Episode 123 - Building with Your Spouse with Bryan and Shannon Miles
Bryan and Shannon Miles are the husband and wife team behind BELAY. Bootstrapping their business with no outside funding, BELAY has generated over $100M in revenues since its beginning and has exploded to over one thousand team members.
Without an office, BELAY has graced the Inc. 5000 list five times and was awarded the number one spot in Entrepreneur Magazine’s Best Company Culture and been featured in several top-tier media outlets over the years.
With a company focused on providing virtual support staffed entirely by people who work from home, we couldn’t think of a better duo to walk us through working under the same roof as your spouse.
Episode Transcript
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Henry Kaestner: Bryan and Shannon, welcome to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Very glad to have you both on the show. Thanks for joining us.
Bryan Miles: Thanks for the opportunity here. We're excited.
Shannon Miles: Yeah, it's good to be here.
Henry Kaestner: Cool. So we can talk all about BELAY and your work there. But first, we want to talk a bit about you and understand who you are, where you come from. How'd you meet? Was it love at first sight or was it business meeting and business conference?
Bryan Miles: We were two very young kids. We met in college in Ohio. I was a junior in college and she was a freshman. And I didn't give her an opportunity to get on the market. I first saw her and thought oh my word. Yeah. So we've been together. We've been married 23 years.
Henry Kaestner: Awesome. Very cool. So the way I understand it, you guys were both in pretty high demand in corporate jobs before sign quit and start your own company back in 2010. So it's been 10 years. What was life like before that? And then what were the steps leading up to this transition that we're gonna be talking about?
Shannon Miles: So, you know, from the time that we met in college, we finished college in Ohio and graduated in the late 90s and moved to the Atlanta area. And that's really where our careers started to take off. We took, you know, two different paths. Friends was more geared in sales and marketing. And mine was more like and legal, a little bit of sales and then project management. So for the 10 years prior to leaving our jobs and starting ballet, I worked for McKesson, which, as you know, global health care company. I worked in the software division and kind of grew up professionally there and had a lot of really cool experiences. And I think that's where God laid the foundation for the skill set needed to eventually lead that organization and start ballet.
Bryan Miles: I worked for church construction company that was based in Ohio and I led a sales team of 10 folks and we basically worked with churches all over the U.S. to either build or renovate their space. And I did that for seven years before we started her company.
Henry Kaestner: So you guys are in Ohio. You've been kind of cryptic about where in Ohio, I think about Ohio is the center for ice cream production in the United States, because you've got two incredibly, you got Jennies and we've got Graters. What are you in North Carolina? You say are you Duke fan or Carolina fan? What's the best ice cream in Ohio?
Shannon Miles: Well, Jenny's, I think, for sure. Let me clarify, in all due respect to anybody who lives in Ohio or is from there, I like to say it's a great place to be from because we've been in Atlanta for the last 20 years and it's become our home, but definitely like great salt of the earth. You know, I come from a farming background with my father's side of the family as to just hardworking people. But in terms of ice cream, Jenny's 100%.
Henry Kaestner: That's OK. All right. OK, that's good to know. Does that mean that you're from northern Ohio as opposed to southern Ohio? Is that betrayed a geography?
Bryan Miles: No, actually, central. We met in college at Mount Vernon, which is a north of Columbus.
Henry Kaestner: OK, good. All right. Off ice cream. Back to BELAY. Give us some insights into the early days of BELAY and in a lot of people asking to know what Belay is. So just tell us what BELAY is and then the early days, please.
Bryan Miles: Sure. So we found in starting our business that it's really hard for entrepreneurs especially to find really great people and then help to scale their business. And so at Ballay, that's essentially what we do. We help our clients climb higher through four core services, which are virtual assistants, bookkeepers who can do payroll, social media strategist and then Web site solutions, folks. So those four core services, we come alongside a business owner to help them navigate really the administrative side, their business and do all those things that really they need to offload so they can stay focused on their business card.
Henry Kaestner: Good. So how did it start? What's the origin story? I understand you come out of these more corporate backgrounds, diverse backgrounds, but what was the problem that you saw, the opportunity that you kind of leaned into? And what was it like starting off, you know, as you put together your first couple of customers?
Shannon Miles: Yeah. So rewind 10 years back in 2010 and I'm working for McKesson. My last role was in program management there. Brian was in that sales job for the church construction company. So he was on the road all the time, too much like five days a week traveling. Our daughter was five. Our son was two. And, you know, I think just professionally, as you grow, you just kind of do what you have to do for the job.
