Episode 1634: Interview with Elaine Lankford About Her Coaching of Female Entrepreneurs

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Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us on episode 1,634 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

Elaine Lankford: I'm Elaine Lankford. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to open your heart to God is key, and one way to be inspired to do this is to listen to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

Um, but I really love the story that God gave me. The whole emphasis behind she steps forward is Luke 1 45, which is Elizabeth speaking over Mary. Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. And I think God put that [00:01:00] relationship in the Bible specifically for us to encourage us.

Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in your.

Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

In this podcast episode I interview Elaine Linkford, ask her about her work in She Steps Forward helping female entrepreneurs. I also ask Elaine about how her work with women internationally through her nonprofit came about. And Elaine also shares with you how she helps women lean into their own calling.

As her calling. [00:02:00] I have a great book that's been out for a while now called Inspired Living. Assemble the puzzle of your calling by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about that book over@inspiredlivingbook.com. It'll take you to a page where there's information and you can sign up to get some mailings about it, as well as purchase a copy there.

I'd love to see you get a copy and share with me how it impacted your world. Elaine is a passionate advocate for Christian female entrepreneurs dedicated to helping them launch and grow successful businesses, ministries, and nonprofits. As the founder of, she Steps Forward Coaching and she steps forward international.

She empowers women to step confidently into their God-sized dreams. Through. She Steps Forward coaching. Elaine offers targeted strategic planning and individualized support to aspiring female entrepreneurs. As a certified John Maxwell team member, [00:03:00] she brings expertise in speaking, writing, leadership development, and entrepreneurial coaching to her faith-based approach, expanding her vision globally, Elaine established she steps Forward International, a nonprofit organization that equips both American and African women to lead impactful ventures.

At the She Steps Forward International Women's Conference. She unites like-minded female entrepreneurs annually, each march in the United States and each May and Africa, fostering a global community

of inspiration and shared wisdom.

Welcome to the show, Elaine.

Elaine Lankford: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm so appreciative.

Scott Maderer: Thank you. I'm glad to have you here and talk a little bit this today. Now I shared a little bit in the intro about some of the things that you've done and some of the work that you do now and your past journey, but I always like to dig in a little deeper and talk about not [00:04:00] just what you do today, but how did you get here?

Why is this the, the message that you're putting out, the work that you're doing?

Elaine Lankford: Yeah, so I had a really interesting step into entrepreneurship and it came after a longstanding nursing career, and I was a nurse from 1992 up until 2008, had. Elevated up into nurse practitioner was doing pain management out in private practice.

Um, I was also at that point a church girl raised up in the church. Life was going pretty well. And then in 2008, I tell people I had a job as in job in the Bible moment and everything just crashed. And so around August of that year. My nursing career was kind of swept out from underneath me by some circumstances I couldn't control and [00:05:00] I went into a stance of having to defend myself professionally, and that was very costly process.

And then in the midst of all of that going on, my father passed away. And then several months after that, my husband at 47 was diagnosed with prostate cancer. So you can imagine all within about. 12 months that my life just totally went to ashes and I wasn't quite sure what was going on. Um, it was a real test of faith and I just had to step back and step away.

And because of the circumstances that were going on with me professionally. I got to a point in my defense that I had to make a hard decision, and that was to walk away from my career because it was financially costing my family and it was not something that was going to resolve easily. And so here I [00:06:00] am.

Had a wonderful 16 year nursing career, had really worked hard at it. Built up a lot of integrity and trust in the community, and all of a sudden all of that is gone and my father is gone and my husband is going through this process and I was just so lost. And that was about the hardest five year period of my life.

Just trying to recover from that. Mm-hmm. And the first two and a half years were excruciating because there was a lack of employment. There was questioning of myself, there was all of these things that I was dealing with. And so during that period though, about halfway through at the church I was at, we started, um, going on mission trips, and I won't go too long into that, but the long story short is on one mission trip.

I clearly heard a a still small voice early in the morning with an obnoxious rooster going off in the [00:07:00] background, tell me to go home and raise up his daughters, and I wasn't quite sure what that all meant. I was not, as I tell people, a sorority girl, I didn't go to to, to traditional college. So I didn't have that kind of sisterhood.

