WendyY Bailey is an Income-Acceleration Mentor, Sales Speaker, and the Master Business Coach at her company, Business Beyond Limits.
It is my pleasure to feature WendyY in this edition of our #MogulMoxie Maven series, which highlights incredible women who are making an impact on the world around them and beyond. I had the pleasure of meeting WendyY online many years ago thanks to power of Twitter and CoachU – where we both trained and became certified coaches. I’ve kept up with Wendy Y and her work during the past few years and reconnected with her after we lost touch, thanks to the reach of Facebook.
This interview with WendyY is one of the most personal we’ve featured yet. I’m honored that WendyY chose to share her personal story of resilience in business and how she reclaimed her mental health to become her best self with #MogulMoxie.
If you are working hard to reach your next level of success, the wisdom shared in Wendy Y’s journey will help you do it.
So … grab your favorite beverage, settle in and get ready to be inspired by the incredible life of #MogulMoxie Maven WendyY Bailey.
We love hearing about the formal and information educational experiences of our MogulMoxie® Mavens.
Tell us a little about your background.
“I attended college at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, but ended up focusing on work. Years later, after establishing my career in Information Technology and embracing my role as a single mother, I went back to school to earn my Bachelor’s degree in Management at National Louis University. The program suited my skills and fit into my schedule even with my 60-hour workweek. I attended class one night per week for four hours with an intimate group of professionals who had similar interests and experiences.
Not long after I graduated, I decided it was time to explore my true calling: coaching. I trained professionally at Coach Training Alliance, CoachVille, CoachU, and the Fearless Living Institute. Additional to having a Bachelor of Science in Management, I hold several coaching designations. They are Master Business Coach, Certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner and Certified Experienced Coach. Every aspect of my training and education has prepared me to do what I do today. I’m a proponent for a coach having formal coach training.”
Deciding to return to education after already establishing your career requires ambition.
What does ambition mean to you? What role has it played in your life?
“Ambition is a very real thing for me. I was recruited into Amway at the age of 17, and the work in sales fueled my confidence because it challenged me to make real connections with people. I also quit one of my jobs in my twenties to become a full-time independent consultant with Princess House, which is another direct sales organization. My sales secured my spot as the ‘#2’ consultant in the country and I won a trip to Spain.
Both experiences made me aware that I could be successful through my own actions. That’s why I was so encouraged to delve into something entrepreneurial following my corporate career. I wanted autonomy, independence, self-sufficiency and freedom.”
Self-sufficiency and freedom certainly hard won benefits of the entrepreneurship lifestyle.
Tell about your business.
I’ve reinvented both myself and my business multiple times over the past 15 years. When I began coaching, it was more of a practice with me being the sole service-provider, much like a therapist. After I completed my training in NLP, I leveraged my NLP skills and training to create a signature system that teaches people how to create, design, market, fill, and deliver profitable group coaching programs using NLP. That’s how my business looked, for the most part, for more than seven years.
In 2015, I symbolically closed the business I’d served in for more than 13 years following a 15-18-month hiatus due to illness. I re-branded, retooled my offerings and re-launched my services with renewed commitment to entrepreneurship. Accordingly, I named my new business, Business Beyond Limits.
Today, I serve entrepreneurial leaders and people in what I call the ‘transformation’ space. Coaches, speakers, trainers, consultants and emerging thought leaders. My services focus on three key areas: mindset mastery, marketing messaging and sales scripting.”
Your adaptability and perseverance are inspiring. Tell us about what motivates you.
Wonderful! Have you ever struggled with confidence in your business or career? Tell us about it and how you’ve overcome the struggle.
I’ve grown my business to six figures twice and lost it all twice. That can truly shake your confidence and rob you of courage. Because of mistakes, missteps, recession, and illness, I’ve known severe financial losses that left me feeling extremely low.
When I returned to working after my hiatus, I wasn’t sure that I still had a voice in the marketplace. I reached out to my e-mail list who hadn’t heard from me in a very long time and they welcomed me back with open arms. My confidence grew from there and that trend continued throughout 2016. These setbacks have been extremely challenging, but I wouldn’t change a thing for what they’ve given me. I wrote a new affirmation the other day to support my way of being: ‘I am living and breathing the ebb and flow of life with grace and ease.’”
Growing your business to six-figures not once, but twice is a tremendous feat!
