Andreas Widmer - How St John Paul II Showed Me that Business is a Force for Good

Hello, my name is Andreas Witmer and I'm a professor of entrepreneurship at the Catholic University of America. I'm really excited to be here at the Catholic Homeschool Conference and get the opportunity to speak with you. This issue, this opportunity of homeschooling is near and dear to my heart. My wife Michelle and I actually homeschool ourselves and I sort of look back on my life that I wish I would have had the opportunity to be homeschooled. I'm originally from Switzerland and went like everybody else there through public school. Now I have some learning disability and bit of attention deficit and let's just say school didn't go so well for me because they didn't recognize all these things and often the school moved forward and moved on on topics without me having caught up. I can tell you that left a really strong impact on my life because all through primary school and secondary school, I was pretty much the tail light of my class. The kind of self image that you are taught through that at such a precious age is really bad. And by the time I was 18, 19, I had not really succeeded at anything that I had done before. Then I had to go. Like every Swiss male, I had to go to the military. Now there I did excel because I'm the youngest of six kids and I have three brothers and two sisters. And we were growing up in the countryside, really, the countryside. And we were outdoors a lot and we were wrestling and fighting and let's just say I'm 6 foot 9 and I developed really well and I was sportive at that time and the military loved it. So I got in there. It's a militia, you start on the bottom. And very quickly they took a liking to me and they started to promote me and give me additional responsibility. It was an absolute joy to be in there. And so I decided I would actually want to make a little bit of a career out of being in the military. And I applied to become a Swiss Guard. Now, the Swiss Guards are not connected to the Swiss military. Formally, Switzerland is a Protestant country. As a matter of fact, when I became a Swiss Guard, I had to give up my passport because it's a Foreign legion. You can't serve a foreign head of state if you belong to another state. But given that we're 500 years old Corps, they sort of worked this out. But nonetheless, there was no real connection between the military in Switzerland and the Swiss Guards. It's just something I decided to apply to. Now, interestingly enough, I did not apply for this because I was the Strongly convinced and faithful Catholic. I actually wasn't. I'm kind of a product of religious education of the 70s and early 80s and didn't really have an interest or didn't really have any faith, so to speak. But I thought that being a bodyguard was about the coolest thing you could do. And so I applied and lo and behold, they accepted me. I arrived in the Vatican on November 1, 1986, and went through a military training there. It was fairly rough. It would be about two months before we would end. My service was to start, I think, on January 1st of 1987. And the deal was this, that if you go through the recruit school, there's a test at the end and if you pass that test, you can stop your recruit school and start to work as a guard. My plan was to, and I did take this class, take this test. I think it was the 22nd of December or so. So that if I would pass, I would sort of get my time free over Christmas and start on January 1st. At least that was my plan. I took the test and on the 23rd I found out that I passed and so I could leave the recruit school. And then I, you know, I went to bed as a typical 20 year old. I slept until like 11 o' clock next morning, I remember, and I went out into the, down into the courtyard and I did notice it was a little strange that everybody else was going the other way, like hurriedly. And I was on my way down to the, you know, to the cantina to get my breakfast. And as I walk into the courtyard, the sergeant major came out of his office. See, when you're new there, you don't know this, but the sergeant major is a person who tells people what to do, they assign the jobs. And as soon as that guy comes out of his office, he wants something. And it's just, I didn't know that and I didn't see him, but everybody else did and they ran the other way. Well, I happen to just walk right into him and he says, hey you new guy, what are you. I heard something. You passed the exam. What are you doing tonight? And I'm like, well, I was hoping to go out, you know, to Rome, have a nice meal. It was the 24th, so for us, in Switzerland, even in Rome, the 24th is the big event for Christmas. And I thought, isn't there a party tonight here in the Swiss Guards as well later on? And he's like, no, I'm not talking about it, I'm talking about work. Like one guy got sick I need somebody to fill in. You fill in for him. I said, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. I don't start until January 1st. Boy, that was not a good thing, not a good thing to say to him. That guy blew up, he chopped my head off and basically set me straight. Let's just say