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What If It Works? Empowering Women to Step Forward in Faith with Elaine Lankford · Profitable Christian Business

• 0:01
  Welcome back to the Prophet Christian Business Podcasts.
• 0:05
  Let me start over.
• 0:06
  Those of you who are watching live, I'm starting over.
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  So, for the recording, just give me a second.
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  Everything got moved around on me when I hit go live.
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  All right, I'll do my own little countdown.
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  Five, four, three, two, one.
• 0:25
  Welcome back to the Profit of Christian Business podcast.
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  We are equipping kingdom-minded entrepreneurs to walk boldly in purpose and prosper with integrity.
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  I'm your host, Doug Greathouse, and today's guest brings a message of empowerment that's deeply needed.
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  Elaine Lankford is the founder of She Steps Forward Coaching and She Steps Forward International, two incredible platforms designed to equip and elevate Christian women who
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  are called to entrepreneurship and nonprofit leadership from the U.S.
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  to Africa.
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  Her mission is clear, help women launch, grow, and lead with bold faith.
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  In this episode, we're going to talk about
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  the importance of identity in Christ when building a business, how women of faith can overcome fear and start.
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  And you don't have to go alone.
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  You can dive into how you can step forward with confidence.
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  I'm gonna do that all over again.
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  You know, because I normally, and for the viewers watching this live, I'm usually just off the cuff.
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  I'm not used to reading something from the script, but I wanted to give a really good introduction for Elaine.
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  So.
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  uh
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  But let me just go, I'm gonna go into my regular riff and then I'll read the introduction.
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  So five, four, three, two, one.
• 1:35
  Hello and welcome to another edition of the Prophet Christian Business Podcast.
• 1:39
  I'm your host Doug Greathouse and I am overjoyed today to have my guest Elaine Lankford.
• 1:44
  Elaine Lankford is the founder of She Steps Forward Coaching and She Steps Forward International, which are two incredible platforms designed to equip and elevate Christian
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  women
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  who are called to entrepreneurship and nonprofit leadership.
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  From the US to Africa, her mission is clear, help women launch, grow, and lead with bold faith.
• 2:03
  How are you today, Elaine?
• 2:04
  I'm great.
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  Thank you so much for having me.
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  So you and I got connected through a wonderful person that's a mutual friend of ours, Myrna, uh and we just hit it off.
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  I could tell that your heart is similar to mine.
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  We share a lot of the same uh passion for helping entrepreneurs grow, you and particularly women, especially when it coincides with spreading the gospel.
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  So I'm ready to dive into all that, but first.
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  I have some getting to know you questions that I always kind of ask to kind of break the ice, get the audience to get to know you a little bit better.
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  uh If someone was to go look at your bio, what's one thing that's not on there that they would be surprised to know about you?
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  am actually a hostess with the mostess.
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  I love hospitality and if you came over to my house, you would have such a great time.
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  uh I love entertaining people.
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  So, um what, are you a foodie?
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  Um, if it comes to chocolate coffee, absolutely.
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  Nice, nice.
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  I'm a little bit, my wife and I are a little bit coffee snobs, if you will.
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  We don't really like Starbucks that much.
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  Starbucks is often convenient, ah but we like local coffee shops.
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  We like tasting different coffees.
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  We like ordering, we like coffee from, we went to Hawaii, just how much of coffee nerds we are.
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  When we went to Hawaii, we went to the coffee farm because we wanted to.
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  see how coffee is grown and taste all that great coffee.
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  I don't know if you have a particular type of coffee that you like.
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  I just like it strong.
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  like the high roast and I love that my husband over the years went from teasing me about going to Starbucks to being such a coffee connoisseur.
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  we have been down our own little coffee snob road, if you will too.
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  It's kind of funny.
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  Nice, nice.
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  ah So speaking of travel, I just talked about Hawaiian.
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  I you've traveled a lot.
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  you travel for She Steps Forward International.
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  What's one unforgettable experience that you've had on those travels?
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  You know, I consider Nairobi, Kenya, my second home now.
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  And I think one of the biggest shocks when I got there was to look at their traffic pattern.
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  And when I say traffic pattern, I mean chaos.
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  Like they make Los Angeles look tame.
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  I'm not sure what the rules of the road are because nobody follows them.
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  And so really learning to lean into a different culture and kind of understand how it all blends has just been a thrill of a lifetime.
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  I've heard stories from other people that have traveled to Africa about the traffic and how people on motorbikes just zip in and out uh like there's no cars there.
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  And it's not just motorbikes, it's buses, it's cars, it's goats, it's people walking.
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  Like it's just a blend of everything.
