#003 - Overwhelmed? Give Yourself Permission to Do Things in Layers

Whether you're writing, publishing, or marketing your book, are you feeling a bit overwhelmed? This is one of the things that I hear most often from the writers we work with. We've been mentoring writers since 2010. We have been writing our own books and publishing since 2008. And so we've been doing this a long time. And I myself get into that place too, where I start to feel overwhelmed. And so this is just a nice little tip for you. Today you have permission to do things in layers, so you don't have to do everything at once. So what does this look like? Well, there's a certain author that I follow online and she released her book, had a big launch, did all the things, but I just noticed this week she just released a leader's guide. I didn't see this before and I read the book, I have both the Kindle and the hardback copy. And I, I think she just waited until later. And so it made me think about this idea of doing things in layers, that sometimes we feel this pressure that we have to do everything now. Like maybe you're feeling pressure that you need to get endorsements for your book. Guess what? You don't need that. First of all, that's just an optional thing. But if you are self publishing or independently publishing, you can always add that later. And so, you know, you have the option to always edit your book later, later, so you could add an endorsement to your book later if you're feeling the pressure to get a lead magnet so you can put that link in your book. You know what, sometimes done is better than perfect. And so getting your book out there, getting some feedback, finding out what your audience is actually interested in, what kind of lead magnet would actually be most effective. And then you can go back, like I said, edit the book, add that back in later if you're wanting to do a leader's guide. And we have training on this in Christian Book Academy on how to make your book interactive. And then I also provide a template for you on how to create a leader's guide and a Canva template in our book marketing shop. So those resources are available for you. But if you want to add a leader's guide, it really helps with bulk sales. And that's what has really helped my book. Broken crayons still color is A lot of people will buy it in bulk for book studies. And so if you feel like, oh, I want to have a leader's guide, I just really feel like this is going to be good for my book. Guess what? You can do it later. So this particular author, she created this really beautiful PDF, a leader's guide. It's just really a helpful thing. And she's actually going to be really targeting different businesses, corporations and in a different niche obviously than most of us. I mean, some of you may be in that niche, but. But it was just really well done and she did it later. I mean, I think it's been, oh, six months since her book launch or more, I don't know. But I just want to tell you right now, write yourself a permission slip, get out a piece of paper, a post it note if you need, and give yourself permission to do things in stages, in layers. Whether it's marketing, marketing is always, there's always something to do, right? I have been doing this full time in our business since 2011, so 11 years. And there are still things I'm adding in, I'm improving, I'm doing differently. And there's layers upon layers. Even for Christian Book Academy right now we're making a lot of changes and just updating things and making it better. But if I felt like I had to do that from the very beginning, I would have never launched the membership. So that's my tip for you today. Take a nice deep breath and say, where are you putting pressure on yourself to have everything done at once? If you're launching your book, maybe you don't need to do all the things. There are so many things that you can do to launch your book. But maybe you just focus on the, you know, one main part of it or the thing that's most, you know, has been most effective for your audience. Or you just try something. You can always do a promotion later, do a relaunch later. You can. There's just, I, I just want to give you permission to take the pressure off and say, okay, I'm going to do the most important tasks right now and if these other things don't get done, it's okay. Trust God with the outcome. He is the God of the outcome. And so I hope that this encouraged you today to give yourself permission to do things in layers. Again. My name is Shelly Itz. Thanks for listening in to this edition of the Hit Splits.