#034 - Are You Jumping to Conclusions

Hey friends, this is Shelly Hits. And in this episode I want you to really reflect and think back over maybe the last quarter, the last few months and think like, are you jumping to conclusions when it comes to writing self publishing and marketing your book? So yesterday we talked about what story are you telling yourself now with that story, are you jumping to a conclusion like, oh, no one's will read my book book, you know, why should I even try? You know, and so that's going to shut you down. I will tell you that kind of story or jumping to that conclusion, it will not make, it will not motivate you to want to put your butt in that chair and write your book. Because writing a book is hard, right? Or with marketing, oh, no one will buy my book. Why, why should I, you know, why should I even try Jumping to that conclusion is going again to keep you from even wanting to put any time and effort into marketing. Marketing takes time. It's like parenting, you know, I mean, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And too many times what I see is that authors give up too soon because you jump to conclusions. You do your initial book launch and then you think, oh well, that's it, you know, no one else is buying. And actually we recently had a Christian Book Academy member post in our private group, actually I think it was yesterday. And she was asking about this very fact. You know, she had a big splash when she first released her book and she reached out to our friends and family and her local community, her library and, and all of these things and she sold about 70 books, which is great. And now it just seems barely anything is happening. And that's where we recommend that you have a 90 day goal focus for each quarter of what you're gonna focus on for marketing. Now it doesn't mean you're not going to do other things, but I give you lots of ideas in our clarity call training that's in our orientation module in Christian Book Academy. And you don't have to watch the video, you can just download the workbook and look at this, the ideas that I have for you on those goals and you have, you know, just ask God for wisdom of what to focus on this quarter and then our book promotion plan workshop again, you don't have to watch the entire video. You can actually download the workbook and it gives you 27 book marketing ideas. But it also, I also lead you through a process of how to figure out what marketing activities are best for you, for your audience. And you'll, you'll do a book Marketing audit as well in that workshop. And so like I was talking about in yesterday's episode, these Headsplits podcasts are fun for me. Like I'm realizing these are, these really feel easy and fun and I love just being able to share things in real time and so what, what works best for you? But coming back to the the theme of today's podcast, where are you jumping to conclusions? I recently went on vacation. C.J. and I went and visited my family in Florida. And now my whole family is there for part of the year. My mom and stepdad still go back and forth to Ohio. So right now my entire family is down there. My dad currently lives with my sister and then my mom was down there as well. So I got to see my entire family and I was so looking forward to it. We were initially not planning on going down there for the holidays and we kind of decided last minute to plan something after Christmas over New Year. And I just, I let my team have the main holidays off and I kind of held down the fort, so to speak, and then I took that time off. Well, anyways, I was looking forward to it so much. And then I don't know if you were.

Listening to the news or if you saw anything at all about this, but there was a huge winter storm and there were tons of cancellations of flights. And we fly with Southwest and they in particular had a huge, what they call, what the news and media and stuff were calling a meltdown. Apparently their system for keeping track of their employees, their planes, you know, all of the behind the scenes admin stuff for that side of things has not been updated for years. And it just, it all just kind of broke down during this because not only did did they have to cancel all these fights due to weather, it was during the busiest travel time of the year. So it was like the perfect storm for something like this to happen. Well, anyways, what ended up happening is they ended up canceling flights for days after that so that they could get caught up, they could get things back in order and, and they are planning now to update those systems, believe me. Oh my goodness. But they canceled our flight. And initially I was jumping to conclusions. Like I in the past it's been easy for me to quote, unquote, catastrophize. So that's a term that they use in the counseling world. Like when you jump to a conclusion that the worst case scenario is going to happen.

Know I was just so looking forward to this trip. And so when we found out it was on Tuesday, we found Out. We were supposed to fly out on Thursday. That whole day, I just. I gave in, I think, to my emotions and jumping to the conclusions of, are we even going to get out there? How's this going to work? And part of the reason was because my sister and her husband work in a school, Christian school, the school my nieces attend. And then my nieces were getting ready, you know, to go back to school. So we only had a short window of time, a few days that we were going to be there before they had to go back. And I felt like all of those days were just lost, you know, and the. The. The near. The. The first day we could get a plane ticket was Monday. So we were supposed to fly out on Thursday was, you know, the next. You know, the first available week of mine was on Monday. My sister, you know, and teachers and everything went back to school on Wednesday. We were supposed to, you know, have a Christmas gathering and my dad's birthday's on New Year's and celebrate his birthday and, you know, just. And just wanting to be together. And I thought, oh, my goodness, all of the plans are ruined. You know.

Jumping to conclusions and catastrophizing. I got through that day. And, you know, the Lord is. Is gentle with us and. And he continues to help us to grow. And I have grown in my mental health so much over the last few years, and things that would have taken me down for days or a week previously, I can rebound from quicker now. This. It. It was. It was a tough day, Tuesday. But I feel like Wednesday I woke up, I had a different perspective. I reconnected with the Lord. I just really was praying. We just started praying, right? And it was interesting because I jumped to a conclusion that was wrong. Actually. This ended up being our best trip maybe ever with my family. C.J. just kept checking. And, you know, I think it was the Lord, too. He allowed, you know, for us to see that there were a couple seats that opened up on Saturday.

