Co-Founder of #1 Catholic App: Surrender

Speaker A: Coming up on um, this episode.

Speaker B: Surrender to God with joy has been the thing that's, that's carried me through.

Speaker A: This is the show where today's fast growth founders bring us inside their game changing companies and reveal the biggest challenge that transformed them from founder to CEO. Welcome back to the show, my fellow founders around the world. I'm Todd Uderstadt, your guide on the journey from founder to, to CEO. I've been waiting to interview this founder for quite some time, ever since that little purple app appeared on my phone magically. No, I downloaded it and his name is Alex Jones and Alex co founded Hallo in 2018 and has been leading as CEO ever since. Halo is the number one Catholic meditation, prayer and sleep app. With 50 team members and growing, the company is now north of 2.5 million downloads, over 75 million prayers, which is 700% growth year over year in prayers downloaded through the app. And I pulled this fact over 72,000 reviews just on Apple podcasts alone with an average rating of 4.9. But Alex, those numbers don't mean as much as the number of people that you are bringing back to the Lord, right?

Speaker B: Indeed. Uh, praise God, he's doing all the heavy lifting. We're just blessed to be along for the ride. But uh, I. The thing that matters most to us is we just get these incredible notes every day from folks that God is able to reach out to and change their lives. And it's uh, just incredible to be able to be a part of those miraculous stories. So it's been an enormous blessing.

Speaker A: Well, I can't thank you enough for being here today and sharing your story from founder to CEO with our thousands of founders around the world. And I'm also excited to do this because as you know, I'm also a Catholic man just like you. And so seeing the Catholic church, albeit through your entrepreneurial endeavors and the Holy Spirit working through you, I was like, yes, finally someone has broken through with technology and the church.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's been a big focus for us to try to create world class tech that, you know, someone who's used to downloading Instagram or TikTok or Netflix or whatever would look at Hallow and you know, think that it stacks up. And the real reason for that is just the spirituality within the Christian tradition is just so beautiful. It deserves the ui, UI UX design tech that is at that same level. So, uh, has been a big focus for us, but uh, we've been blessed to have a really phenomenal team working on it. So, uh, Still a lot more work to go.

Speaker A: It is truly amazing because I remember maybe it was three years ago, maybe you remember this, where the Vatican made some sort of rosary device and apparently got hacked within the first 30 days. Do you remember the story?

Speaker B: I did not hear that it got hacked, but I do remember the device.

Speaker A: Yeah, I remember reading that story and I was like, ugh. Uh, because if you look at the Vatican's website, I mean, come on, Alex, right?

Speaker B: I mean, the church is phenomenal with a lot of things. I mean, the biggest thing, I mean, Christ came and the tradition of what he taught and how he called us to live is what the church is trying to invite us all into and to build the Kingdom of God. But startups and technology, in the pace of engineering and dev and UI ux, I wouldn't necessarily say, like the core competency of the church. And so the church has called on lay folks to do, and people outside the church is to build these types of things. And so we're excited to try to be a tool for the church and. And her mission of trying to help people grow closer to God.

Speaker A: Well, it's hard work and I know it's not easy. And it's been a long journey for you and your team, your growing team. And we usually kick things off with a special quote or mantra or something that keeps us founders going, keeps you going during your journey from founder to CEO. And I might imagine that you might have something quite profound that helps you along the way, since you are the leader of the app that has access to the great inspiration of the Lord. So what does keep you going? Like, what's your go to thing?

Speaker B: Yeah, it'll probably be a relatively common theme of my whole story, but in the whole Hallow Journey. But I was talking to a member of the app who had been using the app for a while, and he was sharing with me this beautiful story. His wife had passed away, was very young, mid-30s, had passed away, and, uh, she was diagnosed with a terminal illness and she had about a year left to live. And he just described like the last year of her life. She just journeyed through with such joy. And he asked her about it because obviously it was an enormously stressful thing for him and depressing. And I couldn't imagine going through something like that. And she just said towards the end, she said, it's funny, we live these lives and we think it's all about getting the thing that we want done or being successful or getting money or getting a nice family or the right house. Or living in the right place, or achieving xyz, becoming xyz. But really the whole thing, our whole journey here on Earth, is just an exercise in learning how to surrender to God with joy. And that's it. And I don't know, that stuck with me for, you know, not. Maybe not exactly in those words, but that's been the core of the Hallow journey. There's a prayer meditation on the app called the Surrender Prayer Novena. This just, oh, Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything. And that's just the thing that gets me through. Uh, there's a bunch of stories about how God's been able to do the heavy lifting. But. And I've talked to countless founders and it's a similar experience, obviously, not always with the same spiritual context, but having something that if you have to carry all that weight on your shoulders yourself, it's just, you can't do it. And so having something that you can give it to, and in my case, someone that you can give it to, is just enormously freeing and just lets you have fun. It's a fun thing, getting to build your own thing. It's enormously hard work, but it's fun. And it's too stressful if you try to take it all on yourself. And so the surrendering and just trying to listen for God's will and voice in our life has just been an enormous blessing. So that just surrender to God with joy has been the thing that's carried me through.

