Giving Birth to Dreams

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.

Welcome to Author Audience where I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me as I share the turning point in my life as it relates to New Year's Day, an RV and Kindle Publishing. My name is Shelly Hitz. I'm the author of over 35 books and the list keeps growing. I've coached thousands of authors through my books, training programs, online events, seminars and more. And I'm best known for inspiring those around me to take action. So if you're an action taker, you're in the right place. I believe you have a God given message to share with the world. The question is, are you ready to shine? It's time for the Center Stage Spotlight. This is where I share training and strategies to help you grow your business or ministry through writing and publishing books, marketing online, and creating products and services to sell on the back end. I'm not just about books, but so much more. I'm here to help you connect with your audience in the best way possible. Today's podcast is episode 00 titled Giving Birth to Dreams. So before we dig into the upcoming training I have for you on procrastination to publication, I wanted to set the stage today and share with you a little more of my own story and why I'm so passionate about helping people like you. Honestly, I never considered myself a writer and I never dreamed of being a published author someday. I know 80% of people say they want to write a book, but that just wasn't me. But I always wanted to help people. I went in to the healthcare field thinking I was going to be a nurse or a doctor and I ended up becoming a physical therapist. As I was practicing physical therapy, I began to speak professionally on the weekends and on my vacations with my husband. I would take the girls, he would take the guys and we would speak to them on topics relevant to them. My heart was to share with teen girls how to find their true beauty in Christ. And as I was speaking with them, I realized I wanted to have resources to share with them. After that 45 minute or one hour session was finished and so I began a website Find you'd True Beauty.

I'll never forget the day in 2008 when our friend and ministry partner Philip Telfer of Mediatalk101.org showed us his self published book, what Wouldn't Jesus Do? When I held his paperback book in my hands, I was impressed. It looked and felt great. That day became a defining moment not only for our ministry, but also for my career. I could do this, I thought, and I had to find out more. For the next few months, I researched everything I could about self publishing. And by the year's end, I was a published author for the first time. With my book mirror, am I looking deeper to find you'd true beauty? You see, I was a speaker before I was an author. But with recent advancements in technology, anyone can get published in print, ebook and audio formats. People started asking me, how did you publish your book? And little by little, God began to lead me into what I do now, which is helping others publish and market their books. As an author coach, I practiced for 12 years as a physical therapist before I took the big leap in 2011 and completely resigned my job. That was one of the hardest things I've ever done. To give up that regular paycheck, the respect that I got in my career, and and to really do what I felt God was calling me to do. And it was confusing because once I resigned my job as a physical therapist, my husband and I set out in an RV and we were planning to be speaking all across the country in youth events and conferences, camps, and everything just kind of started drying up. It was confusing because I quit my job so that we would have the ability to travel and speak full time. And then all of a sudden the doors slammed shut. I won't kid you, I was really struggling and wrestling with God on this. God, what is going on? But you know how they say hindsight is 20 20? Well, when all of those speaking engagements stopped coming in and we couldn't even get people to bring us in to speak for free, we're like, okay, what do we do now? And that was in January 2012, just a few months after I resigned my job.

