February 21, 2025 • 36 mins
BWA is a thoughtfully curated magazine, that invites readers on a transformative journey through the diverse tapestry of women's literary contributions, both established and emerging.
BWA Magazine, believes in the power of storytelling as a transformative force with a myriad of genres, from poignant fiction to empowering poetry, thought-provoking essays, and insightful interviews.
Their mission is to create a vibrant platform that amplifies the voices of women authors, illuminating their unique perspective.
BWA magazine's founder, Paulette, is a single Mother who raised two sons. She has a BS degree and AS degree in Business Administration. She also host a video-podcast weekly show entitled " Let's Talk About it! I love to journal thoughts and have been doing it for years.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/and-i-thought--3370626/support.
BWA Magazine, believes in the power of storytelling as a transformative force with a myriad of genres, from poignant fiction to empowering poetry, thought-provoking essays, and insightful interviews.
Their mission is to create a vibrant platform that amplifies the voices of women authors, illuminating their unique perspective.
BWA magazine's founder, Paulette, is a single Mother who raised two sons. She has a BS degree and AS degree in Business Administration. She also host a video-podcast weekly show entitled " Let's Talk About it! I love to journal thoughts and have been doing it for years.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/and-i-thought--3370626/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
That way I could put the reels in, you know,
on my page and share it, you know, with our people.
So okay, you know what, So tell me a little
bit about your show, and you know, we can always
I can cut some one.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Writers Woman's paid thing.
You know something, I went all the way back to
before twenty nineteen with that one. I did all the
way back to before twenty with the Writers Woman. Yeah, ooh,
I've gained some weight and aged in the face a
little bit since then. Oh wait, I shouldn't point that out.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Ah my bad. Oops.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Anyway, Uh, yeah, you're here for the Anti Thought Ladies
podcast because remember in twenty twenty one, I think it
was twenty twenty two, I decided, you know what, I
should name it the actual name of the podcast, right
does We named the podcast the Anti Thought Podcast, and
then we were like, welcome to the one that didn't
work out well because people were looking for something completely different.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
They were like where are you when I was like,
how did you not know it was?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And I thought, and then they looked at me just
like this, and I could I never understood what was
going on until like, you know, one day it hit me,
I should say the name of the podcast. This is
the end, I thought podcast ooh, and it was somber
like too oh no, no, no, no, anyway, I will
no no. And on one half of the end, I
(01:27):
thought ladies. Go figure the end, I thought ladies podcast,
and I thought they. I thought ladies, whoo, we are
really original with our naming here.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Our character is better in our books. I swear to you.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I promise, I promise we have really cool names, which
is funny because you know, we write culture mentioning books. Oh,
I'm about to do a segue, and I don't even segue.
I'm feel an awesomely professional no today segue. You saw
how the professional demeanor settled in, even the lines and
the cheeks settling like maturity has arrived.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Segue.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
We wrote books, and those books are and I thought
The Wars was bad, and I thought being grown up
was easy and only our mea memoir and verse form
coffee Widdles web in Whiddles, debt recognize that those are six,
although there's I'm missing a book because of seven, but
that's okay. When you go to the website, you'll figure
it out. You find the book. It's kind of like
that whole you know, woman's kvent I thought thing I did.
(02:22):
I dropped the work on you. Those are our audio books,
not our actual books. And if you want to find
the rest of our seventeen books, because you know you're
missing ten again, work on you, you can go to www.
Dot and I thought ladies dot com. And no, I
am not doing it like I normally do it, like
a car salesman. I'm not even going to do the
(02:42):
shtick where I signed the whole thing out and sign
language because I don't feel like it. It's snowing outside
and I have a whole packet of orioles to eat
next to my wood fire and the fire place. So
y'all aren't getting any special effects today, but you are
getting awesome gas. Hello, wonderful well guess ononderful guts. Would
you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yes? Hello, my name is Paul att Henson. I'm the
CEO and founder of BWA magazine. Nice to be here. Nice.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Does BWA stand for something? It stands for women authors,
I'm hoping not.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
The black women authors. Yes, that's what it stands for,
and so we highlight and amplify black women voices as
well as men, and so we do have our Black
Men Author magazine as well. So I'm super excited to
(03:41):
be on your show to talk about what b w
A has in store for everyone.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Ooh, black women Authors. Ye here.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
So I'm going to just go ahead and jump in
and be so narcissistic because I am the narcissist.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Of the group.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Please, I'm a black woman. Okay, I'm a black young lady.
Even though I'm playing the lines here, I'm going to
say young lady. Yeah, and you have a black woman magazine.
Would you make an exception to put a young lady
in there?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Absolutely? Absolutely. We are a growing culture. We have a
Facebook group of almost fifteen thousand followers where you can
go There you can promote your book, you can connect
with other authors and get some good writing tips. We
(04:38):
also just launched our website, which is Black Womenauthors dot Net.
