Presenting: BARBARA WINTER!
Well, I am really excited to be able to present to you my first interview: Barbara Winter, best-selling author and creative entrepreneur extraordinaire. I am always fascinated by people who manage to combine their artistic and creative talents with being a successful entrepreneur. In the end that’s what I am aspiring to achieve.
I first met Barbara in a seminar in Toronto and I enjoyed her humorous, casual yet informative style. A few phone conversations and a tele-class later: here she is!
Barbara in front of Buckingham Palace.
1. Please tell us a bit about your background and work experience.
I've been self-employed for 30 years so the things I did prior to that seem very much in the distant past. My first job was as a high school English and speech teacher. Then I worked for the State of Minnesota Employment service. After taking three years off to be a fulltime mother, I was an interior designer with Ethan Allen. Every one of those jobs taught me things that helped me when I started my own business--including teaching me that I never wanted to work for anyone but myself.
2. You are one of the pioneers of self-employment. When and why did you decide to become self-employed? What was it like when you got started? How have things changed since then?
I certainly wasn't encouraged to be self-employed when I was growing up. The decision evolved gradually. I had gotten interested in personal growth and development back in the early seventies and was slightly frustrated that all the books and seminars (which were far fewer than there are today) were by men, for men. I decided to take some of the things I'd learned and do seminars for women. I also began publishing a newsletter called The Successful Woman. It was all trial and error.
There was very little information to help me then. I began working from home, but was somewhat embarrassed about that. I had no idea that I was going to be part of the home business revolution. Essentially, it's so much easier now to be self-employed because there are more of us doing it and there's more good information.
3. One of the primary focuses of this website is travel. Tell us about your "Support Your Wanderlust" seminars.
Well, I've always had wanderlust myself and as I got more confident about being self-employed I knew I wanted my business to include travel. As time went on, students in Making a Living Without a Job seminars kept telling me that they wanted to travel so How To Support Your Wanderlust came out of those requests--and my own and other entrepreneur's experiences creating profitable travel for themselves.
4. How do you integrate travel into your entrepreneurial ventures? What opportunities of travel have you been able to enjoy through your business endeavours?
I travel extensively throughout the US doing seminars. Now that I've joined forces with Nick Williams, who lives in London, we're doing more work together in the UK, as well as in the US. As a writer, I've also traveled and incorporated research into those trips adding another profit center-- and tax deductible travel.
5. How often do you travel and how do you reconcile travel with all your various business endeavours?
It varies, but I've kind of developed a system that works for me. The seminars I do in adult ed programs are primarily held on Friday evenings and Saturdays so I travel on the weekends with those. When I'm in Europe, I have to have my writing projects done before I leave. I've always preferred to travel more frequently, but for shorter periods of time so that makes it possible to keep up with the demands of my business at home because I'm usually not away for long, long periods of time. And I only buy houseplants that can survive without me.
6. Please tell us about your life and business philosophy in general.
My philosophy--in its simplest form--is "have a great life and talk about it." I decided long ago to make myself a guinea pig and experiment with ideas before passing them along in my writing and teaching. I consider myself a card-carrying dream builder and my greatest joy is helping others go for their own dreams.
7. You are a bestselling author of the book "Making a Living Without a Job". Tell us more about that book.
Making a Living Without a Job was first a seminar which was enormously popular--still is--that put together my ideas about being creatively self-employed. When it went into book form, I wanted to write a manual that wasn't just about getting started, but also about keeping going. It really was meant to free the corporate slaves by exposing them to a different way of working and thinking about their own lives.
8. What about your most recent book "Jump Start Your Entrepreneurial Spirit"?
Jumpstart Your Entrepreneurial Spirit is a collection of 52 short essays about all sorts of things appropriate to the entrepreneurial life. It includes lots of the intangibles things that make for success and lots of stories about people that inspire me.
