Barbara Winter: Making a Living Without a Job

The book you are holding in your hand right now changed my life, and it can change yours too.

Back in the early nineties, I was a young lawyer who seemed to have it all: a beautiful wife and children, a good job with a high-powered law firm, making the big bucks, you name it. But the operative phrase in the preceding sentence is “seemed to have it all.” In truth, I was miserable. I was working in excess of sixty hours a week, my boss was the very definition of a “bad boss,” and the fact was, I hated being an employee.

What I longed for, what I literally and figuratively dreamed about, was to be my own boss, to start my own business. But I had no idea how. And then I found this book. Making a living without a job? Was that even possible? It was, and Barbara Winter showed me how. The book explained how anyone can become what she calls “joyfully jobless.” I devoured it—writing in the margins, doing the exercises, following the leader. It was easy to read and understand, even though the ideas she presented were significant and life changing.

If you long to be your own boss, then this is the book for you. If you, too, would like to make a living without a job, read on. If you want to learn how to quit the rat race and make money living your dream, then buy this book, now.

I started making a living without a job about two months after reading this book and have never looked back (well, maybe I look back sometimes, but only to remember how much happier I am today). After starting my own law practice by following Barbara Winter’s tips (my favorite? Create Multiple Profit Centers) , I went on to become something of a small-business expert myself. Today I speak around the world and have my columns and books translated into different languages. I make far more money, have a lot more fun, and work when I want, where I want, and how I want.

And it was this book that started it all. I am deeply appreciative of it, and you will be too.

While I always knew that joyfully jobless tribe members would be fascinating folks, I am forever grateful to the people who have shared their stories and lives with me via email messages, old-fashioned letters, and by participating in seminars. Your passion, creativity, and willingness to follow your heart and make your unique contribution to the world has made my world brighter.

Since Making a Living Without a Job was first published, I have had the pleasure of meeting many of my readers. They have contacted me by writing letters and emails, and some have attended my seminars and other speaking engagements. My favorite fans are the ones who show up at one of my seminars carrying a worn and much-used copy of the book. One woman arrived clutching her copy, which had dozens of Post-it tabs on all three sides. “How do you remember what you want to look up again?” I asked. She laughed and assured me that there was something on almost every page.

Even though new readers kept finding my book, it seemed to me that the time had come for a bit of renovation. For starters, much has changed in the past fifteen years. I suspect you don’t need me or Bob Dylan to point that out. These changes have been dramatic—and sometimes startling—in my own business.

Fifteen years isn’t a terribly long time span, but my business now looks quite different from the way it once did. One of the ways it has changed is in the tools I use. This book was originally written on a typewriter. It went through four complete revisions and reams of paper. Reluctantly, I got my first computer shortly before the book appeared in print. At the time, I wasn’t sure why I’d want to replace a perfectly good typewriter with a machine that intimidated me. Fifteen years ago, only a few people I knew used email, and there wasn’t much to see on the Internet. When I started to hear about small businesses investing thousands of dollars for a website, I thought they had taken leave of their senses.

It’s not that I was a stranger to changing times. I’d been through that in the first decade of my own joyfully jobless life. I recall that when I started my first business, I went to great lengths to conceal the fact that my office was a corner of my family room. It was years before anyone began talking about homebased businesses. Information on how to create a one-person operation was nonexistent. How did I manage, I wonder, without Google, Skype, Twitter, and a website?

Happily, I have made peace with technology and the new possibilities it has offered for running and growing my business. Although I still spend plenty of time on airplanes, flying to seminar engagements, I’ve expanded the teaching part of my business through teleclasses taught from the comfort of my home. Participants from across the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe, in the comfort of their homes, can learn how to build a better business by dialing in on their telephone or Skype. If they can’t attend in person, they can get an audio download of the class. That’s something I never envisioned fifteen years ago.

As amazing as technological changes are, nothing offers more opportunity than changing times. Sweeping cultural factors and problems demand innovative solutions. Fifteen years ago, not many of us contemplated designing a green business, for example. Fifteen years ago, we were unaware that the Boomer Generation was about to redefine what it means to be a senior in our culture. And fifteen years ago, few people imagined a time when there would be a major job shortage.

Despite the fact that change is often unsettling, these are exciting times, for those who are paying attention. The new possibilities are enormous and without precedent. Imagine running an international art gallery from your home on a tiny island off the Canadian coast. Or setting out in a motor home with your laptop to keep your business running. City dwellers do, of course, run small businesses, but those who prefer a quieter setting can have the best of both worlds—a lively business in a bucolic setting, serving customers and clients from around the world. It’s thrilling to realize that we are the first people in the history of the world for whom geography is not a limitation to self-employment. As geographical barriers go down, entrepreneurial imagination goes up.

All this activity has another consequence: As more of us go down this path and share what we’ve learned, it gets easier for the next round of self-bossers to step onto the trail we’ve been busily blazing. Magazines, books, and websites offer more information than one person can possibly absorb. Best of all, much of this information is created by people who have run their own businesses and are passing along real-life experience and advice, not dry business theory.

With every person who chooses this path, it gets a little bit easier for all of us. As more of us strike out on our own, we find that we have to defend our choices far less often. The warnings of dream-bashers and naysayers are growing faint as we silently recall the Chinese proverb that says, “Person who says it cannot be done must not interrupt person already doing it.”