Short Professional Bio
After nearly four decades of leadership in the home business industry as an author,
newsletter publisher, and
speaker, Barbara Brabec continues to be an inspiring role model
for individuals who are trying to achieve success and financial independence through
a business based at home.
She is the author of eight home business books,
two of which—Creative Cash
and Homemade Money— are now in their sixth editions with sales of more than
a hundreds thousand copies each, earning both of them classic status in their
respective fields.
Widowed in 2005 after nearly 44 years of marriage, Barbara continues to
reinvent herself on the Web and move in new directions as a writer,
editor, self-publisher, and home business adviser.
Of Barbara's writing,
reviewers have said:
"Barbara Brabec knows more about how to run a successful
home-based business than anyone in the nation."
- Alan Caruba,
Bookviews
"Brabec speaks from a lifetime of experience. . . has
weathered the storms and know what it takes to create a
business that has longevity."
- Barbara Winter,
Winning Ways News
"Brabec has long been known as a motherlode of
information." - New Business Opportunities
"Brabec understands the real life situations of her
readers, and addresses them frankly." - The Knitter's
Link
"Listening to hundreds of HBB owners over the years has
made Brabec probably the best-known HBB authority, and
one with the most experience." - Oklahoma Home-Based
Business Bulletin
"Barbara Brabec believes in delivering value." -
Pat
Katz, The Star Phoenix
"Brabec tempers enthusiasm with good sense." - Jefferson
Business
"Barbara is a warm and intelligent person with a healthy
dose of old-fashioned good sense." - Boogiejack's
Almost
A Newsletter
See a listing of all of
Barbara's Books
Reader/Reviewer comments
about Barbara's Books
See related article,
"I Already Did That"
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Barbara Brabec's Bio
(What she has been doing for the past fifty years)
At left you'll find my "professional bio."
But what follows below is everything that happened between the
lines, so to speak. It's a
story that summarizes my career accomplishments as I see them now, looking back over the past fifty years. This is more than
the average person wants to know about me, but those who read to the
bottom will find some important lessons in how to succeed in their
chosen business or life endeavor.
Understand that it's not my intent to brag here—though God knows I've always had an ego that needed to be controlled
(and controlling that ego was something my late husband always considered to be one of his most important jobs in
life). Rather, I'm simply trying to illustrate how an ordinary person can come from total
obscurity with only a high school education and, with little or no money, achieve one goal after another through
nothing more than hard work, self-study, and a willingness to keep going even when the
future looks bleak.
I hope my story will be an encouragement to individuals who are just
starting a business of their own and wondering if they have what it takes
to succeed. Or maybe it will encourage someone to keep going if they've just
experienced a devastating business setback and are wondering if it's worth the
effort to try again.
ABSOLUTELY! I've experienced many small failures
in my business life, yet here I am, still going in my 70s like the Energizer
Bunny®. Perhaps in the end the real
secret to success is just to keep going. Switch tracks if necessary, but keep going. |
MY MOTHER ALWAYS TOLD ME I could do anything I wanted to do in life, and she
was right. I am entirely self-taught in business and marketing, writing,
periodical and book publishing, teaching, speaking, editing, eBook design and
publication, using computers and related technology, and designing and managing
a website. I'm
proof positive that if you can read, and then apply what you’ve learned, you can
achieve success in anything you may be trying to do. Of course, a driving
ambition to succeed will speed the process along.
After high school I headed for Chicago, where I worked first as a secretary
and then an office manager for ten years. At the same time, I was studying music
and eventually became a musical entertainer (marimba act), doing women's club
programs, playing at weddings, and in a swank supper club on the South Shore.
(That experience would later make it easier for me to become a public speaker,
with my mouth becoming my new instrument.)
My
involvement in music eventually put me in the path of Harry Brabec,
who swept me
off my feet and married me less than three weeks later. Figuring one professional musician in the family was enough, I quit
performing but kept my office job for awhile. Later, when Harry asked me to stay at home and
just be a wife, I complained that I didn't have enough to do. "Get a
hobby," he said, and those three little words ultimately changed not only my life but his,
for he eventually found himself being drawn into the field of arts and crafts
as a
crafts show producer.