There you can read some articles, you can learn how
to be On the website as well as in our magazine,
we have author's spotlights and features and it's a BEAUTI
(05:00):
a full place for people to go to not only
appear in our magazine and on our website, but to
get resources. We provide websites and book trailers and covers
and marketing, you know, to help you to promote your
book and uh, you know, to kind of break that
(05:24):
monotony of you know, being a self published author and
promoting yourself and your brand. And so we specialize in
coaching authors. I personally do a lot of the coaching
with authors and entrepreneurs and developing their brand, educating them
(05:48):
on your book. Your book is your business. Your book
is a product of your brand, and and what what
you need to do to get your brand out and
promote yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's always great to have a helping hand when you
first start out on self publishing.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
And it's always great to have a helping hand with
every book.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Absolutely, before we started talking, but what was to hit
the report button? You had mentioned you had some experience
doing this. You don't look like you have much experience
doing this because you know you're so young in face.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Oh thank you, But you mentioned that.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
You had experience doing this, So can you tell us
a bit about the experience that you've had and what
you've learned and how you're bringing that to the table
for the authors out there.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So I will speak candidly. I do have a ton
of experience I have three degrees in business administration, including
a master's degree in adult education, and along with that,
I have forty years of administration on a government level
(06:59):
as I work, you know, a government job for thirty years.
But I started my first business not to date myself,
but back in nineteen eighty eighty three, and I developed
a retail clothing business. At that time in eighty two,
(07:24):
I was also a cosmetologist. I've owned a salon for
about maybe twenty years in the nineties. And so with
those experiences having a retail business, traveling, doing pop ups
and events, I learned a great deal of information on business,
(07:52):
business women in business. Being an entrepreneur, I learned a
lot of lessons, one of which, you know, not everything
will work. Sometimes you have to go back to the
drawing board. A lot of times you have to go
back to the drawing board. You have to repurpose your business,
(08:16):
and you have to repurpose it intoday's time. And so
a lot of times people will start business ventures and
not realizing that the first one to three years you
are pouring into your business, and so you may not
see a profit, you may not see even a break
(08:39):
even because you're pouring into your building your business, and
you're building that foundation. And so that is when sometimes
people will drop off because they feel that, hey, I'm
not making any money. I'm doing all this work and
I'm not seeing anything and return. But you are seeing progress.
(09:05):
If you see progress that and the and maybe it
doesn't equate to dollars, but you see progress in your momentum.
You see progress in the people that you're connecting with,
your your audience or or your niche, your niche market.
(09:26):
If you see those starting to rise, then you are
moving in a direction. Now, going back to the drawing board,
if you're marketing, you you want to look at who
are you marketing to, who is your niche market? And
how do you connect with them, how do you speak
their language so that they can connect with you, and
(09:51):
and so a lot of that over time, it's evolved.
When when I go back to when I first started
business with my retail company, we had we were designing
our own clothes. We were you know, working with vendors
to create to purchase items, and then we had sea
(10:15):
interests to sell those items, and then we had to
then go out and sell the items. And and so
the Internet was there, but not like today, and so
we were still passing out business cards. We were going
door to door to different businesses and people attending events
(10:38):
and trying to get our name out there. Now today,
the advantage that we have is that we we have
a viable internet. We have cell phones that we can
record shorts and reels and record content. We can video
(10:58):
a lot of things. We can put ourselves out there
on a global stand and so that's our advantage versus
you know, the old school way where you had to
pitch yourself to everyone. And so I think that a
(11:19):
lot of the tools that I have learned is one
to be, you know, as tech savvy as I can,
because technology is constantly evolving. With BWA, of course, we
have a magazine. We have now our digital magazine which
(11:41):
we sell on our website again it's Black Womenauthors dot Net.
But we also we have a g squad that helps
our authors and our entrepreneurs with their technology concerns. You know,
(12:02):
you want to build your brand, you want to learn
about SEO, which is search engine optimization. A lot of
people don't understand that that is how people find you,
how your description of your business, how your book is described.
There's certain key words, your books, how how your books
(12:24):
are described, those are that the GPS and how people
find you on the web. And so you have to
understand what those tags mean, what those keywords mean, and
how to describe yourself properly so that people can find you.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Thank you, thank you first of all for bringing up
the seos, because that it's real hard when you go
to look up an author and then they're like on
page seventeen because you're not going to make it to
page seventeen right now, page three if.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
You're lucky, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
So it's really important to get those keywords out there
and make sure that it is asistent.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Exactly and bring up you bring up a good point
because especially on Google, when you talk about how you're
going to be placed, Google is alphabetized, right, So if
you're if your business name starts with an A, you know,
(13:28):
and I thought X absolutely, there's a good chance that
you're going to be at the top of a list
because it starts with an A. So you have to
be strategic in how you name your business or your brand.
I I want to say when when I think about
(13:51):
what I've learned again, technology is its key. You can
use some of those older principles in business, but you
also have to have that technology that goes with it
so that you are reachable, you know, and that your
(14:15):
business can be found by the people that you want
to see you.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So tall a question on the You've learned a lot.
I also not, as you said, retail, and then there
are some businesses in.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Between that too.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Coming to UH, marketing for books and owning a magazine.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
You are all over the board.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
But I feel you are bringing a lot of skills
to this marketing side of writing.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
So where's the ovalap here?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
What skills have you dragged with you through the years
that apply to this section?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Wow? So the skills that I have drag with me
or brought along the way. Basically what led to b
w A was one is I've always loved to write.
I've always journaled for years. I've been journaling for years.
