Sarah Jakes Roberts Runs Woman Evolve Like a Business With a Pulpit Attached

Twice a month, Sarah Jakes Roberts opens an episode of Woman Evolve with a segment she calls "Mind Your Business," and the title carries two meanings on purpose. Half the time it means exactly what it sounds like: budgeting, negotiating, building something that outlasts a bad year. The other half means the older, blunter version: stop watching everyone else's life and go handle your own. On October 9, she ran a "Mind Your Business" edition titled God Can Meet You Here, and that slide between financial and spiritual, practical and personal, runs through the whole show.

That dual citizenship is the point of Woman Evolve, which Roberts started in 2018 as a book club and devotional newsletter before it grew into the podcast, the conference, and the publishing imprint it is now. She's an assistant pastor at The Potter's House, the Dallas megachurch her father, Bishop T.D. Jakes, has led for decades, and she co-pastors an affiliate congregation in Los Angeles with her husband, Touré Roberts. Those credentials get listed first. The part that actually explains the show is what she's talked about herself, on stage and in her own book: becoming a mother at 13, marrying at 19 into what she's since called an abusive relationship, and rebuilding her own life in public before she stood up to tell anyone else how to rebuild theirs. The show works because she built that record before she started handing out advice.

That track record is also why the guest list reads the way it does. What to Do When the Dream Falls Apart, from September 16, brings on actress Terri J. Vaughn to talk about what happens after a plan stops working. A week later, comedian Ms. Pat sat down for Owning Your Story Without Shame, an episode that lets a comedian be serious without losing the comedy. Content creator Pretty Vee came through earlier in September for You Can't Take Everybody With You, and the conversation spends its time on who you're allowed to outgrow rather than venting about toxic friends.

The money episodes get just as specific. The Money Habits Keeping You Stuck, from September 30, pairs Roberts with financial author Anthony O'Neal. The episode treats debt and shame as the same conversation instead of two separate ones, which fits a host who's been open about rebuilding her own finances after 2010. The newest episode in the feed, It's Never Too Late to Start Again, released October 14, brings on gospel singer Lisa Knowles-Smith for a conversation about restarting in public, a theme Roberts keeps returning to because she's lived it herself.

None of this would carry the same weight if the audience weren't also showing up in person. Woman Evolve's annual conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington has drawn more than 40,000 attendees in a single year, and organizers called it the fastest-selling women's conference the venue had hosted. Recent lineups have put Roberts on a stage alongside Brené Brown, Priscilla Shirer, Tiffany Aliche, and Morgan DeBaun, a range that mirrors the podcast's own mix of therapy-adjacent vulnerability and straightforward business advice. Her 2024 book, Power Moves: Ignite Your Confidence and Become a Force, debuted at No. 4 on the New York Times bestseller list, and TIME named her to its 2023 TIME100 Next list the year before. The podcast is the free, weekly version of a platform that also runs as a stadium event, a publishing deal, and a church pulpit.

What keeps the show from turning into another generic self-help feed is that Roberts won't pick a single lane. She runs the trauma conversations and the budgeting conversations in the same feed, sometimes in the same episode, and trusts her audience to follow her between them. Nearly 215 episodes in, the show still sounds like it's building toward something instead of repeating itself, which matters for a podcast literally named after the idea of change.

The audience follows her past the podcast app, too. Woman Evolve runs an active Instagram and TikTok built around clipping these same conversations into standalone moments, which is a big part of why a guest like Ms. Pat or Pretty Vee tends to reach listeners who never set foot in a church and found the show through a comedy clip instead. That crossover matters more than it sounds like it should. A podcast that only reached people already inside Potter's House pews would be a devotional, not a business and culture show with a weekly release schedule and a guest booker who can land actresses, financial authors, and gospel singers in the same month. The conference proves the same point at a bigger scale: Woman Evolve sells out a stadium every year precisely because the audience isn't limited to people who'd call themselves churchgoers first.

If you're starting cold, the Ms. Pat episode is the easiest entry point: funny enough to hold your attention, honest enough to show what the rest of the feed is doing. From there, save the money episodes with O'Neal for a day you need the practical version of what Roberts has built her whole platform around: a bad chapter doesn't end the story.