The Secret to Funding a Faith-Based Business w/Alex Jones | E191 The Lila Rose Show

0:00 we raised $50 million one day but I reflect on my day and I was like you know what my daughter came and gave me a hug and that was better when it was objectively better what's it been like being the CEO where you've raised 100 million bucks you have 100 people you're managing is not ultimately about us feeling good it's about us trying to do the Lord's will sometimes that feels good and sometimes it really doesn't also gotten some blowback about oh they're using celebrities and I'm curious your take on that hey everybody welcome back the lla rose show today I'm sitting down with Alex Jones Alex Jones who is the founder of hallo app he raised over100 million for this technology his app has had over I think 300 million prayers prayed

0:45 anyways Alex gets super personal about how he did this not just the why but the how behind building this really incredibly impressive effectively Tech and prayer company and so much more I think you're going to find this episode fascinating and don't forget to subscribe to the show if you're not already subscribed did you know that over 90% of our listeners sometimes on YouTube or podcast app aren't yet subscribed so make sure that you hit that subscribe button Alex Jones welcome to the podcast thanks for having me it's an honor it's great to have you here not that Alex Jones no you are the Alexon in my world okay certainly certainly not um the more that I talk with you and I've you know asked you for advice on stuff before business related obviously I've been involved with Hollow app it's amazing have met your beautiful family you guys

1:32 are just salt of the earth people and you're you're not only brilliant but you're super solid so thank you for thank you for being you oh praise God likewise right back at you we're big fans and the work you do is incredibly important and yeah it's been an honor to get to be get to work together certainly but also be friends so thank you me I feel the same so I'm excited to talk because obviously we're going to talk about hallow and all the amazing things it's doing out in the wild the number one Prayer app in the world um but I also want to talk about your leaders your your approach to leadership running you know one of the biggest Catholic technology companies is that fair to say Yeah by by the by the grace of God probably I guess yeah it's amazing there's not like a thousand Catholic technology companies true it's not like a huge list but it's pretty

2:18 significant though what you built it's pretty cool it's cool to watch them so uh but we were talking earlier you're out here in California and tell us a little bit about what brought you out here uh my family does um we try to get together as a family with my parents and my sisters and my sister has her my nephews and a niece and uh we try to get together and so for the holidays we got together here out west and then we spent some time my family and I in Northern California which we lived there for like 3 years and then we're coming down here for a day we're taking the kids to Disneyland which is the first time I've ever been there but my daughter seems pretty excited so we'll see and she's four right she's four almost five yeah it's Brave yeah it'll be we've got a four-year-old a 2-year-old and a 5-month-old so I I don't think it'll

3:06 be uh I it'll most likely be a cross but we'll have fun I mean it's funny time you been to Disneyland or or your been to I mean I think as a kid maybe my parents took us to Disney World once but no I haven't I haven't been anywhere and we just yeah we were out here and so we wanted to hit the we did the Redwoods we did there you go that sounds that's good the Redwoods was were were beautiful and um we just north of the Bay Area and it was just oh gosh it was gorgeous but yeah so we'll see this probably will have a different vibe but similar amount of thank you if you want to if you want to cancel it if you if it's like so miserable there's like a petting zoo that's really cool I'm sure my kids would love that so much more not not in a OC area so I'll I'll

3:52 send you the wreck but uh so I'd love to hear the origin story I mean you've shared it before um not on the show yet so the audience will get to hear it for the first time but I also you're talking about Northern California you went to Stanford yeah I think I was out in the area around the same time you and your wife were out there but I don't think we ever met I was actually living in Meno Park for a little while several years back yeah so I remember you saying you were at you know business school there but tell us about how the idea of Hall came to you and what what you were working on what were you doing before you started Hollow yeah um it's kind of all um one story which is mostly the story of my relationship with the Lord but um so I guess I'll

4:39 start there and then hopefully the other pieces fit in but so I was raised Catholic but fell away from my faith in high school and college would have considered myself agnostic or atheist for most of that time unfortunately I went to another Dame and the when I graduated I got really I started working I was in Consulting doing like strategy and like digital products kind of uh helping big companies launch apps and stuff uh but I got really into meditation and I don't know what it was it wasn't like stress although stress was a piece of it it was mostly like a fascination with the spiritual life and unfortunately my mind did not first go to kind of Christian spirituality and like the great Saints but to this kind of secular meditation thing and this was

5:25 this was I guess seven years or so ago six seven years or so and uh these two apps I just launched which were headspace and calm and I downloaded them and I started using them and they they teach how to do kind of secular meditation techniques um and I thought they were great I thought there were uh like helpful ways to learn this technique within the comfort of your own home for like 10 minutes uh before going to work you didn't have to go to like a meditation Studio or go on some big Retreat or something it felt like you had a really capable guide who was leading you through it it felt like almost technology without technology like you'd pick a session but you didn't have to like do it looking at a screen you press play and close your eyes and um plugged in your headphones and you're kind of guided through this meditation session but the weirdest thing kept happening which is every time I would

6:13 meditate uh which I realized was really the first time that I'd ever actually sat in silence like without distractions without thinking about stuff without trying to work or whatever but just sitting in silence my mind kept feeling this weird pull towards something spiritual like uh an image of the Cross or the name Jesus or the words Holy Spirit and I thought that was very strange because I would have considered myself agnostic and so I started reaching out to priests brothers and sisters folks who took their faith a lot more seriously than I did and I asked them what I thought was a really interesting question which is hey is there any way there's some sort of intersection here between this meditation thing and this Faith thing and uh they all laughed at me and said yeah we've been doing it for 2,000 years you probably should have heard about this probably more than 2,000 years certainly more than 2,000 years um it's