I, you know, wasn't super popular in school. Like my friend circle was super small and I was like, God, what in the world? And so I went home and basically the church that I was in at the time was. Had grown from about 400 to a thousand people. We had moved into a new building and I looked up one Sunday morning and I saw all these beautiful women who I had had in my small group, or my Bible study, if you will, through the church for, mm-hmm.

For years. And I thought, wow, she has such a great max story. Why isn't she using that to help another woman? Or, wow, she's so talented in this area, why isn't she doing something with that? And just all these people coming in, checking off a box, going home. It dawned on me [00:08:00] that's what it was. I was meant to be the catalyst that was supposed to move these women forward, and that was my step into the coaching world.

Scott Maderer: So let me ask you a question about that. 'cause I think you know, this is something that I hear a lot from people of faith. They kind of hear a direction or a calling and we're usually, we're confused. We're resistant. Maybe we're not sure exactly what it means. And a lot of times, and, and you just said it you looked out and you saw someone else and says, why is it she doing, you know, we have that instinct of why is it someone else doing this?

You know what I mean? Why, why isn't someone else doing it? How do you think that affected you, realizing that, you know, wait a minute, maybe you were. You were the someone in that sentence, so to speak.

Elaine Lankford: You know, I laugh. Um, God is kind of sneaky sometimes. He kinda, [00:09:00] um brings things to our, our our consciousness and we kind of push it away and he brings it back and we push it away.

But, I really just felt a strong urge. I think because I was raised up with such a strong leadership capability that I had, had used that in my nursing career, that I was used to building teams and directing and those kind of things that all, it just kind of came natural for me and, once I could identify the problem.

Again, this comes out of being trained as a nurse, right? You assess, you diagnose, you treat. I think after seeing the problem, I kind of knew where to go from there. And so it was really fun. And I'll back up and just say that as I was going through my. Um, journey. Uh, I had again been teaching bible study in the church.

I was [00:10:00] starting to journal and write a little bit and start to try to do some presentations. I thought through all of this that I was gonna become like the next Beth Moore. I thought that's where I was going. And so that Sunday morning when I looked up and I realized that I'm supposed to become the catalyst for another woman, he was very clear with me that you are not gonna be in the front.

Initially you are here to push them forward. And so yeah, it was just such a revelation to see how he was turning it, how he was using it, where he was going with it. And I was in for it. I was excited When you get to that point that you know, that, you know, then the excitement can kick in and you, it'll carry you the rest of the way.

Scott Maderer: So let's talk a little bit more about how your faith journey and this intersected. You know, you talked about having the the dark night of the soul mo moment and going through all of that. And obviously when, a lot of times when we go through things like [00:11:00] that affects our, our faith in different ways.

Some people. Makes pushes away some people, it makes us closer to it. It depends. And then as well, with the work that you're doing now and how that's affected your faith, talk a little bit about how your faith journey and your life journey have kind of intersected as you've gone back and forth through that.

Elaine Lankford: Absolutely. So, um, like I said, I was raised up in church. I tell people, you know, my birth certificate says OBC hospital, but I'm pretty sure I was spit out in the nursery of Western Branch Baptist Church and had known that lifestyle my whole life. But what I described myself as back then is a bubble wrap Christian, because nothing had ever gone wrong.

Everything was good. You know, I could, it love on Jesus because he loved on me and it was just, you know, just great. And so when this all happened, you're exactly right. And that's what I tell people. Like this crossroads just hits us at some point in our [00:12:00] life. And, um, it's not a cliche to say that you have to have a test before you can have a testimony.

I just had never reached that point to have such a test. Didn't realize that's what it was when I initially went into it, but it really had. Me considering where this was all going, because what I knew was the first time I hear heard that small still voice was in sixth grade and it told me to be a nurse.

And so that's what I did. I just, I went for it all through high school. My whole trajectory was toward that. And so when this all went down, I was like, gosh, Lord, I did what you asked me to do. I did everything and did it with excellence, and I really tried hard and why are you taking this all away from me?

And so as I'm sitting in that five year period toward that, that first two and a half years where the deep work he did in me happened. I'm journaling all these things he's downloading to me. I'm [00:13:00] writing and journaling and documenting scripture, and really studying in my Bible and just trying to figure this whole thing out.

And I realized that he was actually saving me by taking me out of it because I had crossed over into my identity being my whole nursing career. All of those initials behind my name meant more at that point than my Christ. Identity. Right? And I believe he was pulling me out to, to reposition me and to get me realigned with him.

