The Saintly CEO: There Are No Accidents: Understanding God’s Plan For Your Life

And How Exciting Life is When You Realize You're Made With a Unique Purpose

Silas Mähner

and

Catholic Founders

Jul 21, 2025

I tried to chase my destiny, but it took a detour through purgatory.

Today we’re going to be talking about destiny… or as we Catholics call it, Divine Providence.

Welcome back to The Saintly CEO. Every Monday, while you sip your coffee, get some tactical advice to run your business fully in union with your Catholic faith.

In Today’s Email:

CF Role Model: He Built a Burger Empire and Promoted the Faith
Plus! 5 more Catholic entrepreneurs (Heavenly Hustlers)
Feature Content: There Are No Accidents: Understanding God’s Plan For Your Life
Miscellaneous Resources

[read time: ~8 min | word count 1,798]

Heavenly Hustlers

Looking to meet other ambitious Catholic business owners? You’re in the right place.

Meet today’s Heavenly Hustlers.

🍔 Carl Karcher, the founder of Carl’s Jr. was a devout Catholic who played a huge role in the promotion of The Faith in Southern California.

He passed away in 2008, but in 2013 his company was sold for $928m. He’s kind of the slightly older version of Tom Monaghan, but burgers. It’s worth noting that they started with a hot dog stand. An incredible commitment to the game of entrepreneurship.

Some of the things he did to promote the faith include. Heavy involvement with the Knights of Malta. He funded the promotion of legislation that would uphold Christian values. Large donations to education and medical centers. So much so that he received an award from Pope John the XXIII for exemplifying charitable principles.
🙏 Andrew Laubacher founded Humanality to help people detox from social media and phone addiction. They do this with in person experiences that help us become more human. You won’t find him on social media but you can hear him on podcasts. Here is a recent appearance from The Catholic Gentleman.
💼 Joe Dunikoski is the founder and CEO of Verso Jobs helping ensure values alignment in the hiring process through gamification. He’s based in the Dallas Fort-Worth area.
🚧 John C. Preiss and his family run Preiss Construction Co., Fatima Family Apostolate International, and Veils & Mantillas. This kind of family productivity is something I think a lot of us aspire towards.
💰 Albin George is building Drawing Board Capital to help various diasporas gain access to different emerging market investment opportunities. On a side note, if you are, or you know someone who runs a fund, reach out to him as he’s looking for partnerships.
✅ Drago Dimitrov is building Holy Habits. An app that uses science to help you break out of habitual sin and grow in virtue. I’ve just started using it and it’s really well made. Check it out if you’ve not already heard of it.

🙋‍♂️ 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!

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There Are No Accidents: Understanding God’s Plan For Your Life

Over the past few months, I’ve had several conversations that reminded me of an important truth: Nothing happens by accident. God is always at work in our lives. He’s teaching us, preparing us, and even turning our mistakes into blessings.

It made me realize that in the modern era, we almost always miss the connection between Divine Providence and our lives, especially as business owners.

Divine Providence

Let’s reflect on the role of Divine Providence.

God created everything. If you observe the world for even just a moment, you’ll recognize He has incredible attention to detail. That intentionality and stewardship of everything doesn't have an end; it applies to literally everything.

The Catholic Church teaches that if God were to forget about any one of us, we would cease to exist1. This profound truth extends to every aspect of our lives. God created our soul at the moment of our conception. He chose that specific moment in all of world history, your parents, your geographical location—all of these things were chosen intentionally to create the environment for your life.

Thinking about this always makes me feel a profound sense of closeness with God. I have to admit, it’s something I don’t often feel worthy of, but it’s true for all of us. He is there, choosing all the smallest things. On top of this, we're given unique interests, natural skills, and tendencies. They are not random. While our fallen human nature might put some of these at odds with each other, they are naturally good.

Then, you can look at the other aspects of our life: the "accidents" we get into, the things we’re exposed to, the friends we make, even things as small as the red lights we hit on our way to Mass. He is there in all of them, orchestrating His plan.

Our Free Will

Now let’s consider our free will.

