Lost Her Sight At 3, Bullied For Years, Redundant With A Baby, Then She Built Her Dream Business

What does it actually take to go from a childhood defined by something you can't control to building a business that's entirely yours?In this episode of the Meet Your Inspiration Podcast, Meri and Rich sit down with Tracey Vince, founder of Zerenity Creates — a creative design studio offering web design, web development and graphic design. Tracey's story is one of the most powerful we've recorded. It begins with an accident at age two and a half, and it ends with a woman who owns her story completely.Tracey's accident that left her blind in her right eye. She spent months in hospital, went through multiple operations, wore a coloured contact lens to try to blend in and then spent years in primary and secondary school navigating the bullying that came with her looking different. She kept her fringe long. She suppressed how she felt. Bur she just kept going.After secondary school, she trained as a nursery nurse, went back to college to study computing, worked at Primark to pay the bills, earned a degree in web design, and spent nearly ten years working her way from junior web developer all the way to digital lead at an agency, all the while never quite letting go of what she truly loved to do. Then, coming back from maternity leave, she was made redundant.Instead of taking another job, she started Zerenity. Two years in, she hasn't looked back.In this warm, honest and genuinely moving conversation, Tracey covers:🔹 The supermarket moment with the little girl and the mum who said "she's just weird" 🔹 The moment she decided to own it — completely, publicly, without apology 🔹 Starting Zerenity from scratch with no clients, no plan and a one-year-old at home 🔹 Her first client — her old personal trainer and why it almost felt too easy 🔹 What a website actually is (and what it isn't) — explained without jargon 🔹 Why your website needs to work as hard as you do 🔹 Kent Foundation mentoring and why it's one of the best free resources for UK startups 🔹 Learning to say No, knowing your worth, and collaboration over competition 🔹 The mindset shift from taking any job to knowing her value 🔹 Investing in coaching and why she wishes she'd done it sooner 🔹 F1, rugby, and why McLaren is a leadership school for life 🔹 "Done is better than perfect" and why she says it to every new clientWhether you're navigating a disability, starting a business from scratch, wondering whether to invest in a website, or looking for proof that your setback can become your setup, this episode is for you.💬 "I sit here now and it doesn't really have any effect on me. I will own it. And sometimes I'll call it out. I'd rather people come up to me and go, what happened? And then I'll tell the story if I want to." — Tracey VinceContact Tracey👇https://zerenitycreates.co.uk🙌 Many thanks to our sponsors:https://www.hempsteadhouse.co.uk/https://whatsoninkent.com/https://theitrustapp.com/Special thanks to Charlie Smith for the help with editing 🙌 https://www.dr-ant.co.uk - for the book giftshttps://www.tropicskincare.com/meridonikyankoleva - for the Tropic skincare gifts✊ If you like what we are doing and would like to support us 👉https://buymeacoffee.com/MeetYourInspiration👍 Like and share if you found this story inspiring