Saying Yes to All of God’s Opportunities - Corey Alderin

00:01 - Speaker 1 I know how much people in the church work, how hard they work. I'm very involved in my church and I get to see a lot. I work very closely with a lot of the staff at my church in different ways and friends with them, and I know how much they work and I know how much that work can take them away from big, impactful personal stuff. That really the church is there for right, and so I think, with the technology expanding so much, there's just a great opportunity to leverage it more. Hey everyone, my name is Corey Alderin. I am one of the founders and the CEO of Sermon Shots. Sermon Shots is a platform that repurposes your sermon. It uses your sermon to turn it into all kinds of different content and just helps make it more efficient, time-saving, but allows you to also have the complete flexibility of designing things the way you want. This is my Faithly Story. 00:55 - Speaker 2 Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at faithlyco. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry. On the Faithly Stories podcast. 01:37 - Speaker 3 Could you tell me how your faith journey started so? 01:41 - Speaker 1 I grew up in a Christian house so, very fortunate for that, grew up going to church, saved at a young age, always been part of the church from as early as I can remember. I, going into college, moved away, went to college for four years and progressively just kind of got away from church, not necessarily because I was like against it. Just being in college and all the things about being living on your own just kind of took me away from that. And after going to college I met my wife in Chicago. First I moved out there for my job. 02:26 A few months after college, probably about two weeks after moving there, I met my current wife and we, just within a few weeks that, started going to church together there in Chicago and from then on just kind of progressively got more and more involved in the church and back into things and since then just been super involved in church in all kinds of different ways. But that's my I don't know two minute quick journey. Where'd you go to school? Iowa State University. So I went there. I chose there because I wanted to be an architect but very soon realized that it wasn't for me and ended up switching to statistics. 03:07 - Speaker 3 My architect. 03:08 - Speaker 1 friends call it architorture I heard all the torture stories and I was, like you know, I thought this was a good idea, but I'm not sure if I'm really committed, and so this sounds like too much for me. I heard that that sort of work helps really filter out the people that aren't really committed, and it worked for me, got me out. 03:27 - Speaker 3 So what was it about college that, like, made you kind of get distracted with your faith? 03:33 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably all those things right. It's living on my own, no longer like I get to make all the decisions. Now, probably the friend group that I was really in that just wasn't their thing at all and so, uh, never really had somebody to be like, hold me accountable to that party scene. Sure, I mean that you know off college staying up late and not wanting to wake up early Sunday morning, right, um? 03:59 so all those things for sure, I will say one, oh uh, one thing. I, the one thing that, just like I feel like, has kind of held me connected, though so I was always one to study a lot, so I, I worked hard in school and my roommates were very loud most of the time, and the one way that I helped drowned everything out was listening to music, and I didn't have any sort of fancy thing. The only I had one radio station that was able to work, and it was the local Christian radio, and so I listened to that all the time while I was studying, and so that was the one thing that just kind of kept me there. And to this day now I don't know if it's because of that, but to this day now, every time I work and I need something to like really focus. That's what I do Headphones on Christian music and play in the background, and helps me really stay focused on what I'm working on. 04:52 - Speaker 3 I'm exactly like that. I only listen to Christian music, but like when I'm working I'm not really. It's like background music and so I'm so used to it. 05:00 - Speaker 1 Yep, yep, it's like it, just it. It just really sets me up to be able to really focus. But yeah, I never. I listened to it, you know, five hours a day. I couldn't tell you much about the people, or I couldn't say the names of the songs or anything, cause it's just in the background, but all the time. 05:14 - Speaker 3 So what was it about Chicago that made you want to go back to church? 05:17 - Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I would say, probably a combination of things, but I finally had the one person that was actually like a little bit more accountability than I ever I ever had, right, um, it it wasn't hard. I just like it was just like a conversation of like we should, we should, go find a church. I was like, yeah, we should, wasn't hard. I just never had that in college. Um and so, yeah, just it was pretty simple. 05:42 - Speaker 3 How long into your dating were you like looking for churches together? 