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  It is just so chaotic.
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  And yet I have yet in the five years I've been traveling there, seen an accident.
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  uh
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  They're just hyper aware because I think the difference is they're not as distracted as we are in America driving.
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  So nice, nice.
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  ah So when you're not so busy with She Steps Forward International and your coaching business, what's one thing you like to do to kind of unwind and refresh?
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  You know, we live out in the country here in Virginia and I just love to go out on a deck and just be in the quiet and in nature and maybe have a little coffee or tea.
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  And that's just kind of how I do it.
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  So I love my little solitude that we've built here.
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  Nice, let's talk about, let's kind of circle back to travel again real quick because I'm the type and my wife as well, we don't like to go to the hustle and bustle tourist
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  destinations.
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  We do like to go to tourist destinations, but we don't like to go where the tourists go.
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  We like to go where the nature is, right?
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  And the local culture.
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  And it seems like you might be the same way.
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  Absolutely.
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  So I live near Virginia Beach.
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  Some people may know where that's at, but I never go there because it's so touristy.
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  We actually travel down to Atlantic Beach right off of Moorhead City in North Carolina because it is more like Nags Head was in the seventies, which is one of our other uh
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  really touristy beach spots at this point in time.
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  So we definitely like to get away and get away to ourselves and we go off season so we don't have to compete with the crowds.
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  Yeah, when it's just warm enough to kind of get in the water, but it's still kind of chilly Yeah On that note if you've never been I grew up I grow up I lived in the
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  Charleston area for a long time and it it's kind of like that on Sullivan's Island like it's still really tranquil if you get a chance to go there ah Then there are spots in
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  Florida same thing like Myrtle Beach is like not that far from us and we don't we don't like to go to Myrtle Beach
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  As often like at a stow, there's too many great places to go around where we live.
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  Very similar.
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  you
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  no.
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  Hello, hello, test one two.
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  Anybody watching this live or waiting for either Elaine or I to be unfrozen if you're watching me, she might be talking to you, but we'll figure this out here in a second.
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  It looks like my internet connection is fine.
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  You are back.
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  Are you back?
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  You are back.
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  Can you hear me?
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  Can you hear me?
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  Test one two.
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  Test one two.
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  Oh, I hope we don't have to reschedule this.
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  Did you freeze?
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  It froze on you, didn't it?
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  Did I freeze or did you freeze?
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  I think we froze for each other, but you're back now.
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  Okay, sorry.
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  No, no, it's all good.
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  um That's what editing is for.
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  Even though we do this live, um there is the ability to edit.
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  that'll just work.
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  So let's just get back on track.
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  I don't know what you heard out of what I said.
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  It was just basically talking about how there are tranquil places around us as well.
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  So um love, love that.
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  So we're just kind of.
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  This break actually is fine because we're about to go into the next segment.
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  So for editing purposes, it won't be all good.
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  So let's talk about your coaching business and She Steps Forward International a little bit.
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  um Sorry, let me start over.
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  This is, I would not usually so off.
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  um All right, for segment two, five, four, three.
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  All right, so let's dive into your She Steps Forward International a little bit as well as your coaching business.
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  So first of all, I want to know what stirred your heart most to equip Christian women?
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  What's kind of the story behind that?
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  You know, I came out of a long standing nursing career actually, and I was someone who was raised up in church, had never had any issues up until then.
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  Everything was going very well.
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  And then in about 2008, I had a real life crisis where my career kind of got pulled out from underneath me and my father passed away.
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  And my husband at 47 was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
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  And all of a sudden, my whole world was in ashes.
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  And I came to this crossroads of faith.
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  And I had to decide whether I was going to lean back into my faith or whether I was going to run away.
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  And I decided in that tumultuous time to lean in and to really see if God is who he says he is.
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  And once I got on the other side of it, which I was just grateful for all of the lessons that God taught me in all of that, I really felt the
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  call from him that there were a lot of women that were holding back because they had been through some things and that they had these stories that needed to be told, but it was
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  going to take someone to push them forward to get them to come with it.
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  And so I just really became a catalyst after that.
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  Just everything that I went through, I knew was not wasted.
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  I used it.
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  I mentored and coached women within the church setting at that point.
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  And I just really felt the drive to get women out of their seat and
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  help them to not waste their potential and to do good.
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  I love all that.
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  I want to talk about this just a little bit further.
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  So your testimony, like a lot of us would go through these hard times.
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  You describe several things that seem to happen all at once, but we don't, it's always on the other side of it.
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  We realize God has given me a powerful story and a testimony and that's part of it, right?
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  um Were you able to kind of see that once you were out of it a little bit?
