Happy Anniversary, Seeking Excellence! My name is Marissa, and I have had the ultimate gift of working alongside Seeking Excellence President Nathan Crankfield over the last year. We have received numerous questions on how we started, what inspired the organization's creation, and how the team got involved. 

Part one of this exclusive Q&A session with Nathan, provides a little insight into the hard work and dedication put in over the last year to make Seeking Excellence what it is today! 

What was your inspiration for creating Seeking Excellence?

My inspiration for beginning was derived from one of my most quoted scripture passages that comes from the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 9, where Jesus goes, and he heals various people in the town; a blind man, a layman, all different and unique in circumstances. The gospel says that he went through all the cities and villages, healing every infirmity and every sickness that he came across. When Jesus looked out towards the crowd he had pity for them. Jesus had compassion for their conditions and that they were helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Christ then tells the Apostles to praise the Lord of the harvest, to send out laborers into the community because the workers are few. Looking back, I think that was it for me. Reflecting on the world and seeing how frustration helps many people work, how lost the people were in our current world, especially during the pandemic. In hindsight, it was very timely that it kicked off during 2020. Seeing with the Lord's eyes has been one of my favorite prayer reflections to practice.

"Lord, help me to see with your eyes, hear with your ears, speak with your words, lift up with your hands, walk with your feet, and respond in love with your heart." Seeing what the Lord's eyes allow you to see revealed to me just how lost many people in our community are. People need vision; they need direction and motivation to understand what is the best way to live. I wanted to share guidance on how to accomplish those goals and start living a life of true Excellence. Seeking Excellence is ultimately having a life of fulfillment, holiness, and virtue that leads to true freedom.

Can you share the process of how you started the organization?

I give many props to Father Jacob Willie, my spiritual director when I lived in Cincinnati. He encouraged me, kind of indirectly, to begin Exodus 90 starting in January, leading up through Easter in 2020. Part of my journey within Exodus 90 was similar to when I was deployed. I committed to doing a weekly reflection. I was writing about 1500 words a week, writing out the reflections and emailing them out to people who were interested in hearing me ramble and share my thoughts of the week. That was kind of the kick-off of developing our blog program! Bob Doughtery and I had a meeting in Columbus, Georgia, when I was deployed there in 2018. Right after I got back from Afghanistan, we were actually considering starting the ministry back then. One of our biggest challenges was that we didn't have any bank content to begin to share so we didn't have to go week to week in writing articles. There's a lot of pressure in that, and it was hard as I was also completing Exodus 90. Once you add some of the stuff you removed in your life during Exodus 90 back into your life, it's a challenge to try to live an everyday life again. It's really tough to think about writing or doing anything every week consistently. 

With the pandemic hit in March and back-to-back speaking engagements canceled in Charlotte and Boston, I started doing events online. I began our Holy Happy Hours event with a priest, a woman, and myself. During those events, we would drink and talk about some topics regarding faith. Amid those events, Bob surprised me and created a website, our beta website for Seeking Excellence. Looking back on it, it was not stellar, but we thought it was super badass when we created it. I did my first Holy Happy Hour with Father Brian Nolan and Caroline Owens, and we launched the website to announce it. At the end of the event, we started Instagram, and everything else fell into place at that time. Later that summer, I went to Dan Shannon's parent's house in South Carolina. I had a reflective weekend during the July 4 activities, and I just really praised and thought, "what, Lord, are you calling me to do right now? Is this meant to be more?” I always knew I wanted to start a podcast and host events, and get into coaching and community engagement. My goal has always been to help people understand our Seven Pillars of Excellence on a broad scale because I really think it can impact our world and the Church. 

Marissa and I connected during our first iteration of August 2020. It now officially has turned into the busiest month of the year for us. That was the timeline to kind of get things started, and we got rolling. We didn't really know everything. We didn't know how to get started. We didn't know how to do a podcast. We didn't know how to do anything, really. In the beginning, the team was still figuring out a lot as we went along.

Let's talk about the team! Walk us through how you put together this group of dedicated individuals.

The original three in its very unofficial days were me, Bob Doughtery, and Leeanne Leary. I met Leeanne way back in 2013 when she was a freshman at Mount Saint Mary's University. I was a junior, and we did army ROC together there at the Mount. Leeanne loves editing, writing, and reading; she's very talented and intelligent. Leeanne had edited my blogs since January when I started Exodus 90 and had been helping me with that. Bob had created the original template for us and assisted me with the basic logistical tasks like setting up accounts, figuring out how to draft a newsletter, and getting things rolling out. In July, Marissa and I connected to start revising the official website, and that's when we began to build out the rest of the team. We created the official nonprofit, which at the time, our officers were me, Leeanne, and Lucas Wollschlager. Lucas became the Treasurer, a pseudo business manager, and his role changed over time. He and I go way back to when I interviewed with The Culture Project when I was getting out of the army in 2019. We've grown to be really good friends over that time! I'm going to be in his wedding. He's going to be in mine. Actually, I think all the men who have been involved in the team are a part of my wedding. We had Tori start as one of our blog writers (then Tori Sanders, now Tori Slayman). She married Seth Slayman, who was Initially just our voice of the podcast intro (It is now time to begin… Seeking… Excellence). Seth became the podcast editor, which evolved into him and Tory recording a guest podcast episode once a month, along with our other guest host, Josie Kuhlman. Josie and I met doing the initial Holy Happy Hours; she was one of my first guests. She's just an absolute rock star! I first heard of Josie from my friend Mike Solomon, who told me that he had found the female Nathan Cranfield. So I was really curious to meet this person. We did the Holy Happy Hour together, which was awesome. It was myself, Josie, and Father Chase. A few weeks later, Fr. Chase became our team Chaplain, which has been really great. I met him at Mount Saint Mary's in 2011, probably about ten years ago, which is crazy to think about. And then lastly, aside from the board, Father Jonathan Myer and I go back to November of 2019.

