In this episode I share honestly both my successes and what I learned from my mistakes in 2015. I hope you can learn from both my successes and my mistakes.
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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- How branding played a huge part in my success this year.
- Why I chose the membership model for Author Audience Academy.
- What FEAR held me back from doing in 2015.
- And much more!
Enjoy the podcast! It’s my hope that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to reaching more people with your message.
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Godly Gain Segment:
Each week, I share a Godly Gain segment for entrepreneurs who want to keep Christ at the center of their business.
Today’s scripture:
“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” Philippians 3:12 (NIV)
Thanks for listening!
You ROCK! I appreciate everyone of my podcast listeners. If you have a specific question for me, submit it here: www.shelleyhitz.com/ask
“Even the weakest light can hold back the darkness.” – Unknown
It’s time to let your light SHINE!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below:
Welcome to episode 25, this is the final episode for 2015 and it’s hard to believe this year is coming to an end. I’m excited today to roll out the red carpet and invite you to join me as I share my personal year in review, both my successes and my mistakes and what I learned.
So, this has been an amazing year, if you’ve been listening to my podcast you’ve heard in the last couple of episodes about goals and some of the things that really helped me accomplish so much. I am just so blessed, I’m thankful to God, I give him all the glory for all he’s done in my life, and yet as I was looking back I was realizing that there were specific things that I learned from this year and I thought it might be helpful for you to hear what I have learned from my successes and what some my mistakes have been; and what I have learned from them as well. I believe that you have a God given message to share with the world, the question is, are you ready to shine in 2016?
It’s time for this weeks Center Stage Spotlight Training, this is where I share training 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 I love teaching the entire process because it’s the exact process that I’ve used to create a full time income. Today’s podcast is episode 25, titled Year in Review: Successes and What I Learned From My Mistakes. I know this is going to bring you one step closer to getting your message to more people because I think it’s going to help you to relate my lessons to your business, and your life, as well. So, be prepared to shine.
As I was thinking back over this year, 2015, so much has happened; it’s been such a dramatic change in my business. My theme for 2015 was the word growth, and growth was right. I grew in leaps and bounds in so many areas of my business, personally, and professionally. Some of the successes, that when I look back, I had was; one of the biggest things was branding. I transitioned from a general brand at TrainingAuthors.com where I had a partner—Heather Hart and I were working together on that site—to a personal brand. That was such a dramatic shift for me personally when I did that, first of all I was able to niche down to my target market, but also being a personal brand it allowed me to put me into my marketing; it allowed me to really feel like I could share more stories, that I could share more of me. I know I could have done that at TrainingAuthors.com, but it was me and Heather, it was more of a general brand, so it was very easy for me to just take me out of it.
So, with branding, whether or not your brand is a general brand or a personal brand, the lesson that I learned in this success is to put more of you into your branding; your stories, who you are. People do business with those that they know, like, and trust, and when somebody gets to know you they get to like you, they get to trust you, they’re more willing to spend money with you. With the branding, it was interesting, because one of the verses that I use in my branding is the theme, really, of my business. This verse is from Matthew 5 and talks about letting your light shine, and that really became part of my brand. I have really niche down to really having a heart to helping those that are Christians. Does that mean that I can’t have people that aren’t Christians that are in my programs, because I do, I attract all kinds of people, but the biggest part of my audience will be Christians. Most people will recognize, “let your light shine,” they will recognize from the song we grew up singing in Sunday School, “this little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” Do you remember that song? It’s going to ring familiar, it’s going to resonate with you, and it resonated with my message, with my branding. So that became part of my brand.
It was interesting, because “let your light shine,” I realized that wearing certain colors, wearing certain things, also helps to accentuate your brand. So, I started wearing more gold, because gold represents that shine or things that have a shine to them, certain jewelry, or certain things; it’s been very purposeful. It’s because of the branding, and because I really do want to help you get your message to more people, and to help you let your gift shine. So, it’s been very interesting.
One more tip with the branding that really changed things for me this last year is getting professional pictures. I did two different photo shoots, I did one with my friend April Zoe here, she’s local, and she did an amazing job, she really helped me change my look a little bit to help elevate my brand a little bit more; and I love those pictures she took for me. I had a second photo shoot, months later but not quite a year later, with Molly McMillan she’s in Denver—she took some additional pictures, and it’s the picture you see on my podcast image and so much more. These pictures were critical in really seeing a shift and an elevation of my brand to a new level. If you have not gotten professional pictures, definitely take them. I got pictures in all kinds of positions, pointing, laughing, just action shots and different things, all of those pictures I can use in so many ways.