05:44 - Speaker 1 testing my memory here, it's been a good uh, 15 years now. Uh, probably not too long. I would say maybe like three months in into it. Uh, it was a. It was a long distance relationship for for a while. So then once she moved into chicago is when it happened. I would say I was like three months in or something like that. 06:05 - Speaker 3 The reason why I ask is because I've never really heard couples in a dating relationship, at least very early on, be like, hey, we should go to the same church together while we're dating, you know. And I think that's a really good idea, because here's the thing If you go to the same church and then you don't work out like do you find different churches, Do you know what I? 06:24 - Speaker 1 mean, yeah, well, to be fair, I probably wasn't thinking that long term, so, at the young age, a lot of short term thinking really, so it's a good point, but it probably wasn't on my mind, probably. What did work out, though, is I had just moved there, and three months, four months later, she just moved to Chicago. Neither one of us were at a church, and you know that was she probably wanted to look for one more, and it just kind of happened in the discussion with me, and so, yeah, and we ended up going to a very big church. So if it didn't work out, we could have been completely, we could have still gone. 07:07 - Speaker 3 So what were some of the criteria for you guys looking for churches? 07:09 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so, recalling this, trying to recall from memory, I think we definitely attract, we were attracted to the big, you know mega church, just because of in your words, glitz and glamour, I mean it was. In your words, glitz and glamour, I mean it was. I believe we had, we had heard about the church before from people and so it was just like go try it out, and so that that was. I don't remember that being a difficult thing. It was just like this is one of the big churches in the area, let's go try it out. And I believe the first week we went they had some announcement about the 20 somethings group getting together that day, uh, right after church. If you're in that, you should go. And so we did. We went to that. 07:56 Not my thing at all, I am, um, I am an introvert, not my thing. So, um, if I wasn't there with my now wife, I would not have gone. But that's her thing, she's an extrovert. And so we went and right away I don't know what it was the person leading it Shout out to she's now she's. We were in small group and everything together. Her name's Devin Klein and she works at glue. Now she was a huge part of connecting us. We just connected with her right there. She got us involved and I don't know what she said or what she did, but we ended up being a small group with her from that and just connected really well and so stayed at that church for, uh, a long time so what was it about your wife that like drew you to her? 08:42 yeah, um, I man, you're really testing my memory on all these things like, uh, so where we met, so my, uh, my roommate at the time just moved to chicago. My roommate who I knew from college. He had been in chicago for a while looking for a roommate, his he was dating someone and this was my now wife's good friend. So she came up to visit her and I think we joke now because I say that my first impression of her was that she was stuck up that's just me at a young age, not reading people. Well, and we just we spent like the whole weekend together because she was up there and just remember thinking that like this was somebody that I was very interested in over time Not from my first impression of her, of course she was. She was nice and easy to talk to and we just stayed connected after that weekend, had a few phone calls and, yeah, went from there. 09:45 - Speaker 3 So what was it about the first impression that made you feel that way? And the reason why I ask is because, for anyone who's afraid that they messed up on the first impression, not like your story is like, it's okay, it'll work out. 09:58 - Speaker 1 Yeah, well, if it was the first impression and I left and I walked away, it probably would have never worked out. 10:05 But yeah, I mean, in relationships everywhere I've had this experience with like just first impressions or can be can be tricky because I think different people I always feel like like I give off horrible first impressions because I am an introvert, I'm not huge at like being the first one to talk and sometimes I give off a not a great first impression. 10:30 But I think that in my experience, most of the time you can learn who the real person is like just by you know, talking to them a few more, a few more times, having more conversation with them. There's a lot of different personality types and I think some don't quite match in the first impression, at least in my experience. So that was it when my wife and I got married, or before we got married, part of one of the things that we had to do, the pastor had us take these personality tests and it confirmed a lot of what we knew then and to this day, where personalities are very different, we were told by the pastor that ours is the most different from any one that he's ever married, and so that probably contributes a bit to not great first impression. 11:21 - Speaker 3 Even in just this 10 minute conversation, I see God's humor in your life. In college, the only way to save you is to listen to like Christian music. The only way to get you to church is to get you to date a girl that you didn't initially like and so now you're like yeah, that's great. 11:36 - Speaker 1 I hadn't thought about it that way, but that's a good point. 11:38 - Speaker 3 So how did you go from your first job to sermon shots, because I'm pretty sure there was like many years in between yeah, well, my first job out of college was working in the marketing team of a pharmaceutical company. 