Episode Summary
Becca Syme, Author coach and founder of The Better-Faster Academy, has individually coached more than 5000 authors at all levels. Becca joins us to help you get past whatever’s keeping you from writing better faster stories.
Episode Notes
Becca Syme (MATL) is a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach and has individually coached more than 5000 authors at all levels. She is the author of the Quitbooks for Writers series and the popular Write Better-Faster course, and the host of the Quitcast for Writers podcast and YouTube channel. She also writes mystery novels and lives on one of the thousand lakes in Minnesota.
Becca Syme, founder of The Better-Faster Academy joins us to help you get past whatever’s keeping you from writing better faster stories.
//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//
Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We’ll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won’t charge you a dime.
We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That’s the best kind of business plan.
• Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/
• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog
• Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com
Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.
Transcript
Kevin Tumlinson [00:00:01]:
You just tuned into the hippest way to start and grow your indie author career. Learn the ins, the outs, and all the all arounds of self publishing with the team from D2D and their industry influencing guests. You’re listening to Self Publishing Insiders with Draft2Digital.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:28]:
It’s the music. It just gets us going in the morning. Welcome everybody to Self Publishing Insiders. I’m Jim Azevedo. And today, I’m so excited to welcome back to the podcast Becca Syme. Hey.
Becca Syme [00:00:42]:
I’m so excited to be here. We had so much fun last time. We’re gonna have a blast.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:47]:
We are. We are. I’m so excited to have you back. You know, let me read your bio because your bio is pretty interesting. Let me let me do that so I can kinda set the stage because Becca was here about almost a year ago now, and she’s walking back anytime. But for those of you who are new to the show, welcome, and you’re going to really enjoy this conversation. So let me tell you about who Becca is. Becca Syme is a Gallup certified strengths coach and has individually coached more than 5,000 authors at all levels.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:20]:
Wanna underscore underscore that individually coached over 5,000 authors. That means we’re not talking about, like, you had a hundred people at a conference that you coach all at once. This is individually five more than 5,000 authors. So there’s a lot of experience there. Becca is the author of the quit books for writer series and the popular write better faster course and and the host of the quit cast for writers podcast and YouTube channel. She also writes mystery novels and lives on one of the thousand lakes in Minnesota. Welcome back to the show, Becca.
Becca Syme [00:01:56]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I always forget to we forgot to change that. It should be 10,000. You can tell I didn’t grow up here because I missed that, but a thousand is is a lot.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:09]:
That’s that’s a that’s very watery, so we get the we get the idea. Watery. I thought you were gonna say that you coached 10,000 authors, and I was gonna be like, what?
Becca Syme [00:02:17]:
So I I am closer to 10,000 individual people now. Like, I’ve done I’m at over 6,000 individual authors because I think that bio was from about three years ago.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:29]:
But over 6,000?
Becca Syme [00:02:30]:
Yeah. I’m over 6,000 individual, and then I’m close to 10,000. Not quite because I I just didn’t have the volume of people before authors, but, but close. It’s I get a little obsessed about stuff when I really, really get excited about something, and I used to coach people everywhere I could find them. I would coach them in the grocery store, on the plane, in the library, like, in line at Starbucks. Anywhere I could be, I’d be like, oh, let’s talk about this. I heard that thing. So, I I love it.
Becca Syme [00:03:02]:
It’s fun for me.
Jim Azevedo [00:03:04]:
Like random people or people that you already had as clients?
Becca Syme [00:03:07]:
Yeah. And, like, I was telling somebody, one of my clients
Jim Azevedo [00:03:09]:
I need to visualize this a little bit before we get into the meet. So how do you walk up to, like, a random person to start calling?
Becca Syme [00:03:15]:
It was never walking up. It was always I would overhear something. So either this and it used to happen so much more on planes ten years ago where you just pick up random conversations with people. And a lot of it was because I traveled so much, I would sit next to people on the plane and they would tell me stuff. And I’d be like, oh, is your spouse doing because they tell me something. And I’d be like, do they do this, this, and this? And they’d be like, yeah. How did you know? And I’m like, because you’re probably this, and you probably ended up with someone who’s not. So here’s how you fix that.
