Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Donna Gunter. Donna is the CEO of the consulting firm, BizSmart Media. She's also the host of Main Street Mavericks Radio and has contributed to a number of publications on the topics of authority marketing and personal branding.

 Donna is the author of: Make Them Choose You: How Local Business Owners Can Double Their Business, Get Customers Consistently, and Have More Free Time WITHOUT Being Held ... Expensive Marketers (Become Business Famous), Brand Yourself as The Trusted Local Celebrity: 25 Marketing Strategies to Position Yourself as the Obvious Choice in Your Market and Biz Smart Quick Guide: 10 Strategies to Online Visibility for More Traffic, Clicks and Profit!

Norm: Good day Donna and thanks for participating in our interview

What do you consider to be your greatest success (or successes) so far in your career?

Donna: In the past few years, it’s been publishing three books. I just published a brand new one, Make Them Choose You: How Local Business Owners Can Double Their Business, Get Customers Consistently, and

Have More Free Time WITHOUT Being Held Hostage by Expensive Marketers, which became an Amazon #1 best-seller shortly after its release.

As an avid reader all my life, I never remotely imagined I would also write books, much less become a best-selling author. I owe thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing for helping me make that happen.

Norm: What has been your greatest challenge (professionally) that you’ve overcome in getting to where you’re at today?

Donna: That would be starting my own business. In the late 1990s, I was living in Massachusetts and was quite disillusioned with my life. After living there for 11 years, my marriage was on the rocks, I hated my job, and I missed my family in Texas. So, I decided to blow up my life. I quit my job, told my then-husband I wanted a divorce, sold most of my possessions, put my home up for sale, pulled out my retirement funds to live on, and packed myself and my dog in my car for an 1800-mile trek back to Texas to my hometown.

I moved into my childhood bedroom and opened my business as a virtual assistant from my mother’s garage. I had no local prospects for clients, since working virtually wasn’t on anyone radar in my small, East Texas hometown. Using the skills and connections I made online, I was able to create a profitable business in six months. I would never encourage anyone to start a business in this fashion, but it worked for me!

My business has changed and evolved through the years and no longer resembles what it was in the beginning. However, January 2019 was my 20th anniversary of being in business, so I’m obviously doing something right.

Norm: How many times in your career have you experienced rejection? How did they shape you?

Donna: As a business owner, I experience rejection quite frequently. Perhaps it’s an idea or strategy that I have offered that doesn’t resonate with my client. It might be an article I have written that draws someone’s ire. Anyone who believes that you are your own boss when you start your business is delusional.

The reality is that you have traded one boss for many bosses, those being your clients. As a business owner, especially one who does business online, you must develop a thick skin and let much of what is said roll off your back. If you take everything personally, you’ll end up in a fetal positioning crying for your mother…LOL.

Rejection also runs rampant on social media. I’ve discovered that since social media has become so pervasive in society, many people say things and troll others in a way that they would never do in a face-to-face situation.

I’ve been Facebook-shamed by several business owners whom I respected up until they showed their true colors and were quite unprofessional in their dealings with me.

And, of course, there’s always author rejection when a reader writes an unflattering review of your book. I tell my author clients that a poor review or two keeps things real, as page after page of 5-star reviews makes a prospect question whether all the reviews are valid reader reviews.

Norm: What would you like to accomplish as an author that you have not?

Donna: The new book I have just published, Make Them Choose You, is the first of a series of books in my Become Business Famous series. I’m working on the second one now about how to profit as a podcast guest.  I anticipate there being about ten books in this series, so I have a long way to go to fulfill this goal.

Norm: What is BizSmart Media?

Donna: It’s an authority positioning marketing/consulting firm where I help entrepreneurs, consultants, speakers, coaches, and professionals stop the client chase by leveraging their knowledge to gain authority status in their industry. I then dramatically amplify their message and show them how to convert the new audience into high-paying customers.

I work together with my clients to build powerful personal brands and grow their businesses through speaking, publishing, and publicity.

Norm: Many people have the skills and drive to write a book, but failure to market and sell the book the right way is probably what keeps a lot of people from finding success. Can you give us 2-3 strategies that have been effective for you in promoting your books?

Donna:

1. Being a guest on podcasts. Part of what makes my book publishing and marketing consulting unique is that we don’t worry about selling books. Book promotion is all about how to successfully integrate giving away your book to as many people as possible as a part of your ongoing marketing strategy.  As a gift/call to action from being a guest on podcasts, I invite listeners to download a free digital copy of one of my books. As a guest, I talk about a topic that is relevant to one of my books. My current goal is 60 podcast appearances in 60 Days. I’m one-sixth of the way there as of this writing.