11:51 - Speaker 1 I did things what you know. I had a statistics degree, so I did different, a lot of quantitative stuff like forecasting and quantitative analysis of you know, surveys and things like that. I'd say probably about. I worked there for about seven years. I would say probably somewhere in the like three to five years. Being there. I just I actually love my job, but I always felt like I wanted to do something on my own, like really, you know the, the, the cap when you work at a huge company. I mean, theoretically I could continue to go up, but I mean there's a certain cap, right, and I just always wanted to have like control of being able to like kind of manage my, my growth more, lead a business, do something interesting like that, and so for a few different years, for a few years while I was working there, I did some things on the side at night, like before I had kids. I could do different things. I was testing out stuff and lots of failures, lots of things that did not work out. But I I started through one of the businesses One of my businesses that I started that failed was creating Christian t-shirts and what I did in that to try to market that was. 13:10 I built a Facebook page thinking that that would help Right, and I built that with with somebody else. It's called Christian quotes and it just it took off. It was a daily quote in an image back when Facebook pages if you built a page that had a lot of following, it actually was impactful. Everybody saw your posts. That grew to about five million people very, very early in the Facebook page world and that was able to help me kind of get to it. That was the first thing that was kind of successful. I was able to build a website around it and advertising and all that stuff and that helped me meet my current uh business partner. Together we he had a business in the christian niche as well and we kind of combined and so let's combine our two things. He had a website what christians want to knowcomi had this Christian Quotes Facebook page and together we were like let's build something new. And so we were building websites together and thought that one was successful. We'll keep building these and keep going. 14:16 But eventually we realized each new one didn't have the same. It was becoming easier and easier for the masses to produce this content, and so it was harder and harder to make money off of it. Advertising revenue was going down, as you know, everybody was going into Facebook and advertising there, and so basically my partner and I were thinking about what we wanted to do next, and software seemed like the thing that was the bigger potential in business, and Through some failed things there as well, one of my biggest learnings was it's really hard to find a developer to code your stuff the way you want to. You might get a few good months out of them and then they're gone, and through that happening multiple times, I was like I'm interested in this, I'm going to teach myself how to code. So I taught myself how to code to then build the next project that we had. That project was BookBrush. It's bookbrushcom it's a design platform for authors has has been very successful and has really been what led me into Sermon Shots. It helped fund Sermon Shots. It taught me a lot to be able to then launch. 15:33 But at one point again, my partner and I had a discussion of. Bookbrush is doing well enough, we don't need two owners in it a hundred percent of the time. And so through that we we realized we wanted to help the church. We, we felt like we were being called to help the church in some way. Take what we've learned, take the success, take, take all that and, uh, help the church in some way. And so from that I kind of went back to my market research days at the pharmaceutical company and started calling churches, talking to churches, uh, figuring out what they needed, and through a process of that we heard so many times that sermon clips were a thing that were like challenging for churches to make or expensive. But they wanted to do it and so I was. I guess we were fortunate that then book brush actually had a lot of the underlying code that was needed to start that and so, yeah, so we were able I just kind of repurposed that a little bit to work for Sermon Shots, and so that's how it all started. 16:32 - Speaker 3 I have a lot of questions. 16:34 - Speaker 1 One that was the long. 16:35 - Speaker 3 No, no, it's great. It means we have a lot of things to talk about. What was it like managing five million members in a facebook page? Because and the reason why I asked is because we have a groups feature and one of my fears is, if we ever got to five million one where our platform is and you understand the code now like it would be a disaster to maintain. So like not I'm not even talking about technically, like on the front end, like how do you? 17:01 manage those many people? And then two, when it was like you realized it needed to die out, did you just abandon it or like? Did you do something with it? What happened to that group? 17:11 - Speaker 1 so it wasn't really a group, it was a page and so it there it's. Probably it wasn't complicated, because I didn't over complicate it. I like we didn't really manage it in any way other than just posting a quote or two. Every day was basically it. And so you know, looking back, I probably could have done a whole lot more, but early on it was just post a quote every day. This is what people are coming in for, it's what they're, they're sharing it and all that. 17:37 It wasn't a group of like asking questions or interaction or things like that it was. You know, if people commented, it was amen or love, that quote, this right, and it wasn't more complicated than that. Really. Eventually we turned that into a with this quote, here's a devotional, and so we created a whole website on it as well christianquotesinfo. It's still there, it operates, and we would just create a devotional and that is where more interaction would happen there, and so I had we had a pastor on staff who would take email, questions and things like that, or still do to this day. He takes questions and all that, but it's not. It wouldn't be be. It definitely is not as complicated or as much uh community as faithfully is so, uh, much simpler than than what you probably have wait, so is the facebook page still active live yeah, so, yeah, it's still there. 