Becca Syme [00:03:48]:
Right? And I don’t know that I would say I count people that I talk to for ten minutes. Right? Like, I wouldn’t count that in my number. But if I had their strengths in front of me and I had the ability to coach them about the strengths themselves, but that’s how I got into it originally was just I would just obsessively talk to anybody who I knew had a problem. And I’m like, you don’t understand how predictable these things are. Everybody and personality tests get a bad rap because people try to use them to explain everything, and they can’t explain everything about you. And no one test explains everything. Everything is there there’s a complexity to human beings. But if you can understand where the underlying behavior motivation is coming from and these talent clusters are so predictable, it’s like I can tell you if you’re high empathy, don’t do this and this because it’s gonna make your life hard and every high empathy person does that.
Becca Syme [00:04:45]:
And we all need to just let empathy people alone. You know what I mean? Like, not Yep. Not throw all the things on them.
Jim Azevedo [00:04:54]:
But I’m laughing because I’m that’s because
Becca Syme [00:04:55]:
you’re number one
Jim Azevedo [00:04:56]:
of the Yeah. But before we before we go down those paths, let’s kinda set that foundation a little bit to tell so people understand what we’re talking about when it comes to these different personality traits. Can you give us some background on the Better Faster Academy, and then what what QuickBooks is all about? And we’ll kinda talk about the coaching, specifically and and the, and the clip and the gosh. I forgot the name of it. CliftonStrengths?
Becca Syme [00:05:25]:
CliftonStrengths. Yep.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:26]:
CliftonStrengths and and how that works.
Becca Syme [00:05:30]:
Yeah. The the core of the Better Faster Academy is this understanding that how people are different matters a lot to how they’re successful. So what I think a lot of us would like, because it would be easier, would be if there was just one way to be successful, and then you could just make yourself into that thing. So if it is like waking up early in the morning or whatever it is that you think you’re supposed to be doing, then you could just force yourself to do this thing that would make everyone successful. And then by doing that, you would ensure that you have success. What we actually found, not just, like, me personally, but as the CliftonStrengths was being created, is that the differences between humans are so consistent and predictable that those differences have success patterns in them. So, like, when I’m a number one empathy, there are certain ways that I’m gonna be the most successful as a number one empathy, and empathy is a trait cluster, right, where all these different behaviors that have empathy in common, you do all of those things. And everyone who has empathy does that trait cluster with excellence when they have empathy high because of how they constructed the test.
Becca Syme [00:06:48]:
So when you know you have these strong behaviors that have been studied for decades and decades, and you know that this is a consistent thing about you, then you treat yourself as though you are this way instead of trying to conform to something that isn’t not only is it not promised that it will actually work that way for you because you have to be wired in that way in order for it to work. And, really, that’s kind of the core of Better Faster Academy is that you can’t act against your wiring no matter how much we want to because it’s so strong. So we might as well understand it and then work with it and then get the better faster is that you get exponentially better when you are acting in areas with natural talent instead of trying for its weaknesses all the time. Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:07:40]:
That’s so interesting. And it gives a bit of permission too for those of us who might feel okay. I’ll speak about myself. Yep. If I’m feeling like, gosh. You know, I need to be more like an extrovert. I need to go into these networking opportunities and work the room. And, oh my gosh.
Jim Azevedo [00:07:54]:
I’m such a loser because I can’t do that. Like, that type a person over there or that expert over there, they’re so witty, and they’re so outgoing. Gosh. I I thought it was only like that. So what I’m hearing from you is that you’re not like that exactly, but you’re like this. And here are your here are the traits that you could put to work for you to to use the strengths that you already have. Oh, by the way, you do have strengths. Everybody’s got some strengths, and here’s how you use them.