it's the last time I ever said anything, you know, against what he, what he wanted or said. Anyway, he basically caught me to sides and says, you're showing up tonight at 8 o' clock for service until your service from tonight at 8 to tomorrow at 8 o' clock in the morning. And that's the last of it. Boy, was I furious. This was supposed to be my Christmas, my first Christmas in the Swiss Guards and I was going to go to this party and I studied so hard and I performed so hard to pass this test and everything. So I was just fuming, very angry. And one of the things that the Swiss Guard commander actually does, which is sort of a nod to the folks back home in Switzerland and you have to remember that was in the 80s. There was no email or anything and telephone calls were very expensive. But twice a year, for example, one time on Christmas Eve there was one telephone in the barracks downstairs, like in the cantina in the Mess hall for 110, 120 guys. And mostly that was an income inbound phone because it was not, you couldn't dial out. But twice a year at Christmas Eve and then at Easter Sunday, the commander would open it up and every one of the guards could call home to wish their family a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter. Well, there it was, that it was the Christmas afternoon and I stood in the line to wait my turn, so to speak, to make my call home. So standing in that line I was, I remember I came up with like new swear words for the sergeant. It was one of these feelings of being so angry and all this anger in me came up that I was being done something unjust and that this was not right. And you know, I had a low self esteem to begin with and I felt like here I am coming and trying to perform well and now they're putting me down once again and I'm always on the losing side. And you know, my whole start in the guards was, you know, they spoke Italian and I didn't. And it was a foreign city. Rome is chaos, total chaos. I didn't have a good time. And as I stood there waiting to call my parents, I just went into this hole and eventually it was my turn to Call. And I get there, because there's a long line, and you just have to wait your turn. I get there and I dial, you know, with the rotary phone, you get like, bloody fingers calling an international number. But anyway, so I dial the number, and my dad picks up back in Switzerland in our little mountain village. And he says, oh, Andreas, you know, it's nice to hear from you. So are they going to keep you? And I'm like, yes, dad, they're going to keep me. As a matter of fact, I just passed the test yesterday, and so I am going to stay here. And he says, you know, that's the greatest Christmas gift you could give me. I'm so proud. You do our family a great honor, and so on. And I liked all that. And then he said, and now go. And, you know, I hope you guys have a great party for Christmas tonight. And I said, well, dad, that's just it. I'm not celebrating Christmas tonight. They're making me work. And my dad is, like, on the phone saying, what? I thought you worked in the Vatican. Don't they know it's Christmas tonight? And I'm like, yeah, tell me about it. You got to tell that sergeant of mine. And the whole time, I just know how this is at home, the whole time, my mother's, like, next to him, listening with her ear. And then she grabbed the phone away from him, and she couldn't even say anything. She basically just started to cry. She heard that I was working that night, and she was basically just dissolve, dissolving emotionally and cried and cried and cried. And here it's important for me to say that I am the youngest of six. Okay? So I have a very special relationship with my mom. I may be 6 foot 9 and so on, but I. Well, how should I explain this? Well, let's look at it this way. I like to say to my siblings, they like to call me the baby of the family. I don't think. Look at me. I'm not the baby of the family. I think I'm her masterpiece. After me, she's like, okay, I have the perfect child. I don't need any more children. I've actually achieved it. Needless to say, we have a very, very strong relationship. And one aspect of that is that, you see, when my mom cries, I have to cry with her. And so she's on the phone crying. And I look back, and there's literally 30 guys, military guys, standing behind me, everybody, of course, looking at me, waiting for me to finish. And I had to decide between my honor and my mom. I chose my honor. And I hung up. I hung up on my mom. And I said, mom, I love you, Merry Christmas. Because I couldn't stand to start to cry in front of these people. And I ran away and I ran to my room and I put on my uniform and I went to work. Eight o' clock again, I passed, you know, Pope is sort of protected in these circles. I pass one after the other of these checkpoints of all the guards. And, you know, you check in yourself and all that. Nobody said a word. They could just, you know, they were all just happy that their turn was over. Finally I get to the guy who I'm supposed. Who was there before me, and I'm taking over to do this night service. And the position was the last position before the Pope, which