But I think it just got to a point where his travel became way more than our family could bear. And in my career, it's pretty demanding, too. And for the first time in my tenure there. There was no next step for me. And I felt like for a lot of different reasons, God was moving me in a totally different direction. And so we sort of both got to this place of unrest in the spring of 2010, and we'd always kind of dreamed about having our own business, but didn't 100 percent know what that should look like. And so we started talking about what could be, you know, if we put our. And went in and started a company together.
And so the idea of what we were ended up being BELAY and is still today was the work that Brian was doing with his virtual assistant, which we didn't call it that at the time, was just his assistant. But she was in Charlotte and we were here in Atlanta. And it's like, man, you know, we get so much work done and we work so well together. We're growing this organization. What if we could find resources based in the U.S. that come alongside at that time as pastors? But eventually now business owners and other leaders to provide these services, we could really like elevate this industry that was pretty much in its infancy. So that's the genesis of like what we decided to go to market with in the summer of that year. Got our, you know, company organization in place and all that are still working other jobs kind of side hustling to start this thing and decided that, you know, October 1st of that year we would go to our employers and give our notices to quit our jobs and cash in our 401ks and go all in on BELAY, that we spent next couple months wrapping up those obligations in case BELAY failed.
Bryan Miles: Yeah, we wanted to finish well, just in case this crazy idea didn't work.
Shannon Miles: So, yeah, that's kind of how it started to me. Mark, December 1st and that when all the chips were on the table were all in on this business.
Henry Kaestner: So let me get this straight. So it's 2010 because that's when BELAY started and you cashed out your 401ks. 401ks are meant to be for retirement. Right?
Bryan Miles: And so it turned out that's the case.
Henry Kaestner: 2010 is also probably not the best economy ever. Yeah. So there's some amount of risk of you guys kind of jumping off together, right?
Bryan Miles: Yeah. So during that season, friends and family kind of thought we were nuts because, you know, we were raised around folks that, you know, you get a job, you start really kind of putting away retirement. So forth. But people that we talked to that were wildly successful in business, we told them this idea and they were like, you should do this. So unemployment at the time was nine point six percent, you know, just nine point six percent.
But we just felt like the time was right to strike. And then there was also a book that happened a couple years before called The Four Hour Workweek. And in that book, you really pointed to all overseas solutions. But there weren't really any key domestic players here in the US and we thought that that could be a key differentiator for us. So while it was very risky and we had a few dark days, our business got, you know, into the black. Within 14 months of starting.
William Norvell: Well, that's great. I'm not a certified financial planner, but I do believe cash out your 401k is not part of the plan. I don't think that's in the top advice thing. So that's respect. We love financial planners, but sometimes the wrong, obviously. Okay. So go into this family perspective. So you've not only gone in and start a business together, you've cashed out all your money together. You know, equally yoked seems to be an understatement at this point. Tell us about doing that. What worked? What didn't? What are some of the ways being married to your co-founder works and doesn't? Walk us through that a little bit.
Shannon Miles: Yeah. I mean, let me just say record for the audio. We love Dave Ramsey, love Financial Peace University. They're a huge supporter of BELAY, all that. We are not recommending that anybody cash is in their 401ks, but it was the best way that we could find to fund this thing.
Bryan Miles: So let's just unpack that briefly. A lot of the reason, what we uncovered after the fact was that you have to have a third party to administrate an esop essentially, which means day one, you're a C corp, which if you're successful in that environment, you don't want to have it. ESOP established, you have to unwind that. And so that was very costly, very expensive for us. After about five years into our business, we had to unpack that and unwind that legally. So there's just other ways, I would say, if you're really going to do it, although I don't advise it to take the hit. And then just do it. You need to do with it. But for us, it worked at the time. We don't recommend it today. But we didn't want to ask people for money either. We wanted to really kind of go all in on our concept or idea. That's just our story.
Shannon Miles: So back to the, you know, husband and wife working together because we had all that financial burden, right? Like we took all this retirement. We cut our salaries in half. Our kids were super young. Those early days were hard. They were really hard. We remember, you know, arguing about finances and how we going to pay the mortgage and every sale mattered. So we would take on opportunities that eventually weren't good for the core of our business.
