The Catholic Pursuit of Excellence

What Does It Take to Be a Thriving Catholic Entrepreneur?

• Jessica Castillo • Episode 16

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#016 - This is the second episode in a special series for Catholic Entrepreneurs.

In this episode, I read "The Manifesto" for thriving Catholic entrepreneurs -- and why it matters so much.

You can get a nice, printable copy of this manifesto as part of The Thriving Catholic Entrepreneur's Roadmap

Get your Thriving Catholic Entrepreneur's Roadmap here:
https://www.athrivingcatholic.com/roadmap

Here is a snippet from The Thriving Catholic Entrepreneur's Manifesto:

I am a thriving Catholic Entrepreneur. 

I know that my strength comes from the Lord and I rely on Him to lead me and guide me in my business and my life. I know that with God all things are possible, and I keep my eyes fixed firmly on Jesus while walking the path that He has set before me. By seeking God and his kingdom first, I know that everything else that I need will fall into place – including the success I most desire for my business. 


Are you ready to build high-impact habits of body, mind, and soul that actually stick? Check out the Catholic Path to Excellence today to find out how you can be more consistent in your habits and excel in every aspect of your life.

Feeling "stuck" in your life? Coaching could be the solution you need to break through whatever is holding you back. Book a FREE Call with me today to find out how I can help you.

Speaker 1:

You're listening to the Catholic Pursuit of Excellence, the show that helps you accomplish more, stress less and become the saint God created you to be. I'm your host, life and health coach, jessica Castillo, and this episode is the first in our series for thriving Catholic entrepreneurs. So in this episode, I want to give you an overview of what you can expect from this series, all the things that we'll be covering, and also why we're even doing it in the first place and what I'm hoping to accomplish by hosting this special series for thriving Catholic entrepreneurs. The first thing I want to say is, if you have not already, there is a free roadmap that I have created to kind of go along with this podcast series. It's called the Thriving Catholic Entrepreneurs Roadmap. It is a step-by-step roadmap to becoming burnout proof while accomplishing your God-given mission at the highest level. Ultimately, that is the goal. The goal is that you perform the mission that God has given you to do at the absolute highest level that's possible for you, while at the same time, maintaining your health, maintaining your relationships and, of course, continuing to grow in holiness. This is so important, so I have created this roadmap. It is a step-by-step guide. It includes so much of the content and material that I'm going to be covering in this podcast. But because we all absorb information better in different ways, I really recommend that you just get this free guide, this printable roadmap. You can get it at athrivingcatholiccom forward slash roadmap or you can check the link in the show notes for this episode.

Speaker 1:

Okay, why are we doing a series specifically focused on Catholic entrepreneurs? Well, a lot of the people that I end up interviewing on this podcast are Catholic entrepreneurs. I'm an entrepreneur, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and I get this kind of cool behind-the-scenes view of a lot of Catholic businesses, like the founders, the creators and the people who are running these businesses, who are behind these businesses, and so it's a really cool thing because what I've seen is so many dedicated, mission-driven people who feel called by God to use their special gifts, their talents, their abilities in service to God and in service to the world. In a way that's going to have this ripple effect and it's going to bless the world. It's going to change the world. It's incredible. I'm honestly humbled and awed by the people that I see doing this work. It's so good.

Speaker 1:

But I've also noticed that a lot of these Catholic entrepreneurs they have these huge hearts. They have this huge desire to use their gifts and talents to serve God and others. They want to do something meaningful that's going to impact the world and their family and themselves in a profound way. And what I've noticed, though, is that, for many of these entrepreneurs, they might actually kind of start losing sight of that higher vision amidst the day-to-day grind of what comes with entrepreneurship, which is that it's a lot. It's a seemingly never-ending list of tasks and stresses, and there's a lot that goes into running a successful business, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's just reality. The reality is, entrepreneurship is a challenge, it is a difficult mission, and there's a lot that goes into it, but what I've also noticed is that a lot of Catholic entrepreneurs end up accepting a really secular vision for their businesses that tells them that, in order to be quote unquote successful, they have to hustle and grind and, at least in the short term, sacrifice their health, their happiness and, in some instances, even their relationship with God.

Speaker 1:

And, really, in this episode, what I want to highlight are some of the lies, really, that the hustle, some of the lies really, that the hustle culture the quote unquote hustle culture is feeding to a lot of entrepreneurs like in general just entrepreneurs in general which means that Catholic entrepreneurs are not immune to it. We are also being exposed to these lies and sometimes falling for them. So one of the lies that hustle culture will feed you is that everything depends on you. So if you want your business to be successful, you just have to push harder, you have to work later, you have to sacrifice more. Another lie that we might believe is it's okay to sacrifice our sleep in the short term we're in the middle of a launch or once this project is finished, once we get this one thing done. So, yeah, we're staying up late and yeah, we're waking up early. We're not getting enough sleep. We know we're not getting enough sleep, but it's okay because we're just going to push really hard for right now and when the season passes, then it'll get easier and we'll get more sleep, right?

