Speaking Worth & Stepping Into Potential as a Christian Podcaster

Hi Friend!

Let’s talk about claiming your own worth and stepping into your potential as a powerful, successful Christian Business Owner on a mission. In this interview with Dr. Cortney Baker from Women in Business (now the Funny Money Show), we chat about the hard parts of figuring out how to tap into your own confidence and claim your best life.

If you’re a podcaster or online business owner who is ready to go next level, listen in.

I pray this blesses you!

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00)
Hey girl, welcome to another episode of the show. This is episode number 141 with Dr. Cortney Baker. And I’m really pumped to bring this to you guys today because we talk about how to relate and find commonalities and similarities between you and your customers and clients. And I think you’re gonna totally, totally love it. Dr. Cortney Baker is from Texas and she is one of the top 100 healthcare leaders in the nation. She’s been named Texas businesswoman of the year, and she went from a teenage mom to a CEO of an eight figure national enterprise.

(00:36)
So really she’s here to teach us how to kind of take what your passion is and look at it as if this can become a true full-time dream for me. Okay. So dig in, I think you’re gonna love today’s episode and Dr. Cortney Baker. Speaking of digging into your passion project and really honing in on what the God led calling is over your life and over your heart. I offer strategy sessions and breakthrough calls specifically designed to help you come up with your four tier brand. We figure out what’s the thing, what’s the common denominator between all the things that you absolutely love to do and figure out a next step plan for you to create an online brand and business.

(02:14)
We even chat on how you could potentially monetize this in the future. Let me help you by offering you some coaching, digging into these with you and figuring out next steps for your business. I also coach on podcast strategy, podcast growth and launch course creation, and really anything your little mompreneur heart desires. So email us at info@stefaniegass.com for the latest coaching menu. Let’s do this girl.

(02:43)
I’m sure you guys heard about Cortney on the intro. She’s Dr. Cortney Baker. Let’s get that straight. Okay. But I’m so excited to welcome her to the show today, and we’re gonna dig into some pure gold. You guys are gonna love her. So hi, Cortney. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks. Stef. Or should I call you Dr. Baker? Oh, you just call me Cortney. Okay, Great. No, I feel like doctor is just so fancy. It deserves like my kids instead of calling me, mom would have to call me doctor. Cause I’d be like, I worked for this. Yeah. Excuse me. It’s doctor mom to you. Exactly. Well, I’m so excited you’re here.

(03:17)
Why don’t you start with who you are and share your story with us. Okay. I am Dr. Cortney Baker, and I started my adult journey as a single teenage mom and I was on Medicaid and food stamps six months after I graduated high school. I put myself through college and got a master’s degree in communication disorders and sciences, which is just fancy for speech quality and worked for about a year as an undervalued employee for an agency. I realized really quickly, I mean, it was right after September 11th, my husband was working the night shift. We were pregnant with our second child and I just decided it was an amazing time to start my own company.

(04:02)
So I did that and it was just me with 10 little patients, 10 little pediatric patients with speech disorders. And today we are now 16 years later, an agency that is operational all over Texas, Colorado, and now Idaho. Nice. And yeah, and we have over 600 employees and we’ve had the amazing privilege of serving probably 70,000 children with special needs. Wow. Providing speech, physical, occupational therapy and nursing services. That is so cool. And you have podcast. I do. It’s called Women in Business. Yes.

(04:44)
What inspired you to kind of take that direction from, you know, going from this child focus to women in business focus? In 2012, I went back to school to get my doctorate degree in leadership and organizational leadership. Cuz at that point I realized, you know, I wasn’t doing therapy anymore. I really needed to know like what do I need to do to be a good leader and steward this company well. I went back to school and in my research, focused on women and the corporate ladder and advancing our careers. And instead of looking at the glass ceiling, I just decided let’s talk to the people who have gone beyond that and reached the highest levels of leadership and find out their strategies.

(05:29)
So I looked at what are the reasons women are held back from climbing the ladder. And there were four main challenges that I found. Then I started thinking about it. There was actually a couple of tiggers. There were two instances. One was a research article done by McKenzie and company, along with Lean In that found at the rate that we are going, we are more than a hundred years away from gender equality at sea level. And honestly that just made me mad. Yeah.

(05:58)
Then the second piece of research I found was in New York times, article in 2015, the headline read that fewer big companies are run by women than men named John. Yes. Oh my gosh. What is it with the Johns I’ve had like four bosses named John. I’m not even kidding. That’s so funny. Yes I know. And I was like, you know, what can I do? Because I think entrepreneurs are either builders or sustainers. And I’d really gotten to a point where I was sustaining in my business. And so I transitioned outta the daily operations to let other people run it.

