Spiritual Entrepreneurship: Bob Keith

Today, we’re talking with Bob Keith, entrepreneur and executive who has been working in the entrepreneurial space for over 30 years and currently teaches at the Busch School of Business and Economics at the Catholic University of America. In this podcast, we hear about his journey from consulting at Fortune 500 companies to becoming a Catholic and working with spiritual entrepreneurs. Bob and Anthony talk about the Church’s deep entrepreneurial roots and how we can learn business and startup lessons from the saints and spiritual leaders in our past.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

How NOT To Raise $80,000: MariVi Deliz and Therese Bussen

This week, Anthony chats with MariVi Deliz and Therese Bussen about their involvement in the 8beats project. MariVi is a communications jack of all trades for a secular non-profit. She ran the 8beats IndieGoGo campaign and was a large force for its success. Terese has been a writer for the Denver Catholic newspaper and now is a freelance writer and expectant mom. She came on board with 8beats to be a writer and ended up as a full-blown marketing director and strategist.

They discuss how wounds that are created and triggered by systems and mindsets in the Church can be healed even while having to work with the very things that caused them. Therese and MariVi also share their tips on putting together a crowdfunding campaign, how to get over the fear of starting, and how to decide what is worth volunteering your time and talents for by looking at deep desires versus being guilted into it.  

You can still preorder the 8beats film by visiting our IndieGoGo page.

A big thanks to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

Philosophy, Beauty, and Pipe Tobacco: Christopher Haley

Today we spend some time in deep philosophical discussion with Christopher Haley, Director of Communications at the Hildebrand Project. Christopher is a poetry-loving former atheist who once started a philosophy club in high school and eventually made his way to the Catholic Church. He talks with us about living the reflective life, his journey to the faith, the philosophy of Christian Personalism, and the best way to smoke a pipe in your home study.

Check out Christopher's tobacco, pipe, literature, music, fine art, and movie recommendations. 

A big thanks to our Patreon sponsors who made this podcast possible! If you're enjoying the podcast, please consider becoming a patron. Thanks for listening.

Theology of the Bodybuilder: Jared Zimmerer

Today, we’re talking with Jared Zimmerer, a husband and father of 6, and bodybuilder/fitness enthusiast who works as an author, speaker, and writer for Word on Fire. In this podcast, Jared and Anthony have a great discussion about how to bring your body into the spiritual journey. They talk about how ascetic practices like working out, cold showers, and fasting can help impact your spiritual life, what the Catholic Church can learn from the fitness community, and how fitness and Theology of the Body are connected.

A huge thank you to all of our Patreon supporters who made this podcast possible.

Creating in Sonship: Jason Jensen

Welcome back to the podcast, where we get together to learn from leaders in the Catholic Creative world every week. Fun fact we wanted to share: we now have listeners in over 25 countries, including Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. So wherever you are right now, thank you for listening.

Today, we’re talking with Jason Jensen, a married father of 4 from Vancouver and the Director of Strategy at Glass Canvas. Glass Canvas recently hosted the Catholic Creatives team to talk about future strategy for the organization, and today, Marcellino and Jason talk about speaking the unspoken to be more effective, why it’s dangerous to confuse identity and vocation, how the Father wants to pour love out on us every day, and why willing to be small is the Church’s answer to the modern world.

A big thank you to our Patreon sponsors who make this podcast possible.

Community and Belief: Joe Marshall and Tommy Marshall

Hey, everybody, and welcome to the podcast, where we talk to leaders in the Catholic Creative world and share their stories and insights with you. We hope that you had an awesome Christmas season and a great start to the new year.

Today, we’re talking with brothers Joe Marshall and Tommy Marshall about their work in web and software development. Joe and Tommy both spoke at the first Catholic Creatives summit, and in this episode they share their experience of starting an agency in their parents’ attic, recording an album that now earns them less than a dollar a year on Spotify, changing their careers from freelance to working at big agencies, and growing communities within the Church.

A big thank you to our Patreon sponsors who make this podcast possible.

Enjoy the episode.

Abundance and Stewardship: Matt Pinto

In this episode, we talk with Matt Pinto, founder and president of Ascension Press, about his journey of Catholic entrepreneurship and ministry. Matt is a great example of someone bringing the lessons of entrepreneurship and the business world into the service of the Church in a powerful way, so I’m excited for us to learn from him and get inspired to face our own creative challenges.

This episode is brought to you by our Patreon sponsors. Thank you all so much for your support.

