"The BELAY relationship is honestly critical. We are seeing the benefit of the relationship with BELAY. Amanda has saved me time. She has made us money. Megan is doing the same thing. [Things] still get done – and get done well and make us money."
— Guy Timberlake, Chief Visionary Officer
The Challenge
Guy and Margaret ‘Maggie’ Timberlake founded the American Small Business Coalition in 2004 — an organization built to empower government contractors and agencies with the knowledge and relationships needed to move forward. But growing GovCon Club from the ground up came with serious growing pains. Guy came from a contractor background; Maggie brought HR expertise. Together, they knew their content deeply — but neither had ever run a professional organization before.
As their membership and programs expanded, so did the operational demands. The couple found themselves stretched thin, unable to scale efficiently without adding capacity. Guy, in particular, had developed a deeply ingrained habit of doing everything himself — a survival instinct born from years of starting at the bottom and working his way up.
“So we knew the content really well, just not the structure. We ended up growing to the point where we needed more of us – more capacity – so that we could actually scale and deliver and be efficient doing those things.”
It was through entrepreneur Michael Hyatt that Guy first learned about BELAY. Having seen how Hyatt used virtual support to grow his own business, Guy reached out — ready to confront what he knew was his biggest obstacle: learning to let go and trust someone else to carry part of the load.
The Solution
BELAY matched Guy with Virtual Assistant Amanda Bussey and immediately put a structured onboarding plan in place. Rather than an overwhelming handoff, Guy and Maggie carefully mapped out what to delegate first — starting with the inbox. Using SaneBox as an automation layer, Amanda learned the names, organizations, and communication rhythms of GovCon Club’s world, building a triage system that kept urgent messages front and center while batching everything else for focused review.
One of the most significant hurdles was allowing Amanda to reply to emails on Guy’s behalf. Guy has a distinct voice — one his clients recognized immediately — and the idea of someone else speaking for him was deeply uncomfortable. But the client responses quickly won him over.
“I was very nervous. I was pushed out of my comfort zone – [but] when I started getting feedback from people about her, they were like, ‘Who is that? She was really awesome.’”
With Amanda’s impact firmly established, Guy and Maggie expanded the relationship by adding BELAY Social Media Manager Megan Oliver to their team. Megan arrived with a fully formed strategy and, within her first 90 days, articulated the GovCon Club brand voice in a way the Timberlakes had never been able to put into words themselves. “She put into words everything that we hadn’t been able to articulate about the brands,” Maggie said. “And that for us was just like, ‘Whoa.’”
"The dream for most people when they create something is that it can last and endure – and I’m no different. I want to be able to create something that survives us, that we can leave for our daughter. And that’s what we’ve been able to do with BELAY."
— Guy Timberlake, Chief Visionary OfficerThe Impact
The results were swift and concrete. Guy’s inbox — which had ballooned to 5,000 unread emails — was reduced to just three. Watching from across the room, Maggie had her own reckoning.
“The a-ha moment for me was Guy’s inbox – which was usually about 5,000 emails – was down to three. And I’m looking at mine that has 500 and I’m like, ‘This is my own doing.’”
On the social media front, Megan delivered equally strong results. LinkedIn grew by 100 followers in just 30 days, with engagement climbing an average of 3–4 percent. For an organization that had operated largely without a formal social strategy, this represented a significant leap in visibility and reach.
Beyond the numbers, BELAY reshaped how Guy thinks about the long-term future of GovCon Club. Having lived through a serious health scare when their daughter was just six months old, Guy had long understood the fragility of a business that depends entirely on its founders. BELAY helped him build toward something more durable.
“I want to be able to create something that survives us, that we can leave for our daughter. And that’s what we’ve been able to do with BELAY.”
And on a personal level, the change was equally profound. With Amanda handling the daily flood of email and communication, Guy was finally able to close his laptop in the evenings — giving him back the one thing no metric can fully capture: time with his family.