So, you know, with Southwest, you can change your ticket at any time. So there could, you know, could always be things that move around. Even if it says one day that there's no seats, you know, maybe they got people on an earlier flight, and now it's opened up seats on, you know, that Saturday flight. But you. You kind of have to watch because you just never know. So C.J. was watching and he was refreshing and checking. And sure enough, we were able to get tickets on Saturday. And not only was it a better time to leave, so we were leaving, like, at 10am instead of like 5:30 in the morning or no, 9am or something. But instead of 5:30am in the morning, when you fly out at 5:30am in the morning, even if the airport's 20 minutes away, you've got to get up early and like, not get all your sleep. And so anyways, the timing was better because we were able to get a full night's sleep and, you know, still get there. But we were able to do everything that we wanted to do. Like, it literally, like almost brings me to tears thinking about this. And I'm actually glad I'm recording this so that I can look back and remember God's goodness in the midst of what seemed like such a horrible thing, you know, And I mean, yes, there were people that got caught in that Southwest thing that spent four days in the airport with a one year old. I mean, the stories and the things, it was horrible. And I, you know, I know that sometimes we go through hard times and, and sometimes, you know, God uses things in different reasons, you know, for different reasons. But in our particular case, I jumped to the conclusion it was going to be horrible. I was reading all the news stories. I was, oh, just like, oh, we're not gonna get to spend any time. I got to actually spend time with my sister every day. When we were on this trip, believe it or not, part of it was after they went back to school. My niece had some basketball games. So we were able to go and sit with her at the basketball game and connect with her there. But we also went and we were able. My mom and I were able to help her get ready her room ready for her fifth graders. And oh my goodness, I spent like an hour and a half, two days helping her just organize her room and do things. And I was exhausted. I'm like, how do teachers do it? I am so proud of my sister and she is amazing. I don't know, I don't know how elementary school teachers do it. But anyways, I digress. So I. We were able to connect really deeply this time with my nieces. And that was so special. And anyways, just so many good things happened and we just had such a great time.

Plus.

By going two days later, I was able to get a bunch of work done for a promotion that I'm doing for, excuse me, Christian Book Academy in January. And you'll only get this promotion if you've purchased one of our either a marketing workshop or the most recent.

Conference, the All Access Pass for collaborations. But anyways, we're doing a special promotion and I Was able to. To get all of that done on Thursday and Friday. Delegate it to my team. They were still off, but delegate to my team so they could do their part while I was gone. So awesome. Because when I come back, yes, it is overwhelming. Yes. You know, there's a lot to do, but I didn't have to, like, jump right into, like, ah, I've got to get this, you know, promotion thing done. So that was. That was good.

But we got notice, and Southwest is doing their best to regain their reputation, to make things right for their customers. And we got a message that they were giving us $25,000 or $25,000. I wish 25,000 extra points each for everything that happened. That's 50,000 points. Our trip to Florida was 26,000 points. So it was almost like we got to go to our trip on our trip to Florida for free. Plus, it'll help us to purchase tickets in the future.

Southwest definitely regained our trust by doing that. And it also showed me it was. It's just reminded me that sometimes we jump to a conclusion and we don't really see the big picture of how it's all going to work out. What if instead of worrying and, you know, spending time looking at, you know, the news or social media or what are other people doing or what's this and that, what if we spend our time in prayer, begin praying that God would intervene in this situation? And, you know, it's so easy to make a judgment of whether something is good or bad, and we may not know yet in the moment whether what, what, what the outcome will be, what God will do, how it will all work out. Now, this worked out for us. And like I said, I know it did not work out for a lot of people, but I could have spent so much time and energy just like.

Basically crying, you know, or, you know, in despair or anxiety or worry. And yet it all worked out. So anyways, what areas are you jumping to conclusions and where can you stay open to what God wants to do in your life? You know, if you're a fiction novelist, it's all about the plot twist, right?

And so many times there are plot twists. There are plot twists and how God's gonna. Gonna, you know, help you to finish writing your book and provide for you the. The finances to publish your book or to connect with the right publisher or to really find the marketing techniques that work for you to connect with your readers. And so I just want to pray for you, Lord. Thank you so much that you are always working, even when we don't see it. And even when we don't feel it, you are working. I thank you right now for every person listening. I pray that whatever they're going through, Lord, that they would count it all joy, as James chapter one says, because the testing of our faith develops steadfastness, and steadfastness makes us mature and complete. And I just pray that you would bring about good in the difficult situations they're walking through right now regarding their writing, publishing and marketing, and help them to stand steady when those battles come, when those. When those things happen. And instead of crumbling in defeat and despair and giving in to emotions, Lord, I pray that they would fix their eyes on you. Yes, we need to feel the feelings. Yes, we need to process the things. And yet come, always return to you. Come back to you and anchor our hearts to you. And Lord, just to leave the outcome to you. And instead of jumping to a conclusion, waiting to see what you're gonna do because you typically have something else up your sleeve, there may be a plot twist in a way that you work it out that we don't see yet. So we pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen. Amen. Friends, I hope that this encouraged you. And it just, like I said, I mean, it almost just brought me to tears just thinking and about all that ended up happening on this trip. And it could have even been, you know, partially the. The enemy trying to keep us from getting to Florida, you know, because initially I almost thought, well, maybe we just don't go, like, you know, if we're not going to be able to be there during the time that they're off. And my sister said, shelly, sometime is better than no time together. And there was just some really special things that happened with my nieces and with my family and everything. So I'm just really, really grateful. So, anyways, I will talk to you in the next episode. Bye.