I have an entire training module in Author Audience Academy on branding. So, if you want more on branding make sure to check it out, and if you have questions for me on the types of pictures I took, or anything like that, feel free to ask in the forums. I would love for you to join me, it’s authoraudienceacademy.com, you can find out all about my signature program there.
That was the first success was the branding, that was huge, that was key. The second one was really changing my mindset from a one time fee product to a recurring income through a membership site. This was something that I got through Shane and Jocelyn. They began to transition their products to a membership site, and they had given me some coaching and recommended I had considered doing it as well. I was actually a little resistant to the idea at first, but oh my goodness, I am so glad that Jocelyn really talked to me about this in depth because, it has taken so much pressure off of me. Once you have a certain number of members; in a recurring income membership, if you’re offering value—which I feel like I am, I’m not just taking money and people aren’t getting anything from it. They are getting access to me in the forums, coaching in the forums, all my trainings, thousands of dollars of trainings, they are getting me in group coaching twice a month, plus tons and tons of extra bonuses that I keep adding because I love teaching and sharing. If you are offering value, people are getting results, they are going to want to stay.
One of the things that a membership site does is you join for the content, but you stay for the community, and you stay for the results that you’re continuing to get. I’m so thankful that I listened to the advice of Shane and Jocelyn. You can find them at FlippedLifestyle.com, amazing podcast too, definitely listen to their podcast as well. Because it has taken so much pressure, I was in the launch sequence where I would create a product, launch, create a product, launch, create a product, launch, and I was getting burned out to be very honest. I don’t really love sending a ton of promotional emails to my list all the time, but that’s what it ended up being because I was creating, launching, creating, launching, creating, launching. That works really well for certain people, and some people will only launch once a year, but for me I was so excited to transition to recurring income model, and yes I have some people cancel every month, but it has been a very low percentage and most people are choosing to stay. So, it provides a consistent income and take the pressure off of me and I can focus on serving my members, offering them amazing value, and continuing to make this the best membership out there for authors, speakers, and entrepreneurs.
The third main lesson I learned from 2015 was the power of investing in paid coaching. I had invested in coaching previously, but not to the level that I did in 2015. I spent thousands of dollars in coaching, and it was so worth it! When you invest in coaching you’re putting skin in the game, it’s not just a free consultation, it’s not just something that you can put on the shelf and think, “I’ll get to it later.” You have skin in the game, you have an investment in it, and for me it was a really big stretch financially. Because of that I wanted to get my money’s worth, I wanted to get everything I could out of that, so it was a huge asset for me. I have different levels of coaching that I offer as well, if you’re looking for a coach for business, for publishing, for online marketing, definitely check out my coaching; it’s at trainingauthors.com/coaching/. I will let you know if I think we are not a great fit, but if we are I would love to work with you. I pay for coaches, believe in the power of it, and also believe that you could benefit if it’s the right timing for you.
So those were the successes, now moving into some of my mistakes. This is where I have to get honest and be real, and you guys know if you’ve been listening to my podcast, if you know me, I am real. I share from my heart, and one of the things that was still an overarching theme for 2015, for me, was fear. I still had a lot of fear, and I’m still working through it, related to my business. It really held me back, in many ways. I definitely deal with the scarcity mindset, and I grew up in a family that really emphasized scarcity, getting the deals, not wanting to get taken advantage of, just wanting to pay as little as you can for something, just that scarcity mindset.
My grandparents on my mom’s side, they grew up in the depression, and I remember one time at a garage sale they were arguing on whether or not to spend 25₵ on something, and I was like, “Momma, Poppa, I will give you a quarter, it’s OK, it’s worth a quarter!” That’s the kind of mindset that I grew up with, and I’m still working to overcome. Also, the fear of will people buy, or am I good enough? Some of those types of things trickle in there as well. It held me back from offering some higher end options. I just recently put VIP Days on my coaching page, a half a day or a full day, it’s thousands of dollars to spend that time with me, but I will also make sure that you get a ton of value from that time. It may be the right time for you to do something like that, but it was fear that kept me from putting it on my site. It literally took me about half an hour to add that to my site, to decide exactly what I was going to offer—because I had already discussed it with my coach—but it took me months to put it on there. When I look back I go, I think it was fear that is holding me back from that.
