#19 The Catholic Case for Side Hustles, Influence, and Serious Money | Nathan Crankfield

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Some people romanticize poverty. Nathan Crankfield is not one of them.If you're a Catholic entrepreneur looking for permission to succeed and pursue sanctity — this episode is going to hit.

Hey everyone! Silas here 👋

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In this Email:

* Intro to the Guest and Topic

* Episode References

* Summary of Discussion

* Key Moments

* Select Quotes

* Core Takeaway: Regardless of Your Situation, You Should Consider a Side Hustle

* Full Transcript (bottom of post)

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Today’s Topic & Guest:

* Nathan Crankfield | Seeking Excellence + Hallow

* Why Catholic men need to build wealth, pursue influence, and become standard-bearers in every area of life — from spiritual to financial. Nathan walks us through how to strive for greatness without losing your soul in the process.

Episode References:

* Revolt Against Reality (book) – critique of compartmentalized Catholicism

* Poop Troop: Side hustle Nathan heard about

Summary of Discussion:

In this episode, I sat down with Nathan Crankfield, founder of Seeking Excellence — to talk about why Catholics need to pursue financial security so we can exert influence on the world. We also spent a bit of time talking about side hustles.

We went deep into the tension between humility and ambition, why so many Catholic men settle for mediocrity, and how to build a life that’s excellent across all dimensions: spiritual, financial, professional, emotional, relational, and physical.

Nathan also shared his own path: from being broke in Army training to building multiple income streams, coaching programs, and a podcast — all while prioritizing family and faith.

And yes, we also talked about poop-scooping businesses. Seriously. Stay to the end.

Key Moments: (outline)

* 04:54 – Converting at age 13… and why middle schoolers hate being treated like kids

* 07:25 – Raising the bar on responsibility (even for 14-year-olds)

* 10:03 – The self-esteem lie: why only competence builds confidence

* 11:59 – What Seeking Excellence means (and why he launched it in 2020)

* 13:53 – Taking massive pay cuts, doing ministry… and still planning to become a millionaire

* 16:10 – The power of real estate, side hustles, and Airbnb-ing your basement

* 18:19 – Multiple streams of income; a Catholic duty

* 20:58 – The 6 Pillars of Excellence: a framework for Catholic lay holiness

* 22:11 – Why financial stewardship is a spiritual issue

* 25:20 – Afghanistan, DR, and why American Catholics should build wealth

* 26:14 – The truth about time: discipline, tradeoffs, and building for the long game

* 31:33 – When you prioritize God, time actually multiplies

* 32:31 – Social media as a Catholic: resisting the rage bait trap

* 34:51 – Accepting “small” reach when you're doing God's work

* 37:51 – Catholics & money: how to avoid both greed and laziness

* 41:15 – The real reason people criticize financial ambition

* 45:28 – What if Elon Musk were a devout Catholic? Why influence matters

* 48:53 – How donor wealth already shapes the Church

* 50:08 – Side hustle ideas, from poop-scooping to stroller golf carts

* 54:23 – “Do things you don’t enjoy. Sainthood looks like discipline.”

* 55:48 – The final call: cast a long-term vision and pursue personal greatness

Select Quotes:

* “Poverty isn’t a virtue. Stewardship is.” - Nathan

* “There’s no such thing as self-esteem — there’s only competence.” - Nathan

* “If you’re making just enough to scrape by, and you're still gone 12 hours a day... what exactly are you giving your family?” - Nathan

* “We don’t need more comfort. We need more men willing to suffer for a purpose.” - Nathan

* “Being a Catholic entrepreneur means being excellent at what God gave you.” - Nathan

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Core Lesson:

Regardless of Your Situation, You Should Consider a Side Hustle

Most Catholics can pursue a side hustle without it interfering with family life. This will help them to provide a better life for their families but also to be more generous in supporting their favorite apostolate.

I used to assume that entrepreneurship was not for everyone, but after today’s conversation, I’m convinced that pretty much every Catholic should build some side hustle.

It supports your family financially, it offers you an opportunity to be an example of effort and excellence to your children, and it allows you to support the Church through the talents that God gave you.

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

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Full Transcript:

Nathan Crankfield (00:00)

The main thing that people need to realize is that poverty in itself is not a virtue. I think that poverty can contribute growth in a lot of virtues, but it's not in and of itself a good thing or a virtue. It's not something to seek after, especially as a lay person.

Silas Mähner (00:18)

Welcome back to the Catholic Founders podcast where we discover how to run your business like a saint. Today, we are speaking with another Catholic podcaster and LinkedIn influencer. don't know if you'd like me calling him that, but at least that's one of the ways I consider him, Nathan Crankfield. Nathan is a sales manager at Hallow and also runs a project called Seeking Excellence, which is kind of similar to the structure of Catholic Founders. He's got an online community. He runs a podcast and he also does some coaching through this Seeking Excellence kind of journey or this objective.

And I wanted to have him on to discuss pursuing additional streams of income because this is something he talks a lot about on his show. He's pretty big into promoting good finance for Catholic families. And I wanted to ask him about his journey of building a side income with his Airbnb work and with his work with Seeking Excellence. I think something a lot of Catholics can pursue even if they're not interested in fully diving into kind of a full-time entrepreneurship journey. I also thought it'd be a great opportunity to discuss how to do social media as a Catholic because

The social media algorithms tend to reward not exactly virtuous behavior, rage-baiting, things like that. And on top of this, we actually did cover some of his story. We talked a lot about finance and we also discussed the importance of Catholics really striving to be the best at what they do so that together we can shape the society to become more godly. So a lot of really interesting things there. One more thing before we do get into the show. If you are looking for a community of other Catholic entrepreneurs,

Join the Catholic Founders Guild today. It's $10 a month or $100 a year. Just click upgrade to paid in Substack today and we'll get you started. All right, enjoy the show.

Silas Mähner (01:51)

All right, welcome to the pod, Nathan. How are doing today?

Nathan Crankfield (01:54)

I'm doing great, my man. It is so good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Silas Mähner (01:57)

Yeah, I'm excited. This has been a while coming. We had to reschedule a couple of times, understandably, but I won't hold it against you. it was tough. It was tough the week you rescheduled on me first, because I think I had two other pods canceled that week and I was like, my gosh, I had three lined up and I had zero left. So I had to do one, but it's all right. It works out right. The Holy Spirit has a reason for it. Maybe you learned something new since that last recording time, but absolutely. Amen.

Nathan Crankfield (02:03)

I appreciate it.

That's right. Yeah, hopefully I'm a better man since I was a month ago.

Silas Mähner (02:22)

So give a quick intro to who you are. mean, I think probably a lot of my audience will be relatively familiar with your podcast and what you're doing, but just give a quick intro to who you are and what you're doing today.

Nathan Crankfield (02:31)

For sure. Yeah. So Nathan Crankfield, born and raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, baptized Lutheran, went to a Methodist preschool. And my dad's side was kind of Southern Baptist, kind of agnostic, nothing. And then I started Catholic school in kindergarten. And so when I was 13, converted, became the first Catholic on both sides of my family. And from there, really went downhill and really lived a very hedonistic lifestyle throughout all of high school. And then went to Mount St. Mary's University, which is where I had a really deep conversion.

And really changed my life and started to my life over to the Lord long battle of battling many sins I still battle today, you know new ones that have popped up since then but a big part of my journey and growth and virtue and discipline was joining Army ROTC when I was in college as well and so I did Army ROTC there got an ROTC scholarship became an infantry officer active duty afterwards and Went on to go to infantry training airborne school Ranger school and then

was in the 82nd Airborne Division and deployed to Afghanistan as a platoon leader there. Got out as a captain and then I went to Dynamic Catholic for a year. I served as a parish consultant and then went and did some men's ministry at Benedictine College for a very short stint, about eight months before starting in sales at Hallow. So the Catholic Prayer and Meditation app, Hallow, started as just an account executive there and now I'm sales manager coming up on my four year anniversary at Hallow. Yeah, and five years ago started what I'm sure we'll talk about a lot today was just seeking excellence.

first launched as a podcast, have developed into an online community, as well as a coaching program, speaking events and other things. And so that's kind of my side pet project that I really enjoy doing.

