Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Shanine Young. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Shanine, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

Wow! Time flies when you are having fun. I’m thinking back to when I first started my business and started setting myself up to attract the right clients and customers. I was networking my butt off. I was connecting with other authors and entrepreneurs in Facebook groups and at conferences and events. I enjoy meeting new people and connecting with likeminded individuals so it was work but I didn’t mind.

I remember after I published my first book, everyone kept asking me questions, “How did you do it? Was it hard?” I was still a full time teacher at the time so I enjoyed breaking down concepts and making it plain as day. I sold hundreds of copies all around the world using different content marketing strategies that I would implement and practice over and over to get right. I realized that many people were in need of help when it came to getting their book published and getting people outside of their family and friends to purchase.

I started researching and putting together a course to break down the process and share everything I did to have a successful book launch. I launched a Self publishing course, ran ads and promoted it through my social channels. It was very exciting because I knew my course would be beneficial to anyone who purchased. I had a young lady I met on social media purchase my course! I saw the sale come in and I was ecstatic! I did a little shimmy dance and was so excited to hear her feedback. With the course, I gave away a lot of VALUEE!! Maybe too much, she was able to schedule one on one calls with me and she got access to my private community and so much more. She said the course was extremely helpful because she was stuck and unsure of what to do but she gained clarity from following the modules.

Even though I probably didn’t price my course at what it was worth, just the fact that someone bought it, believed in me and trusted that I knew my stuff was all the encouragement I needed! This course was the start of my business, Reaching While Teaching, where we focus on helping entrepreneurs publish and market books that will help them make an impact while making an income. From this course, I became serious about my business and wanted to encourage people to share their story and remind them that their story matters!

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?

So my name is Shanine Alessia Young, the name of my business is called Reaching While Teaching and that name stems from my 8 years of teaching experience and my passion to impact and empower individuals. I’ve successfully published three books and helped over 50 authors publish and market books to grow their business.

Reaching While Teaching’s Books 2 Impact Book Publishing Accelerator focuses on equipping entrepreneurs who have a story and expertise to share with the world. Through our courses, coaching and programs we walk them through the process of publishing and marketing their book to generate sales around the world.

Many of our clients come to us with a vision but they are unsure of how to make their book idea a reality and once they leave our Books 2 Impact program they are Published Authors. One thing that makes our coaching unique is our team truly cares and we don’t just focus on helping our clients get their book published but we also provide step by step tutorials on how to have a successful book launch and build an audience that is excited to purchase your book. Our clients start making money immediately after applying the strategies they learn in our trainings.

Having the right mindset is important, our clients believe in themselves and believe in the value their book provides and that allows them to invest in themself, walk out their purpose and impact hundreds and thousands of lives with their story and expertise.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When I started building my social media account, it was specifically for educators and to empower them and provide them with tips on how they could live their best life in and out of the classroom. I knew I would be releasing my book soon and I was aware of the importance of building a social media presence and building a loyal audience.

I would engage with other accounts and respond back when accounts engaged with me. I always focused on the quality of my content and having quality followers instead of worrying about vanity metrics. At this time I could have easily payed for followers but I wanted to build organically. When I released my first book for educators, I had several people from my online community purchase because they resonated with me and my content for the past year or two.

If I could give some advice I would say when it comes to building your online presence, I usually teach the 3 C’s;

You want to Create Clear, Consistent Content

Create: Spend time creating content and posts that are relatable to your audience. Find inspiration online and remake what you like. You can’t just sit around hoping to build an online presence but not creating any content online.

Clear: Your Brand Value should be clear to your audience, your followers should know what your page is all about and you shouldn’t confuse your audience by posting random content that isn’t aligned with your brand. For example: now when people come t my coaching page they

Consistent: Consistent does not mean everyday. Consistent means you should not come online once in a blue moon or post a picture once a month. People love consistency so the more you show up or even if you have a specific day you talk about a certain topic that helps your audience that can help you remain consistent. This is huge when it comes to building your online presence.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn having a broke mindset. I was a big saver so growing up I hated spending money and as I started out in business I use to have that same mentality that I should try to hold on to my money instead of investing it. Once I invested in coaching and in different programs and saw a big return on my investment I continued to invest in different areas of my business.

I got a virtual assistant, purchased memberships and implemented systems that made my life so much easier.
I think the backstory on why I was scared to invest at first was how I was raised. I was told to save a certain percentage of my paycheck, prepare for rainy days but I didn’t get much guidance on the investing aspect.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.books2impact.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/reachingwhileteaching
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/reachingwhileteaching
• Linkedin: Shanine Young

Image Credits
So Flo Inspire