And so that is the one of the bigger lessons that probably came out of it. And everything that I was being downloaded, led in that direction of, will you really follow me? Will you lay down the cross of what you want? Will you become a true disciple? And so as I'm journaling, these are the things that are coming out that would eventually come out into a book.

And so I, um, yeah, that whole intersection really got me. [00:14:00] I was I knew that, I knew that I believed in God, that for me, that was a, that was a non-negotiable. But what I didn't understand is. Who he was because I had not been chasing him. And I said, God, if you are who you say you are, I need to know it.

And I need you to help me to understand that. And he immediately kind of impressed upon me service. And so my way out of all of this, which was very, um, disturbing and dark and depressive and all the things that people would think as you go through something like this was service. And my leaning back into my faith was to get myself up.

Pull myself up by my bootstraps, go in and serve somehow in the church. And back then, when I got started, it was simply going in and doing our worship folders or bulletins or whatever you call it at your church. It was just going in and assembling them for the staff, so they didn't have to do it. But what it did is it put me a good, in a good environment of people who [00:15:00] loved me and were praying for me, and it got my attention off of myself.

Onto service of others. And that was the other big piece that he was building into me right before he would drop this in my soul about raising up his daughters because he never waste anything and everything is always leading to something.

Scott Maderer: Yeah. Well, and again, I think a lot of times we put the pieces together, but we have to go through 'em before we know that they're there.

So again, maybe part of the reason you became a nurse is so that you had the skillset you needed later. And, but it was time to put that down. Absolutely. You know?

Elaine Lankford: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I, you know, you think, you walk into something and you think it's a forever and always, but that's not true. God is a god of seasons.

Right. And so my season in nursing had changed and it was, to me was painful. And you hadn't recognized it. Right? I didn't recognize like it was coming to an end. But, you know, sometimes people like me who just are, [00:16:00] um, I'm sure you, you know him, Scott, you might be one like. You're go-getter, you're hard, you're fast.

Sometimes you gotta sit you down to get your attention.

Scott Maderer: No, I, I don't know anyone like that. No, no, not at all. No. Don't. And don't ask my wife please. Yeah. Uh, as people, people will tell me all the time, it's like, boy, you're competitive. And I'm like, I'm the least competitive person in my family.

That's, that's, that's the bad thing, you know? My whole family's like that. Okay. Just, just. It was the only way I ate chicken, you know, otherwise there was no chicken left. You had to compete for everything. So let's talk a little bit about the book. I know you, you mentioned that a lot of the journaling that you did and the, the story as you went through that you, you put it together in a book.

A book is one of those things that I think a lot of folks they think about doing a book. They have the idea of having a book, but yet bringing a book into fruition is its own. Whole [00:17:00] journey and, and set of challenges and work that that has to happen when you just, you know, what, how did that come about?

Did you just decide one day, oh, this needs to be a book, or, you know, what, what happened?

Elaine Lankford: I had been journaling for probably the first, like I said, the first two and a half years. And I honestly, it was one night. He speaks to me in that still small voice and I heard him say, you need to put this together.

And I said, oh, no, Jesus, no. I said, these are all my internal thoughts. These are all my internal. Pains. This story is not a story that most people I thought at the time would understand. It was a story that made me feel shame, and yet he was not setting it up for that. I was just feeling that's play of the Devil.

And I was like I can't put this out here 'cause nobody's gonna understand that [00:18:00] they were. In the wrong, and I was in the right, or, and, and everybody knows that bad things happen to good people, but they always have that suspicion like maybe they did something to cause this. And I just was like, oh, no.

But once I ab obeyed him and I really pulled those notes up and I looked at everything, it took about six months for me to organize it all. And I can truly say the spirit was guiding and and doing all of those things. But once it kind of came together, it was like, oh. I see what you're doing now.

Like I see the, the progression of, of my pain and and how it had to, to go step by step and then how it can become a testimony and I really relate to. Joseph in the Bible, and I write a little bit about that in the book, but I really relate to, you know, him having a dream and kind of people pushing him down.

I've always felt that insecurity, that my dream was really not that big of a deal and that I [00:19:00] was insignificant compared to some people. And, just being accused of something, you know, you didn't do, and then having to suffer the consequences of it. And, but just seeing how Joseph was faithful in all of that, and I tried to be faithful and all that, so I really related to him.

