Latest / Reeling It In with Collin Bass / 037 - Building a Catholic Culture w/ Silas Mähner: The Power of Faith, Family, and Community
Transcript
- Collin Bass: Welcome back to your loaded man. This is your host, Colin Bass, and I could not be more excited for you to listen to this podcast with Silas. Man, for the last couple months I've taken a break from podcasting, but we're finally back, and we have a stacked, sort of a season two. And this was an awesome episode to kick it off. He dives into not only what Catholics like you and I can do to concretely live out their values in the real world every single day, but what you, as an individual, whether in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, even your 60s, 70s, and 80s and beyond. Can do to find the greatness that your life was created for. This is a must listen. I took five pages of notes and I know you will too. Let me know what you think. Without further ado, let's get started. go. Five, four, three, two, one. Here we go. Silas Manner, welcome to the show, my friend. Silas Mähner: Hey, thanks for having me out. This is an absolute pleasure. I didn't even realize you had a podcast until you text me later. I like, Man, what am I doing? I'm sleeping on this guy's show. I gotta check it out. Collin Bass: Sleeping on the show. It's been a while since I've like fully invested in it, but the time is now we're getting back into it. And I have like five or six episodes scheduled for the f for September. So we're finally getting back to prioritizing it. But it has been a while since it's been full speed ahead. But I appreciate you you being here. I guess just to kick us off before we dive into some of your background story where you're coming from. Tell our listeners about yourself and all the different avenues of what you what you do and what your job consists of. Cause I feel like you can scroll through your LinkedIn and I was like, Holy crap, I've scrolled three times and you're still having present work across all these different companies. So I wanna hear about you and yourself Silas Mähner: Yeah. Collin Bass: a little bit. Silas Mähner: Too many things, man. Well, I'll try to keep it brief. So the short ish version is I am a country boy from the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin. I grew up in a place where it's literally woods. You go outside and it's woods. There's no neighbors that you can see. Our closest neighbor is an eighth of a mile away, so you you can't technically see them because there's trees everywhere. But I grew up in the woods, just out in the middle of nowhere. to give you some context of what in the middle of nowhere looks like. It's at least, about three hours from any major airport. And I'm the oldest of eight kids. I grew up with a dad who's who makes cabinets. So I worked for him a lot since I was eight years old. And that taught me a lot of, physical skills, but just also being out in the woods, generally speaking. I I I think it was a great upbringing. It's something that I I in in a lot of ways I took for granted until I started living in cities and I like, how am I gonna get, you know, hundreds of acres to be able to like have my kids raised on? Because I w my family doesn't have lots of lots of acres, but my uncle has a farm right next door. So we have about 400 acres of of family farmland. And then beyond that, there's just thousands of acres of other neighboring land, which people are never there. They they hunt there. So as long as I avoid, around hunting season, I I can just drive our four wheelers three wheelers and turt bikes, whatever out in that. So I had this very free kind of upbringing. But my dad is somebody who did not encourage us to go to college. So I skipped college. I was actually homeschooled too. So homeschooled, skipped college, got into sales, with the Knights of Columbus action initially, and then Somebody who I met through this program called Praxis, Discover Praxis. I don't know if your listens listeners are too familiar with that or not, but I know you have some connections there yourself. But but I did this program and someone's like, Hey man, you sound like a sales guy. You want a job in New York City as a as a recruiter working in renewable energy? And I was like, I don't know anything about recruiting. I don't know anything about renewable energy, couldn't really care at the time. And I was like, But I would love to live in New York City. So I ended up moving out there right before COVID, March second of twenty twenty. So I won't I'll spare you the the the the the key details, but I worked there for four years. I eventually met my wife in New York, who's originally from Uganda. We moved back to Wisconsin and around 2024, and then I started my own firm. So I started started my own company called Roosevelt Talent, and I do recruiting in that space, so recruiting for clean technology and reindustrialized America startups. And then I also started this thing called Catholic Founders, which I'm sure we'll talk about today, which is effectively a community of it's a project of That's trying to help Catholic entrepreneurs understand how to be Catholic entrepreneurs and then also leverage their businesses to change culture. That's that's it what is a community, it's podcasts, it's a newsletter, it's a lot of things we can talk about it. But that's what we do today. I I now live in Nashville, Tennessee with my wife and now as of just a week ago at the time of recording this, our second child. So we have our first son who's just born. So it's really exciting. It's the most exciting thing. And I have other projects that I'm involved in, but really Roosevelt Talent and Catholic Founders are kind of the two things that take up the majority of my time. Collin Bass: Yeah, that is huge. That is huge. And congrats on the kid. That's always exciting. I saw that the Substack note pop through praying for the intercession of Mary and Saint Gerard, I think. And then I saw the the response to it. Like, he was born, here we go. Two kids now Silas Mähner: Yeah, it's all Collin Bass: ready to go. So that's fantastic. Congrats on that. and thanks for sharing the whole story too. It's cool to see go back through your whole like a story arc almost and you're just beginning your story, especially being as young as we are. but it's really cool to go back and I'd love to maybe explore back to your dad's cabinet business. and sitting there as a young kid from the middle of nowhere, and having this a desire maybe to go to big city to jump out and I mean ultimately led you to New York City. what was that like s having that background, being from the small town, being in that cabinet the cabinet shop with your dad? and what were your ambitions at that point and where did you think you were gonna go? Silas Mähner: Yeah. So my ambitions were not large at all, to be honest with you. When I was younger, I think. The the biggest ambition I can remember when I was younger was someday I wanted to to own a company that built homes. And I didn't imagine that being some kind of behemoth of a company. I imagined that being a company where, I was one of the people still actually building the homes, not like, having a an army of workers to do it or something. So I don't know what kind of scale that would be, but probably pretty small. That's what I had imagined I would do when I was older, when I was when I was I don't know, somewhere between the ages of ten and fifteen. The other ambition I had was I really wanted to just create a a better life for my siblings. I was very motivated to help my siblings to learn how to believe in themselves. we weren't exactly raised with a mindset that we were capable of achieving things. We weren't really raised with that kind of perspective. And I got very lucky that my first job so after I I I my birthday's in March. So I turn eighteen in March. I move out. I had this this summer job lined up. One of one of five at the well, I had one summer job lined up and then I eventually had like five part-time summer jobs that that first year. But one of those was helping tend the gardens at the church I grew up going to in in Wassa, Wisconsin, w and this guy Jack Schultz, who had been kind of the benefactor who spent a lot of money building up this church and turning it into a very, very beautiful church, probably one of a kind in North America, at least to my knowledge, it's a high gothic style church. And at this point he was very, very retired and he was like living literally next door to the church and he's, you know, around eighty years old, tending the gardens and picking weeds, and I'm working for him part-time, you know, helping tend these gardens. And he just starts mentoring me. And that's when I started to have, let's say, grander ambitions. I started to realize that number one, it's possible for me to do more things. And number two, it's also okay for me to believe in more things. Because Jack was, similar to me. He's a kid from Wisconsin. He he did not come from a large family. He's one of he's a one o an only child, but he also skipped college, right? And he started his company for three hundred bucks in the seventies and ended up selling it for a hundred million dollars in two thousand or something like that, somewhere around there. So if if a guy like that could do something like he did and then he had a a a huge impact on my life because I grew up going to that church and that was a great great community, really affected my faith in a lot of ways. I thought, well, why why couldn't I do something like that? And I also thought to myself, why why not why specifically would God take me from this kind of like backwater, no, know, middle of nowhere place with with a family that has no money, we have no particular network, you know, no nothing really We we have a lot of things that are special, but no earthly things like that, right? And then he puts me in touch with this opportunity to to learn from and get mentored by a very successful businessman. And I always thought that was something where it's like it feels clearly like God picked up the train from the one track it was on and like moved it to a totally different track. Like it it it it's not like there was just a fork in the road and he he gave me an extra track. It just it didn't exist. We weren't even in the same realm. And because of that, that's where I started to think that maybe God has something more in store for me. Collin Bass: Totally, totally. Yeah. And how cool was that? you had this small, I mean, your first your first job, your first summer as an eighteen year old getting out there. and you had a small ambition to go serve the church and like be as a almost a gardener, it sounded like. And then like the side character just came in and completely changed the direction of your own life, the direction of what you thought could be possible. And then it sounded like I guess I'm gonna read between the lines, but just after that you started praxis and then practice was probably a couple of years and it led you to New York. is that the story from there? Silas Mähner: Yeah. So