We you know, we just tried really hard in those early days to remind ourselves why we decided to take this risk to begin with. It's because we wanted a different future for our family. We wanted to be able to have freedom and autonomy in our work eventually and how to keep going back to that. And there was one time early on in the business, we were just buried in all this stress and pressure and. You remember a contract that we saw and it was like kind of a big deal at the time. It's over like, oh, forget it. Let's just go out to a really nice dinner and sub test, even if it seems irresponsible. So we had to remind ourselves, like, hey, first for husband and wife. And we've got this long term vision that the business is here to support, not us, you know, supporting the business.
Bryan Miles: Yeah. Early struggle is early struggle for a reason. And a lot of business owners never kind of break through that for us. You know, we worked really hard to communicate with each other. The other big thing for us, working together as a couple is we're two entirely different people. We're two entirely different leaders. And the first year we had to kind of work through that. And then the first couple years. But now we know the lanes that we need to remain. And from a leadership standpoint, and then we default to each other and those other areas. So it just works really well when you understand the strengths and the weaknesses in the person you're married to. This also, you know, 50/50 with you in the business.
William Norvell: And you mentioned a couple of kids as well. You know, just thinking about that some time. That's a lot, you know, and sort of taking all that up. Tell us a little about sharing those responsibilities and then walking through raising a family in the midst of building a business together.
Bryan Miles: To be honest, those ages that kind of felt like the fog of war for me. I'm glad it took a lot of pictures because I don't remember all a lot, to be honest. But what did happen, which was really great, was that especially my son, because I travel so much. I really started to develop a relationship with him because I was just home and I could be around him and I could see him responding really well to me as a dad. And so that was a huge blessing. Just right out the gate.
Shannon Miles: Yeah. I mean, they were so young when we got started. You know, all they needed to know that they were taking care of. But as they got older and I don't know if we've mentioned this yet, but Ballay is a completely distributed, 100 percent remote organization. So we've always worked from our home as well. So the integration of family and business is part of our everyday life. So we would sit down at the dinner table with the kids and talk about our days. You know, a lot of it was what's going on at Boulay and what are our challenges, what are our opportunities. And so we just wanted to have those discussions appropriately so with them to help them understand business. And using the examples is like teaching opportunities. And it's really fun now that they're older. You know, our daughter just entered high school on our side middle school, like they understand the business and they understand, you know, leadership principles and customer acquisition.
And we talked about P&L is like I just I'm sure they'll go to therapy someday. Like, I'm just going to assume that's going to happen. But hopefully it won't be because mom and dad sacrificed themselves for that business. Hopefully we've used this as a teaching opportunity for them.
William Norvell: Yeah, I mean, I'm in and therapy's a great thing. And now we all need it. I enjoy it. OK. So I want to shift to this. So you've mentioned the business a little bit. Let's let's go there. You mentioned the virtual assistants didn't really exist. We've kind of hinted around. That's what you all do. Walk us through the general view of the virtual assistant marketplace at the time you started the business. And give us a little bit of how it's grown and and what the organization looks like today.
Bryan Miles: Sure. Obviously, Belay, our virtual sister service line, is our largest of the four service lines. That's what we started with in about a month after we started. We created a bookkeeping service line because we just realized that that was a giant need. But it's two different types of skill sets. And so we added bookkeeping within a month of us starting our virtual assistant service line at the time. Most of what we were up against competitively was organizations that were based overseas. And because we decided early on to be really Nichi, we focused on pastors in the U.S. because that was my network. That's who I knew. And so as we built that out, what we came to, the realization was actually more people than just pastors could use the service. And we had a kind of like an Oprah moment about nine months into our business where Michael Hyatt became a customer of ours and he started saying really nice things about us in the market. And we went from one tiny niche to 30 different verticals really quick. And that scale is. And then we realized that our business could be broad and deep, meaning we could work with small startups to large billion dollar corporations. And so we've worked really hard while we're pretty industry specific today. We still are very broad in terms of the markets that we serve, including non-profits. So with that, from a competitor standpoint, there's three ways really around virtual assistance that we see the versus our model, which is this relationship based model where you're assigned an assistant that works with a company or works with a leader or department, and they're integrated in just like they're part of the team. Sometimes this is referred to as employment leasing. It just happens that our folks are virtual. They all are in the U.S. The next way that you can kind of go after this is the marketplace. And those are like the other works of the world or the folks that create marketplaces change where you're bringing folks together. And then the final way is really kind of task based, which is more like, I don't really know you. I'm putting some. It's a piece of software that's being lobbed over to some cubicle based somewhere, and they're just grinding out the task, but there's not a relationship involved. So that's really the three ways that our industry has emerged, that we've just decided that we want to go deep and build meaningful relationships and that that model has really worked for us as a domestic player.
