a venture-scaled business, your investors expect a ludicrous pace. In winner-take-all markets, success often requires being first. If you have chosen this path, acknowledge it and buckle up, buttercup. That’s the nature of the beast.
2. The Manufactured Rush
Alex Hormozi points out that most “rush” is manufactured. Unless you are competing for the first-ever smartphone users, your pace probably doesn’t matter as much as you think. Growing a service company or a local business doesn’t require you to go crazy fast. Most of the time, the pressure is just our own impatience.
I would add that in some cases, rushing can hurt your business growth. Rush can lead to bad customer experiences, which slows down the compounding machine of customer satisfaction.
3. Your Season of Life
In the same way you cannot control when or where you were born (I’ve talked about this a lot) you cannot simply change your state of life. If you are married with children, you cannot abandon them for the sake of advancing your venture. That would be a violation of your primary vocation. Your season of life dictates, to an extent, what pace you can have while still fulfilling your family obligations. Accept the constraint; it is a gift, not a curse.
4. The Timing of Your Calling
Some founders aren’t ready to build their great work until their 50s; others start at 18. Daniel Ek talks about Founder-Fit. A lot of investors also consider this when evaluating a founder. Some people are uniquely qualified, by skills, life experiences, and/or personality, to build specific businesses or types of business. Don’t rush a door that hasn’t opened yet.
All In Versus Part Time Build
Before we wrap up, I also want to address going all in on your venture versus building your way out. Using prudence, it’s up to you to understand if God is calling you to take the leap and trust in Him. Or if you should build your way out of your job.
As my friend Joseph Henry recently reminded me, Slow and Steady wins the race.
Just because some of the famous entrepreneurs, whom many of us undoubtedly look up to, went all in and made it work, doesn’t mean that’s what we are called to do.
Conclusion
God has a pace for you. There is no universal rulebook, only the specific call He has placed on your life.
But here’s the thing. You will only be able to hear the instructions He gives you if you take the time to reflect on your circumstances rather than just sprinting through them. Your circumstances are often how God speaks to you. He gives you hints, you just have to look for them.
Push hard, but push within the boundaries of the life God gave you.
God Bless & Happy Building
~Silas Mähner
Highlights
If you want the full list of resources, you can get them here: The Ultimate Catholic Founders Resource Guide.
Feel free to bookmark it as we’ll continue to update it. And if you have suggestions on what to add, ping us (even if you want to promote your own stuff).
Today’s Highlights Are…
Being skipped. Only so much time to do it.
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Speaking as a founder building a business after a layoff, you must slow down to consider the circumstances God has given you. I have almost burnt out a few times because I was toiling too much, figuring out what's going to make the most money, how many clients I can take on, and how much outreach I should be doing. Silas is right that God speaks to you in those circumstances but you must slow to listen.