Making a Living Without a Job: Interview with Barbara Winter

The Path to Self-Employment

Barbara Winter grew up not knowing exactly what she wanted to do for a living. After college, she worked many different jobs, but never felt she had found her true passion. Eventually, Baraba became interested in personal growth, and she found more confidence in herself and her ideas. She decided she would start her own business, The Successful Woman, which was focused on personal growth for women. She began hosting a class called “Making a Living Without a Job.”

Here are a few key takeaways from her interview:

A good starting point is to try out numerous different ideas you have – we often don’t know which idea of ours is the best at first
To get started, one of the most important things is connecting with others who are self-employed, and take note of their processes and ask questions!
One sign of working with passion is that the longer you do something, the more interested you become
The business you start out with isn’t the business you’ll end with. Self-employment helps us learn our own strengths and talents -- it’s an ongoing learning experience
It’s important to know what times of day are the best time to focus on different things - maybe in the mornings you’re more productive with writing, and in the evenings you have more energy to working on other tasks