End of Year Post

Where are we now after vibrant and expansive a year? Well, we started in the new year of 2012 with a greatly successful tour with The Woodworking Shows. Here were are again about to repeat that with a new season. This year we saw our  paulsellers.com website  successfully resist commercialism to create a way of connecting with people searching for real woodworking on an exponential level that far exceeded anything we could imagine. Your feedback based on over 340,000 views told us we were reaching exactly the right people at last. Thanks to Tom Bowden and a string of friends, too long a list to even start mentioning here, our second New Legacy School of Woodworking took root in beautiful Greenwich New York. They all went beyond volunteer realms to create the most perfect teaching environment for woodworking I have ever known. Training them, about a dozen or so, has been pure joy. There were even more behind the behind the scenes people beyond that. Establishing legal business status, accounts and book keeping, building work and just general administration took much time and its this spirit  of generous giving and sharing that made the classes fill and the school able to receive the first year’s intake from all over the USA.
We were able to successfully purchase the Unplugged Workshop from Luke Townsley who did such a sterling job to establish this valuable woodworking resource for woodworkersworldwide. This too has grown through our efforts too, but equally so through your support without which it would not have happened. Interaction on so many fronts means we are not Lone Rangers so much as parts of a greater woodworking whole.

The UK New Legacy School has gone from strength to strength over the past few years and I believe that makes us the only woodworking school with a school on two continents. Let’s hope that this expands, but i know that that can only happen by others engaging with us, which leads me to another big Thank You! Your emails together with a stream of people beyond enabled us to enter the realms of training in a much different way. you may not realise it, but your questions and your quest for more training meant we saw more of whatvwas needed. We took a step of faith to start videoing in my back yard earlier this year. We had done some short videos to encourage people with on the Paul SellersYouTube Channel, but the Workbench series was a new and major step to start DIY videography instead of DIY woodworking. I’m sitting here in Atlanta Georgia asking myself how we ended up with almost 3,500 YouTube subscribers in just a matter of a few months and over 340,000 views of our videos. Even more surprisingly, on the paulsellers.com blog, we have now had over 600,000 views in just 12 months.
Our greatest success has been launching the online broadcast. This has been a dream for me. I cannot imagine this level of success and the success is in your lived lives. You started the projects, answered the questions on the forums and relieved me of a lot of work. Thank you Gary Palmer and Ken Haygarth who were right there from the start. Shannon Rogers of the Hand Tool School jumped in to let people know we were around too, so, Thank you, Shannon.  There was also a video from Jim Sear, Thanks Jim!

 

Many more of you have gradually come on board since then, and I don’t want to leave one of you out. I thank all of you for your willingness to ask questions and try to answer them too. We have a family growing here. I really respect what you have done in making the Online Broadcast work for so many beyond just the teaching videos. This is becoming a resource centre and we will need more volunteers to categorise the outcome so those following will be able to navigate with the least resistance down the road.
As we close this year I want to express my heartfelt gratitude,yes, but one thing I have learned through the past two decades and beyond is that what we do must have direction and purpose. You are my purpose and you too have purpose in making this more real in our campaign to help people become the new-genre woodworker on even a global level. I have to say, you are impressive.
I don’t want to forget others involved behind the scenes in making all of this happen; I especially want to thank my wife Liz for her special and unique support. She knows what it took to make this happen and I really know it has cost her too. And then there is a less behind the scenes guy I am very proud of and very grateful to. Without my son Joseph this would never have happened. He has made my dreams become a reality.
Thank you so very much. I hope that you are looking forward to the new year as much as we are.
Blessings to each and every one of you,

Paul