SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME

WELCOME

Welcome and Happy Wednesday!

So the good news is that we’re doing technical rehearsals this week for the 2026 Dancing Stars of Atlanta. I’ve done my first full run-through in my costume and none of my parts fall out of my dress in a way that would make the night turn PG-13, so that’s already winning.

Now, although this is for such a worthy cause, I promise y’all I am ready to hang up my dancing shoes. Oh, my stars and stripes, this has been so much harder than anticipated! I thought this would be a fun and bonding experience. Somehow I did not also anticipate this would be endlessly hard work and a whole lot of cardio. (I’ve had to treat this like my job and I already have a job.) What we’ll have done for the Alzheimer’s Association will have been worth it, but I am more than ready to be a fan of ballroom dancing again, and not a participant.

Now, because we’re coming up on Mother’s Day, I have a special story to tell. Instead of spoiling it, let’s just dance right on into it.

STORYTIME WITH GLENNDA

Before There Was Glennda, There Was Betty

Today I want to tell y’all about Betty Baker, the woman who made me who I am today.

My Origin Story

The thing about Mommy was that she leaned into the fact that I was different. She never tried to make me like my peers, like Rebecca Bryant or Rebecca Holland. She never tried to make me like Tricia Myers. She didn’t care about conformity.

My mom never once thought about keeping up with the Joneses; it just wasn’t in her DNA. Rather than try and make me be like other people, she let me be who I was. Now, this is kind of an oxymoron, considering the fact that she dressed me every day of my life until I was 16 or 17 years old. She laid out my clothes for me nightly before I went to bed. (I didn’t argue because she had great taste!) What’s funny is the time that she didn't speak to me for three days when I went with Rebecca Holland and got my hair cut without her. Still, she made me feel like I was who I was supposed to be. I thought I was on my own path, not realizing she was always quietly putting up the guardrails all around me.

When Mother’s Day rolled around, she’d never let me buy her anything because she was so damn persnickety. She liked what she liked, so on that day, she would take me out and buy me a gift because she always said that I was the best gift God ever gave her. My mother always celebrated me, and I definitely carry that on with my kids. I don't want anything from them. I just want to revel in the fact that that they're mine, that I get to be their mom. And even with my step kids, I live in the moment that I got to be their mom.

When I was with Wilson, ours was not a good marriage, but he gave me Lucas. And Lucas is the best of both me and Wilson. Being married to Wilson gave me Grant and Nicholas by extension. My kids have had stepmoms, and I think that you don't realize how that role really transforms your child, and how they're such an example. Wilson found somebody who was amazing to my son and I will always be grateful.

Everyone’s Mom

I feel like I’m naturally predisposed to be the mom of my team, and that translates to being the mom of my clients, too. When I work with people, they're not my clients; those people are my family. Every single person that I deal with, no matter how well I know them, I treat them like family. I’m direct, like my own mom, and I tell people up front, “Look, this is the way I do business. I'm going to treat you like you're my family and I’m going to treat you like that with the advice that I give you.” Even the advice I offer online is the same advice that I would give to my child.

So I take care of everyone like my own mom took care of me.

Betty Baker Doesn’t Take No for an Answer

Now, in honor of Mother’s Day, I want to share the most quintessentially Betty Baker story. When I was 18, my mother said to me, “On Friday night, we’re going to go to Pancho’s and listen to the mariachis, and then we're going to go to this club that has a live orchestra.” That’s what she’d do, she’d announce things like they were a foregone conclusion.

I was like, “Yeah, Mom, I'm 18 years old. I'm not going to a club with you.”

Completely ignoring what I said, she replied, “It's a club in Buckhead, next to Limelight, and it's so much fun. I went there the other day with Blanca, and we had the very best time—you're gonna love it.” As though the issue was that I didn’t know what it was, and I’d suddenly be on board once she explained. Her explanation did not help. I was dug in and definitely not going to a club with my mother, so she didn’t say anything else. I thought the matter had been put to bed.

So, Friday rolled around and she said, “The mariachi start at seven. I want to make sure to get there by 6:20 so I get a good seat.”

Exasperated, I said to her, “Mom, I told you I'm not going out with you.” Let me tell y’all something—when Betty Baker set her mind to something, that was it. She moved in one direction and that direction was directly forward. She said, “Let's just go to Pancho’s and listen to the mariachis while we eat Mexican food.”

When she put it like that, it made some sense. We went to Pancho’s and ate and and we listened to mariachis and I did enjoy myself, exactly like she’d promised I would. At 9:30 Mommy said, “Okay, let's go.” When we left Pancho’s, we’d turn to the right to go home… so of course, she turned left.

As she drove the wrong way, I said, “Where are you going?!”

She smiled all slyly and said, “I told you, we’re going to go listen to that orchestra.” And I had told her that I was 18 years old and I was not going to a club with my mother. She smiled again and assured me we were going to have so much fun. At 9:45, we arrived… and there wasn’t another soul there. The band wasn’t even there. The employees were still walking in and they weren’t yet set up to take the money. I was like, “This is horrible! This is mortifying! This is a nightmare!”

