Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E191: How He Convinced Silicon Valley To Invest in Jesus w/Alex Jones

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E191: How He Convinced Silicon Valley To Invest in Jesus w/Alex Jones · The Lila Rose Show

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  We raised $50 million one day. But I reflect on my day and I
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  was like, you know what? My daughter came and gave me a
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  hug. And that was better when it was
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  objectively better. What's it been like being the
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  CEO where you've raised 100 million bucks, you have 100
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  people, you're managing? Fur is not ultimately about us
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  feeling good. It's about us trying to do the
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  Lord's will. Sometimes that feels good and
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  sometimes it really doesn't. Also gotten some blowback about
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  oh, you're they're using celebrities and I'm curious your
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  take on that I. Think that.
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  Hey everybody, welcome back to the Lila Rose show.
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  Today I'm sitting down with Alex Jones.
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  Alex Jones, who is the founder of Halo app.
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  He raised over $100 million for this technology.
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  His app has had over I think 300 million prayers prayed.
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  Anyways, Alex gets super personal about how he did this,
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  not just the why, but the how behind building this really
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  incredibly impressive effectively tech and prayer
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  company and so much more. I think you're going to find
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  this episode fascinating. And don't forget to subscribe to
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  the show if you're not already subscribed.
• 1:02
  Did you know that over 90% of our listeners, sometimes on
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  So make sure that you hit that subscribe button.
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  Alex Jones, welcome to the podcast.
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  Thanks for having me, it's an honor.
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  It's great to have you here. Not that Alex Jones, no.
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  You are the Alex Jones. In my world.
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  OK, certainly not, certainly not the more that I talk with you
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  and I've, you know, asked you for advice on stuff before
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  business related. Obviously I've been involved
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  with hollow app. It's amazing have met your
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  beautiful family. You guys are just salt of the
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  earth people. And you're you're not only
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  brilliant, but you're super solid.
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  So thank you for thank you for being you.
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  Oh, praise God. Likewise, right back at you.
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  We're big fans and the work you do is incredibly important.
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  And yeah, it's been an honor to get to be get to work together
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  certainly, but also be friends. So.
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  Thank you. I feel the same.
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  So I'm excited to talk because obviously we're going to talk
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  about Hallow and all the amazing things it's doing out in the
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  wild, the number one prayer app in the world.
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  But I also want to talk about your leadership, your your
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  approach to leadership running, you know, one of the biggest
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  Catholic technology companies. Is that fair to say?
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  Yeah, by the by the grace of God, probably, I guess.
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  Yeah. It's amazing.
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  There's not like 1000 Catholic technology.
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  I mean, that's true, but it's not like a huge list.
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  But it's pretty significant though what you've built.
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  It's pretty cool. It's cool to watch them.
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  So, but we were talking earlier, you're out here in California
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  and tell us a little bit about what brought you out here.
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  My family does. We try to get together as a
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  family when my parents and my sisters and my sister has her,
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  my nephews and a niece, and we try to get together.
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  And so for the holidays, we got together here out West.
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  And then we spent some time, my family and I, in Northern
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  California, which we lived there for like 3 years.
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  And then we're coming down here for a day.
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  We're taking the kids to Disneyland, which is the first
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  time I've ever been there. But my daughter seems pretty
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  excited, so we'll see. And she's 4, right?
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  She's 4, almost five, Yeah. It's brave.
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  Yeah, it'll be. We've got a four year old, a 2
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  year old and a five month old. So I, I don't think it'll be, I
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  think it'll most likely be a cross, but we'll have fun.
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  I mean, it's funny you've been to.
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  Disneyland or or. I've never been to, I mean, I
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  think as a kid, maybe my parents took us to Disney World once,
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  but no, I haven't. I haven't been anywhere.
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  And we just, yeah, we were out here.
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  And so we wanted to hit that. We did the redwoods.
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  We did. There you go.
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  That sounds that's. Good.
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  The redwoods was were were beautiful and we were just north
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  of the Bay Area and it was just oh gosh, it was gorgeous.
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  But yeah, so we'll see. This probably will have a
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  different vibe, but similar amount of luck.
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  Thank you if you wanna. If you wanna cancel it, if you,
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  if it's like so miserable, there's like a petting zoo
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  that's really cool. I'm sure my kids would love that
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  so much more. Not not in in OC area.
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  So I'll I'll send you the wreck. But so I'd love to hear the
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  origin story. I mean, you've shared it before,
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  not on the show yet. So the audience will get to hear
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  it for the first time. But I also, you're talking about
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  Northern California. You went to Stanford.
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  And I think I was out in the area around the same time you
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  and your wife were out there. But I don't think we ever met.
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  I was actually living in Menlo Park for a little while several
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  years back. Yeah.
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  So I remember you're saying you're at, you know, Business
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  School there. But tell us about how the idea
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  of Halo came to you and what what you were working on.
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  What were you doing before you started Halo?
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  Yeah, it's kind of all one story, which is mostly the story
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  of my relationship with the Lord, but so I guess I'll start
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  there and then hopefully the other pieces fit in.
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  But so I was raised Catholic but fell away from my faith in high
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  school and college. Would have considered myself
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  agnostic or atheist for most of that time.
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  Unfortunately, I went to Notre Dame and the when I graduated, I
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  got real. I started working.
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  I was in consulting, doing like strategy and like digital
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  products, kind of helping big companies launch apps and stuff.
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  But I got really into meditation and I don't know what it was.
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  It wasn't like stress, although stress was a piece of it.
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  It was mostly like a fascination with the spiritual life.
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  And unfortunately, my mind did not first go to kind of
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  Christian spirituality and like the great Saints, but to this
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  kind of secular meditation thing.
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  And this was, this was I guess seven years or so ago, 6-7 years
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  or so. And these two apps had just
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  launched, which were Headspace and Calm.
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  And I downloaded them and I started using them and they,
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  they teach how to do kind of secular meditation techniques.
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  And I thought they were great. I thought there were like
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  helpful ways to learn this technique within the comfort of
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  your own home for like 10 minutes before going to work.
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  You didn't have to go to like a meditation studio or go on some
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  big retreat or something. It felt like you had a really
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  capable guide who was leading you through it.
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  It felt like almost technology without technology.
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  Like you'd pick a session, but you didn't have to like do it
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  looking at a screen. You press play and close your
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  eyes and plugged in your headphones and you're kind of
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  guided through this meditation session.
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  But the weirdest thing kept happening, which is every time I
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  would meditate, which I realized was really the first time that
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  I'd ever actually sat in silence.
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  Like without distractions, without thinking about stuff,
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  without trying to work or whatever, but just sitting in
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  silence. My mind kept feeling this weird
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  pull towards something spiritual, like an image of the
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  cross or the name Jesus or the words Holy Spirit.
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  And I thought that was very strange because I would have
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  considered myself agnostic. And so I started reaching out to
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  priests, brothers and sisters, folks who took their faith a lot
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  more seriously than I did. And I asked them what I thought
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  was a really interesting question, which is, hey, is
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  there any way there's some sort of intersection here between
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  this meditation thing and this faith thing?
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  And they all laughed at me and said, yeah, we've been doing it
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  for 2000 years. You probably should have heard
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  about this. Probably more than 2000 years.
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  Certainly more than 2000 years. It's called prayer.
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  And I was like, no, I know prayer prayers.
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  They're like, hey, thanks for stuff.
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  Sorry for stuff. Help me with stuff are the
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  things that I memorized as a kid, which are both great ways
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  to pray. I had this one priest.
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  It was it was funny. He was like, could you imagine
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  if if you came home to your wife every day and I think she was my
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  fiance at the time, But if if you came home to your wife every
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  day and you said, hey, honey, I'm thankful for these things.
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  I'm sorry for these things. Could you help me with these
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  things? Good night.
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  Like how healthy would your relationship be with your wife?
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  And I was like, it wouldn't be that healthy.
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  And he was like, why? And I was like, wow, I spend
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  most of my time saying, hey, honey, how was your day?
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  What can I do for you? And then listening.
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  And he was like, OK, great. What you've told me so far as
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  you think prayer is talking, which is an important part of
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  prayer. Like you share with God what's
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  on your heart. That's an important half of it,
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  but a more important half is listening.
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  Like have you ever tried to listen for God?
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  And if if you spend most of your relationship with your wife
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  listening, how much more would you want to listen to the guy
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  who created the universe who knows what he wants for your
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  perfect joy and happiness in every moment?
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  And I was like, OK, that's compelling, but what does it
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  mean? Like he doesn't usually audibly
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  talk. He does sometimes, but he
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  doesn't audibly. Usually talk or text you in the
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  morning or whatever. You're like and he's not on the
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  Headspace app, so like, what do I do?
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  And so I started learning about this whole world of
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  contemplative and meditative prayer and spirituality within
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  the church that I'd honestly never heard of before.
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  So Lexi Davina, Carmelite spirituality, prayer,
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  recollection, chant, obviously the rosary and the stuff that
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  we've heard of before, but this whole world that I'd read
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  Ignatian spirituality, examine all these things.
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  And I googled how to do Lexi Davina, which is a way of
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  meditating with scripture, randomly opened up a Bible that
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  was laying around and to Luke 11.
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  And in Lexia Davina, you pick a word that sticks out to you from
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  scripture and you meditate on it.
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  And Luke 11, funnily enough, is where the disciples asked Jesus
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  to teach him how to pray. And he gives him the our Father.
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  And the word that stuck out to me was hallow.
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  And it was just 10 minutes just in the comfort of my own home.
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  But it changed my life. It brought me back to my faith.
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  It is the most important part of who I am now.
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  Mass sacraments, all of the beauty I think of the church and
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  Christianity and a relationship with the Lord.
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  And it's like, it's really hard to put into words like any
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  prayer experiences. But it was just this really deep
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  combination of this deep sense of peace, but combined with
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  this, like wrestling with something real.
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  So hallow means to make holy, which I didn't even know what
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  the word hallow meant. I had to Google it.
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  I think, which is so funny, like you said, the our Father 1000
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  times and but it's a weird word like we don't, you know, it's
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  not. We don't use it.
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  Use it in regular English and it means to make holy.
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  And I was like, well, is God trying to make me holy?
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  Am I letting other people grow in holiness?
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  Am I supposed to be serving other people?
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  And the answer was no. The answer was I was doing my
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  own career for my own career's sake because I was trying to
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  whatever, do what I was supposed to do and follow the ways of the
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  world. And, and so it led me to quit my
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  job during my 4O1K like 26 years old and do some startup that
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  almost certainly was like a 99% chance of losing everything.
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  And so it was really stressful because it's like, oh, your
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  whole life is wrong. Like, you're doing the whole
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  thing wrong. But it was wrestling with that
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  in this place of deep peace. So is this weird, like
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  combination of those two? So I knew I wanted to do that
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  for the rest of my life. I knew how to code a little bit.
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  And with some help, we built the the first version of it mostly.
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  Well, certainly entirely just for me.
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  And we had some friends and family start using it.
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  And that was, yeah, six years ago or so.
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  And it's just been like, had you told me 1000 people would have
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  prayed with the thing, I would have told you you were crazy.
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  I mean, that's like 1000 people. A lot of people.
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  That's like a whole church that's and I think we just
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  crossed like 750 million prayers prayed or something through the
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  app, 22 million downloads or so. I mean, it's just, it's just
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  mind blowing 7. 150 million prayers prayed yeah so people
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  sign up say they're praying a prayer and then the app is
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  recording as their people agreeing they.
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  Actually have to pray like they have to start praying a prayer
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  and get a certain chunk through it because some people start and
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  switch and so and so you, you start like a session and pray a
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  prayer. So like you, you enter into.
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  You have any idea how many like minutes and hours of time that
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  is? Yeah, we did.
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  We did this. We looked at it like 6 months
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  ago. It's more time than has pat.
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  I think we passed this like a year ago.
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  More time in prayer has been spent on the app then has passed
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  since our Lord was here, which is crazy like more than 2000
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  years, which is insane. But and there's cool like it's
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  so cool to see. Like I on our ladies feast day,
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  we looked up what how many rows are.
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  I think there's like 70 million rosaries have been prayed
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  through the app or something insane.
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  And it's like across like 150 different countries.
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  We just got kicked out of China. So like 149.
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  But they they're not huge fans of John Paul the Second.
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  They're not huge fans of Christianity, right?
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  It's a little. No, no, they're, you know, some
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  versions of it, but the but yeah, it's just it's and for us.
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  How many languages it does Halo? Well, you can use the app pretty
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  much anywhere that it's allowed. Anywhere that there's an iPhone
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  or an Android phone and that you have Internet are there?
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  Different translations, different.
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  Languages, yeah, so we have 8 so, so most of it's in English,
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  but you have we have 8 different versions of the app in different
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  languages so we have Polish, French, German, Italian,
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  Portuguese, Tagalog. I think we have one other
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  language in the Philippines and Spanish.
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  Yeah, I think there's and I think we've got a couple other
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  stuff that we're working on. But yeah, it's really cool.
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  What's the what's? The end game.
• 12:38
  Every single person in the world has access to.
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  Halloween and is using it to pray.
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  meat delivered. You know, there's two pieces to
• 13:57
  that, I guess which is the one is I, I do think like, I think
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  prayer. I think prayer changes the
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  world. I think if you have everybody in
• 14:06
  the world waking up every day and ending their day and
• 14:09
  throughout the day, like trying to ask God, what do you want me
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  to do in this moment? He's going to tell you to live a
• 14:16
  life of better love and he's going to build up his Kingdom
• 14:19
  and he's going to use you to do it.
• 14:20
  And if he's using everybody in the world all the time, like
• 14:23
  that's, it's probably not fully there, but it's pretty close to
• 14:25
  the Kingdom of God, you know, and the, and I think like people
• 14:30
  are really hungry for it and you're hungry, especially in
• 14:34
  today's world, like for some real peace and meaning and
• 14:37
  purpose and struggle. And but for us, it's, I don't
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  know, I, I don't. And then like even the folks
• 14:44
  that we already have on the app, like even myself, like, man, if
• 14:46
  there were like a couple of Saints that we got to pray with,
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  like or be some small part of somebody's journey, like, how
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  cool would that be? And.
• 14:53
  Meaning you, you collaborated with some number of people and
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  then like, you know, 50 years from now.
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  Or someone in the 22 million people who have downloaded the
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  app ends up a St. like that that.
• 15:04
  Oh yeah, how? Cool, would that be?
• 15:05
  You better get at least one out of.
• 15:06
  That hopefully one would hope $22 million.
• 15:09
  I don't know. The way is narrow.
• 15:11
  For like 21 million Saints minimum but.
• 15:13
  Yeah, I mean, and and we, yeah, we have like monks and nuns and.
