Legal Secretary Leaves Corporate Rat Race and Launches Coaching Business

After working as a legal secretary for nearly 15 years, Baltimore, MD native and entrepreneur Cheryl Wood, true calling as a coach and speaker landed in her lap. “My work as an empowerment champion really found me. In 2009, I had grown tired of frantically running the corporate rat race while trying to be a fully engaged mother. The job was getting the best of me while my family was getting the worse of me — the tired, frustrated, irritable mother who wanted to claim success on my own terms. Every day that I went to my 10×10 cubicle, my spirit was crying out that I deserved to find my passion and pursue it. The job was not my passion. My desire to create “time freedom” propelled me to consider entrepreneurship as a way to discover my passion and utilize my gifts and talents,” says Wood.

[Related: The Art of Being a ‘One Woman Band’ Entrepreneur]

With a focus on empowering women to expand their expectations and play bigger, and a host of speaking engagements lined up including the I Am A Warrior Conference in Arlington, VA on June 13, 2015 and the Dare 2 Dream BIG Conference in Goldsboro, NC on June 19 & 20, 2015, BlackEnterprise.com caught up with Wood to learn how a wife and mother of three, transitioned from a legal security to transformation coach.

BlackEnterprise: Describe the moment when you realized your true calling?

Wood: I remember that moment like it was yesterday even down to what I was wearing (laughing). It was September 18, 2010 and I was embarking upon my very first speaking engagement at Morgan State University for a women’s conference. I had never served in the role of a professional speaker before, had never been in Toastmasters or even considered speaking as a viable career. But the opportunity presented itself to explore this option and I took the opportunity. That day, when I opened my mouth to pour into the women who were sitting in the audience at the conference, I knew with everything in the core of who I am that speaking was what I was born to do. And I’ve never looked back.

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