Her response? “This is great! We’ll get us the best table by the dance floor!”

But What About Tom

The worst of it was, I actually had a date that night with this guy named Tom. He went to Emory where he was an SAE. His dad was one of the most powerful attorneys in DC. He was tall, handsome, with brown hair and green eyes. Tom was a catch. I promise y’all I wanted to be with Tom and not with my mom at a club.

At about 10:30 the band rolled in and by 11:00, there was a line out the door. My mother was pleased as a pig in a puddle about our great seats. What was funny is that we were the only Americans in the club. Everyone was Latin dancing, and I was just sitting there thinking, This is insane.

As it turns out, my mother was right and we ended up staying for hours and having the best time. Late into the night, we drove up to the townhouse and Tom was sitting on the stoop. Mind you, this was 1984 so there were no cell phones. Earlier, I’d told Tom, “Look, my mom wants to go out to dinner. When I get back, I'll call you and we'll figure out what we're going to do.” Poor old Tom was just sitting there on the stoop, all forlorn. At this point, it was about 1:00 a.m. and he must have been there for hours. When I got out of the car, Tom was in a panic. He exclaimed, “You didn't call me. I didn't know what was going on!” And my mom got out of the car, and she was just kind of a spectator as we talked it out.

I shrugged and told Tom, “With my mom, you never know what to expect. She wanted to go to this listen to this orchestra.”

Then Tom said, “Well, I was really worried about you.” And he turned around and he looked at my mother. With a shake of his head, he said, “Mrs. Baker, I think that you're probably a bad influence on Glennda.” That’s when my mom looked at him straight in his face, and she said, “Then it's a good thing that I don't give a shit what you think.”

Of all the core memories of my life, that one night defined my mother. Start to finish, in every way, she had a plan. She lived by the plan. She executed on the plan, and she got you to do what she wanted you to do, and you felt good about doing it after you had done it. You were never, ever mad. And then in the end, she didn't give a shit what anybody thought, she was going to do what she wanted to do. My mom lived by no one's rules. She was ruled by no one's opinion, and she literally never thought twice. She enjoyed every single moment, and that’s because she had that plan.

The Tie-In to Dancing 

That night, I’d worn this beautiful purple dress with jewels on the shoulder. (Again, it was 1984.) All night long, my mom said, “Pumpkin, you look so pretty. You should go dance.”

I told her, “I don't know how to dance like this.”

And my mom said, “Oh, they'll show you how to dance.”

Let me be clear—I was not dancing. Then she said, “Well, if you were going to dance, who would you dance with?” I looked around at the crowd and I fixated on one guy. He was the best-looking man in the place, by far. I pointed him out, and Mommy nodded and said, “Oh yeah, he is a good dancer.”

Over the course of the night, people would ask me to dance and I would just say, “Nope, nope, nope,” because I was way to shy to give it a go. Finally, that one guy walked up to me and in Spanish-accented English, he said, “Dance with me.” I declined, even though he was just oozing with charm and my mother was practically shoving me out of my seat and into his arms. He looked from me to my mother who was nodding enthusiastically and then back to me. That man looked at me straight in my face and he said, “I'm not taking no for an answer. I'm not leaving the table until you dance with me.”

And that was how I met Wilson, Lucas’s father and my second husband.

As this is a story about my mother, I’ll save the rest for another day. But understand this, as I take that dance floor on Saturday night, I won’t just be dancing with my partner. I’ll be dancing with the memory of the woman who made me who I am.

GLENNDA’S GURU

Welcome, Chris Smith!

I’m so pleased to share the conversation I had with Chris Smith! Chris is somebody y’all need to pay attention to because there’s a difference between talking about marketing and actually building something that works.

Chris used conversion to build an eight-figure business without outside money. This already tells us he understands discipline in a way most people don’t. He wrote The Conversion Code and they’re literally using this as a textbook at places like Johns Hopkins University and NYU. What I love is that he knows how to turn attention into action… and action into revenue. He’s worked with billionaires, built companies, been featured everywhere that matters, and he’s still in the trenches figuring out what’s working right now. So if you’ve ever said to yourself, “I’m getting leads but I don’t know what to do with them,” or “My marketing isn’t converting,” you’re going to want to hear this one!

Thanks, Chris!

GLENNDAISM

Today’s Words of Wisdom

GLENNDA BAKER & ASSOCIATES

And Speaking of Concerts…

This home at 4992 Concert Lane in Marietta, GA, is the kind of house that just performs, okay? Every room has a role, every detail hits its cue, and the whole thing comes together like a perfectly-timed orchestra that you actually planned to see.

You walk in and it’s bright, open, and completely intentional. That two-story great room anchors everything like a conductor. Then the kitchen carries the rhythm with that oversized island. The keeping room is where everybody actually gathers, whether they planned to or not. Upstairs, the primary suite slows down the tempo and every other bedroom has its own space, its own privacy, its own quiet tune. Downstairs, the terrace level picks the beat right back up again.

Now, homes like this don’t happen by accident. Somebody had a vision, they executed it, and now everything just works. You don’t have to fix it, tweak it, or figure it out. You just step in and let it play!