Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Theology of Business Podcast. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is the show for Marketplace Christians seeking to explore and apply God's will for business. On this episode, we're joined by Janet Ward Black. Janet Ward is the principal owner of Ward Black Law, located in Greensboro, North Carolina. It is one of the largest woman-owned law firms in the state of North Carolina. The firm's clients have received settlements of, at least at the time of this bio, more than $100 million over the last 10 years. And the firm represents people injured at work in accidents and by dangerous products and environmental hazards across North Carolina. So she's really an advocate for people who need justice. And she she does that in a Christ-centered way, as you're going to hear about on this interview. She's a graduate of Davidson College, Kum Law and Economics and Duke Law School, and served as the third woman president of the North Carolina Association of Trial Lawyers and the fourth woman president of the North Carolina Bar Association. And the program she created while president of the 16,000 member bar association called For All has been used as a model in the United States and Canada for providing free legal services to the poor. And there are many, many accolades awards I could read off here, such as North Carolina's Super Lawyers, North Carolina's legal elite, best law firms in America by U.S. News and World Report since 2010. But Wade, I thought it was interesting way down at the bottom. Fun fact uh Janet Ward served as Miss North Carolina in 1980. How about that? Janet Ward, welcome to the Theology of Business Podcast.
SPEAKER_02I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
SPEAKER_01This man, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work in business?
SPEAKER_02Well, it's an excellent question. I'm not sure there's a quick answer to it. Um, but I never planned to own my own business. Um, I figured I would always work for somebody else. Um, in fact, I always planned to be a doctor. And then I ran into organic chemistry. Um, a lot of things have uh changed since that time. Uh, and I did end up going to law school and realizing that there was no way I would want to be a trial lawyer, but then I ended up as a trial lawyer, which is kind of the way things work. Um, and then by a set of circumstances about 18 years ago, I ended up becoming the owner of the firm and had all of this um staff and had all these cases and had overhead. And I had to figure out sort of what do I do with it now that I'm in this position. And I heard about an organization called C12, which is a group of Christian CEOs and business owners. And I contacted the person on a magazine ad. I never responded to a magazine ad, I think, in my life, and joined C-12 and realized that there were a bunch of Christian business people out there who wanted to know how to run their business using Christian principles. And that could include a law firm. I know a lot of times people think lawyers and Christians don't necessarily go together, um, but I guess that kind of started a real affirmative work on my part for our business to stand for Christ, just not me as an individual.
SPEAKER_01And actually, C-12 was how uh we got connected. And uh periodically I will ask uh the C-12 CEO, Mike Sherrow, for some good recommendations on who I need to interview on this podcast. And you were um at the top of the list. So um, yeah, and a lot of people think they had they know the way law firms function, you know, seeing the show suits. Um, but you're I get the sense that your your firm is not like that and and is really characterized by uh a Christ-centeredness that that's very distinctive. Um what what changed when you made this this uh had this revelation that God wanted to uh that he really wanted to be the Lord of the business?
SPEAKER_03I I guess the easiest way to answer that um is to to point back to the scripture.
SPEAKER_02Uh that you know, you see in the scripture where there's discussion that people who are teachers are being held into a higher level of account uh than individuals who are not, uh, that you hear so many times, such as the parable of the talents, where you are supposed to take what you have and go out and trade with it in order to get the well-done, good, and faithful servant. So it was really sort of a process over time. There wasn't some instantaneous moment. But I and and one of my chief leaders, our executive director, uh realized that so many people don't go to church anymore. And that the closest thing to church that they'll ever attend is the place where they work for good or for ill. And so we realize that we are going to be held account uh for how we have shepherded the people that we uh employ, in addition to our clients and the people with whom we do business, uh, but that we need to take that as a sacred trust, much as a Levite or a priest would do, a preacher would do to say, this is my flock, and I need to do the very best I possibly can with it. So we have set out on a process of trying to figure out what does that look like in reality? And it can look like that, even in a law firm.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And one of the things that we try to draw out on this show is to help our listeners understand myself, uh, because I ask the questions that I'm most interested in, um, to really find out what are the habits that characterize Christ-centered company leaders, Christ-centered company cultures. What's one of the habits that helps you become more Christ-centered in your approach to business?
