Help Arrives With a First Class Stamp

This week I’ve been getting ready for my upcoming trip to Sacramento where I’ll be teaching three classes at the Learning Exchange. As the enrollments kept climbing, I kept getting more excited.

Sometimes I hop on a plane and get to share ideas and information with people in farflung places. Sometimes I spend an hour on the phone sharing via a teleclass. Sometimes I’m on the other side of the desk taking a seminar or teleclass. Sometimes I am designing a new special event.

There’s only one thing that I’m doing all the time—gathering things for Winning Ways newsletter.

When I started my very first business, The Successful Woman, I knew I wanted to create personal growth seminars, but also realized that a seminar was just a starting point for learning something new, something important.

In my own journey, there’d been a lot of backsliding and I wanted my participants to avoid some of the long setbacks I’d endured while trying to figure things out on my own.

To this day, I have no idea how I came up with the notion of publishing a newsletter, but once I hit upon it, I realized that it was the  perfect vehicle for reinforcing new mindsets and adding resources as I came upon them.

Even though my early seminars morphed from personal growth into entrepreneurial subjects, a newsletter is still a perfect tool for keeping the learning going. Unlike books which are read and returned to the shelf, a newsletter keeps coming.

It’s kind of like getting a chapter at a time with an interval in between installments for testing and trying out things for yourself before moving on to the next thing.

Since I’m the kind of person who can’t keep good things to myself, sending out the best of what I’ve uncovered six times a year is efficient and strangely fun for me to produce.

Nevertheless, I remain astonished that Winning Ways is still a source of such creative satisfaction that I’m now celebrating its twenty-fifth year.

Equally startling to me is how pertinent the information remains over time. When I go digging in my archives I’m always surprised to discover an article or resource I’d completely forgotten, but can put to use again in 2011.

While I’m not so naive as to think all of my subscribers store every issue themselves, I do know that if Winning Ways was done electronically instead of as old-fashioned hard copy, it wouldn’t enjoy such a long shelf life.

One of the most frequent comments I’ve gotten from my readers is that Winning Ways always arrives just when it’s needed most. I used to think that was magically auspicious, but then I realized it wasn’t nearly so mysterious.

What day isn’t a good day to be encouraged on your Joyfully Jobless Journey? What day isn’t a good day to find a reminder in your mailbox that you mean business? What day don’t you need to feel connected to others on a similar path?

The only mystery, it seems to me, is how something so ordinary looking could pack such a punch.

If you’d like to add Winning Ways to your power tools, I’m extending my special offer for new subscribers until October 15th. Order now and I’ll include a copy of Seminar in a Sentence, my collection of quotes on creativity, success and entrepreneurship.

I’d love to have you along. Here’s what some of my readers have to say about the newsletter.

I am reading your newest issue right now.  I absolutely must renew every year as I LOVE reading them.  I save every issue in a file after I have read it. Great stuff! ~ Micheal, Ohio

I get a lot of publications, but Winning Ways is the only one I read cover to cover as soon as it arrives.–Jack, Georgia

Your last Winning Ways was topnotch! The Smart Investing article is a gentle reminder for me to put my money where it matters. For years that felt selfish. Now it feels smart! ~ Maureen, Colorado

Thanks for filling my mailbox with such inspiration. ~ Jen, New York

Thank you for your wise and inspiring words. Please keep sharing your passion for living life to the fullest. ~ Paul, Canada

I subscribe to many newletters which pertain to self employment, self publishing, mail order, marketing and so forth and have been doing so since the early 1970’s.  I rarely renew past five years because of the drop off in quality and rehashed material.

I have renewed Winning Ways for a number of years now because your newsletter, much like your book Making a Living Without a Job, is excellent material which I constantly refer to.  Both are excellent “idea generators” for me and have helped me immensely over the years. You are to be commended for your excellent, thought provoking writing.~ Tom, CT