What has been helpful to you in increasing and managing your cashflow?
“A bulletproof mindset, dogged persistence, and powerful resilience. This is all about applying real-world principles to rid yourself of all liabilities, limiting beliefs, self-defeating habits, outdated ways of thinking, naysayers or other people who discourage you and your dreams, stressful situations and any other emotional baggage that stifles your success. When you’re ready to raise your fees, it requires a higher belief in what’s possible for you and your business.”
Belief in yourself and your business’s abilities is certainly essential to success, especially when encountering difficult circumstances.
Tell us about one of the toughest things you have had to do in your career and what you’ve learned from it.
One of the toughest things I’ve had to face in my life is learning to live with major depressive disorder.
In case you don’t know, major depressive disorder is the name doctors assign when they don’t know the exact cause of the depression. They only know it’s a chemical imbalance that requires the right combination of medications to treat. I was diagnosed in my 20s and I’ve had to learn how to identify the triggers, practice medication management, and participate in cognitive therapy. It’s worked very well for me to partner with my doctors to create effective treatment plans.
After having major surgery for another health challenge at the end of 2014, my treatment plan for the depression stopped working properly. I was a chemical mess! It took trial and error with lots of different medications that caused horrendous side effects.
During that time, I sought out support to return to the persona of my true self, ‘WendyY.’ WendyY is outgoing, smart, funny, creative, and fierce. That’s who I really am, but depression robs me of that when treatment stops working. It’s kind of like trying to make a three-legged stool stand when one of the legs is broken.
When my treatment is working, however, I’m thriving and so is my business.
Before last year, I was terrified of telling people know about my mental illness. I knew I’d feel judged, ostracized, and isolated by people who don’t understand mental illness, and I didn’t want to subject myself to that scrutiny.
When I returned to the marketplace and stepped back into the spotlight of my business, I realized it was time to share. I attended a call where the speaker had a secret and when she shared it, it helped her build a speaking empire. I asked her how she knew it was time to share, and she told me ‘When your desire to heal is greater than your fear, you’ll know it’s the right time.’ That’s so true! I feel open in my life and business. The judgment I thought I’d encounter doesn’t matter. I’m courageous, brave, and free!”
We appreciate your willingness to openly discuss mental health, as so many accomplished women suffer from this disorder and don’t get the help they need to be their best selves and thrive. THANK YOU!
When thinking about your life and business, what have you accomplished, created or built that makes you feel the proudest?
“My absolute greatest accomplishment is without a doubt my adult son. I raised him as a single mom and we’re extremely close. He’s smart, creative, witty, caring, introspective, funny and just frigging cool. I did that!”
Fabulous! 🙂 What’s coming up that you want our readers to know about?
“I’m presenting a live event later this year called Play Bigger Now 2017, an income-acceleration conference for entrepreneurial leaders, coaches, speakers, trainers, consultants and emerging thought leaders. The two-day event is designed to prepare business owners for expansion, exposure, and elevation. They’ll experience sales training directly from me and business-building strategies from the speakers I’ve assembled for this event. It’s going to be awesomeness, for sure!”
This event does indeed sound awesome! How can our readers keep up with you?
“I’d love for readers to check out my blog at http://businessbeyondlimits.com/blog. They can add it to their blog reader using http://businessbeyondlimits.com/feed.
Facebook: http://facebook.com/wendyybaileybiz
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/wendyybailey
Instagram: http://instagram.com/wendyybailey
YouTube: http://youtube.com/wendyybailey”
#MogulMoxie Maven WendyY has showed such courage in being so transparent with us in this powerful interview. It’s an honor to share a part of her journey with you.
Here are a golden nuggets of wisdom from her journey that you can implement into your life, starting today:
- Take care of your client base and online community – and they will take care of you. After WendyY was returned to work after a 15-18-month hiatus, she reached out to her e-mail network and was welcomed with open arms.
- “A bulletproof mindset, dogged persistence, and powerful resilience” are essential to success in life and business. This formula helped WendyY build a six-figure business not once, but twice.
- Be conscious about your mental health and take care of it the same way you take care of your physical health. Untreated mental illness can be debilitating and disrupt your ability to thrive.
Now that you’ve been inspired by our MogulMoxie® Maven – it’s your turn. What are you going to do differently in your own life or business? We want to hear about it!