SPEAKER_02Well, one of the greatest resources that we have adopted, and this was in large part because it was something I learned about in C12, uh, was corporate chaplains of America. There's also an organization called Marketplace Chaplains. They sort of provide the same services. Uh, but we pay to have a uh chaplain come to our office every Tuesday morning. He doesn't stop and talk at length with anybody. He just walks by and goes, Hi, how are you doing? How about those Panthers? You know, whatever the question may be. But it's just to remind the staff that he is available off-site, off-hours, to address any kind of need they have, whether it's spiritual, emotional, or otherwise. And one of the things that we learned from corporate chaplains is even though I may think I'm a reasonably smart person, there are so many different life issues that our our employees have. And I am not the most qualified person. I cannot come up with the right response. I may not know the right resources. I may not have the time to be able to nurture that employee in the way that we need to. And I'll give you something that was a really kind of powerful example to me. Uh, we had a paralegal whose next door neighbor uh had been having a very difficult time. And then the paralegal went next door to check on her and found where she had killed herself. And our corporate chaplain was at our paralegal side within 30 minutes and stayed with her that evening. That's over my pay grade about how you deal with the trauma of what she found and how she had to respond to it. And then the long process thereafter about helping her to, at best, she can heal from that instance. But that's the kind of thing, and I've heard stories of corporate chaplains where, you know, someone got killed at work, and you have so much trauma that's occurred. Um, some of these school shootings, for example, where there's so many people who need help, and we oftentimes need professionals. So we've had a corporate chaplain for more than 10 years here. It's been the same guy the whole time. Uh, he has performed weddings, he has performed funerals for our staff. And that may be, for some of them, the only minister of the gospel of that name that they encounter. And these are not people who beat you over the head with their um with their belief system. They they're just to have relationship with people. And then if the person wishes to open the door about the spiritual side of um whatever the issue is, the chaplain can move into that place.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I love that. And in fact, we have a Christ-centered company assessment. There's 37 habits, and the one on pastoral care is consistently the lowest rate, self-rated habit of the 37. And I think it's because uh as business leaders, we don't feel uh competent or qualified, and and really we don't necessarily need to fill that role. There's conflicts of interest and all those kinds of things when it comes to trying to provide that kind of counseling and ministry of presence for employees. Not that we don't still have a role in that pastoral care, uh, but it it's it's consistently the lowest rated. But uh corporate chaplains, uh, marketplace chaplains, there's other organizations as well providing this kind of service, but um the it's just one of my favorite parts of what God is doing in the marketplace. Um and hey, if you want to be a pastor, I mean, check out marketplace chaplains and find out what openings they might have to be able to serve in that um in that capacity. That's that's excellent. What's another habit that you've really uh instilled across your company corporately to help the entire company reflect God's character?
SPEAKER_02Um, and a couple of things come to mind. Um we started sponsoring funding the first international mission trip for our staff. So um most of the time it has been something like going to Habitat for Humanity for a week in Honduras and building houses to let people know that the United States is not necessarily the center of the universe and that there are ways for them, even if they're not skilled in buildings, uh, to be able to move a few concrete blocks and enjoy getting to meet people of other cultures. So that's one thing that we do to try to invest in our staff. Um we, and and this is, I think, particularly important to younger employees now is how are you developing me? And even things such as an international mission trip is part of that, as well as any other kind of training. Uh, we also have um, you know, a couple of really simple things. Uh we have a prayer closet that is actually uh full of books, and we have books that address almost any kind of spiritual need you can think of. Because of the nature of what we do, representing predominantly people who are seriously injured or may have uh lost a loved one. We know that sometimes it's um you want to send something more than a card when somebody's child passed away. And so one of the things that we do is we make sure the staff knows that that book closet is open and they can come get any book for anybody at any time, client or not, to be able to sew into that person's life. And then about, I don't know, maybe five years ago, uh, some of our staff came up with the most exquisite idea. And I think it's one of the best things that we do. You know how maybe people in business, if they learn that somebody's um lost a dog or, you know, I had had a terrible cancer come up in the family that you want to send a card and maybe you have some people sign the card. Well, for us, after a period of time, that just felt like it wasn't enough. That, you know, how how can we do more than a book or a card? So what our staff developed, and I think I've got a couple of copies around here, is um a set of scripture cards that we mail to that individual for a period of 31 days. So they'll have things on the front, for example, like this one that I have, says, you alone are worthy in this pretty artwork. And then on the back, it says, He alone is your God, the only one who is worthy of your praise, the one who has done these mighty miracles that you have seen with your own eyes, Deuteronomy 10, 21. And then it identifies that's from the prayer team of the law firm. And then that what we've learned over time, Darren, and this is this came as a surprise to us, is that so many people say they may have lost a spouse. They would tell us, I could look forward to going to the mailbox because I knew over that 30-some days that I had something that was going to be a positive. Uh, we had one woman who had cancer who was not really strong enough to take down her Christmas tree. And what she did was she took the ornaments off and then set the cards as ornaments into the tree and called it her healing tree.