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  Yeah, it, you know, I really, it was about a five year period about the first two years of that.
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  tell people, I just kind of set stunned, not sure what had just happened.
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  Um, I did realize about part way through that, that, you know, I really had kind of, uh, misaligned my identity.
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  I'd really gotten into my career.
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  It was really self identifying as that.
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  And when it all went away, because I really believe God was pulling me out of something that was pulling me more toward the world until, and, and away from him that
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  I needed to come back to the center, which is my Christ identity.
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  And so from there, it was just this uh sense of that there is a higher purpose.
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  And so I wanted to take all of that and to use it and to not waste that time period that went past.
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  But it really did take a lot of love and patience and talking and just him showing up in moments where we thought we were just done.
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  to understand how much God loves us and how much he really can take care of us.
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  And that if we would stop being so independent of him and be more dependent on him, ah that is what life is all about.
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  And what he opens up when we lean into that is just absolutely amazing.
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  My life has not been the same since.
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  So so many, I have so many comments on that.
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  First off, was a something someone, one of my friends shared on Facebook the other day that said, the devil doesn't attract you with the bad things.
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  He attracts you what you think you, what your heart wants.
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  And oftentimes that's a trap.
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  He's just trying to get, make you create an idol out of something that is going to pull you further away from God.
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  So it sounds kind of like you were doing that with your career a little bit.
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  And we're all in danger of that.
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  And I think it also goes right in line with the post that I was
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  Put up yesterday that got a pretty good response is we need to put on the armor every day because Satan is out there trying to Pull us away all the time.
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  So if we're not actively in the word actively following God's will for our life He's gonna look for every weakness we have
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  Absolutely.
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  And for me, it was one of those things where I really knew since sixth grade, I was supposed to be a nurse.
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  I knew God was calling me into it.
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  I can remember the classroom and the window I was looking out when I heard that still small voice.
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  So for this to kind of come about the way it did and to have my career just kind of completely um pulled out from under me circumstances I could not control, I was like, God,
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  What are we doing right now?
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  So it was kind of a shock to the system, but it really was that loving father saying, okay, I got you into this and along the way you changed your focus on me and you really
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  have leaned into more than I expected you to do or wanted you to do.
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  And I have more for you than that.
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  So I need to get you out of this materialistic looking degrees on the wall.
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  You did it.
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  Ra-ra.
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  And I need you to come back to me and understand that I am the one who controls your path.
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  And it's not a control dictatorship.
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  It's a control of loving father trying to pull the best out of us that we can be.
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  Yeah, a couple more things still on this topic is that it, uh and it was just actually somebody else talking to again yesterday.
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  It's all just God's timing is so amazing.
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  So I was just talking to somebody who's kind of at that point where they feel like I have nothing left to give.
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  I don't know what else to do.
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  And they're at that point that they're, they're just, it's just only thing that can happen is God, right?
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  And so many times he pulls us down.
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  He lets us go down that far.
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  just so that we can see it's not about us.
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  It's not about what we can do.
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  It's about what he can do.
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  So I love all that.
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  I also, no, no, go ahead.
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  encourage them is to just lean into servanthood.
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  That is the one thing that got me out of all of that was moving away from my problems and trying to help people with their problems.
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  That turning of our mentality from self into others.
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  is the trajectory that God wants to take us and when we lean into servanthood the way Jesus did servanthood ah it will start a path of recovery and hope and healing for us.
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  It also happens with resources and money.
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  If you ever feel like you have a lot of anxiety about money, go give some money away to somebody.
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  Even if it's like $10, go give $10 to somebody.
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  Pay for somebody's lunch because it will change their heart position.
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  um And I don't know, it's just, God is just amazing.
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  oh The other thing I was gonna say about that is I plan my day every day and I tell God all the time, say,
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  uh Those are my plans, God, but whatever you want to have happen, right?
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  Because I know your plans are always better than mine.
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  So it's not a waste for me to plan.
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  I'm still planning trying to be in God's will, but often no matter what I put in there, it could look totally different than what I write down.
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  It's just a matter of us leaving just enough room for him to operate.
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  And I think we are a good steward of our time if we try to plan out our path, but just leaving that room for him to change the path if we need it and then understanding that
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  something better is coming if we allow that change and that shift.
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  Yeah, yeah, I love that.
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  Let's talk about your clients experiences.
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  Can you kind of give a reference to maybe one of your coaching clients or even someone from She Steps Forward International that you just saw a dramatic transformation?
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  Just kind of highlight that for us.
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  Yeah, absolutely.