7:00 called prayer and I was like no I know prayer prayer is the like hey thanks for stuff sorry for Stuff help me with stuff or the things that I memorized as a kid which are both great ways to pray but I had this one priest um it was it was funny he was like could you imagine if if you came home to your wife every day and I think she was my fiance at the time but if if you came home to your wife every day and you said hey honey I'm thankful for these things I'm sorry for these things could you help me with these things good night like how healthy would your relationship be with your wife and I was like it wouldn't be that healthy and he was like why and I was like well I spend most of my time saying hey honey how was your day what can I do for you and then listening and he was like okay great what you've told me so far is you think prayer is talking which is an important part of prayer like you

7:45 share with God what's on your heart that's an important half of it um but a more important half is listening like have you ever tried to listen for God and if if you spend most of your relationship with your wife listening how much more would you want to listen to the guy who created the universe who knows what he wants for your perfect joy and happiness in every moment and I was like okay that's compelling but what does it mean like he doesn't usually audibly talk he does sometimes but he doesn't audibly usually talk or text you in the morning or whatever you're like and he's not on the headp space app like what do I do yeah and so I started learning about this whole world of contemplative and meditative prayer and spirituality within the church that I'd honestly never heard of before so Lexi deina carite spirituality prayer recollection chant um obviously the rosary and the

8:30 stuff that we've heard of before but this whole world that I'd ignation spirituality examine um all these things and I googled how to do Lexia deino which is a way of uh meditating with scripture randomly opened up a Bible that was laying around and uh to Luke 11 and in Lexia dein you pick a word that sticks out to you from scripture and you meditate on it and Luke 11 finally enough is where the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray and he gives them the Our father and uh the the word that stuck out to me was hallow and it was just 10 minutes just in the comfort of my own home but it changed my life it brought me back to my faith it the most important part of who I am now Mass sacraments all of uh the beauty

9:16 I think of the church and Christianity and a relationship with the Lord and it's like it's really hard to put into words like any prayer experience is but it was just this really deep combination of this deep sense of Peace but combined with this like wrestling with something real so Hall means to make holy uh which I didn't even know what the word Hall meant I had to Google it which is so funny like you say the are father a thousand times and but it's a weird word like we don't you know it's not we don't usually use it in regular um English uh and it means to make holy and I was like well is God trying to make me holy am I letting other people grow in Holiness am I supposed to be serving other people and the answer was no the answer was I was doing my own career for my own career sake cuz I was trying to whatever do what I was supposed to do and follow the ways of the world and um and so it led

10:04 me to quit my job drain my 401k at like 26 years old and do some startup that almost certainly was like a 99% chance of losing everything and so it was really stressful CU it's like oh your whole life is wrong like you're doing the whole thing wrong but it was wrestling with that in this place of deep peace so it was this weird like uh combination of those too so I knew I wanted to do that for the rest of my life I knew how to cat a little bit and with some help we built the the first version of it but mostly uh well certainly entirely just for me and we had some friends and family start using it and that was yeah 6 years ago or so and it's just been like had you told me a thousand people would have prayed with the thing I would have told you you were crazy I mean that's like a thousand people is a lot of people that's like a whole church that's uh and I think we just crossed like 750 million prayers

10:50 prayed or something through the app 22 million downloads or I mean it's just it's just mindblowing what God 750 million prayers prayed yeah so people sign up say they're praying a prayer and then the app is recording as their people are they actually have to pray like they have to start praying a prayer and get a certain chunk through it because some people start switch and so and so you you start like a session and pray a prayer so like you you enter you have any idea how many like minutes and hours of time that is yeah we did we did this we looked at it like six months ago it's more time than has P I think we passed this like a year ago more time in prayer has been spent on the app than has passed since our Lord was here which is crazy like more than 2,000 years which is insane that makes cry Alex but and there cool like it's so cool to see

11:37 like I I on on our ladyes feast day we looked up what um how many Rosary I think there's like 70 million rosaries have been prayed through the app or something insane and it's like across like 150 different countries we just got kicked out of China so like 149 but they they're not huge fans of John Paul II um they're not huge fans of Christianity right no no they you know versions of it but the um but yeah it's just it's and for us are you in how many languages does Hall well you can use the app pretty much anywhere that it's allowed anywhere that there's an iPhone or an Android phone and that you have internet are there different translations different languages so we have eight so so most of it's in English but you have we have eight different versions of the app in different languages so we have polish French

12:22 German Italian Portuguese talok I think we have one other language in the Philippines and Spanish yeah wow I think there's and I think we've got a couple other stuff that we're working on but yeah it's really cool the end game um every single person in the world has access to Hall and and is using it to pray did you know that up to 90% of the meat in your grocery store is not from the United States it might say USA on the label but it's not actually from American ranchers it's imported and packaged in the United States good ranchers is 100% sourced from the United States and when you choose goodranchers.com you're choosing more than just delicious meat you're choosing to support local American Farms and ranchers standing up for transparency

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13:56 you know there's two pieces to that I guess which is the one is I I do think like I think prayer I think prayer changes the world I think if you have everybody in the world waking up every day and ending their day and throughout the day like trying to ask God what do you want me to do in this moment he's going to tell you to live a life of better love and he's going to build up his kingdom and he's going to use you to do it and if he's using everybody in the world all the time like that's it's probably not fully there but it's pretty close to the kingdom of God you know and the and I think like people are really hungry for it um and you're hungry especially in today's world like for some real peace and meaning and purpose and struggle and but for us it's I don't

