We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dr. Joan Wright-Good. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dr. Joan below.
Alright, Dr. Joan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
When I first started my publishing business more than a decade ago, it was a modest venture with limited resources and reach. The vision actually began in 1995 when as a library secretary I would help graduate students to write and prepare their thesis and dissertations. The more students I helped, the more the word spread, the more the word spread, the more money I would make. After I left that job, I went on to becoming the marketing manager for a large company. I wasn’t aware that the premise was being set for me to own a publishing and marketing company a decade later. This was just training!
Years later, after actively job hunting unsuccessfully, God brought me right back to the vision of business startup strategies, publishing, and marketing, however, when I launched my business, only 10 people showed up (friends & family). I had no clients or visibility. This happened because I thought once I stepped out in purpose then people would support me. I didn’t understand the importance of market research, brand messaging or value communicating. I made my first check during the same week from a referral my friend, Dr. Shalette Ashman gave me.
Fast forward more than 10 years later through dedication, prayer, grit, strategic planning, and adaptability, we’ve significantly grown in size and influence over the years.
Some of the strategies I used overtime that assisted me to scale were first, to stop focusing on the service or product I sell and focus on the client and the transformation. I also learned that I am not in business to sell, I am in business to serve, once I knew who my dream client was, where to find them, what bait to use to attract them and the kind of result I wanted to give them, leveraging and scaling became easy.
As a company, we were able to identify niches and genres with untapped potential, helping us focus our efforts on areas where there was a demand. At the time the niche was entrepreneurs and Christian writers. Making the highest demand of all our products or service to be our business startup services and book publishing. Once we were able to discover our ideal clients, their passions and how we could serve them at the expert level. We invested in serving them at the expert level by hiring help.
Diversification was our next move. To mitigate risks, we diversified our offerings, and expanded from just print publications to include digital services, such as, digital courses, public speaking, mentoring and business coaching. We were teaching people WHY they needed to publish books and how to leverage their revenue, but we kept the HOW (the process) to keep them coming back. This diversification allowed us to reach a broader audience.
We also engaged in more collaborative partnerships, distribution partnerships and investors. We established partnerships with distribution channels, bookstores, online platforms, media houses, and other marketing agencies. Collaborating with established players in the industry gave us access to a wider distribution network.
As a company that serves our clients with marketing and promotion, we had to lead by example. We ourselves had to invest in marketing and promotion at a higher level. We began to effectively utilize social media, email marketing, traditional media promotion and content marketing more, we built a strong online presence. We also ran targeted advertising campaigns to reach potential clients.
Because capital and staffing were 2 of our biggest obstacles, we had to continuously create and position new offers that our clients could enjoy. That also assisted us in improving our team through an affiliation/referral program we created. Our clients became our sales team. After increasing in this way, we were able to hire skilled professionals with expertise in publishing, marketing, and branding.
The pandemic was a potent lesson for us, it was the year we grossed the highest, which taught us the importance of the literary industry and adaptability. Pivoting helped us to stay up to date with evolving technologies and learning curves. The growth of Business Startup & Marketing Solutions has busted at the seams, it has birthed a new baby that we will introduce in January 2024. Our clients are in for a treat. I am always dreaming of ways to make my clients feel like the royalty they are who deserves to be pampered. My publishing business has scaled into a beast of its own and will be showcasing two of the brands that resulted from scaling in July and October of 2024. We’ve been able to navigate meaningful moments, overcame obstacles, and learned from mistakes, ultimately positioning our business as a significantly larger, and more influential player in the industry today.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Sure. I am an Award-Winning CEO whose favorite thing to do is to work on my walk with Christ. I empower individuals to harness their gift, talent & purpose leveraging them into financial success. Overcoming significant challenges throughout my life, the most recent being the loss of my spouse, going back to growing up in an orphanage, the process of trauma did not take my voice or my purpose.
This is why I established my business with the mission to empower ambitious individuals who have ingenious ideas but need assistance in building thriving businesses. Not to be left out I wanted to provide a platform for women to share their stories that would help people heal from unhealthy relationships, financial depravity, and doubt.
Since then, I have coached and mentored hundreds of individuals individual and thousands as a touring CEO and public speaker. Not only has God used me to assist in hundreds of writers becoming authors, entrepreneurs and discovered, I have been recognized by the White House as a corporate responsible CEO, by the Wheatle Ball Association, FORBES, Fox26 News, Sheen, Black Enterprise, RollingOut, The Tom Joyner Show, Huffington Post, Voyage Miami, CVM TV, The Gleaner, The Jamaica Observer, TVJ, BYTV Miami, iHeart Radio, Houston2Houston, Empower Magazine, MadameNoire, MizCEO Women Leader’s, GirlFessional Collaboration Award, Unity & Legends Women Leader, BTrue2U Leading Coach, DTBWE Organization, 100 Successful Women in Business and Opulent Business Recipient.
I hold a bachelor’s degree in management studies and politics from the University of the West Indies (Jamaica). A law degree (LLB) from the University of London. A master’s degree (MBA) from Kaplan University (USA), and a Doctor of Psychology in Biblical Exposition from Liberty University. Annually, I assist aged-out orphans whose dream it is to attend college through the Maxfield Park Children’s Home in Jamaica.
I love traveling and enjoy a good ‘no work’ spa and rest/beauty day.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
As a business owner, it is widely known that it is best to use other people’s money as capital and keep or grow yours. Unfortunately, as a new business owner acquiring business funding is not easy, even with access to grants and loans. People will not trust what or who has no credibility or evidence of stability.
I had to use my creativity to create income in my early days of business, I created funnels that provided me with constant leads. I then pre-sold my products and services to them before they were created. Once people paid for the services, I would take a portion of the income earned to create the product then re-invest the rest. Making more offers and promoting more pre-sale promotions worked for me, especially, as my email list began to grow.
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
Yes. Entrepreneurs, it is imperative to create a proper brand message. Knowing how to communicate the transformation your brand brings makes all the difference. Don’t put the focus on you, or the product, but rather on the client’s need. Our team is a big fan of email and text marketing; we are currently working on an app to help small businesses thrive. To foster loyalty brands must nurture their leads, once they become clients, they must figure out a way to sustain them to the end, not just close the sale. We also use tools such as loyalty programs, offer valuable content through videos, mentorship, value added offers, listen to consumers, and run campaigns to foster some sense of loyalty, but overall, it’s how we make our clients feel. We do have free online communities on social media where we engage our clients, network, train, coach and mentor them.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.luxcoreconsulting.com and www.businessstartupacademy.live/jwgpublishinghouse
- Instagram: joanwrightgood
- Facebook: Joan Wright-Good
- Linkedin: joanwrightgood
- Twitter: joanwrightgood
- Youtube: @OBSLJoan