#041 - Create a Repeatable System

Hey friends. Welcome back to this episode of Hit Splits. My name is Shelly Hits, the owner and founder of Christian Book Academy. And I'm so glad that you're here. Just wanted to try to keep this one short and just talk about creating a repeatable system. So I have been in the weeds of setting up the systems for running and hosting a one day conference. This is different than the conferences we've done in the past in September where we've had multiple days and multiple speakers and everything. We will have one day, it'll be seven to eight speakers. We'll have a kickoff call on Zoom in the morning, a closing call on Zoom that evening, and that's it. But there are still a lot of things that go into home hosting an event like this. And so what I've been doing is I've been setting up systems. So what are systems? Systems are.

Template, a checklist, a bullet point, you know, step by step process of like you're gonna do this and then you're gonna do this and then next time that we do a one day conference, cause I wanna do them more often. So instead of having one big conferen days, I want to have multiple one day conferences throughout the year focused on very specific topics. Less overwhelming, higher impact hopefully for you and less, you know, stressful for me. The last conference we hosted was amazing, but it was really stressful for me and I went back to my business meetings with God. I was like, okay, God, I don't know if I can sustain this. This was a lot. So anyways, it's exciting. We're starting to plan our next one. Tentatively planning for March 9th. So if you can mark that off on your calendar. We're going to have a 11am Zoom call, a 8pm Eastern Zoom call. So those, those are eastern times and it's going to be good. This one's going to be on email marketing, but talking about creating systems. So if you're, if anything that you're, you're doing that you're going to do more than once, especially if it's going to be often, it's so good to do this. And this has been one of the things that I think has really helped me to succeed in business and as an author and to be prolific is to create these systems. So in Christian Book Academy we have created some of these systems for you. In the first draft module there is a checklist. In the self publish module there is a checklist. And now you can take our checklist and then you can use it to then create your system like Tanisia Mitchell, she is one of our members and she's published a book as a result. And she said, you know, she loved the self published module and the checklists and you know, the step by step process. But then she took that and she adapted it to what, what she ended up doing and now she can rinse and repeat and use that again for her next book. So when you're, you know, in the writing the publishing parts, there's still a lot and you, you know, there may be months or years between times that you write a book. And so it's so important to write down what you did. Like who did you use for editing, formatting, you know, book cover, you know, what steps did you take? You know, I even sometimes write like how much it cost and you know, just all the things. But I have been creating these systems and for this particular project instead of using our project management system, we used it last time and I tried to import the to do list.

For I had gotten it from another program I was part of and anyways it was kind of a mess and I mean it worked. But I think for these one day conferences I also have been part of a program where I just got a spreadsheet and I can, I created this drop down, it's either blank, you know, or it's, you know, not done or it's done or whatever and there's dates and it just is simpler. So I think, you know, I set up one of those and I edited it for the only the things that are needed for the one day conference versus the multi day conference. So how can this apply to you? Well, you might have a different checklist for a Kindle only book project versus one that's Kindle and print. So you know, you have a more robust system if you're also doing a print book. Sometimes you just want to do a Kindle book. We released our Kingdom marketing mindset for authors. Just tiny little ebook, you know and some of you downloaded it and read it and really enjoyed it. And yet I just, I, I just said let's just do it in Kindle, you know, let's just get it out there and have it available. And so sometimes you just want Kindle and that's going to be a different checklist. And that's where we have our Kindle ebook only module and Christian Book Academy that you can go in there and there's separate training in there for you. But.

For this conference, you know, I set up a Google sheet so it's like, you know, one that's one system I have. I set up an airtable tracker to keep track of all the speaker stuff and that's another system that I have. And then what will happen every time that we have a conference? I'll just duplicate those. And then I, I have a Google Doc where I said, you know, to set up a new one day conference. And then I, I, I, I wrote down steps, you know, do this, do this, you know, after you duplicate the AIRT database, make sure to update the due date, the due dates, the, you know, links to certain things. But then, so I have all of that in a Google Doc. So next time, guess what, I'm just going to go in, I'm going to look at that Google Doc, I'm going to say, okay, I've got to duplicate this, got to duplicate that, got to change these few things, I'm done, we're ready. And then I can start to pitch the speakers and then hand most of the rest of it off to my virtual assistants. So it takes longer, takes longer the first time and I have been in the weeds this week of just setting up those systems and I'll tweak it as I go. So what I'm doing is as I'm realizing, like I need to tweak something or I need to add something or I want to change something. I make sure to change it to the template or the thing I'm using for March, but then also update the template that I created so that the next time the template that I duplicate is also updated. And you know, like I said, it takes more, a little more time, it takes a little more energy. But I will be so grateful and so will you. You will be so grateful that you've done this, whether you're doing it for writing your first draft, for publishing, for marketing. You know, even if you're, you're doing a book launch and you don't think you're ever going to do a book launch this way again. Document what you do. You never know how you're going to use that again. You may use it to help another author. You may create a product that you sell to, you know, tell people how you did it and this is, you know, your templates and things like that. Or you may be launching a book again and want to do something similar and then you have that checklist and can go back to it again and again, however you want to create that checklist. It can be a written checklist with paper and pen. It doesn't have to be technology, it doesn't have to be anything fancy. Just get it out of your head, onto paper, and in a place that you can see it. So next time, you don't have to use that brain power to figure out the checklist again. You already have the checklist. You can use your brain power in other creative ways. And that's what I'm setting myself up for. Let's set ourselves up for success. Amen. All right. I hope that this was encouraging to you and inspired you to create your own systems and your own checklist. If you want to use some of our checklists and systems, join us@christianbookacademy.com or if you're a Christian Book Academy member, check out our main modules and look for those checklist lessons. People love it, and I think it will help you a lot. So. All right, I will talk to you in the next episode.