Appreciation #1: Cheers To Our Earliest Readers and Members

Written by: Daniel Richard

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Image courtesy of Timothy Lloyd

That’s right. This post is dedicated to all the early readers and members of Winning Everyone!

Can you believe it? It’s 5 months since Winning Everyone was founded.

How WE was like at the start

WE started off as a “maybe people will like these stuffs” kind of blog that talks more of happiness, encouragement, and how little stuffs in life we do can build up friendships. That too was only when I was the person who was running the entire site.

The very first version of Winning Everyone

It was only until the start of April when we finally formed a team of 4 - all of us whom are almost totally new to writing and blogging - with a goal of writing articles that our friends would enjoy reading, applying, and discussing among each other on the topics that featured on this blog. Apart from building our friends up, we too had believed that our writing skills would improve through publishing on WE and had set us a standard of writing higher quality articles which serves in encouraging each other to use proper command of the English language in our lives.

That was how Winning Everyone looked like at the very beginning (with the drop down menu bar and huge subscription area featured prominently in the site).

Our design had a radical change in mid May 2008 when more readers found their way to this site. That too was when Winning Everyone had became more serious in writing and publishing our articles.

Fast forward on… 5 months later

Winning Everyone had grown steadily in readership, influencing and inspiring our friends and the people that found their way here for the past 5 months. We even took time to publish an updated about us page along with a follow up article on that to confirm and crystallize the values that formed our values in this blog and for the WE Team.

What you see today, with all the successes, are attributed to one primary reason: the readers (and that includes you)!

That too is the reason why we changed the design and took on a more serious tone in our writings. And this entry is our first ever appreciation article that is dedicated to all of you, the earliest readers and members in Winning Everyone.

Great thanks to the following people

Here’s a list of some of the earliest readers and friends (many of them who are respected people and leaders in society) who had been with us from the very beginning of Winning Everyone (listed mostly in chronological order):

• Renae - http://www.renaebrumbaugh.com/
  She writes in her blog at Morning Coffee, married to the pastor of Central Cities Church, graduate of Houston Baptist University, an established freelance writer and author with articles featured in newspapers and magazines in her state and country. Her first book (titled: Morning Coffee with James) will be out in fall 2009. She had been a great encouragement that helped us strive for better quality contents that inspires people around us!
• Shilpan - http://successsoul.com/blog
  Shilpan is an ambitious and purpose driven human being who believes that success is the result of positive thinking followed by action. His blog at Success Soul had won over thousands of new viewers and fans weekly with his thought provoking articles. Shilpan’s story of how he moved to America with only US$20 when he was a young adult and now building his fourth hotel after a few years is surely inspiring. He’s a great friend and an encourager who had been with our WE blog from the very beginning.
• Clay Collins - http://thegrowinglife.com/
  Author and writer of The Growing Life. Clay talks more of the alternate productivity, anti-hacks, liberating us from traditional work environments and pursuing non-standard ways of living. Well known to be a maverick blogger with a strong, authentic, and conversational style of writing in the lifehacks and productivity topics. Note: Rated PG due to cuss words featured in his blog.
• Justin Smestad - http://www.resourcefulidiot.com
  Justin writes in his blog (also referred to as Ri) on software development from a business-oriented perspective. Most of his articles are contributed to his dad, a CFO, and the rest of his family who all have business degrees. He is the first person who have linked us on Ri’s blogroll, and he too is one of our earliest readers.
• Mike King - http://learnthis.ca/
  A great guy who lives a service oriented life by focusing his work and relationships on others. He is a product manager in the Oil and Gas industry for Advanced Measurements by day, and a freelance 3D animation artist by night. He too writes information based articles that challenges us to make a difference in our lives on his blog.
• Robert A. Henru - http://www.reason4smile.com/
  Robert used to be an introvert who had found a passion in helping other introverts making them successful in their lives. His blog now takes on a new direction with sharing 4 perspectives of his journey (The Blogger, The Engineer, The Leader, and The Human). He too was one of the earlier readers who has now joined our WE team and leads a powerful life in building people up!
• Evelyn Lim - http://www.attractionmindmap.com/
  A fellow Singaporean blogger who is a certified NLP practitioner and life coach. She started her blog through her passion in writing articles, designed to help readers reach greater self awareness and achieve personal empowerment.
• Hunter Nuttall - http://hunternuttall.com/
  Hunter believes that practically everyone is living far below their potential, and achieving far less than they deserve. His site strives to be the personal development site that will help bridge the gap between the life we have and the life we want.
• Karl Staib - http://www.workhappynow.com/
  Karl has a wonderful blog that talks on how we can have a happy work life. His primary motive for his site is to help his readers find ways to maximize their happiness at their current jobs. This site will provide many techniques to tweak and enhance working life.
• Tina Su - http://thinksimplenow.com/
  Tina’s blog at Think Simple Now focuses on finding clarity, simplicity, creativity and personal happiness. Giving us simple steps towards positive change. She is a popular blogger and writer for her site that provides clear and detailed methods and ways to tackle challenges in life in a simplified manner. Tina personally practices the stuffs that she writes. Truly a CHO (Chief Happiness Officer) and is definitely on her way to bringing more fulfillment and happiness to the lives of others.
• Jonathan Mead - http://www.illuminatedmind.net/
  He’s into learning and spreading the inspiration virus to those around him! Jonathan’s blog at Illuminated Mind is about finding freedom; from what we’ve been conditioned to think will make us happy, freedom from the tyranny of our inner judge and victim. His fun and conversational style of writing engages the readers in a way that too gives us something to think about while empowering our beliefs.
• Jon Phillips - http://freelancefolder.com/
  Jon is a cool dude who is a full-time freelancer, blogger and designer. Oh yes, he plays heavy metal with his band as a guitarist. He is also the founder of Freelance Folder, dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and freelancers.

