From Dial-Up Startup to Global Empire: and the Phone Call that Challenged Everything. Sandra Yancey on The Jeff Crilley Show

27 Apr From Dial-Up Startup to Global Empire: and the Phone Call that Challenged Everything. Sandra Yancey on The Jeff Crilley Show

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The eWomenNetwork founder and CEO traces her path from a sweltering spare bedroom in Dallas to a global organization — and reveals how her daughter Briana's near-fatal medical crisis reshaped everything she thought she knew about resilience.

The Kitchen in Denver

Sandra Yancey is searching for a room. She has just stepped off a stage in Denver, still carrying the energy of the event, when a woman approaches and tells her she needs to find somewhere private and call her husband immediately. Attendees want to talk. There is no office, no green room. Yancey finds a kitchen.

She dials Kym Yancey, her husband and business partner of forty-six years. On the other end, he is inconsolable. "He was crying and he was trying to talk to me, but I couldn't understand," she recalled. "I kept saying, what's going on? What's going on? And he just kept saying, 'Our baby, our baby.'" The phone was taken from Kym. A doctor told Sandra there had been "an unfortunate incident" and she needed to get home. She did not ask what happened. "I didn't want to be that far away and know something tragic had happened," she said. What followed was a desperate sprint through Denver International Airport, a last-minute seat on an American Airlines flight, and a hospital room where her daughter Briana lay on life support — the start of a story that would redefine the woman behind one of the largest women's business networks in North America.

A Spare Bedroom Above the Garage

eWomenNetwork began during the dot-com boom in a room above the Yancey family's garage in Dallas. "Hotter than the hinges of hell here in Dallas," Yancey told Jeff Crilley. "But we were cooking up something pretty big, you know. We just didn't know it at the time." The original concept was a digital platform — essentially a proto-Facebook for women business owners. Members would snail-mail photographs to Sandra, who would drive to Kinko's, have them scanned onto a disc, drive home, and upload them one by one.

"It was a great idea. It was just too many years before its time," she said. Everyone was still on dial-up. There were no pictures, no color — just plain text. The lesson, as Yancey framed it, was blunt: "There's this thing called timing, and it's an important factor in success."

Watching the Customer

By 2002, the internet bust had hollowed out the original business model, but Yancey noticed something. A member in the Atlanta area called and asked for zip codes of nearby members. She wanted to meet them face to face. "I'd like to meet them. I wanna be eye to eye. I wanna hear their story," the member told her. Yancey started paying attention.

She compared it to Japanese automakers studying shoppers in parking lots — watching women juggle kids and groceries and bags, then inventing the hands-free trunk. "They watched and they listened to what their customers were saying versus what they want," she explained. The members said they didn't have time for another meeting, but their behavior said the opposite. So Yancey pivoted. Her husband and co-founder Kym rebranded the "e" to stand for entrepreneur, enterprising, enthralling — a whole brochure full of meanings that freed the company from its digital-only origins and launched a face-to-face networking model that now spans North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

April 11: One Percent

Two years ago, on April 11, Briana Yancey — Sandra and Kym's daughter and a key member of the eWomenNetwork team — went in for a routine outpatient procedure. The doctor injected lidocaine too deep; it entered her bloodstream. She suffered seven seizures and went into full cardiac arrest. Care flight crews kept her alive manually for forty minutes, but oxygen delivered by chest compressions is not the same as a beating heart.

When Sandra finally reached the hospital and walked into the room, she barely recognized her daughter — intubated, elevated, ice cold. The neurologist was direct: "I don't expect her to make it. I'm giving her one percent chance to live." The emergency doctor had already told Kym and Briana's husband Travis to focus on "alternate plans, end of life plans."

Sandra leaned over her daughter, grabbed her ice-cold hand, and whispered: "It's okay, baby. You rest, you rest, let your body heal. 1%, Briana. You've been a one percenter your whole life. Here we go. Here we go again."

The Miracle and What Came After

Recovery came in agonizing increments. Briana couldn't speak. She had no use of her left side. When nurses placed a spoon in her right hand, she didn't know what it was. "Every step of the way the doctors are saying, this may be the best she ever is," Sandra recalled. But Briana worked — eight hours a day of therapy, every kind available.

Then the MRI results came back. The same neurologist who had given one percent odds pulled down her face mask, looked at Kym and Sandra, and said, "You got a miracle. There's no medical explanation for her recovery." Briana got home, got pregnant, and delivered a baby boy on March 11 at 11 p.m. — a string of elevens that Sandra sees as more than coincidence. "There are just no accidents in all of this," she said. The boy spent time in the NICU but is healthy today. Briana is now the succession plan for eWomenNetwork.

Face to Face in a Trust Recession

Sandra Yancey sees the current moment as a vindication of her company's core bet: that in-person connection will always carry more weight than a profile on a screen. She pointed to Mark Cuban's recent warning in Inc Magazine about AI making it harder to distinguish reality from fabrication. "Face to face, knee to knee, heart to heart conversation is going to be more valuable than ever," she said. "The days of sitting behind the computer, the COVID days — I mean, you got to get up, take a shower, get some pants on, and get out now."

The organization's philosophy remains unchanged: lift as you climb, give before you ask, and build the kind of trust that referrals require. With chapters on multiple continents and an upcoming event in Allen, Texas, on June 11, eWomenNetwork is doubling down on the model that a member in Atlanta inadvertently suggested more than two decades ago.

One Percent Belief

Sandra Yancey does not minimize what April 11 cost her. But she has metabolized the experience into something she now carries onto every stage. "I now know what a bad day is," she said. "Nothing will ever measure that day, Jeff. Nothing. There's nothing that will ever come close to that day. So the blessing now is that every day is a beautiful day." Briana, she added, is living proof that a one percent belief is enough — "if you work for it, and she worked for it, it too can be yours."

Sandra Yancey is the founder and CEO of eWomenNetwork, a global networking organization for women entrepreneurs with chapters across North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Learn more at ewomennetwork.com. This episode was recorded on The Jeff Crilley Show.

Key Topics

  • the early days of eWomenNetwork
  • watching customers to drive innovation
  • the importance of face-to-face networking
  • the philosophy of lifting as we climb
  • Briana Dai's miraculous recovery
  • the power of community prayer
  • the CEO advantage and business shifting

About the Guest

Sandra Yancey is the Founder and CEO of eWomenNetwork, a premier global networking organization for women entrepreneurs. With chapters across North America, the UK, and Australia, she has dedicated her career to helping women build million-dollar enterprises through a philosophy of "lifting as we climb."

Episode Timestamps

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Episode Chapters

  • 00:00 – Introduction
  • 00:29 – Jeff Crilley's Journey from Reporter to PR
  • 01:23 – Welcome Sandra Yancey
  • 01:58 – The Early Days of eWomenNetwork
  • 03:39 – Pivoting from Digital to In-Person Networking
  • 05:39 – The Power of Community and Giving
  • 08:18 – Face-to-Face Connection in the AI Era
  • 09:37 – The Phone Call That Changed Everything
  • 12:15 – Racing Home to Briana's Bedside
  • 15:35 – One Percent Chance to Live
  • 18:16 – Signs of Hope and a Long Recovery
  • 23:06 – A Miracle and a Full Recovery
  • 25:10 – New Life and a Family Legacy
  • 26:09 – Upcoming Event and Final Thoughts
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