Silas Mähner (04:01)

Yeah. Now, I discovered your podcast when I was doing research for the first episode of this podcast with Alessandro. And so if I understand correctly, you guys know each other pretty well. There a lot of questions I want to ask you from that, what you just mentioned. You went through your background quickly. But one thing I'm curious about is how do you become, you know, influenced enough to decide that at 13 years old, especially if neither of your parents were Catholic, that you were going to become a Catholic? Like, was it because you had been exposed to the schooling process? Like, what led to that?

Nathan Crankfield (04:08)

Yeah, there's certainly a longer story, which I'm happy to get into if you want, that got me to that point. But the short version of it is that middle school was really difficult. think it's difficult for everybody. always say nobody looks back on their sixth to eighth grade as the peak of their childhood or their overall life, for sure, unless you have some type of exceptional middle school experience. But you're obviously going through a lot of changes and difficulties during that time as it is.

But on top of that, my familial difficulties were at their all time high during those years. And so my dad was kind of in and out of my life from 10 to 13, 14 years old. My parents ultimately ended up getting divorced, but that was happening. I was discovering new siblings in my life, a whole host of things. I'm my father's seventh child by five different women. And so that kind of gives you an idea of just some of the complexities of my family upbringing. And so for me, the big thing I think when I was 13 and eighth grade was seeing

People had, all my classmates had gotten confirmed. I watched them go to confession for the first time, first reconciliation, first communion, all these things. And I'm there with these kids who hate going to mass, many of them. Parents are dragging them to mass or aren't going at all on the weekends. I actually really enjoyed it. I was like at sleepovers and things like that with my friends on the weekend. I'd be the first person up to go to mass and dressed and ready and excited because my family had stopped going to church totally by the time I hit middle school. And for me, was just something that I saw as a way to get involved with something that was bigger than myself.

something that gave me purpose. I always believed in God. I'm like, they're all getting all these sacraments and I'm not, I don't know anything about Lutheranism. know, like I was, it's like I went to Sunday school there. So I'm like, the only thing I know as far as Christianity is Catholicism. And so was like, why don't I just ask if I could, if I can be a part of this, I want to receive communion and I want to get confirmed. And so I asked my pastor and he was like, yeah, we could do it like next month, as long as your parents say, okay. And they were on board with it. Later, my mom converted as well. I got to be her sponsor when I was a senior in high school. And so.

Yeah, was big, but yeah, it was kind of like an emotional moment. I always kind of call it my emotional conversion and then my more logical, intellectual and deeper heart conversion happened as I mentioned in college.

Silas Mähner (06:26)

Mean you make this point that it you know a lot of people don't consider the peak Decisions of their life at you know 13 or whatever, but I actually just saw this on Twitter today that somebody was making the point I think it was George Mack mixed feelings about him, but he was saying something about How he believes most people are influenced by one particular piece of media sometime around you know 10 to 13 that kind of changes their life and I've been thinking about this a lot lately that the

When we are young, think that we just in our current culture believe that, especially for men, like you're not really a man until you're older, but it's like when you're 13, 14, 15, you should be, you already are pursuing these questions. And I think we severely underestimate the capabilities of people at that age. And some of the, I don't know, this may be like a little bit mystical, but like the way God speaks to us through that time of adolescence, if you will, I don't know you have any particular thoughts there. We might go down a totally wrong rabbit hole that we weren't planning to.

but i just think it's interesting point ready you've just maybe reinforced that the belief there

Nathan Crankfield (07:25)

absolutely. I think there's a lot to that. I think for me as a speaker now, when I speak to middle schoolers, which I used to really shy away from, but now I actually really enjoy, I think that one of the things that makes me effective at that is a different strategy that I try to take. And it is very much like, I'm not going to treat you like children. You hate be treated like children. You hate being called children. You hate being put in a kid's group or different things like that. You know, at Hallow, we have the struggle with that. When we partner with schools, it's like the middle schoolers don't want to listen to the kids section of the app.

And I try to reinforce to them that that's all good and well, but the way that you avoid that is actually through embracing responsibility. You can't hate being called a kid and then want to act like a kid and act like a baby, act like a toddler, have the emotional maturity of a toddler, have the responsibilities of a toddler, et cetera. And so I think that both can happen where you have parents in a society that kind of treats young people like they're incapable of a lot of things. And I think that they embody that while also trying to reject it.

And so think that's the other side is you want to like reject that because you want to be older, you want to be able to do adult things, but at the same time, they're often just trained and only have the certain capacity for responsibility and maturity because they're being treated like children all the time. And so I often try to remind people that, you know, a 22 year old today, 22 is like the new 17.

And so we kind of treat like college graduates as though they're what we used to treat like a high school junior where you expect them like, yeah, okay, now this summer you have to actually get a job and maybe take your own car in for an oil change and actually have some minor responsibilities yourself. But still parents, I see so many parents of people in their early twenties that are just babying them and treating them like they're still 14 years old. And so it...

Silas Mähner (08:59)

It feeds into the massive depression amongst young people because they have no idea how to handle the world. So they just kind of coil up and run away. And unfortunately, it's just getting worse and worse. I, again, I don't want, this isn't a parenting show, but we should probably talk about this offline sometime. But the whole idea that we're not going to give our kids responsibility until they turn 18 doesn't make any sense to me, right? And I'm, my daughter's only seven months old, but my plan is for my children to sometime around, you know, 13, 14, 15.

to have a conversation like, you're responsible for all your decisions. You have to face the consequences. I will be here to help you, but I'm not gonna keep telling you how to live your life because at that point, you know how to make decisions, right? So it's whole other story.

Nathan Crankfield (09:34)

I think it really crosses over into stuff that think Catholic founders and business leaders are interested in. One of my favorite quotes that I think kind of comes from this, a good bridge maybe, is that there's no such thing as self-esteem, there's only competence. And I heard Jason Craig say that a long time ago and it really hit me. I think this is especially true for men to your point, but I do think that it's true for most people. And many of us, millennials, older Gen Z grew up in kind of the self-esteem era.

of participation trophies and all these sorts of things. And founders know, business leaders know that doesn't exist in the world. You'll have like, know, blimps of it maybe where like DEI was really hot for a little while and you could get promoted and selected for traits that you had nothing to do with in your life. But generally, you know, over a 10 year span, over a lifetime, that's not how life works. You're not going to be successful based on those sorts of things. And so I think developing competence and allowing your kids or your employees or whoever it is in your life that you care about to actually experience the consequences of their actions and develop confidence is how you actually develop confident and virtuous people. And so I think that that all really does kind of tie into everything and especially into excellence and all the things we're gonna really talk about today.

Silas Mähner (10:43)

Yeah. And one last thing I want to reflect on briefly, maybe this would be beneficial for you too, but also for people listening is that I think it's your story to me is really like, it really stood out to me that you're kind of the challenging situation that you were born into that actually has prepared you in a way to be a very effective voice to certain people, right? Who may not have had, you know, they might've had a more structured childhood or whatever. And I think this is difficult for some people to...

I've noticed this, that some people, once they convert later in life, they're like, man, I'm so upset about all the mistakes I made and how didn't come sooner. But it's also, hey, God has a plan to use each of us in His own way. And for all we know, He maybe gave you this specific thing as a gift, actually, to then be able to become an instrument of Him. And I think that as an entrepreneur, generally, as entrepreneurs, we should recognize this, that there are specific traits and things that God has given to us. And He makes this beautiful sculpture out of...

