We recently connected with Jonathan Harris and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jonathan, thanks for joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

“Success” to me are good decisions done consistently. Consistency is the key thing anyone needs to reach a goal, especially the bigger goals. Anytime I start a business, project, or goal, my focus is always on staying there, not just arriving. When I lost 100 pounds, I wanted to be intentional about making sure that healthy living was for the rest of my life. When I wrote my first book, I wanted to make sure that ten years later, the book was still relevant. One of my earliest stories about the power of consistency came in the form of an important lesson that took me four years to learn. Could I convince you that each year I was never the #1 student in high school but I still finished top of my class? That’s right, every year another student had higher grades than I did. Whether I was number 2, 3, or somewhere in the top 10, I was never the number one student.

You can imagine my surprise when the principal called me down to the office to congratulate me for being class valedictorian. As a 17-year-old at the time, I was surprised because of the fact I was never in the first place. What I did not realize is that the students who were in those number one spots never maintained their status. We have all heard the expression that “life is a marathon, not a sprint.” Doing well in school was not about straight A’s in one marking period and straight C’s the next time. The honor of Valedictorian is given to the student who is the most consistent over the entire high school experience, not just a single moment.

In your life, you will see more success if you focus on consistently doing good small things compared to only when you can sometimes do big things. If you cannot manage to respond to the three emails in your inbox, you likely will not be able to serve 5,000 customers. If you cannot show any patience with your intern who is trying to learn, it is not likely you can run a company with 300 employees. It is great to have grandiose goals but I encourage you to ask yourself, “How do I do with small tasks?”

Jonathan, 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?

My name is Jonathan Harris. I hail from Fort Washington, Maryland which is a part of Prince George’s County. I am an award-winning author, motivational speaker, and success coach. I also run my own non-profit called “Million Paths Foundation” and co-own a vending machine business with my cousin called B n’ H Vending. In my community, I am a proud member of 100 Black Men of Prince George’s County where I mentor the youth. In all that I do, my passion is helping people feel comfortable to move toward the next level in life. I do that through serving as a mentor and helping where I can.

As a child, people described me as ambitious because I have always wanted a lot for my life. If I was able to get 100% on a test, I always aimed for 100%. They would also say I talked and lot, and still do. Strong-willed is a word you might hear a lot. If you knock me down, I get back up even if I need a moment to catch my breath. Even though many things challenge me, I walk with faith. Over time, I have learned how to use my gift of verbal and written expression to encourage others on how we can show up better in spaces to make a better world. I smile when I see that my books or speeches encourage them to try harder.
An average week for me usually includes walking five miles a day, checking on my friends/family, working on business ideas, studying a new skill, volunteering, watching WWE on Monday nights, weekly self-love dates, and nightly prayer.
As a success coach, I love helping people with their confidence and branding, which I apply mainly to people interested in writing books and starting vending machine businesses. I want everyone to feel comfortable in who they are so when they speak about their products, the world believes it but more importantly, they believe it too. I have helped my clients achieve some cool goals including best-selling author, award-winning author, job hiring, weight loss, and healthier internal/external relationships.

Some of my proudest moments in my career include being the inaugural Mr. Maryland U.S. United, TEDx speaker, and 40 under 40 for Prince George’s County, Maryland. I have been blessed as an author to work with some cool brands including Chick-Fil-A and Tropical Smoothie Café with some additional partnerships coming soon.
A few of my favorite personal moments include losing over 120 pounds and staying committed to my prayer journey (over 1600 days and counting!).

When I retire which will probably be never, I want to have a body of work that is ultimately a platform encouraging positive change. More importantly than a physical body of written/recorded work, I want to see my teachings show up in human behavior. If I give 10,000 hours to changing the community, my goal is to see 10,000 hours worth of change.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Above any other strategy, how you speak about your service/product is the number one way to grow a client. Passion is a universal language. It is extremely easy to tell when someone is excited about what they do. You can hear it in their word choices. You can see it in their mannerisms down to their smile. As an author, speaker, and success coach, my goal is that I want you to feel my excitement.

In business, people buy from companies that they know, like, and trust. As a book coach, I am extra intentional with my clients about making sure we practice how they talk about their books. I show them that I am not Jonathan the author selling a book. Instead, I show them that I am Jonathan the person who also happened to publish books. I do not use every interaction I have with strangers to sell a book. I use those interactions to build a relationship and from relationships come support.

Ask yourself this, who are you more likely to drive to the store, your best friend of 50 years, or a neighbor down the street you see once a year? Most of us would say the best friend of 50 years and here is why. We are usually more motivated by who is asking for the favor, not necessarily what is being asked. I have seen when loyalty and love are present in a relationship, people will truly go to the ends of the Earth for you. How you speak about what you do helps you establish how knowledgeable you are, how likable you are, and how trustworthy you can be. That is where your support will come from.