SPEAKER_03Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_02And so there were just ways, like another woman took a mirror and stuck all the cards around the mirror, around mirror, and put it up in her kitchen. You know, just things where people said, Oh, I'm gonna put this in a booklet and I won't, I'm gonna bring people to my house and show them these scripture cards that I got. We didn't expect that we would be getting thank you notes for those scripture cards, but we do. And it's interesting that that sort of letting people know that we're thinking about them more than one instant in time, but that rather we are taking the time and we have a very complicated system about how we mail them and making sure that they're going on time. Uh, it has been just a tremendous way for us to give the gospel to individuals who are in different kinds of pain. Uh, and it's been a huge blessing to us to do that.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Wow. So the lady, she just left her Christmas tree up year-round and put those cards on there as her healing tree.
unknownRight.
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SPEAKER_02Uh well, it's a it's an odd one. Um I was minding my own business. I was driving down the road, and a lot of times if I hear from the Lord, it's just a couple of words. You know, I don't have this ongoing conversation in my head that some of my wonderful friends do, but I was not thinking all religious, but I heard in my head, I am a substitutionary God. And I'm like, okay, I wasn't asking for that. I have no idea what that means, but I guess I better think about it. So when I gave it some thought, I realized that yes, God is a God of substitution. You know, in the Old Testament, we hear about crops or animals that were given in substitution. Um, we certainly know about Jesus in the New Testament substituting for the wrong that you and I've done, Darren, uh, and everybody else on the planet. And I said, okay, well, if God is a God of substitution, I at least know that I've tithed as an adult as long as I can remember. And I truly believe that the Lord has put me in positions I have not deserved, such as Miss North Carolina or the president of the trial lawyers or the president of the Bar Association or whatever the position may be. And you realize you didn't deserve to be there, but you were put there for a purpose. So I said, well, if we tithe on our gross revenue, if if that tithing has blessed me, and then I tithe on our gross revenue, by definition, I'm tithing for everybody who's an employee. So I have substituted the finances of the firm for whether or not they tithe at their own house of worship. So what was curious at the time was we were uh making about a 1% profit. So I called in my executive director and I said, Well, you know, I think the Lord wants us to start tithing on our own gross revenue. And she didn't understand what I was saying. And so she said, Well, you know, I've finished the budget. Uh, you know, I'm I have budgeted a profit for next year. I think we'll be able to tie 10% on the profit. Like, no, no, no, 10% on the gross revenue. And she swallowed really hard. And then she walked out in the hallway and called her husband and told him that I had lost my mind. And because it was mathematically impossible for us to do that. So I brought together um a small group that we created called the Tithe Team. And those folks are spiritually aligned with me. And I told them what you know I wanted us to do. We started a bank account that um is our tithe account. We decided that we would move the money at the end of the month of whatever the revenue was into the tithe account, and that we would work together to figure out how we would invest what we believed was the Lord's money. And we had had to make sure, though, that what we weren't doing was just some sort of color-coded marketing scheme. So what we concluded was that we would make contributions to nonprofits, but we would do so anonymously, and that we would not let the NGO use our name in any way, not on a wall somewhere, not on some letter. And that the letter where we send the check says, we ask that you keep our identity anonymous because we want God to get the glory. We do not want this for the law firm. And then we started looking at the scriptures, trying to figure out, well, who is it that the Lord wants us to invest in? And we really kind of came up with sort of an Old Testament and a New Testament set of categories. Uh, for