18:34 Yeah, uh, you know, in the early days, five million people if we posted something, uh, it would it could crash our website. You know over a million people if we posted something, uh, it would it could crash our website. You know, over a million people would see each quote we posted to this day. I mean, it's like a hundred thousand, fifty thousand. It's just so small now that it's not as it's just not what facebook's driving people to anymore, and so, yeah, but it's still there. We still still. Uh, pastor on staff takes questions. There. There's a new, a new quote every day. Still, it still operates. Um, it is not a big part of our business, so we don't do a huge part of managing it, but it it still goes. 19:13 - Speaker 3 No, I think that's amazing because you took a simple thing that was working at the time and it like scaled Right and I think the scale was like proof of concept and you kept it simple and it was this thing that you didn't over complicate it, and then you just pivoted to something else. Well, just, didn't, just, it just is. You know what I mean? Yeah, so my next question is for me I went to coding bootcamp, right, and it's like like a double-edged sword, right, because one the curriculum, actually like when you look back, I'm like, oh, I could have just saved money, but the camaraderie with other people, my friends, was actually a good thing because, like, coding is rough, so for you, like, like, how did you even get into it? 19:55 - Speaker 1 yeah. Well, I will say to this day and looking back, I may not have done it the right way if it was going to be my long-term career thing, because I am not an expert coder at all. I still get we still have issues with some of our websites because of some early code that has to be fixed right. So I'm not saying that my path was the right path, but it worked out for me. I never became the expert, but I did. The coding part was just kind of part of my whole trajectory as a business owner. I've always just kind of figured out how to do a thing that needed to be done, and so I learned as I went. Oh, I need this new thing, I'm going to just teach myself how to do this thing. And so, even with encoding each little thing I don't know why, but I decided just pure vanilla. Javascript was the thing that I was going to teach myself how to do. It seemed the most simple at the time. I don't remember why I chose that, but I did it and I was able to make book brush work from that. And then there were times where, like, there was this other thing that needed to be done and I would just learn, okay, how does that need to be done in the coding? And I would add that in. And I never really became the. Nobody would ever wanted to hire me to do a great coding project, but I made it work was basically how it happened. I started it with a book, a thick book, read the whole thing To this day. I don't understand how I read through that whole JavaScript book, but I did. I was super interested in it. 21:34 I get sometimes in business and then just wanted to try it out, so I started doing it and then I would go to Google, right, I forget the website that I used, but you know, stack Overflow, right, stack Overflow. I asked question. I would Google Stack Overflow, right, like all the time when I had something. I mean, that was one of the good things about choosing plain, pure vanilla. Javascript is like there. It was almost an answer to every one of my questions. So I did a lot of copy and pasting and, uh, did it work? Nope, I'm going to go try a different one. Did it work? You know I did a lot of that early on. Yeah, I don't remember exactly where I was going with all of that, but that was that, that was, uh, that was my journey of learning to code. I did not ever probably learn the like more theoretical stuff, or here's how you, uh, here's how you should structure things. 22:28 - Speaker 3 it was a lot of just like I learned and I added, I added, I added, and so I taught myself how to do it well enough to build a site, but not probably good enough to apply it across yeah, like looking, I've only been coding for like maybe four years now, right, and the first two was really rough because, like literally I was just every day trying to understand what even I'm copying and pasting, right, and like you might think you're an average coder, but you are an amazing startup founder. Because that's the attitude and the mentality and the hustle you need of like I'll just learn it, like I'm not scared, right, like what's the big deal? It might take time, but like we'll get there and I love that like exuberance in you. Where does that come from? 23:14 - Speaker 1 I don't know, I don't know where that comes from. I get, I get super interested in a thing and I just like learning, and so I think both of those things combined. Just like when there's a need in the business and I'm interested in it, it's easy for me to like just consume information. But I don't know, I guess it's just something that's been there. 23:38 - Speaker 3 How did you start Sermonshot? And now I understand what you mean by use the old code, because it was like kind of similar thing. So that's smart, yep yep, yep, yeah. 23:46 - Speaker 1 Well, it was, it just so happened to be like I. 23:49 I wasn't looking to do that, it's just like uh when the story of your life cory, it just kind of god just does things for you I mean we, we when we figured out, when we realized like sermon clips was the thing that people wanted, it was like we have the video tool already made, like I just need to repurpose it slightly to I think we could do this really quickly. And so another thing that just kind of dropped on our lap was early on we were testing other things that weren't working out. And what happened in one of those conversations I had a conversation with I don't know why. He got on a call with us. We were trying to get some feedback on things and Kenny Jane, you may know him he got on a call with us. I had no idea who he was at the time and the conversation was not about sermon shots or anything, but it kind of. It went there at one point and he had some great feedback for us. 24:46 We implemented something and he just really liked it and he said he said they