Becca Syme [00:08:23]:
Yeah. Like, that extreme extroversion trait, let’s say, the the wittiness, the charisma, that kind of thing, they’re not good at certain things. So, like, something that they are not great at, you’re great at. So understanding what I’m great at and what someone else is great at is super important. And I use this example a lot because, there are certain traits that we’ve kind of been conditioned to believe are opposites, but that are really on a sort of continuum. Right? Like, I might be I might think of myself as an introvert, but on a continuum of introvert to extrovert that’s actually gradiated, I might actually be closer to the middle. So I may have been expecting myself to act in a certain way, but I’m not an extreme. So then if I try to treat myself as though I’m an extreme and I teach myself the skills that the people who are excellent at that extreme are doing, I may actually not get any closer to being excellent at that thing because I just don’t have that capacity.
Becca Syme [00:09:25]:
Whereas if I will teach myself to do the things that people who are more excellent at what I’m good at will do, then I can become more and more. Again, that’s the better faster area, right, where I wanna become better rather than constantly trying to fix my weaknesses in a way that makes me feel like I’m not making any progress because I’m not getting any closer to that extroversion. Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:09:51]:
I’m already feeling better about myself. We’ve been in this conversation, what, less than five minutes.
Becca Syme [00:09:56]:
We need everyone, and this is the other piece that I think is really, really important. Everybody’s difference serves a purpose that is a larger purpose. And it isn’t like some of us are meant for stardom and some of us aren’t. That’s not what I mean. I mean, we need to see all versions of stardom out there. So I need to see the introverted sort of, let’s say, like, Sarah J Maas style of author who just doesn’t wanna be on social media, doesn’t wanna be around people, doesn’t but is extremely talented at being a writer. I need to see if I’m wired that way that she exists and that people like her exist. So if I’m wired that way, I’m not trying to make myself into an Instagram influencer because I am not wired to be successful in that way.
Becca Syme [00:10:46]:
I may be wired to be successful by cloistering and hiding and what what we would call from an archetype perspective, wardrobing, where I just go into the wardrobe and disappear in there, and then I come out with a finished product. But I’m not out there all of the time trying to sell my books to everybody and and act like this extroverted person because that’s not me. So it’s important to know that those other success archetypes actually exist so that you don’t have to feel like, well, I feel like I just wanna hide all the Syme, but everybody says every single time we hear the phrase everybody says, you absolutely need to just question the premise of it because there is no such thing as something everyone should be doing. It’s not it is not possible that that’s true.
Jim Azevedo [00:11:39]:
I love that. Let me bring up a quick comment here
Becca Syme [00:11:42]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:11:42]:
From Beth Erwin. Hi, Beth, and thank you for your comment. Beth says, Becca is a career changer because she drills down on your particular challenge of strength and teaches you how to be a better you.
Becca Syme [00:11:54]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:11:55]:
With that comment, like, what brought you into coaching in the first place?
Becca Syme [00:12:01]:
Yeah. It’s interesting because that’s exactly what was missing for me. I grew up with people who were very similar to each other in my family of origin in terms of, like, how they were motivated and how they were their best self. Right? So when I was trying to be like that, it was just killing me. I felt unsuccessful. I felt like I was never gonna amount to anything. Like, literally, I run a 7 figure business. At 18, my parents were not sure I would be able to function on my own outside the house
Jim Azevedo [00:12:35]:
Mhmm.
Becca Syme [00:12:36]:
And, like, fully have my own, like, house and pay my own rent and etcetera. But it was because I was so just bogged down with these expectations of trying to be like other people and trying to be successful and excellent in the ways other people were. And I had this coaching session, and I went to grad school, and they required us to take the strengths test as an entrance. And then I got coached for an hour after we took the assessment with a certified coach and changed my whole life. Like, I walked out of that because, basically, he told me all these things that you’ve been holding yourself accountable for, like, those are your parents’ strengths. That’s how they’re successful. These are not strong for you. Like and he would say things like, you know, I can hear this in you.
Becca Syme [00:13:24]:
Right? Like, you do not have that trait. That’s that’s their trait. That’s probably in your bottom five. Sure enough, it’s my number 32 strength discipline. That’s just not for me. Both of my parents are the most Syme my mom has worked out at every single day of her adult life. She works out on vacation. She works out, like, literally every every single day of except the day she had surgery.