William Norvell: Absolutely. And so to timestamped this little bit, you know, by God's grace, these podcasts live forever. So, you know, people come back to him over time. But we are recording this during the global pandemic, the COVID crisis right now. And so as are many of our listeners will be listening to it, unfortunately, while this is still going on. Walk us through your business. What does it look like right now? It's been an extraordinary time for many, but I love hearing the specifics around specific businesses.
Shannon Miles: I mean, like a lot of business owners we've talked to, we were forecasting our best year ever and 2020 like we're flying high. And then, you know, mid-March happen and we serve a lot of small businesses. And so they were immediately impacted by things shutting down and losing their revenue. And it was a trickle down effect to us to a certain extent. That was hard. It was hard to see our customer suffering and having to make fairly hard decisions about what to move forward with. But now that we're a few months out from that, we've been able to actually rebound from that initial hit. And we're now acquiring clients who never would have become part of the Ballay team because they now know how to work from home and they know that it's probably a model that's going to sustain for their companies. So they're looking toward organizations like ours for resources that know how to do this and do it well.
Bryan Miles: Now, we've fully recovered on our loss. So we had about a four month hiccup in our business, but we are above where we were now starting mid-March and growing. So by the end of the year, we'll be around 15 percent growth for the year, which we're really happy with considering we're in a global pandemic.
Rusty Rueff: That's really cool. I mean, it's it's it's amazing to hear the stories of those who, you know, we're looking for the future and the future came to them even in a time of crisis. Right. So you ended up in the right place at the right time. I should note that I was actually on a board with Michael Hyatt. So your virtual assistants made him look way better than he really is administratively, that's for sure. That is for sure. I'm going to pivot back to the relationship and how the two of you made it work. And particularly, I want to go back to the beginning a little bit about division of responsibilities. And then as the company grew, I mean, was it easier or harder to divide responsibilities? And how did you define those swim lanes as the company got bigger?
Bryan Miles: Well, today, just kind of you know, you heard our origin story. But today, just for perspective, we're now the co-chairs of our board. And we actually appointed a CEO that runs BELAY, who actually was my assistant from when we before we started our company. And so she now runs the business day to day four.
Rusty Rueff: Was she virtual when she started?
Bryan Miles: Yeah.
Shannon Miles: Yeah. We've never had an office. Yeah, yeah. Everybody works from home on the BELAY team.
Bryan Miles: And so to answer your question, we've had to give away parts of who we are as leaders over and over and over again to grow and scale our business because the business kind of required it. But in the early days and think we I'm very much the rubber meets the sky. And she's very much the rubber meets the road.
And so for the two of us, it just really worked well together. It didn't mean that we didn't disagree or have moments like, come on, time out. You know, I don't understand you. But, you know, she's just really gifted in leadership in ways that I'm not and vice versa. And so we really did find early on quick defaults to each other in that sense. And then we did something very practical, which is we instituted a owner meeting every Thursday without fail. We just did it. And it worked out because then we could parking lot things to that Thursday meeting or we could review schedules. We just gave ourselves that. And we'd do that today, even, you know, like tomorrow morning. We'll have one today. Yeah.
Shannon Miles: To your point there on like the roles and responsibilities we've had to redraw those lines a lot in our business, not just because we're husband and wife, but because I Brian said we have a mantra at BELAY of place herself. I always find the next leader who can do what you're doing so that you can evolve with the organization. And so we've both held the roles of CIO. We've both held the roles of CEO. We co shared that role last year. And so we just sort of tried to flow with the business and what was needed while recognizing that the title's more as important for he and I, especially as it was like, what leaders are we developing? How are we finding ways to replace ourselves so that eventually we can sit in this owner box?
Rusty Rueff: I've actually never heard that term rubber meets the sky, but if Elon Musk is listening, he just had a new business idea. There's got to be something in that. So you mentioned earlier that you brought your kids into it and the conversation around the table has been business, business, business a lot. And my wife and I used to work together when we first met at PepsiCo and we had a rule, had a set of rules that said we never talked about business when we were horizontal because we had to set some kind of boundary. And that was the only boundary we could really come up with. No talking about work when you're horizontal. But I'm believing that the two of you have to set some boundaries, too. Right. You can't talk about it 24/7. Give us an insight into how you set those boundaries.
