I recently appeared as a guest on Gregory Treat’s show, the Great Houses Forum. (https://greathouses.forum/)

We primarily spoke about the values of having a loyal employee base who become ‘lifers’ and how you can generate that type of loyalty in today’s day and age.

Keep in mind that we don’t agree on every single point regarding Catholic teaching, but I wanted to share this conversation with you because it sparks the exact kind of high-level discussion we need to be having right now.

Enjoy the episode!

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Key Timestamps:

01:43 - Silas’s Background: Silas shares his personal journey and the overarching mission behind Catholic Founders.

03:12 - The “Lifer” Employee: Gregory unpacks the historical context of long-term corporate employment and the math behind employee retention.

09:35 - The Japanese Corporate Model: Gregory highlights how Japanese firms successfully build lifelong careers through intense training and division expansion.

16:36 - Patronage and Leadership: Gregory explains why intelligent leaders have a moral obligation to protect and provide for those under their care.

27:20 - Democratic vs. Aristocratic Technologies: An exploration of how shifting technologies impact market timelines and short-term capital allocations.

35:49 - Building Lifelong Covenants: The guys discuss creating enforceable agreements and cultivating mutual dependence to secure top talent.

50:29 - AI and Corporate Specialization: Gregory predicts a near future where AI forces companies to develop highly idiosyncratic tech stacks.

58:58 - Reviving Small Towns: Silas and Gregory discuss leveraging remote capital to build hyper-local employment in forgotten communities.

1:04:03 - Three Feudal Futures: Gregory outlines how AI deployment might shape society into caste-based, collectivist, or Christian feudal structures.

1:12:12 - Cultivating Beauty: Gregory argues that true architectural beauty stems from a family’s deep desire to keep their own children engaged in their legacy.

Select Quotes:

“Your likelihood of defection is equal to one minus the proof of work you’ve put into a particular system or thing divided by proof of work plus the benefits of defection” - Gregory Treat

“If you want a long-term relationship, you have to be okay with the person you’re in a long-term relationship with asking for accountability and some means of reducing your likelihood of defection, which is gonna mean you giving up optionality” - Gregory Treat

“The number of talent in the market who are genuinely interested in compounding their knowledge forever has basically gone to effectively zero.” - Silas Mähner

“When you have a relationship with your employees and you respect them as humans, as not just numbers, they feel that. By the way, this is the number one reason why people leave jobs, is they just don’t feel respected.” - Silas Mähner

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