That’s quite a list on its own. Here’s two more websites that I had to give credit to for the inspiration to start this blog:

• Zen Habits - http://zenhabits.net
  One of Leo Babauta’s successful websites that covers the many aspects of life such as achieving goals, productivity, being organized, GTD, motivation, eliminating debt, saving, getting a flat stomach, eating healthy, simplifying, living frugal, parenting, happiness, and successfully implementing good habits.
• Skellie - http://www.skelliewag.org/
  It was this post on using creative commons (attribution license) images from Flickr that had me started out on experimenting writing posts and including images in them.

That’s about it for now for the great people out there on the web with their own blogs. Now here’s to thanking the many other people in these following groups who I’ve heard feedback from that they too read Winning Everyone:

• Students from Singapore Institute of Management (SIM).
• My great friends from my church (City Harvest Church) and cell group (W450).
• All my friends who checked out my profile on Facebook, followed my tweets on Twitter, and Digg my favorite reads along with stumbling on StumbleUpon.

Yeps! A huge thanks to all of you mentioned here. Seriously, without you, Winning Everyone wouldn’t have turned out to what we are today.

Not forgetting the following 8 people who had definitely helped tremendously in the growth of this site: Jeremiah Sam, Jephthah Koh, Mavarick Ho, James Yeo, Tesla Lin, GanaShan, Robert A. Henru, and Asher Aw - from the WE Team!

You guys play a huge role in helping to turn us into a formidable team that will see greater success along the way together!

I’d too would like to thank God for having the opportunity to connect out with such a huge group of people with this blog. It’s a great joy not only to write and inspire, but to be there as an encouragement to many others who could do with a little more light in our lives.

Of course, the list shouldn’t stop here! There are many more readers out there who I’d love to thank. How about starting to comment regularly, subscribing to us, or even drop us an email to let us know more about you? That would be super cool!

Alright, that’s all for this appreciation post. Hoped that you love this and send us some shoutouts. We love to see more of you here with us on Winning Everyone. Have a great week ahead!

Time to subscribe to Winning Everyone now for more stuffs to help get you on along your day. Cheers and enjoy the latest from us!

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