(06:37)
I thought, what can I do to decrease this gender gap? I have a 16 and a 12 year old daughter. Yeah. What can I do to make their journeys better? And so I looked at everything that I had in my wheelhouse and said, I can help women start their own businesses and be CEOs through the power of business coaching. And that’s what I do. That is amazing. How cool I’m all about that. And now I have all these boys, you know, I have two little boys and my pug is a boy. Who’s snoring. If you can hear him sitting next to me, I was like muting myself. Cause I’m like, he is snoring so loud.

(07:15)
Then I’ve got my husband and I’m like, but yet I even in my own life still see places of inequality. Like I’m still the one expected to do the household, even though I am making just as much, if not more money than my spouse. And there’s these like kind of social stigmas or maybe even their personal to me, like you put that on yourself as a woman. So I’d love to hear what were those four things that you had mentioned that you discovered in your research?

(07:43)
The first one is exactly what you’re talking about. It’s family obligations. Hmm. And women do nearly twice as much housework and childcare than men do. For every one hour a man does any housework during a week, a woman does 1.7 hours. And what like, is that just because of our personality or do you think that that’s society based that we’ve been ingrained in us or instilled in us that we have to do that? Cause I feel like a lot of that’s natural to me, but was that a learned behavior? Yeah. And I think it’s societal. I think there’s a lot of history at play.

(08:19)
I also think that it’s that social stigma of, you know, the man earns the keep. Women are CEOs in their own right of an incredible, powerful, stressful, amazing organization called the humble abode. I mean we’re in charge of housekeeping. We’re in charge of transportation, human resources. Yeah. You name it like we’re the therapist. Right. We’re like, you know, the encourager, the therapist, the doctor, like it’s so cute. I’m like apparently the keeper of all the things too, like last night, my husband’s like, where’s my wallet. I’m like, where’s your wallet? I don’t know where your wallet is.

(09:00)
Am I the keeper of the things? Like you just walked in the door, but yet where’s your wallet. So I totally feel into that. What else did you uncover? The second challenge was limited opportunities, limited advancement opportunities. And then the third challenge really surprised me. It was gender based discrimination. Now I went into my research and just all transparency. I really thought it was gonna be the good old boys holding us back. And there are still instances of who I lovingly refer to as Bubba. And he’s still, I am in Texas. He’s still out there rubbing his belly and laughing at his own jokes and you know, expecting us to go get his coffee and his name might be John. But anyway, yeah, I know him. I know him. I used to work for him.

(09:49)
We all know Bubbas, but what was incredible was that more often than not women talked about other women holding them back on their journeys and the lack of female mentorship. Wow. One of the women that I talked to in my study, I asked her, I said, tell me about your female mentors. And she laughed at me. And she said, I haven’t had mentors. I’ve had two mentors. And it just blew me a way. And then the fourth challenge was how many women lacked confidence? It was nearly 80% of the women that I talked to. And so I thought, you know, I’m not a coach or a therapist or a life coach or anything.

(10:32)
If I could be a mentor, help women and provide the business knowledge and the strategies and help them navigate those family relationships of the expectations, then help them create their own opportunities. Then I have laid the foundation, create strategies to get beyond every one of these obstacles. So we can be CEOs today as opposed to in a hundred years. Yeah. And I do see, I feel like I see some of those four things kind of shifting, or at least in my space, but I’ve never had problem with like confidence or things like that. I’m a go-getter and like I’ve never had that issue, but the first one, for sure.

(11:18)
I used to be in corporate and there were two divisions, where I was the financial controller of one division and there was a 60 year old man that was the controller of the other. I was 26. Right. He’s making $110,000. I’m making $60,000. Right. And like at that moment I march my little tooshie, see, this is where I’m different, I march my tooshie in there to that CEO’s office. I’m like, I know what people make, cuz I’m the financial controller and I’m not making what he’s making. Like we’re gonna fix this. And like within a month I was making the same as him because I came and played the card of like, listen, if I’m doing the same work as him who also had the corner office and I’m in the cubicle, I’m like, I need the same pay. I need the same treatment.

(12:11)
So they remedied that real quick. But if I didn’t have that voice to speak up for myself, it would’ve continued like that forever, I fear. And it was because, oh, but he’s more experienced, but does it matter if I’m doing the same work today? Yeah. Then I should get paid more because I came with a lot less experience and I’m gonna to be here longer. True. At least you had the knowledge of what he was making. Yeah. And a lot of times you don’t have that clarity. Yeah. So what do you say now? So you’re, you’ve stepped into this space of helping women become CEOs. Cortney, what are you finding in that world?

