If you've heard me speak recently (or attended the Topical Calls on the Patreon), you've heard me tease this, but here's the promised "full" announcement.

I'm making some changes to the trajectory of my career (especially in an effort to be more sustainable), and I've announced this on the Patreon as well (which is where the recording of the Topical Call below will be). So here's the link to that post if you want to bookmark it.​

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COURSE LIBRARY

We are making an “Author4Life” course library free, starting in January of 2024. Any course that isn’t coached (so we’ll keep SFW, WBF, and Burnout as-is) is either going to get broken apart and put into the course library for you to work through on your own without coaching, or it will be newly written to not need coaching.

“Author4Life” is the name of the “development journey” we already take people through. It’s not a new program. It’s a codifying of the current program and a re-aligning of some current resources to be more intentional.

The goal of Author4Life is to produce people who will be authors for their entire life (it's the same goal as Better-Faster, it's just stated more clearly so I don't have to describe the hyphen in Better-Faster... lol).

I realized, as I was trying to build “Publish Better-Faster” that we do not need another giant course. (We, the BFA organization, but also “we” the author community.) I don’t have the bandwidth to bring people on to coach those big courses anymore, and what I really want to do isn’t be in the classroom coaching right now. I want to deliver content and continue to do research.

I’ll still do our digital conference (2024 dates are March 1-2 and 8… more coming on those weird dates later) and, at least this year, our in-person conference (2024 dates are October 7-9 at the Mall of America), but I’m not going to launch anymore big courses.

Instead, I’m going to build the library of smaller courses inside the Author4Life course library (which will be free to anyone on our newsletter and therefore, to anyone).

When we launch on January 1st, if you are on this list, you will get the link to the course library.

I'm pulling apart the bigger courses like Market Better-Faster, Write Better-Faster 201, and Ads for Intuitive Authors, turning them into “topical” courses that can be consumed in 3-4 lessons with homework you’ll do on your own, and with no coaches in the classrooms.

When the library launches in January, some of those “MBF rewrites” and “WBF201 rewrites” will already be in there, in addition to the “new launch” course (below), so there will be some info to consume already there.

Future topics include: VERTICAL PLATFORMS, SUSTAINABILITY ARCHETYPES (and others of the archetypes–including individual courses on the different types as I can write them), ENERGY PENNIES MANAGEMENT, OVERWHELM, etc.

There will be no Strengths content in the Author4Life library. More on that below.

I will, however, continue to coach Strengths in the DEAR BECCA letters on this newsletter, so you can continue to get that content as long as you stay subscribed.

You do not have to belong to the Patreon to get access to this library. This newsletter list will get the link. All courses will be self-guided with no discussion forums attached to them. Anyone can consume any of the content.

And this isn’t going to be “free content” the way I think some people write free content (and there's nothing wrong with that... I just don't have it in me to make any more big courses). I’ll still write content the way I always do. But for me, building these giant courses is making me slow down in my content creation to build infrastructure because of the limits on my time, and I’d rather just release the information topically.

If anyone has questions that need to be coached, after they finish the course, we’ll have call on the Topical Call level to address those questions. (That, you'll have to belong to the Patreon to access, but the courses will be built in an effort to reduce the need for additional discussion or questions.)

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INSTEAD OF COACHED CLASSES

I’m going to rewrite the lessons to be “work on your own” and to discourage discussion instead of encourage it.

We will still have the free Live Public Coaching every month on the Crowdcast, but I will only be there for 90 minutes, so we can only get through what we can get through.

If you have been hoping to send friends through WBF or SFW or Burnout, those will all still continue to exist, as they are, and we’ll continue for now to offer them as often as we have been because they’re still filling.

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JANUARY LAUNCH (MARKETING FOR INTROVERTS)

Krystal and I are working on a book called “Marketing for Introverted Authors” so we’re going to release a four-part course as our first official Author4Life launch in January. It will go live into the course library (the link will be available both here and on the Patreon). The course will include lessons and tools and homework, but you will be responsible to do the course on your own.

Once the course is live, it will just stay live on the Author4Life Library page. And since there won’t be a paywall on that (it will just be a page on our website that you can share if you really want to), it's open to the public.

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I know this is a long email... take a break reading if you need one...

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STRENGTHS DEVELOPMENT

As always, we encourage you do be doing Strengths development on your own, and I’m going to do a Topical Call that will be open to anyone who follows the Patreon or the Newsletter to talk more about how to do your personal Strengths Development in 2024.

That call will be: December 8 at 8am Eastern

Register here: https://betterfasteracademy.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0sc-irqTooHtVaBHjOyAeROlsux2BfzP_6​

I think we might have a 300-person limit on that Zoom call, but if it fills, never fear. It will be recorded and the recording will be available on this post.

We’ll be covering the process of development and the goals of individual work for 2024. At the end of that call, we’ll talk a bit more about the next topic (development level on the Patreon), but the goal is to help everyone leave with a tool to make a plan for 2024 development.

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DEVELOPMENT LEVEL ON THE PATREON

We are going to add a very specific Development Level on the Patreon that will be intended for specific development of dominant Strengths.

The level will consist of:

• Your own physical set of the Insight Cards from Gallup. (We may also do Resource Guides at some point, but we need to start off with the Insight cards.)
• A 2-hour interview and coaching session with people who have this Strength as #1 in their list (or a #1 equivalent if they’re in alphabetical order and Becca thinks their Strength is healthy enough to act as a model for our development purposes). We will coach an individual Strength every month.
• A guided set of homework for your own Strengths development if you have that Strength high.
• A follow-up post (or call, depending on the level of interest in the Strength) for people who have questions at the end of the month.

We’re starting this in January, with Achiever. We have a high Achiever coach coming on in January, and we want to celebrate her presence by starting development with Achiever. (We'll announce her here on Wednesday.)

When we do the official announcement for this level, we will also include a calendar for when you can expect your Strengths to be on the Development Track.

The price hasn’t been set for this level yet–more info coming later.

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WHAT THIS MEANS FOR BECCA

I’m going to be coaching one-on-one less. I still have development work to do with several of the people I’m currently coaching (and we’ll still keep working through that until we’re done), but the goal will be to 1-on-1 coach less over time, travel less over time, and write more content for mindset, sustainability, and the future of publishing.

I will still be available for spot-coaching for anyone who’s coached with me in the past and I’m introducing a quarterly coaching check-in program for myself that will provide people who need it with enough ongoing support that you can feel like you’re still making progress. But I’m going to encourage people to get into long-term one-on-one coaching relationships with others of our coaches. We work in development as coaches together, trying to get better at helping you, and I want to encourage you to seek out coaching from the other amazing people we have in this place.

I will still do one live Q&A (which will include Author4LIfe course topics, and Q&A from the courses, since I’ll be the one writing them), and I will still do the Live Public coaching at the beginning of every month on the Crowdcast, so I can also catch Author4Life questions there.

But I want to focus most of my energy on doing development in this community. It’s become more and more clear to me that what we need on this newsletter is more of me in the “public” sphere of this community. Less of me in traveling and at conferences. Less of me in one-on-ones, and more of me on the Quitcast, on this Patreon, and in the course creation.

More regular Dear Becca letters, more regular Quitcasts. That's my goal for long-term sustainability. More Intellection/Input, less Communication/Indy. :)

Anyone who’s currently coaching with me, hopefully we’ve already talked about this, but please do reach out via email if you have any questions. I’m here to answer them.

And for anyone at all, if you have questions, please reply to this email. I will answer every one I can.