You know, what starts out as probably a messy piece of, I don't know, like a stone or whatever. But I just want to point that out. I really appreciate you sharing the basis of that story. So cool. Well, let's shift in a little bit to your entrepreneurial endeavor. So obviously you've got seeking excellence. Tell us a little bit more about what those kind of all the core pieces there. And I also want to understand kind of the motivation from a financial perspective to, you know, add an income besides your nine to five.

Nathan Crankfield (11:59)

Yeah, absolutely. So Seeking Excellence was founded in 2020. It was kind of a fruit of the pandemic, something I'd been thinking about for years and had wanted to start for a long time and was kind of...

dabbling in some blog writing and things like that, but had never really developed a website or anything that really moved it forward in any serious way. so 2020 hits, many people remember this, we had a pandemic in 2020. And so when we were all locked in our houses and just loving life, I decided to do what I called Holy Happy Hours, which are kind of like theology on taps for young adults. And there were kind of Zoom webinars before everybody hated Zoom the way that they do today, and especially the way they did in like early 2021.

but it was a time where it was kind of a good opportunity. So I just would post it and promote it to people on Catholic Instagram and would have usually myself, a woman and a priest. And I did six weeks of these. I ended up meeting my wife through these. She was my last and final guest was me, her and the priest that married us. And so that was really fun. But in the middle of it, we launched a blog, launched the Seeking Excellence Instagram. And then a few months after that in August of 2021, launched a podcast. And so...

The podcast was really just kind of a passion project for a while. It was just kind of a fun hobby for me. And it was always something that I wanted to do because I've always had this dream of doing something like this full time. And this was actually, I started it before I was kind of transitioning out of dynamic Catholic and into Benedictine college. And it was an interesting time in my life because my, you know, I was making...

I could be pretty transparent here, I guess, but I was making, I was an army captain. These things are public. So I was a captain in the army, four years experience making about 80 to $85,000 a year. took a slight pay cut to go to dynamic Catholic, but then took a massive pay cut to go to Benedictine and be a resident director and do some men's ministry stuff. And so free housing and things like that, which is all really nice and good, especially if you're fresh out of college, less so if you're like 26 and trying to get married. ⁓ and you were an army captain and serving in Afghanistan three years prior. This is more of like a, you know, 23 year old unsure of the.

or next step or in grad school kind of situation, but my wife was there and I wanted to date her in person before we got engaged. And so it was all worthwhile, but interesting time of my life just financially, I was doing it really just as a hobby and I wasn't really looking for any financial gain from it. My speaking was starting to pick up during this time as well, but I continued podcasting, started getting better at it, started to really enjoy it and really find a lot of fruit in it, posting more on social media and things like that. And then just a couple of years later, I got my job the next year at Hallow.

And that kind of somewhat complicated things a little bit more. It was more time intensive being in sales at Howell than being a resident director, but was able to really grow both of those over the last three and a half years. And so I added, like I said, the community piece last year. So I have a locals page. And so I have like subscribers on there and post exclusive content, do book clubs and specific live streams and things on locals and give people access to different resources and things that will help them to pursue a life of excellence.

And then I also started a coaching program this year in 2025. so January launched that. I have eight clients. I have room in my life for 10. I probably have room in my life for five, but I say I have room in my life for 10. And it's been really fun. That's been the most fulfilling thing so far. So that's kind of been like the peak experience, I would say, because what I really want to do is help people to change their lives and help them to fulfill their potential in this life, pursue personal greatness, feel good about that, feel good about wanting to be successful and really help them to overcome the challenges and adversity that they face.

on that journey to being their best. And so the coaching program has been by far the most impactful way to do that. And it's been really rewarding for me as a coach and as somebody who's walking with these people in their everyday life. And so that's been really fulfilling. would say that's kind of been the journey of seeking excellence as a business. And speaking events kind of are a part of that too, speaking at men's conferences, youth conferences, company events, all kinds of different things, parishes, missions and things like that, schools, leading retreats.

And so that's also something I'm really passionate about. really enjoy speaking. And so I'm really grateful for the opportunity to continue to do that and to build that up. And why develop a second income? I would say we've always kind of been minded. I've always been kind of driven to do that. And I think that a large part of that came from, and you let me know if you want me to pause at any point. I have obviously lots of thoughts on this story, but the going back to kind of give you my financial life story in a shortened version of it at least.

I graduated college, I had about $300 to my name and I had to buy $1,500 worth of Army equipment to get started as a second lieutenant. And I was like, well, how this math doesn't work out. We didn't get paid for six weeks after we started because we're working for the government and nothing's efficient. And so I actually had to take out a loan just to buy my equipment and like groceries for the first few weeks, the first month that I was down in Fort Benning, Georgia. And so getting through all of that and noticing in my parents' divorce and their sloppy marriage that

so many of their fights, even though my dad was committing adultery, staying with different families, lying, all these things, their biggest fights that I remember were always over money. And so I knew that when I was older, I was like, I don't want to be that way. And I'm in a place, I know that there's a lot of guys who retired from the military, who just were in the military, that end up financially successful. I need to figure out how I'm going to go from $300 in my pocket, second lieutenant Nathan Crankfield, with like six grand of student loan debt, barely anything. How am I going to become a millionaire? How am I going to become a multimillionaire? How am I going to be in a place where

my family can be confident and comfortable and have consistency and safety in our financial life and not have that be a huge rock or huge point of conflict in my marriage. And so I started reading books, started pursuing things and started wanting to learn about it. And that was really the impetus for this and got me started in a number of different things that really started to drive me in this direction. So.

As I started learning about different things, real estate, this and that, after we get married, we buy a house and we started at Airbnb in our basement. So we Airbnb our basement for a couple years to kind of offset our mortgage because, you know, Denver mortgages are pretty high. And so I'm paying for my mortgage in our first year, what I've made my first year in the army as my annual salary. And then we have a kid. So now we have two kids. But when we had our first son, my wife, we always knew her long-term plan was to, she at least wanted to not work.

That's what we wanted for our family was her to be able to stay home with the children. And so it's like, okay, we're going from two incomes to one, and we're living in a very expensive place. And so I got to figure out how to start to monetize seeking excellence, as I've always wanted to do, but didn't feel any urgency to do it, especially because I'm like, if I'm going to take time out of my life to do this, at this point, now that I have a family, I have to be making some money from it. At least can't be losing money year over year, which is what it was at the beginning. So.

Yeah, I think that's the big driver is just trying to think of, I tell people a lot of times, especially for the men out there who are trying to provide on, can't, I think it's really difficult to do it on one income. I think you can do it on one income earner, but I think that income earners just strive to have multiple streams of income. And so that's where I think you can kind of offset it. Obviously working in sales is really helpful. I've been able to increase my income pretty substantially year over year working in sales, but

Yeah, I think that the need for just like financial safety and just seeing money coming in from different angles is really, really helpful. I have no desire to just have one W-2 and that be it.

Silas Mähner (18:49)

yeah, the only thing that gets challenging is having to manage the tax process, but if you just hire an accountant, you'll be all right. Now, I appreciate this, man. There's so many interesting points here. think one thing I'd like to maybe double down on, just to back up a little bit, is how would you summarize the core thesis of seeking excellence? Because it's a number of things, but they seem to all be in service of one item.