Speaker A: Surrender to God with joy. So we've been blessed to have lots of great founders on the show over the years. Eight years doing this now. And oftentimes in founderland, we like to use words like dominate, eviscerate, uh, you know, all that kind of stuff. Right. You're the first person who's come on the show in eight years to say surrender.

Speaker B: I wouldn't necessarily say it's like the first rule in all the startup books, but, I mean, it's, I think, to reframe it in, like, startup language. It's find something bigger, which I think is a pretty common thing. People are like, you have to have a mission bigger than yourself. You have to have something bigger than just you. If not, you'll crumble. And the stress of having a team, uh, and a community of folks using the app and growing closer to God, the stress of that would be too much for somebody. And it's also just way more fun to just have something that you're just along for the ride and you get to. I Think it's important to, you know, competition, I think, makes things better. And so it's important to try to compete as best you can, to try to build something excellent and to work really hard to do it. It's important to move really quickly, to take really big swings, and to try to win for fun and because it means that, you know, your mission is being achieved, which for us is more people praying. So it's incredibly important. There's nothing. I mean, in the work that we're doing, there's nothing more important than trying to get more folks closer to God. And so it's incredibly important to work really hard to do all that. But at the end of the day, it's not us who's doing it. So it's just freeing and allows us to have a little bit more fun and take a little bit bigger swings and make a little bit riskier bets and move quick and all that fun jazz. So that's been helpful.

Speaker A: I appreciate you sharing that. Years ago, when I saw the comm app come out and whatnot, uh, the thought occurred to me. I'm like, wait, well, how come everybody is into meditation? We Catholics have been meditating for 2,000 years. And when I read an interview that you gave in the national, uh, Catholic Register, you said something similar about the origin story of this amazing app. Do you mind telling us the gist of that story? Because I do think it's a big part of the Holy Spirit working through you and your team.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So I was raised Catholic, but fell away from my faith. Would have called myself atheist or agnostic for all of high school undergrad. And when I started working, I got really into secular meditation. I was just fascinated by the idea of a contemplative life, meditative life. I had stress like anybody else, and so finding some sense of peace was intriguing. But, you know, my mind first went to kind of Eastern traditions of meditation or secular meditation, yoga, that kind of stuff. And Headspace and Calm had just launched, and I thought they were awesome apps. I started using them every day for a couple years, and I thought they were phenomenal. Great ways to sit at home 10 minutes, feel like you had kind of a customized personal guide, learning different techniques of meditation in the comfort of your own home before work. But every time I would meditate using mindfulness meditation or one of the secular meditation techniques, my mind would always feel oddly pulled towards something spiritual, which, like an image of the Holy Spirit or cross or something Christian, which I thought was very strange because it wasn't an, uh, Important part of my life. So I went around pastors, priests, nuns, friends who were deeper in their faith life asking this question, thinking I had a revolutionary question which you already knew the answer to. But, hey, is there any intersection? Is there any way there's some intersection here between this meditation thing and this faith thing? And they all laughed at me and said, we've been doing it for 2,000 years. It's called prayer. You probably should have heard about it before this point. And I was like, you know, I know prayer. The, like, hey, thanks for stuff, sorry for stuff. Helped me with stuff, or the things that I'd memorized as a kid. But it always just felt like I was going through the motions, repeating things, or journaling in my own head. And I started learning all about this kind of rich tradition of contemplative and meditative prayer within the church, which I'd really never heard of before. So Lexi Divina, um, uh, the. Examine recollection, Carmelite spirituality, chants a bunch of stuff, imagined prayer, a bunch of things that are really beautiful, powerful meditative practices within Christianity. Lexi Divina is a way to meditate on scripture. So mindfulness meditation, you focus on your breath and lecture Divina, you pick a word from scripture and focus, uh, on that and then use it to start a conversation with God. So I googled how to do Lexi Divina, opened up a Bible to Matthew 6, and our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Hallow was the word that stuck out that I meditated on, and it just. It changed my life, brought me to tears, brought me back to my faith, changed everything about what I value. Faith is the most important part of who I am. Used to have to drag me to mass. Now you can't keep me out of the church. Confession is beautiful. I mean, it's. It's, uh. But it's just this beautiful combination. Hallow means to make holy and hallowed be thy name. So it was this deep sense of peace like you get from secular meditation. I would argue a little bit deeper, but it was this deep sense of peace, but at the same time wrestling with, okay, um, am I supposed to make God's name holy? Is he supposed to make me holy? Am I letting him make me holy? Am I supposed to be helping other people grow in holiness? Most of which the answer, you know, I was in consulting at the time. Most which the answer was no. I wasn't really doing anything, and I wasn't letting God do anything in my life. And so stressful questions, big questions, but. But it was Kind of this combination of this deep sense of peace and this deep sense of purpose. So I knew from then that we had to build something. For myself, I knew how to code a little bit. So we started building it just because I needed to do this. So that was really the beginning of Hallow was kind of discovering that intersection between meditation and faith. And from there, it's grown into a bunch of different things. Music, sleep, uh, scripture, diving into really powerful, beautiful, deep reflections, homilies, sermons. But the core of it has always been prayer. And how do you start a conversation with God and learn to listen to God and build a habit of silence in your life? The truth is, God definitely came up with the idea and just hit us the head until we listened. So has been a blessing to work on.