Becca Syme [00:13:55]:
Right? Like, maybe she skipped a day. Slacker. Very slacker. I’m not that person. I can’t be that person. So me trying to motivate myself in the way that is that that expectation, I will always feel like a failure every time. So my goal, I think, after I had that experience was, like, I need everybody to understand this is not intuitive for people to understand. We are wired biologically to try to copy what other people are doing to be successful, but we’re copying the wrong people.
Becca Syme [00:14:30]:
We need to understand how to listen for our strengths and and copy people who are like us.
Jim Azevedo [00:14:38]:
Gosh. This is so interesting. We were talking backstage about I was telling you how I’m such a big proponent of coaching across multiple disciplines, whether it’s athletics or creativity or business, career advice, all of that stuff. Why do you feel that coaching is so effective for the creative community and writers in particular?
Becca Syme [00:15:01]:
So there’s two reasons. One is you don’t know what’s going on inside your brain. Like, you don’t know. And you’re only in charge of 5% of your decisions, like, consciously in charge. Everybody thinks, like, I’m in charge of all my choices. You are in charge of 5% statistically of your decisions in a day. 95% of your decisions are being made by systems you don’t even understand, let alone have access to. And this is exactly what like, just to use an athletics equivalent, I grew up in an athletics family.
Becca Syme [00:15:34]:
I have division one athletes, you know what I mean, in my in my family. So athletics makes a lot of sense to me. When you have a coach, the coach is above the game. Like, the coach is not in the game with you. They are on the sidelines. You’re doing all the high stakes stuff. You’re having all of the execution, etcetera, but the coach knows why you’re doing what you’re doing. The coach knows the fundamentals of your behavior, and the coach is there to give you the perspective that you cannot have when you are inside the game.
Becca Syme [00:16:10]:
And the problem is and if any of you ever played a game like basketball, football, like, something where you’re actually surrounded by a lot of stimulus and there’s a lot of kind of, things going on that can draw your attention, you can’t see the field. Even the quarterback with with field vision can’t see the entire field. It’s the coach’s job to understand the context of the game that you’re playing, to know all the rules, to know your behavior, and to know you well enough to say, hey. Let’s come out of that. Like, you’re getting to focus on this person that’s coming at you. Look up. Like, look at the horizon instead of looking at that tackler. This is your o line is not doing their job.
Becca Syme [00:16:55]:
We’ve gotta get this person to come other here. Right? Like, for me, the the understanding of what coaching provides for you is why it’s so important. I don’t care who coaches you. It could be us. It could be Claire. It could be anybody. I don’t care who does it. But everyone needs a coach of some kind and not just a mentor.
Becca Syme [00:17:15]:
Mentors are are often
Jim Azevedo [00:17:17]:
I’m just about to ask you that. Does that include mentors?
Becca Syme [00:17:19]:
So different. Mentors are so interested in you doing the thing that they did. Like, true mentors. You go to someone because they’ve had a huge amount of success in your field, and you’re trying to understand how they did it and they’re giving you the benefit of their experiences, coaches understand the game that you are playing, and they understand the fundamentals of the game you’re playing and how you progress. So a really good coach is as much a developer, like a developmental sort of maximization specialist as much as they are anything. They are way less interested in the exact mechanics of what other successful people do because it doesn’t matter. And, again, I to use a sports metaphor, like, Michael Jordan and LeBron James don’t play the same game. You don’t coach them the same.
Becca Syme [00:18:14]:
They’re not the same player. You don’t coach Kobe Bryant the same way you coach Caitlin Clark. They’re not the same well, that’s a bad example because I think they do actually have the same number one strength, but, like but but you don’t coach them the same way because they’re not the same player. They’re not playing the same game. They’re not on the same team. Right? Like, they’re they’re they’re they’re not the same, position. So, like, you don’t coach those people the same because I’m not coaching a system. And and that’s the difference.