14:41 know I I don't uh and then like even the folks that we already have on the app like even myself like man if there were like a couple saints that we got to pray with like or be some small part of somebody's Journey like how cool would that be and meaning you you collaborated with some number of people and then like you know 50 years from now or someone in the 22 million people who have downloaded the app ends up a say like that that oh yeah how cool would that be you better get at least one out of that hopefully one would hope2 million I know the way go for like 21 million Saints minimum the but yeah I mean uh and and we we have like monks and nuns and I feel like we got to do a quick pause because the and I know Hall it's cath there's lots of Catholics on Hall but it's not just for Catholics it's for anyone who wants to pray uh and same

15:28 with the the podcast here like we've got a lot of Catholics who listen I everyone knows I'm Catholic talk about it like all the time but we have people who are not Catholic people who are you know Protestant Evangelical different backgrounds so like we're using this language of the Kingdom Saint becoming a saint and I wanted to I want to just take a quick pause and then you talked earlier about becoming holy yeah like you felt in your life I'm not working towards becoming holy in my life when you were working in your Consulting gig and you know you're getting your big degree at Stanford and doing all the cool things right uh but then you wanted to make this big shift in your own conversion of now I want to live for Holiness which is for God right what does it mean to when we're talking about we want people to be

16:13 Saints to be holy talk more about that what does that mean yeah because I think a lot of Christians think of themselves and you know especially if you're not Catholic and you're not have this kind of framework the people of God are his Saints so if you are born again if if you profess the name of Jesus Christ if you repent your sins then you are a saint so what is this process of becoming holy this process of becoming a saint that you're yeah talking about yeah I guess it's the a couple things that I'd say um to that too which is yeah certainly I am a Catholic I don't hopefully ever hide that I'm Catholic and we're never going to Hall's never going to have something on the app that's like Mary is a demon or something but at the same point what we wanted to do really from the beginning was build something that was focused on

16:59 helping people grow deeper in a in a personal relationship with Jesus which hopefully can be something for anybody interested in any in in any sort of Christian spirituality um and what we've found uh really from the beginning but certainly over the last couple years is is how true that has been so we have probably about half the folks who are downloading the app or coming into the app at a given point now are not cathic or of um uh you know a lot of folks are either Christian or interested in some sort of Christian spirituality um but it's an honor to get to pray with everybody of all faiths um you know everything on our app hopefully is rooted in scripture and is about diving deeper into a relationship with Jesus primarily through his word but through a handful of the different ways that he that he interacts with us funnily enough

17:46 the first um like power user I guess is what you would call it in the app world uh we had what's the power user it means somebody who uses the app a lot okay uh very I'm pretty sure St forward Sil Valley has fancy words fancy Tech term for it's a fancy word for you use it a lot um the but there was somebody who used it I think it was and this was this was like six weeks in and to launching and someone had used it 300 times or something so it after six weeks yeah so for like 30 yeah for something crazy they used it 10 times a day for 30 days or something yeah in AOW there's only you know a couple hundred people using this thing and so I just reach out to her and I'm like hey I'm Alex uh you're it seems like like you spiked on our thing for like using this a crazy

18:32 amount is there any chance you could like we could chat I think she had reached out to us first and said I love the app and but and showed us her streak and completions and all that stuff because we take privacy very seriously so I'm not like looking at people's activity but then I talked to her and she was like yeah I love it it's changed my life uh I wake up I use it like four or five times throughout the day in the morning first I do two things and then at lunch I do another two things and then at night I do two things and then I have insomnia so I usually wake up two or three times and I need like the scripture really helps me fall back asleep and she was an Evangelical woman and this was like the very early days and I was like does the like like you know I'm I'm Catholic it's thank you so much for getting to pray together uh does it like does some of the stuff there bother you at all and she's like no it's like it's it's I skip the I don't do the rosary I'm not really all

19:18 that interested in the rosary and the all the rest of it like 99% of it is just scripture just meditating with scripture um but I don't know your your question and so it's you know and we've seen that continue to play out where it's just like our goal is to try to help everybody to grow deeper in a relationship with Jesus whoever is interested in growing deeper in a relationship with Jesus we've had a lot of people be like oh well you should build a different religious version of it like a Muslim version and a Buddhist version and a and I was like no it's going to be Jesus it's it's always just Jesus but anybody who wants anybody who wants Jesus uh um hopefully Hall can be a tool for you but your question around uh like becoming a saint or growing in Holiness is an interesting one you know for me it's just about trying to give more and more of your heart to the Lord and and there's this beautiful little

20:04 like image or something that I saw on social media where it's it's uh the teddy bear image yeah I think so it's all I have oh makes me cry every time I think about it it's this little girl who's giving I could cry to because it's so beautiful so beautiful and she holds out her heart to Jesus and he's standing there and she says it's all I have and he says it's all I want which is just like H but it's so true and how how much of my heart do I keep for myself s like for for me and I believe in the Lord like the Lord has saved my life is the best person he my best friend he's the person I trust most with everything I talk to him all the time hopefully um but like I have so much like I have so much attachment to the things of the world I have so many like I have so many things I have to work on so many habits I have to break so much more of my heart