were getting together, him and some other Christian business leaders in the church space were getting together. He said you should present this idea. Can you build something? We're getting together in three months? I was like I think so. I think we could have an MVP in three months. That was kind of quick, but again going back to like I'd be able to repurpose that. 25:11 And so we had some a very early MVP that just fortunate to be able to present in front of a good group of business leaders that not only knew like what was needed in this space but could give some really great feedback too, and so we presented and it presented well, uh, enough, uh, got some great feedback and was able from there to then develop the idea a little bit more. And within a couple months of developing it a little bit more, we, uh, we, we launched the beta version of it and we were able to get a good about a hundred people to use the beta version of it. And we were able to get about 100 people to use the beta version of it early on and gave us some great feedback. And after hearing from those 100 people how much time it saved them and what they were able to do, we realized right then that this is what we wanted to do and it definitely was needed. And so from then on we've just been been building it. 26:08 - Speaker 3 So what is your dream scenario for Sermonshot that we can continue? 26:12 - Speaker 1 to just help the church Really. That's what started it all from the start. It's just, it's great that not only can I build a business, but I'm helping the church as well. Uh, save time, produce more content that's spreading, and so my, my dream with it is that we can helping the church in this, this amount of space, like I want to help them in, in this amount of space, like, continue to expand what we can do to to help the church. Continue to expand what we can do to help the church. I think there's just there's so many opportunities still for me to have 10 years worth of continued improvements on sermon shots to help the church. 26:52 - Speaker 3 So what is it about church that really resonates with you and you wanting to help the church? 26:58 - Speaker 1 So I guess I just I know how much people in the church work, how hard they work. Oh, I know I'm very involved in my church and I get to see a lot. I work very closely with a lot of the staff at my church and in different ways and friends with them, and I know how much they work and I know how much that work can take them away from like big, impactful, like personal stuff that really the church is there for Right, and so I think, with the technology expanding so much, there's just a great opportunity to leverage it more, to leverage it more and I just think that the people that I know in the church do such great work of connecting with people and, you know, just being the support system for people in the church, that's really what their you know big goal is right. They're making disciples within the church and I know that some of this tedious work can take them away from that. 28:00 - Speaker 3 So what made you fall in love with your church work can take them away from that. 28:02 - Speaker 1 So what made you fall in love with your church? I'm going to probably feel repetitive here Again. By chance, we moved here to Indianapolis eight years ago or so and came because friends said this was one to come try, and just like the story of going back to how I connected with the 20-somethings that day when we were there the very first day we showed up, hey, we're having pastors get to know all the new people in the church tonight, and it was like, okay, I guess we'll go. 28:32 And so just meeting the pastor and being at the well, first of all, just being at the church and really feeling like they were speaking our language, but then connecting with the pastors and hearing from them about their passion, those two things just the same way as connecting with Devin at the church for the 20-somethings just connected us. That same thing connected us right away and, uh, we've been. 29:05 - Speaker 3 We've been with that same church now since we moved here do you have an example of a specific time where, like it made a real big impact and resonated with you? 29:16 - Speaker 1 yeah, I I do remember the church being very welcoming basically the whole way through. Everything was just like felt like they wanted us to be there, all the way to the end of being invited to the event, meet the pastor thing, and they actually wanted us to be there and meet us. I think it just has always been, has always felt welcoming to, to new people. I think that was the. That was a big reason for connecting. Early on I also got a little bit dragged into not not dragged slightly pushed into things that have helped me grow as well. So I remember just a kind of a funny moment Somebody in our neighborhood where we lived had said that going to, going to our church had said, like, if you guys speaking to me and my wife, if you guys had let, if you guys lead a small group, I'll join, but I'm not going to be in a small group if, because they didn't feel like they could join another small group. 30:11 And so the next Sunday I asked one of the pastors hey, if I was interested, if I wanted to lead a small group. This was a huge, like huge thing for me. Again, introvert, not like, not like that at all. But I was like okay, all right, I feel like okay, if somebody's telling me this, I better at least kind of. And uh, I I asked him and the pastor was walking by just as I asked him and he's like Adam Corey wants to lead a small group, what should he do? I was like no, I was just wondering what, like, what does it mean to be a small group leader? And he just kind of like he pushed me into it. So I didn't have a, I didn't feel like I had an option, so I that's just one story, but like that has helped me stay connected or or very much be connected in my church. 