|
|
|
About Real Solutions Press
The Name
Real Solutions Press is very
young, compared to the history of this company. Back in 1993,
a young woman who had worn many hats in the previous years--technical
writer, software trainer, database programmer, public relations
manager, and editor, among others—realized that she and
all her friends and colleagues were making the same mistakes
in their personal and professional lives. Mistakes that could
have been avoided if the right education and resources had been
available. But college doesn't prepare young people for 'real'
life.
Benjamin Franklin once said, "Let the trials and misfortunes
of others be a school for our own understanding."
Taking Ben's philosophy to heart, she created a newsletter designed
especially for college students, called The Reality Check
Gazette™. In it were brief articles dispensing advice
on a wide variety of everyday life types of topics: from money
management to finding a job to legal issues amongst roommates,
even some cooking. Interviews with hiring executives, career
counselors, recent graduates, and anxious seniors were also
included in every issue. The company was named Education
for Reality™ because that was precisely what was
being provided—a practical education for the real world.
Two Years later
the newsletter evolved into a paperback book by the
title, Success in the 'Real World': The Graduate's
Complete Guide to Making the Most of Your Career (and your life!).
Divided into three sections (Your Career, Your Money, and Your
Life), the book was jam-packed with more information and savvy
advice than could be gleaned from a half-dozen 300-page volumes.
In a compact 64-page softcover, it was formatted to save busy
students and grads time by using bullets to present its advice,
rather than page after page of verbose paragraphs. Rather than
force readers to wade through a huge volume with a highlighter
in hand to mark the few, truly valuable, tidbits of advice (like
all traditional books do), the book presented 'all of the good
stuff and none of the fluff.'
2005
In 2005, Success in the 'Real World' was
released as an electronic book filled with the same savvy
advice in the same quick-reading bullet format. But it went
several steps further by including live links to over 100
additional online resources. Career counselors, student associations,
and parents were thrilled with the value of having links to
additional resources in a such an easy-to-use, portable format—the
e-book was distributed to almost 1.7 million students and
grads that Spring.
2006
A new type of book was conceived in the Fall of 2006:
The
Smartest Thing I Ever Did...™,
a collection of successful solutions to everyday problems and
situations, compiled from 'field experts' (well-known people
as well as not-so-well-known people like you and me). This is
a very fun project to work on as stories come in from around
the country from people who have some very clever solutions
to problems you and I face in our daily lives. And it’s
thrilling as well, as excitement grows for the project from
all who learn about it.
QwikSmarts™
And, finally, in the Spring of 2007, I took a book off
a shelf in my office to review some material before heading
off to a speaking engagement (yes, I'm that same young woman,
though young is rarely used to describe me any more!). Opening
the book randomly near the middle, I let out a sigh and my shoulders
slumped in defeat—the two pages I was staring at were
an endless sea of words with no organization. I dreaded the
thought of how much time it would take me to find the little
bit of information I needed to review.
The next thought that came to my mind was "why-in-the-world
doesn't somebody put this information in a brief, easy-to-reference
format? You know...something like my Success book."
And, thus, QwikSmarts™
was born! Over the subsequent weeks, it became dizzyingly obvious
that the scope of this line of qwik-reference tips publications
was gigantic, spanning just about every conceivable situation,
decision, or concern of individuals, families, and business
owners.
QwikSmarts™
are now available to individual consumers in the form
of conveniently-sized booklets and information cards as well
as in a variety of sizes and formats for businesses and organizations
to use as promotional or value-added items. New titles are always
being added.
How can we help even more people?
It’s obvious that our Smartest
Thing™ series will
help tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of people around the
country by providing solutions to their puzzles. But I felt
there was a way to use the books to help even more people. The
answer—my missing puzzle piece—came to me as I waited
for a flight at LAX: use the sales of the books to provide donations
to worthy causes. And with the wide variety of titles in the
series, it provides an opportunity to help a lot of causes in
a variety of areas. So it became clear that each title in the
series should have its own charity associated with it. Learn
how you can help us choose those worthy charities by clicking
here .
Getting Readers Involved in the Process
The United terminal at LAX is apparently a very creative
place for me to be, because ideas seem to flow like a waterfall
while I wait for flights. This time the idea was about the readers
of the Smartest
Thing™ books. These
books are for them…why not let them be involved in the
process of creating the series? I like to call this a ‘for
the reader, by the reader’ philosophy. Starting with helping
to choose the charities to whom we’ll make donations and
later helping us choose photos for the book covers and voting
for your favorite stories, you can be a part of this process
from start to finish and make this your book series.
Click here
to learn more about how you can get involved.
The end is nowhere in sight for either Smartest
Thing™ or QwikSmarts™.
Each brand is taking on a life of its own, expanding and blossoming
into boundless potential. It's gong to be a very exciting ride...why
not take it with us as a contributor to one of our Smartest
Thing™ books, or by
spreading great advice and goodwill as a distributor of QwikSmarts™?
Together, we can help thousands of people around the country…maybe
even the world!
I look forward to working with you soon.
Kathryn Marion
Founder, President
Real Solutions Press LLC
Real solutions to life’s many puzzles.™
Contact us for more info
|
|
|
|
|