20:51 and my life I have to give to him and he he does it like he's the one working in my heart to to take more of it like uh we do some work with Mark Mar wallberg and he said you know I thought I was doing father stew which was this religious movie that he did it's like the one thing that I'd do for Jesus and be like hey okay I did this Jesus thing for you and like as soon as you crack open the door he just takes the rest of it and so that's like for us at hallow it's about how can we yes we've cracked open the door and some of us much more so than others some of us are very deep in their faith and um you know have given much of our Lives to the Lord but like how can we give our whole Hearts to him and it's like this ongoing deepening conversion of our initial conversion like how can you Contin to grow deeper and deeper in a relationship with with the Lord so anyway that's kind of how we think about it and how we try to focus on it and and it's just like just makes

21:38 life so much better it's just like so much more joyful it's so much more peaceful everything changes with Jesus it's so much fun it's crazy yeah like like things like the same circumstances same person same everything with Jesus without Jesus dramatically different interior experience yeah we had this woman reach out to us after some of the really bad hurricanes in Florida she had been praying with the app and she said there were like two or three that came through her town and destroyed a lot and then there was this really bad one I forget the name of it it was this year and it like totally wiped out her home of like 80 years like her family home of 80 years it totally wiped out her like her she looked across the block the home was gone it was all just flat her uncle lived in another

22:23 family home with like 90 years totally gone and she was like for ath moment there I was just so angry and frustrated at like what why would God do this to me and why would this happen to me and how upset I was and then she prayed with a prayer on the app and it was like a session on gratitude and like finding God's will even when it's really hard or finding God in your life even when it when it feels really hard and she was like you know what I realized I realized that had those two hurricanes not come before the smaller ones which cleared out a lot of the debris um we probably people would have died in our town and nobody died our town and how lucky we are that like I still have everyone I love and that I live near and everyone in my town is still alive like man how lucky am I and so then she's like okay well what you know that's not true for

23:09 everybody so how can I go out and serve the people who don't have that and so then she goes on this like life of service but it's to your point it just changes like the same thing all right guys Ash Wednesday is coming up and we will be entering lent the 40 days before Good Friday and Easter this is a very special time to deepen your relationship with God and to grow in prayer that's why I'm so pumped about hallow hallow app has a special pray 40 challenge that thousands of people across the world will be joining in order to deepen their relationship with God this Lent and I want you guys to join Hallow's pray 40 challenge is using the incredible spiritual Masterpiece the way to help us draw closer to Jesus Christ what's very fun about the pray 40 challenge at

23:55 hallow is it's going to be narrated by some amazing folks folks like markk Walberg and Chris Pratt you'll also be hearing from Jonathan roomy and sister Maran James who will lead you through meditations and prayers this is already shaping up to be the best lent ever with thousands of people already joining the pray 40 challenge so don't wait you can sign up and join for free by going to hall.com Lila you can get the first three months free do your entire lent free go to hall.com Lila I was praying the other day with my kids my family trying to do like family prayer and you do you guys use the app every day I use the app every day we as a family use it I wouldn't say every day but certainly multiple times a week hopefully like the Saints alive thing there's a there's all

24:40 these stories of for kids yeah there's all this kids stuff that my um my kiddos love there's it's tough like some of the Saints stories are yeah I it's funny you say that because I I I've actually with the app and with the Saints content on there it's like is this okay like gutian stabbed with arrows and I'm like he's two and they're three and four and and I started playing some I forgot what it was but it was something and it was getting really intense and it was like and and then I looked back I mean I look in the riv Mir I'm driving and my like three-year-old is like yeah we should probably put some and I was like okay well we're going to turn on like something like my two-year-old listens to it all but maybe it's not but yeah we did the J of AR one which is like such a phenomenal story and such a beautiful story but then it

25:27 ends and it doesn't end you know she's burned alive so then and and we the guy's on our team who does this and he does a phenomenal job he also has a bunch of young kids and so he tries to he tries to do it like without without theore so yeah like as Softly As you can without like not telling the truth like well this is what happened and you know the framing of it for kids is obviously they're in heaven and that's beautiful and and it's incredible but you do like you get to the end of this and it's like and so then they didn't believe her and they she burnt at the steak and she's now in heaven and it's like oh what one part there is is tough it is amazing though when you put it in context for kids of the larger story of what is the human person made for and like this life is not our only life and all of this

26:14 like like death isn't as scary death is like a tough thing right but it's like kids I think are much more naturally capable of seeing the big picture If we're honest with them about the big picture in an age appropriate way obviously and they just get yeah I mean for me beautiful I struggled with it for a bit and then I like walked into our church with all our kids and I was like wait like the thing we have everywhere is a dude who was killed like that we just have that everywhere the symbol of him and then him on the cross the crucifix whatever and like the main thing of the church is just a human body that's nailed to a piece of wood agonized bloody Lord on the cross yes like the Lord didn't really hide it and us as a church don't really we're not like oh well you know like hey is actually he would just experienced a

26:59 little pain it's like no we killed him and so I don't know I was like Ah that's it doesn't really get any darker than that you know by definition now there's some crazy stories but yeah the I guess the the one other thing too is like the um anyway the this the story about my kids we were praying and my wife and I are like trying to enter into this prayer and my four-year-old runs and like does like a tomahawk thing around my neck my 2-year-old is like kicking my stomach or whatever and we're like both trying to pray and I like initially I'm like um man this is like frustrating like I'm kind of trying to enter into this space and like you're supposed to pray as a family but like this isn't really and then I like sit for like two seconds and

27:45 we pray just a little bit more and then I'm like gosh how lucky am I to have like two little crazy tolers who I love more than anything who are happy and healthy who are just like running and kicking and having fun how happy am I to have a wife who I love who I get to pray with every day how lucky am I to have a little baby who's healthy who's like the nicest happiest little baby in the history I mean it's just like and then you CH and then it's just like I just want to savor this like I just want to I want to be in this moment I'm not frustrated I'm not angry I just want to savor this like joy that I have which yeah it's just way more fun it's just a lot more fun way to live life it's because of Jesus so it's been uh you said six years since Hala six years that's crazy I have to keep upping it but I guess we launched in December member of 2018 so and during that time you got married and had three kids as

