Platform Power Up 100-Day Challenge with Jean Wise

This is episode 32 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. It's time to let your light shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet and inviting you into my community for a behind the scenes look. And what's working for authors just like you. My name is Shelly Hitz and I'm the owner of authoraudienceacademy.com and the most rewarding part of my job is helping others get results and reach their goals. And in this episode, I'm going to position the spotlight on one of my members, Jean Wise. Hi, Jean, welcome.

Hi, Shelly. Thank you for having me today.

You're so welcome. And I'm excited about this interview and just the topic that you're going to share with us about your 100 day platform challenge. It's just so fun. And so I'm going to just share just a little bit about your bio before we jump in just so people can get to know who you are. Jean is a freelance writer, speaking speaker, retreat leader. That's fun. And spiritual director. I know we all have a need for a spiritual director sometimes. She's a contributing author of devotions for six compilations published by Barber plus the solo author for Let Every Heart Prepare Him An Advent Devotion. She's published numerous magazine articles and this is kind of cool for former reporter for a local daily newspaper.

She has a blog, healthyspirituality.org, which you can find all about her. So much more. But welcome Jean. I'm so glad to have you.

Thank you, thank you.

So when I was talking to Jean, she told me about this process that she went through and she calls it the platform power up 100 day challenge. I love that because having a solid author platform is really the key, I believe, to long term success. So Jean, tell us a little bit about this whole concept and how it came about for you.

Well, actually it started, if you want to call it that way, in a failure, not a success. Yes. I had met a literary agent at one of the writers Christian Writers Conference. I went to and we really clicked and I said this is the one. I just really felt this was the one that was gonna sign me and I'd be this world famous best selling author.

So I sent her my book proposal and didn't hear, didn't hear. And just at the first part of summer, got my letter of rejection from her. Oh, I was crushed, Shelly. And it was such a sweet letter though. She was very encouraging. She said positive things about my writing. She actually went to the owner of the agency and they discussed, discussed it. So I kind of, I was, I think I was almost there, but didn't quite make her cut. Found out later she is working mainly with the big houses and her comment was, is your platform's just not big enough. Right. Yeah. And I think I was close. I don't think I was a beginner. I was kind of maybe in an intermediate, but I needed to grow my platform larger. And you know, as Christian nonfiction writers, that is a key element. So I was discouraged.

Decided, okay, I'm going to send this proposal off to another person or I was going to quit altogether. I was just kind of all over emotional for a couple weeks. And then I decided to take her words of advice to heart that what could I do to take my platform up another notch. It was around that time, I think it was a God thing more than anything. I discovered. Shelly Hitz and the Author Audience Academy just said to my husband the other day, that was the best thing I did in 2015 was to become a member of your academy, all for all the things that you've taught and shared with us.

So I love hearing that.

Thank you. And out of that, one of the modules you shared the mind map system and you shared the free mind. I think Free mind is that the name of the application we use. What I started doing was kind of brain dumping, collecting a lot of different thoughts. And then I started and I put them into a mind map and literally created a really, really complicated mind map.

The middle one, I named the platform power up 100 days challenge. Counted out my days by this time. It's about the end of summer. So it just took us to. Right about this time was the hundred days.

Awesome.

And my nodules on the side, if anybody's familiar with the mind map, you know, there's one core piece and that was the title of this platform Power Up. And then the next.

Nodules on the side were things like social media, my blog, speaking products, ebooks or books and expanding expertise. And then I just had a whole lot of to do's then branching out from there. And I think what thing that was a little bit different about this process was I ran this off every month and kind of highlighted what was going to be my priorities each month. And I picked one or two kind of big ones. You know, that was going to take some time, like writing an ebook, you know, or. And then I pick two or three smaller ones that might only take a couple hours to get done. And each month would check more off and check more off. And I've seen some success from this project, so I'm really, really pleased with this. And it started with you and your mind map system and your encouragement on that way. But some of the success I've seen, as I looked the other day, my page views have jumped quite a bit on my blog.

That's on your blog?

On my blog. And I was very.

Did they.

Was there a certain increase? Did they double? Did they. I mean, was it.

I now I want to qualify this just a little bit. I have a blog post on Advent Quotes that seems to be. It's on the first page of Google so it has a tendency to go a little wild every November. Yes. So that kind of overshadows it. But I literally tripled my page views. Some of it was that blog post, but I think some of it also was this effort.