9. Please tell us about your " Winning Ways" newsletter and the tele-classes and seminars you offer?
One of the most critical things for anyone wanting to succeed at self-employment is to have steady reinforcement. A newsletter does that beautifully and also gives me a format to share new business ideas, books, and stories from my seminar students. Winning Ways comes out six times a year and is great fun to write. I'll be starting my 19th year of publication, which is a longevity record for small business newsletters. While I still do short seminars that include the ones you've mentioned and another called Establish Yourself as an Expert, this past year I've been moving to longer events, which I love. Here in Minnesota I do one called Camp Entrepreneur. Nick and I also do an event in Las Vegas called Being an Inspired Entrepreneur and another in the Lake District in the UK called Building the Possible Dream. I'm quite smitten with all the longer events and plan to do more of them in the future.
10. For a while now you have been involved in building a business across international frontiers. Please tell us more about your newest initiative – Dreambuilders.
One of the interesting challenges I've been dealing with for the past couple of years is learning how to work with a business partner who lives 4,000 miles away. While e-mail and the telephone make it easy to stay in touch, Nick Williams and I are also aware of the fact that we're most creative when we're together in the same place. Sometimes we also have little cultural differences of opinion which we always manage to work out, perhaps because we both find it fascinating to see a different perspective. These are all just little issues that add spice to our business, I'd say.
I once wrote an article called Another Barrier Down in which I talked about the fact that we are the first people in the history of the world for whom geography is not an obstacle for starting a business. In the article I said the business of the future will look quite different: our customers and clients will be people who share a consciousness, not a postal code.
It's that new paradigm that Nick and I have heartily embraced in creating the Dreambuilders Community. We're getting members from all over the globe who share our consciousness. It won't be long before we're holding events in a number of different countries and seeing that the entrepreneurial spirit can flourish almost anywhere. It's wildly exciting to be part of this growing global community of inspired entrepreneurs.
Let me thank you, Barbara, for sharing your experiences and some insight into your creative entrepreneurial mind. So far I have learned a lot and I am definitely planning to sign up for your next “Establish Yourself as an Expert” teleclass!
SQ.
http://www.travelandtransitions.com/
http://www.textronics.com/
I first met Barbara in a seminar in Toronto and I enjoyed her humorous, casual yet informative style. A few phone conversations and a tele-class later: here she is!
Barbara in front of Buckingham Palace.
1. Please tell us a bit about your background and work experience.
I've been self-employed for 30 years so the things I did prior to that seem very much in the distant past. My first job was as a high school English and speech teacher. Then I worked for the State of Minnesota Employment service. After taking three years off to be a fulltime mother, I was an interior designer with Ethan Allen. Every one of those jobs taught me things that helped me when I started my own business--including teaching me that I never wanted to work for anyone but myself.
2. You are one of the pioneers of self-employment. When and why did you decide to become self-employed? What was it like when you got started? How have things changed since then?
I certainly wasn't encouraged to be self-employed when I was growing up. The decision evolved gradually. I had gotten interested in personal growth and development back in the early seventies and was slightly frustrated that all the books and seminars (which were far fewer than there are today) were by men, for men. I decided to take some of the things I'd learned and do seminars for women. I also began publishing a newsletter called The Successful Woman. It was all trial and error.
There was very little information to help me then. I began working from home, but was somewhat embarrassed about that. I had no idea that I was going to be part of the home business revolution. Essentially, it's so much easier now to be self-employed because there are more of us doing it and there's more good information.
3. One of the primary focuses of this website is travel. Tell us about your "Support Your Wanderlust" seminars.
Well, I've always had wanderlust myself and as I got more confident about being self-employed I knew I wanted my business to include travel. As time went on, students in Making a Living Without a Job seminars kept telling me that they wanted to travel so How To Support Your Wanderlust came out of those requests--and my own and other entrepreneur's experiences creating profitable travel for themselves.
4. How do you integrate travel into your entrepreneurial ventures? What opportunities of travel have you been able to enjoy through your business endeavours?