28:32 well yeah yeah and how big is the business now in terms of like whatever you want to share give us your revenues your staff numbers but whatever like what's the what what stats do you want to share about the biz the we have 100 employees full-time wow 99 maybe 100 yeah and then another 50 or so parttime across like 15 countries it is crazy it's uh and then can I are you do you share publicly how much You' raised for the company 100 million 105 million amazing yeah as it started that's a lot of activity yeah in six years especially when you're starting a family yeah it takes a phenomenal wife obviously first but the Lord first I guess very phenomenal wife second but yeah I don't know kids are

29:19 kids are a funny one because it's busy it's certainly and and you and I were talking about sleep deprivation which is certainly for me like the physically hardest part of it and it's funny like you you talk about it with parents and everybody laughs and then you're like wait what do they do for Seal training when they break like the strongest men of our time what do they do and it's primarily sleep deprivation I I have a theory I think sleep deprivation is harder for men biologically than women that's possible certainly my wife crushes it but it's yeah sleep deprivation is is tough but anyway so kids are busy and they're they're you know a lot of work and it's not it's certainly not easy but for me they they just like they make life it's just like Jes it's and it's so much like

30:06 the Lord It's so much like Christianity cuz like Jesus says hey look I'm going to give you something that you couldn't possibly even imagine like right now you're like living in this black and white and like you're going to be in this crazy like you're going to be in this Heaven that you like I has not seen an ear has not heard it's you couldn't even imagine what I have for you and I hear that four kids and I'm like okay I don't really even know what that means like what how do I imagine something like that and then I have kids now and I'm like I that is how I would describe this to my previous self I'd be like you will have a joy that you couldn't even possibly imagine like we raised $50 million one day we close this round for

30:51 $50 million by the grace of God and I came home and I do every day at the end of the day this little practice where it's like you reflect on the moments you're most grateful for from the day and then you try to sit with them it's called an examine and and it really helps you grow in gratitude and presence and all the stuff but I reflect on my day that day and I was like you know what my daughter came and gave me a hug and that was better when it was objectively better it I mean it was just a better moment like I enjoyed that moment more than or even like my son just saying like Dad like Daddy like just the sound Daddy from and it's just like had you told me that laugh baby and they giggle like uncontrollably like but had you told me that before I'd be like are you I mean maybe okay fine

31:36 but like that's insane and the other thing is it also kind of takes the stress off like you come it really does it's a great point you think your life is so important you know like whether you look fundraising and you're wheeling and dealing and it works or it doesn't work and you've got all these important millions of people with the truth or whatever and your baby is there yeah and you come home to your kids and it's like you had a terrible day and nobody wants to give you money or you have a great day and everybody wants to give you money and you come home and your kid's like hey can we play tag and your kid doesn't care at all you know like doesn't care at all like it maybe my kid would be fine without a roof but you know they they may be care that there's a roof and other than that it's like I just want to hang out with you that's all that it's just like man that just really puts life and perspective and it

32:23 helps spiritually I mean the biggest thing for me over the last six years is it's been this crazy cool spiritual life this journey of learning what a real relationship with the Lord is like and the best way that he's taught me is through Parenthood it's like man I love these like immediately as soon as I meet him they as soon as they're conceived but uh certainly as soon as I meet them but it's like man as soon as they're in my life I'd Die For Him in half a second and they could do the worst possible thing the worst possible thing and they come back back to me and they say Dad I'm sorry and in instantly forgive them like not even I would never hold something over and and humility is another funny one CU humility is a really hard one like what does it mean

33:08 to be really humble and what it means to be really humble is like I want better for you than I want for I want better for you than I want for me and that's true for everybody and that's crazy like I like you a lot like and you're a great person but like do I really want you to be a lot happier than I am like I don't know like I that's a tough one up it's called I don't know with a name for prayer no I actually am starting it up but it's not for prayer be great I do want that to be very successful the but for kids it's just it's naturally given to you it's like I want you to be to have such a better life than I had and it's I don't I don't feel a comparison I don't feel a jealousy I just want you to have like so much more holy joyful like

33:54 a better relationship with the Lord than I have you know everything better I mean they're Jesus to us right that's the power of like a vocation where you're a parent or you're a spouse like this is it's like love and serve the Lord with all your heart your mind your strength okay are you married love your wife love your husband love your child you see Jesus in them they are Jesus to you today and when I remember that and I don't remember that enough so I'm reminding myself right now because it it it is incredibly transformative because now it's like this love that I have in my heart for my Lord which I want want to be a raging fire right now maybe like you know a little bit of a too much of a spark right now um but if you see your child you're like this is Jesus today to love I get to love Jesus and my baby like what a what a mindblowing thing

34:40 yeah which is is like the perfect training ground too cuz I have I have a spiritual director which is a pastor that I meet with regularly and he just gives me tells me to be better and is that what he does he literally says just be better at he's so funny he's he's great do you tell him your business dealings and he gives you I really want to like I mean I want to hear what you're going to say so I'll let you finish and then we'll talk about that cuz he doesn't care about any of it every once in a while I find a small business that I fall absolutely in love with and that's why I'm so excited to share weart nutrition with you guys weart nutrition.com is a vitamin and supplement company that provides the highest quality researched back ingredients customized and optimized to help you be healthy what I also love about weart nutrition is that this is a family-owned company and they're not