Enjoy the episode!

Learning like an Artist: Cory Heimann and Mark Guiney

Hello, creatives, and welcome back to the podcast! You all know Cory Heimann of Likeable Art, and today we’re discussing creative education with Cory and Likeable Art intern Mark Guiney, who just finished a three-year stint as a middle school teacher.

Cory and Mark recently led a Catholic Creative Meetup event to discuss creative education and how to raise up the next generation of makers to communicate the beauty of the Faith to the world. One of the main takeaways from the event was the need for new creators to get real-world experience in work as well as the inspiration to undertake a creative life.

Likeable Art has been embodying this belief with its intern program, which several Catholic Creatives have participated in. We wanted to find out from Mark what the program’s been like, what he’s been learning (and unlearning) about creative work, and about his first task at Likeable Art, which was the very serious job of renovating a dollhouse for a video shoot.

Let’s jump right in and hear how Mark got the internship.

Corey Heimann believes beauty will save the world.

Mark Guiney is committed to beauty as mission.

The Crucible of Collaboration: Sam Sorich

Hello, creatives, and welcome back to the podcast! So sorry for being out for a while, but we have been busy with this 8beats project. Which we will be talking a bit about today.  We’re talking with Sam Sorich, director at Glass Darkly Films… the guy who came up with the whole project. I can’t wait for you to meet him. Ever since he and I met at seminary, his radical commitment to being different has inspired me, including his stint living in a van and his passion for a new wave of Catholic cinema.

The subject today is the crucible of collaboration, and how to get through the insecurities of art making. 

If you’ve ever worked in a participatory art like film, theatre, or music, you know the challenge of bringing an idea to life at a high level of quality, within practical limitations, and alongside other people. This is something that Sam and I and the whole team 8beats team were experiencing intensely last month. It started with a big idea, and we invited the community to collaborate. We got excited, got into teams, those teams grew to about 130 people in total, and we got to work. We put this gigantic promise out into the world, released the IndieGoGo… and then we had to rewrite a bunch of our scripts, and our IndieGoGo plateaued, and we were hit with tons of fear. Can we really do this? Will the church actually support this sort of risk? Can we trust each other to stick out the challenges and creative conflict? 

This conversation is about that journey and what we learned from it: that through trust and commitment to each other, a new creative energy is discovered that brings about better art and creates deep relationships at the same time.

Before we start, if you haven’t shared our IndieGoGo campaign for 8beats yet, please head over to the 8beats Facebook page and share our latest post. All the regional teams begin filming the stories this month, and we need your help and the help of the Catholic community to see the project through. Please collaborate with us by spreading the word, donating, and praying for the project.

Create something awesome this week, and enjoy the podcast.
 

What They Never Taught You About Modernism: Jonathan Anderson

Hello, creatives, and welcome back to the podcast. Today we’re talking about modernism and the philosophical and theological questions posed by modern art. Joining us today is Jonathan Anderson, an artist, art critic, and associate professor of art at Biola University.

We all know that modern art gets a bad rap in the Catholic world. When we compare a traditional icon to a contemporary abstract painting or traditional chant to some modern musical compositions, we find the stuff made less than about 500 years ago a little difficult to appreciate. But instead of calling for a wholesale return to tradition, we need to find a way to understand and access modern art and participate in the conversation it inspires.

Jonathan is all about the theological implications and underpinnings of modern art. He recently co-authored the book Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism. Our conversation today gets into some of the serious philosophical and theological implications of modernism, and Jonathan provides a great context for understanding contemporary art in the modernist movement. He tells us the best way to start our own personal quest to appreciate modern art. And perhaps most importantly, he gives a definition of art that we need to all think about and discuss.  

So strap yourselves in and get your thinking caps on.

Before we get started, Catholic Creatives just launched its first major collaboration! Our team of over 100 Catholic artists and filmmakers have begun work on a groundbreaking film made by the millennial generation, for the millennial generation. The film is called 8beats, and it is an anthology film exploring the collision of the Beatitudes into our human experience. We believe these challenging stories provoke a re-examination of happiness, suffering, and the meaning of life. We’re looking for people to join us in generating stories that matter through the power of film. Go check out the project on Indiegogo, and like us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Please share our Indiegogo link to help spread the word. By supporting this project, you will be putting a world-changing idea into motion.

As always, create something awesome this week, and enjoy the podcast.