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  I, I feel like we got to do a quick pause because the, the,
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  and I know Hallow, it's, there's lots of Catholics on hallow, but
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  it's not just for Catholics. It's for anyone who wants to
• 15:26
  pray. And same with the, the podcast
• 15:29
  here. Like we've got a lot of
• 15:29
  Catholics who listen. I, everyone knows I'm Catholic,
• 15:32
  talk about it like all the time, but we have people who are not
• 15:34
  Catholic people who are, you know, Protestant, evangelical,
• 15:37
  different backgrounds. So like we're using this
• 15:40
  language of the Kingdom, St. becoming a St.
• 15:44
  And I wanted to, I want to just take a quick pause.
• 15:46
  And then you talked earlier about becoming holy, like you
• 15:49
  felt in your life. I'm not working towards becoming
• 15:52
  holy in my life. When you were working in your
• 15:55
  consulting gig and you know you're getting your big degree
• 15:57
  at Stanford and doing all the cool things, right?
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  But then you wanted to make this big shift in your own conversion
• 16:05
  of now I want to live for holiness, which is for God,
• 16:08
  right? What does it mean to when we're
• 16:12
  talking about, we want people to be Saints, to be holy, to talk
• 16:15
  more about that? What does that mean?
• 16:17
  Because I think a lot of Christians think of themselves
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  and you know, especially if you're not Catholic and you
• 16:22
  don't have this kind of framework, the people of God are
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  his Saints. So if you are born again, if you
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  profess the name of Jesus Christ, if you repent your sins,
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  then you are a St. So what is this process of
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  becoming holy, this process of becoming a St. that you're
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  talking about? Yeah, I guess it's the a couple
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  things that I'd say to that too, which is, yeah, certainly I am a
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  Catholic. I don't hopefully ever hide that
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  I'm Catholic. And we're never going to
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  Hallows, never going to have something on the app that's like
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  Mary is a demon or something. But at the same point, what we
• 16:54
  wanted to do really from the beginning was build something
• 16:57
  that was focused on helping people grow deeper in a, in a
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  personal relationship with Jesus, which hopefully can be
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  something for anybody interested in any, in, in any sort of
• 17:06
  Christian spirituality. And what we found really from
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  the beginning, but certainly over the last couple years is,
• 17:14
  is how true that has been. So we have probably about half
• 17:18
  the folks who are downloading the app are coming into the app
• 17:21
  at a given point now are not Catholic or of you know, a lot
• 17:26
  of folks are either Christian or interested in some sort of
• 17:28
  Christian spirituality. But it's an honor to get to pray
• 17:32
  with everybody of all faiths. You know, everything on our app
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  hopefully is rooted in Scripture and is about diving deeper into
• 17:39
  a relationship with Jesus, primarily through his word, but
• 17:41
  through it a handful of the different ways that he that he
• 17:45
  interacts with us. Funnily enough the 1st like
• 17:49
  power user I guess is what you would call it in the app world
• 17:53
  we had. What's the power user?
• 17:55
  It means somebody who uses the app a lot.
• 17:58
  Very. And I'm pretty straightforward.
• 17:59
  Silicon Valley has fancy. Words fancy, fancy techo term.
• 18:02
  For it's a fancy word for you use it a lot the but there was
• 18:06
  somebody who used it, I think it was and this was this was like 6
• 18:10
  weeks in and to launching and someone had used it 300 times or
• 18:15
  something so it. After six weeks.
• 18:17
  Yeah, so for like 30, yeah, for something crazy, they used it 10
• 18:21
  times a day for 30 days or something.
• 18:22
  Yeah, in a row. There's only, you know, a couple
• 18:24
  100 people using this thing. And so I just reach out to her
• 18:27
  and I'm like, hey, I'm Alex. You're it seems like like you
• 18:31
  spiked on our thing for like using this a crazy map.
• 18:33
  Is there any chance you could like we could chat?
• 18:35
  I think she had reached out to us first and said I love the app
• 18:37
  and but and showed us her streak and completions and all this
• 18:40
  stuff because we take privacy very seriously.
• 18:41
  So I'm not like looking at people's activity.
• 18:43
  But then I talked to her and and she was like, yeah, I love it.
• 18:45
  It's changed my life. I wake up, I use it like four or
• 18:49
  five times throughout the day. In the morning, first I do two
• 18:51
  things and then at lunch I do another two things.
• 18:53
  And then at night I do two things.
• 18:54
  And then I have insomnia. So I usually wake up two or
• 18:56
  three times. And I need like the Scripture
• 18:58
  really helps me fall back asleep.
• 19:00
  And she was an evangelical woman and this was like the very early
• 19:03
  days. And I was like, does the like,
• 19:07
  like, you know, I'm, I'm Catholic.
• 19:09
  It's gonna thank you so much for getting to pray together.
• 19:12
  Does it like, does some of the stuff there bother you at all?
• 19:14
  And she's like, no, it's like, it's, it's, if I skip the road,
• 19:17
  I don't do the rosary. I'm not really all that
• 19:18
  interested in the rosary and the, all the rest of it, like
• 19:21
  99% of it is just scripture, just meditating with scripture.
• 19:26
  But I don't know that your, your question.
• 19:27
  And so it's, you know, and, and we've seen that continue to play
• 19:29
  out where it's just like our goal is to try to help everybody
• 19:32
  to grow deeper in a relationship with Jesus.
• 19:34
  Whoever is interested in growing deeper in a relationship with
• 19:36
  Jesus, We've had a lot of people be like, Oh, well, you should
• 19:37
  build a different religious version of it, like a Muslim
• 19:41
  version and a Buddhist version and a, and I was like, Nah, it's
• 19:43
  going to be Jesus. It's just, it's always just
• 19:45
  Jesus. But anybody who wants anybody
• 19:47
  who wants Jesus, hopefully hallowed can be a tool for you.
• 19:51
  But your question around like becoming a St. or growing in
• 19:55
  holiness is an interesting 1. You know, for me, it's just
• 19:59
  about trying to give more and more of your heart to the Lord.
• 20:02
  And, and there's this beautiful little like image or something
• 20:05
  that I saw on social media where it's it's.
• 20:08
  The teddy bear image. Yeah, I think so.
• 20:10
  It's all I have. Makes me cry every time I think
• 20:12
  about it. It's this little girl who's
• 20:14
  giving. But I could cry too, because
• 20:15
  it's. Isn't it so beautiful and she
• 20:17
  holds out her heart to Jesus and he's standing there and she says
• 20:21
  it's all I have and he says it's all I want, which is just like,
• 20:24
  but it's so true. And how how much of my heart do
• 20:28
  I keep for myself, like for for me and I believe in the Lord
• 20:31
  like the Lord has saved my life is the best person.
• 20:35
  I these my best friend. He's the person I trust most
• 20:37
  with everything. I talk to him all the time,
• 20:38
  hopefully. But like I have so much like I
• 20:42
  have so much attachment to the things of the world.
• 20:44
  I have so many, like I have so many things I have to work on so
• 20:48
  many habits. I have to break so much more of
• 20:50
  my heart and my life. I have to give to him and he, he
• 20:53
  does it like he's the one working in my heart to, to take
• 20:55
  more of it. Like a we do some work with Mark
• 20:58
  Wahlberg and he said, you know, I thought I was doing Father
• 21:00
  Stew, which was this religious movie that he did.
• 21:03
  It's like the one thing that I'd do for Jesus and be like, hey,
• 21:05
  OK, I did this Jesus thing for you.
• 21:07
  And like, as soon as you crack open the door, he just takes the
• 21:09
  rest of it. And so that's like for us at
• 21:11
  Hallow, it's about how can we, yes, we've cracked open the
• 21:14
  door. And some of us much more so than
• 21:15
  others, Some of us are very deep in their faith.
• 21:18
  And you know, I've given much of our lives to the Lord, but like,
• 21:21
  how can we give our whole hearts to him?
• 21:24
  And it's like this ongoing, deepening conversion of our
• 21:27
  initial conversion, Like how can you continue to grow deeper and
• 21:30
  deeper in a relationship with with the Lord?
• 21:32
  So anyway, that's kind of how we think about it and how we try to
• 21:35
  focus on it. And, and it's just like, it just
• 21:38
  makes life so much better. It's just like so much more
• 21:40
  joyful. It's so much more peaceful.
• 21:41
  Everything changes with Jesus. It's so much fun.
• 21:44
  It's crazy, yeah. Like, like things like the same
• 21:48
  circumstances, same person, same everything with Jesus without
• 21:53
  Jesus, dramatically different interior experience.
• 21:56
  Yeah, we had this woman reach out to us after some of the
• 21:58
  really bad hurricanes in Florida.
• 22:00
  She'd been praying with the app and she said there were like two
• 22:03
  or three that came through her town and destroyed a lot.
• 22:07
  And then there was this really bad one, I forget the name of
• 22:10
  it. It was this year.
• 22:11
  And it like totally wiped out her home at the of like 80
• 22:15
  years, like her family home of 80 years.
• 22:16
  It totally wiped out her, like her.
• 22:19
  She looked across the block. The home was gone.
• 22:21
  It was all just flat. Her uncle lived in another
• 22:23
  family home of like 90 years, totally gone.
• 22:26
  And she was like, for a moment there, I was just so angry and
• 22:31
  frustrated at like, what, why would God do this to me and why
• 22:35
  would this happen to me and how upset I was?
• 22:37
  And then she prayed with a prayer on the app.
• 22:39
  And it was like a session on gratitude and like finding God's
• 22:42
  will even when it's really hard or finding God in your life,
• 22:45
  even when it when it feels really hard.
• 22:46
  And she was like, you know what I realized?
• 22:48
  I realized that had those two hurricanes not come before the
• 22:52
  smaller ones, which cleared out a lot of the debris, we probably
• 22:56
  people would have died in our town and nobody died in our
• 22:58
  town. And how lucky we are that like,
• 23:01
  I still have everyone. I love it that I live near and
• 23:04
  everyone in my town is still alive.
• 23:05
  Like, man, how lucky am I? And so then she's like, OK,
• 23:08
  well, what? You know, that's not true for
• 23:09
  everybody. So how can I go out and serve
• 23:12
  the people who don't have that? And so then she goes on this
• 23:15
  like, life of service. But it's to your point it just
• 23:17
  changes like the same thing. All right guys, Ash Wednesday is
• 23:22
  coming up and we will be entering Lent, the 40 days
• 23:25
  before Good Friday and Easter. This is a very special time to
• 23:29
  deepen your relationship with God and to grow in prayer.
• 23:32
  That's why I'm so pumped about Hallow.
• 23:35
  Hallow App has a special Pray 40 challenge that thousands of
• 23:38
  people across the world will be joining in order to deepen their
• 23:41
  relationship with God this Lent. And I want you guys to join
• 23:44
  Hallows. Pray 40 Challenge is using the
• 23:46
  incredible spiritual masterpiece The Way help us draw closer to
• 23:51
  Jesus Christ. What's very fun about the Pray
• 23:54
  40 Challenge at Hallow is it's going to be narrated by some
• 23:57
  amazing folks like Mark Wahlberg and Chris Pratt.
• 24:01
  You'll also be hearing from Jonathan Rumi and Sister Mary
• 24:04
  and James who will lead you through meditations and prayers.
• 24:07
  This is already shaping up to be the best Lent ever with
• 24:10
  thousands of people already joining the Pray 40 Challenge.
• 24:14
  So don't wait. You can sign up and join for
• 24:17
  free by going to hallow.com/lila.
• 24:21
  You can get the first three months free.
• 24:22
  Do your entire lent free. Go to hollow.com/lila.
• 24:26
  I was praying the other day with my kids, my family, trying to do
• 24:29
  like family prayer and. You do you guys use the app
• 24:32
  every day? I use the app every day.
• 24:35
  We as a family use it. I wouldn't say every day, but
• 24:37
  certainly multiple times a week. Hopefully like the Saints alive
• 24:39
  thing, there's a there's all these stories of for kids.
• 24:42
  Yeah, there's all this kids stuff that my my kiddos love.
• 24:46
  There's it's tough like some of the Saints stories are.
• 24:48
  Yeah, I, it's funny you say that because I, I, I've actually with
• 24:52
  the app and with the Saints content on there, it's like, is
• 24:55
  this OK? Like St.
• 24:56
  Sebastian stabbed with arrows and I'm like he's 2 and they're
• 25:00
  three and four. And, and I started playing some,
• 25:03
  I forgot what it was, but it was something and it was getting
• 25:06
  really intense and it was like, dude.
• 25:08
  And, and then I looked back. I mean, I look in the rearview
• 25:10
  mirror, I'm driving and I like 3 year old is like.
• 25:15
  Yeah, we should probably put something.
• 25:16
  And I was like, OK, we're going to turn on like something like
• 25:19
  1. 2 year old listens to it all, but maybe it's not.
• 25:21
  But yeah, we did the Joan of Arc one, which is like such a
• 25:24
  phenomenal story and such a beautiful story, but then it
• 25:28
  ends and it doesn't end, you know, she's burned alive.
• 25:31
  And so then and and we, the guys on our team who does this and he
• 25:35
  does a phenomenal job. He also has a bunch of young
• 25:37
  kids. And so he tries to.
• 25:38
  He tries to do it like without. Without the bore.
• 25:42
  So, yeah, like as softly as you can without like not telling the
• 25:45
  truth, Like, well, this is what happened.
• 25:47
  And, you know, the framing of it for kids is obviously they're in
• 25:50
  heaven and that's beautiful and and it's incredible.
• 25:52
  But you do like you get to the end of this and it's like.
• 25:55
  And so then they didn't believe her and they she burnt at the
• 25:59
  stake and she's now in heaven. And it's like, oh, what?
• 26:02
  One part there is is tough. It is the amazing, though, when
• 26:06
  you put it in context for kids of the larger story of what is
• 26:10
  the human person made for. And like this life is not our
• 26:13
  only life and all of this like like death isn't as scary.
• 26:16
  Death is like a a tough thing, right?
• 26:18
  But it's like kids I think are much more naturally capable of
• 26:23
  seeing the big picture if we're honest with them about the big
• 26:25
  picture in an age appropriate way, obviously, and they just
• 26:28
  get it. Yeah, I mean for me.
• 26:29
  It's beautiful. I struggled with it for a bit
• 26:31
  and then I like walked into our church with all our kids and I
• 26:36
  was like, wait, like the thing we have everywhere is a dude who
• 26:41
  was killed like that. We just have that everywhere,
• 26:43
  the symbol of him and then him on the cross, the crucifix,
• 26:46
  whatever. And like the main thing of the
• 26:47
  church is just a human body that's nailed to a piece of wood
• 26:49
  and just bloody Lord. And so like the Lord didn't
• 26:52
  really hide it. And us as a church don't really,
• 26:55
  we're not like, oh, well, you know, like, hey, actually he
• 26:58
  would just experienced a little pain.