Nathan Crankfield (18:55)

Yeah, so I describe seeking excellence as the, I think the Aristotle quote really kind of hits it on the head. And so he says that excellence, we repeatedly do, excellence therefore is not an act but a habit. And so I think a lot of times in the Catholic life, right, we think of, you think of so many people who feel like they graduate once they get confirmed and they kind of look in, they're like, I'm good for the rest of my life for faith. People who graduate from high school and they're like, I'm done learning for the rest of my life.

people who finish playing sports or get out of the army and we become fat, right? And you just like let yourself go. And it's like you don't, I'm not the summation of my life is not just my peak at these different points in my life. I was most intelligent when I was in college. And then when I was in Ranger school, I was in great physical shape. And then like for the first couple of years, I was a really great father. It's like, no, you develop this life of excellence, this well-rounded life.

to say, you know, I don't want to be really financially successful at 40, but be broke at 65, right? I'm trying to build this well-rounded long stream of success and excellence throughout my entire life. And I also don't want to be financially successful and divorced, right? Or a totally absent father or extremely overweight and unhealthy or whatever it might be. And so that's where I think the six pillars of excellence really come in. so seeking excellence is all about striving for greatness in all important areas of your life.

mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, financial, professional. And so I think that God gives us each one of those things in our lives. We have emotions, we have relationships, we have a mind to cultivate, we have a body to cultivate, a soul to cultivate, and we're supposed to be stewards of all these different things. And I think that at end of our life, God's going to judge us on how we stewarded those things, like you see in Matthew 25 with the parable of the talent. And so I think that's what ultimately we're called to do. What does it look like to be holy? What does it look like to be a saint in our 21st century world?

As a lay person, think that excellence really is that call, that you're striving to be your best in each of those areas in accordance with your current station in life.

Silas Mähner (21:07)

Yeah, I completely agree, man. I think it's interesting, again, not to compare us to a legend, but I had a similar type of thing when I was younger. I had just moved to New York City and it was, I won't the whole story, but basically I came to the realization I needed to do, I needed to focus on more than just one area of life. And I kind of developed five pillars of things that matter to me. And I also saw, as I was reading Tom Monahan's book, one of the biographies written on him, that he also had developed kind of these five core, I think it five or six core things. And you have, know, number, little more than five, but you have got the same principle there. And then we have to do this well on ivory account. I think that, I don't know if you have any takes on this, but it seems to me, I grew up in a Latin mass community in the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin, primarily. And a lot of the times I find people completely forgetting about or neglecting the financial side of things. You're saying, Hey, know, everything's going to be in God's hands. It's great. Which I appreciate the mentality, but

Also, the parable of the talents is like, okay, you this is not just about spiritual things. This is also about your skills that you were given. So don't know if you have any takes on how do we get men to, especially men, to consider the financial side of things, the career side of things.

Nathan Crankfield (22:11)

Yeah, I think the main thing that people need to realize is that poverty in itself is not a virtue. I think that poverty can contribute to the growth in a lot of virtues, but it's not in and of itself a good thing or a virtue. It's not something to seek after, especially as a lay person. I think there is a lot of value in it, obviously for priests, for religious, and people who have dedicated themselves fully to God. For those of us who are called to provide, I don't see any value in trying to do that.

by barely getting by on that. I don't think that we should strive to barely get by on anything that we do. I don't think you should try to barely be healthy enough. I don't think you should try to, you know, we hear this all the time and like chastity talks, right? You give a chastity talk to a room of middle schoolers or high schoolers. What is the first thing that somebody asks? Well, how far can you go? How far can I go with my girlfriend without sitting? And that to me is like a man who's like, yeah, I know that I'm called to be the provider of my family, but what's the minimum I can make and be the provider for my family? Especially if the minimum you're making still requires you to be gone for 10 to 12 hours a day.

then I think you're kind of giving your family the short end of the stick in both ways, because it's not like you're extremely present. And you're also giving them all these restrictions and things that they're not able to do, experiences they're not able to have, because you're not out there earning, you're not working smart and hard, right? I think we got to work smarter and harder in today's world. I also have this real conviction around making money as an American, because I've gone to third world countries. And so when I was growing up, I grew up in Harrisburg, PA, as I mentioned earlier.

I remember going to inner city Harrisburg where I had a lot of family, Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C. I saw some hood places and I thought I had seen poverty. Then freshman, sophomore, junior year of college, I go to the Dominican Republic every January on a mission trip. And I was like, wow, this compares to nothing that I've seen in the United States. Then I thought that I had seen real poverty. But then I get deployed in 2017 to Afghanistan and get on the outskirts of Jalalabad, kind of on the border of Pakistan, like eastern, southeastern Afghanistan. And I'm like...

this makes Dominican Republic look like vacation, right? I just couldn't believe, I had never seen skinny livestock, like livestock that was like on the verge of dying because it was so impoverished and so, you know, on the verge of starvation. And so I'm like, to me, I don't know how you go and see all these things and come back to the wealthiest country in the world, the land of opportunity, and you say, I'm going to intentionally be poor. I'm going to not work smarter, not work harder so that I can provide for my family and have enough left over.

to give and give abundantly, not just give the widow's mitre. mean, it's good to be generous and we should give until it hurts no matter what income level we're at. But I think why would I not try to be financially successful here in the United States when I see kids in the Dominican Republic who don't have that chance? I would say they had a one in a thousand or one in a hundred thousand chance. I think that kids in Afghanistan have a one in a hundred million chance to make it out and live the life that I could live.

here in the U.S. And so don't I owe it to them? Don't I owe it to kids in the inner city in the U.S. to be successful, be an example, and to be able to have money to pay for a kid to go to college or help my future generations, whatever it might be. I just think that it ultimately ends up being, I think a lot of times we try to cover cowardice or sloth with charity and like a devotion. And I think that a lot of times it's a misunderstanding of virtues.

Silas Mähner (25:20)

Yeah, that's a really, really good point. think, I don't know if there's anything else to add there. mean, just we cannot be lazy about this. I'm very, very adamant about the fact that God gave us skills, not for our own benefit, but for us to use, for us to become instruments of His will, right? And so I really appreciate your perspective there. Let's back up a little bit. When you were getting to the process of, you you were about to get married, eventually, you know, had your first child and you were starting all these projects and you started investing even more into them.

you that's a lot of time you mentioned somewhere there that you you started even more things you thought you could write with timepiece a lot of people have encountered i try to convince hey you should try to build a side hustle do something there always i i just don't have time like i won't be able to get the daily mass and all these things and i'm curious we know without leaving the leading the question too much what did you experience in terms of time when you started investing in these things you know kinda holistically also in your spiritual everything

Nathan Crankfield (26:14)

Yeah, it is challenging. think the time balance is probably the most difficult aspect of it, especially if you have a demanding full-time job, which I do, especially now, and you're trying to build something or multiple things on the side. I think there's a few things that have to happen. One, you have to become more disciplined and be willing to sacrifice things. I think that the example of daily mass is a lot more easy to justify or reasonable than it is

to say, I know so many guys who work a full-time job and don't do anything on the side that are golfing four times a month or that have their own hobbies or watch multiple hours of TV a day and catch every single sporting event that's on TV. And I've just been so challenged throughout my life by people like Patrick Bette David, Alex Hormozi, these guys who are working like, I would say overworking because they're not even taking a Sabbath, some of them. And...

That to me is where you can overdo it because I do think that we should respect Sunday as a day of rest and not work on Sundays. But Alex Ramosi is the best point of this. And I think so many people who want to point back to when we used to have agrarian culture and husbands and wives working together, it's like those dads worked sun up to sun down Monday through Saturday. It's like that was like the standard thing. And so how can we say now that we don't have, and they were.

very holy, you know, they stopped three times a day to pray the Angelus, they prayed the rosary every day, they were at Mass every Sunday. It's like, yes, should we go to daily Mass? I think it's a good thing to do. I personally don't feel like I need to go seven days a week. Maybe some people do feel like they need to, and that's okay if they do feel that way. I think they actually have 30 minutes of prayer a day, which is something that I strive to do. And that's difficult to do, but it requires sacrifice, it requires multiple levels of sacrifice. So I have to be disciplined in what I say yes to, okay? So I enjoy coaching middle school basketball, I did it for a year.