The thing that makes us most human, I would argue, is our free will. It’s the defining aspect of our lives, of human nature, and of all human history. Without it, we’d be robots. Because of it, the great drama of salvation unfolds – from the “no” that led to the fall of man — all the way to Mary’s "yes" that led to our salvation. Free will is front and center in our story.

This ability to choose good or the lack of good (evil) exists within the context of eternal consequences. It’s not as if our decisions are made in a vacuum; there are real and eternal consequences. You could boil life down to a series of choosing God’s will or our own. While we certainly have leeway in the small things, the big decisions in life often come down to this fundamental choice.

If the choice is binary, God’s will (good) or the opposite (evil) it begs a big question. How do we unite our free decisions with divine providence?

Putting Them Together: Your Unique Mission

Now, this is where it gets really exciting.

Once we recognize that God has crafted a unique environment for us to operate in, it’s like solving a mystery2. We must pay close attention to all the clues. But more than that, we get to consider our own feelings, interests, and attitudes because we are the main character in our unique story.

When we're thinking about starting a business, for example, there are going to be things that we are uniquely qualified for or skilled at. We also need to consider our upbringing and what truly matters to us, in addition to the work experience we've had to date.

This totally reshapes the way we approach life. If we are given a unique mission in life, it gives us an even greater sense of purpose. Yes, as Catholics, we know that we are called to strive for heaven. But there is a level deeper than that.

Imagine it like this. You’re a superhero character in this game of life. Your powers are totally unique to you—no one else has them. Your character’s back story was shaped by God himself. On your own, you can do a lot. But when you follow the clues from The Creator Himself, you can achieve unimaginable things.

God's Hand in Action: Real-Life Examples

In every way, God is walking with us, step by step, orchestrating events even when we can't see the full picture.

My own life offers an example. The summer after high school, I worked for Jack Scholz, the benefactor of my childhood church. He chose to teach me as we worked side by side in the garden. This had a profound impact on my professional aspirations.

Last week on the pod, we heard another great example from Tim Glemkowski3. Though the pandemic ended his parish ministry company, leading to unemployment, it was a divine redirection. This "setback" ultimately led him to a more impactful role with the Archdiocese of Denver and later, the CEO position of the National Eucharistic Congress.

Finding Your Unique Calling: A Constant Journey

To become an effective participant in God’s harvesting efforts, consider the following things.

What has your unique childhood (parents, circumstances, geography, time in history) prepared you for?
What unique experiences have you had?
What unique ‘assets’ do you have at your disposal?
What recurring themes keep showing themselves?

Spend time contemplating and praying about these things over the coming weeks. Once you get a strong sense of the answer, don’t stop there. Throughout our life we should develop a habit of constantly reflecting on these questions.

These things are like the wind at your sails. You can try and go in a different direction. But you’ll go farthest when you cooperate with the divine wind that God is sending you.

God Bless & Happy Building

~Silas Mähner

Misc. Resources:

URGENT: The 25th is the last day to sign up for the SENT Angels Pitch Competition (happening at the SENT Summit in September). If you’re a startup raising capital, apply to pitch today!
Register Here
(Before applying, listen to this episode with Juan Acosta, co-founder of SENT Angels)
Groups:
- Join the Catholic Founders Guild (peer group) $10/month or $100/year (we’re meeting tonight)
- Apply to become a member of SENT
- Fides Entrepreneurship Group
- Join DOMINUS Lab (tons of resources to help build 1000 Christian Startups)
Events:
- Sign up for the SENT Summit (Sep 8-11, 2025, in Notre Dame, Indiana)
- Fides Entrepreneurship’s future events (NYC)
- Upcoming DOMINUS Lab Events
Content:
- Learn how Trevor Alcorn is building a Catholic Beer company (Tridentine Brewing Co.) (Episode #5)
- Newpolity had a great episode recently that covered (among other things) the fact that as Catholics, we do not always accept new technology as a good thing. Check it out.
- Leading up to his new book launch, Alex Hormozi released a killer episode on money models and how to make offers at the right time to maximize value capture. It was an absolute banger — I’ll be relistening to it soon.
Services:
- Hire a Catholic Virtual Assistant through ParacleteVA (email us: dearcfpod@gmail.com)
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