after that, the end of the summer, you know, I had at one time, I think at the max it was five part time jobs at once. it was not it was not good, but it was what I had. It's what I had to pay the bills. And then my godfather was like, Hey, what are you gonna do in the winter? Because most of these are summer jobs. You can't mow lawns in the summer or in the winter in Wisconsin in Wisconsin. So you're gonna have to get something else. And he's like, Well, you should come work for me with the Knights of Columbus and do insurance sales. So I was like, well, I guess so. I need to if I want to run a business, he he told me this. He's like, if you want to run a business, you're gonna need to learn sales. You might as well get paid to do it. So come, learn sales, make some money while you do it, and I'll teach you. So I ended up working with him for a year and a half. And then I did practice. So it was after that that I was like, man, I'm pretty good at this stuff, but I don't have an interest in sticking around with the Knights of Columbus for for 10 years, right? There's no, there's not a lot of upward trajectory there. It's like you're an agent. You can be an assistant general agent and you can be the general agent. It's like unless you're gonna go and move to Connecticut, there's there's no upward mobility. And I would say I I remember part of your question was going from Wisconsin and and trying to leave. I didn't actually plan to ever leave where I was where I was from. Like I planned to stay there when I was younger. It was after about I think it was about a year working with the Knights of Columbus. I again I said I was really good at the job. And I think by let's see, so I started when I was eighteen. By the end of the next year, so I was nineteen, nineteen and a half-ish. And I was making seventy, almost seventy grand a year with a kid, a kid with no debt in the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin, which is a lot of money for somebody. this way more than you need to to get by a single man with no debt. And that's when I started really like asking myself, what do I want more than this? And I I had the feeling that in order to like develop, I needed to leave. And I didn't I didn't know what that would look like. In my mind, I thought, maybe Milwaukee would be like a cool place to live because I had some friends there. and I was like, well, I could I could live in Milwaukee, I guess. that was kinda like that seemed like a stretch to an is to an to an extent. And then I heard about Praxis and I was like, this is amazing. The the reason I joined Praxis was primarily because I I heard that a lot of times they they get you jobs in other like in person and I assumed there was no jobs in Wisconsin. So I was like, no startups in Wisconsin. So I was like, it's probably gonna be somewhere else. I imagine Chicago or Minneapolis or something. but that's when I had the decision that I want to leave because I think that there's some more out there. And I I wasn't necessarily thinking, I'm gonna leave and never come back. I was not opposed to the idea of coming back, but I was like, I do need to get out of here. Like because I was getting very frustrated with the small town mentality that existed there. So I can get into that more if you want. But that's kind of when I began then praxis through doing the program. I met somebody who who, you know, introduced me to that opportunity in New York City. Collin Bass: Yeah, no, that's fantastic. And you're this young kid stepping into the big city with no college degree. You had a bit of training, right? You had the I know the formalized program. My wife got to go through it through practice as well. but you're you're stepping into like the big city and and with almost zero experience to some extent, but completely different life change, completely different season. and I'm curious what that was Silas Mähner: was very interesting. Collin Bass: like being the kid that probably in many ways was un unqualified and maybe self-conscious about where you're stepping into. and then at the same time I know that your faith kind of spun in into that story as well. So tell me about that. What was it like stepping into the big Silas Mähner: Yeah. Collin Bass: city and how did your ambition sort of pair with your faith as you formed Silas Mähner: Mm-hmm. Collin Bass: your own career early on? Silas Mähner: Yeah, so I would say my faith was very important to me by that point. I moved to New York. So I moved to New York March second of twenty twenty, right before COVID began. But which again, there's a lot of things I could say about that. But what I'll say is I was very convinced of my faith. There was no like doubt in my faith at that point. I had visited New York once before I got started having those interviews, and then I went for an interview in in New York during the time and then I moved there. So I moved there after having been in New York City twice. I knew one person there. I knew one person like that I could like call if I ever needed something, right? And the faith component, I would say the the hardest part was that COVID happened and then I had no friends by that point, right? Because I was trying to get sorted out with the living situation. And I thankfully had a really amazing opportunity to to live for very, very, very inexpensively in New York City and in a great place. So I got very blessed there. But Because of what happened, I just I didn't have any really f hardly any friends. Well, no friends effectively for a year. Because the guy I did know was a little bit older and he's like, I'm not I at first he's like, I'm not leaving. I I'm not going out of my apartment, I don't know what's going on. So I didn't know anybody really in my faith effectively for about a year. Even after church had opened back up again. I was going to church, but there was it wasn't very obvious that there was coffee and donuts afterwards. Like I didn't know about this until somebody That I met on pilgrimage was like, there's this, there's this other Catholic dude I know. And I'm pretty sure he goes to the Latin Mass there. And I'm pretty sure they have coffee and donuts on Sundays, because they had restarted it. And then I finally went, there's like a I think it was around ascension time the next year that I finally made some Catholic friends in New York. So during that year, it was definitely challenging. I would say that even though I believed fully in my faith, that year was where I had to really confront, Am I willing to continue to pursue God? when the temptation and the opportunity to not do so is there. Because it's it's one thing, you know, there there's temptations obviously, like where where I grew up, but it was very different when you have a whole community around you of people who know how you've been raised, they know you're a good kid. And you kind of have to like live up to that to an extent, versus being an unknown person where you live in a place where you can completely you can go completely unknown in most parts of the city, especially when you don't literally know anybody. So it's very easy to just want to do whatever you want to do. And that was when there was a moment where I had to say, you know what, I I need to I need to own this faith more. And that's when it became even even more, I guess you could say serious. It's it's not that it wasn't serious before. It's just that it's like training for an arm wrestling match and then like actually having to go do the arm wrestling match. You know, like it's one thing to train, it's another thing to actually compete. So that's that's kind of that's what I would say about that. If there's if there's more questions you have about that, more than happy to dive in. Collin Bass: Yeah, no, that's that's fantastic. and I yeah, I think that what an insane way to begin your own career. You step out of the big city and you're thrown into the abyss of New York City. and man, that then you're locked down for COVID-free, you're completely alone. And like what an epic like an epic story to begin to tell with your life. And you probably had no idea what was gonna happen next. but I'm curious. Silas Mähner: Correct. Collin Bass: So you step in, you you finally have your feet underneath you, you're beginning to build community across that first year. And work's beginning to take off. And tell me about like recruiting and what like drew you into it to begin with, especially in the clean tech side of things. And then what still excites you about that today so much so that you're you're starting or you have started your own firm. Silas Mähner: Recruiting in general is a thing I think most people get into by accident. Like I didn't I I didn't try to get into recruiting. It happened by accident, mainly because I wanted to move to New York City. when I got into the space again, I had no particular interest in renewable energy, but I was like, it doesn't seem like a bad place to be, so I might as well. And shortly after joining the the company I was working with, I learned about this thing called clean technology, which was kind of adjacent to to renewable energy. It's not so focused on energy, you know. production, but more so on on technologies that are doing things in a way that is either more sustainable, all almost always is substantially cheaper or more efficient or effective in some way than than you know traditional technologies in those spaces. And the general idea was that like what I saw was I think the specific example that really blew my mind was that there was a company using technology to make cement where Part of the process was that they would input carbon that had been captured out of the air and it would make the cement stronger and lower carbon emissions. I think it was I forget the exact numbers. It was something like twenty percent reduction in carbon emissions or fifteen percent reduction in carbon emissions and about twenty percent greater strength. The the cement itself became stronger and it cost the exact same to make that cement. There was it wasn't like it cost more to make this green. And and premium product. It costs the same. And I was like, my goodness. If there's science that is being developed to do things like that, I believe that everything, everything else that we touch will be reinvented. So I saw this as effectively the beginning of the industrial revolution again, where everything will be reinvented, every like synthetic material, the production processes, everything will be reinvented from a lens of. technology that is, circular and meaning if you've got waste that that is produced through making the product, sometimes you can take that waste and throw it right back into the the the input of the supply chain. Or sometimes you design things so that when they're done, when they're when they're done being used, they can be r like recycled effectively back into the system. Right. And I saw this as just like the future. That vision is not something that is widely held still today. a lot of people view clean technology as just like it was a grift, it was a thing that