Before he knew it, I was out selling my woodcarvings, music boxes and artwork,
and asking more questions
about how to do this right than we
could find answers for. So he suggested we start a magazine for people
like me, and even though we knew absolutely nothing about how to do this, we
launched Artisan Crafts with Harry on the phone and me on the keys of an electronic typewriter
with a lot of letterpress sheets at hand for making headlines. Of course I had
already begun to read books on how to design a magazine and succeed as a periodical publisher.
(I didn't even consider my lack of writing experience, which to that point
included only letters to my mother and my
Valedictorian speech.)
After five years—during which time the magazine consumed our lives and all
my self-study failed to reveal the secrets of how to survive the recession we
were in at the time—we declared this
venture to be a "literary success but a financial flop." And that's
when I learned one of the most important lessons of my life: that failure is always a
beneficial experience when it teaches you what NOT to do the next time around.
If not for that magazine experience and all that I learned about myself and
my abilities in the process—plus all the people in the crafts industry that I
met during that period who later helped me up the ladder of success—I would not have
written my first book or be here on the Web today.
A New Career as a Writer and Publisher
It was at this point that I decided I wanted to be a full-time professional writer.
After reading three
books on how to write well, I found myself with my first book contract in hand. I then
ordered five years' worth of back issues of Writer's Digest to learn how to
write a good book readers would enjoy reading. The publisher loved it and,
without changing a word of content and giving it only the usual copy edit, sent it out for typesetting.
Recognizing
my business and marketing abilities (and considering all the editors I knew in the crafts
industry who would give my book publicity),
he then asked me to join the company as his assistant so we could make my
book a best-seller. But he died a couple of weeks later in that
1979 crash at O’Hare airport that took the lives of
everyone aboard. When I realized that my book was never going to be published in
this one-man publishing division if I didn't do something about it, I
volunteered to take over his job until a new person could be hired. The company
was thinking about closing the book publishing division, but I convinced them I
could do the job, and that's how I found myself with the title of publisher and general manager of the book division of Barrington Press, Inc.
Now, with my book still in the process of being designed and typeset, I suddenly found
myself completely responsible for its publication and sales success. (Back to the books again,
this time to learn how to be a book publisher, sell to book clubs, and get
publicity for a new book.) A mention in Family Circle
ultimately sold thousands of books, and the overwhelming
amount of fan mail I got from early readers convinced me I should quit this job,
go home, and start my own writing and publishing business.
So, in 1981, with my husband worrying about the income we were going to lose
when I quit this job, and
fearful that I might fail (and then what would I do?), I took courage in hand and
launched my business at the age of 42 with a thousand dollars borrowed from
savings. It was the smartest life decision I ever made.
With Harry's help, I went on to write, edit, and publish a profitable subscription newsletter for fifteen years,
reading books all the time to keep learning how to refine my skills in
copywriting, direct mail marketing, and PR strategies. Between 1981 and 2000 I
wrote several new books and updated some older ones. During this period I
was also developing expertise as
a speaker, first presenting day-long workshops at community colleges, and then
moving up
to do keynote speeches and break-out workshops at many of the major
home-business conferences that
were then common in both the U.S. and Canada. Let me emphasize here that it was
always hard for me to move outside my comfort zone to keep trying new things,
but I found it fascinating to observe how every new step I was courageous enough
to take automatically led to yet
another advancement of my business and writing career.
Once I had became known as "a home-business expert," it was easy to build a
reputation as "one of America’s best-known and most
trusted home-business authors and speakers." Because I regularly sent news
releases to an ever-growing PR list, I was frequently quoted in the national
press and interviewed on dozens of radio and TV news shows. I especially
enjoyed my week-long appearance on ABC-TV’s Home show, where I appeared as
guest expert on their "Homemade Money series" titled after my book (which sold
thousands of copies that week).
