How to Find More Time Using the L.E.A.D. Process

This is episode 23 of Author Audience.

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 and 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 about how to find more time using my lead process. Lead is an acronym that I'm going to explain more about in this episode. My name is Shelly Hitz and 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. 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 God has given you a message to share with the world. The question is, are you ready to shine?

It's time for this week's Center Stage Spotlight training. 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. As we near the end of the year, I think a topic that's on many of our minds is planning for the new year Productivity, setting goals. And I'm so excited to share with you in this episode how to find more time using my lead process. Today's podcast is episode 23, and I know this is going to bring you one step closer to getting your message to more people because just imagine if you save even 10 minutes in a day, that will equal over 60 hours in a year. Within 60 hours, you can accomplish so many different things. So I hope you really not only listen to this training, but put it to action because I want you to be prepared to shine. The lead process is L, E A D. I'm going to go through each one of them. The first one is locating. Locating is what I call doing a brain dump. So you're going to just go ahead and put everything that's on your mind, everything that you have to do, on to paper. I like to do this writing it out with paper and pen or else on my whiteboard. I think it's usually best to do it in this way. There's something about writing it out and having that tactile feedback that really helps. So what I recommend is sitting down and setting a timer for about 15 minutes. And just say 10 or 15 minutes and just write out everything you're doing right now. Write out everything you're doing for business. Write out all the projects you're working on. Write out all the volunteer activities you have. Write out all the responsibilities you have at home and just write out everything. Just write a list. Don't leave anything out. Just write everything down. That's locating. So you're doing that brain dump. You're getting everything out of your brain onto paper. Now, I love doing this for even just specific projects. So if you feel stuck in a project, this is something to do too. If you feel stuck in your book, this is something to do when you're outlining your book. If you're stuck in any area of your life, this is a great strategy to use to do a brain dump. It's like a brainstorm, just writing everything out. So that's the first step. An L is locating. It's the lead acronym. E is eliminating. Now, this is the painful part. You know, when you prune a rose bush or you prune different plants, it says that they'll be able to grow and flourish even more. The Bible even talks about this in John 15, that we're, you know, to have that pruning and anything that's not bearing fruit, get rid of it. Well, I want you now to look at that list that you wrote out and look at everything you're doing what is not bearing fruit or what is not supporting your main goals right now. There may be some things that you need to eliminate. And I want to tell you from personal experience, it is painful to do this at times. I had to do a lot of this over the last few years as I got more focused into really helping authors and entrepreneurs, speakers to get their message to more people. I had to let go of some things. I had to let go of partnerships, I had to let go of websites, I had to let go of products. I had to let go of so much. But you know what happens when you eliminate. It frees up time and it allows you to have time to focus on what your main goals are. So I encourage you to find at least one thing you can cross off that list. Maybe it's a volunteer activity, maybe it's something else that you're doing right now that it's really not.

Helping you accomplish your goals. I talk to a lot of people that are on a ton of social media sites and they're really not getting a lot of return on their investment because they're doing too much. When we're spread out thin, then we're just doing everything a little bit. But when you're really focused, you're able to do a lot of things. You're able to do one thing with a lot of focus and have a lot more results. So the elimination phase is crucial. Set a timer again for maybe five minutes and go through your list and see what can you eliminate. The next step is automate. So automate. I love this step because there's so many tools now, there's so many apps, there's so many things you can do to automate. A lot of the tasks that you do every single day. I want you to think about what can you automate. Maybe there are even things that you're not even thinking about, like groceries. You can sign up for Amazon prime and you can get onto a service that they send you certain things every month or they have different services now. Like I've been trying out hello Fresh this week and they'll send you all of the meal planning and the ingredients for your meals and then all you have to do, you know, you just cook it. So it saves you time in going to the grocery store and, you know, doing that meal planning and all that stuff. Now time sometimes equals money, so sometimes you have to pay for these automations. But I know a lot of authors that are just sending out weekly or monthly newsletters to their email list instead of using autoresponders. You know why it says auto in the name? It's because it's a way to automate. You set it up once and it markets for you forever as long as you continue to have that email list. I love that. I love doing work one time and then to have it continue to work for me ongoing. That's what's happening with writingweek.com I've created this challenge, but it will continue to bring me new leads. It will continue to bring me potentially new members of Author Audience Academy ongoing. So think about what are things that you could do one time and then automate and have it continue to work for you. There's really cool sites like ifttt, you can set up automation through that or Zapier. There's different things you can set up on there and there's tons of things that you can automate, whether it's your subscriptions or your member signups. I had somebody in Author Audience Academy just recently say that she is delivering her product manually. She just has a PayPal button and then she's delivering that product manually. Well, you can use systems to automatically send those Products, those digital products to your customers. There's something as easy as gumroad.com or sells S E L Z dot com. Those are very easy to get started, very low key, and they will automate the process for you. Yes, you pay a small percentage to them, but it's worth it. That way you're not behind your computer. If you get sick, your business stops. What can you automate? What can you do to help automate the things that you're doing every day? That's the A. The L is locating. That's the key part of this process. The brain, the brainstorm or the brain dump. The E is eliminating. That's the painful process. But it's so important. A is automating. What can you automate to free up more time? And then the D is delegating. So there are certain things that each one of us are doing that we could pay someone a small fee to do for us. And I have to say I'm one of those people that I've resisted this for a long time just because I think I don't have the money to, to pay someone. But what it does is then it takes up my time. Then I don't have the time to do the things that are the higher, you know, the higher dollar task. Creating programs, creating content, creating new books. Those types of things are the things that only I can do. What is it that only you can do? And what are some things that you can start to delegate if you want to get your feet wet? The very first thing that I started to do with delegation and it didn't feel overwhelming, it didn't feel like it was too much, was use fiverr.com for $5, you can start having people create images for you. I just hired someone to do a really cool infographic for writingweek.com so they should be able to be finished with the final touches here soon. But you can hire people to do graphics for you. You can hire people to do video editing for you. There's different things that you can hire there. Then once you're ready to take another step, you can hire on a project by project basis on sites like Upwork.com or OnlinejobsPH OnlinejobsPH are people that are working from the Philippines. Many times you can hire people for as low as $4 an hour from another country that will do work for you. And it takes a little more time to find the right person to write up the job description and to do the interviews. But.