They asked me the next year and I said, no, now that I have a family, I need to prioritize seeking excellence and doing that in my free time, not coaching middle school basketball. Later in my life, I'm trying to build this so that when my son is 10 years old, I can coach him in basketball. So I don't need to be volunteering to coach other people's sons at 11 years old in basketball. Like let the dads do that. They should be the ones doing that. I'm not going to do that to other people when I have a 10 year old, 11 year old. So let them coach their own children in basketball. That's okay to say and to do, I think.

So I have to be disciplined in stopping even some of the things I enjoy doing like golfing, like basketball, coaching and things like that. But then outside of that, okay, now I have this extra time. Now I have to be disciplined with that. I have to make sure that if I wanna go to the gym, if I wanna get my pair of time in reading time, I have to wake up on time. And so I have to wake up at 5.30 or six o'clock in the morning.

And so there's so many layers of discipline that actually come with it, that allow you to have the time and make the sacrifices. I think especially for the providers, for the men, but this is true, I think for both men and women, mothers and fathers out there is that you have to decide what you're going to sacrifice, what you're going to be bad at. And for me,

I'm okay. I work like Wednesday nights is my go-to night with my wife. We've talked about this. We set up the schedule to say, okay, these are how many hours a week I need to work in order to provide for the life that we want to have and the things that we want to do. And I think to be where we want to be when we're 40 so that I can go to baseball games at 5 p.m. at four o'clock or I can coach and all this other stuff. And so are you okay with me working Wednesday night? So Wednesday night, I just don't go home and I stay here until nine, 10 o'clock. And that's kind of my bulk seeking excellence time.

You know days like Juneteenth that we get off for a federal holiday. It's like we don't care about Juneteenth So I'm just gonna use that as a workday, you know I skipped my Wednesday night that week but then I have a full workday that I can utilize as my time to work and so That that kind of stuff I think of making those sacrifices where it's like is my son gonna be okay Is he gonna be scarred to become an alcoholic because dad worked Wednesday nights from you know, ages one to five I don't think so. Maybe some people do think so. I'm extremely present I try to when I get home like when I get home tonight to be there and be present with him, to put my phone away, to play with him, to say after dinner, what do you want to do? I'll do whatever you want to do for the next hour. I'm all yours. You want to go outside. You want to go walk to look at our neighbors chickens. You want to play baseball, you know, out back. If you want to play basketball in the basement, you name it, I'm yours. Having specific routines and making sure that we have serious quality time together is really important. But I think you have to be willing to sacrifice here or there or else I think again, I viewed my trade off of working some Saturdays, traveling for work some

working Wednesday nights, I give my kids a full 40 hours of my wife back each week. And I think that I'm giving them future me, more time with future me because of this, because I'm willing to trade that off. And to me, that's an easy trade off. Eight to 10 hours of my time a week for 40 hours of my wife's time. I think that's a pretty good trade.

Silas Mähner (30:42)

you mentioned the point about the agrarian societies and people when I when I tell them like 40 hours a week of work is like whoever came up with that, like why is this a thing? Right? Like who said that we only supposed to work 40 hours a week? I love working. I also really enjoy playing, you know, hanging out with my my seven month old and you know watching her learn how to crawl and stuff. But it's also that so many people get soft, I think with this with the current society and they don't realize it. Right. You mentioned seeing different levels of poverty and it motivates you more. think I had a similar experience when I got to go visit Uganda before my wife and I got married. And it just gives you more recognize, or you kind of recognize like you've got it easy and so many people have it easy and they're not willing to challenge themselves. I don't believe this true comfort is necessarily something we should pursue. Like comfortable life is not necessarily a good life because I think that's where the devil can really easily kind of trick you into thinking things are going well.

even if you are going to daily mass, even if you have other things in place. So I also have noticed that from a time perspective, more it seems like the more I invest in these things and the more I'm willing to say, okay, I'm still going to do it. I'm still going to do the daily mass, all these items. It's like the time gets multiplied because somehow the Holy Spirit kind of cleans up the bad things in your calendar that you don't need. They cancel on you or whatever. I'm not saying that your cancellation was that, but it works out in the end. So I really appreciate this perspective because again, I'm always trying to get people to be a little bit more aggressive with this.

I think you're a really good person to ask about this. So I've always wondered how Catholic entrepreneurs who have a more public facing role, in some cases they're not necessarily publicly Catholic, right? Their business is just a business. Do you have any particular takes on being on social media and being kind of more public facing with your work and how you manage it with your family? Any core things that you kind of try to keep in mind as you're doing this? Because...

You and I both know if you're trying to play a social media game, it's so easy if you just want to rage bait people and things like that. You don't want to do that because that's not what we're called to, but how do you approach that?

Nathan Crankfield (32:31)

Yeah, for sure. think one really central thing is to avoid The John F. Kennedy approach where he said, I'm a Catholic at home, but I'm a Democrat out in the world. I'm a Democrat president and having this kind of separation of self, right? This identity separation that many people wanna have.

I think that's really important to avoid. see a lot of people in this in the world today with pronouns in their bio or celebrating pride or different things. it's like, well, I have to because of my company. You don't have to do anything. And I think that St. Thomas More is in many ways a saint for our time because of this. He really represented that well, but he was very successful. He was a lawyer. He was very educated. He was like the king's right-hand man. And for the sake of marriage, which I think is also really relevant to our time, he decided to give all of that up, including his head, to get decapitated and his

kids had already lost their mom who had died years before. stepchildren, because he got remarried, had already lost their father. And still, every excuse that all of us can make today times 100, he decides to give it all up to stay true to what he knew was true, right, and good. And so I think we have that obligation, first and foremost, is to be Catholic in both places. Now, that doesn't mean you have to wear your crucifix outside of your shirt, and you have to have a rosary on your desk at all times and things like that. But...

you do what is good and you strive to be virtuous out there in the world and to stay true to your morals and values in the midst of doing what's right and best for your company. And so I think that that's the first thing is to not separate those two things. There's a great book called Revolt Against Reality that kind of highlights, especially the John F. Kennedy kind of Catholic mentality and how that seeped into universities after his presidency. And I think it's kind of trickled down throughout Catholic education to where so many high schools and universities especially are.

Try to be good universities that happen to be Catholic instead of being good Catholic universities And I think that for us we can't be that right? I can't be a good man who happens to be Catholic I have to strive to be a good Catholic man and That means that I can go out and work in the world just like I did being in the army But it still means that my virtues my the my values and virtues to guide and kind of dictate my life And so that that would be kind of my general recommendation to people is to have a serious devout life

recognize for you what that looks like in your station and your current stage of life, but still allow your values and the truth to guide you in your decision making and to trust in God that if I don't rage bait and do all the things that I know a lot of other people are doing, it's obviously difficult. I feel that discouragement myself. I get drawn into things that I've had podcast episodes on certain topics or times where people really wanted me to talk about certain political things.

and could keep that going and I decided, no, that's not what I feel like God wants me to do. I feel like through my discernment, like I'm here to help people to become excellent, not just to talk about race and the issue of race in America, which I love talking about and talk about political things, which I really enjoy talking about or talk about, you know, financials within the church. I've had some episodes that got really hot and popular on that. And it's like, that's not my shtick. That's not my niche, right? And so I want to help young Catholics, young Christians to become their best. And so I think

staying attuned to that is really important. And maybe on the flip side of everything we just talked about of being driven and being successful and all that, is being okay with and being humble and surrendering to the fact that maybe God doesn't want you to make $5 million a year. Maybe he does want you to make 200K, you know, and to learn to be happy with that. I think that that's the other thing that we have to learn to accept too, is that maybe I'm going to do this for a long time and I'll only ever have 10 coaching clients and I'll never do Seeking Excellence full time.