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36:13 today use the code Laya at checkout to get 20% off your purchase and when you spend $50 get that adorable free bamboo capsule box to store your vitamins in that's weart nutrition.com he's he's like oh H is really cool like you're doing great stuff and it's awesome and always be in line with the church and I'd like give him stuff and he's phenomenal but and super Orthodox super and but the most of it is hey Alex I need you to do three things every day I need you to spend 20 minutes in silence I need you to do a rosary and I need you to go to mass every day and if you do those three things your whole life will change and everything will flow from that and then the only other thing and so and then the only other thing we'll talk about is how well you're loving and because those three things have to lead to love and if they

36:58 don't lead to love then those three things are a waste of time and he says so anyway we just meet like 30 minutes and he's like okay how are you doing on these three things if there's like a habitual sin or something big that we're working on then but then uh but then he's just like okay so how are you loving and you or how are you serving how are you being charitable how are you growing in charity and love and usually I'm trying to be like oh well I want to go serve the poor I want to I should spend more time you know on a mission trip or and those are all like important things certainly that you should do and in our community in Chicago there's certainly a lot of opportunity to serve the poor and you should spend a lot of time with the poor but he always is just like what can you do every day for the next month to better love your wife and I'm like H that's the it's it's like

37:45 it's just the Daily Grind of like I should do the dishes you know or like when she asked me to do something I shouldn't wait 30 seconds I should do it right away and I should guess what she's and like maybe you know she couldn't use an extra hour but then I have to watch all the kids and and so you know it's like it's just but it's the hard parts and actually so we did this content with Kevin James where he uh was had a conversation with um uh Jonathan Remy and they were talking about growing in the their faith lives and and he had this beautiful analogy which well I don't know if it was analogy he just said a phrase where he was like it's whenever I feel like I'm in the pocket um which I think is probably a football analogy I think it's a football analogy probably like you're back in the pocket and there's a bunch of people coming at you but it's like

38:32 his point was whenever you feel like whenever whenever things aren't good you know whenever it feels tough like whenever God like whenever God gives you something and you're like really upset with the person at like we got a rental card a day and it was the wrong rental C and I had to walk like two and a half blocks with like five bags and three kids and then I had to walk back and the lady had made a mistake and so then I'm like walking back and I'm like oh this is this is the pocket this is the pocket and then there's like a you know my wife does something like she forgets to check a bag or something and we have to go back to a counter and and you know my initial reaction is like why what why would you do that and I'm like oh wait this is this is when I have to this is when I have to love this is the opportunity for me to grow deeper to the Lord like this is the opportunity for me to deny my own

39:19 anger to deny my own frustration into love instead and like that the The Daily Grind of like how can I be better and better with my wife we're we're somebody would look at our marriage and be like wow they're Christian wow that that's Jesus in there and we're just yeah there a lot of work and it's not like the Glamorous work it's like the hard work of a husband and wife you know but family life teaches you that in an incredible way certainly what's what's it been like being the CEO of a company where you've raised 100 million bucks you have a hundred people you're managing I mean not directly but you know under you you have there's only one repor oh really no that would be crazy that would be cool um the pope has like aund reports I guess but what cardal and even the bishop I guess all the Bishops technically chief of

40:05 staff there right or somebody I mean like as a bishop you meet with the Pope once every I think it's four years or something so that's how he manages his direct reports but even as a bishop you have 200 rep like that's a that's you're saying you're the pope of hallow no no I have like seven so the as normal companies usually have like six or seven reports but um or folks who you know you directly manage but how but how do you do that that because you're you're on the road I've had brainstorm sessions with you before and you're brilliant you're like always Ting but then you're managing people but then you're fundraising but then you're doing like podcasts and like media you know you're going on shows and then you're doing probably 10 other things I haven't said yet yeah it sounds a lot like what you do so I guess I could ask I guess I

40:52 could ask the same well that's what I want I mean it's different but tell me how you tell me your approach is to prioritize and navigate all that I don't do all that much uh like show stuff uh or PR stuff I do a handful of I do a handful of things and then um so we're really special guys the uh uh you know it's and fundraising is an interesting one in startup world how did you raise all that money just tell that's when I that's a that's that's a probably the most helpful story but in startup lot of persistence right um no kind of all right I'll I'll let you I'll get to it the um but I try to focus most of my time on the like building the thing which is product and

41:37 content mostly which is finding great um content and um crafting the story with our content team and then building the app and those are the two things you know we do marketing I think decently well but what we're trying to do really is build worldclass content in a in a great app and most people don't build their you know I talked about this but most most organizations don't have their own app it's it's usually you're licensing some someone else's Tech and for us it was really important like I really wanted to build a great product and we actually just had a there's this grad student in design that I was talking to on the phone who had just converted and he was like you know it's funny cuz I was looking around at different apps and I heard about you guys from something and I went to look at the app and I was like wait this is one of the few apps that doesn't suck

42:24 like this one actually doesn't suck from a design perspective and he was like okay I'll actually give it a try and then he gives it a try and he encounters the rosary actually for the first time and he starts bring the Rosary every day and he said he said the the only way I could explain what happened to me is it it was like I was standing looking at a wall and my mom was in the room and she was beckoning me and I didn't look at her and I finally turned around and looked at her and she gave me a hook wow and I was like that's the most beautiful way to say that ever and so anyway he converted his and but the like a user experience like that takes work I mean there's obviously God's working and the Holy Spirit I believe is working but you guys had to do the natural work of creating an app that was really intuitive yeah which is really hard the product product design

