We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tonya Williams. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tonya below.
Alright, Tonya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?
We need to teach them the basic principles of finances and teach them how to budget and balance. I also believe it’s inpoirtant to teach them the fundamentals to prepare them for interviews, resume writing as they get ready to join the workforce.
Tonya , 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?
I became a life coach during the time I was going through school for ministry back in 2017. I would travel with my husband because he’s in the entertainment industry and when we would visit clubs and places like that people was always drawn to me. It seemed like the moment I told them I was in ministry they would pull away from me. So I began to seek God and ask him how I could reach these people. Long story short, that’s how I became a life coach! I’m able to teach people who normally wouldn’t step inside four walls of a church and still apply biblical principles.
As time has gone on I have used my own personal experiences and challenges to write a book called The Best Version of Me and I have also created a workbook, leaders training guide and currently lead a small group from it. We discuss issues the church tend to shy away from like rejection, church hurt, forgiveness,molestation, rape, abortion, seeing yourself as God sees you, faith over fear. I lead this group in 6 week semesters via zoom with the exception of summer.
In addition to this I have just written a new book called The Purpose Driven Business Paid on Purpose with a journal called the Entrepreneurs Journal to Sucess. I wrote these to help entrepreneurs who are interested in starting a business how to start, find their purpose and how to be profitable. In addition to these two books I also teach a 6 month Business 101 class that walks them through the process of marketing, branding, business credit, applying for your LLC, setting up your website and things that they need to help build a great foundation in starting a new business.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I’ve overcome a lot of obstacles that challenged how I saw myself. I never had alot of self esteem honestly but you would never know it if you saw me. I allowed the things that happened to me dictate how I saw myself. This was something I had buried down deep and don’t realize the root cause was being molested as a young girl. I went through a small group and this was life changing for me.
Although I already knew God had called me to do ministry, I didn’t have the confidence in myself to be anymore than what I was doing at my 9-5. I never had a desire to have my own business until I was in my early 40’’s. I began to be uncomfortable in corporate America to the point I started to push myself to find a way to prouduce a business out of my purpose. In this pushing process that’s how my books, small group, speaking opportunities and personal business started. If there’s one price of advice I can give anyone it would be it’s never too late to start something new! There’s no failure in trying, we only fail when we don’t try. If things don’t go as planned then that doesn’t mean we quit, we just start fresh, tweak some things and make sure we’re in alignment with what God wants us to do in that season.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I have always been present on social media due to its free publicity to reach people. I’ve always believed you can reach more people virtually than you can locally. I started on TikTok when it first came out it knowing what my niche would be but I knew God told me to use this platform. I watched for a while then got up the nerve to start doing videos. I began to lip sync sermon clips that really spoke about real issues people struggle with. In addition to the sermons I’ve added some of my own videos that are numerous to not only show my personality but to be relatable to people. People think because your in ministry that you can’t have fun and you have to be about Jesus 24/7. Don’t get me wrong I’m always about my fathers business but I still enjoy life and have fun because I don’t think he would want me to be so serious all the time. My audence has grown pretty rapidly within the first year. I’m now being offered collaborations for products to advertise on TilTok due to the amount of followers I have. My advice to anyone who’s trying to build a social media presence would be stay consistent! It’s not something that will happen overnight as you see I’ve been doing it for close to 2 years. You have to be able to find your niche and stick to it. Growing a audience is work lol, you will need to post atleast 3 times a week if not more to keep them engaged. It’s important to give them a little of who you are and your business or talent. People want to be able to relate to you. Don’t worry about the number of followers and keeping up with the numbers. Not everyone will be your people but I have learned the ones that are, will be loyal! I receive inboxes on a daily about how watching my videos has helped them or changed their lives and for me that’s the REAL reward! Getting paid from TikTok and collaborations are all good but my real goal was to change lives! I believe God has shown me through all this that if we are obedient to what He tells us to do, He will give us more than what we prayed for!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.coveredgirlscoachingandservices.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/spiritually_grounded?r=nametag
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonya.williams.9
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonya-williams-6b237966
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCMvI1EnEWKOOdpR-s5pIE5g
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@spiritualgangsta01?_t=8W95zphqzFa&_r=1