We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carina Dawn Reed. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carina Dawn below.
Carina Dawn, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
At Trumpets of Tirzah, our mission is empowering women to live out their calling while bringing Kingdom influence to the world around them. Everything we do is centered around our mission; social media posts, workshops, conferences, courses and outreach.
I come from a very humble background. I grew up in a small town where the expectation of women is to marry after high school and have children. Some women are called to that, which is wonderful, but many women aren’t. As I was thinking about my future adult life while in high school, it looked different than what I saw around me. I was determined to become something different and I knew that I was going to have to venture out into “unknown territory” to make that happen. Little did I know where my path was actually leading!
I explored a few different careers and had success in them but the success seemed to be just mine. What I was doing wasn’t leading to success for other people. I realized that personal success was very selfish if others can’t benefit from it. Real success, my own hard work, should benefit not just myself but the people I know. I wanted the people around me to share in the work that I was doing. If I was going to work hard, I wanted it to benefit many. That’s a better feeling of satisfaction and a real return for investment.
So this mission began stirring inside me. How could I use the experience I had along with the impact I wanted to make so that it could benefit others? The answer was taking the focus off of myself and my work and helping others, specifically women, to get to where they wanted to be. Coming from a small town, the mentality can be really hard to overcome. It’s a feeling that you really don’t have any options and when you live there, it can take money and/or opportunity to be able to leave. And opportunity was something that I could give to others.
We don’t realize how impactful our words are and how they affect others. We should realize it because people sometimes take drastic actions when something hurtful is said to them, but we tend to disconnect the power in our words on a daily basis. Everyone alive needs encouragement. I’m thankful to have had the support and encouragement of my parents as I grew up but not everyone has that. So I made it my mission, and my organization’s mission to be that voice of encouragement and equipping for women around the world. I love to work hard in order to give others a voice so they can impact the world around them.
Carina Dawn, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Trumpets of Tirzah is a very unique organization. The first thing that sets us apart is that we primarily focus on women. Thankfully, with the help of technology and digital communications, we mentor women all around the world. We have a myriad of ways that women can receive empowerment, encouragement and equipping: one-on-one mentoring and coaching appointments, our ministry school, weekly online church, weekly podcast, social media lives, outreach events and other one-time gatherings both online and in-person.
What sets us apart from others…
Everything in Excellence
We give our very best to those around us because God gives His best to us first. We pass that on! We honor one another in all ways, that means putting time, effort, and attention into everything. We take time to present ourselves, and all we do, in a way that honors God and honors those around us giving everyone respect from a genuine heart posture.
Our focus is Biblical Life Application
People in the Bible that followed God’s instructions always flourished. When they didn’t follow His instructions things were easy. So in order to empower women to flourish, we equip them on how to apply Bible teaching to their daily lives. We are dedicated to training women so that they can flourish in any situation or circumstance. God has a proven track record and all we need to do is follow it.
Genuine Community
The Tirzah Tribe is hands-on. We care about those in our community, whether virtual or in-person. Regardless of where our community is, or how we reach them, we do our best to follow-up, reach out, support, and encourage. We get to know those in our community through personal interaction. The ones who engage with us are the ones that we engage with! We are passionate about seeing God’s children fulfill the purpose that He created them for.
I have a gift for breaking down scripture and helping others understand scripture in context. I present scripture with cultural and historical understanding, literal and figurative meanings, with Hebrew and Greek explanations. As a person begins to understand what scripture is saying, we can then find the action step that we need to take. I understand how the Old Testament and New Testament relate to one another and what that means to us today, so I’m able to give practical tips, advice, and action steps so you can start practicing what Jesus preached and step into a flourishing life.
It’s an honor to work with women from all over the world. We might have different cultures but the problems we face are the same at the root. We are currently equipping women in 22 countries!
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
The most important way to manage a team is to make them your family and treat them as such. All people want to feel valued and appreciated. Gone are the days of knowing that your staff will be with you until they retire, that is not current culture. The more we can bond as a team, becoming genuine and personal with one another, the more the entire team will feel a sense of unity. Unification helps everyone feel responsible for their part to the team, while feeling valued and appreciated, so the bond is secure and the morale is high. That means the manager of the team needs to put honest effort into the team dynamic. Connecting with each individual on the team and identifying each strength within them. And sometimes that means a day of work needs to include no work at all; a team retreat refreshes everyone!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Everyone had to pivot in 2020. Our ministry school was meeting in-person only and under religious freedom we were going to continue to meet in-person but not everyone was comfortable with that. I wanted everyone to finish out the academy year strong, which meant I had to figure out a way to finish without meeting in-person. It might sound like a simple fix, just meet over Zoom, but the way our ministry school operated, meeting in-person was necessary. We had so many hand-on activities, activations, confidence-building exercises with one another that I had to restructure our curriculum very quickly. Our academy’s 7-month course is transformational and I had to restructure that in a way which would translate, while having the same effectiveness, over a virtual connection. We took two weeks off, I prayed a lot, and changed how we taught, operated, and interacted with students. Thankfully, at that point, we only had 2 months left until our year-end.
The beauty of it all, if that had not happened, we wouldn’t be mentoring women all around the world. Once that academy year ended, I restructured our entire course for a virtual audience, including the accountability aspect, and that first year we had women in 3 countries join our course and it’s grown since then. I recognize that many businesses were not able to restructure and this is why I do what I do, to tell others that it’s possible – sometimes you just need to think outside of the box instead of throwing in the towel.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.trumpetsoftirzah.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trumpetsoftirzah/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trumpetsoftirzah
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trumpetsoftirzah/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV-ixRBTJm7sMvBXISpgAlw/featured
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@trumpetsoftirzah
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trumpets-of-tirzah/id1551900025
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4DCT4KBVsmzfnqyobR4ZwF