the Democrats did. And the the people don't understand really what's going on scientifically there. And I still believe that there is far, far more innovation in that space than even anything in AI. AI will help accelerate those scientific discoveries, certainly. But that's part of the reason why I'm still working in this space as a recruiter. I chose to work in in a space doing recruiting for the clean technology space, which adjacent to that is the reindustrialized America stuff, because if you're gonna compete with China, you cannot do it with human labor. You have to have better technology. And if you're gonna have better technology, that that means faster, cheaper, more more efficient, more like less waste. Those are green technologies. Nobody calls them that in in especially in the the reindustrialized America crew. They don't call them climate technologies, but they are. And to me, that is the future of technology broadly. So that's why I do it. And recruiting specifically, the I mean, the thing about recruiting is it is such a complicated service to provide. It's not like SEO or something. Like, no no offense to anybody who does these things. Like this is not a skill that you can just learn by watching a few YouTube videos and like doing some technical thing. It is a combination of like psychological warfare. and resilience on your own self and there's also some technical components to it. Most of recruiting is very non-technical in nature. It's like you just like type in different keywords in a Boolean search and then you have to look to people and you have to use your human intuition. Then you have to attract the person to to take your message as a recruiter because you're trying to pitch them on the opportunity and you have to come across a certain way. And then you have to get them on a phone. And then when you get them on the phone, now you have to screen them for the opportunity to make sure they are a good fit for your client because we're working as an agency. We're not, we're not in-house, we're a third party. Screen them for your client to make sure they're a good fit. So you're simultaneously pitching them on the opportunity, but also pushing them away from the opportunity if it's not the right fit and having this weird like back and forth. And then, you know, managing the the psychological expectations along the interview process, making sure that they're happy with the offer they get. There are so many like really, really nuanced components about doing it. It's very, very complicated. as I'm running my own team, I'm realizing that it is way harder to train this than I than I had thought it was. I I wasn't I wouldn't consider myself particularly amazing at recruiting right away. It took me five months to get a f my first deal, which is on the longer side, if I'm not mistaken. But I must be good at it from a psychological perspective because what I'm what I'm realizing with my own team is that It takes six months of training just to get somebody relatively competent, they can get by, and then a year to be get decent and then I don't know how long to get good. So that's why I think it's interesting. It's it's one of those services that, you know, maybe maybe recruiters just say this because they're they're they're coping, but they say a lot of times like recruiters can never be replaced by by AI. And you're gonna need recruiters even in times where the the the market is down, even if the economy is bad. there's still gonna be companies who needs help getting in touch with the best people, right? Because just because there's people on the market applying to jobs in say the tons of layoffs, that does not mean that the people who are applying to jobs are good candidates, right? Unfortunately, sometimes you have to, go rip people out of the other companies that are good, right? I don't know if you you heard about this, but apparently even to this day, like for the past couple of years, Meta has been just ripping people out of all of the companies, like the AI experts. They're getting these huge, like things guaranteed like eight to ten million dollars a year worth of RSUs on top of a two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand dollar base salary. Like there will always be talent wars and you can just pick an pick a niche and work in it. So it's not glamorous, I will say, but it is very human. And I think in the age of AI, I'm very proud to be like a very well I'll just say this way I'm an anti AI outreach person. I refuse to use AI for any outreach regarding its customers. potential clients or candidates. I think that recruiting is human and we need to make it more human because most of recruiting today is like the most anti-human experience ever. Collin Bass: Yeah, no, that's really good context. And I think just to tap on the recruiting for a second, in my day job, I'm beginning to hire, having to go through the first hiring process. And man, like the amount of bots that apply to things, the amount of non-human Silas Mähner: Yeah. Collin Bass: humans that are out there, and just the amount of trash that flows in and out of a application process is insane. So how cool to get to have play a huge part as a human, like fully playing into that, to other humans looking to like improve their life through a new career or respark their own desire for their own vocation in the world. but you did bring up that idea of being human in in in that workplace. And I'm curious what working and placing so many people over the years has taught you about people in general or really about humanity a as a whole? Silas Mähner: I would say the core thing that stands out to me is that it's it's very unfortunate that the majority of people that I encounter are and this is gonna sound a little bit rude, but the majority of people I encounter are NPCs. Most people are not and it's by the way, it's not entirely their fault, okay? Most people are not inspired to greatness because the opportunities around them to be great are not really that present, right? there's not enough people Who are willing to to set aside all of the the standard expectations that society has for them or for the people around them and to do what's really, really important. So you know, number one is like a lot of people can't even just put two and two together to think about how they could stand out better in the process, right? You talked about bots applying, right? There's literal bots, but there's also people who act like bots, right? Like there's people who will do one click apply to a hundred jobs on LinkedIn and then they'll complain about how it's so hard to get a job. It's like you didn't put any effort into applying to that job. So what do you expect, right? and if that's the effort you put into applying for a job, what kind of effort are you going to put into doing doing your job, right? So and I'm not saying that it's all on on the people, right? What the point I want to make too is that most companies are not doing inspiring work. They're building some kind of like another B2B SAS like widget thing that's completely uninspiring. And why would it c inspire somebody? i if somebody has to work in person in an office, in a cubicle and and spend all their days and deal with all this nonsense and then, there's some corporate organized fun. This just it's nothing interesting. why would that inspire the average human? We're called to do great things, but yet we we are forced to live in this modern, machine of bureaucracy. Humans are called to greatness. We're we're called to do things that that inspire us, that n that make us fearful, that that fill us with just a zeal for life and the way the world operates currently is like a spreadsheet. Like you think about I I you don't have kids yet, but you think about the the fact that as soon as you're born, you're as a parent, like you have to go make sure you get their kids' social security number so they can be a digit in some database. And so that, you know, they can have to follow all these rules and and be forced to, you know, obey everything in life. And if they if they step out of line, there's no such thing as mercy. You're you're going to jail or you're gonna, you know, be fined or whatever. Like there's There's all these things and I'm not I'm not even saying bad crimes or anything, things that are wrong, which I'm talking about people doing regular human things, but it's against the law and as a result they get some kind of ticket and it's stupid, right? I I know that one point there was there's this whole thing where in Florida you weren't allowed to grow one of these cities didn't allow people to grow a garden in their front yard. Their own property, right? This this has since changed because these people fought it and they took it up to the state legislator and eventually they said, You cannot stop somebody from growing a vegetable garden. Which is amazing by the way. but at the same time, like I say that's amazing, but why should that even be a discussion? Like, that should not be, right? So, anyways, what I'm trying to get at here is that most people are not doing interesting things. Most companies aren't doing interesting things. And that's what I've observed is that people are definitely hungry for something of meaning, something of substance. And when I talk to people, because I'm very direct with them. I usually will if a candidate is looking for a job and I can't really help them, I'll try my best to give them 15 minutes of my time, even if it's just like a voice memo or while while I'm taking a walk. And I give them some very basic advice and they're usually mind-blown. They're like, my goodness, this is the best advice I've ever heard. I can't believe nobody's ever told me this. I'm like, and it's very simple, simple, like logical things that I could have come up with with without ever having been a recruiter. These are just like put two and two together type of thing. so Yeah, that's the core thing I've noticed is that a lot of people they need to be inspired to greatness and people need to start thinking outside the box. And I don't know how you how you get people to escape the matrix, but I will say part of the thing part of the reason that makes me excited to do the work despite it being kind of monotonous, is the companies I get to work with are companies that are inspiring the future, right? these aren't these aren't clients of mine, but in a two examples is you got a company called Rainmaker that is you that is doing cloud seeding in order to make it more rain make it rain or snow so that there's more water production for farmers or just various things, right? They're doing something that is genuinely extremely challenging, extremely difficult. And they have these forward deployed guys where they have take the trucks, go out into the mountains and operate these drones and and do cloud seeding in order to to create more rain. And these things inspire people. Like Augustus, I believe, is my age or maybe slightly younger than me. And he's running this this I don't know, it's probably I would assume the company's worth