43:10 is really hard work and the the coding is really hard too um but we we that's what we try to focus on which is we want to do that we want to do that the best in the world not the best in the faith world not the best in Christian world but like the best in the world and we have a phenomenal team God has blessed us with many things but mostly a a a very talented and Mission driven team which works like crazy but um you know how we raised is I threw a bunch of things at you how do you do what you do with all the things you do how do you raise money I'm GNA ask you about controversial stuff too good for fun the how we raise is probably the answer that's most of the that's the same answer to most of the other questions which is so like our first round which is the round that

43:55 mattered the most Siri is that friends and family it's called the seed the SE friends and family was just like us putting in our C SE and you run out of that you know that that that gets yeah um and so we realized we were running out of money and so we went and raised a real seed round what was the first seed round it was two or three million um and without that we probably would have had to go back and get regular jobs so it probably would have died most the other rounds have mostly been like okay we could get to a sustainable economic thing on its own without additional money but if you want to invest you can and we can maybe move faster and build out a team or add more content faster

44:40 than we were going to before but we can still we're not going to die if you don't give us money meaning like you have organic you have an organic growth trajectory which is solid but if you want to Rocket Fuel it and if you want to like blast you know like create an incredible engine that's going to be super profitable in a short period of time you know rock a fuel with the money is basically you can you can create more content spend more on marketing faster than so like we have a hall is there's a free version of the app but there's a subscription version the subscription version is the only way that we support ourselves then what you do is you build up we build up a group of people who support us through the subscription and that allows us to support the cost of the team and content creation and you can build up the team and do more content creation and more marketing be

45:27 with a smaller subscriber base or you can wait for that subscriber base to grow and so if people investing allows us to move faster than we would have otherwise had we had to wait till you have the cash from subscribers and then your bet there if they do invest is that okay well the subscribers are going to grow faster and so that's it's going to make economic sense obviously in service of the mission that we're trying to work on but the first round was not that the first round was if we don't have this money we probably shut it down and which is very stressful and we had like you know there's like eight people working on it at that point were you graduated from Stanford at that point no this was between my first and second year interestingly um Stanford as a like really on fire Christian is a really interesting experience for and then

46:12 raising for a Christian Catholic startup is another interesting experience but were you the only guy like you at Stanford in your class there was two other it I I talk about it there were two other people who really took their faith super seriously and the part of that was sad but part of it was really cool cuz you like feel like you're part of this Rebel church and like when I grew up in Ohio like 30% of people would go to church what were catholic and the other 60% were Christian and everybody would kind of go to church regularly but you know probably only like 10% of those folks like really believed it and or were like on fire for it and in in Silicon Valley like if you're Christian you're crazy like it it'd be like you like it's your

46:57 whole ident it's everything and so everyone's going to be like what are you what what are you doing and so you have to really understand your faith but then also it sets you on fire it's like part of it's kind of yeah you're like a rebel church and it's so it's but anyway so we do the first fund raise and I go out and the seed round is the worst because there's a bunch of people who could invest the later rounds they're larger so it's there's fewer folks that could do it there's fewer funds or individuals and so I meet with and you probably want to I had all these advisers and all this stuff but like what you wanted to do was fundraise in like a short period of time so that everybody's talking about Hall and it's all Silicon Valley likes to think that they're all contrarian thinkers but they're not they're they all like to ride whatever the wave it is and so you close within mon kind of

47:43 thing yeah uh well for us it was two weeks but uh W did you set that timeline you're like I I did kind of so you woke up one day and you're like we definitely need two to three million bucks we got to do it in two weeks we needed like a we needed like a million and a half m um we ended up doing like two and a half but so I meet with these 80 people over the course of two weeks zooms or is this in person this was pre-co so all in person mostly so you're flying to New York Chicago you did some zooms some phone calls but to and from the Bay Area yeah it was crazy it was it was and you had your deck and you had your like 7:00 a.m. to 10: p.m. constant meetings and you're just pitching and you lose your voice and everyone uh is you're like I'm constantly analyzing how I doing it uh cuz I want to succeed I want to do it

48:30 and I'm like worried about what I look like am I answering questions well enough and did you wear a hoodie or were you wearing this is the only outfit I wear Valley cool dude uh the some the Steve Jobs we met a bunch of different people there's you know some New York people who certainly are not the hoodie style but hoodie in New York or Christian donors yeah I I I don't cuz you're a tech BR so I'm kind of I don't I'm done I wore a suit a lot I wore a suit a lot done wearing a suit I feel like a tiny little person is like strangling but the um but the thing about fundra so I met with probably 80 people over the course of two weeks and if you're lucky like five will say yes but that means 75 say no and you get the nose really quick and the yeses take a long time the yeses take a couple weeks

49:15 and so I'm just meeting with these people and you just get no no no no no no no and this is the first time I'd ever done anything like this and you just get no no no no no no no no no and the NOS are like what I'm pitching is my relationship with the the Lord the thing I'm dedicating my whole life to and the no are like this is a stupid idea you don't know what you're doing you've never done anything like someone actually tell you that 100% this is never going to work nobody prays anymore the Silicon Valley this is meditation not prayer mental health not Jesus and this was a different it feels like a very viable business it's a nice little very small like there's nobody's going to use this and even the people who took their face seriously a lot of people thought it was a stupid idea which is fair it's a kind of hard idea to pitch it's like you don't like my mom takes her faith super seriously and she was like you know it's I'm glad that you