I travel extensively throughout the US doing seminars. Now that I've joined forces with Nick Williams, who lives in London, we're doing more work together in the UK, as well as in the US. As a writer, I've also traveled and incorporated research into those trips adding another profit center-- and tax deductible travel.
5. How often do you travel and how do you reconcile travel with all your various business endeavours?
It varies, but I've kind of developed a system that works for me. The seminars I do in adult ed programs are primarily held on Friday evenings and Saturdays so I travel on the weekends with those. When I'm in Europe, I have to have my writing projects done before I leave. I've always preferred to travel more frequently, but for shorter periods of time so that makes it possible to keep up with the demands of my business at home because I'm usually not away for long, long periods of time. And I only buy houseplants that can survive without me.
6. Please tell us about your life and business philosophy in general.
My philosophy--in its simplest form--is "have a great life and talk about it." I decided long ago to make myself a guinea pig and experiment with ideas before passing them along in my writing and teaching. I consider myself a card-carrying dream builder and my greatest joy is helping others go for their own dreams.
7. You are a bestselling author of the book "Making a Living Without a Job". Tell us more about that book.
Making a Living Without a Job was first a seminar which was enormously popular--still is--that put together my ideas about being creatively self-employed. When it went into book form, I wanted to write a manual that wasn't just about getting started, but also about keeping going. It really was meant to free the corporate slaves by exposing them to a different way of working and thinking about their own lives.
8. What about your most recent book "Jump Start Your Entrepreneurial Spirit"?
Jumpstart Your Entrepreneurial Spirit is a collection of 52 short essays about all sorts of things appropriate to the entrepreneurial life. It includes lots of the intangibles things that make for success and lots of stories about people that inspire me.
9. Please tell us about your " Winning Ways" newsletter and the tele-classes and seminars you offer?
One of the most critical things for anyone wanting to succeed at self-employment is to have steady reinforcement. A newsletter does that beautifully and also gives me a format to share new business ideas, books, and stories from my seminar students. Winning Ways comes out six times a year and is great fun to write. I'll be starting my 19th year of publication, which is a longevity record for small business newsletters. While I still do short seminars that include the ones you've mentioned and another called Establish Yourself as an Expert, this past year I've been moving to longer events, which I love. Here in Minnesota I do one called Camp Entrepreneur. Nick and I also do an event in Las Vegas called Being an Inspired Entrepreneur and another in the Lake District in the UK called Building the Possible Dream. I'm quite smitten with all the longer events and plan to do more of them in the future.
10. For a while now you have been involved in building a business across international frontiers. Please tell us more about your newest initiative – Dreambuilders.
One of the interesting challenges I've been dealing with for the past couple of years is learning how to work with a business partner who lives 4,000 miles away. While e-mail and the telephone make it easy to stay in touch, Nick Williams and I are also aware of the fact that we're most creative when we're together in the same place. Sometimes we also have little cultural differences of opinion which we always manage to work out, perhaps because we both find it fascinating to see a different perspective. These are all just little issues that add spice to our business, I'd say.
I once wrote an article called Another Barrier Down in which I talked about the fact that we are the first people in the history of the world for whom geography is not an obstacle for starting a business. In the article I said the business of the future will look quite different: our customers and clients will be people who share a consciousness, not a postal code.
It's that new paradigm that Nick and I have heartily embraced in creating the Dreambuilders Community. We're getting members from all over the globe who share our consciousness. It won't be long before we're holding events in a number of different countries and seeing that the entrepreneurial spirit can flourish almost anywhere. It's wildly exciting to be part of this growing global community of inspired entrepreneurs.
Let me thank you, Barbara, for sharing your experiences and some insight into your creative entrepreneurial mind. So far I have learned a lot and I am definitely planning to sign up for your next “Establish Yourself as an Expert” teleclass!
SQ.
http://www.travelandtransitions.com/
http://www.textronics.com/
posted by SQ at 10:16 PM
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