the New Testament, it's Matthew 25, uh, hungry, thirsty, jailed, sick, strangers, naked. Um, from the Old Testament, we we included widows and orphans and Levites, and we define Levites as people who are preachers of the world and not somebody who has another kind of occupation. So leaders of nonprofits, in our view, can be Levites. So we then set about trying to find best in class nonprofits that were serving those groups of people. And then we would invite them into the firm to present to our little tithe team, and we wouldn't tell them why we were inviting them. And then if all of us were aligned, we would decide whether to give and in what amount. Well, miraculously, after that first year, we were able to do it every single month. And not only that, but at the end of the first year, we were able to renovate our lobby uh with cash. We gave the largest bonuses we'd ever given. And I think the Lord allowed us to have that outcome so that the staff didn't think that they were losing 10% of anything, but that there was not a harm to them, but in fact a positive when you might otherwise assume if you give away 10%, you're worse off, not better off. But what was miraculous over the now 11 years that we have done this is the Lord has been faithful. We have um become in relationship with nonprofits, with remarkable leaders whose call is to address those different populations that I just described. It may not be my skill set to use my talent to go fill up a bunch of rice bags, but it's somebody else's call. And if my call in my life is to use my business to help fund the person who is called, in fact, to pack the food for those who need it, then that to me is the way the world is supposed to. Work scripturally, that I am taking my talents and I am gambling with them, I'm investing with them, I'm trying to make revenue so that at least 10% of that, a dime on the dollar, is going for those categories that the Bible tells us is important to God. So that had, you know, was fantastic for our little group of the tithe committee. And we were getting our socks blessed off. You know, people would show up in there, you know, to report back of what they'd done with the money, and it was just blowing us away. And we had to start thinking about how do we make sure we're communicating this to the entire staff, not just to the people who are getting to be a part of it. So after that first year, one of the things that we did was um we took a bus tour and we put all the staff, we didn't tell them where we were going, we put them on a bus, we took them around to local nonprofits, uh, homeless shelter, day center for the homeless, feeding programs, uh, entities that serve the uh people who were in jail and reconciling children and parents together, and had a police officer get on the bus and ride around with us and explain what it's like to live in poverty in our community. And that let the staff start to see how their work was directly correlated with good things happening for the populations that they got to address. That changed some people's lives. Um, one example is our office manager went to our urban ministry here, which has a side for men who are homeless and a side for women who are homeless for overnight. Um, and she said, Well, where do the children stay? And urban ministries had to explain to her, you know, most of many of these people have either criminal records or backgrounds that are such where it's not appropriate for them to be around children. And so that set us on a path of going, okay, well, who's serving homeless families in our community? And we found that there was really a dearth in our community for folks who had facilities where both men and women and minors could stay together. So that was kind of the first few years. And then that same person, the one I just mentioned to you, the office manager, was not on the original TIE team. Her name's Wendy. Wendy's been with me for 25 years now. So Wendy comes to our executive director after the first year and tells her that she wants to be joined to the TIE team. And the one who told me, told her husband I was crazy, now who's a believer, right, in all of this, says, Well, why do you want to be on the tie team? And she said, Because I've written the check here, checks here for decades, and it was mathematically impossible for what we did last year. And I wrote every one of those checks, and I want to be a part of what the Lord is doing here. And now she actually is the lead of our tie team.