You can definitely get started at not a huge cost what can you delegate? Maybe you can delegate things to your family. Have you thought of that? Maybe they're willing to help you with certain tasks. Maybe they're willing to help you with the laundry or cleaning or different things around the house. Because.

When you're able to have more time to do profit generating tasks for your business, it benefits your whole family. I heard one person say that she asked her high school daughter to do some graphics for her and she did those graphics without any money up front. But she says once my product launches and once I have money and get paid from that product launch, I'll pay you either $5 or $10 an image. I don't know. It was a certain amount. And so she paid her daughter later. But family a lot of times are willing to work in those ways too. So this process is called the lead process. The acronym is L E A D L is locating. That's where you do your brain dump and your brainstorm. You get everything out of your brain onto paper or a whiteboard or a mind map or something like that. I prefer writing it out. I think there's something powerful with that. The E is eliminating. What from that list can you eliminate? Because we're all doing a million things a day, you know, it feels that way anyways. We have a lot on our plates. What is something that is just not contributing to your focus, to your goals that you can either eliminate for a season or maybe permanently? Like I said, I've shut down websites, I've ended partnerships, I've discussed, done all sorts of very, very difficult things in order to move forward in my business and to have that focus. Then a is automating. What can you automate in your business? There's so many tools, so many apps, so many things now available to us that can help us. And the final one is de delegating. What are some things you can delegate? Choose at least one thing that you can eliminate, one thing you can automate, and one thing you can delegate. And I guarantee that you will begin to free up more time. Thank you guys so much for joining me again. My name is Shelly Hitz. I'm an Author coach@shellyhitz.com I'll see you next time.

So you're listening to a replay of a training I did on Periscope. Now the cool thing about this is I recorded the video on Periscope, I edited it, it's now on my YouTube channel and it's in a paid membership area where I teach this process as well. And now it's on My podcast. So talk about repurposing, right? That is a topic for another podcast. But now it's time for your take action tip. I want you to actually do this process with me. So if you can see 10, 20, maybe 25 or 30 minutes, just set aside 25 or 30 minutes. So you'll set a timer for 10 minutes and do the brain dump of everything you're doing. Then you'll set the timer for five minutes. You'll cross off anything off the list that can be eliminated that does not support your main goals right now. Okay. I want you to cross off at least one thing. Okay, you got it. You're crossing something off. I hope so. Now you'll set a timer for five minutes and list at least one thing you can automate. And then finally set a timer for five more minutes and find at least one thing you can delegate. That is my challenge for you this week is to take action and to actually go through the process. I want you to also get all the show notes@authoraudience.com 23. That's the number 23. Authoraudience.com 23. And the reason I want you to go there and get these show notes is because I've included the PDF download for my lead process worksheet. So I want you to get that worksheet because then that will help you to go through this process process and be able to take action.

Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week's Godly Games segment.

The scripture for this episode comes from Matthew 25, verse 2. This is at the end of the parable of the Talents. I think many of you are familiar with that parable. If you're not, you can go back and watch read the entire chapter or the entire parable in Matthew, chapter 25. But this particular verse talks about.

Being rewarded for your productivity. Says for everyone who has more will be given, and he will have abundance. But from him who does not have even what he has will be given taken away.

And in the parable, you know, it talks about the different workers and one was given ten talents, one was given five talents, one was given one talent, and the one that had ten talents multiplied it and was productive and used their time effectively and they were rewarded for that. The person who only had one talent, it says he was afraid and so he hid that talent and in the end it was taken away from him. And so I don't know where you're at in your life right now, what season you're in right now. But I encourage you to seek God and to seek his will for your life.

To become productive in the gifts and the abilities that he's given you. This lead process is just one one way that you can do that. And so I encourage you to not just be afraid and let fear run your life or let obstacles get in your way.

But to allow the gifts that God has given you to shine, to multiply them and to pray and ask God for wisdom as you go through this lead prayer process.

It's my hope and my goal that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to being able to shine and reach more people with your message. I'm excited to hear the results that you're getting with the lead process and I would love to work with you personally if you would like to join me. I'm going to have a virtual planning retreat coming up. Whether you're listening to this right as it's released or years later, you can join us@planitday.com There will be replays and training in the members area later. Just go to planitday p L-A-N-I-T-A y.com and to learn more about being able to truly be plan your next year for the most success. I'd love to be able to help you in that process. And also remember to go and download my Lead Process worksheet when you get the show notes@authoraudience.com 23 and I'll see you next time.

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.