• 27:00
  It's like, no, we killed him. And so I don't know.
• 27:02
  I was like, yeah, that's it doesn't really get any darker
• 27:04
  than that, you know, by definition.
• 27:06
  Now there's some crazy stories, but yeah, the, I guess the, the
• 27:11
  one other thing too is like the, the, the, the story about my
• 27:17
  kids, we were praying and my wife and I are like trying to
• 27:21
  enter into this prayer. And my 4 year old runs and like
• 27:25
  does like a tomahawk thing around my neck.
• 27:27
  My 2 year old is like kicking my stomach or whatever.
• 27:29
  And we're like both trying to pray.
• 27:31
  And I like initially I'm like, man, this is like frustrating.
• 27:39
  Like I'm kind of trying to enter into the space and like you're
• 27:41
  supposed to pray as a family, but like this isn't really.
• 27:44
  And then I like sit for like 2 seconds and we pray just a
• 27:46
  little bit more. And then I'm like, gosh, how
• 27:48
  lucky am I to have like 2 little crazy childlers who I love more
• 27:52
  than anything who are happy and healthy, who are just like
• 27:54
  running and kicking and having fun.
• 27:56
  How happy am I to have a wife who I love, who I get to pray
• 27:59
  with everyday? How lucky am I to have a little
• 28:01
  baby who's healthy, who's like the nicest, happiest little baby
• 28:04
  in the. I mean it's just like, and then
• 28:06
  you chat and then it's just like, I just want to save for
• 28:08
  this. Like I just want to, I want to
• 28:10
  be in this moment. I'm not frustrated, I'm not
• 28:11
  angry. I just want to savor this like
• 28:14
  joy that I have, which, yeah, it's just way more fun.
• 28:17
  It's just a lot more fun way to live life.
• 28:20
  It's been as a Jesus so. It's been, you said, six years
• 28:23
  since Hallow. Six years, that's crazy.
• 28:26
  I have to keep upping it. But I guess we launched in
• 28:27
  December of 2018, so. And during that time you got
• 28:30
  married and had three kids as well.
• 28:32
  Yeah, yeah. And how big is the business now
• 28:35
  in terms of like whatever you're going to share, give us your
• 28:38
  revenues, your staff numbers, but whatever.
• 28:39
  Like what's the what, what staff do you want to share about the
• 28:42
  bid the. We have 100 employees full time.
• 28:44
  Wow, 99, maybe 100. Yeah.
• 28:47
  And then another 50 or so part time across like 15 countries.
• 28:51
  It is crazy. It's.
• 28:53
  And then can I, are you, do you share publicly how much you've
• 28:56
  raised for the company? You've raised 100 million a 105
• 28:59
  million. Amazing.
• 29:01
  Yeah. As a startup, that's a lot of
• 29:02
  activity in six years, especially when you're starting
• 29:05
  a family. Yeah, it takes a phenomenal
• 29:09
  wife, obviously first, but the Lord first, I guess a very
• 29:14
  phenomenal wife second. But yeah, I don't know.
• 29:17
  Kids are kids are a funny one because it's busy.
• 29:22
  It's certainly and and you and I were talking about sleep
• 29:24
  deprivation, which is certainly for me, like the physically
• 29:28
  hardest part of it. And it's funny like you, you
• 29:30
  talk about it with parents and everybody laughs and then you're
• 29:33
  like, wait, what do they do for SEAL training when they break
• 29:35
  like the strongest men of our time, what do they do?
• 29:37
  And it's primarily sleep deprivation.
• 29:40
  I have a theory. I think sleep deprivation is
• 29:42
  harder for men biologically than women.
• 29:44
  That's possible. It's hard for anybody.
• 29:47
  My wife crushes it, but it's, yeah, sleep deprivation is, is
• 29:51
  tough. But anyway, so kids are busy and
• 29:52
  they're, they're, you know, a lot of work and it's not, it's
• 29:55
  certainly not easy. But for me, they, they just
• 30:02
  like, they make life. It's just like Jesus.
• 30:04
  It's it. And it's so much like the Lord.
• 30:06
  It's so much like Christianity because like Jesus says, hey,
• 30:09
  look, I'm going to give you something that you couldn't
• 30:11
  possibly even imagine. Like right now you're like
• 30:15
  living in this black and white and like you're going to be in
• 30:17
  this crazy cut. Like you're going to be in this
• 30:20
  heaven that you like eye has not seen and ear has not heard.
• 30:23
  It's you couldn't even imagine what I have for you.
• 30:26
  And I hear that before kids. And I'm like, OK, I don't really
• 30:30
  even know what that means. Like what, how do I imagine
• 30:32
  something like that? And then I have kids now and I'm
• 30:37
  like, I that is how I would describe this to my previous
• 30:41
  self. I'd be like, you will have a joy
• 30:44
  that you couldn't even possibly imagine.
• 30:46
  Like we raised $50 million one day that would close this round
• 30:51
  for $50 million by the grace of God.
• 30:53
  And I came home and I do every day at the end of the day, this
• 30:56
  little practice where it's like you reflect on the moments
• 30:58
  you're most grateful for from the day, and then you try to sit
• 31:02
  with them. It's called an exam.
• 31:03
  And then and it really helps you grow on gratitude and presence
• 31:06
  and all the stuff. But I reflect on my day, that
• 31:10
  day. And I was like, you know what?
• 31:11
  My daughter came and gave me a hug and that was better when it
• 31:14
  was objectively better. I mean, it was just a better
• 31:17
  moment. Like I enjoyed that moment more
• 31:19
  than or even like my son just saying like dad, like daddy,
• 31:23
  like just the sound daddy from A and it's just like, had you told
• 31:26
  me that you had the laugh of a baby, the baby laugh.
• 31:30
  And they giggle like uncontrollably like.
• 31:32
  But had you told me that before, I'd be like, are you?
• 31:35
  I mean, maybe OK, fine. But like, that's insane.
• 31:39
  And the other thing is it also kind of takes the stress off.
• 31:42
  Like you come. It really does.
• 31:43
  It's a great point. You think your life is so
• 31:45
  important, you know, like whether you look like.
• 31:47
  Grazing and you're feeling and dealing.
• 31:49
  In your works or it doesn't work and you've got all these.
• 31:51
  Important problems of people with the truth or whatever.
• 31:54
  He's like, oh, and. Your baby is there, Yeah.
• 31:56
  Yeah. And you come home to your kids
• 31:58
  and it's like you had a terrible day and nobody wants to give you
• 32:01
  money. Or you have a great day and
• 32:03
  everybody wants to give money. And you come home and your kids
• 32:05
  like, hey, can we play tag? And your kid doesn't care at
• 32:07
  all, you know, like, doesn't care at all.
• 32:09
  Like it may be my kid would be fine without a roof, but you
• 32:13
  know, they, they maybe care that there's a roof.
• 32:15
  And other than that, it's like, I just want to hang out with
• 32:17
  you. That's all that.
• 32:19
  It's just like, man, that just really puts life in perspective
• 32:22
  and it helps spiritually. I mean, the biggest thing for me
• 32:26
  over the last six years is it's been this crazy cool spiritual
• 32:28
  life, this journey of learning what a real relationship with
• 32:34
  the Lord is like. And the best way that he's
• 32:37
  taught me is through parenthood. It's like, man, I love these
• 32:40
  like immediately as soon as I meet them, they or as soon as
• 32:46
  they're conceived, but certainly as soon as I meet him.
• 32:50
  But it's like man, as soon as they're in my life, I die for
• 32:52
  him in half a second. And they could do the worst
• 32:55
  possible thing, the worst possible thing.
• 32:57
  And they come back to me and they say, dad, I'm sorry and
• 32:59
  instantly forgive him. Like not even, I would never
• 33:03
  hold something of it. And, and the humility is another
• 33:05
  funny one because humility is a really hard one.
• 33:07
  Like what does it mean to be really humble?
• 33:09
  And what it means to be really humble is like, I want better
• 33:11
  for you than I want for myself. I want better for you than I
• 33:13
  want for me. And that's true for everybody.
• 33:16
  And that's crazy. Like I like you a lot, like,
• 33:20
  and, and you're a great person, but like, do I really want you
• 33:23
  to be a lot happier than I am? Like, I don't know, like I
• 33:26
  that's a tough one. I'm starting an app, it's called
• 33:30
  I don't know but like the name for prayer.
• 33:33
  No, I actually am starting it up, but it's not for prayer.
• 33:35
  It's going to be great. I do want that to be very
• 33:37
  successful the but for kids, it's just it's naturally given
• 33:42
  to you. It's like I want you to be to
• 33:43
  have such a better life than I had and it's I don't, I don't
• 33:46
  feel a comparison. I don't feel a jealousy.
• 33:48
  I just want you to have like, it's so much more holy, joyful,
• 33:54
  like a better relationship with the Lord than I have, you know,
• 33:57
  everything. Be better.
• 33:58
  I mean, they're, they're Jesus to us, right?
• 34:00
  That's the power of like a vocation where you're a parent
• 34:03
  or your spouse like this is, it's like love and serve the
• 34:06
  Lord with all your heart, your mind, your strength.
• 34:09
  OK. Are you married?
• 34:10
  Love your wife, love your husband, love your child.
• 34:13
  See Jesus in them. They are Jesus to you today.
• 34:16
  And when I remember that and I don't remember that enough.
• 34:20
  So I'm reminding myself right now because it it it is
• 34:23
  incredibly transformative because now it's like this love
• 34:26
  it that I have in my heart for my Lord, which I want to be a
• 34:28
  raging fire right now to be like, you know, it's a little
• 34:30
  bit of too much of A spark right now.
• 34:33
  But if you see your child, you're like, this is Jesus today
• 34:35
  to love. I get to love Jesus and my baby
• 34:37
  like what a would a mind blowing thing.
• 34:40
  Yeah, which is like the perfect training ground too, because
• 34:43
  I've, I have a spiritual director, which is a pastor that
• 34:46
  I meet with regularly and he just gives me, tells me to be
• 34:48
  better and. Is that what he does?
• 34:51
  He literally says just be better.
• 34:52
  He's so funny. He's he's great.
• 34:54
  Tell him your business dealings and he gives you.
• 34:57
  I really want to like, I mean, I want to hear what you're going
• 34:59
  to say. So I'll let you finish and then
• 35:00
  we'll talk about that because. He doesn't care about any of it.
• 35:03
  Once in a while, I find a small business that I fall absolutely
• 35:06
  in love with and that's why I'm so excited to share We Heart
• 35:09
  Nutrition with you guys. We Heart nutrition.com is a
• 35:12
  vitamin and supplement company that provides the highest
• 35:16
  quality researched back ingredients, customized and
• 35:20
  optimized to help you be healthy.
• 35:22
  What I also love about We Heart Nutrition is that this is a
• 35:25
  family owned company and they're not just any family owned
• 35:28
  company. This is a company that shares
• 35:29
  your values and they donate a full 10% back of all of their
• 35:33
  revenue to pregnancy resource centers to help moms and babies
• 35:37
  in need. We Heart Nutrition customizes
• 35:39
  their vitamin packages specifically for your state in
• 35:42
  life. So whether you are premenopausal
• 35:44
  or postmenopausal, whether you're looking to conceive, help
• 35:47
  improve your fertility, whether you're pregnant and this is a
• 35:49
  great prenatal vitamin or your post Natal Plus I'm very excited
• 35:53
  to share this with my husband. Now We Heart Nutrition has come
• 35:56
  out with their your first line of men's vitamins.
• 35:58
  And if you order today at WE Heart nutrition.com get your
• 36:01
  vitamins, you can get 20% off using the code Lila.
• 36:05
  And if you spend at least $50, you will get a free signature
• 36:08
  bamboo capsule vitamin box, which is very cute.
• 36:11
  I have one myself. So go to weheartnutrition.com
• 36:13
  today, use the code Lila at checkout to get 20% off your
• 36:16
  purchase. And when you spend $50, get that
• 36:18
  adorable free bamboo capsule box to store your vitamins in.
• 36:22
  That's We Heart nutrition.com. He's he's like, oh, hell, is
• 36:25
  really cool. Like you're doing great stuff
• 36:27
  and it's awesome and always be in line with the church.
• 36:29
  And I'd like to give him stuff. Yeah.
• 36:31
  And he's phenomenal, but. And super Orthodox.
• 36:35
  Super. And, but the most of it is, hey,
• 36:39
  Alex, I need you to do three things every day.
• 36:42
  I need you to spend 20 minutes of silence.
• 36:43
  I need you to do a rosary. I need you to go to Mass every
• 36:45
  day. And if you do those three
• 36:47
  things, your whole life will change and everything will flow
• 36:50
  from that. And then the only other thing
• 36:52
  and, and then the only other thing we'll talk about is how
• 36:55
  well you're loving. And because those three things
• 36:57
  have to lead to love. And if they don't lead to love,
• 36:59
  then those three things are a waste of time.
• 37:01
  And he says, so anyway, we just meet like 30 minutes and he's
• 37:06
  like, OK, how are you doing on these three things?
• 37:08
  If there's like a habitual sin or something big that we're
• 37:10
  working on, then. But then, but then he's just
• 37:15
  like, OK, so how are you loving and how are you serving?
• 37:17
  How are you being charitable? How are you growing in charity
• 37:19
  and love? And usually I'm trying to be
• 37:21
  like, oh, well, I want to go serve the poor.
• 37:23
  I want to. I should spend more time, you
• 37:25
  know, on a mission trip or. And those are all like important
• 37:28
  things certainly that you should do.
• 37:29
  And in our community in Chicago, there's certainly a lot of
• 37:32
  opportunity to serve the poor and you should spend a lot of
• 37:34
  time with the poor. But he always is just like, what
• 37:38
  can you do every day for the next month to better love your
• 37:41
  wife? And I'm like, it's, it's like,
• 37:45
  it's just the daily grind of like, I should do the dishes,
• 37:49
  you know, or like when she asked me to do something, I shouldn't
• 37:51
  wait 30 seconds. I should do it right away.
• 37:53
  And I should guess what she's and like, maybe, you know, she
• 37:55
  couldn't use an extra hour, but then I have to watch all the
• 37:57
  kids and, and so, you know, it's like, it's just, but it's the
• 38:01
  hard parts. And actually, so we did this
• 38:04
  content with Kevin James where he was had a conversation with
• 38:11
  Jonathan Remy and they were talking about growing in the
• 38:15
  their faith lives. And, and he had this beautiful
• 38:17
  analogy, which, well, I don't know if it was an analogy.