close to a billion dollars at this point. But they're doing these really cool things and they hire, you know, dudes in their twenties who have never gone to college to to come and work for this company because they are brought to life by seeing somebody like Augustus and the mission he's doing. Another example of this is my friend Will O'Brien with Ulysses that make underwater autonomous drones that can go do all sorts of things in defense tech and also like seagrass restoration, etc. And they're doing something physical, they're doing something in the real world and they're doing something that is going to genuinely change the world. And the reason why they attract people is because of their humanness, because of their willingness to to step into the challenge to be great. If they were working on B2B SAS, I don't know how much aura they could potentially exhibit over that to make it interesting to people, right? If you're a super nerd and you care about something very specifically, sure, maybe. But like the average person is not going to be inspired by building the next Google Chrome widget that helps you make your clicks more efficient. Yeah, it's not gonna happen. So, anyways, that's a bit of a rant, but those are the core things that come to mind. Collin Bass: Yeah, no, that's really cool. And it's cool to he just hear stories of guys our age in their twenties that are absolutely crushing it, pursuing their dreams, but like you said, never really thought of it like this, but really becoming more human and like pursuing a challenge that's worth confronting. And it's it's insane to me how many people our age are just going through life as in PCs, as you mentioned. I have I have a buddy who is has started his own business, more of like an online sales platform, but he's really grown. quite quickly. He was on the show a couple months ago. and there's people who want to work for him for free because they just have this deep desire to be a part of something and their day job is not fulfilling that. And that idea by itself absolutely blows me away because there's so many people who are so willing to collect a check, do something they hate for the majority of their life, 40 to 50 hours a week, plus a commute if you have to do that, just because it gives them enough cash to be quote unquote comfortable. so I'm curious as you're as you approach candidates, probably with similar mindsets, how do you wrestle with them from that almost Catholic faith-based perspective of like you have a life that's worth something while also leading them towards a job that will be more fulfilling than what Silas Mähner: I can't give everybody a sermon, otherwise I'd never get anything done. But I will say that generally speaking, I don't bring up these things unless of course they ask for for for Collin Bass: Yeah. Silas Mähner: a job, right? Or if they ask for help. Let's say they they they go through a process with me and they they don't end up being a good fit and they might be like, Hey, you know, can help me with other jobs? And if we don't if it's like let's say a one off role that we don't work on a lot, I will spend some time explaining to them some core things. occasionally in in unfortunately with recruiting you have a job to do and we get paid based on finding the right candidate, the best candidate for the for the customer. We don't get paid by the candidates. So people think okay this guy's like help me out I try my best, but I have zero financial incentive to help you because I can't just send you to a customer and then they're going to say thank you for sending us this person. Please send us a bill for twenty thousand dollars. They're not going to do that, right? So and the candidates are not going to pay us twenty thousand dollars, right? So very, very unlikely. It's it's very there's some people who do that kind of business model. We we would we'd not do that. so the truth is it's hard for me to to say any of these things to them even if I notice that they have it. Sometimes, occasionally, I will encounter somebody and they'll be young on the younger side and I'll say to them like they'll they'll be having doubts about an opportunity. And I'll explain to them that, you know, like the opportunity to move to another city is gonna be very good for your career. regardless if this company works out, if it's a startup, it could fail, whatever. But going to a new city will grow you in ways like and I try to call them to that. To an extent we get the because every time we talk to a candidate, we have to pitch them on the opportunity. And that's where I have a little bit of opportunity to like help paint pictures of of what could be and what life could be for the world if those companies succeed because most of them are doing pretty interesting stuff. But more often than not, Then not that's not the case. And I cannot really do anything about that. What I try to do though is ensure that I treat them with as much human respect as possible. So if they get rejected for an opportunity, I explain to them why. This is extremely not the case in HR departments. Because by telling somebody they why they didn't get the job or explaining to somebody why they were fired, by the way, is like supposedly gonna open you up to risk to be sued. Stupid. I think that's dumb because It's so wrong. you spent sometimes four or five hours of this person's time at least throughout this interview process and you can't even explain to them why they didn't get the job, right? It can be as simple as hey, listen, the other candidates in the pipeline are stronger, are stronger fit. They have more technical skills, they have more years of experience that you didn't make the cut. Sorry about that, man. By the way, here's some other job boards that you can check out in your industry or in your particular niche. and if you have like here's here's here's a couple blog posts I've written on how to like how to get a job or how to be better at applying to jobs. And I try to send them something personal, right? Even when I have to do mass rejections, which doesn't happen very often, but occasionally I'll work as an integrated partner where I take in all the applicants plus our outreach. And I'll have to reject people because let's let's say they required a visa sponsorship and they couldn't do it. So I'll like put all those people in a bucket and I will send a mass email and I'll say something like, Hey, you know, first name, I apologize. This is a mass email, but you're being rejected because you, you know, they can't sponsor visas or whatever. And I'll do things like that where I'm like super honest that this is I'm not trying to pretend that I sent them this individual message. It's obvious that it's not. So I'm just gonna call it out, call it what it is, and explain to them why they're not a fit. So those are the things I try to do in terms of integrating my faith into what what I do. And occasionally, thankfully this doesn't happen often happen often, but sometimes I'll have clients that wanna treat people in a certain way or they'll they'll wanna remove a candidate or or fire somebody and in occasion this is Only very rarely they happen because I have very good clients. I've had to like say to the client, I really think you handled that poorly. I don't think that was the right thing to do. I think it's only happened twice in my time doing this for six and a half years, thankfully. But there's occasions where I have to bring that up and say, You did not treat this person with dignity or respect. and that's good and like the way you're doing this or whatever is is going to have ripple effects in the market and people are gonna hear about it and they're gonna stop stop applying to your jobs, especially if it's a niche, niche business. So Those are some of the ways. Collin Bass: Yeah, no, that's really interesting. And I think it's a common theme through everything that you do, not integrating AI to mass produce something, but especially through through the the human touch of rejection and all the the hard parts of the job, like you have to bring in a little bit of heart to to love in these people well. I wanna shift gears a little bit and talk about maybe that same faith-based perspective. And I know it's not a faith-based company that you lead, but being an a very outspoken Catholic and writing about it almost nonstop. I'm curious how you lead your company. through Catholic values that may not be completely outspoken. Silas Mähner: Yeah. The key ways that we do it are so so I hire most of my talent overseas, all of my talent overseas for my recruiting company. mostly in the Philippines. We've got one person in Canada and one person in Germany. And the way that I go about paying them is I say, Hey, how much money do you need on a monthly basis to for your family's needs, right? Based on whatever it is. Like I don't know, like, you know, does your spouse work? Do you have a rich family? I don't know what their six situation is. I just ask them transparently, what do you want on a monthly basis to get to have what you need? And not like I'm not asking you to live a lavish, bougie life. I'm asking what you need. And because these are all people that we have hired through network, I don't hire there's completely people that I have no connection with. I always have some connection with them. So there's some shared trust there. When they tell me. If I can make it work with the budget, which is if I'm hiring, usually I can make it work because Filipinos, even if they're making your good money, they're not, they're not usually breaking the bank. And I pay them that much. Right. I don't I don't like push them down below that. I pay them with the number that they need. Right. And so that's one way is I I just trust them to tell me what they need and to to pay them as much as as necessary. And then on top of that, they also get bonuses. They get we do profit sharing every month or sorry, every quarter, and there's also commissions for for the recruiters on the team. So that's one way is just paying people a wage that is agreed upon. I'm not talking about what is the the standard wage in the Philippines, right? Which is substanti everybody says like, yeah, like it's a good wage for them. Yeah, it's a good wage because other people pay that, but that does like that's not that's not a like they're still struggling deeply if you pay them that much. So don't do that. Like pay them the right amount because otherwise you're just viewing them as like a as effectively like a kind of like an indentured servant. So That's one way. we pray before every sea every team meeting. we are very specific about the fact that we exist. Our business exists to provide for our own family's needs and to try to try our best to shine the light of Christ to every person we encounter. And with recruiting, it's not like it's very there's never like there's never really super obvious ways that we can do that. Occasionally, like if I take a take a couple days out of office for like a feast day or for something. I'll reference why I'm out of office and like I'll put a