We recently connected with Bryan Cohen and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Bryan, thanks for joining us today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

Three years ago, I decided I was tired of how online educators teach new students.

It started with a webinar to find customers that promised big results but shared little value.

The customers would be intrigued enough to buy with a bunch of flashy bonuses and a limited-time offer.

Then, the students would just be forced to watch videos and figure out everything on their own.

I was tired of it, so I changed it.

We started offering a two-week free event in place of the old webinar model.

Instead of just learning about the theory or the philosophy of how we taught, we decided to get practical.

Prerecorded videos with homework followed by daily Live Q&A sessions.

Volunteers and eventually team members answering their questions all day long.

Free previews of Live content that would usually only be available for a free.

All of it for free and all of it to help these students be able to do the work on their own.

If they decided they wanted to join our premium class later, then we’d welcome them with open arms for year-round support.

But if they went off and got the material to work without paying us a dime, that was fine too.

We applied this system with our Amazon Ads teaching program for authors.

We started with about 1,300 challengers.

They spread the word and we got up to 2,500.

Then 4,000.

One Challenge ended up with 8,000+ authors.

And another led to an actual relationship with Amazon itself.

Who told Amazon about the Challenge?

Multiple students reached out to the company to tell them how strong our teaching was.

It’s been amazing to help all of these customers and to be able to truly say, “We don’t care if you buy from us, we’re just here to help.”

Bryan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

In 2010, I attempted self-publishing my own book. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing had recently launched and it was a brand new day for authors looking to get their work out into the world. While I had some early success publishing my own books, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction helping other authors to publish and market their own books.

In 2014, I started a weekly podcast called The Sell More Books Show which has run every week since, logging over 470 episodes. From the info I learned from covering author news during the show, I launched Best Page Forward’s first service: writing the words on the back of the book. This service has since written over 5,000 book descriptions across the entire community.

In 2019, when some authors were struggling to figure out if their new book description was working or not, I learned how to run Amazon Ads to help them track if their books were now converting more browsers into customers. This self study led to the creation of the 5-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge, a free course that has served over 50,000 authors. We also have a premium program Author Ad School which has helped many authors improve their profits with some even going full-time.

In 2021, the Challenge and our other work got the attention of Amazon itself. For the last 2.5 years, I’ve run multiple webinars for Amazon and have even been added as an Amazon Ads Educator (a team that is currently featured on the Amazon Ads home page).

I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve helped so many authors learn to turn their books into a business. The fact that we help so many of these folks for free with our challenges allows us to worry less about the bottom line and more about how the author community is growing as a whole.

I’ve always believed that the more you give, the more you’ll receive, and that has absolutely been the case during the life of our business.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I used to only find new clients through doing joint webinars with other teachers. This was fine and it worked to bring in new students to our courses like Author Ad School, but I didn’t feel like the students were really learning the material as best as they could. After all, they only picked up about 45 minutes worth of training before joining a pretty big commitment of a program.

That’s when we stumbled upon the idea of the Challenges. What if we ran all of these authors through 10+ hours of training and then the ones who really believed in what we were doing could choose to join at that time.

I loved the webinars, so it was hard to de-emphasize them, but once I did, we had much happier customers who were ready to keep growing with us.

It took time to grow the Challenges, but the mascot of Best Page Forward is the Zen Lemur (a lemur sunning himself in a Buddha pose). We often say “Good Amazon Ads come to those who wait,” but really you could put anything in the place of Amazon Ads and it would fit.

Not everything needs to be a hard pitch. Sometimes, going for the community play can help you make a greater impact while helping more customers to find the assistance they need.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Like many solopreneurs before me, I used cash and credit cards to get my business off the ground.

And since I had no intention of seeking outside investors, I needed the business as a whole to be profitable if we were going to get anywhere.

That meant doing more webinars, teaching more classes, and running multiple Challenges a year.

It meant pushing past any fears of rejection when reaching out to potential partners and developing a thick skin for the haters who thought I was putting myself out there too much.

And if something didn’t work, it meant I had to learn to pivot toward profitability in a hurry.

I’m so glad we funded the business this way, because it taught us valuable lessons on how to be more antifragile as a company.  

Contact Info:

• Website: https://AuthorsAdvertise.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryancohenblurbs/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bestpageforward
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BryanCohenBooks
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bryanhelpsauthors

Image Credits
For lemur shots, you can credit Oomphotography out of Chicago. For the shot with the Bryan bag, you can credit Arpit Mehta.