• 38:19
  He just said a phrase where he was like, it's whenever I feel
• 38:23
  like I'm in the pocket, which I think is probably a football
• 38:26
  analogy. I think it's a football analogy,
• 38:28
  probably like you're back in the pocket and there's a bunch of
• 38:30
  people coming at you. But it's like his point was
• 38:33
  whenever you feel like, whenever, whenever things aren't
• 38:37
  good, you know, whenever it feels tough, like whenever God,
• 38:40
  like whenever God gives you something and you're like really
• 38:43
  upset with the person that like, we got a rental car today and it
• 38:46
  was the wrong rental car. And, and I had to walk like 2
• 38:49
  1/2 blocks with like 5 bags and three kids.
• 38:52
  And then I had to walk back and the lady had made a mistake.
• 38:54
  And so then I'm like walking back and I'm like, oh, this is,
• 38:57
  this is the pocket. This is the pocket.
• 38:59
  And then there's like a, you know, my wife does something
• 39:01
  like she forgets to check a bag or something and we have to go
• 39:04
  back to a counter. And, and you know, my initial
• 39:06
  reaction is like, why, what, why would you do that?
• 39:09
  And I'm like, oh, wait, this is this is when I have to, this is
• 39:13
  when I have to love. This is the opportunity for me
• 39:15
  to grow deeper to the Lord. Like this is the opportunity for
• 39:18
  me to deny my own anger, to deny my own frustration and to love
• 39:22
  instead. And like that the the daily
• 39:24
  grind of like, how can I be better and better with my wife?
• 39:26
  Where where somebody would look at our marriage and be like,
• 39:28
  wow, they're Christian. Wow, that that's Jesus in there.
• 39:32
  And we're just, yeah, there's a lot of work.
• 39:34
  And it's not like the glamorous work.
• 39:35
  It's like the hard work of a husband and wife, you know?
• 39:37
  But family life teaches you that in an incredible way, certainly
• 39:41
  what's what's it been like being the CEO of a company where
• 39:46
  you've raised 100 million bucks, you have 100 people, you're
• 39:49
  managing, I mean, not directly, but you know, under you, you
• 39:53
  have there's. Only one reporter?
• 39:54
  Oh really? That would be crazy.
• 39:56
  That'd be cool. You have all this hope has like
• 39:59
  100 reports I guess, but what? Right, because Cardinals and
• 40:03
  even the Bishop, I guess all the bishops technically he has.
• 40:05
  Like chief of staff there, right or something?
• 40:07
  I mean, it's great. Like as a Bishop you meet with
• 40:08
  the Pope once every, I think it's four years or something.
• 40:11
  So that's how he manages his direct reports.
• 40:13
  But even as a Bishop you have 200.
• 40:15
  Like that's a, that's you're. Saying you're the Pope of
• 40:17
  Hallow. No, no, I have like 7.
• 40:19
  So the normal companies usually have like 6 or 7 reports but or
• 40:24
  folks who you know you directly manage but.
• 40:26
  But how do you do that? Because you're you're on the
• 40:28
  road. I've had brainstorm sessions
• 40:30
  with you before and you're brilliant.
• 40:32
  You're like always idiating. But then you're managing people.
• 40:35
  But then you're fundraising. But then you're doing like
• 40:39
  podcasts and like media. You know, you're going on shows
• 40:43
  and then you're doing probably 10 other things I haven't said
• 40:46
  yet. Yeah, it sounds a lot like what
• 40:48
  you do. I guess I could ask I.
• 40:52
  Guess I could ask this soon. Well.
• 40:53
  That's why I. Wanted.
• 40:54
  I mean, it's different, but tell me how you tell me what your
• 40:57
  approach is to prioritize and navigate all that?
• 41:00
  I don't do all that much like show stuff or PR stuff.
• 41:05
  I do a handful of, I do a handful of things and then so.
• 41:09
  We're really special guys. The.
• 41:13
  You know, it's and fundraising is an interesting one in
• 41:16
  startup. World, How'd you raise all that
• 41:17
  money? Just tell that's what I want,
• 41:19
  yeah. That that's a, that's that's a
• 41:21
  probably the most helpful story, but in startup.
• 41:24
  It took a lot of persistence, right?
• 41:28
  No, kind of. All right, I'll let you, I'll
• 41:31
  let you show. I'll get to the.
• 41:34
  But I try to focus most of my time on the like building the
• 41:36
  thing, which is product and content mostly, which is finding
• 41:39
  great content and crafting the story with our content team and
• 41:44
  then building the app. And those are the two things,
• 41:47
  you know, we do marketing, I think decently well, but what
• 41:50
  we're trying to do really is build world class content in a,
• 41:53
  in a great app. And most people don't build
• 41:55
  their you and I talked about this, but most, most
• 41:57
  organizations don't have their own app.
• 41:58
  It's, it's usually you're licensing some someone else's
• 42:01
  tech. And for us, it was really
• 42:02
  important. Like I really wanted to build a
• 42:04
  great product. And we actually just had a,
• 42:07
  there's this grad student in design that I was talking to on
• 42:09
  the phone who had just converted.
• 42:11
  And he was like, you know, it's funny because I was looking
• 42:13
  around at different apps and I heard about you guys from
• 42:17
  something. And I went to look at the app
• 42:20
  and I was like, wait, this is one of the few apps that doesn't
• 42:23
  suck. Like this one actually doesn't
• 42:25
  suck from a design perspective. And he was like, OK, I'll
• 42:28
  actually give it a try. And then he gives it a try and
• 42:31
  he encounters the rosary actually for the first time.
• 42:34
  And he starts wearing the rosary every day.
• 42:36
  And he said, he said the the only way I could explain what
• 42:40
  happened to me is it it was like I was standing looking at a wall
• 42:44
  and my mom was in the room and she was beckoning me and I
• 42:47
  didn't look at her. And I finally turned around and
• 42:49
  looked at her and she gave me a hug.
• 42:50
  What I was like, that's the most beautiful way to say that ever.
• 42:54
  And so anyway he converted his and but the but that's like a
• 42:57
  user. Experience like that takes work.
• 43:00
  I mean, there's obviously God's working and the Holy Spirit I
• 43:02
  believe is working, but you guys had to do the natural work of
• 43:06
  creating an app that was really intuitive.
• 43:07
  Yeah, which is really hard. The product, product design is
• 43:10
  really hard work and the the coding is really hard too.
• 43:14
  But we, we that's what we try to focus on, which is we want to do
• 43:17
  that. We want to do that the best in
• 43:18
  the world, not the best in the faith world, not the best in
• 43:20
  Christian world, but like the best in the world.
• 43:22
  And we have a phenomenon team God has blessed us with many
• 43:25
  things, but mostly a a a a very talented and mission driven
• 43:30
  team, which works like crazy. But you know how we raised is.
• 43:38
  I threw a bunch of things at you.
• 43:39
  How do you do what you do with all the things you do?
• 43:41
  How do you raise money? I'm going to ask you about
• 43:43
  controversial stuff. Too.
• 43:44
  Good. For fun, how we raise is
• 43:47
  probably the answer that's most of the.
• 43:49
  That's the same answer to most of the other questions, which is
• 43:53
  so like our first round, which is the round that mattered the
• 43:55
  most. Series it's that friends and.
• 43:58
  Family, it's called the seed. Friends and family is just like
• 44:00
  us, putting in our. OK, and you get the seed.
• 44:02
  Round and you run out of that you know that that that gets
• 44:07
  yeah and so we realized we were running out of money and so we
• 44:11
  went and raised a real seed round what was the.
• 44:15
  First seed round. It was 2 or 3 million, and
• 44:21
  without that we probably would have had to go back and get
• 44:24
  regular jobs, so it probably would have died most.
• 44:27
  The other rounds have mostly been like, OK, we could get to a
• 44:31
  sustainable economic thing on its own without additional
• 44:35
  money, but if you want to invest, you can.
• 44:37
  And we can maybe move faster and build out a team or add more
• 44:40
  content faster than we were going to before.
• 44:41
  But we can still We're not going to die if you don't give us
• 44:43
  money. Meaning like you have organic,
• 44:46
  you have an organic growth trajectory, which is solid, but
• 44:49
  if you want to rocket fuel it and if you want to like blast,
• 44:53
  you know, like create an incredible engine that's going
• 44:55
  to be super profitable in a short period of time, you know,
• 44:58
  rocket fuel with the Bunny is basically.
• 44:59
  You can you can create more content, spend more on marketing
• 45:02
  faster than. So like we have a hollow is
• 45:05
  there's a free version of the app, but there's a subscription
• 45:07
  version. The subscription version is the
• 45:09
  only way that we support ourselves.
• 45:12
  Then what you do is you build up, we build up a group of
• 45:16
  people who support us through the subscription and that allows
• 45:18
  us to support the cost of the team and content creation.
• 45:21
  And you can build up the team and do more content creation and
• 45:25
  more marketing with a smaller subscriber base or you can wait
• 45:28
  for the subscriber base to grow. And so it people investing
• 45:32
  allows us to move faster than we would have otherwise had we had
• 45:36
  to wait till you have the cash from subscribers and then your
• 45:40
  bet there if they do invest, is that OK?
• 45:42
  Well, the subscribers are going to grow faster.
• 45:44
  And so that's going to make economic sense, obviously in
• 45:46
  service of the mission that we're trying to work on.
• 45:49
  But the first round was not that.
• 45:50
  The first round was, if we don't have this money, we probably
• 45:53
  shut it down and which is very stressful.
• 45:57
  And we had like, you know, there's like 8 people working on
• 45:59
  it at that point. Where you graduated from
• 46:00
  Stanford at that point? No, this is between my first and
• 46:03
  second year. Interestingly, Stanford as a
• 46:07
  like really on fire Christian is a really interesting experience
• 46:11
  for and then raising for a Christian Catholic startup is
• 46:14
  another interesting experience, but.
• 46:16
  Were you the only guy like you at Stanford in your class?
• 46:19
  There was two other I talked about it.
• 46:21
  There were two other people who really took their faith super
• 46:23
  seriously. And the part of that was sad,
• 46:28
  but part of it was really cool because you like feel like
• 46:33
  you're part of this rebel church.
• 46:34
  And like when I grew up in Ohio, like 30% of people would go to
• 46:37
  church what were Catholic, and the other 60% were Christian.
• 46:41
  And everybody would kind of go to church regularly.
• 46:43
  But you know, probably only like 10% of those folks like really
• 46:46
  believed it. And where we're like on fire for
• 46:50
  it. And in, in Silicon Valley, like
• 46:54
  if you're Christian, you're crazy.
• 46:55
  Like it, it'd be like, you know, like it's your whole identity.
• 46:58
  It's everything. And so everyone's going to be
• 47:00
  like, what are you, what, what are you doing?
• 47:02
  And so you have to really understand your faith.
• 47:04
  But then also it sets you on fire.
• 47:06
  It's like part of, it's kind of, yeah, you're like a rebel
• 47:08
  church. And it's so it's, but anyway, so
• 47:11
  we do the first fundraise and I go out and the seed round is the
• 47:16
  worst because there's a bunch of people who could invest that the
• 47:19
  later rounds, they're larger. So it's, there's fewer folks
• 47:22
  that could do it. There's fewer funds or
• 47:24
  individuals. And so I meet with and you
• 47:27
  probably want to handle these advisors and all this stuff, but
• 47:29
  like what you want to do is fundraise in like a short period
• 47:33
  of time so that everybody's talking about hollow and it's
• 47:35
  all Silicon Valley likes to think that they're all
• 47:36
  contrarian thinkers, but they're not they're they all like to
• 47:39
  ride whatever the wave it is. And so you want to close within
• 47:42
  like FOMO kind of thing. Yeah, well, for us it was 2
• 47:44
  weeks, but. Did you set that timeline?
• 47:47
  You're like. I did, kind of.
• 47:49
  So you woke up one day and you're like, we definitely need
• 47:51
  2 to 3,000,000 bucks. We got to do it in two weeks.
• 47:53
  We need to like we needed like a million and a half.
• 47:57
  We ended up doing like 2 1/2. But so I meet with these 80
• 48:00
  people over the course of two weeks.
• 48:01
  Zooms or is this in person? This is pre COVID, so all in
• 48:04
  person mostly. So you're fine in New York,
• 48:06
  Chicago, you did some zooms, some phone calls, but to and
• 48:09
  from the Bay Area. Yeah, it was great.
• 48:12
  It was. It was.
• 48:13
  And you had your deck and you had.
• 48:14
  Your 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM constant meetings and you're
• 48:17
  just pitching and you lose your voice and everyone is you're
• 48:24
  like, I'm constantly analyzing how I'm doing it because I want
• 48:28
  to succeed. I want to do it and I'm like
• 48:31
  worried about what I look like. Am I answering questions well
• 48:34
  enough and did? You wear a hoodie or were you?
• 48:36
  I said this. Is the only outfit I wear the
• 48:39
  the some the? Steve Jobs with a.
• 48:43
  Bunch of different people there's, you know, some New York
• 48:45
  people who certainly are not the hoodie style but and like.
• 48:48
  In new. York or Christian donors?
• 48:49
  Yeah, I, I, I don't. Because you're a tech bro.
• 48:52
  I'm kind of I'm done. I wore a suit a lot.
• 48:55
  I wore a suit a lot, so I'm done wearing a suit.
• 48:57
  I feel like a tiny little person is like strangling hoodie.
• 49:00
  But the, but the thing about fundraising is so I met with
• 49:03
  probably 80 people over the course of two weeks.
• 49:05
  And if you're lucky, like 5 will say yes, but that means 75 say
• 49:10
  no. And you get the no's really
• 49:12
  quick. And that yeses take a long time.
• 49:13
  The yeses take a couple weeks. And so I'm just meeting with
• 49:17
  these people and you just get no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 49:19
  And this is the first time I've ever done anything like this.
• 49:21
  And you just get no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 49:23
  And the no's are like when I'm pitching is my relationship with
• 49:26
  the Lord the thing I'm dedicating my whole life to, and
• 49:29
  the nose are like, this is a stupid idea.
• 49:31
  You don't know what you're doing.
• 49:32
  You've never. Done anything like this?
• 49:33
  Did someone actually tell you that A. 100% this is never going
• 49:36
  to work. Nobody prays anymore.
• 49:38
  The this is Silicon Valley. This is meditation, not prayer,
• 49:40
  mental health, not Jesus. And this is a different.
• 49:44
  It feels like a very different. Time viable business.
• 49:46
  It's a nice. Yeah, it's a very small, like
• 49:48
  there's nobody's going to use this.
• 49:49
  And even the people who took their face seriously, a lot of
• 49:53
  people thought it was a stupid idea, which is fair.
• 49:55
  It's a kind of hard idea to pitch.
• 49:57
  It's like you don't like my mom takes her faith super seriously.
• 50:00
  And she was like, you know, it's I'm glad that you found Jesus,
• 50:02
  Like I'm glad you're coming back to your faith.
• 50:03
  But I wouldn't use an app to pray.
• 50:06
  I don't need it. I pray everyday.