(15:20):
And I came to a point in my life where
I felt I wanted to write my story, and I
wanted to write a story that you know, of an
experience that I had. But then once I wrote that
story and I appeared on podcasts and I talked about it,
(15:44):
I realized that I needed to do something because there
wasn't a lot of opportunity for us, you know, to
really promote ourselves and to see ourselves in a light
where we can feel proud. You know, people are doing
podcasts and that's great. However, I wanted to take it
(16:09):
a step further. So I wanted to be that pillar
that island in an ocean of books. You know, because
when you think about the numbers of people that write books,
not only that, but the numbers of books that are published,
you have to think about, Okay, how do I fit
(16:31):
into that picture? Who's going to find me in all
of these thousands of books? And so I realized that
we needed a platform. We needed a landing spot for
authors to go to to be promoted, to talk about
(16:51):
their work, to get educational resources. And so right after
writing my book and appearing on those podcasts, I began
to podcast. I have a show called The Author's Lounge.
In addition, I have a show called the Poet's Lounge.
(17:12):
Now the Author's Lounge, Yeah, you mentioned poetry, and I
just thought, oh, my goodness. So the Author's Lounge is
a show where the author can showcase their work, talk
about their book, what their inspiration, and how they can
you know, get how people can get their book. You
(17:35):
know where it's at. It's on Amazon. It's really to
boost them. They can then use that show to promote
on their social media as well as on their website
or wherever. But to have that digital presence, that's number one.
(17:55):
Then I realized, Okay, I need to do more. I
felt like, Okay, the show is good, but I need
to have a magazine or something in print that highlights
us collectively. And I did my first edition of BWA
(18:16):
a year and a half ago, and so I'm happy
to say that we are eighteen editions in and we
just launched our website. It's amazing. And so that's really
how it got started. Going back to my Poets Lounge show,
(18:39):
that show came about because there's a lot of beautiful
poets out there. I used to go to poetry events
in LA They would have them like on Thursday nights,
and every Thursday night, me and one of my friends
we would go place the city's like Lamert Park. I
(19:03):
don't know if any of your viewers are familiar with
Lamert Park, but it's an arts and crafty type of
area and I would always go to listen to poetry
and comedy. New comics would come out and so are comedians.
And I realized I wanted to have a poetry show
(19:28):
because I love it so much, and so I started,
you know, hosting a poet show. I spoke to a
friend of mine. His name is Bruce George. He's actually
the co founder of Deaf Comedy Jam with Russell Simmons,
and so I talked to him about, you know, doing
(19:49):
this poet's lounge and he's like, yes, absolutely, I support you.
He actually appeared on the first show and just kind
of helped me to get through it, and so I
just wanted to give a shout out to him. But
that's really how how things got started. I had some
(20:11):
supportive people in my core circle that were pushing me
to do to fulfill these dreams that I've had, you know,
and and that I was on the track of creating
something special. And so that's that's how it got started.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I think we only needed someone there to support us.
If Jade were here, she would be like, oh, how
did I get involved in writing?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I have a womana?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Yes, yes, And I would be doing anything without a
Jade to be like, let's keep this stak right.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yes you so, Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I think that is the key point about any creative
journey is supportive people. Now I heard, You're right.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So we have talked about your books. We've talked about
your podcasts. I mean, we've talked about your your magazine,
we talked about your podcast.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
But Mattter, we have not talked about your books. Let's
hear about you and your books. How did you start it?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I mean I heard the journaling part name of books
and how did you feel after you finished your first one?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So my first book was, as I said, I wrote,
h it's called Daddy Issues. And I wrote that book
because I had some daddy issues. I have two fathers,
one of which the father that raised me has passed away.
(21:45):
He's been gone for about twenty maybe thirty years now,
but my biological father is here, but we don't have
a relationship. We don't you know, communicate, And so that
came about. I was actually getting my hair done and
(22:06):
there was some other ladies and one of the ladies
that well the style is that was doing my hair.
She's like, oh, you know something about whatever we were
talking about. And she's like, well, girl, you know, I
have daddy issues, and I thought, oh my god, so
do I. And so we all kind of realized that
we had these daddy issues. And so I'm sitting under
(22:30):
the dryer and you know, I just started chotting down,
you know what my thoughts were about. Like that was
the trigger that I needed to write this book, you know, something,
it was in my head. I kept going back to it,
and so that was my first book. After that and
(22:52):
after you know, developing the podcast and going through all
of that, I just begin to write more books. I've
written books on cosmetology, education, building your business as a stylist.
What that entails if you want to own a salon,
(23:14):
or nowadays you can own or you can rent a
salon suite, you know, which will bring your costs down. However,
there's you know, there's issues with that, and so I
dove into that whole world just to share the knowledge
that I have and based on some of my experiences
(23:38):
with being a salon owner, you know, having multiple stylists
in the salon and you know what that dynamic entails.
And that led to other books. As I was going
to school or going back to school to you know,
(24:01):
get my degrees. I The writing just really developed while
I was in school because I was writing more for class,
but at the same time, I enjoyed it so much.
I wanted to write about things that I wanted to
write about. You know, I'm really business driven and business oriented,
(24:27):
so I love to help people, to coach them, you know,
on building their business. There is a a movement that
I'm also a part of. It's called Genius is Common
and it's actually a movement from you know, my friend
Bruce George. And what that is is we all have
(24:53):
genius mentality. It's we've taken the you know that uh uh,
how do I say it? The word genius It doesn't
just apply to certain people, and so it's everyone. We
all have, you know, talents that that only we can do.
(25:17):
And so that's what I realized that I want to
bring that out in people, you know, whether it be
their writing, whether it be you know, them always wanting
to be in a magazine or on the cover of
a magazine, and to exploit that, to help them to
exploit you know, their talents and you know, to make money.