And that would be okay. think that even if only, you 500 people listen to an episode, like that's fine. And I never get to thousand or millions and I see all these other people who are talking about things and I'm like, man, should I change it and pursue the views and pursue the listenership? And I just never think it's worth it. If you feel like you've discerned what God has called you to do, it's okay to be smaller if you feel like you're doing the right thing and doing things the right way. I think that that's the other side of the Catholic approach to entrepreneurship is accepting that.

As long as I'm working hard, I'm doing what think God wants me to do, and I'm staying within the realm of morality that I know to be right, then I have to accept the results that come from that.

Silas Mähner (36:35)

That's a really, really good point. think it's difficult from a business person's perspective to think about pursuing certain business ideas because you're like, well, you know, that's like crazy and the chances of success are super low versus this other thing I could do, which maybe I'm not as interested in, or don't feel as motivated to do, but it's, you know, you know, more financially lucrative in some cases. Again, you are called to just trust. think if we were to look at the Halle story, I think

A lot of people would have told them absolutely, I mean, a lot of people did tell them they're insane for trying this. So, you know, but it still worked out and you can't doubt what God can achieve. And I think it's a very difficult balance to strike when you're trying to be reasonable and use the skills and use the knowledge you have to decide what to work on, but also recognizing sometimes that God is calling you to this and it's okay if it grows a little slower because there's a lot of issues that come with, you know, being massively popular online.

Silas Mähner (37:26)

I'm assuming. I haven't gotten to that point yet. But OK, man, well, that's really helpful. I appreciate your perspective there. So let's go through a little bit. This doesn't have to be rapid fire per se, but I know you've got a lot of pretty well formed opinions on a lot of different things. People like you are kind of my favorite people who think deeply about things and try to develop frameworks. So I'm going go through a couple of items here and just kind of get your takes on them. I might skip around my list, but let's see what you get. So.

Silas Mähner (37:51)

Thoughts on Catholics, especially Catholic men, achieving financial success or driving for financial success. I know you mentioned earlier, you want to become a millionaire. So just kind of curious your thoughts there.

Nathan Crankfield (38:00)

Yeah, I think it comes back to that finding the virtue in the mean. And so you don't want to be lazy. You don't want to be work obsessed. And so I think that's where a lot of people kind of give up is it's really difficult to find the middle. Just like the life of excellence, right? I give you these six pillars and people just kind of give up on half of them because it's it's hard to pursue excellence in your relationships and at work.

Nathan Crankfield (38:20)

and in your financial stewardship and your physical fitness, right? It is, it's difficult. It's difficult to be great. I think that's what it ultimately comes down to. And we don't have enough people in the world today who actually want to be great. But I think that Catholic men need to realize that we're set here for a reason. You're an American Catholic man for a reason. You're given this opportunity that you have. If you're given a mind to cultivate, know, working hours to utilize that you should work as smart and as hard as you can to be as successful as you can and to give your children an example of what success looks like.

I just on Father's Day this past year got a very beautiful reflection from a friend of mine who's actually like agnostic and really interesting guy. He's been on my podcast before. He's one of my favorite people in the world. He's a very deep thinker. Everything you just named, you you listed, you liked about me. I think he's a better version of it just without the Catholic framework. So that's obviously a huge piece, but he does have a lot of great frameworks. Yes, exactly. But as far as, as far as you can be, you know, it's kind of like a,

Silas Mähner (39:09)

Yeah, missing the filter of truth, know.

Nathan Crankfield (39:16)

Is it Ecclesiastes, right? Yeah, the Ecclesiastes. You get pretty far with human reason, but you'll take it a lot higher in the gospels. But he had this beautiful reflection from his boss and he works for a consulting group. It's kind of a lot of military veterans and things. the guy's boss was like a retired one-star general or full bird colonel, something like that. And he was talking about how his dad was often gone, but that he really doesn't think that the sole value of fatherhood is just being present, but rather to be an example.

Nathan Crankfield (39:44)

that kind of really, it was very non-PC in addressing some of the differences between fathers and mothers. But I do think that that's really true, is that what kids kind of need or what they look for in the father is kind of the standard. And that's kind of how I view myself in pursuing being a great husband, being a great father, is I want to be the standard bearer for our family, which is why I feel like I think part of being a husband and father is to also be the leader of the family. And just like I think when I was a platoon leader,

the main thing that you do as a leader is you lead from the front. You set the example. You show them how should you take care of your uniform? How should you take care of your body and be physically fit? You should be a leader in marksmanship, right? You shouldn't be in the bottom 10 percentile of your platoon and your company if you're the platoon leader or the company commander. When it comes to marksmanship and how well you shoot your rifle and how well you know tactics and all that stuff, like you should be at the top in all these different categories. And I think that's the same when it comes to us. And so if I'm going to be the standard bearer to my son,

Do I want to show him financial success and professional success or somebody who was just kind of mediocre that just kind of checked the box that was a quiet quitter that showed up to work every day but didn't have any ambition or drive to actually become better and to grow? No, I don't want to do that. Just like I don't want to show him somebody who only cared about that and sacrificed his family for financial success and didn't care about anything but money. So I think that how do we find that middle? It's difficult, but I encourage young men out there to really seek that out and not settle for either extreme.

Silas Mähner (41:03)

Have you ever noticed anybody giving you a lot of flack for just kind of the idea of pursuing, you know, a millionaire kind of status? Because I don't know, I'll pause there. I just want to hear if you have any pushback.

Nathan Crankfield (41:15)

Yeah, I do think you're going to get that in the Catholic world especially, where it's like, who cares about it? Or you're too money focused and things like that. I think that most of those people you'll find want the things that money can provide without actually acknowledging that that is the source of what they want. And so what I mean by that is my wife and I had this same conversation we were dating and she's like, I think you're too focused on money. And she's coming out of being like a culture project missionary, all these different things.

Nathan Crankfield (41:39)

And we had very different economic situations growing up. I'll say that. Her dad was at a much higher tax bracket than mine. the one thing that was funny is just kind of talking about it. like, okay, that's great. Like I'm all for it. Talk me through how we're going to live in Denver, own a home, have six to eight kids. You're going to stay home and we're not going to like live in abject poverty. But I'm to focus on money as I'm currently making, you know, $35,000 a year as a resident director here at Benedictine. I'm like, talk me through.

How do we get from this to that without being somewhat focused or concerned about money? And that's what I think a lot of people do is they have this kind of, like I said earlier, this poverty mindset. This poverty is like the ideal virtue, which is taught nowhere in the church. I mean, if you read the book of Proverbs, you see that like a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children and things like that. You see in the Old Testament, many of our heroes to the Old Testament.

Whether it was Abraham, David, Job, like these were not unsuccessful, poor individuals, right? Like were very successful. Many saints throughout history have been financially successful, many of them poor. But I think that the real thing there is to understand that the things that you want, that you think are good, that you think of good parents giving to you are going to require a lot of money in the future. I've done a lot of financial podcasts talking about this, where if you look at 20 years ago, what $100k was when I was, you know, 12 years old.

I thought that if I made 100K, I was going to really have made it in life. Is now like the equivalent, the spending power of that is like what 68K was 100 years ago. And it's like 160K that you have to be making now to have the same spending power that was 100K 20 years ago. And that's with two and a half percent inflation. That's not really what the inflation rate's been for the last 20 years. And it doesn't represent at all the housing inflation that's happened over the last 20 years, which is everyone's biggest expense. And so thinking about that 40 years from now, you have all these kids, I love it. I think they're good willed.