was. The Pope lives in an apartment. And there is a little antechamber to the apartment with two doors, and in there is a Swiss garden. And outside is the loggia, you know, by Raphael. And this is on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace. The Pope doesn't live in the whole palace. The Pope lives in this three bedroom apartment. But the last room there before you get into the loggia is where the Swiss Guard is. And they basically have keys to both sides. And so they are sort of the gatekeeper, literally, to the Papal apartment. So I check in with the guy and the other guy who was there before, he couldn't get out of there fast enough. I closed the door, I lock the door. In a sense, you lock yourself in. There's a little desk there with a lamp, makes a little cone of a light, and there you can actually sit. There's a chair there you can sit and you can. You bring a little briefcase with you where you can bring a book and you can read or write, because nobody can get there without you letting them in or out. But I didn't sit and write. It was already 8 o', clock, and so it was pretty dark already. And it was dark in that room, which reflected my sort of state of mind. And I described what I had there as the perfect emotional storm of my life. I started to accuse myself of having failed at everything I've done in life, that I have nothing to show for. I don't know what to do with my life. I'm basically an idiot. And here again, I went right into. I walked right into it. I do something with these people and the minute I get in, they do something unfair to me and I'm down and not appreciated. And I anyway, don't Know who I am and what I'm going to do with my life. I just started to cry so much. Like, I was shaking. I was crying so hard for probably two, three hours. You know, when you accuse yourself, you're a better accuser to yourself than your worst enemy would accuse you of. It was a horrible, horrible experience. Suddenly the radio goes off, and it's the commander of the Swiss Guards. And he says, hey, Widmer, the Pope is leaving the apartment, and he's using your exit. Let him out. I'm like, hello? He's like, wait a minute. Are you there? Just let him. The Pope is coming your way. Let him out. I'll let you in on a secret. So we have a key on both sides. So we have a key to this door, and this is where the Pope is. And what we do is we turn the key. We don't actually open the door. We just turn the key, and then the door is open. And I'm not sure he knows that. Don't tell him. So we turn the key, and the door is open. And then we only open the next door once. He's in front of us. But I unlock the door and I step back, and I just have time to pull my uniform straight and to go into attention. When the door opened, this big door and this warm, beautiful yellow light streams into my room and forms the form of the door on the floor. And I'm standing slightly outside of this, and in the door frame, I see John Paul II. Now, you have to remember that was in 1986. He was still very strong, and he was a stocky guy. He wasn't too small, but, you know, it's relative. And he had broad shoulders. And he stood still in the. In the door frame. And he had this thing that whenever he was interested in something, he would sort of tilt his head. And so he tilted his head and he looked at me, he pointed at me and says, hey, you're new. I've never seen you here. What's your name? And I. Standing there in attention, I was so surprised that he even said anything to me, because I'm just supposed to let him through. I think I gave him my Social Security number. For all I know, I couldn't say anything. And he comes over and he starts to stretch out his hand. And I stretch out my hand once. He does that, and our hands clasp. And he. Of course, we both started to look up. And the second I saw his eyes, I'm like, self, you know, I'm like, uh, oh, can you imagine how I looked like after having been up there for three hours crying my eyes out. And he. Of course, I could see it in his eyes. He immediately noticed it. And he just looked at me and he said, oh, Andreas, of course. This must be your first Christmas away from home, isn't it, Boy? That was the wrong thing to say to me. I'm, like, holding his hand. And tears started to come down my eyes, my cheeks, and I'm like. I'm like. And I couldn't say anything. And. And I. So I am here. I'm the protector of the Pope. I'm the Pope's bodyguard. I'm starting to sob in front of the Pope, holding his hand. And he just pulled me in and he grabbed me with the other elbow, and with these light gray eyes, he looked at me and he says, andreas, I'm so glad you're here tonight. Thank you for your service. I really appreciate it. You will see everything is going to work out just fine. I tell you what, I'm going to say Mass right now, and I'm going to offer it for you. And with that, he was gone. And I was like, finally, somebody cares. Do you know that in that moment, that was not the Pope to me, that was a man who reached out after 20 of the guards I passed on the way to my job. And then the 30 who stood behind me, nobody said a word. And here is the person who's on top of the