Sarah Caniglia and Cindy Griffith turned a visit to a monastery into a job helping Cistercian monks run a multi-million dollar business.

The two women, who wrote “LaserMonks: The Business Story Nine Hundred Years in the Making,” about their experiences, visited the monastery after they stumbled upon its web site. At the time, they were with a marketing company that worked with other ink-and-toner web sites, according to the SF Gate.

Bernard McCoy, a Cistercian monk who lives at Our Lady of Spring Bank Abbey in Wisconsin, decided to start the business when his abbey was looking for a new business venture to help pay the bills, according to the SF Gate. After paying the abbey’s expenses (about $200,000 a year), the rest of the company’s profit goes to charity. The company had about $4.5 million in sales last year, according to the SF Gate.

Caniglia and Griffith moved onto the abbey property, working for free for the first year to help grow the business. Now, they’re paid a competitive salary and still live on the abbey’s property. They, along with two other paid employees, now run all of the operations for the company and its two affiliated sites, according to the SF Gate. They also get to help decide what charities will be helped by the company’s profits.

SF Gate: Good Works: Monks build multimillion-dollar business and give the money away