Barbara Winter: Making a Living Without a Job

It took another year for me to summon my courage and resign. When I did, I received zero support from the people around me, who greeted my decision with dismay. They added to my own uncertainty about leaving a secure position because of something as common as boredom. I decided I’d better hurry up and find another job but had no idea how to begin. I remembered hearing about the State Employment Service and went in for an interview. To my astonishment, they invited me to come to work for them as a job counselor. I gratefully accepted, but the absurdity of this dawned on me as soon as I began. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but now I was being paid to counsel others on their careers. Before long I knew that I would not become a model civil servant, but I was too embarrassed to leave my second career so soon.

My daughter, Jennifer, came to my rescue and gave me a perfect excuse for resigning. My husband and I had wanted to start a family, and when I discovered I was pregnant, my joy was multiplied by the fact that I now had an acceptable reason for leaving the Employment Service behind. I knew that my “retirement” would be temporary, but I was determined to use those early years of motherhood to find work that I could love. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had to find myself first. The real adventure had begun!

When my daughter was only a few months old, I met a group of people involved in personal development training. This was a new world for me but one in which I felt immediately at home. I started attending motivational seminars, studying books on self-esteem and every other self-help tome I could find. I devoured The Power of Positive Thinking, The Magic of Believing , and Think and Grow Rich. Where had these ideas been hiding? I began to believe in myself. It took some time before I understood what Sydney Harris meant when he wrote, “Young people searching for their ‘real self’ must learn that the real self is not something one finds as much as it is something one makes; and it is one’s daily actions that shape the inner personality far more permanently than any amount of introspection or intellection.” The form that my next step would take was still fuzzy, but I sensed that I was getting closer.

The push I needed came in the most unexpected way. One evening I picked up the newspaper and read a story about two women in New York named Claudia Jessup and Genie Chipps. Friends since their school days, they had moved to New York in hope of becoming actresses. While waiting to be discovered, they supported themselves the way many out-of-work actors do, with a variety of available jobs.

At dinner with friends one night, Chipps said, “We ought to stop trying to figure out where we might fit in. Let’s do something on our own. Let’s start a business!” One guest had the nerve to ask just what this business was going to sell. “Ourselves, of course,” they improvised. “We’ll sell our time and energy to people and do whatever comes along.”

And so the seeds of their business, Supergirls, Ltd., were sown. Setting up shop in Jessup’s apartment, they purchased a few supplies, including a record called “Sounds of the Office,” which they played whenever the phone rang, giving the impression that Supergirls had a large staff busily working to meet any and all requests. From such humble beginnings, they went on to create a large and sophisticated public relations company.

I was dazzled! What Jessup and Chipps had done was a new idea for me. If I had ever thought about starting a business as an option, I would have assumed it meant gathering capital and opening a store. The Supergirls were telling me that there was another way to work for myself. I wanted to know more. I got my copy of the book about their experiences, Supergirls: The Autobiography of an Outrageous Business , the very next day and read it cover to cover. At the end of the book Jessup wrote, “Genie and I didn’t lead our class at Harvard Business School. We didn’t even go to business school. But we started a business, and we found out that we knew enough about most of the things we needed to know about to get along. We weren’t and aren’t extraordinary people. The point is, Genie and I didn’t start out being super. We just wanted to be.”

If “wanting to be” was what it took, I was highly qualified. I mulled and dreamed and planned and fretted and finally took a deep breath and launched my first little venture. Supergirls became my handbook and constant companion. It was the only resource I could find to guide me in creating an unconventional business.

The Successful Woman, which I started in September of 1974, brought together my passions for personal development and the women’s movement. At that time, no one had designed a program on goal-setting and self-esteem aimed at women. I organized a seminar, added the idea of publishing a newsletter, and began letting people know about my business. It was both exhilarating and scary. After I publicized the business, I was interviewed by magazines, on television and radio, and in the newspaper. Speaking invitations began to come in from women’s groups, churches, colleges, and businesses. I accepted every one. My seminars got smoother and fuller; newsletter subscribers came from around the country. I was on my way.

As time went on, other opportunities and ideas presented themselves. With my confidence growing from my early triumph with The Successful Woman, I eagerly tried other ventures. I started a mailorder business, which was enormously successful, and branched out into special-event planning and seminars on creative marketing. Eventually, I stopped working exclusively with women and broadened the scope of my training.

More important, I began to see that I had inadvertently stumbled onto the most effective personal development program invented. Running a business taught me about myself and other people. It challenged me to expand in every possible way. When I had been a jobholder, I had given little thought to building character or clarifying my values or serving others. All of these things became momentous aspects of self-employment.

Before my “Making a Living Without a Job” seminars grew from twenty people to more than several hundred, I would begin with an exercise I call Three Questions. Each person would answer these simple queries: Who are you? What do you do? Why are you here?

Although my students invariably came from disparate backgrounds and occupations, from a mix of blue-and white-collar jobs, they weren’t coming to the seminar merely because they were curious. They weren’t even coming because they had lost their jobs, but, usually, their current careers weren’t delivering the satisfaction or security they had expected. My students all gave thoughtful—even poignant—explanations for wanting to become independent. “I want to see my kids grow up” was a common response, along with “My workplace has become so stressful that I get stomach pains when I start to drive to work” or “It’s time for me to devote full time to an idea I’ve had for years.” Almost all of them said they had glimpsed the future and it looked like more of the same—unless they made changes now. Let’s eavesdrop for a moment and see whether your personal motivation reflects any of the answers I’ve heard.

• I want more control over my own time and life. Writer Peter Mayle sums it up nicely when he says, “I’d rather live precariously in my own office than comfortably in somebody else’s.” Many workers and professionals are increasingly frustrated over having so little to say about when they work and when they have time off. Working for someone else often creates an unpleasant dichotomy in our lives. As we mature and clarify our values, we may find it difficult to spend time in ways that do not reflect what we believe and care about. Breaking free seems the best option for changing that.