food chain, of the hierarchy, the person who's actually the boss. And he notices. And not only does he notice, but he reaches out. You know, one aspect of this is, at this time, I was not religious. And I find it in retrospect, very interesting that what he did is he didn't say, hey, Andreas, what you should do is pray more. What you should do is this. You know, guys always like to say, what you should do is this. That, that, that. No, no, no. Actually, he's never said that. But he said, this is what I'm going to do. And he did. And I think it was one of the fundamental changes of my life, the graces that flowed from him saying that Mass for me. He became, in a sense, my role model, my idol, if you wish. I became all fascinated about him. I didn't get the religious aspect. I just saw that when he was contemplating praying, when he did things, he was like the most human person I've ever met. When he started to pray, I started to feel differently. I said, whatever this guy has, that's what I want. That kind of, you know, he knows who he is, I want to be like that. I admired him so much, in a sense, made him into an idol. I admired him. I idolized him. And he wouldn't accept that. When he noticed that I was looking up to him so much and in a sense wanted to be like him. He would always point out to me that what you want is not who I am or me. It's who I have what you want. What you see is my relationship with Jesus Christ, and you can have that, too. He taught me to pray the rosary, and he taught me to entrust myself to God and to open myself to God through prayer and the Eucharist and the other sacraments. And I really had a spiritual, palpable experience of the presence of God, which I think would have never happened if it wasn't for my encounter with him when he. When he did this. And I started to have this realization that God is real and is present to me and I can have this relationship with Jesus. I ended up just with one big question, and that is, lord, what do you want me to do? Discernment is really all about that. It's, lord, what do you want me to do? It's a difficult question. And there's actually quite a bit we can do to help both ourselves, but especially also our children in how to look at this. And John Paul would always talk about God the Father and God's wisdom and intention. And I actually never got it fully until I became a father myself. You see, we have a son, Eli, and he's now 17. But back when he was 4, 5, 6 years old, he would draw with my wife. My wife is an artist. And they would have these long rolls of paper and would keep paint, keep drawing, you know, the painting. It's just marvelous. I just always loved it, how she integrated him into the art. And they did this together. They did beautiful artwork together. And I. I at the time was running companies, and I was not around all that much. I was traveling internationally a lot. And so I started this habit that whenever I came back, I would bring him a gift. And he, of course, loved it. And often I forget to buy it abroad and then go to the airport shop on the way home. And once I remember I bought him, I go in and they had one of these crayon boxes that was like this, this. This long, and it had every shade of every color in there. It. You could almost like, you know, hang this up as an art piece yourself. Like a. Like a rainbow. A rainbow. Absolutely gorgeous. And I, of course, I come home, he Comes running up to me and says, what did you bring me this time? And I get this out of the bag and say, here, Eli, I got you this. These crayons. And he looks at this and loved it. And, oh, all these colors and everything. And. And he kept having in there. And I'm like, well, okay, I go ahead. And he says, what do you want me to do? And I would say, well, I get a piece of paper and I say, I want you to draw. I want you to draw a painting, a picture for me. And so off he would go, and he would pull some of this paper out and start to draw. And then he keeps looking at me and saying, do you want me to use yellow? Yes, Hila, I want you to use yellow. Do you want me to use green? Do you want me to use orange? Yes, Eli, I want you. You see, eventually I'm like, eli, you know, I gave you all of the crayons. I want you to use them all. I wouldn't have given them to you if I said, well, this one I don't want you to use. No, you use all of them. He kept asking what he wanted me, what I wanted him to draw. And of course, you see, as a parent, you don't really care what they draw. It's deeper than that. What I really care about is what he does with it and who it does it, who he does it for. I want him to give me the drawing at the end. My office full of his drawings. It just warms my heart. I want him to give it to me at the end. I want him to draw for me. And so I give him this gift, and he uses this. And that makes like. Warms my heart, makes my soul happy. That's the analogy to God the Father. Because when you were born, when I was born, when our children were born, God gives everybody a box of crayons. Some of these crayons are bright, beautiful colors. These are your talents, your likes, your abilities, your potential. The family you were