link to like the feast day or something like about it, right? So people can learn. So if if people are getting my out of office, they're saying like, he's out for out of office for some like Catholic thing. Okay, interesting. What's that all about? so those are some ways we do it. the other the other things would be so I talk about team prayers. I don't know that this is necessarily only a Catholic thing, but We talk about, people being NPCs. I try my best to get my team to recognize that they are called to greatness as well. And I recognize that they may not be with us forever, but what happens a lot of the time, this is not always the case, but a lot of times, especially with Filipinos, at least what I've what I've observed is that they're often not used to being given agency or like genuine control over things. They're they're typically like order takers to you. Please go do this. Please go do that. And I try my best to help them realize that no, I'm I'm actually, I didn't hire you to be order takers. I hired you to become better than me in your particular niche in the US recruiting market. I want you to know all of you know the best mechanical engineers in robotics. I want you to know all of the best, you know, all of the top salespeople. And I want you to have stronger opinions than I do. I want you to know more about it than I do because I want people to call you, not to call me. when it comes time for their recruiting needs. And that is something I think all people should do, regardless if you're a business owner or y even if you don't manage people at all in your in your job, you should call the people around you to greatness because it's what helps them to recognize there's something worth putting in. Yes, of course it it benefits the business because people are like really doing doing good work, but it helps them come alive more. Right. Like they they actually get excited about going to work. And I will say it takes effort to do this because I am naturally the kind of person who just like goes on with my day. I'm like trying to be there's so many things I'm managing, I'm trying to be straightforward, just like get to it. And then I have to take time occasionally to like give like a mini like spiel or a sermon to them of like, Hey, like go deeper. Like there's levels to this thing, right? And keep going. So I would say those are the core things. There's probably others that I'm forgetting, but those are the core ones that come to mind. Collin Bass: Yeah, I love that. Especially the last one, the call to greatness. and I yeah, we've we've already sort of hinted at that a couple of times here in this conversation. but I that's just something that's so missed so far gone from our generation. and I'm curious your perspective on that for the I mean, you talk about it for those that offshore workers that you that you have that you're inspiring, but just for the normal guy our age here in the US, like how do you help somebody find what their particular call to greatness is here in the world and maybe that's even outside of their job. But yeah, how how how would you help someone find that or sort through that? Silas Mähner: So I do this in a on on a regular ish basis with the work we do with Catholic Founders. I think the core is that people have to realize it's very hard for me to speak in these terms if they're not at least Christian. I have a really hard time like explaining these things to somebody who doesn't have the share of the same baseline about believing that God created you and that God created the the the world and He He chooses when people are created. But I would say to me, the the crux of every person's life is this. God chose for you to be to for your soul to be created at a very specific time in history. It wasn't a hundred years from now, it wasn't a thousand years ago. He created your soul at this particular moment in history. And in this moment in history, there is there there are many, many things going on. And in your particular case, you were born into this family who has these connections, has this financial net worth Have, this type of culture. You're born into this particular geography, which has its own unique things. all of these things are not things you can choose. You can't, when you're six months old, just decide to move across country so you can be influenced by Silicon Valley instead. you can't do that, right? Your way of thinking about life and your natural tendencies are primarily set by the age of five. So your core beliefs in life are typically established by around the age five. And I don't know any f any people who by the age of five were really intentional about who their friends were. That is all a result of the things out of your control. You can change them later. Yes, psychologically speaking, there's there's ways to do that. But naturally speaking, your your way of thinking, your the general trajectory of your life is set by that age. So what does that mean? Right? Who are your parents? Who, what kind of geography were you in? what are the tendencies you have? All these things. What are the what your interests, right? All of those things in my mind are clues to what you're called to do. They're clues to the adventure that God is calling you on. Because as much as we are, you know, just parts in a whole that is, you know, doing lots of things and God has his own work for for the whole, he also has it's almost like there's a play for each of our lives. And we are the main character in this play. There's there's other people around us, and there's a set, and there's all these things around. There's so many components there. And we have to choose to be the main character. That doesn't mean being prideful, but we have to choose to be the main character because the people in the audience, you know, I don't know who the audience is. Maybe it's the angels. I know. Angels and Saints, I don't know. But the people in the audience, they didn't come to see a, you know, like an extra, right? They're not just you're not just the guy moving the table, right? You are supposed to be the main character. And that might be a main character whose whose energy is very gregarious. It might be somebody who's Who's a bit quieter in nature, but it doesn't matter. You have something that you're called to be great for. And by living up to the skills and the and the tendencies that you have, the world will become more complete. And I didn't I didn't learn that phrase. That that's comes from actually a dentist that I interviewed who runs a dental practice. And he tells his hygienist that the world is less complete when you do not live up to your skills. When you become the best person that you can be and you live up to live up to your skills, the world becomes more complete with you. So what I would say is is that, and if for anybody listening to this, that generally speaking, we're all born, unless this is being listened to thousands of years from now, I don't know. congrats to you on that pod if that's if that's the case. most of the people are, you know, in this particular time. And you can look around you, right? If you're listening to this and you live in the US, there are a lot of general things that are happening that we can all be part of, right? There is a severe interest in bringing back family values, in bringing back traditions in general. I'm not talking about any particular like religious. I'm just talking about broadly speaking, the modern way has run its course. It has been played out in a way where people have realized, hey, this whole thing where we just pursue modernity and pursue, this utopia type of future and all that matters is ROI maxing and we don't need God and all that stuff. That has played out and it clearly has not worked, right? So we have something to do with As that momentum comes back, as you start to see tons of people, becoming Catholic or Orthodox again or becoming Christian, broadly speaking, you've got a lot of momentum. What's that momentum for? What's our job? How can we row the boat faster in that using that momentum, right? And we can't take credit for it, by the way, because we're not the ones who created the current. We're part of this broader thing, right? But all of us, you know, we can swim in in this case, like we want to go with the current, right? That's my opinion. But we could swim against the current if we want to. But I think that what we should do is figure out how can we along the way get the, the stranded souls that are stuck there or whatever, their boats are broken, get them on our boat and let's go. we can do something. So what exactly it is, I don't know. I I think that each person is gonna be very, very individual to them. I would encourage people to look in a couple core places, which is what are the things you think about all the time? What are the topics that you could just talk about endlessly and you have very, very deep expertise in or interest in? I think looking at your family history is also important. You know, was your dad a carpenter? I I I'll give an example of myself. I believe that in the long term, one of my key callings is to take over my dad's business. So my dad's a carpenter, I mentioned, he builds cabinets. He is more of an artist than he is a businessman. He is extremely good at what he does, his craft, not very good at making money, which is okay. But my name, Silas, the origin of it is Sylvanus, which means man of the woods. I think it was a nickname for Saint for Saint Silas, who was, I believe, originally called Saul. And they were like, we can't have two Sauls, so we're gonna call him Silas, right? Man of the Woods. So my name means man of the woods. I grew up in the woods. My dad's a carpenter working with working with wood. And I eventually realized all this and I was like, you know what? As much as I wanted to run away from this, I think that's part of my calling, right? And I also think that through eventually taking over my dad's business, I'll be able to create greater family unity. with our family. I I won't get into all the nuances there, but generally speaking, I think that there's something to that. So I'd encourage people to look in those areas, history, geography, interests, what you've already done, because it's not in most cases, God is not calling you to just drop everything and move to the Sahara and start doing ministry. maybe, but probably not, right? Especially if you're a Christian, if if you believe that in some way you're called to serve those around you or or to help bring others around you to heaven. Those people are probably the people already in your life. Your family, number one, people always forget about their own family. How can I, how can I be an example to my own family? How can I create more impact with my own family? Because if you're, you know, if you're if you're so willing to go help strangers in Honduras, you know, come closer to Christ, why why are you not willing to do with your own family? It's actually much harder to do with your own family because you already know them, you know their faults, and there's so much