We caught up with the brilliant and insightful LaNette Kincaide a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

LaNette, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you share a story that illustrates an important or relevant lesson you learned in school

When I started my self-publishing business for writers, I launched it based on pure passion. In 2019, I didn’t know who needed this writing service. Sadly, like many other entrepreneurs with the desire to start a business, I made the mistake of opening my establishment without doing research. At that time, I just knew I had a passion for helping people write and self-publish their stories CORRECTLY the first time.

According to research and recent statistics, many aspiring authors who attempt to self-publish their stories without a writing team, such as writing coaches, editors and etcetera, spend more time reprinting their books due to costly grammatical, punctuation or formatting errors. Can you imagine? At a time when aspiring authors should be celebrating a newly released book, they are having to redo or correct errors in their self-published books.

My company is dedicated to preventing self-publishing errors that are so common in the publishing industry. My business exists because of my passion for educating writers about the self-publishing industry and its processes. My company, I Write Writing Academy, LLC. believes in giving writers a pen. We don’t give them a pen literally, but metaphorically. We believe in empowering writers, aspiring authors, and creatives, helping them to find their writing voice.

Due to my passion for becoming a better entrepreneur, I recently completed a Women’s Entrepreneurship program through Cornell University sponsored by Bank of America. This program provided me with a wealth of information regarding funding, legal foundations, and market research. There were a number of topics covered in the program, but these are only a few.

Aside from learning about the basics of business ownership, I also gained insight into the significance of being a female entrepreneur in the publishing industry. I would highly recommend this program to female entrepreneurs who want to learn the A-Z of business ownership.

Credit goes to Portraits For Patriots

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?

The Coronavirus and quarantines that started during 2019 created a great deal of panic and uproar amongst the general public, but I was too busy building my business and learning more about the craft of writing, self-publishing, and social media marketing. Fast forward, our company now helps clients make money from their self-published books and we believe in saving our customers’ time and money by teaching them to publish correctly the first time around.

Since starting my business, I have learned that publishing information is readily available either digitally or via publications. However, because the information is so technical, it can be complicated to understand and intimidating for first-time authors.

For my clients, I created my writing academy to provide the pertinent details about publishing. I wanted to make sure my customers and potential clients had the information they needed to publish their books. Aspiring authors who work with other publishing companies are often unaware of the process they’ve already paid out to those companies. It’s mainly because some people refuse to read the fine print of their contracts and they’re sometimes reluctant to ask relevant questions to their publisher about the industry.

My recommendation to aspiring authors is to read every part of your contract provided by publishers. If there’s something you don’t understand, allow an attorney to look over your contract with you.

Credit goes to Ralph McCoy @phfdesign

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

It is funny to me now, but when I started my business, as I stated before, it came from an idea driven by passion. There are a lot of companies driven by passion, but the success of the company is a totally different component. Because I knew so much about writing and publishing, I didn’t take into account that eventually I would have to learn about the business management side of the house as well.

One of the things I had to “unlearn” was having a business idea, naming my business idea, registering my business and then funding my business out of pocket. Bootstrapping is what this process is called when you continue to fund your business. I never knew this was a backwards approach until I began networking with other entrepreneurs, taking classes and reading books about entrepreneurship.

My suggestion to anyone wanting to start a business is to ask the major question of “how your business will be funded?” If you don’t know or you can’t solve that equation, do yourself a favor and look for resources before starting your business. Never go broke behind a passion and an idea!

Credit goes to Ralph McCoy @phfdesign

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Keep in mind that my business started during COVID-19. Covid-19 led to being quarantined in the house for months. I used this time to go LIVE on Facebook, Instagram and sometimes YouTube. I allowed my audience to see me “struggle” or “hustle” whatever they considered my process to be. People who watched me would have the choice to either learn from my mistakes or watch me win. Remember my social media audience hung in there with me during COVID so they watched me online at my most vulnerable state.

I think what helped both the growth of my business and my reputation was being consistent and only providing my audience with relevant information about publishing. No fluff just information that would help them write, sell and publish their books. My clients have always appreciated me for that.

Here’s a quick secret to social media:

Prior to spending money on an idea you are passionate about, invest your time developing it. For example, build content to build an audience before you spend money on it.

For two years straight I used the lunch break of my corporate 9-5, which was actually 3pm-12am, to make videos and write down my ideas of what I wanted to see in my business. My videos had no viewers at the time I made them. However, a year later, they were proof for potential clients that my passion and knowledge have always been present.

Honestly, I believe allowing my audience to see my transparency helped build my business. It definitely made people feel comfortable enough to refer their friends and family to my business and I think that’s what having a positive reputation is all about.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.iwritewritingacademy.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/iwritewritingacademy
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/iwritewritingacademy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/i-write-writing-academy-llc/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/iwritewacademy
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WritingCoachLK

• Other: We’re hosting our annual two-day Self-publishing I Write Conference. You can register now at www.iwriteconference.com