And I said, if you can use my story, then God, then use it. Just use it. Mm-hmm. And so yeah, it took about six months to get all the notes together. I decided to go the, uh, self-publishing route through a a smaller house like WestBow Press. And got in there funded it and got that book done and then just started kind of putting it out.

And that really was my step into entrepreneurship. 'cause once you have the book, you gotta talk about the book and market the book and do all the things. And, and that was just another layer of him pulling me back out of where I had been and kind of showing me where he wanted to take me. So

Scott Maderer: right.

So the, the and, and the [00:20:00] book for anyone listening is called love Echoed Back.

Um, mm-hmm. It may or may not be in print right now. Again, self-published. Sometimes they come in and out of print. So when you're listening to this, you can always check. It may be available right now, it may not be. But one of the things that you said there that, that drew my attention is, you know, a lot of times we look at our own story and we think to ourselves, well, well.

It must not be worthy. You know, it, it's not worth sharing. Nobody else is gonna relate to this, I think. Mm-hmm. Is how you put it.

Elaine Lankford: Yep.

Scott Maderer: And yet we all have. Story and I, yet I've yet to meet somebody whose story is perfect. You know, we, we've all got mess, at least from our own point of view, you know, uh, people outside may look at it and go, oh, you've had a perfect life, but the person that's living the life is going, what are you talking about?

No, no, I haven't.

That's right.

Because there's things that are going on internally or things that we don't see, you know, we just see pieces of it, the, [00:21:00] the Instagram photos of people's life, not the real mm-hmm. The real messy journey. When you think about now the work you do with, with female entrepreneurs I think there's a, a relationship there too as well.

How do you encourage folks to, to lean into their story and the mess and, and live through that and turn that into something, something that's more of a strength than a weakness?

Elaine Lankford: Such a great question. One of the things he showed me is once the book was, once the book was published, and people can contact me by way if, if, if they're hearing this on the back and they want a copy and it's not in circulation, I still have some the thing that he showed me through it was once I got the book out there, once I was sharing my story, I found out that people were very compassionate.

I found out that people could relate because of the depth of loss and grief that I suffered, and we all [00:22:00] suffer loss and grief. Maybe it's not a career, but maybe it's a marriage, maybe it's a child losing a child. We all go through. Loss and grief and that was the connection point. It didn't matter the details on my story.

It was that piece of it and the hope of Christ that brought me out of it, that they were starting to draw to. And I've had people tell me, I, I, for my book, 'cause it was self-published and I could do it the way I wanted to, I put a lot of scriptures in it because I put the scriptures in it that he gave me.

And I've had people say. I use your book as a devotional, like, I love all the scriptures you put in it. They hit me, right? Like it's it. And so that's what he showed me. And is if you would trust me with it, I have use for it. And you know, I did like the typical author out there, a local author. I probably got about 300, 3 50 of them out at the time, uh, over the course of a year or so.

But the response that I got from people, men and women, [00:23:00] impressed upon me enough that this is what it's all about. Sharing in our stories being real and then showing the transformation if we lean into our faith, because at the end of that book, it really is a turn of, will you lean into him or will you lean out?

Will you give him a chance to use you? That's kind of how I'm ending the book, and it's a call, it's a clearing call to step in with him and see what it is that he has. For you and let go of the things that you're still holding onto that's holding you back from fully engaging your faith. And that's what he used it for.

And once I could clearly see that, then it was, I passed that book out all the time. I tell people my story without hesitation because now I know the impact of it and why I had to go through it and how he's using it. But just incredibly, it was an incredible. Experience to fill people's compassion and the connection that came out of that.

Scott Maderer: Mm-hmm. Talk a little bit [00:24:00] about the work you do now with the nonprofit. She steps forward international. How does that fit into the work you do and the message you share?

Elaine Lankford: So she steps forward international as kind of an extension of my, my private coaching. So with all of these women, what I've found is that they really just need to have that courage to step forward, right?

So she steps forward. And in that it is learning how we can become that mentor or spiritual person for the other person and empower them to move forward. And so. As I'm going through this whole process, in my whole journey in life, that's what I learned is how I can pull someone up. And so I use that in any of the area that I do, whether it's the private or the international piece.