animosity, whatever. Those are some of the core things I would say is like look into those areas and You're never gonna have a sudden lightning bolt answer, this is what I'm called to do for the rest of my life. You might have those moments and it might you might have moments of clarity for for even years at a time, but the journey will change. And that's the point, is we accept that along this journey, we are not given the whole roadmap. We don't even know we we know the destination we're trying to get to is heaven. But there are many different roads on that route, okay? And our GPS Is prayer. we can we can know the GPS, we can look at the GPS because God's telling us which way to turn, but we to pay attention. We got to look at it and we got to go along that journey. And you might feel very convicted that what you're doing right now is the right thing. In three years, that might change, and that's okay. And in I think I think the world doesn't like that. This uns this idea of uncertainty is something that mud modernity hates. Everybody doesn't want to get married until they have their job sorted out, they've got their house purchased, and they know how everything's gonna play out. They don't want to have kids until they're Ready, blah, blah, blah. Nonsense. It's all stupid. You are so called to walk in this path of trust in God for the future. If you believe in God, you should be trusting in God. If you don't believe, if you don't if you don't trust in God, then do you really believe? That's what I believe. So that's a bit of a rant, but those are some of the core things I would say. Collin Bass: Dude, that is fantastic. It's such good, such good advice all around. And I think you're exactly right. Like every single soul that walks the earth, whether they know it or not, is called to a greatness. And it could be small. It may not be the everyone's not called to be on the front of the stage, but even that small part, you're supposed to be played played greatly. And I've always said this, and I never really knew a better way to describe it, but I felt like as you, as you continue to cern your call, you sort of fall back into who you are. but as you were explaining your perspective on it, falling back into who you were created to be is looking at your life from third person, like way far back and being able to see your whole family tree behind you and be like, you were created for this specific moment, this specific generation, but also all those skills and all those backgrounds that you maybe tried to run from or you maybe thought were irrelevant actually are playing probably a pretty key role into who you were called to be. and you shouldn't ignore it. Silas Mähner: This this matters a lot. This matters a lot. So the reason why this matters so much is that in our current time, we don't necessarily the idea that we have to think about our family ancestry to decide what we should do, what our career choices should be, is pretty not common. It's pretty taboo, right? And part of that is because we have this kind of like I would say generally speaking, it's a Protestant individualism that America possesses where We are very focused on the individual and how we have this phrase, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps. This is true. This is possible. But also, if we don't start thinking in terms of the next generations, we are doomed. The reason why we are where we are, where things have collapsed to the point that they have collapsed is because nobody thinks about the next generation. They think about the next quarter. How can we get better ROI? How can we meet our earnings targets? That's all they think about, right? Or at the bare minimum. or sorry, in the best case, they think about their own life and at the end of their life, like what what do they want to be known for? They do not think about their great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren. None never. Like, and this is why things begin to collapse. So as much of a sacrifice as it is to look back on your own family, I think this is where it begins, is that if you want your children or your grandchildren to can continue to be honorable people who help society flourish, you personally need to be willing to take up that calling whatever it is that your family has in the past and carried on. It will also help your children and grandchildren to take the idea more seriously because it's not from your own mind. It's not like, here's my mission and I'm calling you guys to go do this. It's this is the history of our ancestors. And that could, for you, you know, can combine it maybe it's just your faith. It's like our ancestors are, you know, it's it's about our faith, right? Maybe it's not about businesses, but I guarantee you if you start doing a little bit of digging, you will find things about your family that you didn't know. Right. I found out that my great grandpa Leo was the guy who had the golden Midas touch. he made investments that worked out. He grew the family farm from 40 or 50 acres to at one point I think I think at one point it was 500 acres of farming land. And then they had that hundreds or thousands of other acres at any given time of like timberland, which they would buy and sell. And he he was just like he did all sorts of things. He was like very involved with lots of stuff. My grandpa, on the other hand, was not that. He was the opposite. Everything he touched didn't go so well. but I'm very proud of the fact that my have that great grandpa that I can like hey, he did some great things. Yeah, he wasn't always a great person in every way, right? There's some areas where he definitely should have worked on, but I can look up to him and and probably I'm gonna name one of my sons at some point after him or or at least a bare a middle name, right? So I think that there's a certain amount of sacrifice we have to be willing to make, and it's not about us. As much as I'm talking about the individual be being called to greatness, the the key thing to remember is that n this is not actually about you at all. Right. If you're not a a Christian of any sort, you can think about it in generational mindset. Like hopefully my great grand grandchildren will look up to me and they'll they'll say, Hey, I want to be like him. but really what you should think about is is in a Christian perspective, like what am I called to do? Who am I called to bring with me on this path to heaven? And what can I pass on to my children? What faith inheritance, what stories of honor or sacrifice can I pass on that will inspire them to continue to go do this more and more. yeah. I think I think modern technology has made us so numb to to the ancient and we only think about the instant and it's all about instant gratification. And as a result, we have forgotten about the history of the people who who built this nation, for example, right? Like, there's just so many, so many, so much sacrifice that was made. And we we tend to just overlook that and complain and moan about everything. Collin Bass: Yeah, dang, dude. That is so good. And not even not only is it just the complacency, but it is they're just man, you just have no desire to go change the world in front of you, let alone impact the lives around you. And I think we forget so often that it our greatness, and I never really heard it said like this either, but our greatness really isn't about us to begin with. It's about s the people around us and it's about the impact that we're meant to have. And that doesn't serve us, and that's honestly what makes it fulfilling. And I love it for you to take that a step further. for our greatness to not be about us. Something another topic you talk about often is like changing the culture and how Catholics but people in general are called to push the culture forward. I'm interested your thoughts on that and how you can take your own personal greatness to actually begin to shift the culture. Silas Mähner: I think it all points back to understanding the Transcendentals. The Transcendentals are these things that are desired by every created being. We desire truth, unity, goodness, and beauty. Because God instilled those desires in our existence. Like they are part of us, right? And changing the culture, yes, I I view it from the perspective of making the culture Catholic. But making the culture Catholic is making it more unified, more beautiful, more good, et cetera. More true, right? that's how I view what we're trying to do. So if if you if let's take it from a Christian perspective, because that's only the really like the language I can speak in, is if you are called to get to heaven and you're called, you're you're given these gifts, if you recognize that your life itself is a gift, because our life is an opportunity to show God that we love him. And the interests and the skills that he gave us, these are all gifts from him, right? I I genuinely believe this. Yes, there's financial gifts too and the financial assets you have, but I think even beyond that, it's the intellect, it's the interests, it's the energy you have, the skills that you you develop over time. Those are all things that go into the talents bucket, right? In the parable of the talents. You're given, you know, if you're given five talents, those are your five talents, right? And for you to use them selfishly. is wrong. Because if effectively the way I oftentimes view life is it's simply a decision between two choices. The choice of my will or God's will. I I really believe that that's the case. And I think that you can align your will with God's will. So that you're doing God's will and it's also your thing. But there it's it's always challenging. You have to constantly like battle with that. But I think the reason why I want to make the culture Catholic is because I believe in it being true. And if it's true, I think all the things we better like I live in I live in Nashville. We moved here in January. And in our neighborhood, we've now gotten to know I think five ish of our neighbors. two of them somewhat well and the rest like I wouldn't even say somewhat well. We just like we see them, we text them, like we we know them a little bit. We can ask them for favors. But the people who literally share a driveway with us I went to knock on their door when we first moved in. I I was hoping that they would bring us an apple pie or something, They didn't do that. I went to knock on their door shortly after we had moved in because I had an Amazon package delivered to their house instead of mine, 'cause we are we have the same address, just different number. And the guy just like comes out and is like, No, it's fine, take it. It happens all the time. Shuts the door. Like didn't I was trying to get his number. I was trying to get like I think I got his name. I I still can't remember his name, actually, to be honest with you. I like I was trying to just like get to know the guy 'cause we literally share a driveway. You know, we should probably know each other, right? And what I'm getting at is changing the culture isn't necessarily about any particular act. It's about getting