Chantell Cooley is a marketplace leader, author, and mentor who has spent more than three decades proving that faith and business were never meant to be separate. As Co-Founder of Columbia Southern University and Co-Owner of Columbia Southern Education Group, she helped build one of America's most respected online universities from a single prophetic word into a global institution serving more than 100,000 graduates, all while operating with excellence in the secular marketplace and staying deeply connected to God as her CEO.

Today, Chantell equips business leaders, entrepreneurs, and executives to do what she has lived: hear God's voice in real decisions, position themselves with clarity, and build with excellence without separating their calling from their strategy. Her message is direct. What holds most businesses back is rarely the lack of a better plan. It is the lack of clarity on what God is actually saying right now.

Chantell is the author of several books, including Stand on the Word, Stand on the Word for Leaders, Beyond the Basics, Winning the Game of Life, Cooley Farm Adventures, Living in the Overflow, and Marketplace Mantles. She is not a pastor and she is not a consultant. She lives in the space between both, bringing prophetic discernment and real marketplace results into one voice, raising a generation of Marketplace Ministers who lead with integrity, build with vision, and advance the Kingdom of God through their business and influence.

WEBSITE AND LINKS TO DIRECT LISTENERS

Website: www.chantellcooley.com

Instagram: @‌chantellcooley

Youtube: @‌ChantellCooley

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Welcome to 12 Minute Convos with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Shanta.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

Oh, Alabama, Southern Alabama.

Were you always from there, from Alabama?

Oh, originally, Mississippi.

Okay, that's why the Southern accent's there.

Oh yeah, I've been in the South all my life, yeah.

How did you come to meet Jesus?

Well, I got invited to a youth group and just fell in love with the youth pastor and just my friends.

And that was it.

And I decided I wanted to be a leader for God.

And I was about, probably around 15.

I really, you know, you accept Jesus, some of us really early.

I remember it was 12 years old.

But I really remember, like, I want to be God's leader.

I want to be developed.

I want to be trained.

And I wanted to be a leader at youth camps.

It just never ended for me.

And I never went backwards.

I got so grounded in the word of God at a young age that I don't have one of those stories where, you know, you kind of drift off and you get bored.

I just have just a solid, you know, and I know it was because I spoke the word over myself daily.

I learned how just really early.

Yeah, I got into one of your books.

Well, the first thing I did is I was reading the sample of your most recent book, right?

The name, you know, tell me the name.

Tell me the name of your...

Oh, the recent one was Marketplace Mantles.

Oh, no, it wasn't.

Living in the Overflow.

Yeah, Living in the Overflow.

So that was July.

That was released in July, right?

25.

Yeah.

So that's the one I got into.

And I'm reading the sample.

And then I have to click the buy button because of how good the story is going in terms of...

I'm telling you, and I don't do this regularly on the podcast, right?

In terms of highlights a book and how great it is.

But yeah, most definitely.

Now, what strikes me is the proverbs and the injection of the proverbs into your life.

Is that something you do daily still?

Yes, yes.

Okay, so how that started was about when I was around 19.

And we're starting to build the company.

And I'm like, I need to get...

I need to be smarter because I'm dealing with people older than me.

And so I began to read proverbs daily.

I heard something.

I remember John Maxwell, he said it, you know, read a proverbs every day.

And I thought, okay, if I want to have Solomon's wisdom and the word of God, I'm going to read proverbs daily.

And it just stuck with me.

And, you know, I feel like that I got wisdom beyond my years.

And that's kind of when it started.

And let me tell you, it works.

It put me in places that I could not have ever gone myself without that wisdom.

Hmm.

Given what you've experienced in life and the connection you have with your own voice, where you've been able to listen to God speak with you and then define your destiny, what would you say to the person who does not have that clarity of their voice and what they should do with their lives?

It's such a confusing place to be.

I remember around 35 years old, I'm working for the university.

We're building it.

And I'm doing like 50 things.

I'm a young mother with two babies.

And just like I had this drive to, you know, be successful.

And I didn't want to go back into poverty.

So I'm doing everything.

And I'm not really good at anything because it's a superwoman, you know.

And that's when I'm like, who, what are you trying to be?

So I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me and said, I want you to pick out three to five things that you're good at, that people have even told you you're good at, that you haven't even noticed that come just natural to you.

I'm like, okay, I know how to delegate responsibility.

I know how to build teams.

I know how to create a great culture in a workplace.

I mean, I wrote a book on that.

So, okay, obviously I'm doing really good at that.

And I began to perfect those areas.

I read books, listened to podcasts, secular and Christian books.

And I just developed myself.

And that began to show me my purpose and what I was good at.

And I stayed in those lanes.