Mingo Palacios: Art-Show Ministries and Parking-Lot Churches

Hello, creatives, and welcome back to the podcast. This is our first ecumenical episode, and it’s going to blow your mind. We’re talking with Mingo Palacios, Pastor of Evangelism & Culture at Saddleback Church, which was the church of Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life.

In our community, we’re constantly asking how we can creatively refresh and reframe the experience of the truth for people who haven’t encountered it in that raw, life-changing way. We see the beauty of tradition but don’t want tradition to be an arbitrary stumbling block for people who need to hear the Church’s message. I think Mingo shares some incredibly important ideas that we can use in our creative ministry to the Church and the culture. I encourage you to listen and brainstorm what we could learn from his example and what we can bring to our local churches and the Church as a whole.

Mingo also tells us how Led Zepplin helped kick off his first youth pastor job, how his church started an incubator program for young entrepreneurs and creatives, and how he helped his church reach out to the unreachable with microsite services in parking lots and laundromats.

Before we get started, if you haven’t signed up to participate in 8 Beats yet, the deadline is July 21st, which in real time is tomorrow. Over 80 filmmakers, designers, marketing professionals, and artists from across North America are creating 8 short films inspired by the themes of the eight Beatitudes. There’s still lots of opportunity for collaboration, and you definitely want to be a part of this, so sign up!

As always, create something awesome this week, and enjoy the podcast.

Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Leadership: Matthew Sanders

If you’ve ever been to the official Vatican website, it might tempt you to despair of good design in the Vatican. However, there is top notch work being done out there, and today we are talking to someone who is making it happen. When Matthew Sanders looked at the design coming out of the Vatican and didn’t just critique or groan, he said, I think I can help. So he moved across the world to do something about the church’s communication problem.

Matthew Sanders has served in the military, worked at an archdiocese, and now is the founder and managing director of Longbeard, a digital design agency based in Rome and Toronto.

Today, we’re talking about what kind of approach we need to take as professional lay people to help the Church’s message spread in the world and on the digital continent. We also talk about why there should be more homilies about Captain America. I’ve personally worked with Matt and the Longbeard team in the past and can testify to his humble leadership. He puts his words into action, so take heed!

Before we get started, we just went live with our first group wide collaboration. It is called 8 Beats. Over 80 filmmakers, designers, marketing professionals, and artists from across North America have been divided into eight regional teams. Each team will produce and distribute a 5-12 minute short film inspired by the themes of the eight Beatitudes, done at the highest quality possible and distributed with all the power of modern marketing strategy.

Why? We want to build community. This movement isn’t a Facebook page- it's like minded people creating deep and lasting relationships with each other. We want to see lifelong friends, professional teams, or partnerships created here- and who knows, even marriages. We wouldn’t be Catholic if we didn’t want to help people find their vocations amiright?

So this collaboration is an important next step for us in developing real relationships, going beyond a facebook group

You can find out more at www.8beatsmovie.com 

As always, create something awesome this week, and enjoy the podcast.

Vulnerable Ministry and the Launch of Anthem: Megan Mastrioanni & Jacob King

Hello, creatives! We’re here to talk about something awesome that happened this weekend and the people who made it happen. We’re talking about the launch of Anthem, rebrand of the youth and young adult office of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Joining us are Megan Mastrioanni and Jacob King, who are leading the charge up there in the diocesan office. 

While you’re listening, unless you’re in the car or something, go visit anthemphilly.com, which was designed by our friends at Glass Canvas. You need the full experience because this is like no diocesan office you’ve seen before. There’s literally a grunge-style GIF of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It’s amazing.

This launch is so important not just for Philly but for the mission of the New Renaissance. The need that the Church has for this kind of branding, strategy, and vision is exactly what we talked about at the Summit. But as you’ll hear from Megan and Jacob, this isn’t just about graphic design or videography or branding. All those things are built on a basis of vulnerability and authenticity. It’s an expression who Megan and Jacob and the rest of the team in Philly are, and how they approach living an authentic Catholic life in the modern world. Community in faith and collaboration in mission is what makes this happen. That’ exactly why Catholic Creatives exists and why we’re excited to have these two as our guests today.

In this podcast, we talk about the process of the rebrand, the risks they’re taking in pushing the envelope, and how vulnerability and community have made all of this possible.

So listen to their story, and then visit the website, like their Facebook page, and say a prayer for them. They’re doing something incredible for the Church and they need all the support we can give them.

As always, create something awesome this week, and enjoy the podcast.