Speaker A: So you would say you're just a steward of his work.

Speaker B: There's three human co founders. Our joke is that there's three co founders, and they are not Alex, Eric, or Alessandro, which is a Trinity joke for any of the Christians out there.

Speaker A: I love that. Well, part of our faith, obviously, is, uh, the struggle in life, helps to purify us, helps hopefully move us to the Lord. And countless times over the. Over the years, we've heard lots of founders share their struggles. And we started the show because I was tired of hearing everybody's entrepreneurial hero story because I knew they were bunk. And I think it's especially poignant coming from you, um, since you do perceive yourself as a steward of this idea and that the Lord's working through you and your team and whatnot. Because it's not an idea anymore, it's an actual thing. Right. But the idea of moving from founder to CEO, I think there's a lot of spirituality associated with that. Now, we often don't talk about that on this, on this show, but that movement from taking an idea that's supposed to help people, since business was supposed to help uplift people's lives. Right. And moving into this position where you take on, um, more responsibility, which is permeated throughout the Bible. I mean, you and I both know that there's lots of stories of the Lord giving more responsibility to someone for lots of different reasons. And I'm curious about how you see that on your journey. Has there been a formative experience that you can point to that you said to yourself, that sure accelerated my development as this leader, steward of this work that the Lord has sent us to do?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's. There's been a bunch of stories about figuring out how. How to lead the team through, you know, Covid hit after we launched for, for a year. We've got uh, uh, a bunch of different growth things and misses and a bunch of mistakes that we've made and a bunch of things we've been lucky on. And I mean the biggest thing for me and the biggest formational thing, and it goes back to the quotes, you know, in Christianity, I guess the term a bit is, you know, servant leadership. And so when I think about moving from founder to CEO, which you know, I think is a lifelong journey, or at least a very long journey is, you know, learning how to, how to serve the team and the community of folks and ultimately God. I think the big thing though there has just been learning to let go. I think that's the hardest part of moving from founder, founder to CEO frankly. But the hardest part of founding is learning to let go and learning to surrender, which goes back to the first point. This is still pretty early on for us, but we had launched in December 2018 and we'd been around for maybe eight to 12 months or so and we prayed about and meditated for a long time about whether or not we should do this as a startup or a non profit or whatever. And we got really excited about the ability for folks to invest and to create high quality tech from the startup world. And so we wanted to see if it was possible to do that within the Catholic Christian context. So we went out and we did kind of our seed round, which was our first. We'd raised a little bit of friends and family investment before, but this was kind of our first round of funding that was institutional investors and the whole Silicon Valley gamut combined with some great folks from the faith world. And it certainly was not the most common pitch, uh, in Silicon Valley, like, hey, here's a Catholic startup, we want to help people get to heaven and help people find peace through, through God is not necessarily the pitch that they hear every day, which was actually uh, an advantage in some ways. But I mean, so we just set out and said, hey, look, we're going to give this thing a shot. We've done fundraises since then, Series A, series B, but this was really, are we going to be able to work on this thing full time for two years, Like a solid chunk of time? We'd been working on it for a bit, but does Halo live or die Question. And so we met with Probably I had 80 ish meetings with different funds and different investors and angel investors and folks over like a two, three week period. So it was just a Crazy. I was jam packed. And this was back when we were doing and pitch meetings in person. So you're traveling between New York and Chicago and at, uh, the Bay Area and the city of sf and it's just an incredibly stressful experience. You are sitting across from people. You don't really have an idea. We had a couple thousand folks using the app, but. And so you don't really have any numbers. And so really all it is like 90% of the bet is do I think this guy sitting across from me