We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Queashar L. Halliburton a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Queashar, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.
I had a client ready to throw in the towel when self-publishing her book. She had been working on her book for about two years, and I told her I would mentor her through the publishing process and help her launch her book with excellence. She trusted me, followed my advice, became an #1 Amazon Bestseller in four categories, and received over 25 five-star reviews during her launch.
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?
Since childhood, I have loved writing and knew I would someday become an author. Throughout grade and high school, I developed a love for creative writing, and I would enter and win multiple writing contests. Writing had become an integral part of my life, and I was also an assistant editor and a writer for my high school newspaper. It was only natural that I studied communication in college.
After graduating from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s in communication, my goal was to work in public relations. As excited as I was to leap into the field of public relations, my dreams were shattered as I was laid off from my first PR job. After many attempts to find a position in my field of choice, I was disappointed due to my lack of corporate experience in PR. This experience started a spiral of accepting jobs to pay the bills while longing for career fulfillment. Later, I found my niche in insurance sales.
After two decades of working as a licensed insurance agent, I started missing writing, so I started a blog. Starting my blog motivated me to repurpose content and pen my first eBook, Everything They Won’t Tell You About Procrastination. In 2017, I established QUEASHAR DETROIT PUBLISHING LLC ®️ to self-publish my books. After documenting my authorship journey on social media, people started asking me questions about the publishing process, which motivated me to offer publishing services and educational resources to aspiring nonfiction authors.
Within the past four years, I’ve written four solo books and contributed to five anthologies while helping authors publish their stories. I’ve heavily invested my time, effort, and resources to be coached by some of the world’s most influential leaders in the publishing, speaking, and coaching industries. I’m proud to be a multiple award-winning, international best-selling author and certified success coach.
I’m eager to share the knowledge I’ve gained over the past five years to help professional women build a business and a legacy through literary works. The mission of Queashar Detroit Publishing LLC® is to inspire, educate and empower women worldwide to honor their God-given gifts while thriving in the literary marketplace. We aspire to make a global impact and change the lives of professional women through creativity, innovation, and authenticity.
Queashar Detroit Publishing, LLC ® provides professional publishing services for nonfiction authors. We offer high-quality publishing and coaching services such as editing, book design, manuscript formatting, and comprehensive book distribution services. As a Better Business Bureau accredited organization, Queashar Detroit Publishing LLC® empowers professional women to monetize their genius through publishing a signature nonfiction book.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn was thinking my readers would magically show up if I wrote a good book. I learned the hard way that marketing is a full-time job. After your initial book launch and celebration, you may hear crickets if you haven’t done proper market research for your target audience.
You must build an author platform so your readers will be ready when your book is done. Building an author platform involves everything you do online and offline to build awareness about your book and author brand. If you are writing a nonfiction book, your marketing must speak to the pain points of your ideal reader, provide a solution to address their pain points, and offer the next steps for a complete transformation.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I built my audience on social media by documenting my journey to authorship. I created polls and incorporated my audience’s feedback as research in my books. I created surveys and asked my followers to complete them. I also held contests throughout my writing journey and provided prizes. This feedback helped build momentum, and my tribe was excited when my book was finally ready to purchase.
Try these three things to build your social media presence. First, change your profile to a business page to see your analytics. Switching to a business or creator’s profile will help you gauge the best times to post or engage with your target audience. It will also show you more stats on your posts and help you intentionally create the best content for your target audience. Have a goal for each post and create a call to action prompting your audience to do something. For instance, your focus may be to grow your email list. If this is the case, create a lead magnet and invite your tribe to grab a freebie that provides valuable information regarding your book. It could be a worksheet or quick tips to help them solve a specific problem. Doing this will allow you to nurture your audience and provide value to them. Finally, select one social media platform to focus your attention. Once you learn about that platform, move on to the next ones.
I’m excited to announce my new book, Skyrocket Your Success 2.0! The Corporate Women’s Road Map to Navigate from Employee to Entrepreneur will launch on February 7, 2023. Skyrocket Your Success 2.0 presents a step-by-step framework to transition an unfulfilled employee to a successful entrepreneur. This book will help professional women abandon self-sabotaging behaviors and monetize their genius while creating a blueprint for optimal, skyrocketing entrepreneurship success. Start your transformational journey by going to https://bit.ly/Skyrocket2.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sharhalliburton.com/
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/
qdpublishing - Facebook: www.facebook.com/SharHalliburton
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/queasharhalliburton/
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/qdpublishing
- Other: I’m excited to announce that my new book, SKYROCKET YOUR SUCCESS 2.0, will launch soon. Skyrocket Your Success 2.0 presents a step-by-step framework to transition an unfulfilled employee to a successful entrepreneur. This book will help professional women abandon self-sabotaging behaviors to utilize their innate skills. You will learn how to monetize your genius while creating a blueprint for optimal, skyrocketing entrepreneurship success. Secure your copy by going to https://bit.ly/QDPSys2. Amazon Author Central Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/queasharhalliburton Thanks in advance for your support.
Image Credits
Q11 Photography