(25:44):
And so so then I just began to write more
and more, and I have coloring books. I have gosh
books on marketing again, my my hairstylist book. I've I've
written a course that's on the junior college level for
(26:05):
cosmetology again on that business part. I wrote the entire
course from start to finish, and then I wrote a
book that goes with that course. And so you know
there's now that I'm CEO of BWA, and that is expanding.
(26:27):
I'm not able to write as many books as I
would like to, but I have. I want to say,
I have about twenty three books on Amazon now, so
so I you know, when I get time, you know,
I can sit down and think of, you know, what
(26:47):
I want to write about or what I feel that
people should know. But a lot of my books now
are focused on education, and you know, some form of learning.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I love that you're out teaching people because I think
they say there's three things that you do, and I
forgot the third one.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
So I'm just gonna name two, which is you either
educate or entertain.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yes, And I feel like out of the two you
should put the two, you should put them together and educate.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Anyway, I am not one of those people who educate
you want are entertaining way. I just educate it. Yes,
actually I don't educate too. My guests do. And I
love that.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Now, for someone who's coming out here and they're like,
I'd like to self publish my book, what is the
three things that they absolutely must know before they hit
that published book.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
For self publishing, I'm glad you brought that up, because
that's Number one is that you need to be your
own publisher of your book. One, you need to understand
who needs to read your book, your market, who are
(28:00):
you promoting your book to? Number two, your book description,
your keywords? How are people going to find your book
if you don't have the right keywords in there? Which
your keywords are your GPS? Like you put your GPS
(28:21):
in your car where you're going to get there, That's
what your keywords are for people to find your book.
Your book description is not why you wrote your book.
Your book description is describing what your book is about
(28:43):
and using those keywords to again connect and build on
that GPS. So, in essence, you are speaking to a computer.
The person behind that other on the other end is
(29:04):
typing in what they're looking for. So you need to
find out what what words that are triggers that are
that are going to, you know, bring your audience to you. Pricing.
The last one is pricing. All of this involves research.
(29:27):
You want to look. If you're writing a book about
I don't know going how to how to how to
go fishing, or you know, how to catch a certain
fish or whatever the topic is, you want to do
your research and you want to look and see how
many books are written on this topic. Also, you want
(29:50):
to go on to Amazon and look at the top
five books on Amazon on that topic and look at
their descriptions, look at their keywords. You know, one major
nugget is descriptions are not copyrighted, so you can literally
(30:11):
copy and paste someone's description where they've sold thousands of
books and tweak it to your book. So now you're
going to drive some of that traffic to you. And
so a lot of people don't know that. I see
that a lot with author submissions and their descriptions, or
(30:34):
I can't find them on Amazon and I have to
go back and say, wait, I can't find your book,
where is it? And so there's a lot of things
that can come up when you are publishing your books.
But I would say that those are the top three.
(30:55):
When you are ready to do that, you want to
think about your keyword words, your book descriptions, and and
your pricing. You know you want to be competitive, but
you also want to make sure that you are right
alongside with other books that are doing really well. So
(31:19):
that would be my.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Thank you for those three.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Now let's get to a point where that you're interested
in you're interested in the whole literview.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I'm sure, yes, But.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Where can people find you and what is next for you?
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Wow? Okay, so people can find me again. Black women
Authors dot Net. That's our website again. You can go there.
There's multiple tabs. There's a tab for authors. If you're
looking to promote your book, you can check out our
author's spotlights. We have articles for authors. We have book
(32:01):
inspired articles, So that means if you purchase one of
our packages, you will get not only your page on
our website that promotes you in your book, but you'll
also get an article that's inspired that sort of it
(32:23):
creates a synopsis of your book, but also aids in
promoting your book. We have a library in there. We
have our resources, so if you need help, you need
a trailer, a book trailer or you need a book cover,
whatever it is you need, you need editing services. We
(32:43):
do have our resource page on there where you can
you know, fill out the whole form and tell us
what you need, how we can help you and we'll
get to work. So you can definitely reach out to
me there. Also on our Black Women Authors' Facebook group.
(33:06):
Again there's a lot of support there from the authors.
Like I said, we're almost at fifteen thousand followers and
it's constant. People are posting their books, they're talking about it,
they're talking about their issues, you know, whether it be
writing concerns or whatnot. So you can definitely reach me
(33:27):
that way. Email Paullette at Black Womenauthors dot net if
you are looking you need some coaching. We have a
lot of activities coming up, one of which we are
launching a writer's course that's going to start in the spring.
(33:49):
It'll be about six weeks for that course from start
to finish. That gives you, you know, tools and id
allies on writing, developing your story, developing characters, marketing. So
it covers everything that I talked about today, but just
(34:10):
in more detail, more one on one. And we are
also this month we're launching our AI webinar series which
we are educating businesses and entrepreneurs on making America smart.