(12:52)
What are your are top maybe recommendations for that woman that says, I do wanna run my own business. I do wanna start a coaching business. I do want to break this gender equality and make the same as the dude down the hall. Right? Like what maybe are your top three things that you would encourage her or tell her to do? Oh my goodness.

(13:14)
Believe it or not Podcast Pro University is literally live in the world and there are already students and people are launching their podcast left and right. And I’m blown away at the responses I’ve had to this course. Do I have you considering starting your own podcast by now? I sure hope so.

(14:11)
So the first is to get some clarity around what you want to do and lay out your strategy of like, I want to be maybe a health coach. Okay. What are your experiences in this? You know, one of the things I always tell my mentees is when they’re talking about what they wanna do, a lot of times they’re not clear. So I’ll say, okay, what is a problem that really irks you? Because so many people say, follow your passion. Well, I just say, screw your passion, all the problems that really makes you mad. Ooh, that’s a good point.

(14:47)
Mine is the gender gap. Yeah. And the gender inequality. So I’m solving a problem that really makes me mad. Oh, I really love that. I never considered that. Yeah, because that’s where your fire’s gonna come from. Save your passion for your hobby. Don’t try to monetize it, because if you make your hobby your job, then you have no escape. That’s super interesting. Cause I was just thinking of about myself in that example. And I’m like, I get super fired up about women that are moms saying that they can’t have it all, right? Well I don’t have time or I don’t have support or I don’t have help or I can’t be successful.

(15:24)
I can’t grow and scale a business because I’m a mom and I’m like, Ugh. Like I just wanna smash that and be like, listen, because you’re a mom, you have a responsibility to follow your calling. Like you have to show your kids that you are worthy of doing the thing you were created for. So like I get all kinds of fired up about that, but I never realized it was something that set me off versus just something I’m excited about. Yeah. And so you can help women see that through the lens of showing them that. Well look, look at me as an example, look how I did it.

(15:57)
You know, the thing is like with women to say that they can’t do it, a lot of it, and we could talk about confidence even in this, is that they don’t have the confidence to go to their spouse and say, Hey honey, this is really important to me. I love you so much and I need your support in this. And it’s just having those open, honest, raw conversations that we’re so afraid of. And I give so many times in my podcast, I’m like, ladies, it’s just phrasing it in a question. Yeah. Hey honey, like, do you think I could blah, blah, blah. And they’re like, well of course you could. But that was my idea. I’m like, was it though? Was that your idea? Yeah. Yes, it was. You’re brilliant. I’m gonna go do that.

(16:39)
Sounds great. Let me get your buy-in really quick. Exactly. If the communication is everything and then I think, you know, along with that, it’s getting them on board then allows you to ask for help more freely. It takes that guilt off because we’re so afraid of disappointing everyone or people being mad at us. I think that’s a chick thing, I don’t know. My husband doesn’t care if somebody’s mad at him, if he’s going hunting for 15 days, he’s like, bye. But I’m over here. Like I’m leaving for a night. Everybody’s mad at me. Like, what is that? Yes.

(17:15)
It’s crazy because if we just say, okay, look, I’m putting all the chores in a hat. Let’s pick a chore for the week and this is yours. This is fun. If your kids are smart enough to run a smart device, then they are old enough and willing enough to help. We’ve gotta get our kids on board and show them the responsibility of what it takes to run a house. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to help. And your spouse. I love that. So it starts with clarity. Clarity was first, second was communication.

(17:50)
What would be the next step for these women that are just trying to like grow and scale and maybe be a CEO or maybe become a coach or start that business. They have clarity, now what? So it’s funny because I actually have a course on this called From Side Hustle to CEO. Nice. And we go through the entire process of to start a business. So it’s so tactical. And, once you have like your idea, it’s going through your market research, it’s setting up your business entity, it’s getting your business bank account. It’s all the steps. And it’s step by step by step in five modules. Nice. And it breaks it down, so it’s not overwhelming.

(18:31)
That’s definitely first I think is like, you know, getting all the business stuff set up in place. And you had mentioned something earlier to me about, okay, you wanna do the thing, but first we have to have actually what experienced thing we’re gonna teach. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah. So I get fired up about, there are so many people out there that have put on their business coaching hat, but not necessarily have the experience to be able to speak to it in their own life. I really think, you know, the best coaches not only studied it, but also been in it. For me to be able to relate to some of the women that I’ve coached is only because I’ve walked the journey and to be able to say, look, here’s been my process.