• 50:07
  And that's fair like you do. And it's kind of hard to pitch
• 50:09
  until you try it. Like it's amazing.
• 50:11
  It was pre COVID too. Yeah, wait, yeah, 2018.
• 50:14
  So certainly two years the but so I just was so stressed.
• 50:21
  I, I remember I was and I was 26 and I had these like I had four
• 50:25
  or five knots in my back. I couldn't eat, I couldn't
• 50:28
  sleep. And I was just constantly
• 50:33
  thinking about all the stuff I was screwing up.
• 50:34
  Everybody thought it was wrong. Was this was I, was it wrong?
• 50:37
  Was it dumb? Was this?
• 50:38
  And these are like the smartest startup people in the world, you
• 50:41
  know, like these are not, these are not Joe Schmo.
• 50:44
  This is this is, you know, somebody who's backed Facebook
• 50:47
  and Apple and every startup that's worth ever.
• 50:50
  And they're like, yeah, your idea is dumb.
• 50:51
  And I'm like, I go back and I, I sit and I pray.
• 50:57
  A. Little studio apartment, No in
• 50:59
  silence. You don't always have to use the
• 51:00
  app and the And I was sitting there and I was like, look, God,
• 51:07
  I don't know why you have me doing this.
• 51:11
  I am not the right guy for this. Clearly I'm screwing it up and I
• 51:18
  am so stressed. I don't know why it's like such
• 51:21
  a dumb thing to be that stressed about, but it I was so stressed
• 51:25
  and I was like, I don't think I can handle it.
• 51:28
  It's too much weight. It's too heavy.
• 51:29
  It's too, it's the whole thing. It's everybody who's working for
• 51:32
  it. It's and I was like, look at it.
• 51:36
  I don't know what to do, but I'm going to make a deal with you.
• 51:39
  This is the only thing I know what to do, which is I'm going
• 51:42
  to make a deal with you, which I don't know if I'm supposed to or
• 51:43
  not, but I did. And I was like, if this thing
• 51:47
  works out, I promise you, you are always going to get the
• 51:49
  credit. I'm never going to try to take
• 51:51
  this thing. I'm never going to convince
• 51:52
  myself that I'm some successful entrepreneur, some guy who
• 51:55
  figured it out, some whatever. I know you're the one doing it.
• 51:57
  I know you're the one doing every piece of it.
• 52:00
  I'm never going to forget it. I'm always going to give you
• 52:02
  credit. At the same time, if it doesn't
• 52:05
  work out, that's on you. It's not on me.
• 52:08
  And and that's fine. Like, you want it to teach me a
• 52:11
  lesson. You want it to help me grow in
• 52:12
  humility. You want it to inspire somebody
• 52:14
  else to start something that they're supposed to start.
• 52:16
  You want it to maybe it does grow.
• 52:18
  And then it crashes and burns and everybody hates me.
• 52:20
  Whatever it is is fine. It's your thing.
• 52:25
  I'm going to work hard. I'm always going to work hard.
• 52:27
  You know, we're going to have to question whether I'm working
• 52:28
  hard on the thing. And I'm going to try my best.
• 52:31
  But it's your thing. And it was just like
• 52:34
  immediately, this weight, just like, Oh yeah, it's not my
• 52:37
  thing. It's not your thing, Alex.
• 52:39
  And the next day I went to meet with my the favorite guy I had
• 52:46
  met so far, the favorite potential investor, One of the
• 52:48
  few, there's probably 5 or 6 that were left on this list of
• 52:50
  80. And he was my favorite.
• 52:52
  He is one of the best investors of all time.
• 52:56
  I mean, I think he's very young, but his first venture investing
• 52:59
  check was into Robin Hood, which after Facebook was the best
• 53:02
  venture investment ever made. Fastest growing consumer app
• 53:07
  post Facebook. He was super into the mission
• 53:11
  and was just, yeah, was most investors are either really good
• 53:16
  investors or they're really good at like figuring out how to help
• 53:19
  you build a product, but usually not both.
• 53:22
  And he was both. So he was like, oh, this is what
• 53:24
  I think you should do with the product.
• 53:26
  And most of those ideas for me are like, I don't, that doesn't
• 53:28
  sound like it could. And he had a lot of really good
• 53:30
  ideas and he really liked what we were doing and he thought the
• 53:32
  mission was really powerful and all this stuff.
• 53:34
  And I went, I met with them and I was like, hey, I'm going to go
• 53:37
  grab a coffee. I was at a coffee shop and I
• 53:40
  hadn't read the daily gospel yet.
• 53:41
  So I opened up the daily gospel and it was the story of Peter
• 53:45
  trying to fish and he's been fishing all night and there's no
• 53:48
  fish in the sea. And Jesus says, let Jesus comes.
• 53:51
  He says, let down your Nets. And Peter says, what are you
• 53:54
  crazy? There's no fish here.
• 53:55
  And he says, let down your Nets. And he's like, I've been fishing
• 53:57
  all night. I've I've been pitching all
• 53:58
  these investors, they all say, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 54:00
  What are you talking about? This thing isn't going to work.
• 54:02
  And he says, let down your Nets. And Peter let's down his net and
• 54:04
  he catches more fish than the net can carry.
• 54:06
  And two minutes later that guy gives us an offer to fund the
• 54:10
  whole thing. And then we get 3-4 more, which
• 54:12
  is more than we could take on. And we ended up raising more
• 54:14
  than we'd planned to. And then we couldn't, we
• 54:17
  couldn't accept all the people that we had, which was more fish
• 54:19
  than our neck could carry, which was just crazy.
• 54:21
  And it's funny because every, I have probably 10 of those where
• 54:25
  every great thing that happened in Hallow has been US trying and
• 54:29
  trying and trying and trying and trying.
• 54:31
  And then we're just like, oh God, if you want it to happen,
• 54:34
  it's yours. And then he's like, that's OK,
• 54:37
  thank you. That's what I was waiting for
• 54:39
  you to do. And you're just like, look, if
• 54:41
  you want it to happen, it happens.
• 54:42
  If you don't, it don't. I'm fine with it.
• 54:44
  And sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't.
• 54:45
  And but every good thing has been that.
• 54:48
  And then God is just like, that's what I was waiting for.
• 54:50
  Now I will do it. And it's not like you don't have
• 54:52
  to work. Like we put in a lot of work for
• 54:53
  that. But it is this like letting go
• 54:57
  of letting go of the result. And so everything with Hallow,
• 55:01
  like balancing stuff and anything that's worked and
• 55:04
  figuring out product stuff and figuring out content stuff,
• 55:06
  everything has been that journey, which is you try and
• 55:09
  you try and you try and you try and you try and then you let go
• 55:11
  and you let God. And then he does it.
• 55:13
  And so it's, yeah, it's cool to work with him.
• 55:15
  He's a good boss. Demanding in the right.
• 55:19
  Way he is very demanding. That's a good word.
• 55:21
  Very demanding. But it's because he wants us to
• 55:24
  be Saints. San Jose Maria Escriva has this,
• 55:26
  which for Lent is Lent is a tough time, but the Christian
• 55:31
  life is supposed to be tough. But we have a guide.
• 55:35
  We have a helper. We have her mother.
• 55:39
  We do not do this alone. It's just like, yeah, it is
• 55:41
  tough. Like the Christian life is
• 55:43
  tough. It's supposed to be tough.
• 55:45
  And as part of what makes it really unique, and I think part
• 55:48
  of what makes it really attractive too, especially the
• 55:50
  young men. But it's like, this is hard.
• 55:52
  This isn't, this isn't like sunshine and rainbows.
• 55:54
  This is death. This is literally death to
• 55:57
  yourself. And I don't know, I think
• 56:00
  there's something exciting about that.
• 56:01
  We see that with a lot of our content, like the some of the
• 56:03
  most intense. Sometimes people think it's
• 56:05
  like, oh, well, for someone who's fallen away from their
• 56:07
  faith, it's the like just gradually introduce them to God.
• 56:15
  And sometimes that's true. Like you want to start soft.
• 56:17
  You don't want to go fully into the deep end.
• 56:19
  But sometimes people want to go from zero to 100.
• 56:22
  Like sometimes, like for me, I was like, wait, like this
• 56:25
  Christian thing's crazy. There were guys who lived on
• 56:27
  columns in the middle of the desert and just died like the
• 56:30
  the Saints, just the monks that just lived in, you know, just on
• 56:33
  one piece of bread a week. I mean, it's, you know, yeah,
• 56:35
  it's crazy. Martyrs.
• 56:36
  Any of these stories and you just want to dive into these
• 56:41
  really intense like, well, what what does God do at the extreme?
• 56:44
  And then how can that inspire us to let him do that in our lives
• 56:48
  in like the mundane, the daily, what she does that in the daily
• 56:51
  to like St. Therese, the little way, each
• 56:52
  moment of our life is an opportunity to die to ourselves.
• 56:56
  It doesn't have to be on a cross.
• 56:57
  It doesn't have to be burning. It doesn't have to be these
• 57:00
  crazy cool stories. But we all have that opportunity
• 57:03
  to do that. And so then it's like, I don't
• 57:04
  know, it fills you with this fire of like, yeah, I can go, I
• 57:06
  can go love my wife better, you know, and it's not this soft
• 57:10
  kind of whatever. It's like, no, I can do that.
• 57:12
  I can die to myself. Like, yeah, die, Alex, and then
• 57:15
  love better. So anyway, yeah.
• 57:18
  But that's that's the answer to the how we do stuff is surrender
• 57:21
  to the Lord. I love that story.
• 57:23
  That's a that's a great classic story.
• 57:26
  Yeah, it's his story, so. It's such a good one.
• 57:28
  We were talking earlier about the cartoon that you saw on Face
• 57:31
  that we saw on Facebook or whatever.
• 57:32
  Give. Me, your heart.
• 57:33
  Well, I give me your heart. I was actually thinking of a
• 57:36
  different one that's similar, which is what you're describing,
• 57:39
  which is the little girl holding the teddy bear.
• 57:41
  But I want it so badly. And then Jesus.
• 57:44
  Is there? And he says trust me.
• 57:46
  And he's got like a bigger teddy bear behind his back.
• 57:48
  They have like a little bold version of that.
• 57:50
  They have all these ones of those, those those are so good
• 57:52
  too. But that's the whole spiritual
• 57:54
  life, right? And that's the whole spiritual
• 57:55
  journey. Because at the end of the day,
• 57:57
  like, even if you're, even if you cause like the stories of
• 58:00
  our heroes, of our martyrs, like they lose their lives, like they
• 58:03
  lose, lose everything, but it's what are they getting?
• 58:06
  They're achieving eternal life with their the love of their
• 58:09
  life, with their soul. It's part of the really cool
• 58:11
  part of Yeah, what do you I just read this.
• 58:15
  I mean, so when I first came back to my faith, there's two
• 58:18
  really great in the in the church.
• 58:21
  They're called Mystics, which is like people who really focus on
• 58:25
  and teach us about the interior life and what it means to like
• 58:28
  really sit in silence and really spend time in prayer and really
• 58:30
  grow deeper in relations with the Lord.
• 58:32
  And Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John on the cross are the
• 58:34
  two there's a lot, but but those are my, they're the 2, two big
• 58:39
  dogs. And Saint Teresa of Avila was
• 58:41
  the 1st that I really read. And her, I mean, it's such a
• 58:44
  crazy. She has this analogy where our
• 58:49
  hearts are a castle. It's an interior castle.
• 58:52
  That's the, the journey of the spiritual life.
• 58:54
  And you hear this a lot of times, and this is across
• 58:56
  religions, like the furthest journey that man has to go is
• 58:58
  from here to here. And she says, you know what the
• 59:03
  spiritual life is, is moving more inwards to this castle.
• 59:07
  And there's seven stages she articulate and at the center of
• 59:11
  the castle at the outside of the castle is where most of us start
• 59:14
  in the state of sin. And we're like far away from
• 59:16
  ourselves. We're we're disconnected from
• 59:18
  ourselves. And as we move inward, we become
• 59:20
  much closer and closer to ourselves.
• 59:22
  But at the core, at the center of our heart is Jesus.
• 59:25
  And So what we realize is Jesus is closer to our son.
• 59:28
  This is Saint Augustine. Jesus is closer to ourselves
• 59:30
  than we are to ourselves. And I is no longer I who live,
• 59:32
  but Christ who lives in me. And like the, the crazy part
• 59:37
  about this, like her journey is 7 stages.
• 59:40
  The third one, by the third stage, you've like totally
• 59:43
  disconnected from all worldly cares and you have detached from
• 59:47
  everything that isn't of this world.
• 59:48
  You don't like commit any habitual sins of any sort.
• 59:50
  You like to test any sort of anything that is like all wealth
• 59:53
  or whatever, all power or all greed, all vanity, all.
• 59:56
  And she's like all that's gone by the 3rd.
• 59:58
  And so then we get to the fourth in the 5th and I'm like, whoa,
• 1:00:00
  wait, what? And the 4th and the 5th and the
• 1:00:03
  6th. I mean, it's cool to read
• 1:00:04
  because we're all so far from it.
• 1:00:06
  Except I'm sure there's some people there, but.
• 1:00:08
  Is it on the app? Yeah, it's like, of course the
• 1:00:10
  yeah, there's a beautiful sanctuary, so.
• 1:00:12
  There's like 10,000. Yeah, we have. 10,000 plus I
• 1:00:15
  think we have 100,000 audio sessions on the app which is
• 1:00:18
  crazy. So what's 456?
• 1:00:21
  Deeper spiritual union with the Lord.
• 1:00:24
  So like your soul becomes enraptured with them to the
• 1:00:27
  point where ecstasy like, yeah. And, and even beyond ecstasy to
• 1:00:32
  the, to the last transforming union.
• 1:00:33
  So it's, it's like there's a there's a quiet that comes over
• 1:00:36
  you just kind of called prayer of the quiet.
• 1:00:38
  And then there's a union and then there's this transforming
• 1:00:41
  union and to the point where like, I mean, there's all these
• 1:00:44
  things that happened to her. She's just like transported to a
• 1:00:46
  different place. Like spiritually, she's like,
• 1:00:49
  she sees her body above, she levitates, she does all this
• 1:00:51
  crazy stuff. I mean, it's like insane stuff.
• 1:00:53
  It's like tiptoeing up to the Beatific Revision, right?
• 1:00:56
  Like that's basically the end game.
• 1:00:57
  Yeah, she, she doesn't, she won't.
• 1:00:59
  She'll say certainly he, he reserves and not reserves that.
• 1:01:02
  But that is, that is infinitely further than anything you could
• 1:01:05
  achieve in exile in this earth, on this earthly life.
• 1:01:08
  But you what she describes is this.
• 1:01:12
  And she lives, she, she has a terrible sickness most of her
• 1:01:15
  life, like a very painful terrible sickness.