born in. Being born in the United States of America at this time, into prosperity, into general prosperity. These are all wonderful crayons. Some crayons aren't so nice. Maybe there is an illness. A disease. Difficult relationships hurt. Covid right now. These are the darker colors. Not so easy. And here we are in our discernment to say, lord, what do you want me to do? The two first things he wants you to do, he wants us to do is to draw. To use them. Use all of them. And to generously go ahead and start this masterpiece that is our life. Without hesitation to go into it and use them and use all the crayons. In a sense, this is very similar to what anybody does. You don't have to be a Catholic to do this. But from our perspective, it may look the same from the outside, but on the inside, we have an intention. Why are you drawing and who are you drawing for? I think this is what distinguishes a Catholic's life or a Christian life to a secular person's life. To say, I am drawing this for God. I use all the joys, the pains, the sorrows of life for the greater glory of God. Your mother probably told you at times, offer it up. That's what she means, that to draw with the dark colors also for God, just also drawing with the nice colors and with the great opportunities for God. I believe that this applies to not just our personal lives, but our business lives. I was given this talent of language, of having these experiences of growing up in a country where you start to learn several languages right away. When I came to America, I met people who were involved early on in 89 in a software company that brought the Internet to the PC. It was called FTP Software. They gave me an opportunity. They saw what I could do and say, hey, why don't you join us and help us bring this product abroad? It was literally bringing the Internet to the PC. And I had this privilege to work with them, to bring this all over the world. It was an amazing experience. And then I joined a team at Dragon Systems who invented speech recognition to again bring this abroad and spread this around the world. Speech recognition, the stuff that we're using today, every day, that was a great opportunity. But underneath it all, it wasn't clear to me all along the way. And I didn't have the consciousness at all times that I'm doing this for the greater glory of God and that I'm not doing this for myself. I'm actually doing this as gift. Pope Benedict would say this. It took me a while to figure this out and position this correctly. And it is what I teach today. I teach business entrepreneurship today from that perspective. And that shows itself in how we approach entrepreneurship and in how we approach a curriculum around it. And I just want to explain to you a couple of aspects of that. So first of all, I call the introduction course to business, to entrepreneurship, the vocation of business, because I think it's very important to understand it's sort of the vocation of business. Right away bakes into the title of the class this anthropological aspect of that. This Is all for the greater glory of God that our life is on this trajectory to get to heaven. That holiness is really our ultimate objective. And that is what's meant with vocation. And having vocation in business is to use and to do business in that fashion. In that sense, I believe that education should be much more formation than information. I always feel that, you know, nowadays you can look up anything, you can watch a video or you can read a book on something as. But it's very difficult for somebody to give you formation. So most of what I do is actually informed by my own experience when I ran companies that if I analyze what I really did is I would always hire character over skill, because I can teach you the skill more easily than I can form your character. And let's say you have somebody of a bad character with good skill or somebody with a good character and bad skill. I would take somebody with a good character and bad skill because I can fix the skills. If you hire somebody with bad character and good skills, this is actually becoming very dangerous because they use the good skills for uninformed or even bad things. And we see this on a frequent basis, not just in business, but in government, in the church, in all kinds of places, Places where people abuse this because they're lacking character. So I think a large part of education, a primary focus of education, ought to be the formation of character. The second thing I would like to teach then is to say I'd like you to discover your talents and your inclinations and your interests. And often, and that's one of the challenges of homeschooling, often we are not exposed to people other than those right around us in what's even possible to do in one's professional life, in one's secondary vocation. If you guys are working in a hospital or as a doctor or as a mechanic, or so then your kids right away sort of get a bit narrow view of what. What one could do with a professional life. And I very much would like people to have to expand that view, you know, to expand the discovery of their talents, the discovery of their likes