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  So I have a very good friend now named Michelle, but before Michelle was my friend, she was my coaching client.
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  Michelle originally came to me because she was stirred up to do a marriage ministry kind of off of some things that she had experienced in her marriage.
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  But along the way, God interrupted her plans.
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  He interrupted her uh schedule there and he brought out in her that she was in real estate and that the real estate industry was not a place where he was found a lot.
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  And she decided that what she was going to do was lean into her faith and develop a real estate training company so that when new agents came out, they had a firm foundation, but
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  she's infusing her faith in this all the time with how she treats them, how she treats her clients, how she runs her business.
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  so Michelle has been a lot of fun to watch as she's uh let God shift her into an area where his presence is so needed in an industry that is so cutthroat.
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  and see how she's cutting through the noise and helping new agents not feel like they're thrown to the woods, wolves.
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  And at the same time, her and her husband are also trying to do uh house buys so they can turn them around to give the low income people.
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  And so you're just seeing it on all levels in her business.
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  And then just recently in Kenya, although I have several stories probably from Kenya, but recently in Kenya, you know, just started a group coaching cohort over there and we're
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  working with some really
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  sweet ladies and one of them I just love her name is Lizzie and she wants to do a egg supply business that's a business where they get the chickens lay the eggs and they can go
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  sell them to hotels and restaurants and make a decent income and she wants to build up a chicken farm and what she wants to do when she gets on the other side of that being a
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  single mom who is struggling in their economy in the poverty line
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  She wants to build enough of a business that she can bring other single moms in and give them some adequate work and some adequate income.
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  And these are the kind of people we're leaning into.
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  And they are not only changing their lives, they're changing their communities.
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  And that's what we love about She Steps Forward.
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  Yeah, it sounds like you do a lot of, what's the word I'm looking for?
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  You're able to spread God uh through helping others, right?
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  So the way that you help God, the way that you help them, you're always infusing your faith into it.
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  And basically you're passing along that same kind of uh mindset, right?
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  To these ladies that, hey, uh
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  You can also help others.
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  It's not just about making that almighty dollar.
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  There's a way through your business that you can shine the Lord's light through helping others.
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  So I love that.
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  Absolutely.
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  think Christians for a while have held back their faith in the marketplace.
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  I think we felt a little out of place, a little disjointed, a little uneasy blending the two.
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  But it's not about beating someone over the head with the Bible.
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  It's about serving them in the manner that Jesus has taught us.
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  And yeah, in some places and businesses or paraturks, ministries or nonprofits that
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  gospel can come out a little bit more, really most women just want to live out their faith and they want to serve people in the manner that they know that they should.
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  And they want to just fill gaps.
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  And that is the love of Christ being the hands of feet.
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  And I just love that we've tapped into that now and show them that they can do it and do it successfully.
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  Yeah, you don't have to do like I do and put Christian right in your branding.
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  It's more about just the way you carry yourself, the things that you do, the way that you serve people.
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  People are gonna ask, especially if they've had experience with businesses that don't act that way, they're gonna say, something's different about you.
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  What's different about you?
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  Let me tell you about Jesus.
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  Right?
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  So I love all that.
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  um
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  What is, now I can realize it can be difficult because I am a little bit in the same space with helping entrepreneurs.
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  What is the, let's not say number one, what are some of the main obstacles or barriers that you find in helping these women take the next steps to grow?
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  So I think there's a couple of different things for us.
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  And one that I really want to lean into for a minute is finances.
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  I think women have to come to the comfort level of talking about finances and getting funded.
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  And as Christian women, we have to understand that we are worthy for our wages.
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  That is biblical and in the Bible that we are worthy as a worker for our wages and that we want to collect enough to be profitable, to be abundant, because that means we get to do
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  more for the kingdom.
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  And just giving ourselves away is really not as biblical as we make it out to be.
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  We kind of make that one of our
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  idols is that, I'm so sacrificial in what I'm doing.
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  But really we're not setting ourselves up for sustainability.
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  And one of the things I lean into women about is that there's, and I love this because I've, God has just opened my eyes up to all the women in the Bible and what they were
• 22:13
  actually doing.
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  I, and I challenge women to really read into the women in the Bible.
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  But in Luke eight, one through three, we find that women are traveling with
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  Jesus and the disciples and it is clear in the Bible it says they are giving of their own means.
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  Well, how did they get means?
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  It means they must have been entrepreneurial in nature.
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  They must have had some kind of funding that they had put away because ladies they're feeding 13 guys.
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  That's not cheap, right?
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  So Jesus even in the story of telling us and giving us that wink is letting us know that women
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  can be very economically sound and entrepreneurial in nature and he approves of that.