(19:19)
Here’s the roadmap I’ve walked down and I’ve made all pitfalls and I’ve taken ’em out of your journey. So here, here you go. If you haven’t walked that walk and I just look at the validity of the content that you’re saying. So if you’re gonna go teach a course on it, have a life experience and go through it actually first before you teach it. I love that. I actually had a friend today asking me about if she creates this podcast, she’s like, don’t I need a course before I start the podcast. And I’m like, no, because you have no idea what your audience wants. You don’t know. And the best thing to do is get out there and market research, like you said, but pour into and solve what you get fired up about, you know, using your words and then see what comes back.

(20:09)
So you’re putting it out there for a couple months solutions, solution, solution. You know, I’m talking about this, I’m training on this and you’re gonna get that, that inflow of DMs and the feedback and the reviews of people saying more of blank. And then you can say, oh, now I can teach something at an implementation level, whether that be through private coaching or through a course, right? After you start, you start to see what do people want. And then secondly, what have I walked through?

(20:34)
I feel like one of the biggest, not mistakes I made, but where I could have maybe revised my journey is I jumped into the online space with courses before I ever knew what people wanted. And now I’m about ready to retire four of my courses, because I finally figured out what my signature is, but it took a year and a half of getting to know my avatar. Yeah. So I feel you on that. So ladies listening, bring the salt, but don’t quit your job. Keep pouring into the passion project for a while until you get more clarity. Right? Absolutely.

(21:08)
And I think so many women also look at, and I’m guilty of it too, if things don’t reach the level that of the expectation, then we go, oh, this didn’t work. It was a failure. And it’s like, no, there’s so much value in that learning. And you don’t know how to run a race if you’re sitting on the starting line. So it’s looking at that journey and going, oh my gosh, look at all the lessons I learned through the pivots.

(21:35)
So my last question then is what do you say to the woman who she has the clarity, she has the calling, she’s passionate or fired up about something, she’s ready to maybe look into starting that business or getting further into it but she’s scared. The confidence piece is missing. Where do you find that? Or what can she do? So it’s creating small action steps and doing small action steps. So let’s say you wanna be a life coach and I’m just throwing this out there, then get your programming and learn your content and then go to your best friend and say, Hey, can I practice with you? Do things for free. Don’t be afraid to jump out there and offer your services for free.

(22:19)
And the other thing, don’t be afraid to start reaching out and building your tribe as you go, because you’ll need them when it time to launch. That’s great advice. Yeah, and I feel like, you know, also don’t price yourself out of the market because everybody around is saying, you know, know your price and price your worth. And it’s like, yeah, but you’ve gotta earn that worth as you go. That worth is through experience. Yeah. I started out with free. I was helping people like figure out their zone of genius or I call it their God led calling or their soul call. And then how can we make this a business?

(22:58)
Is there a way to kind of make this profitable for you? Then all of a sudden I’m like, oh wait, could I like charge people to do this? And it was like $50 bucks here and there, tthen it was $200 bucks and then it was $350. And it’s like, that took time. I think anytime I would max out on my client load, I knew, oh, the demand has reached the law of the lid and I’m able to scale, but it takes time. I love that you brought that up. Don’t be afraid of free. And also with courses, like I would give like five people the course so that they could go through it all.

(23:28)
Give me the testimony, give me me the social proof that it works before I charge people for it. Yeah. And you also want that experience to go through all the hiccups and the pitfalls of, oh, I didn’t have this link to whatever. And, and you need that before you launch officially. There’s so much value in that. Wow. Well, so many golden nuggets today. Thank you for sharing all of this awesome information, because now I wanna go research and figure out like what we need to say about this topic.

(23:57)
But also on like the business mentorship and the advice that you gave to the ladies. So where can everybody find more about you check out your show and connect with you? Sure. I’m on all the social media platforms at Dr. Cortney Baker. My website is cortneybaker.com and then my podcast is Women in Business. And on Mondays I have show interviews. And then on Thursdays I have business tips and strategies and advice. So yeah. Check it out.

(24:28)
I love that. Ladies go listen, tag us in your stories if you love this episode, and I’ll be on Cortney’s show soon. So you’ll have to subscribe to her show so that you don’t miss my interview over there. And, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. It was fun. I hope you loved that episode and that chat about just being a boss, like figuring out how to claim your own worth and speak up for yourself and do some of the hard things, sister, friends.

(24:57)
So praying over you now that you have an incredible day full of blessings, full of awareness over all the miracles that are happening in your life. I pray that you find happiness in your current situation and you do your dang best and that you find the courage to continue persevering forward to say the things that need to be said to take control of the situations that need to change to let go of the things that are not serving you and that God hold your hand through all of it. Sending you so much love and light, Stef.