The Power of Having a Bigger Vision: Ashley Crouch

Hello, creatives! This week, you’ve got a question to answer, one that you probably don’t ask yourself enough, something that is challenging and maybe even daunting to all of us. And that question is: just how big is your dream?

Our guest and the person who inspires this question is Ashley Crouch, founder of Appleseed Communications. Ashley was homeschooled in Arkansas, studied theology at the University of Dallas, was a founding team member of Verily magazine, and now runs a PR firm that brings the power of media to the stories of women entrepreneurs around the world. 

As you can hear from that quick description, Ashley has had some interesting changes in her life. Going from raising chickens in Arkansas to founding a PR firm is a pretty dramatic shift. I don’t know about you, but I can definitely relate to not always knowing where my life is headed and sometimes wondering what God is working for me. As entrepreneurs, even as members of Catholic Creatives, we can’t know exactly how things are going to work out, but as people of faith, we need to have a huge vision for the future. We have to believe that the businesses we’re starting, the projects we’re creating, and the work we’re doing is going to change the world and that God will bless that work and make it fruitful.

In this podcast, Ashley talks about why business can be the greatest catalyst for cultural change, how dreaming big guides her work each day, why celebration and having a tribe are essential for entrepreneurs to avoid burnout, and why Catholic Creatives need to be multilingual when it comes to talking about beauty.

Before we get started, a huge thank you to all of our patrons on Patreon. You’re the ones who are pushing us to the next level with the resources to grow and become sustainable. If you haven’t signed up yet, visit our page and think about becoming a patron yourself.

And while you’re listening, think and pray about that question: how big is your dream? Because it’s probably not big enough. The world is more open than ever to entrepreneurs and creatives. Let’s not put a limit on what God can do through our lives.

Create something awesome this week and enjoy the podcast.

Creating an Experience of Truth: Therese Bussen & Anthony D'Ambrosio

Hello, creatives! We are back with a little bit of a twist on the podcast: this week, I am being interviewed by Therese Bussen with the Archdiocese of Denver. Therese was one of the first members of Catholic Creatives. We got to know her through her work on the FOCUS blog, where she wrote some of the most forward thinking and honest articles in the Catholic world, with titles such as, Jesus Doesn’t Alway Fill Your Emptiness, and Why That’s Ok, so it was an honor to be talking with her today.

One of the major questions we get asked as a group is why beauty and creativity are so important for the Church. With all the big problems we’re facing as Catholics, it seems like worrying about websites or branding and liturgical music should be the least of our problems.

But we believe that the greatest force of evangelization and social change in our world is beauty. It isn’t about making things pretty -- it’s about creating an authentic experience of truth that has the power to change someone’s life. 

Today, we're discussing why Catholic Creatives exists, why beauty is essential for the growth of the Church, how to create an experience of truth rather than just preach to people, and what we as creatives can do to take our calling of creativity more seriously. For those of you who have joined the group recently or haven't heard the full story of how we got started, this conversation is a crash course.

A quick reminder: one of the most important aspects of our group is community -- getting to lend each other support and insight for our creative endeavors. If you’re a new member or just haven’t seen it yet, you should check out our Patreon page. Patrons get access to monthly online meeting and discussions with fellow creatives and guest speakers, as well as first dibs on tickets for the next Summit which, if you talked to anyone who went to the first one, you won’t want to miss. So go sign up on Patreon!

I hope you all have an incredibly productive week, and that this discussion helps get you thinking about how to fulfill your personal vocation to creativity in a more complete and authentic way. Enjoy.

High Performance Leadership: Benji Vega

This podcast is a very vulnerable conversation between myself and Benji Vega, Art Director at Pyro, a branding agency whose clients are some of the largest brands in the world (LucasArts being one). He has consistently produced award winning work, and specializes in directing teams of creatives, enabling them to operate on the highest level of excellence. In this conversation we talk about his conversion to Christianity: how the Holy Spirit has impacted his career, and about how he saved a million dollar production by riding on a cop’s segway.

The Early Church & Pagan Culture: Dr. Italy

This conversation was between myself and one of the most eminent scholars in the early church fathers, a man who also happens to be my father: Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio “The Greyer” as we call him.  He was the valedictorian of Catholic University of America,  he holds a PHD in Theology, is currently is professor at Catholic Distance University and is a renowned speaker. He runs Crossroads Initiative, which started out doing youth and young adult ministry as a rock band in the 80’s, and that is transmuted into an organization dedicated to helping the world rediscover the adventure of the Christian faith. 