30:56 - Speaker 3 No, that's an amazing story. So are you still a small group leader now I? 31:00 - Speaker 1 have always been a small group leader until this current our small group broke up Not for bad, but just broke up, and so now we'll be leading a small group here, probably coming up. But yes, basically since then, until the last like six months, I've been a small group leader and I've coached now small group leaders. I am part of the leadership team with the pastor at the church and so I've just done all kinds of things at the church. 31:30 - Speaker 3 Now you know what's fascinating? Because when I hear your story, the image I get is you are highly favored, my friend, because God keeps putting you in situations where you unexpectedly is forced into something and you have such like a pure heart. You're like okay, and then you figure it out. Because if it was me I'd be like kicking and screaming and like cursing and like like why, and then I would do it Right. But for you you're like oh, okay, I'm like, oh man, I need to be more like Corey. I'm just like be very open and curious. So like yeah, so like I guess a question for the small group thing is like not knowing anything and just again your entrepreneurial spirit coming out. What are some things that you learned and grew from? And now you appreciate like, oh, wow, I'm really glad I did this. 32:20 - Speaker 1 Well, I think I'm not sure if this directly answers the question, but it kind of does and goes with what you're saying. One thing I've learned is every time that I have said yes to those things like I have been extremely uncomfortable, Like it's these are not easy like things that I. But every time I felt like it was a thing I was supposed to say yes to, like it wasn't just a opportunity, it was something, it was an opportunity that God was giving me, and opportunity, I think, is the right word in a lot of these things too, because that's what it was. It presented as an opportunity that I could say yes or no to. And I just I'm not I don't want this to sound. 32:58 A pastor friend of mine who said this has said comfortable with being uncomfortable Like that. That's just kind of like how he said it and I think that's the. That's probably accurate. It's like I'm I just do it. Okay, If I feel like God's asking me to do it, then okay, it'll work out. So yeah, he's helped me along the way, that's for sure, Because leading a small group, leading a business, coaching people on small group, like these are not things that come natural to me. Like these aren't easy things, so that's definitely not me. 33:44 - Speaker 3 No, and I think you are the perfect example of being what it looks like to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. So I hope, like you, give yourself more credit because you have a lot of courage to say yes, because it is scary to say yes, but for whatever reason, you just kind of do it and I'm like so amazed to meet someone like you. Yeah, I appreciate it. What has fatherhood been like for you? Of like the ultimate unknown, you know, and like navigating uncomfortable situation? 34:18 - Speaker 1 I mean we could probably have multiple podcasts on just the answer to this. I I have. I have a wide range of kids, so my youngest is six and my oldest is about to turn 13. I have three kids. I have a 10 year old in there uh, an adopted 10 year old and so there's lots of things from ages to the gender differences to, you know, adopting. 34:44 The process of adopting We've had and this might explain some of my answers to this too is we've had medical problems with all the kids that have been some miraculous healings in it, and just seeing some of the lowest of the lows in the adoption process and in medical issues to like turning out to be like the best possible outcome as possible. I think that that probably has been a contributor to some of this. It's just like it was completely out of my control but then it totally ended up. Good To more answer the question to there's all kinds of new things that happen in parenting. I never feel like I'm the, that I ever have the best answer, but trying, I guess, again to just do what feels like is what God's calling me to do. I think that I mean he's guided me in everything else, so that's just been. Maybe that's what helps me every day. 35:46 - Speaker 3 Great answers, great answers. Last two questions what are you hoping for at Faithly? 35:52 - Speaker 1 Yeah. So in Faithly I just really think that community is an important thing. There's been so many times me connecting with people that has really helped me throughout all of this. Just connecting with what seems like random people at the time ends up being friends or the answer I needed for something new in my career or in the business that I, or in the code or you know anything. A lot of that has come through just people and I feel like the more that we can kind of help each other we're all in this together the same end goal, right, and so I think some great things have come from just meeting and being a part of people helping me but me hopefully helping other people as well in the process. So that's what I I'm really looking for in faithfully is just being able to have, uh, another place of community and and and meeting new people. 36:46 - Speaker 3 And how can we be praying for you and your family? 36:48 - Speaker 1 Oh yeah, what's a, what's a good prayer request? Right now, you know, trying to put all this together owning a business, running a business and having three kids and a wife and all the things that comes with all those, I'd say the biggest thing is help me make the right decision when to focus where. That's a big one. 37:11 - Speaker 3 All right, corey, thanks for coming on. This is great Thanks. 37:13 - Speaker 1 It's great being here. Thanks for having me. 37:15 - Speaker 3 All right, that's it for the podcast, guys, bye. 37:17 - Speaker 2 Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. 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