During this period I was also a featured columnist
for several crafts magazines. My "Selling what You Make" (later renamed
"Profits") column ran in Crafts magazine for twenty years, becoming at that
point the longest-running column of its kind. Regrettably, I lost that column in 2000 because of
a ridiculous electronic rights issue.
BY THE END OF 1999 I had stopped speaking
and closed down our mail order
publishing and book-selling business because Harry’s health was failing. I
was still working full time, however, now with another book in progress and also
as Series Editor for Prima Publishing’s line of For Fun & Profit™
books published in 1999-2000.
By now, with the Internet exploding and me still using an old DOS computer
and doing e-mail and exploring the Internet via Web-TV (because I didn't
want to have to learn how to use a new computer with a Windows operating
system), I was feeling totally overwhelmed by technology and beginning to think
that, at 62, I was just too old to learn all this "new stuff." Besides, I was
convinced that the Internet was the greatest time-waster that ever came down the
pike (which is still true if you don't learn how to control yourself), and I was
absolutely, positively sure that I would never want (or have need for) a website
of my own. A little space on someone else’s site would surely be sufficient for
my needs (famous last words).
Just when I thought my long successful career was about over, I was stunned to receive
a big-bucks offer to be a featured content provider and "personality" on the IdeaForest/Joann.com e-commerce site. Although
that site didn’t survive
the big
dot-com bust of 2000, this work dramatically changed my life by literally
forcing me onto the Internet, into this website, and into a whole new
computer/Web/technology learning experience that continues today, as the
articles in my Computertalk department will confirm.
When the website designer I hired to create this website in 2000 suddenly
vanished, I was forced to quickly learn how to manage and redesign it myself with
FrontPage software. Recently, when I learned that much of the
HTML code on my website was deprecated, I became one of
Boogiejack's students, bought his great
book, Website Design Made Easy, and learned how to design
my first website from scratch
using CSS. I'm now in the process of gradually replacing bad code
on this site and making changes that reflect my new personal and business interests. I'm also updating or
deleting old articles in the archives, and looking for editing
errors I missed in the early days of building my site when I was too stressed to be able to see all
of them. (When you have a Website, your work is never done.)
Going with the Flow
Although I now have a popular crafts
blog to help creative people cash in on their creativity,
I have withdrawn from public speaking and active involvement in the general
home business field (been there, done that), preferring instead to focus on my
editorial services and work on some
new non-business books. I'm also mentoring
Traci Vanover, one of the smartest,
brightest, and best business writers on the Web. And she's mentoring me in
return by helping me to keep learning new "techie stuff." I wouldn't have a
blog site without her encouragement, and now she's pushing me to learn how to do
short videos for my websites and dig out
all those VHS tapes I have of my seminars and get them edited and converted to
DVD so I can help a new generation of home-business owners.
Taking my own best advice—Nothing stays the same; remain flexible; go with
the flow—I continue to reinvent myself on the Web as an
editor, self-publisher, and
Amazon Marketplace seller.
In Summary
I find it amusing that I feel much younger now (at least mentally) than I did
ten years ago, and I know it's because I've spent the last ten years of my life
acquiring new skills and knowledge that will enable me to earn a living on the
Web as long as I choose to work. Trust me when I say you will NEVER be too old
to learn something new.
In my Brabec Bulletins, published irregularly as time allows, I continue to
pass along things I am learning as an aging Web entrepreneur,
widow, computer user,
writer and self-publisher. If you'd like to stay in touch with me
through my free e-mail bulletins and see what new tricks this old dog is
learning, click here to join my mailing list.
__________________
Barbara was married for nearly 44 years to Harry Brabec, a professional
musician/percussionist and crafts show producer who died in 2005. He assisted
her in her business for many years and always kept her laughing. His humor has
been included in several of Barbara’s books, and will be featured in the memoir
she is currently writing about his life as a musician. Based on Harry’s
reminiscent letters to musician and Czech friends in the last ten years of his
life, it
will also include some of Barbara’s backstage experiences with Harry and some of
the famous entertainers and show people he worked with.
See
Barbara's
memorial to Harry here.
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