Becca Syme [00:18:46]:
Right? It’s like, I’m not coaching you in my system of how to become a 6 figure author. So it’s a huge difference. I don’t care the steps that you take to get where you need to go. I care who you are. I care what you don’t know about yourself because that is the most important thing of all. When there’s something about you that’s gonna consistently happen and you don’t understand it, I need to bring understanding to you so you know how to control that thing that you’re doing. Right? So a coach is a specialist in being able to have perspective on you and the game that you’re playing, and everybody needs that. I have more than one coach.
Becca Syme [00:19:27]:
Like, I have specific coaches for specific things because I know that there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know, and I need to be able to have more perspective. Because, again, when I’m in the play and I see
Jim Azevedo [00:19:40]:
the the the
Becca Syme [00:19:41]:
player coming at me, I can’t get out of my head in that situation. I need somebody. Right? Like, I
Jim Azevedo [00:19:48]:
Especially when you’re playing the game and it’s been working for you already. It’s been working for me. It’s been working for you. But then how do I excel? How do I break out of, you know, where I am today to get to that next level tomorrow? Because I’m doing this work thing. So I guess I don’t need a coach, really.
Becca Syme [00:20:02]:
Right.
Jim Azevedo [00:20:02]:
Then when you but then when you get it, you’re just like, it’s so eye opening. Everything you’re saying is just like, oh. Yep. It it it’s really just opening doors right now for me. I hope everybody else is going to stay.
Becca Syme [00:20:14]:
It’s huge. But this is also why CEOs, there’s almost all CEOs have multiple coaches. I believe that. Look at people who are really successful, it’s a rare person you’re gonna find. Like, if you watch a a podcast interview like Diary of a CEO or something like that. Right? Mhmm. You’re not gonna see a lot of people on that show who aren’t getting multiple different perspectives from multiple different people because they know that what they don’t know is always gonna be their Achilles heel. It’s their blind spot.
Becca Syme [00:20:45]:
Right? So, yeah, that’s huge. Huge. Huge.
Jim Azevedo [00:20:49]:
You gave the perfect segue a a couple of moments ago, and then I asked you a separate question and then kind of ruined that segue. But you’re asking you’re starting to talk about, how you wouldn’t coach, you know, Kobe Bryant the same way that you would coach Michael Jordan. Yep. But I wanted to ask you, when it comes to different authors and where they are in their career, can we talk a little bit about different scenarios in that respect, and how coaching may be able to help different authors at different levels of their career? Yep. Specifically, what I’m thinking about, like, is aspiring authors who maybe haven’t published their first book. Maybe they finished a manuscript or two, but they haven’t published yet. And then the newer authors who might have a couple of books under their belt, but they’re looking to grow their careers. Then we’ve got established authors who, maybe at this point, they’ve been able to quit their day jobs.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:36]:
They’re earning a living, but they wanna get to that next level, which is the higher end authors who are you know, they’ve gotten to that point where they’re reaching maybe 6 to 7 figures. But those high end authors, they’re just extremely time limited. Yeah. We’re talking about that? Yeah. That was a lot. That was a mouthful.
Becca Syme [00:21:53]:
Yeah. So let me just deal with those three different places first because I will also say how I would coach each individual person who came to me at each one of those levels would be different. But there’s for sure some patterns that I see in those three different areas. The the biggest thing I see with aspiring authors, especially people who either haven’t yet published or who are still in querying, is that they get so focused on the first or the one that they’re not able to kinda see the big picture. And so I have a couple of things I consistently say to people who are earlier in their career. One is, and I think this is the biggest mindset shift that earlier in the career authors need to go through, is I have a 7 figure client who said this to me once, and I repeat this all the time. But I just put this on threads literally today. It was, if I knew how many one star reviews it would take me to hit a million dollars, I would have wanted them to come so much faster than I did.
Becca Syme [00:22:55]:
Because her whole thing was I was trying to keep the pain at bay of, like, seeing the one star reviews, and I didn’t realize that not only are one stars necessary, but they are good for you. Like, one star reviews mean that you’re being widely read. And so many people who are looking for the right way for things to happen, we have this. And, again, this is the perspective that only somebody with experience can bring you. Right? Is when you are, let’s say, too focused on the tackler where the one star review is the tackler, you don’t realize, no. You wanna take that hit because we’ve got a bigger play happening down the field. Yeah. Like, it’s okay for you to take a sack once in a while, Drew.
