We recently connected with Mr. Kelly Cole and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Mr. Kelly thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Besides having a foundation of believing in God, I believe it takes lazier focus and a great coach to become successful!

Over the years I’ve been made fun of because of my focus and willingness to sacrifice short term gratification and reward for what I really wanted. I had a friend who would get mad at me because I wouldn’t watch the NBA finals with him a few years back. I told him I would rather sacrifice watching it now on TV in-order to watch it court-side in the future after I reached my goal.

As far as hiring a coach, it was the best decision I ever made in my business. It provided a new perspective to my business, it gave me direction and a plan. Before hiring a coach I depended on word of mouth to market my business. My coach gave me a system and a paid ad marketing strategy.

Mr. Kelly, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Most know me as “The Publisher” Mr. Kelly Cole. I’m a two-time number one bestselling author myself. I specialize in helping people become bestselling authors in 30 days even if they hate writing and don’t know where to start. I was born in the Cabrini-Green Housing projects in Chicago, where the television series Good Times was filmed as well as the movies Hoop Dreams and Cooley High.

I always tell people I was a born entrepreneur. At the age of six I started my first business in partnership with my sister Kandice. We carried her little table and chairs in front of our building in Chicago, took all the candy out of the house, and sold it. Throughout the years, I’ve done everything you could think of trying to find my passion and what I was to do here on Earth.

I used to be a paper boy, sell DVDs, and be a videographer. I was a DJ and was even a barber for ten years. Anything you could think of legally, I’ve probably tried it.

I used to work two jobs to support my family. I worked at Walmart during the day and Blockbuster at night sometimes pulling in sixteen-to-seventeen-hour days.

I found my passion one day when I walked into Books-A-Million. I came across a magazine called, “Millionaire Blueprints.” There was a guy in the bottom left-hand corner in a drop top Mercedes Benz with a caption that read “Web-made millionaire” that caught my eye. That guy was Yanik Silver.

I opened the magazine and began to read about how he built these websites that made him money while he was sleeping. Almost immediately I knew that I wanted to quit my jobs and start a business on the internet. However, I was scared. I lived in fear for a year until one Friday night I reached the end of my rope. I was just at the point where I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore.
That night I started watching the movie Pursuit of Happyness.

By the end of the movie, I was in tears. I literally cried out to God in prayer and said, “God, I’m supposed to be your child. Even if I end up sleeping in the bathroom with my family like Chris Gardner did with his son, I am going to trust you. I said to myself “when I go to work on Monday, I’m quitting both of my jobs.” My mind was made up.

Monday morning when I went to work, and I got called to the office. I am not going to pretend like I was not scared. It’s one thing to quit, but it’s another to get fired. They told me that they wanted to send me to Arkansas for a shareholders meeting. When we arrived in Arkansas, I walked into the Arkansas Razorback Stadium where we were having a meeting, and guess who’s walking toward me?

Chris Gardner, the guy Will Smith played in the movie Pursuit of Happyness. I called his name, he turned around, and he took a picture for me. Nobody else in the building knew who he was. The people next to me were asking, “Who is that?” I just replied, “You wouldn’t understand.”

That was the sign I needed to know I was on the right track and it was time to quit my job. So, on July 15, 2007, I quit both of my jobs and started my business on the internet. I would love to tell you that things were amazing and immediately I started making money. Nope! At that point I had one product on the internet for $25 and I was selling one a week. Imaging how hard it was to take care of a family on $25 a week. At one point I couldn’t pay rent for seven months, and we almost ended up homeless.

I knew something had to change, and then something happened. I received a flyer in the mail to attend a seminar in Atlanta. I didn’t have a dime to my name, but I made up my mind that I was going. My dad found out about the trip and gave me a hundred dollars. I hit the road. I was so determined to be successful I had planned on sleeping in my car because all I had was the gas to get there.

I decided to go to a motel anyway and use the “swipe and pray” method. Have you ever done that? It is when you take out all your cards in your wallet, and while they are swiping them, you pray that one of them goes through. Thank God one of them worked, and I was able to get a room. I was at the point where I knew something had to change. I could no longer look in the eyes of my children and not provide for them what they needed. The name of the event was Matt’s Marketing Madness, it that took place in Atlanta in 2008. That event turned out to be my turning point.