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  The other piece is just confidence.
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  We just have this, we want everything to be just right before we jump into stuff and God is not, that's not God.
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  God wants us to take a step in faith.
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  He just wants one little step and then he will start opening up the path for more steps.
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  And just getting women to understand you don't have to do it all.
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  we, we,
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  We carry so many hats all the time, the mom, the daughter, the auntie, the worker, the person at church that we feel like we have to do it all.
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  But with God, he's really just asking us to partner in relationship and all he requires is one step forward in faith.
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  And then he starts to open up the path that we need.
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  So getting them past that mind block, those two are probably the biggest.
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  Yeah, I love that.
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  I've seen that just so much in my life and my clients life is there if they're just willing and even me when I'm just willing to take that next step.
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  Oh, wow.
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  God.
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  And then again, often it is in hindsight.
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  I see what you did there.
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  I what you did there.
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  I what you did there.
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  oh I could not have planned it better.
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  So ah it's just amazing.
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  think even you and I connecting was one of those God things because uh
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  There are a lot of ways that we can collaborate.
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  I think, uh again, we share each other's values, each other's mission uh to help others.
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  So uh I thank God for that.
• 24:18
  So thank God uh for Elaine coming into my life and now being on the podcast.
• 24:24
  Well, we appreciate you.
• 24:25
  And let me just say for the record that a lot of people who see women empowering women feel like that we're setting the fellows aside.
• 24:33
  And I just want you to know we appreciate the good guys that are out there, the ones who want to support us and hold us up.
• 24:39
  We got to do this thing together.
• 24:40
  There's a whole lot of work out there to do and segmenting ourselves and worrying about hierarchies and all these kind of things is not going to get the job done.
• 24:49
  We just need to come together as brothers and sisters in Christ and get the job done.
• 24:55
  Nice, nice.
• 24:56
  I just love so much that you're empowering women to kind of step out in that faith.
• 25:01
  uh With that being said, let's talk about your faith a little bit more.
• 25:04
  uh What role has your personal walk with Christ played in shaping your leadership?
• 25:11
  Oh my gosh, God has just taught me so much.
• 25:14
  And the verse that I always go back to is Proverbs 3, 5 through 6 that says, not into your own understanding, but trust God and he will make all your paths straight.
• 25:24
  And he has certainly proven that to me over and over on this faith walk.
• 25:29
  And our relationship has gotten deeper because of it, because I've allowed him to be the lead.
• 25:36
  I've allowed him to, um,
• 25:40
  direct me in this path.
• 25:42
  It's helped me to understand what relying on him really means and that it's a beautiful thing.
• 25:48
  And then the other part is just leaning into, I believe it's in Matthew, where it says his yoke is light.
• 25:54
  Like, why wouldn't I not want to train yokes with him?
• 25:57
  Like, he really doesn't want us banging our heads against the wall.
• 26:00
  He wants us to partner so that he can make our path easy.
• 26:06
  And so I just love how he's taken me to depths now that I am fully, fully reliant on him for to carry this thing off.
• 26:14
  That's what God's size dreams are about, right?
• 26:16
  They're beyond what we can technically see and do.
• 26:20
  And it has allowed me to uh understand him as a father a whole lot.
• 26:27
  Yeah, I want to talk about biblical leadership for second because I think a lot of people may have a misconception of what leadership really should look like.
• 26:35
  And a lot of people, once you and I talk about what leadership really is, may not want it ah because it's leadership comes from servitude, right?
• 26:45
  We think about how Jesus represented leadership, right?
• 26:49
  He was there to serve, right?
• 26:51
  So how can we better serve you?
• 26:53
  Not like how can I...
• 26:55
  barf these orders at you, right?
• 26:57
  I would love your insights in that.
• 27:00
  So I just always go back to the story of Jesus washing the disciples feet at the last supper.
• 27:06
  This is his ultimate um example to us of how we're supposed to serve each other.
• 27:13
  And we have to remember back then, them feets were dirty.
• 27:15
  Like they would walk around in sandals and sand.
• 27:18
  Like this was not a pleasant thing for him to do.
• 27:21
  And so um just to see our Lord.
• 27:25
  wrap that towel around himself in scripture and stoop to that level to let them know that even your feet I can wash.
• 27:32
  And this is how I want you to proceed.
• 27:34
  It's just so powerful when we lean into that.
• 27:38
  We have to remember that none of us are above the other, that the gifts are given by the spirit.
• 27:43
  We should celebrate each other and what we've been gifted in and our impact on this world to be salt and light.
• 27:51
  will only come to be if we're leaning into that.