Another thing that I think fear held me back from was hiring outsourcers faster. I really planned from the beginning of 2015 to hire a general VA, Virtual Assistant, and a support staff, and really do more hiring to take more off of my plate. I’m a doer and I can do a lot of things, but I’ve just been working way to much and not having enough margin. I did take steps, and I did do a lot of things to take that step forward, but I can still tell you there is still a lot of fear for me of hiring someone on a regular basis. The steps I did take, it was either based on either hourly or projects, and I still don’t have that general VA. That’s something that’s now a goal for 2016 for me, and I know it would have relieved a ton of stress, and a ton of pressure, if I would have just pushed through that fear of needing to pay someone on a regular basis, needing to train them, the time that would have taken to do that, but I’m definitely working towards that for this next year.
Another thing, a mistake, for me in 2015 was simply sitting too much. As an online entrepreneur and author it’s easy to be sitting at a computer all day, every day, if you do it full time. One of the things that I ended up doing is buying an inexpensive treadmill and I worked out a set up with my desk, and now I have a treadmill desk. I can’t use it when I’m recording videos, podcasts, Periscopes because you’ll obviously hear that, but I can use it most of the time and it helps me get up and get moving. I thought about it for a long time thinking it might just be too expensive or that I couldn’t’ work out how to do it, and it was just a block in my mind. Once I started researching it my treadmill was about $200, it wasn’t that expensive, and for my health and things that I value so that I can continue to work it was so worth it. That was another thing that I realized was a lesson learned, and a mistake, that I ended up changing near the end of the year but not soon enough.
The last one, I kind of related to this earlier, was just not having margin. You think about books, you’re probably listening to my podcast because you’re an author or you want to be an author. Books have margins, and if a book has no margin it’s going look funny but also, in the center, you may not be able to read certain words because it won’t be formatted right. You have to have those margins for your books. Just like you need those margins for our books, we need margin in our life. I will admit that I am a recovering workaholic and this year was not great for me in this category. I kind of slipped back into it where I was working way to much and I just didn’t have enough margin. That’s something that I’m looking forward to adding into my life more in 2016.
One thing that I’ve noticed, I’ve invested a ton of business coaching in this last year, but like I said one of the biggest things that still held me back was some mindset issues; fear, scarcity, being so driven, not having that margin, and maybe even some control issues with the outsourcing. Those are all internal things, those are all mindset things, and this year in January I’m going to start working with a life coach. I’m hiring a life coach and I’m starting to work through some of those really difficult things. As a business owner, as an author, as an entrepreneur, as a ministry leader, as a leader in your home or wherever you’re at, it’s so important that we continue to grow, and that we continue to move forward.
My theme for 2016 is to thrive, not just to survive but to thrive. When I was doing the PlanItDay.com, virtual planning retreat for my author audience academy members, we actually spent some time praying and thinking about our theme and the secondary theme that came to me during that time is to rise; it’s time to rise up past the fear, past the scarcity, past some of these mindset issues that have held me back for years and years. It’s time to truly trust Christ, truly trust him with everything. So, I want to ask you today, in this take action tip, what is one thing that kind of resonated with you that I shared; whether it was from my success or from the mistakes that I made? What is one thing that resonated with you? Write it down and think about how you might be able to apply it to your own life, or to your own business.
As we end I want to give you a backstage pass in this Godly Gain segment, which is all about keeping Christ in the center of all we do. You know, it’s the end of 2015, but all of my successes and even all of my mistakes, it’s not about me as a follower of Christ, it’s about Christ and it’s about giving him Glory in my life. I talked about that theme of rising. As a Christ follower the Bible says that we have been crucified in Christ and now we live in Him, we rise with him, just as he was resurrected from the grave we can rise with him, we can leave those things from our past, the fear and all the things that hold use back. That’s our old self, that is not who we are now, and we can choose to rise with Him. Because we’re human it does take effort, it takes time, it takes prayer, it’s an everyday thing, it’s not just you do it once and then it’s over.
In 2014, it was right after I had my miscarriage and I was really struggling and grieving the loss. The theme I sensed God give me for 2014 was press on. It reminds me of the verse I just shared a couple of episodes ago in Philippians 3:14, but today I’m going to share a couple verses earlier, this comes from Philippians 3:12 “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” We can continue to press on, we can always continue to grow. As long as we are on this side of heaven we have areas that we can continue to grow, and I encourage you this year to not just survive but to thrive, to rise with Christ, to rise above those issues and those things that are holding you back. It’s your time to shine.
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 believe in you, I know you have what it takes to go to the next level in 2016, and I would love to work with you. I encourage you to join me in my next live webinar, you can sign up at authoraudience.com/webinar. I’m going to take you through three book writing formulas every non-fiction author needs to know. You’ll get help choosing a topic, help writing the book, and so much more. Come and join me, sign up at authoraudience.com/webinar, and I’ll see you next time.
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