For women, it's a matter of they know that, they know that they have a purpose, but for there are, there are certain things in culture [00:25:00] in the church and things that make them hesitant to really step into the full force of their giftings and so. I use my story to show them how they can push through no matter what.

I show them the courage and the tenacity that they can have and believe that God is calling them to something higher. And so through all of this, what came out of it was at one point as I'm journeying through, I kind of started my coaching stuff in 2016. In 2019, he gave me the concept for what's called the she steps forward.

Conference and I first launched that in 2019. And I gathered about 60 women that year to teach them the story of Elizabeth and Mary, Elizabeth and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and how their relationship was really an intersecting relationship of women empowering women. I believe Elizabeth was specifically put in Mary's life [00:26:00] to help her move forward in, in, in doing what she was called to do by the Lord of birthing the Messiah.

And so in that process. God did something really funny that year. He brought Elany from Kenya to my very first conference, which blew my mind. I had no marketing budget. I had very little dinky website at the time, and somehow she had searched the internet for conferences and found mine and she contacted me and, um, she ended up buying a ticket and coming over and I was just.

Enthralled by this person coming from another country, and so I picked her up at the airport. We got to know each other really well that weekend. She hung around a few days in my area and she asked me toward the end of her trip. If I would come to Nairobi, Kenya, and I did not see that one coming. I'd spent some years down going to Nicaragua with our church doing missions, but Africa was new territory and not something on my radar.

And, but there was something so [00:27:00] sincere and she told me I, my first conference was themed. She steps forward with destiny. And that is what drew Theresa here, because in Africa, destiny is a big word. They named their children after what they think their destiny will be. And she said, women need to hear this.

They need to know that they can be empowered, they can be encouraged, they can step forward. Long story short, we planned that out over a year with technology of WhatsApp and Zoom. And in February of 2020, I touched down for the very first time in Nairobi, Kenya before the world shut down. And we had our first conference there and we had 60 ladies from five different countries in Africa show up.

And I just knew this is where God was putting me. The call to Africa has been super strong. It's not, we definitely work here in the States. We are building up here in the States and we want to be a national footprint, but his addition of Kenya was just something very special. And to meet [00:28:00] those women and to know that women across the ocean have the same.

Problems we do, but with a little extra layer of obstacle. Um, it was just very sweet to find that and to be able to start working with them and to, to see them rise. To take this on. And so yeah, so our work has just transcended across the ocean and it's been very exciting. And now we're at a point I'm very excited that very soon we will be connecting our American counterparts with our African counterparts.

People do go to Africa with me when we go in May. It's an open trip, but just to see the connection. Between American and African women has also been huge. And so it's given me now this global perspective of the church, right? Like he's just growing me all along.

And so now I just have this whole worldview that is so much different than when I [00:29:00] started, but the sweetness of it is just understanding that, that we live in our isolated world and God really wants to use us everywhere, and if we can just lean into what he's trying to do what we will discover is amazing. Like you can, Jesus is not boring, y'all. I just want you to know that Jesus is not boring, and if you go on a journey with him, he will take you to places you just never even expected.

Scott Maderer: Mm-hmm. So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I ask you those, is there anything else about the, your book, the work you do or your coaching that you'd like to share with the lister?

Elaine Lankford: So I really wanna lean in, especially for maybe your female listeners. But guys, don't tune me out because I believe there is also this is in the Bible for you with other characters.

But I really love the story that God gave me. The whole emphasis [00:30:00] behind she steps forward is Luke 1 45, which is Elizabeth speaking over Mary. Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. And I think God put that relationship in the Bible specifically for us, to encourage us that he has a purpose for us, and that if we would just believe, if we would just step forward, he's gonna fulfill what it is that He gets started.

And the intimacy of these ladies and their relationship. I think we skim over sometimes because it's wrapped in the Christmas story of the angel coming down and telling Mary she's gonna birth the Messiah. But in that whole sequence, this angel tells her about Elizabeth, and we have to dig into that and figure out why.

And then we have to understand because in our Western context, we don't understand the Jewish context of how this is all playing out. That. Mary didn't just go around the corner to get to Elizabeth. Once she found out about her, she actually walked 70 miles down into [00:31:00] Judea or Jerusalem territory to find Elizabeth, and that means there was some real incredible.

