Note: I am looking for future places to speak, show my art, and for book signings. If you know of an opening to be filled, for a guest speaker, please email me at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Referral Letters: PDF - Rotary Club of Celebration

Never say, never: I talk about, real life.

Never give up, no matter what obstacles are in your way, no matter what your age, or disadvantage, or disability. I have reinvented myself, three times in my life. Just a short time ago, I never would have thought I would be a motivational speaker.

Years ago, young and unable to attain a good grade level; I had a hard time focusing, and barely graduated high school. My memory wouldn't allow me the ability to recall words, and I had a hard time spelling and knowing where to put commas. Determined to change my life, I went to college.

Thirty years later, now I’m a writer with fans that love my work, and tell me on a daily basis'. I’m 75% creative and 25% technical. It’s a, right brain left brain thing; it was the way that God made me… never say never, I have finally managed to improve and continue to overcome. I just simply tell potential readers the truth: “I weigh heavy on the creative side. So, if they're someone that enjoys very good creative writing, they will love my work. Don’t get me wrong, my work is very readable, and my storytelling is some of the best. I am simply prone too, run-on-sentences, with a bit of dyslexia tossed in for good measure.

That disability has not held me back. I have overcome it, and have risen above it to write two books, and have readers email me letters of inspiration, telling me: "Please keep writing, you are doing the right thing in your life."

Later as an adult, I won two major awards in my life. The first of which was an award for: America’s First Help Yourself Advertising Agency --A walk-in, help yourself print shop, computer, copy shop style of advertising agency. Back in 1990, when we opened up our prototype store in Lansing Michigan, it won a national award, from the printing Industries of America. We were featured in many magazines and newspapers around the country. But with little money and a failed-effort too convince our bank, --A bank losing money, in the 1990’s, rust belt recession-- to make a loan for this fantastic idea… we failed.

Kinko’s, --One hundred and eighty stores strong, at the time-- was able to secure the funding, and changed all their stores too: “Your Branch Office”. They won the race… as I lost everything. Here is a segment of their own history, taken from their own web site, which states they changed their stores in 1992: Two years after I had won the award, for the idea that they based this new concept on. There stores look exactly like our prototype store in Lansing. Here is their own story:

"Your Branch Office" in the 1990s

The Kinko's of the 1990s had graduated beyond a low-tech service for college students. The company began opening stores averaging 7,000 square feet in size in suburbs and business areas to attract small-business owners seeking more advanced document copies, sometimes oversize or in color or bearing sophisticated graphics. In a nationally advertised television campaign begun in 1992, small-business people were urged to use Kinko's as: "your branch office."

After losing everything in my life, it took years for me to get over that travesty. I had a great deal of pain I had to work through. But, I did it, and came back strong.

Doing the right thing in your life

In 2005, I lost everything again. This time, it was more of a voluntary thing, needing to change my life. I couldn’t sell my business, no businesses were selling in Michigan at that time, I began to hate it, working around the clock, and desperately wanting to get back to the arts, I just gave it back to the bank and walked away. Here is a snapshot of my next book, and my life:

Weston Rayfield is a testament to following your muse and making dreams come true; his book "Marathon Tools" just became available nationwide. At 50, he made a life altering decision to get out of business, and go for his life-long dream, of being a novelist. Weston sold all that he owned, and began a two-year sabbatical to see his literary dream through.

A Michigan area native, and business owner, he lived and worked in a small town in Michigan, named Grand Ledge, and then worked in the Detroit area, for 25 years. After a stint, as an award winning commercial artist, he became sidetracked for twenty years, intrigued with the idea of owning his own business; he started and managed 3 businesses for the next 16 years. Recently, he decided he needed to change, he says: “Sometimes, you have to leave everything you’ve known behind, to discover what you were meant to do in life.” Three years ago, Weston gave up his business, after he experienced the highest of highs, and the very lowest of lows, of self employment. --He noticed that doing the wrong thing in his life, was affecting his health-- He says, “I changed my lifestyle, eliminating stress, changing diet and exercise, running and working out daily-- I am now a writer on my third book. “

Weston has 37 years experience, as an artist, and has won two national awards. He says, "Everyone is born with some sort of talent; you just have to find it, like I did." Weston travels with his art exhibit, and his book nationwide, signing books, and in some cases, even demonstrates his artistic skills. He changed his style of art, from commercial, too fine art, and now works with a larger more freeform artistic style. He will talk about, and answer questions, on how to publish a book, in a down economy, (everyone from the publishers, to the book sellers, are losing money, and offer very little to help producing and promoting a new author) how too be creative, and how it feels using the gifts God gives you. “I am a far better artist, and writer, than a business owner. I wasted about 20 years before I fixed that part of my life.”

Finish

Never give up, no matter what obstacles are in your way, no matter what your age or disadvantage or disability. I have reinvented myself three times in my life, and so can you.

Marathon Tools is being called a great read, a wide-ranging fiction and self-help book about how an artist, found love where he never would have expected. He says that everyone that reads the book tells him, it needs to be a movie. "Just when you think everything has been done; Weston Rayfield has found a new genre for romance."