We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Corey Winn a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Corey, thanks for joining us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

Personally, I wish I had started my business sooner, but growing up being entrepreneur wasn’t a “safe” choice. I was expected to finish high school, go to college, get a degree (or two in my case), and get a job with good benefits, a pension or 401k and then start thinking about a family. My parents wanted to make sure I was financially independent and could take care of myself with all of the boxes checked. So, I checked all of the boxes. I went to college, then to graduate school, graduated with a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree, I worked full-time plus hours, I got married, I had a baby, and then my priorities shifted. I remember taking her to daycare at 6 months old so excited that I’d seen her crawl for the first time. I told her teacher who looked at me and shattered my heart saying “oh she did that yesterday”. I was missing so many milestones and it broke my heart to go to work full time or more hours everyday as a physical therapist and leave her with someone else to watch her grow up. I’d love to say that I jumped into the world of being an entrepreneur then, but I was too scared. I continued with the safe option.

It took me years of reworking my schedule, working weekends to have days off during the week, working PRN in multiple places to try to be home more. About 5 years ago I began to dabble into the entrepreneurial world. I started off working for a company as a health coach. I thought this was a perfect fit because I’d realized in the mix of being a wife, mother, and physical therapist that my health had taken a back seat. It was incredibly rewarding to work with clients to regain their health, but it was also incredibly disheartening to watch my clients self-sabotage and many of whom returned back to where they started after seeing such amazing gains.

It was then that I decided to further delve into personal development to work to truly understand how your own self concept, your level of worthiness, how much you value yourself, and what you believe deep down about what you are capable of all come together to determine your success. Your success in everything you do, or are too afraid to do, not just your health.

So, deep diving into high level coaching, consulting, podcasting, and beginning to establish my non-profit allows me to work with women and mothers in healthcare on a much deeper level to truly uncover what is holding them back and work through it together so that they gain clarity on what they truly want their life to look like, what success means like to them, and how to step into their full power.

Corey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve been a Doctor of Physical Therapy for over 14 years specializing in working with patients with neurological diagnoses (spinal cord injury, stroke, head injury, Parkinson’s Disease, ALS, MS, etc) and I specialize in wheelchair seating and mobility evaluations. This is where the non-profit comes into play. My mission and vision for my non-profit (The Carl Edward Foundation to be established early 2025) is to provide funding, resources, and equipment needs to patients with the above diagnoses above and beyond what insurance covers.

As far as coaching, consulting and speaking. I work with high performing women, specifically moms, who have checked all of the boxes. They’ve gone to school. They have the degree. They have the family. In all outer circumstances they are incredibly successful, just like I was, but they are no longer feeling fulfilled, they are lacking purpose in what they are doing. They, like me, wake up one day and ask themselves “is this really it?” I help these successful, motivated women gain clarity on what they want out of their life. This includes their relationship goals, their goals as a mother, their professional goals and what success means for them.

As women, highly successful, high achieving women, we can often get blinders on and not realize that our expertise can be utilized in so many arenas. We pigeon-hole ourselves into the grind of the 40,50,60 hour week because “that’s what we went to school for.” But, is that what we still want? That’s where I help my clients. I make sure that they take the time to determine what they really WANT in life. By taking the time to journal on a question my mentor has often asked me: “if there were no consequences or limitations what would your dream life look like.” we can strategize and collaborate and make a plan for what they want their present and future to look like. This requires my clients to take the time to journal for minutes, over a week, or over a month to really dig deep into what they want. Oftentimes as mothers no one has asked them for many years what they want and taking that time helps them uncover dreams that they’ve long forgotten, goals that were once at the forefront, and ideas that they gave up on as little girls because “they weren’t practical or logical or reasonable.” Allowing them to sit back and dream immediately brings passion and purpose back into their lives.

What I want my followers to know? I was them. I was that mom who woke up who seemingly had the perfect life, the perfect marriage, was a good mom, had a good career, was “successful”, but I was no longer challenged. I was no longer fun-filled, I was lacking passion and purpose. I wasn’t excited anymore. I was just coasting in all areas of my life. Passion was gone from relationships, my personal life, and my career, and I wanted all of that back and more. I wanted to get up and be excited about the day each day, and I knew it was possible. I just had to get out of my comfort zone and be willing to take the scary leaps to change.

My life is in an entirely different place than where I was even just a year ago. Waking up excited about what is ahead and what I’ve accomplished is something I feel each day. My passion and mission is to share that with other women who are feeling lost. Don’t give up on yourself, don’t settle, you matter, you are worthy, and your future can be incredibly bright if you allow it.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Lesson “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is”

Growing up I heard that all the time. I learned from a young age that working hard, pushing, grinding, having perseverance to do more of the same (ie working the traditional 9-5) was the only way to be successful. That the safe thing to do was to get a “good job” with benefits, retirement, and saving a little each month would allow me to have a “good life”…”to get by”. Well, I wanted more than just good. I wanted more than to “just get by”. I wanted spectacular. I wanted amazing. I wanted passion-filled and exciting. I had to first stop making myself wrong for wanting those things to be able to move forward in loving myself enough to recognize wanting more was exactly where I needed to be to make my life spectacular! I had to let go of the belief that I “should just be happy with what I have.”

With the initial thought of “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is” always haunting me I was very skeptical of life being easy. I was skeptical of dreams coming through easily, money flowing easily, work being something I love, but no longer being hard.

I heard from my mentor so lovingly one day “how is that belief system serving you?” I immediately responded “Well, it isn’t serving me at all.” I realized in that moment that if I continued to allow that belief to run the show, that if I believed that I had to work myself to the bone, show grit, and push everyday, not only was I going to continue feeling burned out, but I was going to continue getting much of the same results. I had to cultivate a new belief system and let go of the “if it sounds too good to be true it must be” belief and decide that opportunities, money, purpose can flow to me easily if I just allow it. In that moment, my belief system and circumstances changed. Opportunities and ideas started flowing in. I realized that I’d been the one blocking so much for so long.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Books I love!!!

Untamed: Glennon Doyle
Top 5 Regrets of the Dying: Bronnie Ware
Do Less: Kate Northrup
The Power of Receiving: Amanda Owens
You Are a Badass at Making Money: Jen Sincero
Trust the Whisper: Kathy Izard
The Science of Getting Rich: Wallace D. Wattles
Build the Life You Want: Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.coreywinn.com
• Instagram: @coreywinndpt
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/corey.e.tanner/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreywinn/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@coreywinndpt
• Other: Email: [email protected]

Image Credits

@casablancadigitalmedia