Faith on Mary's part. She's young, she's now pregnant, she's traveling down without family, or Joseph to find her cousin. And then in that whole scenario, when Elizabeth speaks that over her, I just think that's so Holy Spirit led. That's such a, a prophecy over Mary. But then at the very end of that story, it says Mary stayed with her three months.

And that is probably the most overlooked verse in the whole story. What happened in those three months? What was it that they talked about? What did they do every day? What was the partnership in that relationship? And I think if women can grab a hold of that and understand the significance of that relationship, man, it will set them on fire.

And so that one story, open my eyes up to all the women in the Bible. And all I will say in wrapping that up is women, please get your [00:32:00] Bibles out. Please read and study. The women who are in the Bible, they have been put there for us.

And we have a role in the kingdom and we need to get to it.

Scott Maderer: So my brand has inspired stewardship and I kind of run things through that lens of, of stewardship.

And yet I've discovered over the years that that's one of those words that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So for you, when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

Elaine Lankford: When I love your whole emphasis of the time, talents, and treasures. We hear that, especially in the, in the Christian world, we know that phrasing, but for stewardship, to me it means giving God a hundred percent.

Like, I feel like we get so tied up in our modern day lives that we give him 10% of our time or 50% of our treasures. And what he really wants is all of it. And so if we're really stewarding what he's giving us, we're giving him a hundred percent in all three of those [00:33:00] areas, in all times to the best of our ability.

And so he's given us this. Amazing life and he's given us the giftings and he's given us really everything that we need to carry that out. And so if we're not giving a hundred percent to it, then we're not really stewarding what we have been so graced with. Hmm.

Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody.

Imagine for a moment that I had this magic machine and with this machine I could take you from where you are today and transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years. And through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life, see all of the connections, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left.

What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

Elaine Lankford: I just really want to make sure that I have left a legacy where women. Really feel the empowerment to [00:34:00] pull the next woman up and that we have a cycle that goes on year after year. See, we have this pattern in the Bible called Titus two. The Titus two women we hear about all the time.

We say it's the older woman leaning into the younger women, but it's really about. Women raising up women, and again, men, I think there are examples for you in the Bible as well, for you all, but for us it's tightest too, and I think we've lost some of that in the church. I think we've been too literal about it in the church because I know that there are some younger women that help raise up older women who raise up younger women.

We need to get across the denominational lines on it. We need to just be raising people up in the kingdom. And so I just wanna be able to look back and say, I raised up a generation who understood Titus two. And not only did they understand it, but they understood there were no boundaries to it. [00:35:00] And if that occurs and that women are starting to raise up women all over the world are from some pattern of that, I would be so happy to see that.

Scott Maderer: So what's on the roadmap? What's coming next as you continue on your journey?

Elaine Lankford: So we're just continuing to expand more on what we're doing. As you know, my, I do private coaching with clients and I'm so excited for that that ability to serve women in that capacity to give them a very.

Non cookie cutter approach to their God given dream to help push them into that is just pretty special. But in the nonprofit piece, uh, we're continuing to span. We, we roll out our conference again every year in March, here in the States and may. They are, the numbers are growing, the quality of person coming into.

The, to the conferences is growing. We're doing cohort programs, which is just group coaching, and we have [00:36:00] African ladies doing it through Zoom and we have American ladies we're starting to raise up. And so we're just growing. She steps forward out so that women know that they have, Christian, women know that they have a safe space to come into, to really wrestle with and figure out the mechanics of what God's asking them to do.

And we hope to become. A gap filler because as you know, and I'll say this, as you know, most businesses or nonprofits that start out fail within the first five to seven years. And we wanna close that gap for Christian women. We wanna make sure they are strategically set up and sustainable. And so yeah, we're just continuing to push our programs and gain ground and gain momentum, and we're so excited to see how God is using that.

Scott Maderer: You can find out more about Elaine over@shestepscoaching.com. Of course. I'll have a link to that over in the show notes as well. [00:37:00] Elaine, anything else you'd like to share with the lister?

Elaine Lankford: Yeah, I would just like to say, ladies, if you feel like that you have a God-sized dream and you're looking for a Christian coach who can lead you in a path, uh, that gets you from point A to point Z, and you are ready to step forward, please contact me.

You can find me@meetcoachelaine.com.

Scott Maderer: I'll have a link to that as well.

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