• 27:54
  We're celebrating each other, we're holding each other, and we're letting each other have the full breadth of what God has given us to do.
• 28:03
  And so I think that servanthood piece is just, uh it's just key.
• 28:08
  It's just key.
• 28:09
  Again, it's an interning of ourself outward, ah and it really shows our true heart when we can do that.
• 28:18
  One thing about that as well is uh I'm gonna give a shout out to all women and why I think they make great leaders and sometimes how it's a contrast to men, not to be stereotypical,
• 28:29
  men can have this as well, but empathy, Women tend to have more empathy.
• 28:35
  So someone that you're leading, you can kind of feel what they're going through, where they're at more so than a lot of guys can.
• 28:42
  uh Guys are often more directed to the point without trying to understand the nuance of what's going on.
• 28:48
  Right?
• 28:49
  So shout out to women for as leaders that are able to do that.
• 28:53
  You know, we struggle sometimes with the story of Adam and Eve and her being a helpmate and how that word has kind of been thrown around even in the church space.
• 29:01
  But that is such a gift to us that we've been given that peace that we can come along and wrap our hands around what needs to be done and hold someone up.
• 29:11
  I love that part of womanhood.
• 29:13
  I don't shy away from it.
• 29:14
  And I think that strong men in their faith love a good woman who doesn't mind that piece of it.
• 29:21
  Look, I love my husband.
• 29:22
  He is a great man and I will follow him all day long and I will do anything I can to uphold him and to make him feel like he is the person that he is, which is just a great,
• 29:35
  great, great man of God.
• 29:37
  And so I think we have to lean into that, not be scared of these words and these things that have been thrown around and just understand our gifting and why we're built the way
• 29:45
  we're built.
• 29:45
  It takes two.
• 29:47
  It takes two.
• 29:49
  I wanna segue into the fill in the blank question that we ask on every episode.
• 29:55
  Your fill in the blank question is, a faith driven woman in business must never forget blank.
• 30:03
  A faith driven women in business must never forget that God has empowered her for such a time as this and that belief is the fuel to what we're supposed to do.
• 30:15
  See, She Steps Forward is based on Luke 1, 45 which says, blessed is she that would believe that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
• 30:25
  And so that is Elizabeth talking about Mary the mother of Jesus and
• 30:30
  This is a story that God gave me to show me that as a woman doing what I'm doing, pushing the realms of marketplace that sometimes I need that support and to be a support.
• 30:42
  so Elizabeth is the support to Mary.
• 30:45
  Elizabeth is the person who comes into her life to really breathe life into her before she's about to do this amazing thing that nobody else has done, right?
• 30:54
  Birth the Messiah.
• 30:55
  And so that
• 30:57
  picture in the Bible, which we skim over so fast because you it's part of the Christmas story and we kind of like forget that piece of it, is something I think God has put there
• 31:06
  for women to show us how to partner together.
• 31:10
  And I would just challenge women, if you are not an Elizabeth today, maybe you're a Mary, go find your Elizabeth.
• 31:18
  And if you can be an Elizabeth today to a Mary, please do that because God is waiting for us to lock
• 31:24
  arms and understand that what he wants to fulfill in us.
• 31:27
  um We have to have a belief in him, but we also may need a little guidance and a little support.
• 31:34
  Yeah, yeah, that is uh very, true.
• 31:38
  Very, very true.
• 31:40
  Your secret question is a big question.
• 31:42
  So uh I'm just going to go ahead and put it out there.
• 31:47
  What is the secret to female succeeding in entrepreneurship?
• 31:52
  Oh, I really feel like um again, this goes back to the financial piece.
• 31:58
  And I believe again, it goes back to us needing to lean into being worthy of our wages and creating that sustainability around it.
• 32:07
  But I also think it's a piece of really bringing all of ourselves to the table so we can be creative.
• 32:13
  The Bible says God gives us the power to get wealth.
• 32:17
  And so
• 32:17
  As we lean in and teach women Luke 1 45 to believe there's going to be a fulfillment of what God has spoken to them.
• 32:23
  We are also pairing that with Deuteronomy 8 18 because we've been given the power to create wealth and wealth in abundance.
• 32:31
  And so if we're putting those two factors together and we're following what we know we've been told to do there's no telling the lengths that we can go to assist the kingdom and
• 32:44
  growing.
• 32:44
  And so I just think that is
• 32:47
  where it's at.
• 32:48
  I think if we lean into those two factors then we're going to be successful in what we're doing.
• 32:54
  Awesome, awesome.
• 32:55
  What is one thing every Christian woman should ask before they launch a business?
