SPEAKER_02 0:00

If you don't understand how your brain is wired to be successful, you're always going to be trying to hammer with a saw, and you're never going to be able to utilize this tool that you have in its most effective way.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formally repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Red It Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hey writer, welcome back to another episode of the Write It Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacey, and this is episode number 33, I think. I have a very special guest interview today with someone who can help you figure out what type of writing process will really work for you. I can't wait for you to listen to this conversation that I had with Becca Syme. I will give her a bio in a minute, but Becca is a success and writing coach, and we talk about how when a writer understands their unique talents and personality, it can help them make better decisions when it comes to their writing and allow them to be discerning about what advice they subscribe to out there. So for example, it can help a writer understand why one particular process might work really well for other people, but it hasn't been working for them. And then they can stop beating their head against the wall. When I first came to writing, I had no idea what kind of process to use. And there were a lot of very well-intentioned, loud voices out there that said, you know, do it this way or do it that way. And I didn't know what kind of shoe was going to fit. And so I tried a lot of different shoes and I really struggled. And Becca is someone in the writing world who can help writers find the shoe that will fit them. And she can even help them pick out the color and the laces and how tight it needs to be. And I'm sure that's a very terrible example. So, but let me give you her bio and then we'll jump into the interview. And I will make sure to include all the links where you can find Becca in the show notes. Becca Syme is a Gallup certified strengths coach and has been coaching Success Alignment for more than a decade. She is the author of the Quit Books for Writers series and the popular Write Better Faster course. She also writes mystery novels in her spare time and lives on one of the Thousand Lakes in Minnesota. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Becca. I've been a fan for years and years and years. And I wanted to bring it on the podcast today to talk more about how you work with writers and how that's changed for you over the years because you just have so much to offer, and everyone should know about you and what you do. So with that, would you please share a little bit more about your journey to becoming a writer and a writing coach?

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Yeah, I have always been a little bit obsessed with stories, just like, you know, from a kid having an aunt who used to tell me stories at bedtime and having parents who used to read me books at bedtime. Like there was so much about story that would just make your imagination be so wide and wild. And and I grew up in a in a very small town where we didn't have neighbors for a mile in any direction. So it was nature was very vast and wild. And it was kind of a play place for me. So we used to do a lot of like playing and making up stories outside, and you know, being in a fantastic castle in instead of a tree. And so, you know, like there was a dragon with a moat instead of grass, like all that kind of stuff as a kid. So very much was into story very early. And I started writing very early as well. And so I think I've always on some level wanted to be a writer. Just I can't remember the moment when I decided I wanted to do it. I think I just always knew that I was gonna be a writer. And when I was in college, I was an English major and then I did an MFA and creative writing for a while. And I realized that I didn't want to go that route of like teaching writing. So I started doing other things. I started doing music and working in nonprofits and doing all kinds of stuff. But on the side, I was always still writing and trying to like finish a novel and be a novelist and things like that. And then I got my first contract in 2010, I think, 2011. Yeah, 2010 or 2011. And then from there, I had a friend who started very early in Indy and was very, very successful. Like she made a million dollars her first, you know, basically her first year. And so I was like, you know, I think I'm gonna try this. My experience with publishers had been fine, but not like wildly exciting. So I was like, let me try this too and see how it goes. And then had some success in indie early. And so I made a lot of friends who were indie writers. I mean, I had this background of working in industrial and organizational site type stuff from my nonprofit work. I had gotten a master's degree in transformational leadership. And I had a bunch of friends who would ask me questions like, How do I do this? How do I make this happen? How do I hire this person? How do I fire this person? Things like that. And because of the way that I was approaching consulting in my like outside world, I was doing personality-based, individualized, customized solutions. And I started coaching my friends who then told their friends to coach with me. And then I started teaching Indie Insider, I think was the name of the class at first for Margie Lawson. And then it just kind of bl like took up, took off from there. And I was doing individual coaching primarily with individualized like productivity, a lot of productivity and author business type stuff. And then it just has kind of exploded into like whatever everyone needs, you know, because that's my personality type is like, oh, do you need this? Okay, well, we'll figure out how to do it. So that kind of became my my methodology, I think, was whatever the industry needs right now is what I'll do. And yeah, that's how I got here.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