• 1:01:17
  This is Teresa Fabula. Teresa Fabula, and she's got a
• 1:01:20
  really tough life and she lives a life of intense poverty.
• 1:01:25
  I mean, she like her whole thing was the Carmelites that she
• 1:01:28
  lived in, where she dedicated her life to were not nearly
• 1:01:29
  intense enough. And they needed to be much more
• 1:01:31
  intense and go back to the original.
• 1:01:33
  And she like met this one guy who like fasted from sleep,
• 1:01:37
  which Speaking of sleep, lived in like a 2 foot by 6 foot cell.
• 1:01:40
  So we couldn't sleep when we're at least.
• 1:01:43
  In the second room or in the second castle?
• 1:01:45
  With all this pain, she is like there is nothing even close to
• 1:01:53
  when I can enter into that prayer for like 2 or 3 minutes.
• 1:01:56
  Nothing even close. Like you could give me the whole
• 1:01:58
  world, you could give me every, you could give me all the money,
• 1:02:00
  you could give me every physical pleasure, you could give me
• 1:02:03
  whatever. Nothing even close to that joy.
• 1:02:07
  And I I've already experienced that in my own, like very, very
• 1:02:11
  beginning part of prayer, which is like, man, like, yeah, real
• 1:02:14
  prayer is, is way better than this stuff.
• 1:02:16
  And it's not like, it's not like chocolate, like it doesn't feel
• 1:02:20
  like it's, it's like slowly builds, you know, it's like
• 1:02:22
  eating health, like a healthy diet, like you, you'd notice it
• 1:02:24
  over the course of time. You don't.
• 1:02:25
  It's, it's not always immediate. Sometimes it is.
• 1:02:27
  Sometimes there's really beautiful experiences, but it's
• 1:02:30
  like your life just radically changes and it's like a joy that
• 1:02:32
  you didn't experience. Well, and the crazy thing is, if
• 1:02:35
  you go in seeking that experience, it might be very
• 1:02:38
  elusive, right? Like that's like the, I mean,
• 1:02:41
  this is my limited experience with, you know, tasting little
• 1:02:46
  bits of getting closer to our Lord.
• 1:02:48
  But the more like you say, oh, I want the experience with the
• 1:02:51
  ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila, right.
• 1:02:54
  Well, do you want to be obedient and do you want to love Jesus,
• 1:02:58
  right? Because in the obedience and
• 1:03:00
  loving of Jesus, you're, you're getting refined.
• 1:03:02
  Like there's a lot of smut that's built up just by being a
• 1:03:05
  human and like living in this world and your own sin and your
• 1:03:07
  own also just like God working in his mysterious ways that
• 1:03:10
  cannot be like your story of raising the money, like he let
• 1:03:13
  you suffer like that because he wanted you to trust him.
• 1:03:17
  And sometimes we don't experience that bliss or that
• 1:03:21
  consolation and then we do, right?
• 1:03:24
  But it's not on our timetable. It's not on our timetable.
• 1:03:27
  It's. Almost never on our timetable.
• 1:03:28
  It's usually when things are really rough.
• 1:03:30
  Yes, you know, it's not always sometimes things rough things
• 1:03:33
  happen and God feels really far away.
• 1:03:34
  But like the worst times in like what has happened, the toughest
• 1:03:40
  times in my life have been when I felt the most consolation from
• 1:03:43
  God. And it's, I mean, it's so much
• 1:03:45
  like a parent and a kid because like at the beginning of the
• 1:03:47
  journey, you know, you do get these little treats, like he'll
• 1:03:51
  give you like, oh, this like it feels good.
• 1:03:52
  Or like, yeah, I did say that there would be a thing there.
• 1:03:55
  And then it was, there were like, you know, the rounds,
• 1:03:57
  like, oh, you gave it to me and then I gave you the round.
• 1:03:59
  Like then you did actually close the seed round.
• 1:04:02
  And he does give you those treats at the beginning.
• 1:04:04
  But ultimately, prayer is not about like trying to, to your
• 1:04:07
  point, it's not about those things can inspire you.
• 1:04:09
  And like people experiencing these awesome things can inspire
• 1:04:12
  you. But prayer is not about seeking
• 1:04:14
  those things. It's about trying to do, like
• 1:04:16
  prayer is not ultimately about us feeling good.
• 1:04:18
  It's about us trying to do the Lord's will.
• 1:04:21
  And it's like trying to give more and more of our lives to
• 1:04:23
  him. And sometimes that feels good.
• 1:04:26
  And sometimes that like makes you emotionally happy.
• 1:04:29
  And sometimes it really doesn't. And like, sometimes it feels
• 1:04:32
  really bad. And there's this CS Lewis quote,
• 1:04:36
  I think it's from the screw tape letters, but it's, it's there is
• 1:04:39
  no the enemy never seems Satan never is more disappointed is
• 1:04:46
  never more frustrated than when man looks around and sees no
• 1:04:50
  sign of God, thinks that God has abandoned him and yet still
• 1:04:53
  obeys. And it's like, yes.
• 1:04:55
  And that's like the the Lord our Lord on the cross, like my God,
• 1:04:57
  my God, why have you forsaken me like we all have those times.
• 1:04:59
  Mother Teresa went through 20 years of aridity.
• 1:05:02
  I mean, where the spiritual dryness, where you feel like God
• 1:05:05
  is far from you and you know, even that is honestly like the,
• 1:05:10
  the purifying a, a purifying thing for us to give of our
• 1:05:14
  hearts to him and, and Saint Teresa of Avalon, the first
• 1:05:16
  couple castles. It's funny because that's the
• 1:05:18
  one that's most relevant for us and people focus all the time
• 1:05:22
  and we have an app for it, obviously.
• 1:05:23
  So, but like on how am I supposed to pray?
• 1:05:25
  And there's all these beautiful ways to pray and all these
• 1:05:27
  beautiful techniques and types of meditation, but the Saints
• 1:05:34
  and Christ is very clear, like the the your core concern and
• 1:05:40
  centuries of Atlas says this. It's like, it's not what you do.
• 1:05:42
  Like when you sit down in silence, you should show up and
• 1:05:44
  you should pray like that's very important.
• 1:05:46
  Let the Holy Spirit lead you. But primarily you should try to
• 1:05:49
  reform your entire life to the Lord.
• 1:05:51
  Like primarily you should try to give up everything that connects
• 1:05:53
  you to the world. Primarily you should try to do
• 1:05:55
  the Lord's will in every moment. And like that is what's going to
• 1:05:58
  give you all these things. Like that is what gets you to
• 1:06:00
  the other mansions. Not like, Oh, I really figured
• 1:06:03
  out this technique or whatever it was.
• 1:06:04
  I really spent like 3 hours in silence.
• 1:06:07
  It's like, no, I, I loved radically as radically as I
• 1:06:10
  could. Like I gave up of my life for
• 1:06:12
  others as radically as I could, forgot and for others as
• 1:06:14
  radically as I could. And so it is funny how they, how
• 1:06:17
  they just, yeah, prayer is not. It's so different from kind of
• 1:06:20
  your secular like, oh, do this and you'll feel good.
• 1:06:23
  It's a movement of the heart, right.
• 1:06:24
  So it's like if you're saying I'm going to totally abandoned
• 1:06:27
  and surrender everything like that's that prayer is like the
• 1:06:29
  most I mean, there's the Jesus. I surrender everything pray.
• 1:06:32
  I know on the app too. You can you can go through the
• 1:06:34
  prayer, you know, you, you know, use an official prayer to say
• 1:06:37
  that. But that action of total
• 1:06:38
  surrender, what you were talking earlier about the darkest, you
• 1:06:43
  know, well, there's the dark night of the soul.
• 1:06:45
  But experiencing this moment of being incredibly close to God in
• 1:06:50
  the most of suffering made me think of Jennifer Hubbard, who
• 1:06:53
  was on the show a year ago. And she was a mother of a little
• 1:06:57
  girl who was killed in Sandy Hook.
• 1:07:00
  You know, you lose your five year old in a school shooting.
• 1:07:02
  Like can you? It's unbearable.
• 1:07:04
  It's unbearable to even consider in your mind.
• 1:07:06
  Like as a parent, your brain just stops.
• 1:07:09
  It's short circuits. You can't even think about it.
• 1:07:11
  But anyways, she's this beautiful woman of faith.
• 1:07:14
  She's Catholic. You should put her on the app
• 1:07:15
  actually, because she says and the way she speaks about it is
• 1:07:19
  so beautiful. And I was just in awe of the way
• 1:07:21
  she talked about it. But she said the days following
• 1:07:25
  the loss of her beautiful daughter in the Sandy Hook
• 1:07:28
  school shooting were the darkest days of her life.
• 1:07:31
  Like unfathomably depth, dark, right?
• 1:07:35
  Like it's, you can't even, there's no words to tell with
• 1:07:38
  that kind of psychological grief and shock and mourning.
• 1:07:40
  Because it's, it's shock, it's mourning, it's, it's a surprise,
• 1:07:43
  it's a traumatic event, all this stuff.
• 1:07:45
  But she said she had never felt closer to God.
• 1:07:48
  And as horrible as those moments were, it's not that she wants
• 1:07:51
  her child to die or anything like this.
• 1:07:53
  She sometimes misses the experience she had of being so
• 1:07:58
  close to God in the middle of the darkest of nights that she
• 1:08:02
  had after that the loss of her daughter.
• 1:08:04
  That's so that's beautiful. The, so there's this story that
• 1:08:11
  there's a couple of these and it goes back to what we were
• 1:08:13
  talking about at the beginning, but the, you know, we first
• 1:08:16
  built Hala mostly for ourselves and, and people sometimes ask
• 1:08:20
  this question of like, well, when did you know that, hey,
• 1:08:22
  you're going to build this for other people or like other
• 1:08:24
  people would use this or you'd try to start it as like a
• 1:08:26
  startup thing and, you know, have an app that other people
• 1:08:28
  used. And the first thing, the first
• 1:08:33
  real moment for that, usually it's a startup person answering
• 1:08:35
  that question or asking that question.
• 1:08:37
  And it's like, well, was your retention rate something or was
• 1:08:41
  your like, you know, economics or something?
• 1:08:42
  And I was like, Oh no, it was this note we got and we had
• 1:08:47
  launched, we were about a weekend and maybe 80 people
• 1:08:51
  using it, friends and family, just people who had heard.
• 1:08:54
  And I got this note, this was December of 2018, like I was
• 1:08:58
  talking about. And it was from my aunt and my
• 1:09:03
  aunt and my godmother had a son and two daughters.
• 1:09:09
  Son was 40 and had just gotten married and had his wife had
• 1:09:14
  just gotten pregnant with her first kid.
• 1:09:17
  And he had a pain in his chest. He went into the doctor and the
• 1:09:21
  doctor said you were fine, go back home.
• 1:09:22
  And he died that night in the sleep.
• 1:09:24
  And she was heartbreaking, like devastated and she couldn't eat.
• 1:09:32
  She couldn't get out of bed. And we have this huge family
• 1:09:37
  like this big like our family, our, my dad's side of the family
• 1:09:40
  is like 100 people get together, aunts, uncles, cousins,
• 1:09:42
  whatever. And we're all trying to be like,
• 1:09:44
  what could you possibly do for this woman?
• 1:09:45
  And The thing is, you can't like what you can't, you can't say
• 1:09:48
  anything to that. There's nothing you can say.
• 1:09:50
  There's nothing you can do. Like it's, it's your son, It's
• 1:09:52
  your only son. And she sent us this note a week
• 1:09:57
  into it, a week after the app launch.
• 1:09:59
  She just said, I wanted to let you know that Christmas is
• 1:10:02
  always a kind of a stressful time for me.
• 1:10:04
  It's like a time that I have to figure out how to get gifts.
• 1:10:08
  I have to figure out how to travel and see everybody.
• 1:10:10
  But but this year especially, I didn't think I'd be able to make
• 1:10:13
  it through it. I just had this overwhelming,
• 1:10:16
  indescribable sense of dread, my first Christmas without my son.
• 1:10:19
  Like I just didn't. I didn't think I could make it.
• 1:10:21
  And I just wanted to let you know that these little
• 1:10:23
  meditations have reminded me that yes, I am in my darkest
• 1:10:27
  moment, but I can still have hope.
• 1:10:31
  So thank you. And I just like broke down in
• 1:10:33
  tears and remember I we had our Co founder live near us and we
• 1:10:38
  went and got a drink and I was like, you know, what's crazy is
• 1:10:41
  if we do nothing else, if we work on this for the next 50
• 1:10:45
  years and we lose everything and everybody hates us and we do
• 1:10:47
  everything wrong and it's terrible and it's the worst
• 1:10:49
  thing ever. And the only thing that comes of
• 1:10:52
  it is that note. I'd do it again.
• 1:10:55
  Like for sure I'd do it again. And that's cool.
• 1:11:00
  Like that's a, that's a cool thing to get to.
• 1:11:02
  And and we get these, there was this other woman, which you
• 1:11:05
  reminded me of the story. I would go off on these stories
• 1:11:07
  forever. So you have to cut me off at
• 1:11:08
  some point. But the, there's this woman who
• 1:11:10
  wrote into us and she just said, Hey, I just wanted to let you
• 1:11:12
  know, I don't think I'd be standing here alive if it wasn't
• 1:11:14
  for this app and the grace that God gave me through it.
• 1:11:16
  And I was like, could you expand?
• 1:11:18
  Is that the bathtub story? No, it's a different 10.
• 1:11:22
  Gosh, there are. The bathtub story is a tough
• 1:11:27
  one, but this woman was married with three little girls and had
• 1:11:33
  become addicted to alcohol and opioids or drugs for a while and
• 1:11:38
  had become involved in a long standing affair with someone
• 1:11:40
  from work. Her husband found out about it
• 1:11:43
  and left her and took the kids and she was like devastated.
• 1:11:49
  Lowest moment of her life by far.
• 1:11:51
  She said everything. It felt like every everyone she
• 1:11:55
  loved, everything she cared about was gone.
• 1:11:57
  She was broken into a million pieces.
• 1:11:59
  The whole world could see her whole shame.
• 1:12:01
  Like at the the worst possible thing.
• 1:12:03
  She'd never really had a relationship with Jesus.
• 1:12:06
  But she was sitting there and she was scrolling and she saw
• 1:12:08
  some stupid posts from Mark Wahlberg talking about the
• 1:12:10
  rosary. And she was like, wait, that's
• 1:12:13
  the guy from the bear movies? And that's like, that's very
• 1:12:15
  odd. I might as well try it.
• 1:12:18
  And she downloads it and she starts praying and she starts
• 1:12:23
  praying the surrender novena with with Jonathan and Jonathan
• 1:12:27
  Rumi, who's one of the guys that we have on the app plays Jesus
• 1:12:30
  in the chosen is phenomenal. And she said, I realized
• 1:12:33
  something in that moment, which is I was right.