Speaker 1:

Or maybe you might have believed that it's okay to eat ramen at your desk right now. I mean, it's okay to just eat leftover chicken nuggets off your kid's plate. For now, it's fine, because you're going to feed your body better food once you get past this big event in your work. Whether it's a launch, whether it's a project. You're working on some client work, even. It's fine, You're going to just push through. You know that you're not going to eat like this all the time, right, it's just for right now. Or maybe maybe this one. Your family won't mind if you're constantly checking your phone when you're with them, right? I mean, you're still with your kids. You're with them just because you're doing something on your phone. They don't mind, right? Like they don't really notice that you're not completely listening to them when they're trying to talk to you. It's fine, this is just for now.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, this is just what entrepreneurship is. You have to answer your audience, right. You have to be engaged with your followers, or how about this one? God understands why you're calculating sales conversions during mass. He knows how important your business is to you, so it's okay that you're thinking about how many people registered for your webinar and what percentage of those people might convert to actual sales, and how much money would that actually be in your business? Because, I mean, he knows you've got bills to pay, right? Okay, friends, I could go on and on and on, because there are a million little concessions like this, a million little excuses that you might make for yourself that you might tell yourself, for why?

Speaker 1:

Reaching quote unquote success means sacrificing everything that's most important to you. In these examples, you are sacrificing your health, you are sacrificing your family life and your relationships, and you have taken your eyes off of Jesus and you're instead making an idol of this success in your business. And what I want to say to you in this episode and in this series is that it does not have to be this way. It is 100% possible for you to thrive in your business and in your life without sacrificing your health, your happiness, your relationships and, most importantly, without sacrificing your relationship with God. And that is what this podcast series is about.

Speaker 1:

So what we're going to do over the next several episodes is I'm going to outline for you first what I call the Thriving Catholic Entrepreneurs Manifesto. So in episode two of this series, I'm going to dig into exactly what that manifesto is and why it's so powerful, why it's so important for you to kind of keep firmly fixed in your mind, in your vision, what a thriving Catholic entrepreneur can be, what that could be like for you, and then what we're going to do in the next episode. In episode three of this series. We're going to go, step by step, through that roadmap. Talk about what those steps actually are, like what you can do, what you can work on. That's going to help you reach this point of really feeling like you are, thriving that you are not sacrificing these things that are so important. And just a quick spoiler alert before we get into all of those episodes I do want to tell you that the number one lie that we are going to refute in this series is that everything depends on you, because everything does not depend on you, everything does not depend on you, everything depends on God, and, as a mission-driven Catholic entrepreneur, that is the number one thing that we have to recognize.

Speaker 1:

We 100% must recognize that not only with God are all things possible, but God, through his mighty power at work within us, is able to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. So something somewhat miraculous happens when we take our focus off of ourselves, off of thinking that our businesses that God has called us to like. If he has called us to this business, he is going to equip us with everything we need to make it work to run this race and run it really really well, this race and run it really really well. So keep that truth in your heart and before your eyes at all times. It does not depend on you, which means that you don't have to push harder, work later, sacrifice more. What you actually have to do is run even more into the arms of your loving father. You have to keep your eyes even more firmly fixed on Jesus and you need to step out of that boat and start walking on the water towards him, because he's going to ask you to do some things that feel impossible, but you can do it. You can do it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that is it for this first episode in this series. In the second episode, like I said, we're going to go through what that thriving Catholic Entrepreneur Manifesto is, and let me just tell you it is powerful and it is going to really have a big impact. So don't miss episode two in this series. In future episodes, we are also going to be going through the step-by-step, so you know exactly what's coming and what you can do to achieve some of this peak performance.

Speaker 1:

I'm all about peak performance. This is peak performance in a Christ-centered way, and that's what we're going to be focusing on in this series. We're going to be talking about in a future episode, the formula for how you actually apply all the things that we're going to be learning in this series. And then I have a few special interviews lined up as well that are specific to Catholic entrepreneurs and avoiding burnout. So it's a really cool series. I'm grateful to have you here listening, so if you are not already, please go ahead and subscribe to the podcast so you'll know when the next episode in the series comes out. And until then, make sure you go to a thriving catholiccom forward slash roadmap and get your copy of the roadmap yourself so that you can follow along, so that you have everything that you need and I will see you in the next episode. All right, that is it for me this week. Until next time, remember that it is Jesus who inspires you to do something great with your life, so don't let yourself be ground down by mediocrity. Bye for now.