(34:32):
So that is our slogan for this webinar series. We
have a keynote speaker that is phenomenal. His name is
Mike Johns and he is on the level of marketing
for Gosh b e t Awards, the Grammys and you know,
(34:54):
so his technology expertise, he is going to educate us
on AI, how we can leverage AI within our businesses,
within our research when we're writing books and as I
mentioned earlier, looking for books that are written similar to ours,
(35:15):
and how we can you know, appear in higher, higher
tiers on Amazon. So so we have a lot going on
with our site. It's a great place to go for
support and resource.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
This sounds amazing. Tell me one more time. What is
that website?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
It's Black Women Authors dot Net.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
You're welcome to talking to us about Black Women Authors
Magazine and Black Women's Authors dot Net.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Since she went ahead and wrapped up for herself, I'm
gonna help go ahead and wrap up for us. I'm
Willona from the Anti Thought Ladies, and you can check
out everything that your ladies are up to a www
dot and I thought, Ladies dot net remember that wisdom
is all around you if you're opening to finding it
and accepting It's a peace of love you guys from
Will Noona and the Missing j Oh Yeah. Thanks for listening.
That way I could put the reels in, you know,
on my page and share it, you know, with our people.
So okay, you know what, So tell me a little
bit about your show, and you know, we can always
I can cut some one.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Writers Woman's paid thing.
You know something, I went all the way back to
before twenty nineteen with that one. I did all the
way back to before twenty with the Writers Woman. Yeah, ooh,
I've gained some weight and aged in the face a
little bit since then. Oh wait, I shouldn't point that out.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Ah my bad. Oops.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Anyway, Uh, yeah, you're here for the Anti Thought Ladies
podcast because remember in twenty twenty one, I think it
was twenty twenty two, I decided, you know what, I
should name it the actual name of the podcast, right
does We named the podcast the Anti Thought Podcast, and
then we were like, welcome to the one that didn't
work out well because people were looking for something completely different.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
They were like where are you when I was like,
how did you not know it was?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And I thought, and then they looked at me just
like this, and I could I never understood what was
going on until like, you know, one day it hit me,
I should say the name of the podcast. This is
the end, I thought podcast ooh, and it was somber
like too oh no, no, no, no, anyway, I will
no no. And on one half of the end, I
(01:27):
thought ladies. Go figure the end, I thought ladies podcast,
and I thought they. I thought ladies, whoo, we are
really original with our naming here.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Our character is better in our books. I swear to you.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I promise, I promise we have really cool names, which
is funny because you know, we write culture mentioning books. Oh,
I'm about to do a segue, and I don't even segue.
I'm feel an awesomely professional no today segue. You saw
how the professional demeanor settled in, even the lines and
the cheeks settling like maturity has arrived.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Segue.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
We wrote books, and those books are and I thought
The Wars was bad, and I thought being grown up
was easy and only our mea memoir and verse form
coffee Widdles web in Whiddles, debt recognize that those are six,
although there's I'm missing a book because of seven, but
that's okay. When you go to the website, you'll figure
it out. You find the book. It's kind of like
that whole you know, woman's kvent I thought thing I did.
(02:22):
I dropped the work on you. Those are our audio books,
not our actual books. And if you want to find
the rest of our seventeen books, because you know you're
missing ten again, work on you, you can go to www.
Dot and I thought ladies dot com. And no, I
am not doing it like I normally do it, like
a car salesman. I'm not even going to do the
(02:42):
shtick where I signed the whole thing out and sign
language because I don't feel like it. It's snowing outside
and I have a whole packet of orioles to eat
next to my wood fire and the fire place. So
y'all aren't getting any special effects today, but you are
getting awesome gas. Hello, wonderful well guess ononderful guts. Would
you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yes? Hello, my name is Paul att Henson. I'm the
CEO and founder of BWA magazine. Nice to be here. Nice.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Does BWA stand for something? It stands for women authors,
I'm hoping not.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
The black women authors. Yes, that's what it stands for,
and so we highlight and amplify black women voices as
well as men, and so we do have our Black
Men Author magazine as well. So I'm super excited to
(03:41):
be on your show to talk about what b w
A has in store for everyone.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Ooh, black women Authors. Ye here.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
So I'm going to just go ahead and jump in
and be so narcissistic because I am the narcissist.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Of the group.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Please, I'm a black woman. Okay, I'm a black young lady.
Even though I'm playing the lines here, I'm going to
say young lady. Yeah, and you have a black woman magazine.
Would you make an exception to put a young lady
in there?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Absolutely? Absolutely. We are a growing culture. We have a
Facebook group of almost fifteen thousand followers where you can
go There you can promote your book, you can connect
with other authors and get some good writing tips. We
(04:38):
also just launched our website, which is Black Womenauthors dot Net.
There you can read some articles, you can learn how
to be On the website as well as in our magazine,
we have author's spotlights and features and it's a BEAUTI
(05:00):
a full place for people to go to not only
appear in our magazine and on our website, but to
get resources. We provide websites and book trailers and covers
and marketing, you know, to help you to promote your
book and uh, you know, to kind of break that
(05:24):
monotony of you know, being a self published author and
promoting yourself and your brand. And so we specialize in
coaching authors. I personally do a lot of the coaching
with authors and entrepreneurs and developing their brand, educating them
(05:48):
on your book. Your book is your business. Your book
is a product of your brand, and and what what
you need to do to get your brand out and
promote yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's always great to have a helping hand when you
first start out on self publishing.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
And it's always great to have a helping hand with
every book.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Absolutely, before we started talking, but what was to hit
the report button? You had mentioned you had some experience
doing this. You don't look like you have much experience
doing this because you know you're so young in face.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Oh thank you, But you mentioned that.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
You had experience doing this, So can you tell us
a bit about the experience that you've had and what
you've learned and how you're bringing that to the table
for the authors out there.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So I will speak candidly. I do have a ton
of experience I have three degrees in business administration, including
a master's degree in adult education, and along with that,
I have forty years of administration on a government level
(06:59):
as I work, you know, a government job for thirty years.
