Saintly CEO: Your Business Is An Engine of Community Creation (Part 3 of 3)
Create Community w/ Other Biz Owners, and Within Your Organization
Welcome back for part 3 of 3 on why you’re called to build community.
It’s important to read Part 1 on the theology (the WHY) behind this idea — and Part 2 focuses on your parish and your neighborhood. Would recommend reading that too, but not critical before jumping into today’s post.
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…
IN TODAY’S ISSUE
News/Updates
Feature Content: Build Community In Your Business, and Within Your Industry
Heavenly Hustlers
Misc Resources
[read time: ~7.5 min | word count 1,648]
News / Updates
We’re planning to host a dinner/hangout in Nashville soon — reach out if you’re interested (if you’re local or planning to drive/fly in)
If you’d like to host a meetup / dinner in your area, reach out — admin@catholicfounders.com
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Please! Check out last week’s episode of the podcast with Dr. Daniel Tataje!!! His story is one that should inspire all of us with a few ways we can learn to be saints in business. Please listen to it and reach out to him if you’re looking for advice on growing your biz.
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Build Your Business Community
Alright! So far, we’ve covered community building in the Family, the Parish, and the Neighborhood. Now, let’s talk about building community in your business and with other business owners.
Your business is not just a way to make money. It’s an engine of community.
You have employees, customers, suppliers, and then the general public that interface with your business (especially relevant for brick and mortar).
What are you to do with this engine?
Number 1: Build Community for/with Your Employees.
Your employees are more than your employees. They are humans with human desires and needs. They want to feel a sense of belonging at work. This doesn’t always mean a warm and fuzzy work culture with beanbags and free lunches. In most cases, that’s actually not it. People want to be respected at work. They want to know their workmates and boss have their back. They want to be part of a bigger mission. They want to have opportunities to grow and be challenged. You can create that through how you treat your employees.
You can also help them foster friendships with each other.
Consider hosting events for your team outside of a work context. Volunteering for a community project, going to mass together, hosting a picnic, lunches, etc. Ways for them to be around each other, outside of the work context helps them to develop friendships. When this happens, they start to understand each other better and have more empathy for their co-worker in times of need or challenge.
This also helps with employee retention and recruiting (it becomes its own gravitational pull, keeping people there and bringing new folks into orbit).
Number 2: Build community with other business owners.
This relates to business owners in your industry, your local geography, and with other Catholic business owners.
Within Your Industry:
Developing a strong community with your industry peers helps with collaboration/partnerships, learning for you, helping each other out if needed, etc. And one last key thing is — the ability to shape the industry. If you can influence these others to act a certain way, say within a framework of Christian morals, couldn’t you imagine the entire industry trending in a certain way? Thus leading to better outcomes for all of your customers (aka, many humans).
In Your Local Geography:
Especially if you’re a brick-and-mortar, but even if you’re not, you live in a place. You’re surrounded by other business owners who have a vested interest in the success of the community. Why not host breakfast gatherings, dinners, or even just 1:1 coffee chats with them? You never know when the time may come for you, as a local community of business owners may come to help influence a city board meeting or maybe get approval for some community project y’all want to fund.
Especially if you’re in an area with high foot traffic, y’all together could do a lot to beautify the space, even just through how you decorate and maintain your shops.
With other Catholic Business Owners:
This may not seem obvious to you, but that’s okay, because I’m literally obsessed with this topic.
We as Catholics, who also run/own businesses, believe (know) ourselves to have the morally correct position on many matters (because the Church possesses the fullness of the truth). If we actually believe that, why wouldn’t we be involved in influencing the world around us towards that gold standard — truth?
If you’re serious about doing that, you’re going to want to have allies who also understand these same things. Other Catholic business owners who will put in a call, donate money, or offer their assets for your use. If you’ve got enough of you, you can achieve a lot of things.
On top of this, it gives you the opportunity to learn how other Catholic business owners are integrating their faith into their work. Or working through a tough challenge. This matters because we do not approach our challenges in the same way that a secular entrepreneur would. We know there is eternity behind each decision.
To build this community:
Host general meetups
Go to mass together
Meet with them 1:1
Rally behind their projects
Join the Catholic Founders Guild (yes, it’s a plug - but it’s great, I promise)
Through doing this well, we can retake society for God. Much more easily than we can alone.
Unity for Good:
I must point out that the purpose of this coordination and collaboration is to operate in unity — in the same way the Trinity has perfect unity, we aim to imitate that. However, we must resist the urge to do things that just benefit us at the expense of others. None of this works unless we are acting in a morally acceptable way.
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Email us your needs -> hire in days -> admin@catholicfounders.com The Bottom Line
At the end of all this, there are two key reasons to build community in business as we’ve laid out today.
To have influence so that you can organize this group of people to do things that are good for society. If you want to build a project for the community (say a mural) wouldn’t it be a lot easier to make that happen if you have dozens of employees willing to help out with time, as well as other influential business owners willing to pitch in financially and politically in your area?
To create a foundation of friendship, which is the soil upon which conversion can begin. Without this deeper, more than transactional relationship, you cannot invite people to mass. They cannot see what you’re about enough to get curious. The opportunities for sowing are just fewer when you’re just another transaction during their day.
Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s get to work.
~Silas Mähner
Heavenly Hustlers
These are other Catholic business owners. Nominate one (including yourself).
🍻 Thor Cheston is the owner of Right Proper Brewing out of DC. Shoutout to SENT Ventures for the recent highlight to help me discover him.
🧔♂️ Tony Vasinda is the co-owner of Catholic Balm Co. (They have some great beard balm, soap, and other men’s hygine products).
🤖 Alejandro Laplana is the founder and CEO of Shokworks, Inc. Founding Partner of Austin AI Lab. And an investor in many other companies. If you’re interested in where AI is headed practically, and want some strategic advice, I’d highly recommend reaching out to him.
💸 Eric Jones is the President of Workforce PayHub Inc and owner of Your Financial Solutions, Inc. Based out of the Detroit area.
🌐 Carson Weber is the Founder and CEO of On Fire Media, where they do digital marketing and website development.
🙋♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.
Thank you to Catholic Owned for helping us find some of these folks each week. Get listed today!
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Become a sponsor 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 (kind of like Catholic YC)
Events:
Content:
Last week’s guest beat PE firms offers to buy out dentist offices, even tho he had a lower offer. Learn why. (Yes, this is a very YouTube-esque title, but this is one of the best guests we’ve ever had on).
I really enjoyed this episode of the Catholic Gentleman (The Husband’s Authority (4 Ways Men Are Called to Protect Their Families)
Services:
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