• 33:01
  Wow.
• 33:02
  So I think that she should be asking God, what is the ultimate plan?
• 33:09
  um He's probably not going to lay it all out for us, but here's the thing.
• 33:14
  Sometimes we forget to just ask.
• 33:17
  Sometimes we just need to ask him, what is the ultimate plan?
• 33:21
  Knowing that we're going to have to take steps to get there.
• 33:25
  But I think short-cutting God and saying all this is all there is to it is where we falter we go we're supposed to start maybe a daycare program for moms who can't have that option
• 33:37
  to pay for it We're gonna do a low-income one.
• 33:39
  Well, maybe there's other factors to that Maybe you're trying to build a little literacy program within that Maybe you're trying to care for the moms on the side of that Like I
• 33:49
  think we get so pigeonholed and that first thing we hear God tell us that we don't
• 33:54
  give him a chance to continue to open up the journey because it is a journey that we're on.
• 34:00
  There's no way I could have foreseen that when I pitched my first conference in 2019 called the She Stops Board Conference here in Virginia that I would end up in Nairobi,
• 34:10
  Kenya within a year doing the same conference and all the things that we do over there now.
• 34:16
  So don't pitch and hold God, ask and pray what is the ultimate plan.
• 34:22
  What I heard in there is vision.
• 34:23
  Ask him to give you the vision, right?
• 34:26
  In our coaching program, we always talk about like work in reverse, right?
• 34:31
  Your goal and then reverse engineer it, right?
• 34:33
  And if you already know where you're going, you know a little bit better how to get there, right?
• 34:39
  And your subconscious starts to work, God starts to work in helping you take the steps that you need to take.
• 34:45
  So I love all that.
• 34:47
  I like that.
• 34:49
  really, and you probably are too at a point, but I really teach women, I lean into legacy mindset when you're talking about knowing, you know, what do you want to do in the end and
• 34:57
  working backwards?
• 34:59
  Like I really pose that question to women because one, I think we have to discover the leaders that we are.
• 35:04
  I think that's been a weakness.
• 35:05
  We have not leaned into that or been taught that.
• 35:07
  But the other thing is having a legacy mindset.
• 35:10
  Like what are you trying to leave not only
• 35:13
  for later, but even into the day to day, what is your legacy from day to day?
• 35:17
  Like legacy is so powerful.
• 35:19
  And I think when we focus in on that, it just opens up our minds and it really is motivating.
• 35:26
  So I really do lean into those two pieces when I work with women is who you are as a leader and what is that legacy gonna be that you leave?
• 35:36
  One of the things that is often something both on the male and female side of entrepreneurship is fear, right?
• 35:44
  With the moniker faith over fear, we hear it all the time.
• 35:47
  But can you give some practical things for anyone that's listening how to apply that faith over fear?
• 35:56
  my goodness, you just have to do it anyway.
• 36:00
  The fear is always going to be a counterweight.
• 36:04
  But if we really lean into it, ah it's going to it's kind of like pushing a boulder up the mountain, right?
• 36:09
  It's something that as we challenge it, as we delve into what's really making us fearful, it makes us a better person.
• 36:17
  So facing that fear.
• 36:19
  is what we need to do.
• 36:20
  We already know the Bible tells us we have not been given a spirit of fear.
• 36:24
  So we know it is not of God.
• 36:26
  And so we really have to figure out what it is that we're fearful or fearful of.
• 36:30
  And what I have started teaching women is when you get in, especially into entrepreneurship, you think, my gosh, what if this doesn't work?
• 36:40
  But you have to shift that thought and that mindset and you have to say, what if it works?
• 36:46
  And when you make that one little tweak to your mindset,
• 36:49
  It relieves so much pressure.
• 36:52
  And I had so much fun, I will tell you a super quick story, teaching this over in Nairobi.
• 36:57
  I was in a church setting at the time.
• 36:59
  We had over 250 women there and part of them were from the Umijo Disability Center, which we support.
• 37:06
  And I taught this message and I said, you guys got to start saying, what if it works?
• 37:11
  And we went away that year and I came back.
• 37:14
  uh A couple of days later, we visited the Umijo Disability Center and the same little lady, didn't know she was in the audience, she was blind.
• 37:21
  She was blind.
• 37:23
  And that was her disability.
• 37:25
  And she's sitting in the little audience at the Umijo Disability Center and I'm kind of reiterating what I said on Sunday for the people who couldn't make it.
• 37:33
  And I said, you gotta stop saying this might not work.
• 37:36
  And this lady screams out, what if it works?