But I started my first business not to date myself,
but back in nineteen eighty eighty three, and I developed
a retail clothing business. At that time in eighty two,
(07:24):
I was also a cosmetologist. I've owned a salon for
about maybe twenty years in the nineties. And so with
those experiences having a retail business, traveling, doing pop ups
and events, I learned a great deal of information on business,
(07:52):
business women in business. Being an entrepreneur, I learned a
lot of lessons, one of which, you know, not everything
will work. Sometimes you have to go back to the
drawing board. A lot of times you have to go
back to the drawing board. You have to repurpose your business,
(08:16):
and you have to repurpose it intoday's time. And so
a lot of times people will start business ventures and
not realizing that the first one to three years you
are pouring into your business, and so you may not
see a profit, you may not see even a break
(08:39):
even because you're pouring into your building your business, and
you're building that foundation. And so that is when sometimes
people will drop off because they feel that, hey, I'm
not making any money. I'm doing all this work and
I'm not seeing anything and return. But you are seeing progress.
(09:05):
If you see progress that and the and maybe it
doesn't equate to dollars, but you see progress in your momentum.
You see progress in the people that you're connecting with,
your your audience or or your niche, your niche market.
(09:26):
If you see those starting to rise, then you are
moving in a direction. Now, going back to the drawing board,
if you're marketing, you you want to look at who
are you marketing to, who is your niche market? And
how do you connect with them, how do you speak
their language so that they can connect with you, and
(09:51):
and so a lot of that over time, it's evolved.
When when I go back to when I first started
business with my retail company, we had we were designing
our own clothes. We were you know, working with vendors
to create to purchase items, and then we had sea
(10:15):
interests to sell those items, and then we had to
then go out and sell the items. And and so
the Internet was there, but not like today, and so
we were still passing out business cards. We were going
door to door to different businesses and people attending events
(10:38):
and trying to get our name out there. Now today,
the advantage that we have is that we we have
a viable internet. We have cell phones that we can
record shorts and reels and record content. We can video
(10:58):
a lot of things. We can put ourselves out there
on a global stand and so that's our advantage versus
you know, the old school way where you had to
pitch yourself to everyone. And so I think that a
(11:19):
lot of the tools that I have learned is one
to be, you know, as tech savvy as I can,
because technology is constantly evolving. With BWA, of course, we
have a magazine. We have now our digital magazine which
(11:41):
we sell on our website again it's Black Womenauthors dot Net.
But we also we have a g squad that helps
our authors and our entrepreneurs with their technology concerns. You know,
(12:02):
you want to build your brand, you want to learn
about SEO, which is search engine optimization. A lot of
people don't understand that that is how people find you,
how your description of your business, how your book is described.
There's certain key words, your books, how how your books
(12:24):
are described, those are that the GPS and how people
find you on the web. And so you have to
understand what those tags mean, what those keywords mean, and
how to describe yourself properly so that people can find you.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Thank you, thank you first of all for bringing up
the seos, because that it's real hard when you go
to look up an author and then they're like on
page seventeen because you're not going to make it to
page seventeen right now, page three if.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
You're lucky, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
So it's really important to get those keywords out there
and make sure that it is asistent.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Exactly and bring up you bring up a good point
because especially on Google, when you talk about how you're
going to be placed, Google is alphabetized, right, So if
you're if your business name starts with an A, you know,
(13:28):
and I thought X absolutely, there's a good chance that
you're going to be at the top of a list
because it starts with an A. So you have to
be strategic in how you name your business or your brand.
I I want to say when when I think about
(13:51):
what I've learned again, technology is its key. You can
use some of those older principles in business, but you
also have to have that technology that goes with it
so that you are reachable, you know, and that your
(14:15):
business can be found by the people that you want
to see you.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So tall a question on the You've learned a lot.
I also not, as you said, retail, and then there
are some businesses in.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Between that too.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Coming to UH, marketing for books and owning a magazine.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
You are all over the board.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
But I feel you are bringing a lot of skills
to this marketing side of writing.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
So where's the ovalap here?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
What skills have you dragged with you through the years
that apply to this section?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Wow? So the skills that I have drag with me
or brought along the way. Basically what led to b
w A was one is I've always loved to write.
I've always journaled for years. I've been journaling for years.
(15:20):
And I came to a point in my life where
I felt I wanted to write my story, and I
wanted to write a story that you know, of an
experience that I had. But then once I wrote that
story and I appeared on podcasts and I talked about it,
(15:44):
I realized that I needed to do something because there
wasn't a lot of opportunity for us, you know, to
really promote ourselves and to see ourselves in a light
where we can feel proud. You know, people are doing
podcasts and that's great. However, I wanted to take it
(16:09):
a step further. So I wanted to be that pillar
that island in an ocean of books. You know, because
when you think about the numbers of people that write books,
not only that, but the numbers of books that are published,
you have to think about, Okay, how do I fit
(16:31):
into that picture? Who's going to find me in all
of these thousands of books? And so I realized that
we needed a platform. We needed a landing spot for
authors to go to to be promoted, to talk about
(16:51):
their work, to get educational resources. And so right after
writing my book and appearing on those podcasts, I began
to podcast. I have a show called The Author's Lounge.