Shannon Miles: So the horizontal line is very interesting. Haven't ever adopted the habit. I can see the value there. You know, for us, we don't set hard and fast office hours or don't talk about business after 10 o'clock kind of thing. I do think, though, we've both given ourselves permission to say, I can't talk about this right now. Like, I just I've had enough. I've had a really long day, long week, whatever. And it's important what you want to talk about now. But can we table it until. And that has worked really well for us. And we've both hit those lids at different times. And I think we find them more frequently when it's a particularly stressful time in the business. And now, like Brian said this Thursday, meetings are super helpful because we have time set aside where we know we're going to talk about the business. It's not just, you know, I'm making dinner and, hey, let's talk about it. It's like it could probably wait. And so we probably are a little bit more leaning toward family time now just based on our positions that we sent in. I mean, what would you say to that?
Bryan Miles: I agree with you. And I think that we made this business not to help our marriage along. We did this for our family and to grow our family and to develop meaningful assets for our family. And these things work for our family, not the other way around. So we've always oriented to say that these are assets that God has given us that will steward for a season the time, but they're there to basically prop up us, not the other way around. So we're just not consumed by the business or the businesses that we're involved in now. We just refuse to do that. I think that we have a pretty good balance in place, but that, you know, especially we you're starting a company area and early struggle. It's so consuming and overwhelming that you have to constantly fight to keep that balance in your business that, you know, it's the same thing. Like we tell young parents is like, hey, you know, these kids are coming into your universe, not the other way around. The same thing. Like, we didn't make this business so we could become a slave to it and hate it. We made this business to better ourselves and to better our situation in life, you know, to the point of working at home.
Rusty Rueff: And you've been doing this for a while. I was reading something the other day that, you know, we used to call it the cottage industry before the Industrial Revolution, where people worked out of their homes. They were crafts people. And maybe we're not old enough to remember. But in my vague memory, you know, doctors used to work out of their homes. Right. And dentists work out of their homes and they would go to lunch, you know, back with their family. And it was very almost porous, you know, to have that relationship. But now we're all kind of being forced to work at home again. And so many people are struggling with it. So you've been after it now for a decade. You've got to have some lessons and learnings that you could pass along to those that are struggling, especially entrepreneurs who were thinking that the world was outside of my apartment or my home or my garage. Right. The day I got out of my garage is the day I'm no longer having to struggle. Give us some of those lessons.
Bryan Miles: Yeah. In 2017, Entrepreneur magazine ranked us as number one in company culture. And on that list of the 50 other organizations, we were the only one that didn't have an office. And so we got a lot of notoriety about how in the world did you land number one on the spot. And it was all third party administrated. So I wrote a book called Virtual Culture. And we talk about like the meaningful ways in which we let our culture to a place that it was not only award winning, but very efficient, very effective organization. And then fast forward to March 16th of this year when the road, at least in the U.S., came to a screeching halt.
Bryan Miles: We took that opportunity because a lot of media called on us to say, like, hey, how in the world do we do this? You name the top tier media. We had interviews and we talked to them about how, OK, this is how you do this. And in a lot of it, kind of centered around extending grace, like recognizing that you're now a teacher or recognizing that your spouse may be home with you, or recognizing that your employees may be struggling at home and they don't have an actual legitimate. So we spent a lot of time to say the best thing you can do as a leader is to extend grace and to be there for your team as best you can. And they give yourself some grace as well. But that was one common theme that we saw that was kind of missing, was that some people had these ridiculous expectations on people that weren't going to work from home for the first time. And so grace was definitely warranted in that.
Shannon Miles: Yeah. I mean, just high level, I think this has been the most difficult time to try to figure out how to work from home, because a lot of kids are home now, too. Normally wouldn't be. And some of the things that we always have recommended for, you know, views that are contracting with that's our bookkeeper's or whatever is have a dedicated workspace in your home. Minimize distractions. Set work hours, you know, time block. All of that stuff is great when you know that your kids are going to be in school from nine to four. Right. But a lot of us don't have that luxury right now. And so back to Brian's point of grace. I think you can still strive for those things, but you also have to anticipate some flexibility there, too, when, you know, March happened and everything started falling off the cliff.