But a lot of Catholics who grew up and their parents paid for them to go to college and they had a vacation home at the beach and they had all these things that really shaped and formed them. They were able to go to Catholic grade school and high school and things like that. I'm like, okay, thinking 15 years from now, you and I both have a child under the age of one. So let's say 15 years from now, what is high school tuition gonna be at Catholic high schools? It's like, has anybody looked it up recently to know that the range is 10 to $20,000 a year now? That's a hundred grand almost per kid.

There's schools, mean, the top tier schools are more than that. You know, there's a high school here in Denver that's $30,000 a year now. So what is that going to be 15 years from now? Dude, that 2.5 % inflation on that. Okay, so maybe you don't care about ever sending your kids on vacation, ever taking them on field trips, going anywhere. We're about to move to Kansas City. Is that all they're gonna see is just Kansas City throughout their entire childhood? They're not gonna see any other parts of the country?

Okay, I'm going to deprive my kids of all these things that I had and appreciated, valued, and thought was part of my liberal education and growing up and being well-rounded, but I'm going to not allow them to experience any of that just for the sake of me feeling good about being poverty-minded. And I think there's a way to do that, but I don't think people will realize how much you're actually giving up and sacrificing because they assume that just being middle class is going to be the same that it was 20 or 30 years ago, and it's not the case. People are going to be sadly mistaken when they can't retire.

when they can't help their kids with college, when they can't pay for their kids' wedding at all, when they can't help their kids buy a house, and they have to work until they're dead. I think that that's gonna be a big reality check, and I try to sound the alarm on that now, because you can't fix it when you're 80.

Silas Mähner (44:58)

Yeah, I also think it's worth noting that it seems to be a pretty common thing in, let's say, know, structured families, families that have a pretty good, you know, overall setup. It's not like the, you know, broken families or whatnot. They don't necessarily, it's kind of, it's kind of rude to talk about the money stuff. So they don't actually teach their kids in a lot of cases what it takes to achieve the lifestyle they have. And that leads to this kind of misunderstanding, right? So I, ⁓ I resonate with a lot of what you're saying. What about your perspective on Catholics pursuing

Silas Mähner (45:28)

obviously excellence, in roles of leadership in the world, whether that's politics or, you know, I always give this example, like what if Elon Musk or Steve Jobs were devout Catholics? What would the world look like now? What do think there?

Nathan Crankfield (45:40)

Yeah, I think that that's a great follow on for everything we just talked about because the second piece to me of why should we be financially successful? Why should we be professionally successful? Be financially and professionally excellent is another way to say it is because whether we like it or not the rules of the game in the world that we live in especially the country we live in is that money is influential and I see that out in the world you see it with people like Elon Musk and I'm not trying to become you know a mega billionaire

But even just within the church, I'm amazed and sometimes even scandalized by the relationships that I see priests have and bishops have with wealthy people in our archdiocese and in archdioceses across the country who are scandalous people who have been married four or five times. And the priest will just affirm that. And they just look past a lot of things for the sake of money. I see a lot of bishops who are really close to the wealthy people in their diocese that don't know the young people in their diocese at all, that don't care about.

Converts in their diocese, none of that. They spend most of their time whining and dining with the wealthy. And to be fair to them, the pressure that they're under is so many dioceses are bankrupt and going under so many difficulties because of the scandal. So there's lots of problems in the church to unpack there. But if you want to be influential in the church, yes, you can do that by rising to the ranks and becoming the next CEO or president of Focus. You can also do that by being out in the world and being financially successful, by being a successful lawyer, being a successful business owner. That gives you more pull.

in local elections, in local government, in state government, in federal government situations, right? That's how people, when you rise to the top, that's how you become the secretary of, you know, Homeland Security, the secretary of energy or whatever it is. Like those people are typically successful in life. You're not seeing people that are just like middle managers at 50 years old that have been middle managers and just, again, were quiet quitters for the last 30 years who end up having any real influence or impact in society. Yes, I believe that the

greatest impact and most important impact we have is at home with our wife and with our children. But that's not the only impact we can have. We can still have impact outside of that. Again, St. Thomas More is a great example of this, where he was a saint and he was like second in command in the government. And they had to kill him to end this basically pushback that ended up becoming the Anglican Church. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to do it. They had to get rid of him to do that. And his martyrdom obviously sparked a whole new conversion and uprising in Catholicism and was very fruitful.

even in his death. And so I think we have to really think about that is like, you know, your favorite apostle, it's going to need money 30 years from now. Your archdiocese is going to need money 30 years from now. Who gets to decide when you're talking about, I see it now, we work even with Hallow of all these different places who are the foundations that are deciding what these Catholic schools can do and what they can't do. Catholic schools are really dependent on donor funds. And so they're saying, hey, I want to see you have better Catholic identity. I want to see you taking the kids to mass three times a week.

None of this once a month stuff anymore. If we're going to be funding you and helping you to stay alive, we have some say in how you're going to actually form the Catholic identity of your school. Yes, we'll give you money for Hallow because it's an Orthodox Catholic thing. We're not going to give you money for this woke mental health thing that you're asking for money for. You actually have influence to actually guide and direct society in some pretty impactful ways when you have money and you're in circles of people that have money. doesn't mean you should exclusively be friends with wealthy and rich people, but it does help you to have some.

Silas Mähner (48:54)

I think that's really worth drilling down on is this idea that we have influence, we have the ability to influence. Because if you think about it, if we look at our very nature as co-creators, that's the whole idea is like taking kind of... In our case, we're not taking some, know, creating something out of nothing. We're creating something with what's been given to us and the materials around us that are at a disposal. But we're not called to just be sitting there and be, you know...

kind of coasting and letting things go. A lot of people I've grown up around complain about the way the government is, the way the world works. It's like, well, go do something about it, right? The apostles, they went out and they preached the gospel. Maybe they weren't necessarily trying to change the governments per se, but they were definitely willing to go do risky things and do things that were non-NPC behavior, right? As I'd like to say. And I think that we all need to do that, whether it's big or small, there's so much impact that you can make.

Silas Mähner (49:41)

And even if it just comes down to a simply, develop a side hustle so you can make 10 grand extra a year and you can put nine or eight of that towards some specific project in your local area, that can make a big difference, right? So I really appreciate you pointing that out. Yeah, we could probably talk for hours, but we're going to have to wrap it up pretty soon here. Let's kind of close off with, are there any specific business ideas or side hustles that you kind of tend to recommend to people who are interested in actually taking that leap to increase their income?

Nathan Crankfield (50:08)

Yeah, it's a great question. think the biggest thing, there's a few kind of framework things and I'll throw some practical things in at the end. But the kind of framework things I always tell people are to think about the ways that your talents, the needs of the world, and things that could be profitable intersect, right? And so I think that thinking about those kind of three things of where's the intersection of something that could make money that I'm interested in or good at and that the world needs. I think another great way to think about that is

what are some things that would make my life better? Right? So whether it's as a parent or it's as a sales manager, whatever the thing might be, it would just had, you know, for Father's Day this past year, my wife gave me a, it's called like the Kid Caddy, I think, or something like that. And it's something that goes on the stroller and like you could fit golf clubs on the stroller. When we moved to Kansas City, we moved to Atchison for a little while. They have a great golf course there.

that I think it's extremely cheap or I think you can even walk it for free. And I'm like, I'm gonna take my son to go all the time and we're just gonna go out there. He loves golf and we've done some par threes and stuff together. So that's a good thing. That's the way that I do kind of try to get some golfing in is if I take him with me and then I'm like, we're at least spending some time together and he loves it. And so that's really fun. But thinking about that, she's like, oh, look at this. And she's showing me like the Instagram of this husband and wife who started it. And it's like, he used to use coat hangers as his way of keeping his clubs on the stroller.