Yeah. And I like that you're being very transparent and honest because sometimes you can just say, oh, I had 300% increase. And they don't tell you that it was this, this or this. But you obviously did have an increase. But that's also another key point. You can create blog posts around different holidays, different events, different things that can really help you to rank in Google and get traffic that time of year. On my site, training authors, I have hashtags for the holidays or holiday hashtags or I don't know, whatever. And it's going wild right now too. So.

That'S another great tip. But so your blog, your blog visitors increased. What other success did you see?

I would say my email list did grow and that was something that, yes, we wanted to see. One of the things I got into was I had never before did the offer the opt in, create something, offer an opt in. And then if they wanted that, then they could also purchase a book on Amazon. And that was the book that I produced for Author Audience Academy. It's called Monthly Musing Journals. Yay on that. And what when people opt in on the blog posts and I had this on several blog posts, they could get a PDF of some ideas of things that each month they can reflect upon. And then I put it into a journal, into a book and then this became the book that I published. And so then that became a product to sell and so that, you know, and I had never met, played with opt ins and leadpages before. So that was the amount that I have learned since I started this project. It's just been a dramatic learning curve on that and learned. And once you get used to it, it's neat to keep up. You know, you could keep that up. So I expect my email list to continue to grow.

Yeah.

So I can see it uptick. And it's especially the ones that connect through leadpages has really grown.

Well, I love what you're talking here and I think, you know, for people who are listening or who are taking this information in, it might feel just a tad overwhelming. There's so much to do. That's what authors always tell me, Shelley, I'm so overwhelmed. There's so much with the platform. But what you did was you broke it down into manageable steps. And what I love about the Mind Map is you can close certain sections so you don't have to see them so it doesn't overwhelm me. I just look at what I'm working on at that moment. But also what I see you doing, Jean, and what you just said is you built a foundation. So when you're building a house, when you're building a property, when you're building a retreat center, you lead retreats. But you think about you have to build that foundation. And so then once you have that foundation, everything else just seems to come up quick. Like if you watch people that are in the process of building a house, it seems like the foundation takes forever and then everything just like all of a sudden the walls are up and you know, everything.

Infrastructure. I'm working on the infrastructure. I said to my husband the other day, it's all behind the scenes stuff right now. And you almost had to think that was going to be my goal in this quarter or this hundred day time, that this is what was going to be my focus. Yes, I was going to work on and that's going to pay off in 2016.

Right. And what I love is I love doing work one time that continues working for me ongoing. So. So those opt ins you set up, they're going to continue to bring you new subscribers, new leads, potentially new sales with the work you did one time.

Right. I had three this morning coming across the email from two months ago. I thought, whoa. I was very, very pleased to see that continue to give.

Yes. And it's like I like to say automagically, oh, that's great work, but I love that. What did you see any other results from your 100 days so far?

The one is sort of, I'D be more personal than anything is. I have this greater sense of creativity, which I would have thought being kind of working behind the scenes. But I still was producing, I was still being creative, and it's almost empowered me. It launched me into 2016 for. I think it's going to be a year of creativity. I hope to produce more products and more ebooks and more print books and continue to grow my platform. So it's. It, like, gave me an energy, a direction.

I would say what I'm hearing is that it's like a momentum.

Yes.

Like you. You gained momentum, you started taking action. And then a lot of times, like, I've been saying this a lot lately, once you take the action, the feelings will follow, the emotions will follow.

Yes.

And you're starting to feel. Feel like, you know, it's an excitement. You're starting to see some of those results. But, you know, what advice would you give for someone who maybe is where you were 100 days ago and they're feeling really overwhelmed, they don't know where to start, like, and they just are just overwhelmed. Like, that's the main thing I think a lot of people feel. What advice would you give them?

Well, you know, when I was down there for a couple of weeks and stuff, it's kind of more in hindsight that I realized what got me out of that funk was taking action, was doing action, got me out. And so I think even if they decide one little step to do, you know, here I kind of created this whole plan and it was a little overwhelming when I first looked at it.

Yeah.

I shared it with a couple friends and they kind of like, whoa.

Like you said, you just take, okay, in the month of September or in the next two weeks or in the next week, I'm going to do this. I think one step at a time. We'll get. Get them there. I think it's the action that'll get them out of that funk and get them some encouragement and stuff. A lot of little steps make a difference.

