The Booklet Queen and new fulfilment!
1991 was a pivotal mid-40’s year in Paulette Ensign’s life. Her professional organizing business was almost a decade old. The sales cycle was getting longer and longer for workshop and consulting work. And there were these crazy habits called eating and paying the rent.
That’s when Paulette spotted an offer for a free booklet called “117 Ideas For Better Business Presentations.” She could do business presentations, and the price was right. Her first reaction was, “gee, I could knock something like this out about organizing tips.” Then she threw it in a drawer.
Six months later sitting in her office, bored, baffled and beaten down by the slow economy, that booklet came to mind. Paulette had to produce a booklet on organizing tips. She had to shift gears from what had become an uninspiring organizing business.
All those organizing pearls she ever shared with clients and seminar audiences about getting organized went into a computer file. It was all headed toward doing a booklet on business organizing tips — a 16-page tips booklet, fitting into a number 10 business envelope. The booklet was ‘110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life.’ There was no indication of where this was leading. Paulette just knew it was time for a change.
The first sales efforts for the booklet were single-copy sales through publicity excerpts in magazines. That became very satisfying as a tub of envelopes, each with money in them, began awaiting my arrival at the post office. However, that was the beginning and certainly not the end. Other increasingly rewarding things happened:
- A public seminar company contracted Paulette to record an audio program based on the booklet, which led to a 20-minute interview on a major airline’s in-flight audio programming during November and December one year.
- A manufacturer’s rep decided to send the booklets to his customers instead of an imprinted calendar. 5,000 imprinted copies, including my contact information with theirs.
- Companies hired Paulette to write booklets for them.
- Paid speaking engagements came from people who bought the booklet.
- A major consumer mail order catalog company licensed a quarter of a million copies of the booklet.
- The booklet got licensed into Spanish, Italian, and Dutch, and by manufacturers of other information products into their format in English.
- Products got created in digital format as downloadable products.
All these activities and more prompted the creation of an entirely new company, one that teaches people to transform their own knowledge into tips booklets and other information products. Each year something new has been added. A website, ezine, and blog were all developed to continuously provide information about writing, producing, and marketing tips booklets.
Paulette created home study kits, delivers teleclasses by phone, in-person workshops throughout the year, and now has a thriving consulting practice. She has had the joy and honor of bringing this work to clients around the world by phone and in person. It doesn’t get more fulfilling and rewarding than to see the creative light bulb come on in a person’s life, and be a catalyst for their success, for their own shift to a more satisfying life.
Clients surpass her own results of personally selling over a million copies of their booklets, without spending a penny on advertising. Paulette and her clients all learned plenty together since the original organizing booklet was written in 1991. The organizing business lived the life it was supposed to bringing many rewards until it was time to recycle the experiences and move on. Paulette never could have written a business plan for how this unfolded. Paulette put it all together giving herself permission to live the life she created.
And because these career activities are so non-location based, Paulette made a cross country move from New York to southern California in 1996 leaving snow and humidity behind! To say that the move was fulfilling would be gross understatement.