One of the things that our team at BELAY ran to was creating resources for this very situation because we weren't really marketing as we traditionally were. Have we pivoted? And there are actually some really good practical free resources at our Web site that can help people who are either leaders leading from home for the first time, individuals working from home for the first time, people who are working from home with kids in different age groups. So there are some super practical things that you can do to make this successful. But big picture, I don't think working from home is going anywhere. I think whether you get back into the office full time or it's a hybrid or you never go back. And I still think that there is a lot to figure out here. And I think it's worth a leaders investment to know how to lead themselves well from home as well as their teams.
Bryan Miles: Yes, I think what organizations are finally realizing our business owners are actually telling us is that they're realizing now that offices are not culture like a physical location. It's not culture is shared vision. And the more that you can really kind of say this is why we exist and here's our values. And it has nothing to do with the physical location that's actually helping organizations move out of this much quicker.
Rusty Rueff: So as you built this culture that was recognized. Take us through how your faith shows up in that culture and how your faith has shaped the direction of BELAY.
Bryan Miles: Yeah. So from minute one, we've always believed that we were stewards of this business, that it was ours for a season, a time not forever, and that we were accountable to God in this process, that we'd own this company and we'd be a good steward of it. We go to 80 Staley's church in Atlanta. I mean, he's beat that at our heads over minute one from us sitting there 20 years ago until now. And we just really believe that that this is really God's business and that we're stewarding it for a season of the time. So our job isn't to make a decision that we think is 50 years or announce it right now while we own it and who we are and how we beat it to be the best stewards possible. We do that with really all the assets where we have a stake in something as we owners for a season at a time. It's all temporary and we're accountable.
Shannon Miles: And I think God really cares about how you treat his people, his children. And so we've tried really hard to treat our team really well. Our clients were like, well, our contractors really well. And those who will never partner with me, you know, to look at every end encounter as an opportunity to leave somebody a little better off. And that's a practical way of how our faith has played out. And, you know, trying to find opportunities to incorporate guide before we can, you know, praying before meetings. And God's had our core values. And it can be tricky, though, as a business owner to have that claim. And then there's a certain, I guess, perspective that people will assign to you or assume that you're going to interact in a certain way and it's coming conflict a little bit. But most of what we've found is that our proclamation of our faith or our business has been a litmus test for people to decide if they want to work for us or not. And we've always been OK with that. And I think God has shown up in some really miraculous ways in the business. And to Brian's point, we just tried to support those opportunities.
William Norvell: That's great. Thank you so much for talking through that. And as we unfortunately come to a close, one of the things we love to do on exactly that is see how God's word can weave itself through our guests and our listeners. And so the last question we love to ask is, if you wouldn't mind sharing with us where God has you. In his word, it could be something you read this morning, could be something you been meditating on for the season. Could be anything around there. But just where my God be taking you. And if you'd be so kind to share that journey with our listeners, that be great.
Bryan Miles: Yeah, I'll start for me. But your second Timothy one seven that God didn't give the spirit of fear, but of power, love and soul, mind, and especially the season where there seems to be a lot of fear, an unknown as just kind of reflecting on that versus. Really seeing like, wow, if God didn't give us a spirit of fear, well, it came from somewhere. And just acknowledging that and then moving past that to say, OK, well, but it's, you know, of sound mind, especially, you know, of course, love and devastating grace sound mind like staying focused and keeping your mind set on those things. You know, that to me has been a really powerful verse in this season of coded. But, you know, I was actually journaling on that verse earlier this week. You know, just a great one. Then I go to just to kind of remind myself.
Shannon Miles: And for me, I've been reading different passages on Courage. A lot of songs right now because it is kind of scary times and be courageous and step out there. You know, there's obviously all of the covered stuff, but there's a lot of social unrest right now that so with a platform trying to think through. Like, what's the best way to handle that? And just seeking out verses and, you know, illustrations in the Bible around current has been really helpful for me.
William Norvell: Amen. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you so much for taking time. I mean, especially as you do work from home. So we know this is work time. We can see behind you. And we're just really grateful for you sharing your story. We're grateful for the work you've done in the marketplace. And we're grateful that you're continuing to love people during this time and get them jobs.
You know, I think you talked about that, but. And just my personal experience, just the dignity of work. And then when I have been stripped of that during different seasons of my life, how I've felt and how I have not felt a beloved child of God during those seasons. And for you all to provide that to people that once probably wouldn't have had it without your organization is really remarkable.
Shannon Miles: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Rusty Rueff: And thanks for adding another dimension to the importance of marriage. Right. That, you know, two people can be yoked together and work together. And I think that, you know, there are those that are very, very fearful of that. And you're a shining example of how it can work. So we really appreciate that.