It didn't take long. Rather than having to go out and find business, it seemed business came to her. One of Metro Girl's first projects was the Sadler & Hovdesven web site. Wendy got the job when a letter she sent Atlanta Journal-Constitution was published as an essay and mentioned that she was a web designer. Eric Hovdesven, who knew Wendy from somewhere else but didn't know what she did for a living, decided to see if she could create a web site for his law firm. She could and she did.

Since then, Metro Girl has taken on a wide variety of projects including:

• a non-profit African-American collective;
• a wedding photographer;
• a wholesaler of fine European wood polish;
• an independent graphic design consultant;
• a medical staff placement firm;
• a condominium community;
• a modern folk artist;
• an architecture/planning/landscape architecture firm;
• an African-American poet;
• a small publisher;
• a high-profile neighborhood improvement organization;
• a local neighborhood association
• a mat sales company
• and more!

Through work on all these various projects, plus her full-time jobs (state agency and then a university research institute), Wendy expanded and fine-tuned her skills -- in design, in programming, in marketing, and most importantly, in doing anything required to solve clients' problems or make their dreams come true.

In January 2004, Wendy switched over from doing Metro Girl part time to doing it full-time. The enjoyment and opportunity of working to create and maintain custom web sites had a much stronger appeal than remaining in a 9-5 office job, no matter how steady the income. While still a one-person operation, Metro Girl is now able to handle a much higher volume of projects and offers new services. From being just a small-scale idea for doing work "on the side," Metro Girl has hatched into a real company.