to know your neighbor and building some unity, right? So when you see I'll try to put it in more tangible terms. I know I'm kind of all over the place here, but more tangible terms would be when you see a family that is fighting and has dis and like has this like issues, it kind of like you know it's wrong. Deep down you know it's wrong because it's disunity. You're seeing a lack of unity in that family. So that is you having some inherent as a human, regardless of how you're raised, like that's not right. Something's not right there, right? That's because it's against unity, which is something that you have deep down. When you see somebody telling a lie, when you know something is untrue, it upsets you because it's not the truth, right? It's a lack of truth. When you see an ugly, you know, government building, it upsets you or it like doesn't inspire you because it's not beautiful, right? These are when you see somebody doing the right thing, doing a good thing, giving somebody like a homeless person some some food or whatever, these are things that make you feel good, right? And we have to get back to those four things, those transcendentals of how can I, in my neighborhood, get to know my people so that way if I need something, I can ask them for help, or vice versa, I'm willing to sacrifice for them, right? So I think that all of these things culminate in effectively being virtue, right? That's what it is. It's virtue and it's care for one another. If you boil down Jesus' teaching, it's love God with your whole heart and love your neighbor as yourself, right? We talk about our neighbors loving as neighbors as ourselves a lot, but who do we consider our neighbor? Most of the time we w we don't literally know our neighbor that well, right? maybe some neighborhoods w have this like this feeling of of knowing knowing each other, but I would propose that even some of the most like old school neighborhoods in America are not like that today. I don't know about you. I've lived in a lot of places and it's not really the case. If it is the case, it's usually five percent of the neighborhood is like that. Very, very, very low number. So that's why I view it. you you have to love those around you and you have to see them as people who are created with a infinite dignity, with a soul that is beautiful and unique and called to unity with God. If you personally are very unified with God, if you receive the Eucharist often, you become one with God, can now you are. your your desire should also be for your neighbor to have unity with God. So if you can bring yourself closer to that person, you have you are one step closer to unity with them. And the more unity you have with God and they have with you, the more they become like God and they bec begin to have unity with God as well. So it's effectively just living out those those the two greatest commandments, if that if that makes sense. There's a lot of other ways, tactics and all that stuff that I believe that Catholic entrepreneurs especially can exhibit to to make the culture around them better and and more Catholic, right? To me they're the same thing. I don't know what your audience is like, so hopefully hopefully they like this. But that is kind of my thought. I know it's like a little bit abstract, but that's how I that's effectively how I view it as as condensed as I can say. Collin Bass: Completely. Yeah. No, I I love that. And I think that we can all boil it way back down to the most simple form of literally just knocking on knocking on your neighbor's door and introducing yourself and loving them well. And it's funny, it's funny that you mentioned that you share a driveway with these people and you don't know them. but I think that's way more common and I it I think it's even pretty good that you know five of your neighbors that and a couple that you have their cell number in just a short time. Silas Mähner: That's ridiculous, right? That to think that I only know five of the households on our on our street area is crazy, right? Like what we want to do at some point, it we probably won't be able to do it this year. My wife just gave birth. I think I told you that already. so we we weren't planning on doing it this summer, but I think next summer what we're gonna do is like just host a barbecue. There's like a patch of grass in the neighborhood. I'm just gonna like okay, we don't have any lawn, like otherwise we would do it on our on our lawn. But like we're gonna get a grill or or we're gonna like I don't know, rent the tent or something and we're gonna like host a barbecue. And literally go knock on everybody's door and give them an invite because there's no way it it becomes a safer neighborhood. if you know people, if you know about the person and the struggles they go through, you're less likely to like or you're more likely to want to protect them. Like let's say like I know my neighbors, like I I lived in New York City for a while, as I said, and the one of the buildings I lived in, I'd never met anybody besides a building owner or the building manager guy. We had a neighbor who was like they only spoke Spanish and I had a hard time communicating with them and I was I oftentimes felt like going saying the hi, but I like super nervous in my Spanish skills, so I just didn't do it. I I should have just gotten over it. But there was this guy in the building who would steal stuff from me, right? And I found out who it was at one point because I like I saw the guy and I knew he had my package and everything. And I and it was I I found out about this. But I was like, if that guy knew me, if he knew like where I came from and some of the struggles I was going through. He would not have done that because he would feel of compassion, maybe he would still steal from other people and he wouldn't change his stealing habit, but he probably wouldn't steal from me, right? This one time he's he stole specifically. I had ordered these passport holders because my family was about to go overseas to Uganda. And we needed these things, right? We needed to have their stuff safe. And I had to rush order. I thankfully got another set of them delivered back in time. But I was like, Yeah, he wouldn't have done this thing if he knew that I needed these things for particular reasons. It's not like it was some frivolous thing and I'm just some some rich dude or whatever who had all kinds of extra, extra stuff, So this is the component about knowing your neighbors, right? Once you know them, then they can feel free to talk about their challenges or they they need to borrow a, you know, a cup of sugar instead of going to the grocery store and spending 15 minutes one way, they could just come over and borrow a cup of sugar, right? And it's the small thing, but you you're never gonna ask those things unless you know somebody, right? The th that you can't. This is always the same. You cannot love God until you know God. And you cannot love your neighbor until you know your neighbor. So how do you expect to get to know them if you don't spend any time with them? Right. if you see just the thing is if we see people on on Sundays that that we sit in the same pew together every Sunday. How many of those people do we actually know? How many do we know enough that they would say, Hey, I'm going through troubles in my marriage or I'm really struggling right now. We can't find work and we're we're not gonna make we can't pay rent. Like we need help. How many people at church would be willing to tell you those things if they were true? Probably very, very, very few, if any. And we supposedly are all going to the same church. We have unity, right? But unfortunately, that's not the case, right? There there needs to be genuine friendship and and knowing each other first. Collin Bass: Yeah, and we need it. We need it so deeply. And it's it's honestly what the craziest part is it's maybe a little bit of fear of intimidation introducing yourself, but it's just mostly people being lazy, which is also just mind-boggling. we could all walk down the street. Anyone on the street could walk down and say hi. literally, I've been in my house just about six months now, and I know the two people that we share driveways with are like we're across the street, our driveways run into each other. And that's it. Silas Mähner: Dinner parties, bro. Dinner parties. Collin Bass: That's it. but I I love your idea of just having a big barbecue because it's that simple. It's you taking the initiative to invite people to go do something. And it's funny, my mom is someone that's like driven by connection. Like she is probably the most well-connected woman she was in the city we grew up in, and she's becoming that. They just moved to Cleveland. and she the the first month they moved there, she felt very alone because she loves community. She went and she printed out an invitation to have everyone over for dinner on their whole street. It's probably like 15, maybe 12. different houses, but it's a lot of people to randomly go up, knock on the door, and leave something in the mailbox that they don't open. But because of that, they've actually started doing that every single month. and they love it, whether they're watching a game or just meeting up because of the holiday party or even the middle of summer, just no reason to get together other than it's nice outside. Let's go hang out in the backyard. it's so easy to do that. And now I'm like I'm inspired by you, but also thinking back to her own ability to do that. Like it's not hard at all to create connection. And honestly, it all ties back to the same thing we've been talking about. your own personal greatness probably isn't that far off of who you already who you are or where you already are at. a lot of the time it's just taking a small bit of initiative and breaking through like that bit of resistance that's honestly not that not that strong, strongly pushing back. but yeah, it's that's insane. I Silas Mähner: Yeah, this is the thing. I I operate and I spend a lot of time hanging out with technologists and people who want to build technology to scale and solve things. And I love that. it's cool. Do do cool things that scale and whatever. But the truth is that the majority of change that we need in our country doesn't you don't need any technology. All you literally need to do is know your neighbor. That's it. It's it's so simple is have Christian charity and love your neighbor and try to get your neighbors to understand what Christian charity is as well. And you will have a much better society. yeah, it's very sad to me that like everybody wants a solution, some bullet, something that will do it's like the thing that really matters is just simply knowing people. Like it's very, very easy stuff. Going back to being an NPC, so many people have never thought about these things. And it's again like I understand like if you've never heard of the ideas, it sounds crazy to you. But that's that's what households were in at one point, right? People built households. They didn't just have a family. They would, you know had people that relied