In August 2018, Bridgett McGowen-Hawkins, the owner of BMH Companies, submitted a proposal, just knowing she would get selected to present at a HUGE conference where Oprah Winfrey was slated to headline the agenda the following spring. (Yes, we’re name-dropping.)
She just knew it.
But …
She was wrong.
Well …
Sorta.
In early November 2018 (she even remembers where she was … sitting at a juice bar near a local mall with two fellow business owners, sipping on a smoothie), she received the email message that her proposal was not “quite” selected. She didn’t get an absolute “no,” but she received a message that essentially read to the effect of “Your proposal is pretty cool, so we’re putting you on the waitlist of presenters. If something becomes available, then we’ll reach out. Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”
Ouch!
But wait. There’s more …
In early March 2019, they did call—well they emailed—indicating they wanted Bridgett to speak at the conference that was taking place in just a few short months. Additionally, there was a question in the messaging about whether she had a book to sell at the conference bookstore—the bookstore that was also selling Oprah’s books—making it available to the more than 13,000 conference-goers.
Bridgett thought “I don’t have a book now, but I will have one by the time that conference rolls around!” And she got to work.
She’d been blogging for years on the topic on which she was speaking at the conference—effective presentation skills. She’d also created Master Your Message, a six-week self-paced online course centered on that topic. By pulling content from both of those sources and organizing it into four categories, she came up with her book, REAL TALK: What Other Experts Won’t Tell You About How to Make Presentations That Sizzle, publishing on April 9, 2019. Within weeks, she’d cranked out that book and was ready for show time!
But that’s not the moment when the idea for a publishing company came to Bridgett.
In late May of 2019, she delivered her presentation at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC to a packed room of hundreds of conference-goers.
Several people raced out of the room once she finished, and the AV team immediately swooped in to dismantle the technology set-up. Several other session participants lined up to chat with Bridgett, take pictures, and congratulate her on an effectively engaging presentation on how to make effective presentations (hehe …)
A few minutes later, several of those attendees who had made dashes for the door returned to the room and said, “Your book’s not in the store.”
“Oh! No-no! That cannot be!” Bridgett proclaimed with outrage. “I got off a plane yesterday and went STRAIGHT to the bookstore to ensure it was on the shelf. It’s there! Before I came to the presentation room today, I even held up that groovy Instagram frame and had someone snap a picture of me with my book on the shelf in the background. That. Book. Is. THERE!”
They let her get out her spiel, then they told her “No, Bridgett. The book was there. It’s sold out.”
And that’s when it hit her.
How many business coaches, entrepreneurs, consultants, and small business owners who are experts at their game had been missing out on opportunities to extend learning and have a unique marketing tool to perfectly position themselves as the answer to their ideal clients’ challenges? How many had been missing out on the chance to further engage those who want to learn from them? How many? And to think Bridgett had been a professional speaker since 2001. That was nearly two decades and thousands of audience members …
That was May 2019. In December 2019, Press 49 opened its doors.
Bridgett McGowen-Hawkins founded BMH Companies, the parent company of Press 49, in 2016 when she was inspired, after getting laid-off, to make it her focus to empower go-getter professionals to stop making awful presentations.
Since 2001, Bridgett has been a professional speaker, but to focus on supporting others, she became self-employed as a full-time speaker in 2016, appearing at conferences, conventions, and summits, speaking on the power of your voice and how to effectively use it. She also began coaching others on how to launch their own speaking businesses, which is based on the chapter she wrote in Own the Microphone.
Then, in 2019, she wrote two books in the course of six months, one of which, REAL TALK, won a Best Indie Book Award in 2020. It was the publication of that award-winning book in April 2019 and having it sell out at an international conference in DC the very next month that moved her to launch Press 49 on December 13, 2019, working with publishing partners all over the globe to provide services that turn go-getters’ expertise into published books and eBooks.
At Press 49, we believe you do not have to be a celebrity, nor do you have to have a massive following in order to be worthy of getting published and leaving a legacy with a book. Everyone has a genius. Everyone has a story. Everyone has value. Bridgett is proud to have made the shift from getting on stages where the lights are usually trained and shining on her to where she can publish the works of others and shine the light on them.
Bridgett lives with her family in Chandler, Arizona and loves beautiful sunsets.
Press 49 is an award-winning hybrid publishing company that provides a full suite of publishing services to new authors.
We design, market, and secure global distribution for high-quality non-fiction trade books and eBooks to expand your brand and solidify you as a contender in your industry.
We get authors published faster than the average publishing company—in weeks or months, not years—with finished books of which they can be extremely proud.
Traditional publishing is an option for only about 1% of the population. Given that fact, the first question was “What are the rest of the 99% supposed to do with their brilliance that deserves publishing?”
There’s the self-publishing route, but if you do not have the time or the inclination to personally become an expert in the publishing business and you truly want your book produced with every attention to detail, then this is not the best option either.
At Press 49, we get rid of all the guesswork and handle every aspect of getting you published in a timely fashion. We believe if you are an expert in your field … if you are a consultant, a business coach, a professional speaker, an entrepreneur, or a small business owner, then others want to learn from you. When you have a book, you not only extend your reach but you extend your “teach.”
Amazon is the second most popular search engine. When people search for the challenges that your expertise solves, your name needs to show up in those search results.
Having a published book makes that happen.
Authoring a book is one of the most effective but one of the most underutilized marketing tools anyone can have to perfectly position themselves as the answer to their ideal clients’ challenges. And at Press, we believe everyone—not just celebrities or those with massive followings—deserves to have a legacy and have seats at tables that you are afforded by being a published author.
Everyone has a genius. Everyone has a message of value. If you want to publish your work so you can impact your community and the world, then we are ready to get to work for you. Let’s do this!
See what our clients are saying about working with Press 49 and the owner, Bridgett McGowen-Hawkins.
“Bridgett and her team were consummate professionals with an elevated eye for edit and design. I highly recommend (and have done so many times) Press 49 to authors who want their book to leave a lasting impact.”
—CHRISSY DAS