SPEAKER_01That's incredible. Yeah, because you started out when you did when the Lord told you to do this, your profit was only one percent. So my math isn't great, but it sounds like you'd be taking 9% out of Hyde. But so what happened to the the profitability after that?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think the Lord uh blessed it, but you know, if you look at Malachi 3, and when you you see that the Lord says, you know, if you are faithful to me in your tithes and offerings, you will see that I will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing on you. That was not why we did it, Darren. It just ended up being kind of a consequence of it. We've been blessed in so many ways, getting to hear these miracle stories, being in relationship with these remarkable executive directors of nonprofits. That was not why we went about it. But I think the Lord wanted to prove to us and to others, and maybe to some of the people who are listening to that podcast, that if you let the Lord protect your 90% by giving him that 10%, you're a whole lot better off than you trying to protect your 100%. That it is, it is in fact God's math. And so we are a living proof that you can give away and be richer for it. And it is part of the miracle that is this law firm. If you ask a lot of the people here, they will tell you it is the very most important work that we do. Now we get to help people for a living, people who are injured in different contexts, but they will tell you that what we're doing with that dime is changing the world. Our little tiny law firm here in North Carolina, we've got about 30 people. By taking that 10%, what happens in 10 years? You've given away an entire year's revenue, right? Because you're doing 10% for 10 years. We started investing in international cooperating ministries, a nonprofit out of Hampton, Virginia, that builds churches for congregations without buildings, much the way Habitat for Humanity builds houses. So it provides the um the bricks and mortar, the cost of all the materials, and the church provides the land and the labor. So over time, uh ICM has built more than 12,000 churches in more than 100 countries. Well, my little law firm can take $10,000 and build a church for 200 people in Africa that will last generations. Now, I don't know about where you are, Darren, but in Greensboro, North Carolina, you can't upfit a bathroom for $10,000. But our folks are able to see the church building and look at the pictures of the dedication or go on vision trips to see that the money that we are investing is changing a country and that it will last for decades. It is not something that just slips through your hand. It is that that gold that lasts, the chaff that has burned away, it is that which lasts. And it is remarkable for us to have the opportunity to let a staff person say, look, my work helped build that. You know, the the fact that this orphanage in Egypt is is providing for a certain uh group of children. The work I did is helping those people in Egypt now. Uh we had a number of properties in Ukraine and outside. I see them as able, when the the war started, it was those countries around Ukraine where the people fled, where it was the churches that helped look after them. They became the resources, they became the shelter from the storm, they became the school, they became the hospital. So for us to be able to invest in those kinds of things makes business have a different feel to it. You know, we're excited about coming to work because it's not just helping our clients, it's doing what the Lord has asked us to do, we believe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I love how you're being strategic with your giving. And I also love that best practice of asking the recipients of these donations to not publicize that it was your firm that that gave the gift. Could you, you know, because that's a scriptural principle from Jesus, right? To give in secret, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. Could you talk a bit more about this distinction between tithing and marketing or publicity giving so that you're going to because you know somebody people might say, well, yeah, we would we would give corporately if we knew that we were going to get our back scratched, you know, in the process.
SPEAKER_02But but how is that any different than buying um billboards or social media or television advertising for your company? You know, if if you've uh built a baseball stadium and it has your name on the outside of it, I mean, that's that's just marketing money. So you are you are hoping for a benefit from it. We had to intentionally say, we are not seeking benefit out of this. We want it where our hearts have to be pure. And sometimes we got challenged on that, you know, where people would say, hey, it would really help us a lot if we could say that Ward Black Law was the funder because, you know, y'all are prominent around here and that would help. And we have to all just go, nope, we're we're happy to support in other ways, but we can't let you reveal us as the source of a particular set of funds that we've provided. And and then let me throw in one more thing just that I think was revelation that came to us um after the first year. We were really challenged by the parable of the talents. Uh, you know, once, you know, we're strategic planners, we are EOS people, you know. I mean, we've got we got plans like nobody's business. And we realized that the Lord wants us to use the strategic planning in our philanthropy the same way that we would would use it to do anything else in in the business. But what we were, what we once that kind of got to be habit, you know, that we're we're doing this every month and we now budget the tithe, you know, we we have a plan to do it. Well, how do you get the return on investment that the Lord says is appropriate in the New Testament? You know, you got that, well, what about that whole pesky verse about 30, 60, 100 fold? What about the parable of talents where the well done is if you double the Lord's money? Now, I don't know about you, Darren, but there are not too many investments I know of that will let you double anybody's money. So we realize that we could do that. And how could we do that? By asking the nonprofits to use our donations as a match and to encourage their other donors to give by saying an anonymous business has provided a match of $20,000 and you know, please give in response to this match. And we asked the nonprofits, report back to us, tell us the result of your matching efforts. And we realized that that would let us double the money, you know, as we still strive to figure out what does that well done look like? What have you done? Not just using your business talents, but how have you used a lever, leverage in order to accomplish what the Lord has put in front of us to do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that. Janet Ward, could you also share a story of a time when you saw God's hand at work in your company? You you've already shared several of them related to giving. Maybe this is related to um something going on with a particular employee or in a particular trial, or just any um any time when you sh saw God's hand at work in your company.