upon them. They recognized that they had a role to play in the broader community, because we make up the community as a whole by our families, right? And if you want to the the society to improve, you have to help improve the people around you. And if and by the way, this is the thing like with what we're doing in our neighborhood. So another thing I did was I convinced a co founder, a friend of mine who who has a two co founders, I convinced them when they were going, they were thinking about moving to Nashville. He I thought they were actually going to move to Nashville no matter what, but apparently they were just debating it still. And I was like, move to my neighborhood. there's there's definitely gotta be houses for rent around here. And thankfully they did. And they moved like two blocks away. So now I have this Catholic co-founder friends that they all run their company over there. And Mark sometimes just comes over for coffee in the morning. He texts me at like seven a.m. You wanna come wanna get some coffee? I'm like, Yeah, come over, I got a pot. Bruin. And these are the things that we can start to do because in the past, people went to a local parish in their neighborhood. So if you didn't see Colin at church on Sunday, you might see you might go to Colin's house and say, hey man, I didn't see a church. What happened? Are you okay? Or like, what are you doing, man? Why didn't you go to church? Like something like, right? So the point is we don't have any of that accountability because even within our own church community, we all like pick our parish and we drive, you know, 10 to to 30 minutes to an hour to go to church. And I I understand wanting to go to a place that feels home to you, but at the same time, you need to make your physical location your your your literal local neighborhood your home. it has to be. Because if you just supplement the the belonging by going to someplace on Sunday or having some church events during the week, you're you you are naturally degrading the opportunities or having a what's it called a the cost I'm I'm forgetting the word, but like the the opportunity cost, the opportunity cost of not being doing things in your local neighborhood, right? Collin Bass: Completely. Yeah, dude. And we just need that accountability to bring us back to who we're created to be. And I love that you even mentioned that we can have all these widgets create all these cool tools to solve all these massive problems at the end of the day, you could all s solve most of it from just getting to know your neighbor and loving and caring about them. so Silas Mähner: If if people took care of their neighbors, you wouldn't need welfare at all. You wouldn't need it. Collin Bass: That is facts. That is facts. Silas, this has been an awesome conversation. And to close, I I love to always ask two questions. Now the first one, I I I want to kind of capture our whole conversation and usually the target market, I we should have dove into this earlier on, but for the podcast is someone right there about to graduate college and about to just take that leap into the world, right where you were when you stepped into New York City, not knowing where The future would hold. And now you're looking back and you're like, wow, that was an insane, an insane transition, let alone with the world was happening in the middle midst of COVID. so I'd love for you to kind of speak into that person real quick, summing up our conversation, any other advice you might have for that kid, 20, 22 years old, stepping into the real world, just ready to tackle his life, but has so open and so green to what the Lord might. Silas Mähner: I would say The most important thing is despite the the fear or uncertainty that you might put you might have, and and by the way, nervousness and excitement are in the same part of your brain. So if you tell yours if you're nervous, you can actually tell yourself you're excited and it it's the same, it's the same part of your brain. So on one hand, there's usually the two the two archetypes are people who are very excited or they're very nervous about what's going on and they sometimes get nervous about which career path to take. What I will say is I think regardless of your family circumstances, your upbringing and your, financial stability. Don't be afraid to do the most interesting thing, the thing that makes the best story. Because it doesn't really matter if you quote unquote fail, right? A lot of people, especially with entrepreneurship, I always talk about people imagine failure and they effectively imagine a boogeyman that doesn't exist. When you think through what it's like to start a business and to fail, you imagine, it's if especially if you waited longer in life, you imagine using up your savings, using burning up your four one K. Selling your house, moving in with your family. You imagine those things viscerally. And then you realize, hey, that's actually not that bad. yeah, it sucks. But at the end of the day, I could, I could move in with my family. I know somebody who would take me in if I was really down on my luck, you know? And the same thing is true about taking some risks in your career. I do think the most important career advice that I can ever give, and this is like, I'm I believe genuinely this is the best objective advice for a career. is choose your boss over your job and over the company. The boss is the person that matters most at this point of your life. If you do not have a good boss, they will not develop you and they will just see you as a number. If you have a good boss at this this juncture who understands that there's a certain amount of mentorship that that is involved with with having younger employees, it will transform your life, right? If you have a if you know particularly the industry you want to be in, then pick a person who is influential in that space and find a way to get in touch with and work for them, right? if I were going back, I would have probably found a way to just get in touch and work with Sam Parr, probably, is what I would have done, knowing myself at the time. Like that that's the stuff I was interested in. I would have worked for him because he is a super connector amongst founders in that particular tech space and he has a certain amount of amount of visibility. So if I had worked for him for a couple of years and done really good stuff, then he would have been able to say, Hey, I've got this intern or who's no longer an intern who wants to do who who looked for this neck next gig, whatever. Those are the kind of things you want to do is pick people who will invest in you and also who have a certain kind of network, career advice wise. The other thing I want to say, I I know you said one thing, okay, but I'm I'm there's a couple of things I think are important. The other thing is, as I mentioned before, you will not have everything figured out. Do not delay if it's do not delay getting married and having kids. It will not be certain, it will not be glorious and glamorous, but it doesn't matter because if you are not called to the religious life, I'm speaking to people who are like this is Catholic terms. Broadly, but if you're not called to religious life, that means you're probably called to married life. And there's no sense in getting everything, you know, getting all the blocks perfectly set up and having your, you know, your little your your little kingdom created perfectly. Because even if you do that, God's still gonna mess it up and like give you a better a better outcome than you could ever imagine. So do not be afraid. I I keep seeing these reels pop up recently on Instagram about families like in 2006, they're like, We didn't know anything, we didn't have any money. We started out in a super tiny rental apartment. We had terrible jobs. None of us went to college. Like it didn't matter. Like they got married and they started having kids. And they have a good life. Like they they lived a life that's full, that is is full of hardship to an extent, right? But that is so much more fulfilling than you doing everything your way and, you know, waiting till you're, you know, 32 to ha start having kids and all these. It's don't don't do that. Just live life and don't be. Don't be living in fear of of failure because that's not what you're called to. You're called to greatness and you can't you can't achieve greatness if you're not willing to to come up against uncertainty. Collin Bass: That is so good. That is so good. And do not delay. Man, yeah. And I and I could just speak to that for a second. Like getting married last year, it just completely unlocks, unlocks your life and sends you off on a path of like with more confidence and more more drive than you've ever had. And like there's no reason to wait to unlock yourself. that is so good. Such good reminders for all of us. and then finally, the last question I always like to ask our guests is take yourself 10, 20, maybe even 30 years in the future. What is the advice that Silas needs to hear then? Silas Mähner: Mm. That's a very good question. I think it'll probably be something to the effect of don't stop doing what you did to get here. don't stop, don't change who you are because you're you're gonna have, different circumstances. by that point my my kids will be older. There's a lot of things that you will naturally want to not do or you'll you'll find yourself drifting away from personality wise or whatnot. And I don't think I obviously there's gonna be nuances and things that change, but I think that sticking with Who you are as a person and and just continuing to do that is necessary. and something similar would probably be don't forget that there is magic in the ordinary things of life. Even with our second son only, our our second child, first son, like the birth, this is the second time I've witnessed my wife go through the birth process. And to me, like it naturally initially kind of just felt like, you know, it's novel 'cause it's only the second time it's happened, but it's not novel 'cause I've seen it before, right? I've gone thro I've watched her go through this before. And the truth is that it's still magical. It's just as magical as the first time I I witnessed it. It's just that it's more ordinary. And because it's ordinary I want to like kind of forget about it or or not like recognize the nuances in it. And I think that we should bring back more recognition of the magic of the ordinary things of life. And I'm assuming that if it's hard for me at this point Ten years, twenty years, thirty years, it's probably gonna be even harder for me to remember that. So that's probably that's probably what it would be. Collin Bass: Was that's good. That is so good. Do not stop doing what you did to get here. And there remembering there's magic in the in the ordinary. That's fantastic. Silas, this was awesome. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing your perspective, inspiring me. And I got so many pages of notes to flip back through. It's been a lot of fun. Silas Mähner: Thanks, man. Thanks having me on. Collin Bass: Let's go.