Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Elaine Lankford. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Elaine, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Honestly, the idea didn’t arrive on a sunny afternoon with a fully formed business plan. It came out of a season of wrestling.

Around 2008, I was a nurse practitioner — a seasoned healthcare professional with 16+ years of clinical leadership under my belt — and I unfortunately experienced the roughest year of my life. My career was pulled out from underneath me by circumstances I couldn’t control, my father passed, and my husband, at just 47 years old, was diagnosed with cancer. I was devastated. But slowly, over the next few years, I knew God was clearly calling me somewhere new, but I didn’t have the language for it yet. I just knew I wasn’t going back into clinical nursing but on to something new. So I did what most people do in that season: I prayed, I waited, and I kept asking what exactly am I supposed to do with this?

By 2014, something shifted. I committed to a serious pursuit of purpose — a spiritual wrestling match, I like to call it — and what came out of it was clarity: I was called to serve women who were carrying God-sized dreams but had no strategic roadmap to bring them to life. That became the seed.

But a calling is not a business. So I went to work on the infrastructure.

The first thing I did was invest in my own development. I knew I had the relational and leadership instincts, but I wanted credible, recognized training behind me. In 2017, I pursued and earned my John Maxwell Team Certification as a coach, speaker, and trainer. That wasn’t just a credential — it fundamentally shaped how I think about coaching methodology. It gave me a framework to build on.

In parallel, I was asking hard questions: Who exactly is my client? What problem am I actually solving? What does success look like for the women I want to serve? The answer kept coming back to Christian women in those vulnerable first years of entrepreneurship — women with vision, passion, and a genuine calling, but no strategic plan. That clarity was everything, because it meant I wasn’t building something generic. I was building something precise.

I officially launched She Steps Forward Coaching in May 2016. By 2019, having not found what I knew I needed when I was starting out in entrepreneurship myself, I launched my own conference platform to help women like me — women who knew they had a deep calling but had no one to show them how to blend faith and entrepreneurship together in a meaningful way. Christian women who needed to know that marketplace service is service. The early days were a combination of one-on-one conversations, organic word-of-mouth, and building credibility through speaking on my own platform.

What I had to figure out quickly was the methodology side — not just coaching women, but coaching them in a repeatable, results-producing way. That work eventually led to what I now call the Strategic DREAM Method, my proprietary coaching framework that walks clients from raw vision to executable plan. Getting that framework built and refined took time, iteration, and real client work to test and sharpen it.

Then in 2020, what had started as a coaching practice expanded into a second organization — She Steps Forward International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — because the mission had grown bigger than one-on-one coaching could contain. Women in Africa, women without resources, women who needed a conference stage and a community, not just a private coaching engagement. One calling, two lanes.

Looking back, the launch wasn’t a single dramatic moment. It was a series of deliberate, obedient steps: get trained, get clear, get your framework right, and then serve the person in front of you with everything you’ve got. The business grew out of the faithfulness of those small steps.

Elaine, 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?

Tell us about yourself, your work, and what sets you apart.
I’m Elaine Lankford — a Christian entrepreneurial coach with deep leadership experience, as well as a published author and national/international speaker, based in Suffolk, Virginia. But more than any title, I’m a woman who was once exactly where my clients are: full of God-given vision, deeply called, and completely unsure how to turn that calling into something real and sustainable.

My background is not a traditional path into coaching. I spent more than 16 years as a registered nurse and nurse practitioner, eventually leading a hospital-wide pain management program, before building a healthcare career in private practice that looked solid from the outside. But in 2008, everything changed at once. My career was upended by circumstances outside my control, my father passed away, and my husband received a cancer diagnosis at just 47 years old. That season broke me open in ways I didn’t expect — and ultimately redirected me toward what I now believe I was always made to do.

Out of that painful refining season, a calling emerged: to serve Christian women who are stepping into entrepreneurship, ministry, or nonprofit work and need both the spiritual grounding and the strategic tools to do it well. I launched She Steps Forward Coaching in 2016, and right after launching, I spent several years in continued preparation — pursuing my John Maxwell Team Certification as a coach, speaker, and trainer and earning a Master of Arts in Theology. I didn’t want to simply hang a shingle. I wanted to bring something substantive and credible to the women I serve.

What I do and who I serve
She Steps Forward Coaching exists for one specific woman: the Christian female entrepreneur in her first zero to five years of business, ministry, or nonprofit work. She has a vision. She has faith. She has a genuine calling. What she doesn’t have is a strategic plan — and without one, even the most Spirit-led dreams can stall, shrink, or quietly die in the gap between inspiration and execution.

My work is built around the Strategic DREAM Method, a proprietary coaching framework I developed through years of one-on-one client work. It walks women from raw, undefined vision all the way through to a concrete, actionable plan they can actually execute. This isn’t generic business coaching with a few scriptures added. It is coaching that holds the spiritual and the strategic in the same hand — because I believe God-sized dreams require both.

I offer one-on-one private coaching, and speaking and teaching at conferences, corporate events, and ministry gatherings. My signature speaking topics range from “Stepping Forward: Turning Your God-Sized Dream into a Strategic Plan” to “Kingdom Women in the Marketplace: Where Faith Meets Entrepreneurship.” I also lead She Steps Forward International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit I founded in 2020 that extends this mission globally — including an annual women’s conference held both in the United States and in Africa.

The problem I solve
The women I work with are not lacking in passion or purpose. What they’re lacking is a bridge. They feel the pull of something bigger — a business they’ve been dreaming about, a ministry they know they’re called to launch, a nonprofit that would meet a real need in their community — but they don’t know how to move from that place of knowing to a place of doing. They second-guess themselves. They spin in overwhelm. They start and stop. And often, they carry a quiet fear that wanting to build something in the marketplace somehow conflicts with their faith.

