Sometimes the difference between a career and a calling is a matter of degrees — not necessarily literal ones, although Misti Coker has those, as well as a 23-year teaching career, to her name. Now a life coach and president of the nonprofit Personal Pep Rally, Coker’s work in education and her work in fundraising are divisible only by context. In substance, she is doing what she has always done: encouraging, motivating and inspiring others.
“My last job was as a literacy specialist for the Stuttgart School District, where my job was raising test scores,” Coker said. “Actually, that is where ‘personal pep rally’ came from. We had to take a subpopulation that was one percent proficient and bring them up to proficient. In 2010, we had a group of English teachers at the high school that I was working with, and one of the teachers said, ‘You know, what these kids need is a personal pep rally.’ I said, ‘You’re exactly right because everybody needs a cheerleader.’”
From that moment on, Coker and her colleagues worked to instill in those students a sense of belief and a feeling of being seen and supported by people committed to their success. That year, Coker said, the group went from 1 percent proficient to
60 percent. The key to their outreach was a focus on meeting students and their families where they were, whether in the classroom, at church or in the community.
It was an important year for Coker’s trajectory in other ways, as well, thanks to a few chance interactions. While out buying lights to decorate for prom — there is, after all, more to school life than test scores — the woman in front of her had the same lights but decided to put them back. At that moment, Coker felt a “nudge.”
“Never underestimate decisions God encourages,” she said. “He told me, ‘You buy those lights for that lady,’ and I thought, ‘I’m not buying these lights for this lady. I have no idea who she is. That would be so weird,’ but I did it, and I followed her out in the parking lot and gave her the lights. I said, ‘I just felt like God told me I needed to get these for you,’ and I ran back in.”
Coming back out with her own purchases in hand, Coker found that the woman was standing in the same spot, now in tears. As it turned out, she had just been diagnosed with cancer and had wanted to put the lights up to bring herself a little joy.
“This was in 2010, and I didn’t start doing all this until 2017,” Coker said. “I decided then that any time there was somebody that I felt had a need, I was going to intentionally be there for them, whatever that looked like.”
One day that same year, a long-term substitute who worked next door to Coker’s office stopped her in the parking lot to tell her she was “wasted” at the high school.
“She said, ‘I’ve watched you. You are a motivator and an encourager. You’re going to do something,’” Coker said. “She said, ‘I put you on the prayer list that goes around three times a day. I don’t know what it is, but there is something big in store for you.’”
Coker left teaching in 2011, but that “something big” in her future still seemed far away. Her life all but fell apart for a variety of reasons, she said, and she entered a depression. Then, on Jan. 1, 2012, she decided that something would have to give.
“I wrote every single day for a year, and that’s how I really started the life coaching stuff,” she said. “I did a website and a Facebook page, [but I] didn’t tell anybody it was me. It started growing, and it grew to over 3,000 people.”
A few years later, the pieces of Coker’s life would start to fall into place, but not before a difficult and life changing journey for her family. Her son-in-law, Marc Stringer, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2016. During the grueling rounds of treatment, friends sent “joy mail” packages to keep the family’s spirits up. Coker and her daughter, Lauren Moore, felt the impact of those gifts and decided to bring the same kind of encouragement to others facing the disease. Personal Pep Rally was officially founded by Stringer, Coker and Moore in 2017, and although Stringer’s battle ended in 2020, his impact continues to grow, thanks to the work of Coker, her daughter and countless others.
“People just need people, and we forget that,” Coker said. “Lauren always says, ‘People forget the power of a handwritten note.’ We think we have to do large, huge things to make people feel like you care about them, but we send a little something in the mail every month, and you wouldn’t believe all the notes and all the phone calls I get saying, ‘I don’t know who you are, but the package came at the perfect time. You helped me move forward.’”
Personal Pep Rally’s care packages ship free to cancer patients throughout the United States, thanks to a dedicated group of local volunteers known as the Chemosabe Sisters, who help assemble and ship the boxes each month. Coker and Moore have also become beacons for the fight against cancer in Arkansas in their own right, even traveling to Washington, D.C., to represent the state at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network’s Lights of Hope event.
“There’s just something about walking across the lawn and seeing your picture on an eight-foot pillar that you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m really doing what I’m supposed to be doing,’” she said.
The nonprofit’s largest fundraiser, Endure the Dirt, is an adventure race at Mack’s Prairie Wings in Stuttgart, where participants crawl, climb and clamor their way through the mud. More recently, the group added a 5K walk for those less keen on getting dirty, as well as the Mini Mudder for children. Coker, who has a knack for delegating as much as she does motivating, has learned the importance of relying on her team’s diverse strengths, from the office to the obstacle course.
“My base people have been there for seven years,” Coker said. “My registration ladies, they know what they’re doing. All the farmers that build the obstacles, they know what they’re doing. Our crawfish guy, he knows what he’s doing. You find the right people and plug them in.”
Coker’s life coaching, which she describes more as “parking-lot preaching,” pairs naturally with her nonprofit work. Both are outpourings of her passion for people. Whether it is in the aisle at Walmart or in the waiting room at a doctor’s office, Coker listens to that “nudge’ wherever it finds her, reaching out and connecting with people in small but profound ways.
“I’ve taken some grief courses with my life coaching. So many of the professionals in that area say [that] in grief, you have to meet people where they are, but it’s really in any situation,” Coker said. “Being an educator, I’ve always put that on the front burner, and I did all that training just because I wanted to learn more about people, but yet, where it has led me is being able to talk to so many patients and so many families that are dealing with cancer.”
Coker said her goal is to continue reaching more people and “filling the gap,” whatever that looks like. She is currently working on a book, In Your Arena, about loss and grief, and she has a podcast in the works, as well. Her message is a timeless one but one that bears repeating about the ways in which joy and sorrow “live in the same box.” Looking back, it is easy to see the ways her career and experiences have been building to this moment. Still, she said, she never could have dreamed it.
“I tell kids this all the time: You go to college, and you think you know what you’re supposed to be doing with your life,” she said. “You get all these degrees, and you do what you think you’re supposed to do. Then there’s a detour in the road, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, hang on for the ride.’ That’s what I’ve been doing.”