knows what he's doing? You know, that's the bet that seed investors have to make, which is a really tough one. But it's mostly like a people judgment, which is incredibly intimidating as the person getting judged. You know, you're like constantly analyzing all the things you do, all the answers you have to different questions. You need to have all your things memorized. You're like watching your body movement. Am I making eye contact right? Am I, you know, is my story compelling? And for me it's, you know, incredibly personal one because obviously, like any Startup Hallow is, you know, feels like, is like a part of me. And it's also my spiritual journey, which is obviously the most core part of me. And the thing is, the nos come back way quicker than any yeses. The yeses take, you know, a week or two, but all the no's come back right away. And if you have a phenomenal round, which we're incredibly blessed to have, you know, a competitive round, but you get 70 no's. And 70 no's is pretty tough to take even if you got 10. Yes is a super competitive round. But 70 no's is tough. And all you get is no's at the beginning. And I come back to my studio apartment with my wife and I'm just like, uh, fried and just overthinking all the stuff that I did that day and just stressed. And I sat down and I was praying. I was doing my kind of meditation of the day. And I just remember, uh, it was in the dark late at night and I was just, I was just like, look, God, honestly, I am doing this thing for you. I want to do it for you. I don't want to do it for my own like, success or vanity or any of that stuff. I want to do it for you. And if this thing works, I am going to give you all the credit for sure. I promise, no matter what, if this thing works, you will get credit. I'm not going to sit up there and be like, oh, Alex, did This because he was so smart or whatever. I, uh, worked so hard. It's just God doing it. At the same time, if it fails, it's on you. I'm not taking. I'm not taking the blame for that. You know, I'm not taking that. So if you want it to work, you do it. I'm going to work real hard. I'm not going to. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to. I'm not going to, um, be lazy. But if it doesn't work, I can't carry that. And the next morning, I walk into a meeting with one of the investors we're most excited about. And. And it had been our second meeting, and I go to meet with him. But then I was like, ah, I'm gonna go get a coffee first. I was in this little coffee shop in sf, and I, uh, grabbed a coffee, and I was like, you know what I forgot to do? I forgot to read the daily gospel of the day. And I read the gospel. And the gospel was of Peter trying to fish in this pond, and he keeps fishing, and there's no fish. And then Jesus comes and he says, let down your nets. And Peter says, I don't know what you're talking about, man. There's no fish. I've been out here all night, all day. Whatever. There's no fish in this sea. And Jesus is like, let down your net. Net. He's like, fine, whatever, man. I'll let down my net for this crazy person standing on the door. And he lets down his net, and he catches more fish than the net can hold. And two seconds later, the guy gives us a term sheet, which is one of the best seed investors in the valley. And we ended up having a phenomenal round, but it was just this hilarious. God was like, all right, all I needed from you was to give up. All I needed was for you to surrender. And as soon as you did, I will show you that I'm going to do this. So in the future, when they're like, oh, Alex, how did you raise a successful seed round? You're not like, oh, because I did my pitch deck really well. It's like, well, you know, I don't know. God did it. I mean, leading the team, hiring folks, tough conversations, people, wise product decisions, growth strategies. It's all kind of came down to that, which is both trusting team, but also the Holy Spirit and the inspiration that God is trying to place into our lives and trying to listen for where God is calling us and surrendering and Any big growth player, any great product feature or any of that stuff has been essential. Actually an act of surrender where we try real hard and then we finally just give up and say, you know, all right, we're not going to get this influencer. We're not going to get this. And then God just comes through and does it and snap of a finger. So I don't know if that's, you know, the. I'm sure it's not necessarily like the standard, um, CEO development story, but has definitely been for me. The thing that I come back to is like, you know, God's. God's doing this thing and learning to let go is. Has been the biggest journey for me as a leader and as being able to be a part of this team.