SPEAKER_02Well, I can tell you a piece of creative plagiarism that was ended up being a wonderful blessing. Um I mentioned to you that we renovated our lobby after their first year of tithing. So we um, you know, we're getting new carpet and new woodwork and all sorts of things. And um we had heard and seen uh another nonprofit that had scripture written on the concrete and on the walls before sheetrock and carpet went up. So what we did was we had a party for our interior decorators and our subcontractors and our general contractor and our staff. And we had like nine o'clock in the morning, had donuts and coffee, and had everybody come and write, if they wished, their favorite verse on the concrete, the pad before the carpet went down. Um, and then we took pictures of everybody's favorite scripture. We put it into a book for the general contractors and the uh the and the interior decorators and the other contractors who were present and had the before and after pictures of the uh of the lobby, but in the back half we had the pictures of all the scripture in it. So we gave that to each of them as a gift ultimately before that was finished. It was a great way for us to take somebody else's idea and breathe some life into it. And it kind of turned into a little devotional for people. You know, it was just um a lot of creativity that came together. But if you come to my office, even though it's now covered with carpet and you're in front of our coffee machine, underneath your feet, it says taste and see for the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_01I love that. I just love how you it sounds like it's your heart to just go the extra mile for people and to do the little extra things that um just make the relationship that much uh sweeter. Um as we wrap it up here, what it sounds like that's almost part of the theme of this episode and just what I hear from you in the culture of Word Black Law is um just going the extra mile for people. How would you encourage people to take uh the next step toward that in their in our own companies?
SPEAKER_02Well, one of the things that we're focusing on this year is to to recognize the value in the children of God. I'm a child of God, you're a child of God, everybody who works here, their children are children of God as well. And that we need to value each other in a really meaningful way, and that frankly, we need to help raise up the next generation so that they too, whether their parents go to church or not, uh, whether they can see the goodness of God and fulfill his purpose. So we do a couple of things here in the office. Uh, we have we and we started this when we figured out we needed to not just focus on outside giving, but internal giving, we have a care team here. And the care team, we give them an allotment, we give them $1,000 a month, and they look for opportunities to bless the staff and their families. So if somebody has a flat tire, somebody works to figure out where did they go take it and to call and pay that bill off first. If somebody's um dog has to have an emergency surgery, somebody's looking to try to figure out how to get that bill paid, uh, showing up with meals for people, that letting people know we care about you. You are not a cog in a wheel to make money, but rather you are a child of God and that we've got to, got to treat each other, whether we look like them or whether we have anything in common, we have to treat each other like children of God. One of the things that we did uh this week uh was I've seen a little story on the Today Show about a school up in New York, a public school, where all of the kids, the theme for the school is called be the change. And the kids all wear these sweatshirts that say be the change on the front. And then on the back it says, I am the change. And then you see the heart of these young people just hungry to figure out ways to help people. And, you know, the Today Show folks did some wonderful things to help them give more toys away and just this remarkable heart. So, what I did for the staff this week is a little present from me. I gave us all be the change sweatshirts. And it and it has just been remarkable for people like, yeah, that's right. And now what we're thinking about is, well, we need to get these for our kids too, because we want them thinking about being the change as well. So those little things, those little extras, sometimes can make all the difference. And we've seen that, for example, put a real spark into our staff.
SPEAKER_01Wow. I just love how that that really defines your your culture and reveals Jesus. Um, wardblacklaw.com is the website. Um, Janet Ward, anything else you want to say about how people can hear more from you?
SPEAKER_03Well, I and just to leave you with a thought.
SPEAKER_02I think that the Lord made it so that there are needs in the world and always will be, and that our jobs are to address them. And I think business leaders, business owners are the missing link on how to make the world closer to Christ, that we have economic engines that can change the world for the better. And we need to be thinking about that. It didn't take many $1 billion companies tithing on their growth to make a real impact globally. So, can we as business owners really look toward that? How do we how do we change our worlds? Individual giving has stayed the same, according to Pew Foundation, for a hundred and some years. Governmental spending is not going to change. You know, the NGOs can only do so much, but there's this huge gap. And I truly believe that the business community, in particular in the United States, can help fill that gap. And that if we can put that inside of the minds of business owners, that we really can be the change.
SPEAKER_01Well said. Be the change. Janet Ward, thank you for exhorting us today. I know I'm I'm energized, encouraged, and I'm I know our listeners are as well. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today, and uh, you've made us better for it.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for having me.
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