In addition, I have a show called the Poet's Lounge.
(17:12):
Now the Author's Lounge, Yeah, you mentioned poetry, and I
just thought, oh, my goodness. So the Author's Lounge is
a show where the author can showcase their work, talk
about their book, what their inspiration, and how they can
you know, get how people can get their book. You
(17:35):
know where it's at. It's on Amazon. It's really to
boost them. They can then use that show to promote
on their social media as well as on their website
or wherever. But to have that digital presence, that's number one.
(17:55):
Then I realized, Okay, I need to do more. I
felt like, Okay, the show is good, but I need
to have a magazine or something in print that highlights
us collectively. And I did my first edition of BWA
(18:16):
a year and a half ago, and so I'm happy
to say that we are eighteen editions in and we
just launched our website. It's amazing. And so that's really
how it got started. Going back to my Poets Lounge show,
(18:39):
that show came about because there's a lot of beautiful
poets out there. I used to go to poetry events
in LA They would have them like on Thursday nights,
and every Thursday night, me and one of my friends
we would go place the city's like Lamert Park. I
(19:03):
don't know if any of your viewers are familiar with
Lamert Park, but it's an arts and crafty type of
area and I would always go to listen to poetry
and comedy. New comics would come out and so are comedians.
And I realized I wanted to have a poetry show
(19:28):
because I love it so much, and so I started,
you know, hosting a poet show. I spoke to a
friend of mine. His name is Bruce George. He's actually
the co founder of Deaf Comedy Jam with Russell Simmons,
and so I talked to him about, you know, doing
(19:49):
this poet's lounge and he's like, yes, absolutely, I support you.
He actually appeared on the first show and just kind
of helped me to get through it, and so I
just wanted to give a shout out to him. But
that's really how how things got started. I had some
(20:11):
supportive people in my core circle that were pushing me
to do to fulfill these dreams that I've had, you know,
and and that I was on the track of creating
something special. And so that's that's how it got started.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I think we only needed someone there to support us.
If Jade were here, she would be like, oh, how
did I get involved in writing?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I have a womana?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Yes, yes, And I would be doing anything without a
Jade to be like, let's keep this stak right.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yes you so, Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I think that is the key point about any creative
journey is supportive people. Now I heard, You're right.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So we have talked about your books. We've talked about
your podcasts. I mean, we've talked about your your magazine,
we talked about your podcast.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
But Mattter, we have not talked about your books. Let's
hear about you and your books. How did you start it?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I mean I heard the journaling part name of books
and how did you feel after you finished your first one?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So my first book was, as I said, I wrote,
h it's called Daddy Issues. And I wrote that book
because I had some daddy issues. I have two fathers,
one of which the father that raised me has passed away.
(21:45):
He's been gone for about twenty maybe thirty years now,
but my biological father is here, but we don't have
a relationship. We don't you know, communicate, And so that
came about. I was actually getting my hair done and
(22:06):
there was some other ladies and one of the ladies
that well the style is that was doing my hair.
She's like, oh, you know something about whatever we were
talking about. And she's like, well, girl, you know, I
have daddy issues, and I thought, oh my god, so
do I. And so we all kind of realized that
we had these daddy issues. And so I'm sitting under
(22:30):
the dryer and you know, I just started chotting down,
you know what my thoughts were about. Like that was
the trigger that I needed to write this book, you know, something,
it was in my head. I kept going back to it,
and so that was my first book. After that and
(22:52):
after you know, developing the podcast and going through all
of that, I just begin to write more books. I've
written books on cosmetology, education, building your business as a stylist.
What that entails if you want to own a salon,
(23:14):
or nowadays you can own or you can rent a
salon suite, you know, which will bring your costs down. However,
there's you know, there's issues with that, and so I
dove into that whole world just to share the knowledge
that I have and based on some of my experiences
(23:38):
with being a salon owner, you know, having multiple stylists
in the salon and you know what that dynamic entails.
And that led to other books. As I was going
to school or going back to school to you know,
(24:01):
get my degrees. I The writing just really developed while
I was in school because I was writing more for class,
but at the same time, I enjoyed it so much.
I wanted to write about things that I wanted to
write about. You know, I'm really business driven and business oriented,
(24:27):
so I love to help people, to coach them, you know,
on building their business. There is a a movement that
I'm also a part of. It's called Genius is Common
and it's actually a movement from you know, my friend
Bruce George. And what that is is we all have
(24:53):
genius mentality. It's we've taken the you know that uh uh,
how do I say it? The word genius It doesn't
just apply to certain people, and so it's everyone. We
all have, you know, talents that that only we can do.
(25:17):
And so that's what I realized that I want to
bring that out in people, you know, whether it be
their writing, whether it be you know, them always wanting
to be in a magazine or on the cover of
a magazine, and to exploit that, to help them to
exploit you know, their talents and you know, to make money.
(25:44):
And so so then I just began to write more
and more, and I have coloring books. I have gosh
books on marketing again, my my hairstylist book. I've I've
written a course that's on the junior college level for
(26:05):
cosmetology again on that business part. I wrote the entire
course from start to finish, and then I wrote a
book that goes with that course. And so you know
there's now that I'm CEO of BWA, and that is expanding.