When I started at Dynamic Catholic. I was invited to speak at his Parish, and we just hit it off and then became homies. He's actually going to be officiating Emily and my wedding in March of 2022. The other two board members we have are Bill Baird, a fellow Parish consultant at Dynamic Catholic. Lastly, my dear friend Alessandro DiSanto, the co-founder of the Hallow Catholic Prayer & Meditation App, who is now my boss. Alessandro and I attended high school together; we grew up together in many ways, both physically, emotionally, most importantly, spiritually as our conversions really were kind of simultaneous, even though we were in different places.

The team has been the biggest blessing! Looking back at what we've done this past year, I am incredibly grateful for them. I am thankful for Leeanne and Bob, for getting things started. Marissa's hard work last year and throughout this year of editing the website, changing things, and keeping us on track with everything we're trying to do has been great. Lucas is there, offering his wisdom, guidance, and friendship throughout this journey. It's been a crazy time since we started on the team. We've had two people who have gotten married. Two of us have gotten engaged, one's been in basically the civil war and unrest in Haiti. Then there is myself; I had two significant moves and a torn Achilles, and two job changes. And so I think, you know, there's been a ton of difficulty and adversity that we faced as a team. And so I'm very proud of what we've been able to accomplish as a squad and really look forward to having, God willing, a more stable feature and much more productive and proof of want as well.

The last person who joined the team at the beginning of this summer was Melissa Gunkel, who started as our intern. She's been a gift, an absolute blessing. Melissa reached out to us and offered to help in the time that we just needed additional assistance. As I was preparing to move to Denver, she stepped up and was willing to help Marissa when I would be more absent. Marissa definitely needed more help with her already overwhelming workflow.

An engagement, five time zones (Fun Fact, NO ONE on the team lived in the same area, ever), and over 90+ episodes later of the podcast, what has been the most memorable part of the last year of Seeking Excellence?

The most memorable part? That's a great question. Wow, that's so good! It's hard to really identify what the most amazing part is. I think to say that being affirmed by people you look up to, guys like Bobby Angel or Father Chase & Father Meyer. Yeah. I have had a lot of amazing men and women who have acknowledged the work we are doing. Role models have applauded us for what we've achieved and the goodness of our mission and its uniqueness. I would say that's definitely big, but even more important than that, the people who have committed to listening have been the most rewarding part of this journey. One of my highlights was when my cousin Gavin told me that he has listened to every podcast so far. Hearing that from him and others who are friends from college or high school, or people that I knew way back in the day, or people I barely met when I was at Benedictine would reach out and tell me how much they love the podcast. They love the content we put out on social media; they love the newsletter. I think those are probably all of my highlights, hearing the feedback from those individuals who have been positively impacted by it. A listener said to me just last week that she was really affected by how we discuss finances. She said I never understood some of those basics of budgeting and investing. We've had countless responses regarding our discussion on Black Lives Matter or abortion, and they've never thought of these issues before. Those are the most significant moments when we get to impact the hearts and minds of people because that's genuinely what we set out to do from the beginning. Being able to reflect on those moments, remembering the victories like hitting almost 30,000 podcast plays and the blog views, watching our social media grow, and cherishing the feedback we get from people with the team. I think that is the most fun that we get to have. Our team meetings are always enjoyable; I wish we could have more of them. I really hope we can meet in person soon, but even getting people together just on a Zoom call is always a blast. There will be many highlights from this coming year that'll make it a little bit easier to pick a favorite in 2022. Honestly, getting started and seeing our ministry evolve minimally and slowly has been a gift. It's like when you do a lot of tilling the earth, then developing the soil and God working with each of us on the team to get us ready for what we're doing now. I think that when you see that first tiny green sprout appear, that's kind of what this year has felt like, and that as a whole was my favorite part.

Is there anything that you wish you would have done differently?

Oh, that's good. Yeah. I wish I would have stretched before I played basketball on January 15, 2021 (referring to his massive Achilles injury this year), but I think we would have got a lot more done this year if we could have met in person. You know, it was hard during the pandemic. I do wish I would have prioritized. It was challenging to plan something with the combination of the pandemic plus my injury. I don't know that I could have done this differently, but I think if one thing could have changed the game for the team is if we could have gotten together in person and really established a plan, you know what I mean? 

I wish I would have prioritized more during June during my travels. That would be my one regret or something that I really want to prioritize this coming year. It's just making that team event happen because there's obviously a different synergy and stuff you can reach when you're together in person. I still think we're figuring out roles and responsibilities on the team. Still, I believe that getting together in person, talking about things, dreaming about the future, and strategizing would have been the biggest game-changer for us in this past year. 

Check back on Sunday for Part Two!