We were lucky to catch up with Sharon Brown recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sharon, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

We have quite an unconventional way of building a team, but it works! I started out on my own with this idea but as I was running three other businesses and always conveying the message around ‘collaboration over competition’, it made sense to ask people I knew and trusted if they would be a part of this business. I knew their strengths and how we could all complement each others so each team member had a small buy in to The Book Chief. Now when we gain clients, each person gets either a fixed fee or a percentage of the sale. It means we all gain through getting clients. The outsourced suppliers are also people I know and have worked with for many years so I can easily feel confident that the job in hand will be done to a high standard and on time.

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?

I had such a simple reason for starting my Publishing Business. My other businesses were all designed around helping small business owners increase their credibility and authority and because I had been creating collaborative books for some time through other publishers, I knew the good points and bad points I experienced. I had been interesting in learning how to publish for some time and so did a 6 month course, built up my skills, read everything there was to read about it and then the name just came to me. I wanted the business to be different and I definitely know it is. We offer a FULL service with heaps of support all through the process and afterwards. Our Cover designs are beautifully designed. Our editing process is thorough and our formatting and typesetting makes the book looks truly professional. The difference with our service is the way each book gets a fantastic boost through the other businesses we run, all interconnected. Each Author appears in a double page spread in our Authors Magazine. We even prepare a press release for them and run it on our media platform. There are opportunities to speak, to appear as a Front Cover spread and we give lots of support and opportunities. We even have our own Authors community and we’ll soon be bringing in a few other surprises, catapulting us as the number one Indie Publishing House. I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved to date and have published over 250 Authors in the past 24 months. This year we won ‘BOOK PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR 2023’ which is a massive accomplishment in such a short time. People can publish books on Amazon but by using a business like ours with an excellent reputation, would be Authors are guaranteed to have a book that not only looks amazing, but has the best chance of becoming a best seller!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I started out in business 8 years ago with a very different kind of business to what I have now. I was a qualified Project Manager working in a corporate organisation so I started a side hustle, as an Events Agency, knowing that at some point I would become self-employed. I dreamed of a laptop lifestyle which awarded me the freedom and flexibility I craved and that I couldn’t achieve working for someone else. Fast forward to three years later and I had started my very own first online membership business, which was for Women in Business with that same deep rooted love of ‘Collaboration over Competition’. The event agency I put aside as I was a still a slave to deadlines and commitments and more importantly, stress. During Covid, I started two other businesses namely, MO2VATE Magazine and The Speakers Index, both of them were online platforms too. Then I started The Book Chief to complement the other businesses. I went from having to be F2F constantly with organising events and attending them, to four online businesses in the space of 3 years. Pivoting is something I’m pretty good at as MO2VATE has now changed to a media hub online rather than a magazine and The Speakers Index is in the process of having a new team on board who are going to manage it. I can’t say that I’m done starting businesses as I have a few more ideas which no doubt I’ll implement in the coming years! Change is important in business and you have to ‘ride the tide’ so to speak so I’m looking forward to what the future brings and what new ideas can capture attention.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Most of our clients are coming through referrals and there are a few good reasons I believe for that. Firstly, we offer £200 to anyone who has referred us with that person signing up to use our services. It’s a great incentive and especially in these times. Secondly, those who have used us tend to refer us to others as they know the service they’re going to get will not have a negative impact on their reputation. They are confident that whoever they refer will get a top notch service and a very professional book at the end of it. We also gain quite a few clients through Google which is great as it means we’re showing up a lot! Many years ago I knew it was important to also build a community on social media and we’re just about to skyrocket our marketing on this, TikTok and various channels, so I’m looking forward to seeing how this works for gaining new leads and potential clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thebookchief.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/bookchiefpublisher
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookchiefpublisher/
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/thebookchief
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebookchiefph
• Other: https://linktr.ee/thebookchief https://www.threads.net/@bookchiefpublisher

Image Credits
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