We asked him to come onto the podcast because, one of the major conversations happening in the group and in the Church at large is centered around the question: How should we deal with secular, pagan culture?

Implicit in this question is another. There is this tension between tradition and creativity: how do we value the treasures of the church that we know and love, while at the same time valuing and adapting to modern secular culture for the sake of innovation? This tension is especially present when we grapple with conversations about liturgy. For those of us that are grappling with questions of how how do we integrate cultural art with our Catholic heritage, I wanted to bring Dr. Italy onto the cast so that we could talk about how the early church approached these questions. The conversation was deeply enlightening.

Crossroads Initiative 

Christians, The Soul of the World - Letter to Diagnetus

How Healthy Conflict Creates Healthy Organizations: Steve Lawson

Marcellino interviews Steven Lawson, the Director of Communications for Dynamic Catholic, a fast growing nonprofit that develops innovative learning-systems to inspire people to rediscover the genius of Catholicism. While working towards his childhood dream to become an animation director in New York City, Steve had a profound conversion experience that lead him into his current work.

This conversation is at once startlingly frank and incredibly hope filled, as they speak about creating a better world, about management, and about how healthy conflict creates healthy culture in organizations.  What would happen if the Church was hopeful and creative and inspired?

Steve's advice:

• Awareness of self will make you a more effective leader and manager.

• Take ownership over your problems. It is very freeing to achieve self-mastery over one's subconscious reactions and communication.

• Everything we do has to align with hope.

• Creativity is a hopeful experience.

• "Catholicism is inherently creative and life-giving."

Resources: 

• radical candor

• marcus arilius meditations

• abandonment to divine providence

• ENTJ- Biographys of people with your myers brigs

• leadership and self deception

• Organizational life cycles

• Seth Godin

•  A VC

• Both Sides of the Table

• Man's Search for Meaning

• Monk Manual Planner

From Selling Donuts to Making Movies: Jack and Jamie McAleer

One of our guests may be familiar to you — Dan Johnson from 4pm Media, winner of the Collaboration of the Year Award 2017.  But the other two interviewees are perhaps less known in this group- yet they have had a powerful influence in the Catholic world, albeit from behind the scenes. Jack and Jamie McAleer, major players in the growth of the Krispy Kreme dynasty, are the Financeers behind 4pm media.  They are board members of Legatus and Franciscan, and they started 4pm Media with their son in law in order to set a new standard for art and media in the church.  

“After working as a store and dough factory manager, the younger Mr. McAleer, now 40, moved into marketing.

Rising to exec VP-brand development, he worked to restore Krispy Kreme’s original logo and ‘50s-style store design, deployed miniaturized equipment that lets patrons see doughnuts made, and added neon “hot” lights to tell passersby when fresh doughnuts were cooking.
”

— https://www.qsrmagazine.com/news/krispy-kreme-exec-mcaleer-leave-post

The McAleers are modern models of the Medicis: the family that sponsored much of the art of the Medieval Renaissance.  We talk in this podcast about how they had their spiritual awakening in faith, how they left Krispy Kreme, and helped to found a Catholic production company with their son in Law.

resources: Family Fortunes
 

Being Cool with Being Weird: Kate Hazen

Meet Kate Hazen, a graphic designer, brand architect, creative genius extraordinaire.

She is one of the most excellent creative directors that I have ever met, and she has so much to offer our group in terms of pushing us to think bigger and with less constriction. In this convo we talk about the time she designed a LARPing game for her company’s conference. We also talk about how she became cool with being weird, about tattoos, and about the CC Summit.

Resources:

Walker Percy, "Lost in the Cosmos"

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Cosmos-Last-Self-Help-Book/dp/0312253990
 
Thinking with Type

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-2nd-revised-expanded/dp/1568989695

The Timeless Way of Building

https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028

Sustainable Packaging Design

https://books.google.com/books?id=Atf_OQAACAAJ&dq=sustainable+packaging+design&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG24zwm9nTAhXJjFQKHS6MAAkQ6AEICTAA

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited

https://books.google.com/books?id=QlduAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=don%27t+make+me+think+revisited&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-ldCVnNnTAhWprlQKHROSDnwQ6AEICTAA#v=onepage&q=don't%20make%20me%20think%20revisited&f=false

The works of Twyla Tharpe, the work and talks of Stefan Sagmeister, the work and process of Seb Lester and Aaron Draplin.

Kate Hazen Links: 

And this weird work she’s done:

katehazen.myportfolio.com

instagram.com/kazen117

tumblr.com/kazen117