• 1:12:35
  I was at the lowest moment of my life.
• 1:12:37
  Everyone I loved had left me, but I was wrong.
• 1:12:40
  I was not alone. Jesus was there with me.
• 1:12:42
  He was closer to me than he'd ever been before.
• 1:12:44
  And he picked me up. He scooped me up into his arms
• 1:12:46
  and he put me back together piece by piece and he saved my
• 1:12:48
  life. I started using the app 15 times
• 1:12:50
  a day, which is a lot of times a day.
• 1:12:52
  I got sober, I broke off the affair, and I started praying
• 1:12:54
  radically for my husband's forgiveness.
• 1:12:56
  Obviously, I didn't deserve it, but I prayed for my husband's
• 1:12:58
  forgiveness. He went to adoration, which he'd
• 1:13:00
  never goes to, which is you sit in front of the Blessed
• 1:13:03
  Sacrament, the Eucharist, and you pray.
• 1:13:05
  And he had his own radical encounter with Jesus that told
• 1:13:07
  him to forgive his wife. And so they got back together
• 1:13:09
  and they had another kid just like, how cool is that?
• 1:13:13
  And so you asked me, you asked me at the beginning, it's like,
• 1:13:16
  what is the vision for Hal? Crazy, Which I do think
• 1:13:18
  everybody in the world praying would be cool, but like much
• 1:13:21
  cooler than that. I mean that maybe not much
• 1:13:23
  cooler, but as cool. Certainly what I've what I get a
• 1:13:26
  lot more excited about like if you were like, oh, Hal is going
• 1:13:28
  to cross 100 million downloads in a couple years is that I'd be
• 1:13:32
  like, it's I mean, that's cool. Numbers are great Alex,
• 1:13:36
  hopefully, but it's you you had you told me 10 where am.
• 1:13:39
  I. I know I had I gave this talk in
• 1:13:41
  front of one of our investors and he was like, I'm not sure I
• 1:13:44
  but the he's like, I'm happy. He's like, I guess surrendered
• 1:13:49
  to Lord works. But the but like when we crossed
• 1:13:51
  a million, I would have he would have told me like that's, that's
• 1:13:55
  crazy. 1,000,000 downloads is insane When you cross 10
• 1:13:58
  million. I would have been like, but
• 1:13:59
  nothing really. Numbers don't ever.
• 1:14:02
  It's cool because they represent people, but.
• 1:14:03
  What is it? What's happening?
• 1:14:04
  Yeah. It never, it never.
• 1:14:06
  Numbers don't really ever. But like, man, if you get one of
• 1:14:10
  those stories, like if we worked for the next 50 years and
• 1:14:12
  everything was terrible and we got one more and you know, the
• 1:14:15
  woman in the bathtub, we didn't a young woman who didn't commit
• 1:14:18
  suicide because she found Jesus through the app.
• 1:14:20
  It's like if there was one more person out there and you told
• 1:14:22
  me, hey, Alex, you have to go work for.
• 1:14:24
  It's very similar to work that you do with saving kids, but you
• 1:14:27
  have to go work for the next 50 years and you're only going to
• 1:14:30
  reach one person, but it's going to be somebody like that.
• 1:14:33
  It's like. I love the mindset because it's
• 1:14:35
  like I'm going to go big for everybody, which I know you're,
• 1:14:39
  you're working hard on. I mean, you, you, you worked
• 1:14:41
  your butt off to raise $100 million.
• 1:14:42
  So you could go big, right? And you're going big.
• 1:14:45
  But in your mind, it's like big to you might end up being, if it
• 1:14:49
  is that one soul, it's worth it your time that you're putting
• 1:14:53
  into it. I know your team is very like
• 1:14:54
  minded, like the team that you work with.
• 1:14:56
  I've met some of them. They're amazing human beings and
• 1:14:59
  I think that's so beautiful because I mean, I think God's
• 1:15:01
  blessing it in the worldly sense, like it's it's being
• 1:15:04
  fruitful, but in the spiritual sense, you, you're seeing this
• 1:15:07
  too and that's just incredible. I wanted to ask you about Mark
• 1:15:10
  Wahlberg, and you've dropped a few celebrity names in this
• 1:15:13
  interview It. Says it usually Mark.
• 1:15:15
  What's that do? I did I drop on.
• 1:15:17
  This Kevin James. Oh, Kevin.
• 1:15:18
  Kevin's great. Yeah, they're no, they're I'm I
• 1:15:21
  think they're, I mean, I've met Jonathan once or twice, but it's
• 1:15:23
  not like I know them. But I what I what is interesting
• 1:15:26
  about Hallow and it's, I think been really successful and
• 1:15:29
  smart, but you've also gotten some blowback from not a lot of
• 1:15:33
  people, but a few, just a few. Let's just say about they're
• 1:15:36
  using celebrities like how dare they, right.
• 1:15:39
  Yeah. And I'm curious your take on
• 1:15:40
  that. I think it's.
• 1:15:42
  So how is? And just so just to kind of
• 1:15:46
  clarify the question, even, it's not that it's wrong to like work
• 1:15:50
  with a celebrity per SE, right? It's more that, you know, I
• 1:15:53
  think there's some people who just feel like if it's something
• 1:15:55
  spiritual, if it's something about prayer, it's so pristine.
• 1:15:59
  It shouldn't be connected to a business or to people who are
• 1:16:03
  influencer celebrities. Like somehow protect this
• 1:16:05
  pristineness of it. I think is this concern that
• 1:16:08
  some people may have. I agree.
• 1:16:10
  That's certainly the concern and I certainly understand it.
• 1:16:12
  I think it's Mark is incredible. He's been crazy helpful to us
• 1:16:19
  and he uses his platform to reach out to people in a way
• 1:16:21
  that few others could well. Yeah, your story it was that
• 1:16:24
  woman found out about Hallow and her life has changed because of
• 1:16:27
  Mark posting about it. And a lot of people like his
• 1:16:29
  rosary on the app. I can't stand it.
• 1:16:32
  It's so fast and it's cool. I mean, it was.
• 1:16:35
  Working out during the rosary. No, it's insane.
• 1:16:37
  It's so it's we, we tried with our core guys, like the folks
• 1:16:41
  that we have on the team to record the fastest rosary we
• 1:16:44
  could just just for somebody who like really was in a pinch and
• 1:16:47
  we got 15 minutes and he just did it in one take and he did it
• 1:16:50
  in 12. It's just really stressful.
• 1:16:52
  It's just and it, it, it's, it's like listening to something it's
• 1:16:55
  like listening to a prayer on 2X speed, but it's, it's 1X speed
• 1:16:57
  and he's just like Hail Mary full.
• 1:16:58
  The grace of the Lord is with thee.
• 1:16:59
  Blessed art thou most women blessed for that one Jesus Holy
• 1:17:02
  Mary mother got pray for this. Amen.
• 1:17:04
  And it's it's just great. I was and so anyway, I can't
• 1:17:07
  pray with that at all. But the he does some cool stuff
• 1:17:10
  on that. He he doesn't all of his stuff
• 1:17:12
  is cool, but he does some stuff that I like a lot on the app
• 1:17:14
  that but I don't know. So how long from the beginning
• 1:17:18
  it was interesting because we prayed about what we wanted it
• 1:17:22
  to be what God wanted it to be. And we're debating like, should
• 1:17:26
  we do this as a nonprofit? Should we do it as a lifestyle
• 1:17:28
  business, which is just like, Hey, build a little small
• 1:17:30
  business and then I can go golf more than I now do?
• 1:17:33
  Or like do we do a startup and me and my Co founder, we all
• 1:17:38
  prayed about it and this is what we tried to do.
• 1:17:42
  We talked to all our we talked to all our faith advisors and we
• 1:17:44
  take it to prayer and we try to take it to scripture.
• 1:17:47
  And it was funny because everyone I talked to in the
• 1:17:52
  faith world and this is the nonprofits are great and they're
• 1:17:55
  phenomenal, but everyone told me not to do it.
• 1:17:57
  Everyone told me not to do it. And.
• 1:17:59
  It's hard. It's really hard and you spend
• 1:18:01
  you can you, you can spend a lot of your.
• 1:18:03
  Time to run ours like we try to run ours like a for profit in
• 1:18:06
  terms of excellence, efficiency, effectiveness, but it's just a
• 1:18:09
  weird world. It's a really weird world.
• 1:18:12
  And so we got counseled pretty heavily, not from like priests
• 1:18:15
  and bishops and pastors. And the shocking to me because I
• 1:18:18
  was like, oh, I thought that was what I was supposed to do.
• 1:18:21
  And so then I took it to prayer and we both ended up praying
• 1:18:25
  same little lecture to Venus session, which is a way of
• 1:18:28
  meditating on Scripture like we talked about, but is on the 10
• 1:18:32
  talents passage. And for folks who don't know the
• 1:18:35
  10 talents passage is his master gives, there's a couple
• 1:18:38
  different versions of it, but the master gives a coin to each
• 1:18:41
  of his servants. He goes back, he leaves, he
• 1:18:44
  comes back. One of the servants has 10X to
• 1:18:46
  his coin. The other servant has 5X to his
• 1:18:49
  coin. And the last servant buried his
• 1:18:50
  coin. And what the master says to the
• 1:18:53
  first is he goes, well done, my good and faithful servant.
• 1:18:55
  You were trustworthy in these little things that will put you
• 1:18:58
  in charge of 10 cities. Same thing to the second one.
• 1:19:01
  And then the last one he says, what did you do?
• 1:19:02
  And the guy says, so I, I knew you were mean.
• 1:19:05
  Essentially, I knew you're a wicked and evil master and I was
• 1:19:13
  scared. So I buried it.
• 1:19:15
  And he goes, why would you bury it?
• 1:19:17
  You should have at least put it in the bank.
• 1:19:18
  And then I could have collected interest.
• 1:19:19
  Which is the funniest? Like tactical, you know,
• 1:19:22
  scripture story. It's a parable.
• 1:19:23
  Jesus is teaching this parable and he takes that, he tells his
• 1:19:27
  other servants to take the coin from that servant and give it to
• 1:19:29
  the guy who has 10. And he says from those who for
• 1:19:32
  those who have more will be given them from those who have
• 1:19:34
  not even what they don't have, even what they have will be
• 1:19:36
  taken away. And it's the story of this is
• 1:19:43
  crazy. I mean, that's a crazy story.
• 1:19:45
  And it's the story, you know, the meaning of the story is not,
• 1:19:47
  it's not about money. It's not about multiplying money
• 1:19:49
  or any of that stuff. It's about the gifts that God
• 1:19:52
  gives you. You're not.
• 1:19:53
  You can't bury them. You have to go and you have to
• 1:19:56
  go and use them. You got to be brave.
• 1:19:58
  And the thing that I'd, yeah. And the thing that I'd never
• 1:20:00
  really thought about with that passage, I'd read that passage a
• 1:20:03
  good chunk of times. But the thing that I'd never
• 1:20:05
  really thought about and that I thought about specifically from
• 1:20:08
  a startup perspective this time was like, man, how crazy is it
• 1:20:11
  to 10X your money? Like, yeah, OK, an interest,
• 1:20:14
  like you put it in a bank with interest and you get like 5% or
• 1:20:16
  something and 3%, whatever it is now.
• 1:20:18
  And. Like to 10X, like that's risk,
• 1:20:22
  like that's risky. Like that guy probably could
• 1:20:24
  have lost his coin. He was making some bets that
• 1:20:26
  were very high risk. So you don't get 10X in a
• 1:20:28
  relatively short period of time with nothing.
• 1:20:30
  And same with 5X, same with 2X. And it's interesting because
• 1:20:34
  there's not an example of a servant losing money.
• 1:20:36
  Like there's not an example of a servant saying, hey, you gave me
• 1:20:38
  that coin and I tried to multiply it, but I failed.
• 1:20:39
  And I think the lesson there probably is like when you, and
• 1:20:43
  again, it's not about money, it's about the talents that God
• 1:20:44
  gives you. But when you actually go and
• 1:20:46
  like risk the talents that God gives you for his Kingdom, he
• 1:20:48
  doesn't let you fail, but in maybe in a worldly sense, you
• 1:20:52
  fail and that's fine. Whatever he must increase, I
• 1:20:53
  must decrease. We fail something that's
• 1:20:55
  fruitfulness, but like the what he wanted his will does not
• 1:20:58
  fail. And for us, the interesting
• 1:21:00
  thing about Hallow is it's not people disagree with me when I
• 1:21:05
  say this, but I use it every day, three times a day.
• 1:21:08
  It's not all that important. If it's not around tomorrow, I'm
• 1:21:11
  going to be fine. If my priest isn't around
• 1:21:14
  tomorrow, I'm going to be pretty upset.
• 1:21:15
  If my doctor screws something up, I'm going to be pretty
• 1:21:17
  upset. If hollow glitches, I'll be like
• 1:21:20
  a little inconvenienced. I still can do all my prayers
• 1:21:22
  without it. I can I can spend time and time.
• 1:21:24
  We all should be able to pray without it.
• 1:21:25
  The hopefully the app helps you to build a habit of prayer both
• 1:21:28
  with it and without it. And I think, you know, I'd say
• 1:21:32
  the same thing for like Spotify and Netflix.
• 1:21:34
  Like if Netflix isn't around, I don't use Netflix.
• 1:21:36
  But you know, if like my music app isn't around tomorrow, I'll
• 1:21:38
  be fine. It's like I'll just use a
• 1:21:39
  different music thing or YouTube or whatever.
• 1:21:41
  And there's a bunch of resources like if you really needed an
• 1:21:45
  audio rosary, there's a bunch of resources for that.
• 1:21:47
  If you really needed a gospel reading, like there's a bunch
• 1:21:49
  of, it's not like we're doing anything crazy like that.
• 1:21:53
  It's not like Elon Musk trying to get us to the to Mars or
• 1:21:55
  whatever. You know, if he doesn't get us
• 1:21:56
  there, then nobody else is going to the.
• 1:21:59
  But what we do have is this really unique opportunity to
• 1:22:04
  reach out to people, especially people who are really hard
• 1:22:09
  traditionally for Christian things to reach out to.
• 1:22:13
  And it's people who aren't Googling Christian terms,
• 1:22:16
  They're not showing up at church, they're not doing
• 1:22:19
  anything. They haven't encountered Jesus
• 1:22:21
  in a while. They haven't encountered anybody
• 1:22:22
  who's talking about Jesus or any media or any of that stuff in a
• 1:22:25
  while and or ever. And we have this opportunity as
• 1:22:29
  this app, as the startup to take risks and take swings, some of
• 1:22:34
  which work out, some of which don't.
• 1:22:36
  And try to reach out to those folks.
