If you hadn’t guessed by now I’m a bit of a self-help/entrepreneurial book junkie. I’m addicted and like any addiction the first step is admitting that you have a problem. Only I don’t want to get help so you’re going to read about it here! I first came across Barbara Winter at a London Scanners’ Night a few months ago. I loved her presentation about her life experience and how to be “joyfully jobless” so much that I impulse-purchased entry to her 1 day workshop also being held in London 4 days later.
If like me the word “job” makes you cringe but you perk up when you hear “multiple profit centres” than go out and buy Making a Living Without a Job right now. This book is jam-packed with ideas on how to focus your talents and interests to develop revenue streams from your various interests. Barbara was one of the first self-employed people to have the “portfolio career” before they even coined the term, which I think went out of fashion as a concept at the turn of the millennium. Now we call them scanners, who knows what they’ll be called tomorrow.
As an employed person myself I have a great sense of admiration for the self-employed. I have romantic visions of working from home in my pyjamas, seeing the immediate impact of my work on my own business, and saying good bye to office politics. Romance aside I also really admire the self-employed because they must get a great sense of satisfaction in working for themselves, but equally they must be under a lot of pressure to bring home the bacon. They don’t get paid when they’re sick, have benefits like medical insurance, and if they lose it all overnight then they are back to square one. To me the self-employed or joyfully jobless are like modern day entrepreneurial warriors.
There are some great exercises in Barbara’s book. In true scanner fashion, I normally get bored of/skip the exercises, but these ones I actually did and I learned a lot about myself. Also check out Barbara’s website Joyfullyjobless.com where you will find tons of useful information including a blog, seminars, you can even sign up for e-mail newsletters, and perhaps the most shocking of all an actually old fashioned paper newsletter mailed out once a quarter called Winning Ways. I signed up and I love getting it in the post, it’s like Christmas for my inspiration come early. Winning Ways is apparently the longest running paper newsletter in the US (it’s 26 years old I think Barbara told me!) You’ll find great content here not available anywhere else. One of Barabara’s great lessons is to value what you have to offer and not give everything away for free! And yes, Winning Ways is definitely worth paying for.
