A short story.
In May of 2020 Covid19 persuaded us to interrupt our sailing trip from The Gulf of Mexico to Nova Scotia. With a lot of unexpected time on my hands, I decided to get back into business. As I just turned 70 years old recently, I might be crazy!
This is just bit of an introduction. My name is Don Winchell, after over 40 years in business I “retired” around 2008 to our home located on an ocean cove in Nova Scotia Canada.
in our backyard
In my years in business, I have started and managed more than 6 successful companies, first in the USA and then in Canada.
After a couple of months of “adjusting” to the virus and taking care of things around the house I started looking into how I could reignite my coaching and consulting business, such as it was, using an online format versus the in-person style I had done in the past.
I had maintained one client over the past 10 years or so, a tree services business whose owner had asked me to work with him after cutting some trees on our property. I have been providing coaching, consulting and internet marketing support to this company since about 2010. While the owner did the work, he relied on me to help him grow the company from about $220,000 a year in revenue to over $1,2000,000 in 2022.
The businesses I have run range from electrical contracting in Colorado and Vermont, to a telephone systems installation company, a custom software development and websites business to management consulting and coaching for owner-managed businesses.
We have delivered software projects of up to $800,000 and have delivered literally hundreds of smaller projects and I have manged projects in the multiple million dollar range and have personally delivered services to companies such as McKinsey & Company, IBM, ABB, electric utilities, telephone companies such as Verizon, insurance companies, the Auditor General of Canada, and many other businesses both large and small, and have employed well over a hundred people over the years.
Over the past 10 years I also dabbled in this and that. I was on the board of a wind turbine company, a chamber of commerce, I researched thorium reactors for a venture capitalist and spent a lot of time “just smelling the roses” and taking sailing trips.
Why get back into business? After working for a good part of my life, it was nice to stop constantly checking my phone and my email. It was nice to stop being on a schedule. But after a while, “doing nothing” loses its lustre.
So with a little help from a global pandemic, and before I am too old I decided to offer what I still could to people who are still in the process of making their way in the world.
I have had a very fortunate life and would like to help where I can.
If you want to just talk about your business, you book a free consultation here via Zoom Meeting.
Here are some of my references, some of them written by dinosaurs.
The form and format of how I do this is still evolving. I have set up a Facebook Group as one step. Prosperity – projects FB group for discussions and training of success through ethical business, and as a way to become more proficient in today’s world of internet marketing and online business have been learning affiliate marketing.
I have discovered a few things so far. One is that business is still business online or offline and it takes effort and perseverance to succeed. But I have also discovered that it is a very impersonal world with lots of scammers and people with very short attention spans.
So, that’s my story which ends with this birthday card, showing our current boat, that I received from some friends we met while we were in Florida in 2020 before the world changed. (I’m the guy on the right)