(26:27):
I'm not able to write as many books as I
would like to, but I have. I want to say,
I have about twenty three books on Amazon now, so
so I you know, when I get time, you know,
I can sit down and think of, you know, what
(26:47):
I want to write about or what I feel that
people should know. But a lot of my books now
are focused on education, and you know, some form of learning.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I love that you're out teaching people because I think
they say there's three things that you do, and I
forgot the third one.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
So I'm just gonna name two, which is you either
educate or entertain.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yes, And I feel like out of the two you
should put the two, you should put them together and educate.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Anyway, I am not one of those people who educate
you want are entertaining way. I just educate it. Yes,
actually I don't educate too. My guests do. And I
love that.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Now, for someone who's coming out here and they're like,
I'd like to self publish my book, what is the
three things that they absolutely must know before they hit
that published book.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
For self publishing, I'm glad you brought that up, because
that's Number one is that you need to be your
own publisher of your book. One, you need to understand
who needs to read your book, your market, who are
(28:00):
you promoting your book to? Number two, your book description,
your keywords? How are people going to find your book
if you don't have the right keywords in there? Which
your keywords are your GPS? Like you put your GPS
(28:21):
in your car where you're going to get there, That's
what your keywords are for people to find your book.
Your book description is not why you wrote your book.
Your book description is describing what your book is about
(28:43):
and using those keywords to again connect and build on
that GPS. So, in essence, you are speaking to a computer.
The person behind that other on the other end is
(29:04):
typing in what they're looking for. So you need to
find out what what words that are triggers that are
that are going to, you know, bring your audience to you. Pricing.
The last one is pricing. All of this involves research.
(29:27):
You want to look. If you're writing a book about
I don't know going how to how to how to
go fishing, or you know, how to catch a certain
fish or whatever the topic is, you want to do
your research and you want to look and see how
many books are written on this topic. Also, you want
(29:50):
to go on to Amazon and look at the top
five books on Amazon on that topic and look at
their descriptions, look at their keywords. You know, one major
nugget is descriptions are not copyrighted, so you can literally
(30:11):
copy and paste someone's description where they've sold thousands of
books and tweak it to your book. So now you're
going to drive some of that traffic to you. And
so a lot of people don't know that. I see
that a lot with author submissions and their descriptions, or
(30:34):
I can't find them on Amazon and I have to
go back and say, wait, I can't find your book,
where is it? And so there's a lot of things
that can come up when you are publishing your books.
But I would say that those are the top three.
(30:55):
When you are ready to do that, you want to
think about your keyword words, your book descriptions, and and
your pricing. You know you want to be competitive, but
you also want to make sure that you are right
alongside with other books that are doing really well. So
(31:19):
that would be my.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Thank you for those three.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Now let's get to a point where that you're interested
in you're interested in the whole literview.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I'm sure, yes, But.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Where can people find you and what is next for you?
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Wow? Okay, so people can find me again. Black women
Authors dot Net. That's our website again. You can go there.
There's multiple tabs. There's a tab for authors. If you're
looking to promote your book, you can check out our
author's spotlights. We have articles for authors. We have book
(32:01):
inspired articles, So that means if you purchase one of
our packages, you will get not only your page on
our website that promotes you in your book, but you'll
also get an article that's inspired that sort of it
(32:23):
creates a synopsis of your book, but also aids in
promoting your book. We have a library in there. We
have our resources, so if you need help, you need
a trailer, a book trailer or you need a book cover,
whatever it is you need, you need editing services. We
(32:43):
do have our resource page on there where you can
you know, fill out the whole form and tell us
what you need, how we can help you and we'll
get to work. So you can definitely reach out to
me there. Also on our Black Women Authors' Facebook group.
(33:06):
Again there's a lot of support there from the authors.
Like I said, we're almost at fifteen thousand followers and
it's constant. People are posting their books, they're talking about it,
they're talking about their issues, you know, whether it be
writing concerns or whatnot. So you can definitely reach me
(33:27):
that way. Email Paullette at Black Womenauthors dot net if
you are looking you need some coaching. We have a
lot of activities coming up, one of which we are
launching a writer's course that's going to start in the spring.
(33:49):
It'll be about six weeks for that course from start
to finish. That gives you, you know, tools and id
allies on writing, developing your story, developing characters, marketing. So
it covers everything that I talked about today, but just
(34:10):
in more detail, more one on one. And we are
also this month we're launching our AI webinar series which
we are educating businesses and entrepreneurs on making America smart.
(34:32):
So that is our slogan for this webinar series. We
have a keynote speaker that is phenomenal. His name is
Mike Johns and he is on the level of marketing
for Gosh b e t Awards, the Grammys and you know,
(34:54):
so his technology expertise, he is going to educate us
on AI, how we can leverage AI within our businesses,
within our research when we're writing books and as I
mentioned earlier, looking for books that are written similar to ours,
(35:15):
and how we can you know, appear in higher, higher
tiers on Amazon. So so we have a lot going on
with our site. It's a great place to go for
support and resource.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
This sounds amazing. Tell me one more time. What is
that website?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
It's Black Women Authors dot Net.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
You're welcome to talking to us about Black Women Authors
Magazine and Black Women's Authors dot Net.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Since she went ahead and wrapped up for herself, I'm
gonna help go ahead and wrap up for us. I'm
Willona from the Anti Thought Ladies, and you can check
out everything that your ladies are up to a www
dot and I thought, Ladies dot net remember that wisdom
is all around you if you're opening to finding it
and accepting It's a peace of love you guys from
Will Noona and the Missing j Oh Yeah. Thanks for listening.
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