Speaker A: You know who you remind me of? I was a sinner. Aren't we all? Um, I was at the Cincinnati Men's Conference a couple weeks ago, and Raymond Arroyo was one of the guest speakers from EWTN and his show the world over. And, uh, he was recounting a story about Mother Angelica, who founded ewtn. And I had never heard this story before. He said Mother Angelica ordered all these satellite dishes to show up in Alabama to kickstart EWTN and apparently was $600,000 worth of equipment. Okay. And the story goes, again, this is him telling story. I don't know the details of it, but he said that, uh, the guys showed up on site with the satellite dishes back then. You know, there was big dishes and, uh, she had no money to pay the men the $600,000. And then the story goes that one of the sisters came running over to say she's got a phone call and it was someone calling out, uh, to make a $600,000 donation.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, honestly, man, it's awesome. It's so cool. These stories, it's, you know, they're hard to believe, but they. It's just the biggest surprise to me about Hallow, and there's countless stories like that. It's just amazing to be a part of this, to get to hear. Folks, it's the coolest part of getting to work on this is getting to hear how God is working in people's lives. But, but especially with incredibly, incredibly holy people like Mother Angelica there. Just when you have total abandonment and trust in God, it's just this incredible. Like Jonathan Rim, uh, who plays Jesus in the Chosen, which is this series, uh, that's, uh, phenomenal, would highly recommend it, has a very similar story about Surrender where he was, like, trying to be an actor, trying to be an actor, trying to be an actor. And then he surrenders finally, is like, he can't pay his rent. And so he just falls on his knees and he's like, God, uh, you know, I give up. I don't know what to do next, but I'm done. And the next day, he gets two checks in the mail from, like, old projects that were paying late, some, like, percentage of royalty or whatever, and, like, almost exactly enough to cover his rent. And then, like, two months later, he gets booked on the Chosen, which is this awesome. It's a hugely successful series. And, you know, there's just countless stories like this, which is just when you. When you surrender and give up your own kind of fight for your own control to God, what the miracles that he will do, it's just incredible. I mean, Mother Teresa has countless stories that are like that Saint Padre Pia. It's just like, there's so much beauty within the church and within Christianity of folks living holy lives and being able to surrender that it's inspiration, uh, to us sinners to try to do what we can to live a, uh, somewhat similar life.

Speaker A: Amen to that. So, Alex, there are thousands of founders listening to you right now. Some of them are Catholic, some of them are not. Many of them, probably not. And you talk about this idea of surrendering to God. How does one go about doing that? From your perspective, what does that. What's the practical application, uh, in your particular case, you read the gospel for the day, and so what advice would you give to another founder, even if they're not Catholic?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch. And we have a ton of folks who have checked out the app and are using the app regularly who aren't Catholic or aren't Christian. We have a bunch of folks from a bunch of different faiths or people who don't take their faith seriously, who are able to find a sense of peace and a sense of, uh, purpose and connect, uh, with something higher through the app, which is a blessing to be able to journey with folks all across wherever you are in your faith life. There's something called a surrender prayer on the app that I would highly recommend for anybody who's trying to grow in it. Saint Padre Pio, his spiritual director, um, for a time, had this vision of Jesus speaking to him, and he wrote it down in a prayer, uh, which is like the prayer that you pray multiple times is, uh, oh, Jesus, I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything. But there's these quotes from Christ that are just these incredibly beautiful, powerful quotes that you go through nine days that are just. It's just Jesus, he's just so funny. He's like, why do you think that you're in charge of this? You're not in charge of this. Stop stressing, stop worrying. You know, one of the examples, I think it's in this prayer. Maybe I'm quoting from something different, but it was like, like, imagine if you had, uh, your pet and your pet was stressed every day about where it was going to get his food. And you're like, chill, dog, I got this for you. You know, I'm m going to get your food for you every day. It's a tough, complicated system, but I'm going to get it. And we're flawed and we typically come through on that promise. So God's always going to come through on his promise. And he's, uh, infinitely more powerful than us. So he's going to answer our needs and lead us to where he needs us to be. So anyway, the surrender novena would definitely be the first recommendation. It's maybe a little spiritual. So it's for. You got to take that with it as you check it out. But the other thing is just, I think just learning to sit in silence and pray is the biggest thing for me every day. And I think for me, the big thing for prayer is how do you listen to God? How do you try to sit in silence and listening to Him? There's lots of really phenomenal preachers, lots of really phenomenal founders and CEOs who can tell you infinitely more about how to build a great business or startup. And there's lots of phenomenal preachers who can tell you more about God than I ever could. But, but the thing that has changed my life is just, you know, why don't we just all try to sit down and listen to him himself? He's going to do a lot better job of teaching you how to surrender than I ever will. He's going to do a lot better job of teaching how to pray than I ever will. And if you're not, you know, into God or not into meditation or any of that jazz, just sit in silence. The thing that I've found, even with folks who are super secular in Silicon Valley, is even people who meditate but use kind of secular meditation, ask them, okay, you're meditating, been meditating for a while. There's no other people in the room. When you're meditating, are you alone? And the answer is always no. It's like okay, well, let's. That's creepy. When you stop distracting yourself From Netflix and YouTube, there's something else, some invisible thing there with you. Like, what is that? Shouldn't that be the most thing in our lives? And shouldn't we let that dictate our lives if we think it's, you know, potentially God or the universe or some higher power? And so just learning and trying to learn and trying to begin the journey, which is a lifelong journey, of how do you learn how to sit in silence and how do you learn how to try to listen to God or whatever you call it? I think he's going to direct you in a lot better way than I will and lead you into a place where you trust. It's not, you know, you don't have to surrender if you don't believe in the guy yet, but learn to listen to him. And I think you're going to learn to trust him because of how amazing he is. So, anyway, that would be the big thing, uh, is learning to sit in silence and listen to God. And then the surrender prayer on the app would obviously be the next one.

Speaker A: Well, that was a softball question because I wanted you to bring up that prayer.

Speaker B: That's a great prayer.

Speaker A: Uh, what I really appreciate about what you and your team have done for the Lord is there's always so many amazing prayers throughout the history of the church. And I've discovered many of them when I would go to our local Catholic bookstore. And there's usually this little carousel of yellow cards. You know what I'm talking about?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. And so this little carousel of yellow prayer cards is, like, not very accessible to everyone. And you have to go, you have to know where the Catholic stories. You have to know there is a Catholic story. Right. And so you make some of those prayers so accessible. And the surrender prayer that you mentioned is just one of many that I highly encourage all of our listeners around the world to listen to, even our brothers who are Muslim, since I read a story about a guy who sent a message to you that he, he actually converted because of the app.

Speaker B: I mean, praise God. We've had. We've had folks who are Protestant pastors who converted. Uh, we've had folks who were following the faith of Islam convert. We've had folks who, uh, were Jewish praying on the app. We've had folks who were atheist, agnostic, folks who had fallen away from, hadn't been to Mass in 30 plus years, folks who were deep in what they describe as their own habitual sins and struggling with temptations and really in a really dark place, able to find peace in the. I mean, it's just an incredible. And you're right, like, we have this incredible, this incredible beauty in the church of these, these 2,000 years of just obviously scripture and all of scripture and all that Christ gave us. And on top of that, these incredible lives that have been lived and prayers that have been written and prayed and, um, inspiration that the Holy Spirit has given people throughout the centuries. And there's just, I mean, like, we have a daily saint. Every day different for 365 days. There's just these incredible stories of just these human beings living just amazingly simple and holy lives. There's these. We have these miracle stories now, like 50 miracles. Ah, a new miracle every day for the, for the time of Easter. And there's just these stories happening today, which are, you know, in 2009, there was this child who was stillborn. Uh, they prayed to Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen, used to have a TV show back in the black and white TV days, and prayed to him, pray to him, pray to him. And he was without oxygen for 61 minutes, which a stillborn child can't be without oxygen. I mean, that human being doesn't survive that without oxygen for 61 minutes. Uh, it was a home birth, so. So they called an ambulance. They tried to resuscitate him at home, they tried to resuscitate him at the ambulance, they tried to resuscitate him at the hospital. Finally, the doctor said, you know what? I give up. Took, uh, his hands off the baby, and his heart begins beating when he takes off his hands 61 minutes in. And they say, okay, that's fine. But this child probably is not going to grow up normal. He's probably not going to be able to walk. He's probably not going to be able to think. He, uh, is going to be severely handicapped in a bunch of different ways. And to this day, the child is fine, just an adult human. I mean, what, what. I mean, that's such a crazy story. And it's 2000. I mean, it's not, you know, that's recent. And, uh, there's just so much cool stuff like that that it's, uh. And within. Within the church tradition, both recent and distant past, that it's just such an incredible spirituality to be able to be a part of. And you can take inspiration from so many different places that it's not like one thing or one thing you got to do. It's one habit, one prayer you got to do. You can switch it up every week and wherever God is calling you to grow deeper. So we're just blessed to be able to get to share some of that beauty that God has created in the world with folks through the app.

Speaker A: Uh, you use the word share, and I so totally agree with that. Because to your point, we're always looking for more signs from the Lord. We're always looking for more. Right. Like, look at what I've given you. He says, right, Go ahead.

Speaker B: There's this movie, Father Stu come out. Mark Wahlberg is in it, which is an incredible movie. Everybody should go check it out. But there's this scene where I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but I think this would be inspiration. Go see it. But he. You know, this guy had fallen away from his faith and was doing a bunch of different. Maybe he had started down his faith journey, but he had always had this, like, antagonistic relationship with God, and he gets in this terrible accident, and he was riding his motorcycle. He gets in a car accident, and he's near death, and he sees this image of Mary, and he says, if Jesus loved me, he would have been here. Like, what has he done for me in his life? In my life? What has Jesus done for me? And Mary says, he died for you. What more could you ask? It's like, yes, like, we keep being like, man, God, like, I believe in you. Like, man, if you could really help me get xyz, you're gonna get grade on this test or get this good job or whatever. It's like, what more could he do? I would be so tired if I was him. It's just like, what more could I do for you guys? And you read it in the Old Testament, too. It's the story of the Jewish people where it's like, God just keeps saving them. And then they're like, yeah, okay. And then a couple minutes later, they're like, oh, by the way, I think this bronze statue is better because he's helped out with rain or whatever. And God is like, come on, guys. What more could I do? And I think it's. It's. You know, the beauty of the church is, in the Christian tradition is. Is like, there's so much that he has done for us throughout the last few thousand years that is just a blessing to be able to reflect on and meditate on and get to journey with him through.

Speaker A: Well, speaking of blessings, you, your team, your wife and kids who help your support in all this as well, are truly a blessing to all of us and to the church. And, uh, I can't thank you enough for acting upon what you heard the Lord tell you to do. Because we all get to benefit from you and your team and making our beautiful faith accessible to so many people. And I'm also grateful for your wisdom about this idea from moving from founder to CEO about letting go, because previously we've heard that theme before, but it's to whom are you letting it go? Right? And you uh, help fill in that blank for us after eight years. So I'm grateful for your sage advice and I also want everyone to be able to learn more about you, learn more about the app. So how can they follow you? I know you're not a big social media guy, uh, but um, what's the best way for them to follow you and also obviously access the app?

Speaker B: I'm not quite good at social media yet, but we'll get there. I mean Alexallow is my social media handles. But the uh, uh, but the Halo app is at Hallow app, anywhere, Twitter, Instagram, whatever is the primary way that we try to share uh, about our journey and share about the content on the app. And then I mean the best way is just to download and give the app a try. Would love uh, for folks to give it a try and let us know. Any feedback is just Hallow H A L L O W like Hallow be thy name or like Halloween, but Hallow on the App Store it's the little purple guy and that's the best way to, you know, it's what we focus on mostly social media stuff is for fun but the big focus and where we try to make sure that folks are along for the journey and get to discover all the different stuff that uh, we're trying to focus on is through the app. So that would be the primary place that I'd guide people to.

Speaker A: And I think you hit the trifecta between truth, goodness and beauty. And it is beautiful. The app itself and the artistry and whatnot is absolutely amazing. You got two thumbs up from my 14 year old daughter who she was comparing it to other apps, said, oh no, this is much prettier. Um, it's really amazing and you're amaz and we thank you so much for sharing your journey from founder CEO, including your spiritual journey from founder to CEO. And we wish you, your wife, your kids, your team the very best as you go along and continue in this ministry.

Speaker B: Well, thanks so much. Glory to God. It's been a blessing to get to work on and uh, has been a blessing to get to chat with you so really appreciate you having us on.

Speaker A: Hey, it's Todd again. If you like this interview, do me a favor. Take a quick snapshot of it. Share it on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and let your friends know about it. It really helps us continue to build a platform that helps founders succeed. And remember, when you grow, your business grow.