and inclinations, to try stuff that they haven't seen before. I also feel that in order to do that, we need good role models that. That can show us how this is being done. Think of this. How many good business people, just off the bat, off the top of your head, how many business people do you know who are really famous and good examples? Not many. Well, there are many. It's just that you don't hear about them. Actually, the Majority of business people are good people and do very good stuff. Yes, there's the Bernie Madoffs out there and some people who did, you know, Ken Lay and so on, who did atrocious things. But for any one of those, there's also people in government, in the church, in the non profit sector that are just as horrible and do just as horrible things. But in business, for some reason, these are much blown out of proportion because of course this messes with people's revenues and income and things like that. So I don't want to downplay it, but I want to upplay and say, how many people do you know? Did you know, for example, that Francois Michelin of the Michelin tires was an exemplary Catholic and very devout and did wonderful things? Ferrero in Italy, who has, you know, the makers of Nutella and Ferrero Rocher, dedicated his entire business to marry the mother of God when he was having a very difficult time. And throughout his life, both of these people have very much dedicated themselves to living, to having a company for God. Same my compatriots in Switzerland, Victorinox, the company, the Elsner family, very devout Catholics and really used their company and their work to the greater glory of God. It is important for our students and for our kids to be introduced to positive role models. On the one hand, saints, and on the other hand, people who are here, and they may not be saints, but they are moving in that right direction. Of course, one of the favorites we have at the Bush School is Enrique Shaw, who is now a venerable and I think he's an Argentinian business man. You should Google him and check him out. Very inspiring story of a business person who really lived for others and worked for the greater glory of God. The next aspect that I would always want to include is that people need to understand how markets work. There's so much information, it's so much misinformation out there that the market is a zero sum game, that if somebody wins, somebody has to lose. The market is such a beautiful thing that to me it's a miraculous thing, that if we create value for each other, that this is analogous to the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, that the more value we create, the more money there is. And this is a beautiful aspect of creativity that the Lord gave us. And on the one hand, to understand that in economic and business terms and how you do that, on the other hand, to understand the anthropology below that or beneath that, John Paul would say that when we work, we don't just make more, we become more. Why, when we see we work is one of the great differences between us and the animals, that when we work, we can make something out of nothing. An animal can't work because they don't have free will, and they are not made in the image and likeness of God the Creator. We are. That's why we can create. And of course, there's free will involved that you have the freedom to create. That includes the freedom to create something not good. You know, the whole idea of culture of life, culture of death, this is something we make a choice of every day of our lives, in our actions, and so do we do in business. But what we're called to do is to participate in God's creative power in our companies. So we create goods that are truly good and that we provide services that truly serve. These are sort of some of the fundamentals that I want to teach to students and then, of course, immediately to move into practical experience, because I think praxis is the best way to reach our hearts, minds, and soul in implementing all of this. So everything we do and everything I recommend you do in teaching business and entrepreneurship in particular, has to be immediately connected to praxis. Otherwise it becomes unrealistic. Now, I've taught now for a good 10 years, and I've taught a lot of students, and I have to say, and I hope that's not too much of a biased information, but I don't think so, that homeschool students in particular are some of my best students, and I even have a theory of why that is. I believe that entrepreneurs, business former owners, business growers, if you wish, they have an advantage if they're homeschoolers, because they are not. See, school is sort of. It conforms people. The whole school system, as you know better than me, it's designed to create factory workers. Everybody conforms, behaves the same way. Well, that's not the future of our economy, and that is certainly not what's needed when you start to innovate and create companies that do. Well, I believe that in homeschooling, you love, you acquired a love of learning. And isn't that what an entrepreneur is? A lover of learning, constantly moving forward and learning new aspects and new things and not being