Here are some practice tips for gaining support:
1. Do not start out talking about your product without first making a proper introduction and building a relationship. Before you sell to a follower on your social media, did you thank them for even following you first? Have you asked them how they have been? Did you ask them what their needs are? Do you know anything about them?
2. Wording is everything. “I think the answer is 57” versus “I know the answer is 57,” says two different things although I only changed one word. When you are writing and speaking, please be mindful of unconfident language. I do not want to buy the book that “could” help my problem, I want the book that “will” help my problem.
3. Who you are in a transaction is just as important as who are you before and during the transaction. How often do you keep in touch with those who already supported you? Your clientele will likely be based on referrals from past clients so if you treat this like a one-time blind date situation, that is how your audience will likely look as well. Longevity is key.

They say misery loves company but so does happiness. When you are having a good time and great at what you do, you will attract a crowd. If you do not believe me, go to any nearby casino and you will see the person attracting the biggest crowd will be the person on the hot streak.
If you still do not believe, go by any high school and the team with the best spirit will also likely have a supportive big audience.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My entire author journey has been nothing but resilience. I think being an author is an extremely tough profession but your career is built on the opinion of others. Some jobs are very black and white in terms of whether you meet the mark of success or not. If your manager says sell three cars today and you sell all three, you are doing a good job as a salesman. However, as an author, you could think your book is great, and then a review comes out that it was horrible. There is no metric set forth but others so the hard part is feeling confident in your own project even if the world does not agree.

I have had opportunities to be on television and radio fall through (several times actually). People who mentioned they would show up and did not. Events I was supposed to be a part of came with the entire program order changing and my 30-minute segment is now 5 minutes even though my presentation was set for 30 minutes as originally discussed…uh oh!
However, even with all of that being said, being an author has been one of the most rewarding jobs I have ever had.
Although I have cried sad tears from this journey, I have cried many more happy tears as well. Since I am an author, let’s do a story time.

So right on the heels of my first back “Master of Ceremonies: A Male’s Guide for a Successful Life”, I was inspired as well as encouraged to write a second book. My first book is all about helping young adult men feel confident and prepared for the world ahead. My second book was designed to be the same exact thing except for young boys in a project called “Growing Gents.” Writing my first book was extremely smooth and I say smooth I mean like spreading warmed butter on hot pancakes smooth.
However, creating my second book was not like that at all. With the exception of working with the amazing illustrator, Deja Dameron, almost every part of making that book was clunky. It felt like I was late to an event and on the drive there, I caught every possible red light and it was traffic on the highway with construction going on ten minutes from my destination during a snowstorm. It took me almost three years to even self-publish that book even though I pretty much wrote it one night. I reached out to local art school teachers to nominate a student that I could hire to give an opportunity to someone local. Of 72 emails sent to every high school teacher in my area, I got 2 responses which is not even 3%. Every company I tried to self-publish my book through mentioned the formatting issues of the book design. I tried everything and called everyone I thought could help. No luck! I feel like I had wasted money making a children’s book that the world was never going to see. In hindsight, I wish I had done more research about the differences in creating children’s books compared to other books especially when it comes to formatting and design.
To add double the pain without double the pleasure, I also wrote “Girls With Pearls” which was the female spinoff to “Growing Gents.” Well, surprise surprise, both children’s books had the same error. I spent many days in actual tears feeling so stuck with no ending in sight. I remember missing hanging out on Memorial Day 2017.
I was in the entire library by myself working on my books while I was on social media watching everyone enjoying the holiday week. I remember just crying and asking God “Why am I here at this library having fun when everyone else is having fun?”
Fast forwarding to 2020, the pandemic gave me a season of stillness to revisit some buried away goals. After making a new friend through social media who happened to be a children’s book author, I was taught a cool trick I could use to reformat my books and viola, on July 19, 2020, “Growing Gents” and “Girls With Pearls” were both published. I call them my brother-sister twins because the concepts are close to identical and they were released on the same exact day. What made this so special is that Growing Gents and Girls With Pearls has led me to many of my biggest opportunities to date. From now being a children’s book author, I won several book awards, read my books on television, spoken at dozens of schools, and even partnered with Chick-Fil-A and Tropical Smoothie Café for a story time event.
As these amazing blessings happen in my life, I think back to that day I was asking God “Why am I here at this library having fun when everyone else is having fun.” I believe God wanted to see how committed I was to seeing my goal through to completion. Although producing those two children’s books were extremely difficult, I am so grateful for what it has done in my life and even the things to come.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.authorjon.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/authorjon
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorjon
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jonathancharris/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/authorjon
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MisterJonathanHarris
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@authorjon

Image Credits
Michael Purnell, Nancy Minor, Dmitri Yearby, Willie Beverly