Even today, I'm in those lanes teaching people how to communicate, how to put teams together, how to grow with the Lord and advance yourself forward.

So that's kind of how I evolved into that.

For those who don't know about the university, please give them insight.

Oh, sure.

Thank you.

ColumbiaSouthernUniversity.edu is where you can find us.

And we're an online institution, over 30 years old.

And we have over 100,000 graduates now.

We have associate through PhD online.

You can go online and apply and use your background you already have as far as your degrees and so forth.

And we cater to those who are about 35 years old and up that didn't have time to go back to college.

Maybe they had to work for their family business or whatever it was, ran out of money.

And we get a lot of people 35 to about 55 years old.

And of course, we could take anybody that if you graduated with the high school diploma.

And we are just changing lives through education.

We're Christian owned, but we are secular university.

And, you know, we take care of our employees.

We have great staff that take care of people and walk them through their education.

So it won't be, you know, a lot of fear in there.

And it's just an exciting place to be right now.

Has it been tempting to release faith and the principles that go with faith in a secular world?

To release fear.

To release faith.

I'm sorry, go ahead and say that again.

Yeah, it's all good.

It's my Caribbean accent now.

Sorry about that.

It's all good.

Faith.

So in terms of faith and belief, well, faith, F-A-I-T-H, yeah?

Let me hear you say faith.

Faith.

Oh, sorry.

I know.

I'm from the South, right?

So would you say it's been tempting, the more the business has grown, the university has grown, to release the principles of faith for what it could actually be without focusing as much as you are on balancing life with faith, your belief in Christ?

Oh, as far as faith, bringing it into your company, it is a must.

I've always just known, okay, keep growing your faith because faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God.

I don't think if you're not getting in the word and expanding your capacity and that faith, you won't be able to handle what's in your next season because it's a lot of warfare there.

It's big.

And one of the things that I noticed is you're going to run out of human strength at some point because things get heavy and big.

And you have to shift into that supernatural wisdom and mindset.

So your brain, it will look at something God showed you and it'll say, you're crazy.

You can't build this university.

You're just this group of family that came out of poverty.

There's no way.

But when you connect to that faith and you're continuing growing your faith, oh my God, that's where all things are possible.

And you just go.

And that's kind of what we did.

And that's just how I see faith.

I was mixed up between, I was juxtaposing with if I should go way back in your books, the specific one that talks of your family's challenges, yeah?

Or if I should go with living in the overflow, right?

Which one would I choose?

So for those that are listening that think, okay, well, yeah, you're there, 100,000 students that have passed.

Like, what do you even know about where I am, yeah?

So speak to that person in terms of the transition that occurs or the mindset that was necessary for you to be where you are today.

Yeah, that's a good question.

You know, we got that prophetic word when we had nothing that our company would rise up like a rocket.

And that was it.

I didn't even think anything different.

I held on to that word like I'm grabbing it right now.

I will not let this go.

And throughout our transition into from poverty until being successful and continually having God as our CEO, we're not perfect, right?

But we constantly got back in alignment if we felt, we're getting a little ahead of God.

But all of that was so powerful that that prophetic word over our life, we just saw it with our eyes, just like Joshua and Caleb saw the land God was giving them.

And they saw the giants at the same time.

Well, they didn't let the giant scare them.

And we didn't let what was ahead scare us.

Yes, we had giants.

You're going to have that as you're growing a company.

You're doing something that no one thinks you can do, but God told you.

And I think that's really what kept us on course.

Five years from today, you're listening to this conversation because I would have invited you back onto the podcast and you couldn't remember exactly what you spoke of.

What's a message you'd leave for future you?

For the future me?

Oh, my God.

Don't forget the word of God.

I mean, don't get bored with the word.

There are scriptures to cover your case.

So 138.8 says, the Lord will perfect that which concerns me.

It's like I have about 10 scriptures that I just carry with me.

They come out of my mouth.

I'm paraphrasing them.

They're mine.

And the word will jump ahead of you.

So I'm never going to sway from it.

I grew up in it.

It works for me.

The word jumps ahead of me.

It fixes problems.

It expands me, my capacity in here so I can handle the big things of God.

I would still say the same thing.

And I guess I'd probably add, figure out, understand the mantle you carry.

I'd probably add that part since I just wrote that book.

So that would be my extra part.

Okay.

This has been a great honor.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share?

Oh, gosh.

You know, yeah.

ChantelCooley.com is my website.

If anyone just like, hey, I really resonate with Chantel.

I want to connect and I want to grow.

I want to understand who I am in Christ.

As a business person, I want to help you.

I'm also on Instagram too, ChantelCooley.

Links are in the show notes.

A pleasure.

I treasure.

Thank you for being on What Is Inspired by 12 Minute Contents.