• 1:22:40
  And so that's the only, I mean, it's the reason behind
• 1:22:42
  everything that we do, which is it's an honor to get to.
• 1:22:45
  I take my faith seriously. I have for six years, I use the
• 1:22:47
  app every day for three times a day.
• 1:22:48
  We have monks and priests and bishops and stuff on the app.
• 1:22:50
  And it's awesome to get to play with everybody who takes their
• 1:22:52
  faith seriously. And I think it can be a real
• 1:22:53
  tool for all of us who take our faith seriously.
• 1:22:56
  But what we really get excited about is reaching out to the
• 1:23:00
  folks who have most fallen away. And that's the only reason why
• 1:23:03
  like that, that's the reason we partner with Mark.
• 1:23:05
  He's a very talented voice actor.
• 1:23:07
  He does great content. The same with Jonathan Rumi.
• 1:23:09
  And I think like, you know, you take Jonathan Rumi from the
• 1:23:11
  chosen. He brings scripture to life in a
• 1:23:13
  way that is, is, is very unique. Like you've heard this, you've
• 1:23:18
  heard the scripture 1000 times and it's, it's new when you hear
• 1:23:20
  it from him. And he's a very well trained
• 1:23:22
  voice actor. And so it's, and same with Mark.
• 1:23:25
  He does a great job like as a as a voice actor bringing to life
• 1:23:28
  these words from San Jose Maria is, is Grieva or whatever it is.
• 1:23:31
  And they do phenomenal jobs. But primarily what they do is
• 1:23:37
  they reach out. And especially Mark Jonathan is
• 1:23:39
  mostly connected with the chosen.
• 1:23:41
  So it's a little bit different, but Mark or Kevin James or
• 1:23:44
  whoever it is, reaching out to these folks who otherwise
• 1:23:48
  wouldn't have stopped scrolling. Like unfortunately my face
• 1:23:51
  doesn't get you to stop scrolling.
• 1:23:52
  And what we're trying to like most of our evangelization right
• 1:23:54
  now is not in person. It's digital.
• 1:23:55
  It's where most of us spend most of our lives, sadly.
• 1:23:58
  And what we try to do is like the question of evangelization,
• 1:24:01
  funnily enough, is a pretty tactical one.
• 1:24:03
  It's like, can I get you to stop going for half a second?
• 1:24:05
  I mean, in my view, hollow is like cream of the crop, top of
• 1:24:10
  funnel. It's top of funnel awareness,
• 1:24:13
  platform marketing, whatever words you want to use for the
• 1:24:16
  for our faith in a digital age, that's what you're doing that's.
• 1:24:18
  Hopefully what we're doing and and.
• 1:24:20
  And you're getting you're, you're creating a space where
• 1:24:22
  someone like Mark Wahlberg, who already was Christian, he
• 1:24:26
  already cared deeply about his faith to actually make like have
• 1:24:32
  a space professionally where he can be proud to share it on a
• 1:24:35
  daily basis and have the excuse. And it makes sense to his
• 1:24:39
  followers to some degree, like Mark Wahlberg's like saying,
• 1:24:42
  pray up all day. Every time he gets in a cold
• 1:24:44
  lunge, he does a little Stay great.
• 1:24:46
  But but it but that's but yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:24:48
  And and there is like I, I, I really think like what's
• 1:24:53
  happening right now with a lot of conversions, like we, it's
• 1:24:56
  hard to get the stats on it right, but I'm seeing a lot of
• 1:24:59
  conversions. And I do think like the larger
• 1:25:02
  work you're doing with hollow, including the marketing.
• 1:25:04
  I mean, again, you get criticism.
• 1:25:07
  Like any risk you're going to, you take, you're going to get
• 1:25:09
  criticism, right. But largely speaking, like
• 1:25:12
  finding solid people like Mark who are he's a solid guy, you
• 1:25:15
  know, but he is sharing the goodness, you know, the good
• 1:25:18
  news on a daily basis, you know, largely through social problems
• 1:25:22
  is huge. I think it's also, it's funny
• 1:25:23
  because most of the criticism we get on that is from folks who
• 1:25:29
  don't use the app. Some of it is, but most of it is
• 1:25:33
  from folks who don't, which makes a ton of sense to me.
• 1:25:35
  If I didn't use this app, I would think all that hello was
• 1:25:37
  was Mark Wahlberg, Jonathan Rumi, You know, because on your
• 1:25:40
  Facebook feed, I mean, it's the ad that works.
• 1:25:43
  It's the ad that gets somebody or it's the face that gets.
• 1:25:45
  Yeah. It's like people not already in
• 1:25:47
  the bubble, yeah. That's what that's for.
• 1:25:49
  It's not for your Catholic grandmother.
• 1:25:51
  Right. Mark Wahlberg.
• 1:25:52
  I mean, she might like him. I don't know.
• 1:25:53
  But like Mark Wahlberg is not for the Catholic grandmother.
• 1:25:55
  Like he's for the 40 year old woman who is, you know, going
• 1:26:00
  through a divorce. You know, like that's who Mark
• 1:26:01
  Wahlberg is for. Yeah, and the, and from the
• 1:26:05
  outside, like the marketing, you know, whatever ad, I mean,
• 1:26:07
  whatever ads work end up taking off and that's all you see.
• 1:26:11
  And so I could certainly see that.
• 1:26:13
  It's like, oh, how is the celebrity thing?
• 1:26:14
  If you actually get into the app, Mark does one session for
• 1:26:18
  Lent a year, a week during Lent, which is great, is phenomenal.
• 1:26:23
  Like through fast and content. It really pumps you up.
• 1:26:24
  It's great. Jonathan does a lot of content.
• 1:26:26
  So Jonathan's a fair 1. Kevin did one session during
• 1:26:29
  Advent a week. The vast majority of the content
• 1:26:34
  on the app is Father Mike or Bishop, Baron or Sister Miriam
• 1:26:37
  leading an imaginative. Career semi anonymous people
• 1:26:40
  right they're. Mostly anonymous folks.
• 1:26:41
  I mean, a lot of them are like the guys that we do.
• 1:26:43
  So we have a daily St. we have a daily gospel.
• 1:26:45
  We have all these folks who you don't know because they're part
• 1:26:47
  of the hallow team. So Francis and Anna and Abby and
• 1:26:50
  the we have these Saints and seven days like if you look over
• 1:26:53
  our annual calendar of releases, like it's we're doing right now,
• 1:26:58
  consecration with Sister Miriam, where we try to consecrate our
• 1:27:00
  hearts fully to to the Lord. We then do like a Saints
• 1:27:03
  challenge. We do another Saints challenge.
• 1:27:05
  We did John Paul the second's life with Jim Caviezel and
• 1:27:09
  Monsignor Shea. And then you do like a bunch of
• 1:27:12
  daily content, which is just daily reflections with Jeff
• 1:27:15
  Cavans, who's a Bible scholar, and Jonathan.
• 1:27:18
  Then you have Father Gallagher who does these Ignatian
• 1:27:21
  imaginative prayer exercises every day.
• 1:27:23
  You have Father Dave Bivanca from Franciscan University is
• 1:27:26
  the president who does these beautiful Holy Spirit prayers.
• 1:27:29
  Father Pete from Notre Dame who does these beautiful.
• 1:27:31
  So it's like if I and all these crazy awesome nuns who does do
• 1:27:34
  these incredible prayers. We have these books at the story
• 1:27:37
  of the soul imitation of Christ. And so the vast majority if I
• 1:27:41
  had to like 95 plus percent of the content on the app is not
• 1:27:45
  you couldn't even connect it, excluding Jonathan, maybe
• 1:27:47
  because he does a bunch of the scripture reading and so, but is
• 1:27:51
  not a celebrity of any sort anywhere close.
• 1:27:54
  And so when you're in the app, it doesn't you know, for me, I
• 1:27:56
  don't feel that way at all unless I'm interested in it and
• 1:27:58
  then I want to go do it. Then I'll I'll go do it.
• 1:28:00
  But like the vast majority of it is someone, and I think that's
• 1:28:04
  appropriate. The vast majority is someone
• 1:28:05
  who's very deep personally in their spiritual life and has
• 1:28:10
  dedicated their life to the Lord and in many cases has taken a
• 1:28:14
  vow of poverty and is leading us in these beautiful prayers and
• 1:28:19
  reflections. And then to have that advertised
• 1:28:22
  by Kevin James, it's like, yeah, that's great.
• 1:28:24
  You know, that's a I'll, I'll take that.
• 1:28:26
  But it's, you know, the core of the app is about trying to help
• 1:28:30
  you grow deeper in your spiritual life.
• 1:28:31
  But yeah, the marketing is and why we do that is for the, for
• 1:28:34
  the woman who stops going for 1/2 a second.
• 1:28:37
  It's like, man, if I could, you know, if, if, if she would have
• 1:28:40
  stopped for my face, I would just plaster my face everywhere.
• 1:28:42
  That's great. That would be awesome.
• 1:28:43
  But if my face doesn't work. Well, The thing is, you're on
• 1:28:46
  you guys My. Name like but.
• 1:28:47
  There you go for whom, right. The what is so cool though, too
• 1:28:53
  is like, I think your approach to even how you market.
• 1:28:56
  I, I've watched it from afar, like develop over time, and I
• 1:29:01
  think that's also been really amazing to see just the humility
• 1:29:03
  with which you guys operate because your end game is, you
• 1:29:06
  know, top of the funnel, bring souls into relationship with
• 1:29:09
  Jesus and you are going to take risks and who you partner with.
• 1:29:14
  And then you're going to learn. And it's, it's an active
• 1:29:17
  learning process too, as you're, as you're doing partnerships, as
• 1:29:20
  what's working, what's not, or, you know, obviously there could
• 1:29:23
  be a mistakes made in that process, but the idea is like,
• 1:29:26
  are we learning from our mistakes?
• 1:29:28
  Are we learning from the process and then just getting better and
• 1:29:30
  better? And there you go.
• 1:29:32
  There you're using your your your talents in a parable.
• 1:29:35
  I was asked to Alex, have you do you guys have you have you guys
• 1:29:38
  made mistakes at Al And I was like, yeah, what we make AI make
• 1:29:41
  a mistake every day. I mean, and some big, some small
• 1:29:44
  and and part of what we're trying to do is and and it's
• 1:29:48
  hopefully, you know, from the beginning, what we knew was
• 1:29:51
  like, hey, we're going to take some risks.
• 1:29:52
  Some things are going to work out and some things aren't.
• 1:29:54
  And that's that's we're not we're going to try to learn and
• 1:29:56
  get better. And what we're trying to do is,
• 1:30:00
  you know, hopefully stay true to the, the thing that we're
• 1:30:03
  working on, which is a relationship with the Lord in
• 1:30:04
  line with what the church teaches and, you know, letting
• 1:30:08
  God guide us. But we're certainly going to
• 1:30:09
  make mistakes. I mean, I'm certainly, I'm very
• 1:30:13
  much a Sinner. The, the, the thing I love most
• 1:30:16
  about our ads. And I think I forgot who on our
• 1:30:19
  team first came up with this, but I think it was Jonathan.
• 1:30:21
  It might have been Jonathan. But the, it's just, most of them
• 1:30:25
  are just prayer. Most of them is just like, hey,
• 1:30:27
  could you stop and pray with me for a second?
• 1:30:28
  And it's funny how that like throws people off.
• 1:30:30
  And then, you know, we did the Super Bowl commercial and I was,
• 1:30:34
  I was very a Super Bowl commercial almost never makes
• 1:30:37
  sense. It's economically a very bad
• 1:30:38
  decision. Ours was regional.
• 1:30:40
  So it wasn't nearly the cost. It was a fraction of the cost of
• 1:30:42
  the national thing. And it doesn't have all the
• 1:30:44
  requirements that the national one had.
• 1:30:46
  But I was, it was still a massive decision and I was very,
• 1:30:50
  it almost never works in terms of like driving enough
• 1:30:53
  subscribers to make up for it. And I was, we were sitting
• 1:30:56
  there, we were praying about it. And I was like, you know, what
• 1:30:58
  would be cool? And then the big question is
• 1:30:59
  like, do you have a good creative?
• 1:31:00
  And there's all these funny things of, you know, most Super
• 1:31:03
  Bowl commercials are funny. And so there's all these funny
• 1:31:05
  ideas that people were throwing to us about what you could do
• 1:31:06
  with Jesus or whatever. That's funny.
• 1:31:08
  And there's some good ones that we might do so at some point.
• 1:31:10
  But but at the end of the day, I was like, you know, what if we
• 1:31:13
  just prayed? Like what if we just said, Hey,
• 1:31:15
  guys, we're in the middle of the game.
• 1:31:17
  What if we just take 20 seconds and pray?
• 1:31:19
  And what if there's somebody in the 100 million people that
• 1:31:21
  watch that that hasn't prayed in a while and like just briefly
• 1:31:26
  turns their mind to Jesus, like just ever so slightly.
• 1:31:29
  You know, again, it probably wouldn't be the right economic
• 1:31:31
  decision, but it's like, it's like, yeah, but that that'd be
• 1:31:35
  worth it for sure. That'd be cool.
• 1:31:36
  And then it ends up working because God, God's like, OK,
• 1:31:38
  look, I'd you give up the worldly things and then I give
• 1:31:41
  you 2 fold the worldly, even the worldly things, I'll give you
• 1:31:43
  back. You know, even in this life,
• 1:31:44
  I'll give you more. And you know, the story of Joe,
• 1:31:48
  you give, you lose it all and then it gives you twofold back.
• 1:31:51
  And it's just like, yeah, you have to, you have to give it all
• 1:31:53
  to him. And then you watch him do these
• 1:31:55
  crazy cool things with it, which is all I've learned.
• 1:31:58
  Amazing, where can people find Halo?
• 1:32:02
  Halo is on any of the app stores.
• 1:32:04
  Link in the description. You tap it.
• 1:32:06
  Yeah, You have a link? Yeah, you have a code, but it's
• 1:32:08
  Halo HALLOW people. You were my ad copy today.
• 1:32:12
  Alex Oh, nice. Was that I?
• 1:32:14
  Don't know, I'll do. We'll put an ad in too, but.
• 1:32:17
  Hopefully I'm a fan. We should sponsor it.
• 1:32:19
  Thank you. Thanks for saying yes to our
• 1:32:21
  Lord. Praise God, thank you for all
• 1:32:22
  your building something. Incredible.
• 1:32:23
  It's so beautiful. It's really amazing.
• 1:32:25
  It's an honor. Glory to God.
• 1:32:27
  Amen. A huge thank you to our partner.
• 1:32:29
  EWTNEWTN is the largest religious network, reaching
• 1:32:33
  millions of people with the truth of the faith,
• 1:32:36
  entertainment and news. Check them out at ewtn.com.