#173: How to Prioritize

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Do you sometimes wonder where you should focus? You have so many ideas that you just don't know where to start. Hi, my name is Shelley Hitz. I'm an author, coach, and the owner of authoraudienceacademy.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. This last September, I was the keynote speaker at the Christian Writers Conference. It's called Inscribe Christian Writers Conference in Canada. And as I was checking out of the hotel, there were some people there from the conference and they asked me a question. One of the ladies is like, Shelly, it was such great information. It was so good. I just don't know where to start. I have so much to do. What should I do first? And it was a great question. And all of a sudden this analogy popped into my head that she said was very helpful and so I thought I would share it with you. It's as if you have several children. You love them all. You don't love any one of them more than the others. However, one of your children is graduating from high school that year. You have to spend a lot more time, money and energy helping that child to prepare for graduation, have a graduation party, potentially prepare for going to college or prepare for a job or whatever is the next phase for them. And there is a ton of time and energy spent on that one child. Now, does that mean that you love any of your other children less because you're focusing on that one child during that season? Absolutely not. What it means is you're helping them to succeed in that season of life. It's essential. And so in that season, there does need to be a focus on that particular child. And in the same way, sure, we're going to have a lot of different projects, we're going to have a lot of different things going on. But I really believe that there's going to be seasons where we're going to focus on one project more than the others. In my training plan it day, it's Inside Author Audience Academy. I teach this concept and I teach it in a way where I have you choose a 90 day goal and that is your priority for the 90 days. Does that mean you're not going to work on anything else during that time? Absolutely not. Just like with your children, you're still going to pay attention to Your other children, you're still going to clothe them and feed them and help them do what they need to do too. But your focus is going to be on the child that is graduating. And in the same way that times have several different projects going on. But there's seasons. And for each 90 day period of time, I recommend that you have a focus. You have one big project that you're focusing on for that 90 days. Because what I find happens in my own life as well as the authors that I coach. If you try to focus on too many things at the same time, you're only going to have a little impact in every area. Whereas if you really have one big focus for, for the 90 days, you're going to see a huge, huge accomplishment and achievement done for that one area. And you're probably going to be able to see some amazing results because you've chosen to focus for a season. I have done this many, many, many times in my career and I really believe it is one of the key reasons that I'm able to be so productive. And I recently had one of my author audience academy members ask me, shelley, how do you get so much done? How is it that you do so much? And I said, I really believe it is because I've gotten good at prioritizing the things that I need to do. So I already have created a podcast for you and a training for you on the high impact tasks I recommend for you as an author. You can actually find that training@shellyhits.com impact that's S-H-E-L-L-E-Y H I-T Z.com impact. You can listen to the audio, read the transcript or watch the video there. So go watch that training or listen to that training and know that a key, key factor to highly successful people is that they learn to prioritize what are the things that are most important for you to reach your goals. So first of all, you have to identify what is your goal. If your goal is to finish your book, then guess what? Your 90 day goal probably needs to be to finish your book. If your goal is to sell more books, then that could mean a wide variety of goals. So there's a ton of things you can do. For marketing, I personally recommend starting with the author Automation System. That's a training and a system that I have given to you inside authoraudienceacademy.com it's a system I use myself and it's once you have it in place, it works for you 24, 7 but there's a ton of things you can do. Right now I am doing marketing. This is going to be on my podcast, my YouTube channel and my blog and eventually it will go out to social media. And so I'm reaching you with this information to let you know about authoraudienceacademy.com I would love to serve you as your author coach inside the academy. And by the way, if you didn't know, I have opened back up the monthly option and so come check it out and join us. I would love to have you in the academy if it's the right fit for you at the right season for you. What? But when it comes to marketing, you can be doing a million different things. You can get caught up at that bright shiny object syndrome where you're just trying this and then this and then this and then this. What if you focused and you prioritized one aspect of your marketing for 90 days to see the results you can get. Now I'm not guaranteeing you're going to get a certain result, but you won't know until you try. I also created a training for Author Audience Academy members all about how to prioritize. And it's really the step by step of what I have done. And it was in response to my members question of how do you get so much done? I literally sat down and thought, what is it that I do? How is it that I choose the tasks that I'm going to work on? How is it that I prioritize? And I have included that all inside a video training. It's only about 20 minutes but members are just loving it. I've had members say, shelly, I needed this so much or you created this just for me. This is so helpful. And so if you're an Author Audience Academy member, you'll find that training inside the Start Here module. What I want you to do is I want you to succeed, I want you to cross that finish line. Obviously the first high impact task that I recommend and it's in the other training that I shared with you to pray, pray and ask God. Ask him for what he has for you to do those God ideas. I also have a podcast on that, it's titled if you need more money, consider doing this. And it's basically talking about praying for God ideas and then to prioritize, prioritize and focus. Just like if you're a parent, you're going to focus on different children at different seasons in their life. I want you to think about prioritizing different projects at different seasons. Now that doesn't mean that you're completely pushing everything aside and never coming back to it. No, you'll be coming back to it, and you may even be doing some of that as you're prioritizing your big project, but make your big project the majority of your time. That's one reason I have not been very active on my podcast this fall. I just had way too much going on. I launched a new brand@yourcreativeadventure.com with a brand, brand new membership area for all my art classes and I was traveling and speaking quite a bit and so I just had to prioritize. I love sharing trainings, I love being on my podcast and connecting with you, but I just couldn't do everything. Was it that I was not going to ever come back and do podcasts again? No, absolutely not. Here I am. So be gentle to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Realize you can't do everything all the time. Extremely well. We have to sometimes prioritize and it's going to be different for every single person. If you're in Author Audience Academy, go watch my new training, how to Prioritize. It's in the Start Here module and post any questions you have for that in our private Facebook group. If you're not an Author Audience Academy, I'd love for you to join. You can get started for as little as $39 a month. Just go to authoraudienceacademy.com you'll get instant access to all trainings, plus access to me and our community of hundreds of authors in our private Facebook group. So I hope you take this training to heart and that you begin to prioritize. You get a ton of things done and most importantly, you get done what God has for you to get done in this season of your life, whatever that might be. This season may be a season to focus on family for you. It may be a season of self care. It doesn't always mean that we're going to be growing, going, going, grinding, grinding, grinding. Sometimes we need those breaks and I've needed those as well, especially this year. But I hope that you enjoyed this training and I will see you next time. Bye Bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Author Audience. I would like to invite you to attend one of my free trainings on three proven book writing formulas. Every nonfiction author needs to know this is a fun and fast way to write a nonfiction book, but also a book that you're proud of. Plus, I will give you two free gifts just for attending. No credit card required. First, you'll get my 10 nonfiction book title templates and you'll also get my ebook titled Brilliant brainstorming. It's a 28 page ebook and both of these bonuses are yours at no charge. Just for joining us for the training, you can sign up for my free training by going to shellyhitz.com formulas. That's Shellyhitz S H E L L E Y H I-T Z.com formulas. This training and the two bonuses are free and I would love to help you write your next nonfiction book.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.