afraid of that, of recognizing that I don't know everything and moving ahead with it. I see my homeschool students that come to CUA as being not afraid of the truth or to pursue the truth. They have a certain immunity from groupthink. And I'm telling you that entrepreneurship exists outside of groupthink because Groupthink would go to the middle of the bell curve and there's no innovation there and there's also no new business there, just very large companies doing what we've always done. All of these opportunities of entrepreneurship, growth and innovation are outside of groupthink. And homeschoolers are trained to be outside of groupthink and not be afraid of pursuing truth. And then what I love about seeing my son Eli with his homeschooling is that he's taking initiative. He's learned to be self supportive, taking initiative and plow through it and be innovative in how he even, you know, he has a say in how things are being done and he gets to structure his day. To some extent that is exactly analogous to somebody who starts and runs a company. There's nobody coming and saying, hey, you should do this now, and now it's time for this and now it's time for that. No, you have to organize yourself. You have to be self motivated. This is one of the intrinsic benefits of homeschooling. And that leads me to my wish, my proposition to you, that I would love to have you start now, during your homeschooling years with your son, with your daughter, to start teaching a bit of entrepreneurship. So my particular proposal or proposition to you is that I would like you to take take a look at our seed program. I'm going to put some links into the talk here and we're also CUA is also an exhibitor at the conference, so you can learn more there. But in a gist, what I'm proposing is we have developed that vocation of business class that I teach at CUA into a high school program that is modularized to the point that you as a homeschool parent can actually teach this to your kids in the homeschool setting we are here, we're going to help to train you. We have modularized everything to the point that you can even choose which pieces you want to teach and so on. Just as a couple of examples, like what we do is we teach, it's age appropriate teaching. We're teaching the student this vocation as creator and in, in asking them to create a meal for the family and to start from ideation all the way through implementation, execution and then eventually going towards the idea of learning and taking stock of what happened. It's a really well thought out experience. And whenever people did it, they give us super feedback for it. They create a dinner experience, a meal experience for the family. The beauty of it, it teaches other directedness. It's a Perfect Christian approach to say, how can I create value for you? My favorite sentence that explains what business is is the question, how may I help you? Business finds profitable solutions to solve common problems. All of what we're doing in the seed program and that what we offer you in the seed program is experiential learning, fully project based classes. And we have an online presence, we have a physical presence where you can reach us all the time. We have, I think, monthly online meetings for all the teachers around the United States who do this where they share information. And we also sit down and I show up sometimes. Luke Burgess, John Bakura, Rebecca, Teddy. Our team shows up to help answer questions and to guide you in this so that you're not alone when you're doing this. And the project is also very geared towards giving you role models and give you a Catholic setting. This is a specifically Catholic course on business and entrepreneurship. And because it is such, we're also very happy to say that if you do this, you can actually earn three college credits for at the Catholic University of America. I would of course love to have your son or your daughter come and study with us, study with me at Catholic University and go through more of this experience of applying John Paul's theology of the body to business to life and to gain a deeper understanding about this opportunity that we have to be co creators with God. I think it's important that we keep that analogy of the crayons in mind because if we go at the age of 18, 20, 22, if we go about our life with that objective, with that deep understanding that what we're doing is we're building a life, we're creating a masterpiece of our life using all the crayons that God has given us, that we have decades to create the most beautiful, beautiful masterpiece possible. And it is my prayer for my students always, but also for you today who listen to this, that as we come to the end of our life, as you come to the end of your life, that you can accomplish this and roll up the scroll of your masterpiece. And as you meet your maker, as you meet God, you hand it over to him and you say, lord, I have made this for you. It is my gift to you. And that the Lord would look at it and be rejoicing and glad embrace you and say, well done, you good and faithful servant, enter into your Father's kingdom. Thank you for listening and God bless.