The Saintly CEO: Justice in Business: What You Owe Others
Plus, How a Bias-for-Action Landed this Entrepreneur a Job with One of Silicon Valey's OGs.
Happy belated Father’s Day to all the dads out there. St. Joseph, patron saint of fathers — pray for us!
Welcome back to The Saintly CEO. A free weekly newsletter from Catholic Founders.
Each week get (1) tactical ways to integrate your Faith w/ your business, (2) a curated list of Catholic biz owners, and (3) misc. resources to help you with your business.
In Today’s Email:
CF Role Model: How This Entrepreneur’s Willingness to Take Action Led to an Incredible Opportunity
+ 5 more Catholic entrepreneurs (Heavenly Hustlers)
What it Means to be a Just Business Owner
Miscellaneous Resources
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🚨 Quick Announcement!
Later this week we’ll be hosting a Catholic Founders Guild group call. If you’d like to join upgrade to paid today.
Heavenly Hustlers
Looking to find more Catholics who share your ambition? Each week, we curate a short list to do just that.
Huge shout-out to Catholic Owned for partnering with us to aid in this curation experience. Catholic Owned is building the Catholic Economy — currently it’s a huge database of Catholic business owners, so we can buy from each other.
Some of those listed each week were discovered through Catholic Owned.
We encourage you to get listed in Catholic Owned today if you’re not already.
CF Role Model:
✝️ Juan Acosta is the founder of Tabella. He’s co-founder of SENT Angels, a project that is connected with SENT Ventures.
We’ll be hearing from him on the pod soon but I wanted to highlight him to you today. The reason being, he exemplifies what it means to be a Catholic Founder.
Through wanting to help and be involved (aka, put his hand up) he ended up eventually becoming the COO at legendary Silicon Valley investor, Tim Draper’s university (Draper U).
Through this experience, he ended up getting sent to the Vatican to help make priests more entrepreneurial. Eventually, he founded Tabella to help dramatically shift how parishes manage their communities.
All because he is willing to step up and help. To take action. Let’s imitate Juan’s action-oriented mindset.
Other Heavenly Hustlers:
👕 Brandy Drzymkowski is building Saints and Symbols. A clothing brand for Catholics with pretty 🔥 work.
🎧 Will Hickl runs the largest Catholic record label, Novum Records. In addition to that he’s building Fio (Spotify but only Catholic creators on it — it also pays creators much more per stream).
📈 Emily Ricci is the owner of Gloriam Marketing. They help churches, ministries, and small businesses to “Market like Jesus.”
👮♂️ Daniel Francis (on the pod last week) is the Founder of Abel Police. A startup that helps police fill out reports from body cam footage. Saving them ~30% of their time.
💸 Aarya Agarwal is the co-founder of Prospinity. A product that allows self-selected groups of people to share a percentage of future income.
🙋♂️ Nominate a Heavenly Hustler (including yourself) - It takes 1 min.
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Justice in Business: What You Owe Others
When we talk about justice, it’s often in the context of the law and judges. But it’s more than that. It’s something that should be practiced throughout life because it’s a natural virtue.
The truth is justice means giving to someone what they are owed.
Respect to our parents for the sacrifices they’ve made for us and the love they’ve showed us. Without their participation in God’s creation, we wouldn’t exist.
Our tithes to the Church for the services we receive from her.
Support to our neighbors when they are in need so that together we can maintain the social contract.
This list goes on and on.
But it’s not just about to whom we owe effort, in justice. It’s also, to what extent we owe that effort.
Spider-Man
If we believe, as we do, that all our gifts, skills, interests, and good desires come from God, we must recognize that to those of us much has been given, much more is expected of us.
Yep! We’re all Spider-Man to an extent.
“With great power comes great responsibility” - Spider-Man
If we run a billion-dollar business, we have a greater responsibility to give than someone who runs a million-dollar business.
Don’t be mislead. Just because you don’t have billions doesn’t mean you aren’t called to do more. If you even run a small business doing a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue, you still have a lot more than someone who is working a factory job.
Even a small business like that gives you certain freedoms. It’s not only about financial success.
You have:
Freedome to spend your time on your terms
Contact and influence with the community you live in
Opportunity to be principled because you’re self-employed
All of these things allow you greater reach and ability than your average factory worker. All this in addition to making good money.
Justice to Our Community
It’s important to point out here as well, that because you run a business, you owe something to your customers. If you run a small business that serves the local community (as many of us do) you owe something, in justice, to that local community.
What do you owe?
It’s partially up to you to figure out in what way God is calling you.
Maybe it’s financial. Maybe it’s volunteering in your community. Maybe it’s using your influence to speak up to the mayor about a local issue. The what will be different for most of us but there is a what somewhere. We just have to seek it.
Sins of Omission
On last week’s episode of the pod, Daniel gave us a really good reminder. He pointed out that at the start of every mass we say the confiteor and most of us just zip past one of the most convicting lines of the prayer.
“I confess to almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”
Read it again. “…and in what I have failed to do,…”
How often do we examine what we ought to have done in a day, a week, or year.
What instances have we been presented with an opportunity and simply ignored it.
How often do we miss opportunities altogether because we are not putting in the effort to seek them?
If we’re being honest, they are probably slapping us in the face half of the time, but we’re so unwilling to entertain the possibility of action. Oh no! Not me Lord!
We Can’t Make Excuses
As business owners, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of thinking we are just too busy. It’s not optimal for my calendar. It would require me to lose focus. It might slow down my trajectory.
Those things might be true, but optimizing financial outcomes is not what God calls us to do. We are called to rise to the occasions He puts in front of us. To use our skills to carry out His divine will.
Resolve
So, as we start this week of work, let’s begin to observe well. That through doing this, we may identify the areas we feel called by God, to take action. And let’s pray every day that we may practice the virtue of justice.
To our employees
To our family
To our customers
To our community/neighorhood
To our priests
To our parish
To our country
To our suppliers
And through doing all of this, justice to God, our Father in Heaven.
Call to Action
By the end of June, let’s decide one way we will practice extraordinary justice. It could be some ongoing thing we add to our schedule. It could be a one time act of building a shrine or painting a mural. There are many ways — we just need to figure out which one we will pursue and proceed with the strength of the Lord sustaining us.
God Bless & Happy Building
~Silas Mähner
Misc. Resources:
Groups:
Events:
Later this week we’re hosting a Catholic Founders Guild discussion. If you’d like to join, upgrade to paid today.
Sign up for the SENT Summit (Sep 8-11, 2025, in Notre Dame, Indiana)
A summer course for Catholic high schoolers to learn entrepreneurship (actually launch a business) taught by the Catholic University of America (closed for this year, consider for next year)
Content:
Recently Marcellino D’Ambrosio came on the pod to discuss moral marketing. In standard Marcellino fashion, it was full of hot-takes. It got pretty real at some points. Highly recommend.
If you’re interested in family legacy, check out this interview from Moment of Zen w/ Samo Burja, that makes the case for family dynastices over meritocracies. Very fascinating.
David Perell just did a great interview with Alex Hormozi on his writing. — this was killer
(Side note, I actually ‘interviewed’ David in 2019 when I was just getting started. It was just conversations — zero editing — it’s terrible but we all start somewhere)
Services:
Hire a Catholic Virtual Assistant through ParacleteVA (email us: dearcfpod@gmail.com)
Hire the best guidance when buying, selling, or passing down a business from our very own Zach Scardino at Scardino Strategic Partnerrs. He came on the pod — Episode #7
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