Highlights of This Episode:
- How Wendy started her first business when she was a single mom to three young kids
- How teaching a one-day class on entrepreneurship turned into designing an entire curriculum
- How she leveraged each win as her skills and successes grew
- Which three factors she leveraged the most when she started teaching people about creating an online presence for their businesses
- How Wendy’s “spitfire” grandmother helped her to be fearless
- How Wendy rebuilt her life and her business after a devastating illness almost killed her
- What she said to herself every morning during the long recovery period
- What important lessons the trauma taught her
- How the entrepreneurial streak of self-sufficiency can get in the way, in life and in business
- What Wendy’s current, most unanticipated challenge is
“Know that whatever challenges you’re facing, there are people that have walked the path before you who can guide you.” –Wendy McClelland (Click to share – thanks!)
About Wendy McClelland:
Wendy McClelland is a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach and a past nominee for Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year. Wendy built her original business after a divorce left her with three kids under 10 to raise. She built her clientele by doing 10 cold calls by 10 a.m. every day! A small typing business grew into a website that the New York Times chose as “one of the best biz sites on the ‘Net” (the same day they chose Microsoft) and developed Wendy’s reputation as an expert on doing business online. As the business became successful, she was traveling throughout North America sharing the potential of the Internet with other entrepreneurs.
In 2000 Wendy contracted an e-coli infection that ate away portions of the lower three vertebrae and two discs in her spine, destroyed one kidney, and damaged her corneas and brain function. After she spent months in hospital and then many more in a body cast (neck to knee to fuse bone fragments around the spinal cord), it took over a year to learn to walk again without assistance and to regain mental functions. She chronicles her recovery and new life in her book 27 Steps to Freedom: What Learning to Walk Again Taught Me About Success in Business & Life.
The last 10 years have been spent raising her now young-adult children and rebuilding a life. Today, Wendy provides marketing support and strategy for small to medium businesses and provides inspiration to people who need to know that “you CAN start over again … and again.”
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- 27 Steps to Freedom: What Learning to Walk Again Taught Me About Success in Business & Life
- WordPress
- Dreamweaver
- AOL
- ryze.com
- Marie Curie
- Mother Teresa
- Nellie McClung
- The Small Business Life Cycle
Thanks for Listening!
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Nice article and useful information shared thanks.