My first venture online that really started putting food on the table was website flipping. I was flipping websites, hands over fist. If you don’t know what website flipping is, it’s just like house flipping or real estate flipping. You buy or build websites from scratch, and then you sell them. You put them out there for sale.

I came home, stayed up for two weeks straight, and built a website that sold niche websites. Now, I’ll tell you right now, it was an ugly looking website. I stayed up and taught myself how to build it. If you were a person who liked beanie babies, I had a website that was full of beanie babies. You didn’t have to ship any of the products, but you made a commission every time one of the products sold. I made these websites for people who wanted to start businesses on the internet.

That ugly website made me $10,000 in three months. My business has been profitable ever since.

Another website I flipped was called Printable Coupons For You. I built it and then sold it. It was just a simple website where we created a list and sent out printable online coupons to those in our email list. After we got so many subscribers, I sold the website for $5,000.

The reason I shifted gears is that the website flipping market got saturated, so I had to find something else to do.

After I took action and published my first book, my life went to another level. It happened around the time when ABC introduced a TV show called Shark Tank. I was obsessed with the show. I recorded every episode and took notes on them. One of my friends found out about what I was doing and thought it would make a great book, so she suggested that I interview “the Sharks.” I thought it was a great idea.

I emailed all the sharks. Barbara Corcoran was the only one who emailed me back and agreed to give me an interview. We hit it off so well that I asked her to help me get an interview with Daymond, one of the other sharks.

She put us all in a group text and recommended he give me an interview. He immediately responded, connected me with his assistant and we set up a time to meet, connected me with his assistant, and we did the interview. I took both of those two interview transcriptions, along with the notes I had written from the show, and I wrote a book called Conversations with Sharks. That book became my first number one bestseller on Amazon.

After it hit #1, my in box was flooded with people asking me to publish their books! That was when I launched my publishing company Publishing Advantage Group.

ET The Hip-hop Preacher, the number one motivational speaker in the world even endorsed my book. I used to get up at 3:00 in the morning and tune in to UStream with ET and we built a relationship. I asked him to endorse my book, and he agreed to.

Since then, I’ve been featured on NBC, Fox, ABC, the CW, Gospel Updates Magazine, and more. I was just recently on the cover of another magazine called Internet Secrets.

I’ve personally authored and published over 50 plus paperback and audio eBooks to date. In 2014, I was elected to the Grind Moves Hall of Fame for publishing a young lady’s book.

In 2020, I was elected to the Client Attraction University Hall of Fame for hitting six figures after being in the program for only five months.

I’ve done a lot since publishing my book. I have been on TV shows, was in Yahoo Finance last year, had different speaking engagements, given keynote addresses, and many other things.

As a coach and consultant, I have worked with clients who have appeared on OWN, Real House Wives of ATL, Bravo, NBA, NFL, WORD network, MTV, BET, Atlantic Records, and more.

As an Entrepreneur & Marketing expert and panelist I have spoken and appeared in numerous conferences, workshops, seminars, radio shows and publications. I am currently available for corporate, nonprofit, faith-based, and educational (middle/high school & college) speaking engagements, panel discussions, conferences, workshops or product consultant.

I believe you can have whatever you want out of Life, As Long As You Take The Necessary Action To Get It!”

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

Yes of course, Thanksgiving weekend a couple of years ago, I lost my mom to a heart attack. Needless to say I lost my passion for everything! I didn’t want to live anymore let alone run a business. I took the entire month of December off and when I came back in January, my project manager quit and left me with a over six-figure hole to dig out of. I couldn’t pay my vendors, my employees or myself. If was a nightmare.

There was a point in that season where I wanted to give up and just let the business go, but I kept going.

It took almost five months to get some breathing room but I did it!

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The best source of new clients for me has been running Facebook and Instagram ads. Plus posting consistent content.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.publishingadvanatagegroup.com
• Instagram: @mrkellycole
• Facebook: @mrkellycole
• Linkedin: @mrkellycole
• Twitter: @mrkellycole
• Youtube: @publishingadvantagegroup

Image Credits
Handcrafted Photography 423