"I love the adaptability of my BELAY contracts. I'm able to say, 'OK, here's a space that we're going to be stepping into in the next several months [where] I could use your support.' And then I have the ability to increase the hours if the opportunity needs more hours."
— Tim Schurrer, CEO
The Challenge
Tim Schurrer, CEO of David Novak Leadership, faced a tension familiar to growth-minded leaders: a big, ambitious vision backed by a deliberately lean team. After a decade running StoryBrand alongside Donald Miller — managing a staff of 30 full-time employees — Tim took a fundamentally different approach at his new organization, building a core team of just four. The goals, however, had not scaled down with the headcount. They were, in his words, "big and ambitious."
Adding traditional full-time hires felt like the wrong answer. The organization's needs were shifting too quickly to commit to fixed roles, and the overhead and risk of growing headcount didn't match how Tim envisioned operating.
"To take the risk of bringing on a bunch of full-time employees is actually a risk that I don't really want to take, because our business needs are constantly changing."
Compounding the challenge was ramp time. Even a strong hire can take three to six months to reach full productivity — a delay a lean team simply cannot absorb. Meanwhile, Tim found himself consumed by the accumulation of small, relentless tasks: the 15-minute to-dos that individually seem manageable but collectively swallow entire working days. As he recognized plainly:
"There is more work on your plate than you are able to get done, and that's not going away. That is just how it is going to be. What do you do about that? You can either reduce the potential impact that you might be able to make, or you can get some help."
Tim chose to get help. And he didn't stop at one.
The Solution
Tim turned to BELAY and committed fully to the model. Today, he relies on three BELAY Virtual Assistants to support the work of David Novak Leadership each week. What drew him to the partnership wasn't just the caliber of the talent — it was the structural flexibility that BELAY's contract model makes possible.
Unlike traditional hiring, BELAY's arrangement allowed Tim to scale support up or down as the business evolved, matching capacity to opportunity rather than locking into fixed overhead. That adaptability proved immediately valuable:
"I love the adaptability of my BELAY contracts. I'm able to say, 'OK, here's a space that we're going to be stepping into in the next several months [where] I could use your support.' And then I have the ability to increase the hours if the opportunity needs more hours."
The onboarding experience also exceeded Tim's expectations. BELAY dramatically compressed the typical ramp time, relieving him of the time-intensive process of staffing and getting new team members productive.
"What I love about what's happened at BELAY is they're actually able to make that happen even faster. The amount of time that I am now spending trying to staff has dramatically decreased. I love that so much."
With his Virtual Assistants taking consistent ownership of the tasks that had been pulling him away from high-value work, Tim was freed to concentrate on what only he could do: strategy, vision, relationships, and the opportunities that move David Novak Leadership forward.
"These people love saying yes. They are enthusiastically there to support whatever it is that you need them to do. And what I'm able to do is spend more time on the business: the opportunities, the strategy, the vision. As a CEO, that's exactly what I need to be spending my time doing."
— Tim Schurrer, CEOThe Impact
The effect of the BELAY partnership on Tim's leadership has been immediate and tangible. The 15-minute tasks that once accumulated into hours are now handled by his Virtual Assistants — consistently and enthusiastically. As Tim describes it:
"There are so many of these 15-minute tasks that I just cannot possibly keep up with. They do all of that, and it allows me to focus on certain things that only I can do, where my greatest strength and opportunity are. I get to focus on that while all these other things are also being done."
More broadly, BELAY provides what Tim sees as organizational leverage: the ability to expand capacity without expanding fixed costs, to move into new opportunities with capable people already in place, and to access exceptional talent without the overhead of a larger full-time team. The partnership has become a structural pillar of how David Novak Leadership operates and grows.
"I still get really great talent, really great people, and yet I don't have to focus all of my time and attention in that space. I leave it to the experts."
For Tim Schurrer — a CEO whose entire mission is developing better leaders — modeling strong time stewardship matters deeply. His summary of what BELAY delivers is direct:
"My Virtual Assistant gives me momentum."For a leader with a big vision and a lean team, that momentum makes all the difference.