We were living in the RV in Florida and we decided to spend New Year's Day with my grandparents. We were watching football, having fun, sitting on the couch. I remember it vividly. And I was checking email on my phone and I saw email about a Kindle publishing course and I showed it to my husband. I said, I really feel like I'm supposed to do this. He was all for it. And so I jumped in with two feet. And 2012 was a prolific year for us. Yes, we published a few books before, but Speaking was our primary income at that time. However, 2012 it flip flopped and we published 23 books books that year. Wow. I don't even know looking back how exactly that happened, but it was a matter of we needed to pay the bills. And that year publishing began to pay the bills more than speaking. We began to make thousands of dollars a month in royalties and it was my first taste for the power of Kindle publishing and publishing in general. My books have been downloaded for free over half a million times on Kindle alone as of the time of recording this podcast. And that's a powerful way to get your message to more people. But not only that, I've actually sold books. We sold over 103,000 books the last time I checked last fall. And God is using this to provide for us, but also to expand our ministry, expand our business in ways I never thought possible. My first book, back in 2008, I wrote it over the course of a year and it was from different articles on my website for teen girls. Findyourtruebeauty.com My recent book, Procrastination to Publication, I wrote in one week and it's because I've been able to develop systems that help me with that process. I have developed a method called the Ascent Method, and if you would love to learn more about that, you can get my free training@authoraudience.com I believe God has given each one of us gifts to share and messages to impact many. I saw in even a greater way this year how God has called me to help give birth to your dreams. In 2005, my oldest niece was born. My sister lived in the same town at that time and invited me to be in the delivery room. I was still working as a physical therapist at that time, so I was sitting on pins and needles all day. I was calling over and over, is she here yet? Is she here yet? I just wanted to be there so badly to see her being born. I got off work, I raced over to the hospital and I walked in the room just as the doctor was saying, here comes her head. I was able to watch the miracle of my niece Lauren being born. And to this day I say, lauren, you waited for Aunt Shelley, didn't you? Because it was one of the highlights of my life thus far, watching that miracle of birth. And I always looked forward to when I would be giving birth to my own children. However, that has not happened for me at this time. My husband and I have not been able to have children and in December 2013 I had a miscarriage it was devastating. I'm older. I just turned 40 this year. And I just, I thought maybe that was my last chance. All of 2014, I pretty much walked through numb emotionally. You might be able to relate to what I was feeling if you've had a significant grief in your own life. I was grieving the loss and what may never be. I walked through a healing process gradually over that year. And it was at the end of 2014. I remember it was the last service of the year at our church. I had a breakthrough and I sensed God saying, shelley, it's time to move on. It's time for a new season season. And I was ready. A few weeks later, I launched my new program, Author Audience Academy. And one of the things God showed me is that he is using me to give birth to dreams. I may never give birth to my own children, but he's using me to not only give birth to dreams, but birth to books that impact many. His purpose for me is so much bigger than what I ever imagined. And I want to help you. I want to help you not only give birth to your dreams and the goals that God has and the things he's prompting you to do in your business and ministry, but to help you give birth to books with powerful messages. In each of my episodes we'll have a lights camera action segment where I will give you a take action tip. So your take action tip today is to get out a note taking device or your paper and pen and write out some of the dreams that you have or the things you felt God prompting you to share with others. What kind of messages? Whether it's a message from your business and teaching people certain skills or it's your testimony or it is on a certain topic. What kind of messages do you have to share with others? Take out that pen and paper or that note taking device and write down at least three things right now.

And finally, I am a follower of Christ. That's who I am. I'm a speaker, a Christian speaker, a Christian author. I grew up as a pk, a pastor's kid. I have known what it's like to be in ministry. My husband and I were missionaries in Belize for two years from 2002 to 2004. And so my heart is especially to help pastors, ministry leaders and Christian entrepreneurs like myself get your message to more people. Therefore, I want to end each of my podcast episodes with a backstage pass or what I call a godly gain segment. And this is for those of you that want to keep Christ at the center and it's really the heart and the motivation of what we do and why we do it. You know, it's not about us, it's about Him. And each segment, I want to share a scripture, something that we can apply to our walk with Christ as we write books, grow our business market online, and reach more people with the message he's given us. So this week I wanted to share the theme verses for my business author audience. It comes from Matthew 5, 14, 16, and it says, you are the light of the world. Like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden, no one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. This is where I get the theme of let your light shine. This is where I get the theme of being able to display and to share the messages God has given us. And I did a little word search. If you haven't used blueletterbible.org before to do a word search of the original language in the Bible, I encourage you to check it out. For these verses, I looked up two different words. The first word was shine, and the Greek word for shine is lampo. This kind of reminds you of the word lamp, and it means pretty much what you think to shine.

But Strong's definition says it's a primary verb. So it's a verb, it's an action word. And it says to beam, radiate, brilliancy, give light and shine. I just love that. Radiate brilliancy. And that's what I encourage you to do as you write your books, as you grow your audience online, your platform, and as you create products and services to show, share with others. Now, the other thing I thought was really interesting is the word that you'll find for good deeds or good works, let your good deeds shine before men. That word is ergon. You know, I used to be a expert in ergonomics when I was a physical therapist. And ergon means to work. But I thought it was interesting the the outline of biblical usage. It says, business, employment, that which anyone is occupied. This is our business. This is what we do as our employment. Let your good deeds shine before men. And then it's interesting, it says, any product, whatever, anything accomplished by hand, art, industry, or mind. When we create a book, we're creating a product. It's something that's been accomplished by hand, whether it's typing out or writing out. And God wants to use that work of our hands that he does through us to give glory to Him. Because if you look back at the verses again and I'll read it again, it says in the same way, let your good deeds, that's that word, deeds, ergon, your work, your business, your employment, your products shine out for all to see so that they can praise you. No, so that everyone will praise your Heavenly Father. Our ultimate goal is that our work, our books, our products, the things we do on social media will bring glory to God. I just got chills. I don't know about you well, but that gets me excited and that is one reason I'm so passionate about helping you get your message to more people so that you can live out Matthew 5:14 16 are you ready to get started? In the next upcoming episodes, I'm going to share my training procrastination to publication based upon my book and it's going to walk you through step by step, the seven steps I recommend that you go through in order to publish your Kindle book. I'm going to give you tons of content and tons of resources so you can get started and take action. Thanks again for joining me today. I believe in you. I am so excited to see what God is going to birth through you. Make sure to connect with me online so you can let me know the steps that you take and I'll see you next week.

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.