So the tool that you that you gravitate towards and that you've built this coaching business around is the Clifton Straints. Right? Yep. So tell us more about what that is and how it works and how you use it with writers.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

So the baseline there is that everyone's extremely different. So different that one solution for one person is going to be like cryptodite for another person. And so what was happening a lot in the early days in coaching was like, well, I can't outline. So how do I force myself to outline? Because outlining was sort of the accepted protocol, right? And if you weren't outlining, it was like, well, what are you even doing? You don't even want to be productive. And I was like, hang on, though. Everybody's brain is different. And I would use the strengths to be like, here is the difference between you and that person. Like, you're not wired the same way that they are. Why would you ever think that you would use a tool that is a completely different tool in the same way? Like you would never use a saw and a hammer in the same way. So why do we think that somehow our brain being wired differently doesn't impact how we would utilize the tool that we have upstairs, right? And and this idea that somehow anyone can do anything, right? Like it's possible for me if I just stick to it enough or if I just learn enough that I'll be able to just be excellent at anything. And what they actually found in this, the research that they did for the Clifton Strengths is that that is the opposite of truth, that there is some stuff that you will never be able to do with competence, to the point where you shouldn't even waste your time trying to do it because it is such a bad fit for your brain. And then vice versa, there are these places where you have standout capacity that if you don't understand how your brain is wired to be successful, you're always going to be trying to hammer with a saw. And you're never going to be able to utilize this tool that you have in its most effective way. And so Clifton Strengths is really uh very fine-tuned. It's been, the research has been fine-tuned over the course of 50 years. It took them 10 years just to develop the test, right? So, like they have worked very, very hard at Gallup to make it the best tool that it can possibly be. And then what I do is I take those results and contextualize them into what it means for writers. Like, what does it mean that you're high intellection? What does it mean that you're high empathy or high competition? What does it look like to be a good version of competition strength? And how can competition work against you? And there's 34 different strengths, and you have five that are like your highest, highest. And so it really is about individualizing how you approach your author career based on what type of brain you have.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah. It's it's it it's incredible. I learned so much. Well, let's put it this way I took the Clifton strengths. I can't, I mean, I don't really know what to call it now. Is it Clifton Strengths or is it Gallup strengths or what what I what specifically, yeah, is the official trademark title.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

So I took it years ago and I didn't know what to do with it. I was like, yeah, that's interesting. Kind of like all the personality tests, right? I was like, yeah, that's interesting. But when I took strengths for writers with you, I learned how to apply it. And that was a game changer for me in that I understood like why I struggle the way I do, yeah. Why, you know, why I'm motivated to go about pursuing a story the way I do. Yeah, it was incredibly eye-opening for me. And I have a feeling that that is probably true for every single writer who goes through strengths for writers, they're like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting too, because some of us can know certain things about our brains, right? Like you can know, well, I need to think a lot in order to process something in order to reach certainty. But if you attribute that to a weakness, right, if you say, like, well, that's a trauma response or something, which is what people are saying all the time now. And I'm like, well, some thinking for sure is a trauma response. Like if it's based in fear, it's a trauma response. But there's also a lot of needing to think to find certainty that is an actual strength that's because of the way, and you can't see my hand, but I'm making a circular motion going down, right? So, like almost like a funnel. And as you think around and think around and think around and think around, you're going down farther into your understanding of something. And that's not a trauma response. That is depth of thinking. So when you're wired to be thinking in a way that is progressively deeper and deeper of an understanding, that's going to impact the way that you write. Because some people are not wired to do that. So when they see people thinking deeper and deeper about something, they're like, stop spinning your wheels. But for intellection people, thinking is not spinning my wheels. It's how I get deeper into understanding and how I find more and more clarity. And if you look just at the strength of an election, like without knowing what it is, you might be tempted to be like, well, I think too much, so I need to think less. Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Like there's something this is something wrong with there's something deficient.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Yep. Right. As opposed to, nope. What really is true is you need to think better, not smarter. You don't need to be any smarter than you are. You're plenty smart. But you need to be more effective at utilizing the intellection strength so that you're not thinking any more than you actually need to to find the clarity that you're looking for. And if you don't understand what intellection is, then you're gonna try using a tool from someone else's arsenal who doesn't have high intellection. And you're gonna steal that like top 1% capacity from yourself in your ability to be an intellection person. So rather than you having the most deeply considered, well-thought, you know, profound, wise thing, you're gonna get the first blush, you know, a thought, which is not what intellection excels at. So for me, it's very much a you're not like other people, and we need everyone to be fully who they are. Yeah. So the more you are the thing that only you can be, the more likely you are to bring, sort of like I think of it like the Avengers, right? Like there's a pantheon of things that we need everyone to be. And you have to be the thing that you are to the best version that you can in order for there to be sort of like balance in the universe, which sounds very, you know, esoteric when you think about it, but I watch it happen. Like I watch people finally be this thing that they're here to be, and the peace that they feel is so significant, it's like they finally understand why what they're here for, why they're here. And it's almost like they just relax into being that thing. And then I mean, if the whole world could just have this gift, I feel like the world would be a better place.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

I think it's it's the closest I've ever gotten personally to complete permission to swim in my own lane. Yeah. Yep. That I mean, if I could sum sum it up. And and the thing about it is I forget that that's where I'm supposed to swim, and I start looking over at somebody else's lane, and then I go, Yep, but I'm not oh I but I want to be there yet, uh or I'm not there yet, I want to be over there, and then that's where I get in trouble. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

And then it's like, oh no, no, right here.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

This is this is, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

So yeah. So it's it's so you mentioned you don't need to be smarter, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

You need to be better. Yep. And I think that would be a really good place for us to like kind of lean into talking about what the better faster academy actually is.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Yeah. So the concept of better faster comes from the original research that Gallup did, right? Which was about speed reading and the and Dr. Clifton was actually the one who did the research. He wasn't affiliated with Gallup yet, I don't think, at that point. But and what he was trying to understand was if you gave every student an equally excellent teacher, could you bring out absolutely top excellence in every student, right? Is what we're missing just better teachers. And so they did this research about speed reading where they divided the class up into median speeds. So there was like a group that was the average speed, they had like 90 words a minute, average speed, and then they had a group that was uh above average speed. So 350 words a minute was where they started. And both groups took the same class from the same teacher, and then they tested both groups at the end of the class. And I think what he honestly expected to find, and granted, I don't know this is true, but just based on the way he designed the experiment, I think what he expected to find was that the average group would get so much better because they had this incredible teacher and they were only with other average students. But what ended up happening was the average stayed average, they got slightly better. They went from 90 to 150, but the above-average students getting taught by an excellent, excellent teacher, like a 10 out of 10 teacher, and being able to focus only on their top capacity, they went from 350 words a minute to 3,000 words a minute by the end of the of the experiment. Yeah. Wow, which is yeah, it is the top 1% of reading speeds, right? So, what that says to me, when I and they tried to replicate it right to make sure that they were testing this correctly. And what they found was when you can spend more time in your most talented areas, you have a better, faster capacity, a more exponential capacity for growth. And so what I want to do with people is I want to get them to let go of this concept of well-roundedness, which is being average at everything. People think being well-rounded means that you're good at everything. It doesn't. It means you're gonna basically be average at most things. And I don't like that idea of like forcing people into average boxes just to try to keep them being having a finger in everything. It's like, let people who are great at math be great at math. Let them be phenomenal at math. And then I'm not gonna do math because I'm not good at it. So, like, I'm gonna do the stuff that I'm good at, they're gonna do the stuff we're good at. And then together, we are all excellent at everything, but I'm not gonna try to be slightly better than average at math anymore, right? Like, I'm just gonna let somebody else handle that. And so for me, in my head, I'm like, as writers, if we would focus in on where we are exponentially top, potentially talented, right? Like those areas where we have a better, faster potential talent and spend more time trying to develop those areas, we are gonna get better faster at our individual talents. And the research itself is an extreme, right? Like the experiment is an extreme. It's not like every single person can be in the top 1% at some skill or another, but the capacity for exponential growth is the same in each person, regardless. And what we see is there's a combo of letting go of the expectation that you should be doing everything, especially because if you're gonna spend time on your job, spending time where you can be above average instead of average wherever possible gives you a better chance also of standing out in a crowded marketplace. So, like for me, it isn't just more well-being, more happiness personally to be doing things that I'm better at, but also seeing more significant gains in the areas where I'm applying myself. Like I'm gonna get naturally better faster at connectedness because that's my number two strength. So when I really apply myself at being more connected, more relational, more bridge building, when I apply myself to that, I get exponentially better at it. And that's really what the my the BFA has done is it's provided this way to help people integrate themselves into themselves, right? And that's what connectedness is great at. So, like when I see that capacity for better, faster work, I want more people to be in that space more often for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is we are a lot happier when we are doing things that we are great at than we are when we're doing things that we suck at.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Yeah, and we kind of stop fighting ourselves and kind of come more into alignment. Yep. For sure. So the idea is that by focusing on the things that you are good at, you're going to get better faster at those things because you're no longer worried about the plethora of things that are not really in your wheelhouse. Yep. Um, so it's it's really just streamlining your focus and learning how to, like you said, let go. And I love that. I love that. So when a writer comes into the Better Faster Academy, is there like a is there a progression that they should follow, a path?

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Yeah, we usually encourage people to take Write Better Faster first, just because it is, it was the original course that I wrote. And it's not about strengths at all. Like we don't talk about strengths in that course, but there's a reason why we don't, because I need us to get our head around the concept of alignment first. Like I need everyone to understand that when you know something to be true about you, and you know that there's 25 different ways that writers could be doing this thing, but you are aligned in this particular direction, that you need to self-select better. It's almost like we have to learn how to be better decision makers about our author careers. And before you can really dig into something that is very coaching heavy, like strengths, where we're gonna tell you, like, hey, you have these 10 strengths, and then we need you to go sit with coaches and figure out how to align yourself individually. There's a bunch of work you could. Doing on your own first, right? That's like you could just be making all of these choices about these continuums that exist about different, you know, writing or editing or productivity or time management, stuff like that. So I always encourage people to come in and take Write Better Faster first, because I think that it provides a really good basic framework for some of the concepts that I really am like hardcore teach, things like essential pain, where there is, there is going to be pain. There is no path that includes no pain. And if we don't internalize what it means that our brains want there to be no pain and see the results that they're getting as pain avoidant, then we will not understand why our brains do certain things. Like, why don't I do the thing that I know I need to be doing? Well, it's because your brain has decided there's pain associated with that thing, and your pain-avoidant brain doesn't want you to do it. So it goes to Facebook first. So if you understand what your brain is doing when it comes to being pain avoidant, then you can have better control over your choices. And really, Write Better Faster is just a way for us to. I mean, it started off as a productivity class because that was what people wanted at the time. But really, it productivity is all about doing my best work as a writer and being as aligned as I can be. And so I always encourage people to start with Write Better Faster just because I think it is the best baseline class for understanding alignment that's out there. And then I usually encourage people after that, at some point, like maybe six months or a year later, to do the Strengths for Writers cohort where you actually get coached like by a couple of people. Usually it's me and someone else, one of our other coaches. And we really dig pretty deep into like what does it mean that you have these strengths? How do we translate, you know, what the strengths themselves are into what it looks like for writers? How do we make that more accessible? How do we apply it right? Like you were talking about. So that's usually what I suggest is kind of to go the right better faster route first.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Right on, right on. And let's just say somebody slipped in the back door. I'm not naming any names. I mean, like myself. And and talk the strengths for writers first. Would they benefit by going back? Yeah, I still would. Yeah. Is that where you talk about the theory about the plates and the screen and those kinds of things?

SPEAKER_02 24:35

Yep. We talk a lot about like the kind of baseline concepts of alignment, right? Things like we talk about the better, faster concept, right? We talk about that there are places we need to let go. And but but really it is the bad news, right? That that pain of win at brain stuff is a really big foundational thing that I think when people get into strengths for writers first, you get the benefit of the individual coaching. So, like you have this person who knows the theories really well who can say, Oh, wait, you're high activator, have you thought about doing this? Oh, wait, your high adaptability, have you thought about doing this? But if you do write better faster, there's also a higher likelihood that you can kind of learn how to translate some of that stuff. Right. Once you do get into the strengths, write better faster is really made for not, it's not really a well, I mean, it's not a strengths class at all. We don't talk about the strengths at all in Write Better Faster.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe I will.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

Yeah. And someday I always encourage people to wait. Like if you've done strengths for writers, get your full experience out of that because you get all these coaching follow-ups, you know, after your first two coaching calls, and you get to kind of see the benefit of like doing the work after you get these, this coaching. And then Write Better Faster is the good kind of follow-up to that, where you get another set of follow-up coaching calls. Like all of our, all of our programs are really designed very much for individuals. So we're trying to make sure that you have the support that you need afterward. And then we have a Patreon after, after that.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Yeah. Which I which that's what I'm a part of. And just for anybody listening, to give you an example of what a writer may come to the table with, like for me, I was like, I want to figure out how to how to develop my story faster. That was that was my thing that I came to the strengths for writers for, because I felt like I would spin my wheels a little bit. And I got really frustrated that I wasn't that I wasn't drafting already. I wanted to be drafting. And what I learned personally is that because of the way my strengths are aligned, I'm a learner, number one. And number two, I have achiever. So this is why I was getting frustrated because I was these two things grind against each other. Yep. Anyway, so because I took strength for writers, I was able to learn that about myself, give myself grace, but also understand that it's okay. Sometimes I have to learn by doing. Sometimes I have to write it to find it. And you were able to give me different strategies for how to keep my achiever happy going along the way. So I as you can see, I'm a huge fan. That's it, and I want everybody to know about you. Okay. So that was kind of wrapping up about talking about the Clifton strings and and how you use them inside of Better the Better Faster Academy. Now, you've also written multiple nonfiction books that support writers that quit books, right? And are they all in audio at this point? Or is it a lot of people?

SPEAKER_02 27:44

They aren't still, yeah, we're still working on that. I think only three of them, yeah, out of the eight, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah. So what drew to write them? And do you recommend a reading order?

SPEAKER_02 27:56

I would start with the the Dear Writer, you need to quit first.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Um it's a fabulous book, people. You need to read it.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

If you're in burnout, then I would read the burnout book after that. Also a fabulous book. Okay, thank you. If you're in writer's block, I would read the writer's block book next. If you have one of the distributors, right, that you like to shop on. We have these three book series that are like the the burnout book, the writer's block book, and then the um stuck book, I think is what's in there. So those are kind of the tool-based, like here's how you deal with this very particular problem. And then the other books kind of go in numerical order. I think it's one, three, five is the other um series. But what initially drew me to write them was I've been coaching for I think five, four or five years at that point. It may have been longer, but I had been coaching long enough that I had a bunch of clients who were like, we don't know how to explain to people what you do. Can you please write a book so that I can give it to my friends and just like give me something to hand to them that will be like your brain in a nutshell? And so I was like, okay, I can write that. And I sat down with basically what are the most common things that I have to tell people in coaching.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

So at that point, I think I had coached like 3,500 individual people or something, like 3,000 to 3,500. And so I had this pattern reading brain that was seeing all these different patterns of like, okay, if you are a person who hasn't reached this level yet, you're hearing everybody talk about book signings, but you don't know how to say no to book signings. Like I will write you a chapter about who should and shouldn't be doing book signings and who and how to say no to that, basically. The majority of the book is about how to say no to almost everything so that you can say yes to writing. So it's the the tagline of it is what to quit, what to keep, and what to question.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

And then most of it is what to quit, which is why it has that title.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Yeah, it's not encouraging anyone to quit writing.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

No, don't quit writing.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Unless that's the thing that you need to do for the for the time being. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

And it was it's funny. One of my favorite negative reviews of that book is actually sort of a one-line one-star review, which was, well, I quit writing, so I guess question mark. And I was like, I mean, if it was you, do you fine? I have a feeling it was a joke review from somebody who just doesn't like me, which is fine. My second favorite critical review of that book has the word windbag in it, which anytime someone does name calling of someone, I'm like, oh, you touched a nerve there, they're calling you a name. So I'm like, I clearly bugged them enough, right? That they were aggressively wanting to tell the world that I was a windbag. And I'm like, great, do that because there are people who will not like what I talk about because I don't give you five easy answers. I don't give you a list of like, here's the five things no one should ever do, or here's the 10 things everyone should do, because that stuff is bullshit, frankly. Like none of it ever works. It only ever works if you're a very particular type of person that's usually exactly like the person who's giving you the list. And otherwise, it generally is stuff that you should just ignore. But there are a lot of people who don't like my work because I don't make it easy for you, right? I don't just say because it like if you see somebody talking about like, here's the four types of writers. If you're an ESFP, you do this. And if you're an INTJ, you do this or whatever, right? Like there's 16 of those I know, but like if there's four types of writers, a lot of people just want you to give them a list of the behaviors that they should do because they are this one type of writer, and they want to never have to think about it again. They just want to be able to follow the list. And I'm like, my sweet summer child, that easy that there was a predictive list that I could just give you that would say, never do this, always do this. First of all, I don't know what world that would be. It certainly wouldn't be this one. But second of all, don't you think I would have done that already? Like, don't you think I want to not do this work bad enough? Like, I want to write fiction books really bad, but I can't write fiction books as much because there's so much work to do in alignment, right? So if if a list like that existed where I could just say, if you are an achiever, here are the four things to always do, here are the four things to never do. Go with God, never want to see you again, right? Don't you think I would have done that? It doesn't exist because it's extremely complicated. Because if your achiever is two instead of 10, or if your achievers with competition instead of with learner, or if your achiever is in a basement instead of in a balcony, right? It's like every single piece of this is nuanced. So what I try to do is give you the tools to handle it on your own, and then as much as possible, and especially in things like the quit books, to say, like, here's who this generally applies to. If you are not this very specific type of personality, this probably isn't going to work for you. So you can probably just say no to it. And that was kind of the goal of those books is to just give people this framework to hang things on so that they could be better decision makers. Because there's nothing about bothers me more than the imperative advice that we get. Like you have to be on TikTok, you have to do direct sales, you have to rapid release, you have to run ads, whatever it is. There's nothing that bothers me more than that. Because I know that that advice is really only actually imperative for a very small percentage of people. And it only works for a small percentage of people, maybe a slightly larger percentage than who it's imperative for. And for a lot of other people, it will kill their creativity, or it'll kill their platform, or it'll kill their ability to work, or their spirit, or whatever. And all of this imperative advice, like the reason I wrote those books, I just want people to say no to more stuff and to have a reason that they can say no that makes logical sense to them so that they can be armed against that imperative certainty advice that is usually bullshit. And not bullshit like people shouldn't say it. The people who are giving advice should give all the advice that they want to give. Whatever they're doing actually worked for them. But in terms of should everyone listen to them? No.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

So what you're saying is that by understanding this, it allows you to be more discerning about the advice you take.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Because let's be fair, like, not everyone does this on purpose. Not every advice giver does this on purpose. But what happens is the more certain someone is, the more you want to believe them. Because their certainty is very loud to us, right? Like, oh, they is that what I should do? Okay, great. Oh, I should be in KU. Okay, great. It's like the the certainty that they have is so significant. But again, their certainty is not based in any empirical knowledge. Their certainty is based on personal experience, is based on anecdot. Almost a hundred percent of people's that there are some exceptions to this, right? But even then, the exceptions, like let's say something like you should be in KU or you should be wide, right? Like that, that fight discussion. So for a certain amount of people, when you're making a decision about which direction to go in that road, there is a better way for you. Like there's a better way for some people to have less platforms to worry about, to not have to worry about running five different types of advertising, to not have to worry about direct sales, all that stuff, right? There are some people who would be better served going to KU. But if the wrong person listens to the KU evangelist, or the wrong person listens to the wide evangelist, and this puts the onus on me as a listener to be really aware of what I need and don't need and really aware of how other people's certainty affects me and to question the fucking premise when things don't feel right or when things don't align or when someone is too certain. That's all I want people to do. I don't want anyone in the nonfiction industry to stop saying what they're saying. Everyone gets to say whatever they want to say. But me as a listener, I need to be smarter about why I make decisions when someone makes me feel afraid, or why I make decisions when someone makes me think that magical thinking is the real thing, right? Like, what is it that's making me do this so that I can be more in control of my decision making and make better choices for myself? That's what I want.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

And I think that's that is the beauty of what understanding your strengths does for you. And it's it's not a one and done. That's been my experience. It is not a it's not a one and done. It's like I just you know didn't figure these things out and then oh, everything's fine now. I have to constantly be vigilant of how I am practicing them or choosing not to. So it's not a one and done thing. And with each situation that you are presented with, you know, you can think about how to use your strengths and apply to that. And it and it may be different. And for anybody listening that didn't know what a basement or a balcony is, when you with the strengths, it's like a balcony is when you're operating in the with the highest intention, I guess, in that strength and balcony.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Okay, high yeah, highest return on investment. Yep. And then a basement is when those strengths are actually working against you and you're going backwards because of it.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

Yeah, we talk about it like nuclear power, right? Like the strength has the same amount of power to work for you as it does to work against you. So we'll just take like learner as an example, right? Which is your number one, I think, right? So learner is the desire for competence. So I want to continue to be better and better, you know, like progress in my competence at something. But I can also feel incredibly incompetent when I have high learner because I know just how much more competent you could feel or you could be. And I have sometimes felt that competent in other areas. And if I don't feel that competent in this area, then I will judge my competence based on, like, let's say, a baseline feeling instead of on empirical evidence. The empirical evidence for learner might suggest that I am, in fact, quite learned at this thing and quite competent at it, but I just don't feel as though I am that competent. And so basement learner can look like, well, let's just take one more class on Facebook ads. Let's just take read one more book, let's listen to one more podcast. Instead of let me learn by doing the hard part, right? The hard part of learner is I'm gonna go experiment and potentially lose money on ads because I need to practice what this looks like. And you can hear Mal Cooper or Sky Warren or whoever say everybody's platform's different. You need to know what your platform is like, but still that's not gonna internalize for learner because you're thinking there's a competency that I could pass that'll make me feel more competent before I have to start spending money. When the reality is what they're basically saying is here are the baseline tools, and then you have to go figure out how your platform works. So you have to learn by doing. But a lot of learners don't want to do that because many learners also have a backstory, right? Like a history of not liking to feel incompetent. And so they do everything that they possibly can to not feel incompetent. So if I have a learner that's working against me in that way, it's keeping me away from that experimentation, learning, and growth that I could be doing because I'm so terrified of feeling incompetent that I'm not willing to take the chance that, yeah, I might lose. Like I had a client once who was doing $100,000 in ads at a month, right? And she told me, she was like, everybody thinks that you can just learn how to do ads without having to spend money. She's like, it cost me $10,000 just to learn how to do Facebook ads, not in courses, but in ad running, in losing money on ads to know how ads worked. And I was like, that's something all learners need to understand because a lot of us don't want to have to lose money on ads to learn how to advertise. So that basement of learner is I don't feel competent enough to take this chance yet. I don't feel competent enough. And so the goal then is to try to work on that. Understanding the goal is competence, understanding the fear is I'll be incompetent, then I have to work on shifting my mindset into practicing makes me more competent rather than being afraid.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Feelings are not in Max. Feelings are not max. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Um as I was listening to you, I'm like, oh, I'm so called out right here. So called out.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

I know I can see your face.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

I was like, uh oh. Somebody hit a button. Yeah. And the other thing is, you know, just if you have a learner, the second you do feel competent, you're bored.

SPEAKER_02 42:04

Yes. Because there's no frontier anymore. Well shit, I better go find something new. Well, and that's the other piece about learner too, right? Is knowing that it's really common for learners to write in multiple genres over the course of their career because once they reach a threshold where they feel like they have they can't be any more competent than they are without diminishing returns, especially if they have strategic maximizer achiever. So they they know they'll be diminishing returns on their competency gains. And so it's like, no, this isn't as fun anymore now that I'm not learning how to do cozy mystery, because I've now reached a competence in COSI that I feel like I've learned everything there is to learn. So I either have to shift my thought process into, okay, now I learn by doing, or I shift into learning from more excellent teachers or learning from like very specific writers, or I learn from outside the writing community or something. Like I have to challenge my learner. But if I don't know that about myself and I just take that information as information, then I may not be getting the best out of my learner. I may not be reaching that top 1% level because I'm letting that basement just continue to kneecap me over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Yeah, it becomes like a gaping hole. Yep. You continue to fall into every time.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Uh thank you so much, Becca. So I think that's a good place to wrap up. If you could, what would you what's your wish for writers out there? What would you share with them that you would like to impart? Oh boy. Question the fucking premise. Come on.

SPEAKER_02 43:42

I'm not. I mean, that would be part of it, right? That question the premise is is a what I would call like a 2016 catchphrase. Like it was a gold rush catchphrase. So yes, we need to question the premise for sure, but I think in the new era. Of publishing, so much of where we're headed as an industry is going to be about sustainability. Like, how do I make this an okay thing for me to do? And so, question the premise is part of that because it means I don't spend money on things that seem too good to be true. I don't spend money on things that are outside the goals that I've set for myself about finances. So there's some sustainability piece about questioning the premise, what we call QTPing, right? And someone pointed out to me it should be cueing the P or Qing TP. And I was like, whatever you do, you QTPing, but it's so it's great to QTP. But beyond that, we need to understand that this is a long, long game. And we play long games differently than we play short games. I don't sprint in a marathon. I run at the pace that it takes to get through the marathon. And I think a lot of us have come into this industry sprinting and not realizing it because we believe that it has to happen right now. Like we need the results to come immediately. We need things to happen on a timeline that we've seen other people's things happen on. And we don't tell ourselves any other story except the one about it has to happen faster. It's never going to happen. And I need for us to go through a collective mindset shift about the way that marathons are run. You run at a different pace. You conserve your energy. You use your resources differently. You do pit stops differently. Like you have a different strategy for how you run marathons than how you sprint. And so many of us don't realize that the rules we've set for ourselves internally include a sprinting mentality. I need to have this money now. I need to get to the top as fast as I can. I need to expend everything, try everything, do everything, trying to have success as quickly as possible. When often the faster success happens, the less likely it is to last. So a big piece for me of like what I want the industry to learn is there is no reason you can't be doing this for your whole life unless you sprint in a marathon. You will not last sprinting in a marathon. You need to run the race that's set before you. So for me, I feel like I want us to collectively go through that shift of like practice the joy of missing out, say no to the fear of missing out, heal yourself, be in therapy, conserve your resources, like run a wiser race than most of us have been running. That would be the one thing that I could say if I could say it to everybody.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

That is beautiful. Run a wiser race. Yeah. So that you can do this, this thing that you love that you enjoy, that lights you up and you know, it pays you back instead of depletes you.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Yeah. I love that. Thank you so much, Becca. Where can listeners find you?

SPEAKER_02 47:09

So betterfasteracademy.com is the easiest place to find the website. The QuickCast on YouTube is where all the content is. We also have an audio podcast version of it as well. And I always encourage people if you've never heard of me before, go to the QuickCast, listen to the free videos. Don't spend any money, just listen to the free content. There's so many people who can listen to the free content and get enough there that they don't need to ever spend money on our stuff. And if that's the case, I would love to see that happen. But betterfasteracademy.com is the space where you can find all of the links and information and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 47:48

Right. Right on. Well, thank you so much for your time and just you know being you in the world in the writing world and all you do. You're a hell of an advocate, and I I certainly appreciate you and all you do. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.