50:02 found Jes like I'm glad you're coming back to your faith but I wouldn't use an app to pray I don't need it I pray every day and that's fair like you do and it's kind of hard to pitch until you try like amazing it was preo too yeah wa yeah 2018 so certainly two years the um but so I just was so stressed I I remember I was and I was 26 and I had these like I had four or five knots in my back I couldn't eat I couldn't sleep and um I was just constantly thinking about all the stuff I was screwing up everybody thought it was wrong was this was I was it wrong was it dumb was this and these are like the smartest startup people in the world you know like these are not these are not joeo this is this is you know somebody who's who backed

50:47 Facebook and apple and every startup that's worked ever and they're like yeah your idea is dumb and I'm like I go back and I I sit and I pray with in our little studio apartment no in silence you don't always have to use the app and the and I was sitting there and I was like look God I don't know why you have me doing this I am not the right guy for this uh clearly I'm screwing it up and I am so stressed I don't know why it's like such a dumb thing to be that stressed about but it I was so stressed and I was like I don't think I can handle it it's too much weight it's too heavy it's too it's the whole thing it's everybody who's working for it it's

51:34 and uh I was like look at I don't know what to do but I'm going to make a deal with you this is the only thing I know what to do which is I'm going to make a deal with you which I don't know if I'm supposed to or not but I did and I was like if this thing works out I promise you you are always going to get the credit I'm never going to try to take this thing I'm never going to convince myself that I'm some successful entrepreneur some guy who figured it out some whatever I know you're the one doing it I know you're the one doing every piece of it I'm never going to forget it I'm always going to give you credit at the same time if it doesn't work out that's on you it's not on me and and that's fine like you want it to teach me a lesson you want it to help me grow in humility you want it to inspire somebody else to start something that they're supposed to start you want it to maybe it does grow and then it crashes and burns and everybody hates me

52:20 whatever it is is fine it's your thing I'm going to work hard I'm always going to work hard you're never going to have to question whether I'm working hard on the thing and I'm going to try my best but it's your thing and it was just like immediately this weight just like oh yeah it's not my thing it's not your thing Alex and the next day I went to meet with my the favorite guy I had met so far the favorite potential investor one of the few there's probably five or six that were left on this list of 80 he was my favorite he is one of the best investors of all time I mean I think he's very young but his first Venture investing check was into Robin Hood which after Facebook was the best Venture investment ever made uh fastest

53:05 growing consumer app post Facebook he was super into the mission and was just um yeah was most investors are either really good investors or they're really good at like figuring out how to help you build a product but usually not both and he was both so he was like oh this is what I think you should do with the product and most of those ideas for me are like I don't that doesn't sound like a good and he had a lot of really good ideas and he really liked what we were doing and he thought the mission was really powerful and all this stuff and I went and I met with them and I was like hey I'm going to go grab a coffee I was at a coffee shop and I hadn't read the daily gospel yet so I opened up the daily gospel and it was the story of Peter trying to fish and he's been fishing all night and there's no fish in the sea and Jesus says let he Jesus comes he says

53:52 let down your nets and Peter says what are you crazy there's no fish here and he says let down your nets and he's like I've been fishing all night I've been pitching all these investors they all say no no no no no what are you talking about this thing isn't going to work and he says let down your nets and Peter lets down his net and he catches more fish than the net can carry and two minutes later that guy gives us an offer to fund the whole thing and then we get three four more which is more than we could take on and we ended up raising more than we plans to and then we couldn't we couldn't accept all the people that we had which was more fish than our Nea carry which was just crazy and it's funny cuz every I have probably 10 of those where every great thing that happened in hallow has been us trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and then we're just like H God if you want it to happen it's yours and then he's like that's okay thank you

54:38 that's what I was waiting for you to do and you're just like look if you want to to happen it happens if you don't it don't I'm fine with it and sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't and but every good thing has been that and then God is just like that's what I was waiting for now I will do it and it's not like you don't have to work like we put in a lot of work for that but it is this like letting go of letting go of the result and so everything with hallow like balancing stuff and anything that's worked and figuring out product stuff and figuring out content stuff everything has been that Journey which is you try and you try and you try and you try and you try and then you let go and you let God and then he does it and so it's yeah it's cool to work with him he's a good boss demanding in the right way he is very demanding that's a good word very demanding but he it's because he wants

55:23 us to be Saints St Jose Maria scri has this which for Lent is um lent is a tough time but the Christian Life is supposed to be tough but we have a guide we have a helper we have our mother um we do not do this alone and it's just like yeah it is tough like the Christian Life is tough It's supposed to be tough and as part of what makes it really unique and I think part of what makes it really attractive too especially the young men but it's like this is hard this isn't this isn't like sunshine and rainbows this is death this is literally death to yourself and I don't know I think there's something exciting about that we see that with a lot of our content like the some of the most intense sometimes people think it's like oh well for someone who's Fallen away from their faith um it's the like just gradually

56:13 introduce them to God and sometimes that's true like you want to start soft you don't want to go fully into the deep end but sometimes people want to go from zero to 100 like sometime like for me I was like wait like this Christian thing's crazy there guys who lived on columns in the middle of the desert and just died like the the the Saints just the monks that just lived in you know just on one piece of bread a week I mean it's you know yeah it's crazy martys any of these stories and you just want to dive into these um really intense like well what what does God do at the extreme and then how can that Inspire us to let him do that in our lives in like the mundane the daily which he does that in the daily too like St Tes the little way each moment of our life is an opportunity to die to ourselves it doesn't have to be on AC cross it doesn't have to be burning it doesn't

56:59 have to be these crazy cool stories but

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