And those are the kinds of things that I think are the most impactful and the most passion-driven kind of side hustles because it's like, yeah, we really needed this and this is gonna actually help people, even if it's something that seems silly like golfing with your kids in their stroller. And so for me, that's what the excellent life program was and the coaching program was. Man, I'm trying to balance these six pillars. Like would love to have somebody who I could talk to that I trusted, that I feel like understood my Catholic framework and perspective on life.

that wanted to help me grow in virtue that was knowledgeable in each of these areas because it's easy to find a financial coach or a relationship coach or somebody that can help you in your spiritual life and spiritual direction. But my priest usually isn't the most influential or insightful when I'm like, how do I overcome this aspect of sales management? So I think having somebody that's kind of well-rounded was something that I saw as something I would really benefit from. And so I was like, well, how about I try to provide that to other people? So I think that's all really helpful.

And then the last thing I would say is it also doesn't have to be something you're super passionate about. I think that following your heart and following your passion sometimes gets misconstrued or like over-prioritized. And for me, I think young Catholics really need to look into small businesses, especially boring small businesses. I've been really big on this lately and really interested in buying a small business. It's something that I'm really interested in exploring more in 2026 and beyond and working with other young driven Catholic men and families to do that.

And I have one example that I've absolutely loved. There's a friend of mine, I meant to look it up before I got on, forget. I'll have to send it to you, maybe you'll put them in the show notes, but they started a poop scooping business in San Diego. It's like their side hustle and he's a husband and father and he's out there scooping poop on like evenings and weekends. And they have this great Instagram 40, makes them like funny Instagram reels and stuff for marketing purposes.

I think that's so good. I'm like, even though it's not obviously something that he loves, it's not something that he probably feels really passionate about doing, it's not something that's fun to do, he still is like, I need to make more income for my family and I'm willing to scoop poop to do it. And to me, the love that that shows, the discipline, the masculinity in my mind behind that, the sense of duty, responsibility, all the army values that I love for so long and still do love, I think that it exemplifies all of those things. And it's beautiful to see like.

I think we forget sometimes, maybe St. Joseph wasn't passionate about woodworking. Maybe St. Peter wasn't passionate about fishing. I'm sure that some people love fishing and would like to do it every day. Maybe he didn't. He wasn't out there having fun on the lake. He was pulling nets. It was hard work. Yeah, it sucked. There's certain aspects of, we always think we have to love every aspect of our job.

Nathan Crankfield (54:01)

I think especially for the side house, we didn't love having the Airbnb in our basement and having to try to quiet our son down and clean it. know, washing toilets wasn't my wife's passion, but it was like the amount of income that we made per hour of how much effort it actually took was pretty great. And so I think that sometimes you do things that also aren't super glamorous for the sake of building up some more income on the side that can give your family more opportunity and a better life. so.

Nathan Crankfield (54:23)

I would kind of get, so I kind of think again, it's kind of nuanced where you have to find that kind of virtuous middle where it's a great blessing to find something you love. And I'm very blessed and I feel like a hypocrite sometimes saying that because I get to work for Hallow and my side hustle is something I really enjoy doing, but I don't enjoy it every day. There's times where I force myself to podcast. Sometimes where I want to go home and don't feel like doing a coaching session. And so we all have to push through that sometimes and do things that we really don't feel like doing or enjoy.

Silas Mähner (54:46)

Yeah, it also goes to the idea that we don't have to pursue this glamorous type of entrepreneurship lifestyle that's always promoted on Instagram by lot of these people. This isn't about how you look. I think it was actually just today in the readings, if I'm not mistaken, about don't pray like the Pharisees who are just trying to always pray in public and fast and make themselves look bad. It's the same principle about…

Silas Mähner (55:08)

Why are doing this? you doing this because you want attention and you want to look cool or are doing it because there's a purpose to it? And first of all, I will say to anybody who has not made Side House of money, that first dollar, man, it tastes so good. I don't care how you make it. It's pretty fun to make a side buck. I even have this now with Catholic founders. Whenever I get a new paid sub, I'm like, man, that's amazing, even though I make way more with my actual business.

Nathan Crankfield (55:20)

It's so fun. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's like $10. It's like, that's so cool. Yep.

Silas Mähner (55:35)

It feels so good. It feels so good, All right. Well, any last things that you want to wrap us up with? Again, you can throw any Catholic side hustle ideas, any specific tools you use. mean, there's a lot of resources you have, but I'm just kind of curious to get your final thoughts.

Nathan Crankfield (55:48)

Yeah, would say just closing thoughts is to really pray about that and think about what is your vision for your life. think people really need to think more long term. think especially for men, that's what we're called to do is to cast a vision. know, another one of my favorites from Proverbs is that people without a vision, where there is no vision, the people will perish. And so it's on us to be thinking more long term. How are we going to shape society? How are we going to be impactful? Where do I want to be when I'm 40, 50, 60 years old? What do I want people to be able to write about me and my eulogy at the end of my life?

And so I think that thinking about all of that really helps you to see the greater picture and see ways that you can start to build it out from this point to then. And so as the saying goes, one of my favorites is like, you overestimate what you can do in a day, but we underestimate what we can do in a month or in a year or in a decade. And I think that's so true is that we want things to happen overnight. You know, I think people now, I've been doing this for five years and I'm not, I haven't hit any of the goals where I would have set for five years ago and where I wanted seeking access to be at this point, but

I'm happy that I did it. I'm a better man for the effort that I've put in. I'm more clear on my thoughts and I've helped more people than I would have by far if I had not done any of it. And so I think that all of that is really important to recognize is that you have to have this vision. You're working to it over a long period of time and that you're gonna have to push through a lot in order to get there. But God, think really needs people to desire greatness and to pursue personal greatness. One of my favorite JP2 quotes.

is where he says, it's Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness. It's Jesus that gives you the desire to be great. Jesus that gives you that burning passion to want to improve yourself and improve society. And so that to me always fuels me to recognize that that desire that you have that maybe some people in your life, that maybe some Catholics in your life have tried to extinguish, they say, you're too focused on success or being financially successful or money or...

fitness and all these other things like you have this desire to be great. You should be stoking that and allowing God to continue to light that fire within you and to make it burn brighter and to help to catch other people around you on fire as well for being great. First and foremost, being a saint, but recognizing that sainthood comes through excellence, virtue, that is going to look a lot like success.

Silas Mähner (57:52)

Yeah, amen. I would just say this last piece is that I think people forget God also gave us the skills and the desires, right? He put these in our hearts, There's a good version, there's a bad version if we let the devil corrupt it. So if you have the desire to make money or to be successful, there's reasons for it, right? I always think about our church here that I grew up going to. This guy sold his company for like $100 million and used a lot of that to rebuild this church and build this community that's flourishing now.

Silas Mähner (58:19)

And if we don't have people like that, we can't have this, right? So we need to build more churches because hopefully we're going to be outgrowing the churches that we have instead of closing them down. So it is a pleasure having you on, We're going to have to have you on again at some point, and I'm sure we're going to keep chopping it up on the background. But thanks so much for coming on.

Nathan Crankfield (58:21)

for sure man it was great to be with you today thank you again for having me

Silas Mähner (58:40)

Hey everybody, thanks so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us five stars on your favorite podcast player. And I would highly recommend, if you have not already, do check out Nathan's podcast, Seeking Excellence, as he's got some incredible content for Catholics who want to live a well-rounded life of virtue in every aspect. In addition, we always appreciate if you can help us get to a thousand subscribers on YouTube. So if you're not following on YouTube, please go do so today. And then be sure to subscribe to the St. Lee CEO, our free weekly newsletter that comes out every Monday.

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