It does. Consistent action over time brings the biggest results. And so what I like to have authors do, and you've heard me say this before, is to look, what is the time you have available? What are the resources, financially you have available? What are your greatest strengths? Look at those things. Things and then create a plan. Yeah. So maybe it's just for the next seven days, you're going to say, I'm going to do something for the next seven days, or I'm going to do something for the next. Like, you Did a hundred days. It means that may feel overwhelming to some people, but this next month, maybe put a plan for the next 30 days. But do something and don't try to bite off more than you can chew because we all have different time available. And if you say I'm going to do this big thing and then you don't do it, it's a feeling of failure versus looking at the time you have and realistically setting some goals. But I was talking to you about this, Jean, that I think it would be fun for you to be able to share your hundred day plan or your hundred day challenge with other authors. Do you have any plans to do that?

Well, we were talking and I had not thought about putting this into an ebook, but I could really write this into an ebook using a lot of the techniques that you teaches, probably fairly quickly because a lot of the work is done. I know the benefits and the success. I know some of the ups and downs that some of the lessons that I learned. I could put that together fairly quickly and have that even as a giveaway on my blog or sell on Amazon, you know. So I'm really excited about that idea, Shelly.

Now if somebody's listening to this, where, where could they find out more information or where could they contact you to to find out when that would be available?

I would say through my blog and it's healthyspirituality.org and I blog there twice a week and it's a faith related blog and I kind of have some fun with it too. So I encourage some people to check that out and join the email list. And like I said, I look forward next year to be a big year of creativity over there.

Awesome. Yeah. So definitely connect with Jean because Jean, I am excited for you to do something with this. I think, you know, anytime we've had success and we have developed a system that's worked, it's always so fun to be able to share that with other people. And it helps them save so much time. It helps them save the time of, you know, planning out all those steps you give them. You know, that 100 day plan, it could, you know, 90 day plan, whatever, you know, it was, but it was 100 days. And then I love the title platform power up 100 day challenge. So I'm looking forward to seeing that.

Come out here in the future.

So as we end today, I always like to end with a take action tip because I love working with action takers. And like you mentioned earlier, taking action is going to help to move us one step Forward to our goals, to what God has called us to do. But what is one thing, practical thing that our listeners could do today as a result of this training?

Well, I always like the slogan, plan your work and work your plan. And so if I leave anybody with that, I just think that's it. Whatever that looks like, whether it be a larger one or smaller one or just the next step, plan that work and then work your plan, you know, do it.

Yes. So sit down. Like, you know, even if it's just 15 minutes, 30 minutes, if you have an hour, set a timer and write out a plan for the next so many days, whatever, like she said, whatever it is for you, you know, take some action right now and think about what you could do to power up your platform. Because we're always working and, you know, we all start at zero.

Right, Right.

So don't.

There's always things you can improve. You know, just take one thing. Don't be so overwhelmed. That was something we went through your planet day the other day. And it really enabled me to think that this one idea, I have a good idea, but it's not next. It's not the very next thing in front of me that I could postpone it for a while. Maybe that'll come around later, you know, so sometimes you can have 14 different ideas. Just narrow it down to the one and work on that.

Yeah. Like I think I was, I said strategic procrastination. And so this may even be something that if you're listening and building your platform isn't your primary focus right now, you strategically procrastinate. Put it on your to do list for later. Don't forget about it. But, you know, contact Jean so, you know when her resource comes out. But stay focused on what you're doing that's so important to have that focus. So thank you so much for joining us today, Jean.

It's fun talking to you.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah.

And go check out Jean's site, HealthySpirituality.org, connect with her online, and I look forward to seeing what 2016 brings for you.

Thank you. Thank you, Shelley.

As we close, I want to give you this backstage pass in this Godly gain segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. Now, it's interesting because Jean talked about how she had a plan to have this book proposal accepted, and that plan did not work out. But what it did was it gave her the motivation that she needed to take this 100 day platform challenge. And it has had some amazing results already. And so it reminded me of the scripture in Isaiah 55, 8, 9 for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. And so sometimes when something doesn't work out, it could actually, instead of being a rejection, it could be a redirection. Or it could be not now, but later. So I encourage you today, if you've had some discouragement in your publishing path, maybe take a step back and ask God, what is it he is teaching you through this? And maybe it could be a redirection in your life.

My hope and my prayer is that these episodes are taking you one step closer to letting your light shine. If you've gotten value from this episode or any of the episodes, would you just take 30 seconds and share our rating and review on itunes? It means the world to me. It lets me know that you're listening and and it helps this podcast get to more people. And so just take 30 seconds and let me know how you've enjoyed the podcast. I appreciate you so much 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.