That last piece matters deeply to me. One of the most significant things I help women understand is that marketplace service is service. Building a business with integrity, purpose, and Kingdom intention is a legitimate and powerful expression of calling. When that truth lands — when a woman finally gives herself permission to pursue her dream without apology — something shifts. That’s when the real work begins.

What sets me apart
A few things, I think. First, the depth of the preparation I bring. A Master of Arts in Theology, John Maxwell Team Certification, 30+ years of professional leadership experience, and decades in the local church — I bring all of that into every coaching relationship. My clients aren’t just getting a business coach. They’re getting someone who can speak to the theological, the strategic, and the deeply personal dimensions of entrepreneurial calling.

Second, I’ve lived the journey. I didn’t build my coaching practice from a place of easy success. I built it out of a wilderness season, with real losses and real uncertainty behind me. That shapes how I coach. I have deep compassion for the woman who is stepping forward in fear, because I’ve been her.

Third, I don’t traffic in generic frameworks with a faith veneer. The Strategic DREAM Method was built specifically for this woman, in this season of business, at this intersection of faith and entrepreneurship. It’s precise because it has to be — the early years of a business are too critical for vague encouragement.

What I’m most proud of
Honestly? The women. The client who secured a speaking engagement she never would have pursued on her own. The client whose work landed a feature placement on a major Bible app. The women who come to me uncertain and overwhelmed and leave with a plan they actually believe in. Those outcomes are what this is for.

I’m also proud of what She Steps Forward International has become — a conference platform that has now reached audiences on two continents, with active partnerships in Nairobi, Kenya, and humanitarian work touching women and children through multiple partner organizations. What started as a local coaching practice has grown into something I genuinely did not have the imagination to plan for. That’s what happens when you hand God a willing yes.

What I want people to know
If you’re reading this and you have a dream you’ve been sitting on — a business idea, a ministry concept, a nonprofit you keep imagining but haven’t started — I want you to know that the fact that you have it means something. Dreams of that kind don’t live in us by accident.

What you need isn’t more inspiration. You need a strategy. You need someone who will sit with you in the vision, take it seriously, and help you build a plan that’s both Spirit-led and practically executable. That is exactly what I do.

She Steps Forward Coaching exists because I needed it and it didn’t exist. Now it does — and I’d love for it to be the thing that helps you move from knowing to doing.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

If I’m honest, the thing that helped me most was a willingness to start small and not be seen in the beginning. We live in a culture that is obsessed with visibility — followers, reach, going viral. And when you’re building a coaching practice, there is enormous pressure to look bigger than you are before you’ve actually done the work to earn it. I resisted that. I was content to serve the one woman in front of me, do it well, and let the reputation build from there. There’s a quiet confidence that comes from knowing your work speaks for itself, but you have to be patient enough to let it.

Integrity has been non-negotiable for me. In this industry, people are trusting you with their dreams — and that is not a small thing. If I tell a client I’m going to do something, I do it. No exceptions, no excuses. That sounds simple, but it is actually surprisingly rare, and women notice it. When people feel genuinely cared for and followed through on, they tell others. A significant portion of my growth has come simply from clients and community members referring people they trust to someone they trust.

Consistency has been the other major factor — and probably the least glamorous one to talk about. Not showing up when it’s exciting, but showing up when it’s hard, when no one is watching, when the results aren’t coming as fast as you’d like. Consistency in how I coach, consistency in how I show up for my community, consistency in the message I carry. Over time, that kind of consistency becomes its own form of credibility. People begin to know what to expect from you — and in a noisy, unreliable marketplace, that is genuinely rare.

And underneath all of it is a commitment to servant leadership. I’m not building this to be seen. I’m building this because women need it. When that orientation is genuine — when people can feel that you are truly for them and not just building a platform off their pain points — it changes the entire dynamic of the coaching relationship. It changes how people talk about you when you’re not in the room.

That combination — starting small with integrity, showing up consistently, and leading from a posture of service — has been the foundation of everything.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

The honest answer is that the coaching relationship doesn’t really end for me — it just changes shape.

From the very beginning, I’m not just teaching my clients how to build a business. I’m modeling a way of operating in the world. One of the core things I teach — by example, not just by instruction — is the principle of helping another woman up. That single orientation does more for brand loyalty than any marketing strategy I could implement, because it means my clients don’t just leave with a plan. They leave with a posture. And that posture connects them back to She Steps Forward long after our formal work together is done.

Practically speaking, I stay invested in my clients beyond the engagement itself. I continue to empower and encourage them as they grow because I genuinely care about where they land, not just where they started. I also bring an abundance mindset to every relationship — which means I freely offer my network. If I know someone who can open a door for a former client, I make that introduction without hesitation. There is no scarcity in how I operate. When my clients win, the whole community wins, and they feel that.

I also actively look for opportunities to collaborate with clients once they are out on their own. Some of the most meaningful professional relationships I have today started as coaching engagements. Watching a woman go from uncertain and overwhelmed to someone I’m now partnering with on a project — that is one of the great joys of this work.

And for certain clients, the relationship deepens even further. I offer select women a seat at the table within She Steps Forward International, my nonprofit, so that they can turn around and give back to the next woman coming up behind them. That invitation — to go from client to contributor — is deeply meaningful. It tells a woman that what she has built matters, that her journey has value beyond her own business, and that she is now part of something larger than herself.

That cycle is what creates real loyalty to the She Steps Forward brand. Not a loyalty program. Not a discount. A culture — one where women know they are cared for, connected, and called to carry it forward.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shestepsforwardcoaching.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shestepsforward_coaching/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shestepsforwardcoaching
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elaine-lankford/
• Other: info@shestepsforwardcoaching.com