2. Keyword optimization on Amazon. Amazon is the world’s second largest search engine next to Google, and many times a Google query will show a book on Amazon that fits the search criteria. If this type of digital marketing is your goal, the key is doing proper keyword research and carefully thinking about the title and subtitle of your book as well as the book description, making sure all of the above include keywords someone might use to find you.

3. Having a call to action inside the book. Building and email list is a primary goal for any business owners. The gold is in the list, so goes the saying, and your list is one of the most valuable assets of your business. As you put together your book, don’t forget a strong call to action, like the offer of a checklist, worksheet, listing of tools, etc. that you have available on your website in exchange for a name and email address. Make sure you offer something unique for the readers of the book and ties in as the next logical step of what the readers would want to know to move forward. Once you have these readers on your list, they become prospects for your services and products.

Norm: Who comprises your readership?

Donna: Small business owners and entrepreneurs.  They work primarily in a service-based business, like coaches, consultants, financial planners, eldercare planners, salon owners, etc.

Norm: Could you briefly describe the three books that I have mentioned in my introduction. As a follow up, what were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?

Donna: Make Them Choose You.

A key ingredient in small business success is getting your prospects to choose you. When you become the obvious choice, prospects start chasing you instead of you chasing them. The lead-to-prospect-to-customer conversion process is easier, and the percentage of prospect-to-customer conversions are much higher. Customers will be eager to refer you to everyone they know. The secret in making your prospects choose you is by publishing your own book and becoming Business Famous.

Goal for Book: Book publishing is one of the primary ways I help my clients establish their authority in their industry and local areas. For over two years, I had been procrastinating on exactly how to write the book on writing books that would be appropriate for my target market, as I follow a very unconventional publishing and monetization model. Earlier this year I realized that I could create the book as a series of FAQs about my take on book publishing and monetization for entrepreneurs. Each question became a short chapter in this short book. Once I hit upon this idea, the creation of this book happened almost overnight. I went from idea to draft to publishing in a matter of 30 days.

25 Marketing Strategies to Position Yourself as the Obvious Choice in Your Market.

Would you like to get more qualified leads for your business? Would you like a waiting list of people interested in doing business with you? How about having effortless sales conversations with prospects who come to you ready to buy? If you're looking to be a standout in your industry and the obvious choice for your prospects, then this brand new book by Trusted Local Celebrity Igniter, Donna Gunter, reveals 25 proven marketing strategies to propel you to Trusted Local Celebrity status.

Goal for Book: This was my first solo book. I have been a prolific content creator since starting my business in 1999, so I wrote this book by extracting 25 articles I had previously written that made sense for this topic.

I had to do some editing to update some of the strategies and to make them flow together reasonably. The strategies discussed in this book serve as the foundation for all of the business coaching and consulting that I do to make an entrepreneur Business Famous, as I now call my strategy.

Biz Smart Quick Guide: 10 Strategies to Online Visibility for More Traffic, Clicks, and Profit!

Have you built a web site or an online business and aren't getting the traffic and visitors that you need? Or, are the prospects who are visiting your website not buying the products and services you have for sale? Biz

Smart Quick Guide contains essential online visibility lessons told by real business owners - successful bloggers, entrepreneurs, and marketers - without hype or gimmicks. It's a peek into the day-to-day working practices of successful people and how they grow their businesses and apply these online visibility strategies in their business operations. In this guide, you'll discover ten strategies to increase your online visibility and get found online by those prospects who desperately need your products and services.

Goal for the book: This was my guinea pig experiment and the first book that I published. I asked nine other marketing colleagues if they wanted to participate in a multi-author anthology, and they agreed. We each contributed a chapter offering how-to info on our area of expertise. I ran my first successful Amazon Best-Seller campaign, and we all became best-selling authors and got author credit in Amazon. My success in this ventured boosted my confidence to change the direction of my business from offering marketing consulting to offering authority positioning via becoming the author of your book.

Norm: What upcoming projects are you excited about?

Donna: As mentioned earlier, I’m working on book #2 of my Become Business Famous series of books. This one will be on the topic of Profiting as a Podcast Guest.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and your books?

Donna: For my contact info, HERE which is is my WEBSITE.

I invite readers to pick up a free digital copy of my latest book, Make Them Choose You: How Local Business Owners Can Double Their Business, Get Customers Consistently, and Have More Free Time WITHOUT Being Held Hostage by Expensive Marketers, by visiting HERE 

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors