🇻🇦🤝 Hope. The Antidote to Anxiety. Saintly CEO
How Hope keeps us going especially when business feels challenging and dry
Happy, and hopeful, Tuesday to you, dear sir (or madam)!
Welcome back to Saintly CEO: the Tuesday morning newsletter for business owners whose first objective is to become a saint.
IN TODAY’S ISSUE
News/Updates/Events
Feature Content: Hope in Time of Anxiety
Heavenly Hustlers x 6
[read time: ~10.5 min | word count 2, 312]
News / Updates / Events:
SHORT NOTICE: Andrew Whiskeyman is hosting a meetup for Catholic Business owners in Tampa this week on the 6th. Sign up now.
Nashville founders and biz owners, we have another meetup lined up. More details here. 👀
For Guild Members, we have launched our first exclusive Guild Members-only newsletter with Wins, Asks, and Updates shared by members. A valuable way to connect with each other more deeply. ❤️🔥
On our latest episode of Catholic Founders pod, we’re joined by Lucas and Jessica Moser. They are a married couple raising five young children on an acreage in rural Virginia, building a life centered on faith, family, and hard work.
Check out all of our in-person events on our Luma page.
It’s the month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Stay prayed up and close to Our Lady through the Holy Rosary. 🙏
And… don’t forget that August 15th is the Feast of the Assumption. A Holy Day of Obligation. Be sure to make it special. After all, you’re a business owner, and can make your own hours.
Don’t Waste Your Parish’s Money
A mismanaged budget is a headache in business. In the Church, it’s a tragedy. Every dollar wasted on a poorly run construction project is a dollar taken from the mission.
When your parish or diocese is building something, goodwill isn’t enough. You need professional, unyielding stewardship.
Our Father Constructors and Associates acts as your expert owner’s representative. They support projects from $1M to $45M. Cristian and his team manage the architects, protect the capital, and find the money you didn’t know you were losing. They ensure what you build today serves the Church for generations.
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👉 Visit ourfather.us or email cristian@ourfather.us today.
Hope in Time of Anxiety
Today, I’m going to be pretty open. Largely because I view my own journey, with life and business, as the means by which God is teaching me things, so that I might share them with you. We all know a person can know a thing through information. But they can also know a thing through experience. When teaching, it’s best to teach from experience.
Most of you know that I started my recruiting consultancy in the spring of 2024, the same time that I started Catholic Founders. The first few months were dry. I only closed one deal, which fell through because the candidate accepted an offer from another company after agreeing to the one I had presented.
It was dry.
Then, on the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, I got an out-of-the-blue call from a contact I barely knew. That ended up turning into about 2/3 of my revenue for the rest of that year. Since then, the business has continued to grow. Quarter after quarter. Not every month was great, but as a whole, we kept growing steadily.
To the point where Q1 of this year I did as much revenue as I had done the entire first year of business. Wow. Incredible. I was on a roll. I couldn’t fail.
You might know where this is going.
These past few months — from around April till early July — things have been challenging. We’ve had clients pull the plug on us. My team and I miss delivery timelines. We've struggled to land new clients. And for the first time since starting this business, some upset clients.
Starting around June, when I’d sit down to do my financial projections on how fast we’d run out of money, it started to hit me. I’m in a deep hole and need to figure this out soon. Honestly, I started to panic. I’ll work harder, put in more hours, call in favors.
None of it worked. We kept going deeper into the hole. To the point where I had to dig deep into my savings and investing accounts to make payroll, several times.
During this time, I was struggling deeply with anxiety and trust in God. I knew intellectually that He would take care of us. That even if I ran into financial ruin, He’d still love me, and I’d still have a place in heaven.
But, expecting another child in a few weeks, and having a family reliant on me, it was really, really hard to pull out of that tailspin mindset. Each day I’d ask God for help trusting in Him and for total abandonment to His will. But the anxiety was still there. Some days I was paralyzed by it.
Then everything changed.
Is Your Money Being Stewarded — or Just Managed?
Most financial advisors will ask what you want your money to do. Tom Rooney and Matthew Mohlman at Monument Advisers start somewhere different — they ask what God is calling you to build. They work with Catholic business owners to bring real stewardship to their finances: investment plans built around your values, guidance on whether a business retirement plan makes sense, and access to private market opportunities most advisors never bring up.
Tom and Matthew want to extend an invitation for an estate health check with their team. It’s kind of like an annual physical, but in this case there’s no cold hands or awkwardness in the waiting room! This check is an easy way to uncover gaps in your overall financial picture and then take action to establish foundational estate documents that address those you care for.
PS: Tom and Matthew aren’t just advisors — they’re Catholic founders themselves, building this alongside guys like us. That’s exactly why we trust them with this conversation.
No. I didn’t land another big client to subdue the worries. In fact, we are still in a very tight spot. I’m probably going to have to keep dipping into my reserve cash to dig us out of this hole.
The thing that changed is God plopped in my head a reminder of the virtue of Hope.
You see, hope and anxiety are incompatible. If we have hope, there is no space for the rumination that occurs during your bouts of anxiety. How can you have anxiety when you’re focused on heaven — on that eternal reward, the endless banquet — the beatific vision.
When you have anxiety, you’re thinking about the future in terms of fear of lack of control. How can I dispel that future fear by controlling something in the present?
The Church teaches explicitly about anxiety, quoting St. Peter.
Christ invites us to filial trust in the providence of our heavenly Father (cf Mt 6:26-34), and St. Peter the apostle repeats: “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you” ( I Pt 5:7; cf. Ps 55:23).
The Church is telling us that Anxiety takes us in the opposite direction of hope. It pushes us away from trusting God’s providence and toward being stuck inside our own worries.
Hope helps us move forward in confidence. The Catechism says.
“When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God’s love and of incurring punishment.”
As you know, I’m not a theologian; I don’t have expert knowledge of all these things. I can’t perfectly translate all of this into a simple, logical argument for why hope is the path.
What I can say is, I know, deep down in my bones, that me being consumed with anxiety is not going to help me move towards the future with strength and confidence in God.
I do know that if I am full of hope, I would be unstoppable. Because God is right there with me. That hope is a trust that He will, in fact, walk alongside me. He will give me the strength to overcome any situation. To act in charity when it may be hard.
I also know that my team, my family, and all those around me will respond better to my leadership if I’m walking with hope. There is a certain vibe that exudes from a man full of hope that does not exist from a man full of anxiety. There is certainly something exuding from a man full of anxiety, but it’s not positive, and it does not inspire.
“The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.” — Pope Benedict XVI
Remember. This hope is ultimately a hope in a person: Jesus. Once we know that Jesus is always with us, and that we are granted eternal life in Him, we ought to hope.
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It’s probably important to mention that this realization only happened last week. So, I am by no means well-versed at keeping this hope front and center. But I can say, ever since having this reminder from God, anytime the anxiety shows up — the worry about the future — how I’ll feed my family — how I’ll pay rent — it’s become nearly impossible to dip down into that pool of anxious thought. How can I? Knowing that God is right beside me and he’s asking me to look up? To look to the cross. To look to heaven as he ascends into the clouds. To look to the saints and Our Blessed Mother.
No. I cannot have anxiety anymore. I’m sure the devil will continue to try and lay it on. Surely one day I may even forget this lesson after the evil one lays off for some time. But deep down I know now that God is calling me to hope in His promise to me and to each and every one of you.
I know — for a fact — there are many of you reading who are not where you want or even need to be financially in your businesses. The early days are hard. It’s not easy to get that momentum going. But I want this to be your rallying cry.
“In you, O my God, I put my trust” (Psalm 24:2)
Spiritually, bring yourself into alignment with God and the eternal beatific vision that He’s promised us. Keep that as your focus. It will be like a taut rope pulling you in like a tractor beam in a space sci-fi movie. Nothing can divert you from moving towards that eternal bliss as long as you have hope. No distractions, no worries, nothing.
Place your hope in the Lord. It will make you a better leader. And it will guide you on your business journey too.
God Bless & Happy Building
~Silas Mähner
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Heavenly Hustlers
These are other Catholic business owners. Nominate one (including yourself).
🧔🏻🤝 John Mullen, based in Columbus, Ohio, operates The Arena, a ministry project dedicated to building fraternal brotherhood and spiritual networking for young adult men. He focuses on facilitating local environments for formation and mentorship.
💻🔊 Vincent Roberts of Charcoal Agency, based in Cincinnati, helps other owners become known and trusted by the right buyers through organic content. In short, write content, get customers (but he does it for you).
🪙🔐 Teresa Suarez, founder of Washington, DC-based DiVinciX (DiVinciX = Divine + da Vinci + the eXploration of space). She is developing a FinSecOps platform that shifts cybersecurity from a fear-based model to a value-driven approach (quantifying risk).
🦺👷🏻 Joshua Garay of Garay Concrete Work Co in DFW, Texas. He is a hustler in specialized concrete work. If you’re looking to build, message them.
🛜 Kenan Wursthorn from Indiana, IN, is a Co-Founder of Signalyze AI. It is an AI engine that helps sales teams grow revenue.
📆📒 Jennifer Autry is the Founder and Lead Consultant of AMDG Events Co. They partner with Catholic non-profits, parishes, and schools in creating excellent and truly God-glorifying and generosity-inspiring fundraising events.
🙋♂️ 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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