• 37:40
  And my heart just melted because if she can catch that message, even with a blind disability and her wish that day Doug, that she wanted me to pray over her was that she
• 37:49
  would be able to travel internationally one day.
• 37:52
  I love that.
• 37:54
  It's a mindset stuff that we need to make.
• 37:57
  What if it works?
• 37:59
  And we had the best person at all to work with to make sure it works.
• 38:03
  Maybe not exactly the way we expect it to, but it will work.
• 38:07
  So I love that.
• 38:08
  just, that melted my heart on that particular trope.
• 38:12
  Yeah, it kind of makes you want to go back full circle to what we're talking about for the enemy is always trying to put derail us.
• 38:18
  If we truly have a God given mission, the enemy does not want them to happen.
• 38:23
  The enemy wants to derail us.
• 38:24
  So all these negative, he's going to try and see these negative thoughts in your head.
• 38:28
  Like you're not good enough.
• 38:31
  You don't have the resources, every possible thing that you can think of that would, and he's also going to put the worst possible outcome that could happen if you proceed.
• 38:41
  And the thing is,
• 38:41
  most people when they proceed that never happens.
• 38:46
  Failure, you may fail, right?
• 38:48
  But the failure is never as big as what you have usually painted in your picture, in your head that the enemy has put there.
• 38:57
  Absolutely.
• 38:57
  I love how John Maxwell who I know a lot of people know who doesn't love John, oh addresses failure like we can't learn without failure.
• 39:07
  If we don't mess it up sometimes we're not going to learn and so we have to use we have to look at failure as a tool of improvement and stop being so fearful of the failing and so
• 39:21
  yeah fear is a big thing but we really have to just
• 39:26
  learn to stand and conquer that.
• 39:28
  And once we can kind of move past some of those things, it's we are just unstoppable.
• 39:33
  Yeah, you have to be willing to fail.
• 39:35
  I know a lot of people might not want to hear that, but you have to be willing to fail.
• 39:38
  Some of the most successful people that you probably look up to, maybe they don't even talk about their failures, but they have failed a lot.
• 39:45
  And it's because of those failures that they became who they are.
• 39:51
  yeah, that's awesome.
• 39:56
  So tell people more about where they can find out more about you and what you got going on.
• 40:02
  Absolutely.
• 40:03
  So they can find me personally at shestubsforwardcoaching.com or they can check out our nonprofit at shestubsforwardinternational.org.
• 40:14
  We welcome you to either site where you can download a free ebook that talks about eight mind shifts that are biblically based to get you started on this path of building a more
• 40:24
  confident mindset.
• 40:26
  And you can see all of our um offerings there.
• 40:29
  Obviously, I do one on one coaching for those who like that path, but in our nonprofit, we're having an annual conference that we do every year.
• 40:37
  We do a group coaching cohort that we're doing.
• 40:41
  We're getting ready to launch one here in the States in September.
• 40:44
  So you want to look us up for that.
• 40:45
  We do a monthly membership online.
• 40:48
  And our biggest goal in the nonprofit space is to become a seed money grant program.
• 40:53
  uh
• 40:54
  a warder so that we can partner with women and give them a little bit of coaching and a little bit of a micro loan to get their dream off the ground.
• 41:03
  And I love all that you do.
• 41:04
  So we're gonna put all those links below to reach out to Elaine, whichever one of those things that she talked about that you feel most interested in diving further into.
• 41:13
  And I'm sure if you find Elaine on social media and you wanna have a conversation with her about what she's doing, she'd be open to that too.
• 41:21
  So we might just put a few of her social links down below too, so to reach out to her.
• 41:26
  uh Seems like, oh, so I have one last question that I ask every...
• 41:32
  person before the show is over.
• 41:35
  That's because I don't want there to be something.
• 41:37
  There's usually something in my guest's head that, I wish I could have said that.
• 41:40
  I wanted to pass on this piece of wisdom.
• 41:42
  So what would you like to pass on to anyone that's watching right now?
• 41:48
  I just want to say that I believe that we all have a purpose and I believe when you find your purpose and you walk in that purpose that your life is so fulfilling.
• 42:00
  And I want to remind people that the marketplace is a big place to step into your purpose.
• 42:08
  We have local churches that we want to support and love one, but we have a whole world out here.
• 42:14
  so stepping into the marketplace may be one of the bravest things.
• 42:18
  that you ever do.
• 42:20
  We need you out here and someone is waiting for what you have to offer.
• 42:27
  So I hope that you will step forward into your God-sized dream.
• 42:32
  This is how aligned we are, Elaine, because my tagline to end these is thank you for joining us, everyone, and until next time, keep moving forward.
• 42:43
  Love it.