Becca Syme [00:23:44]:
It’s fine. Right? Like, that kind of thing because that’s just what has to happen if we’re gonna get the game that we wanna get down the road. But we get too focused on one play. And so often with with newer or younger and their career authors, that’s my talk is, like, we’ve gotta have a bigger field vision about the way that this happens and trust that there’s nothing that can happen to you you cannot recover from. There’s nothing in this industry, no failure, no bad release, no one star review, no nothing that can happen to you that you don’t have agency to recover from. It’s just not possible. So, like, that’s kind of the, you know, earlier in the career. The mid career authors often struggle if they haven’t hit yet, which we’re assuming.
Becca Syme [00:24:33]:
Right? They often struggle with feeling like every single failure that they have is predictive of future failure. So they don’t understand that the first phase of business is the research and development phase. We have a little bit of content on the five phases of an author business on the QuickCast and the Patreon, but the first phase is research and development. Every single business, no matter what what arena they’re in, goes through research and development. For authors, r and d can sometimes take twenty years. Right? So we have this feeling that, like, if I don’t take off in a year or if I don’t take off with my first book or if I don’t take off within two series, then I’m never gonna be able to make money. And we don’t understand that the purpose of the research and development phase, the early phase in your career, is literally to teach yourself how to find the demand for the books that you are writing or the books that you wanna write. So you have to learn how to find the demand.
Becca Syme [00:25:33]:
You don’t need to have it at any point in the research and development phase until you get to the end, right, like, of the of phase one. Then when you found the demand, it will take care of itself, you getting out of phase one. But if you can’t find the demand, demand is the engine that makes the author business grow. Right? So you absolutely need to understand that that first phase, you’re gonna have a lot of frustration. You’re gonna have a lot of failure. You’re not gonna take off. You may have to switch series, etcetera, etcetera. If you can’t internalize the fact that all of those things are okay and you can still have success in the future, you’re really gonna struggle when you stay in phase one for too long because it’s gonna feel
Jim Azevedo [00:26:20]:
like you’re bringing this up. I Yep. Because Huge. Because that could be a showstopper for a lot of people when they had those first failures. And if you’re telling them, hey. Based on my years and years and years of experience with coaching authors and other creatives that not only is failure okay, but it’s, like, expected, and you can move past that. Because if you don’t get past that, you might just throw your hands up and say, I’ve I’ve had enough of this. It hurts.
Jim Azevedo [00:26:48]:
It’s painful. I don’t wanna work through it. Because, you know, through our experience of going to conferences and talking to authors, especially newer authors who maybe they decided to to self publish. They wanted to go down that traditional route, and now they’re scared to death to self publish because they are afraid that if they don’t find that demand with their first book, then traditional publishers are never gonna look at them again.
Becca Syme [00:27:11]:
Right. Yep. I would say that for sure is not true. Right? Like that and we need to just we call the reason we call we say QTP all the Syme. Right? Like, we say question the premise, question the premise, is there are a lot of things that we believe are true because we’re playing under a rule set that we don’t understand. So when you play under the rule set of venture capitalism, right, which is what traditional publishing is, it’s venture capitalism. Somebody who has a lot of money paying creative people to take a chance at making even more money. Right? So I buy a book from you.
Becca Syme [00:27:46]:
You’re a creative person because I wanna see if I can make a million dollars off of your book. Like, that’s how venture capitalism works. Because there’s such a high number of chances that a publisher could take, you have to take off quickly. Because the rules of venture capitalism are you get one shot at this. And if you don’t kill it on your debut, you’re not gonna get another shot at this. Because there’s a thousand other people who can take that place. The rules change when you have the indie revolution because now authors can prove to publishers that it’s takes more than one chance sometimes. So if you miss it on your first chance, you need to remind yourself, I’m not playing under New York rules anymore.
Becca Syme [00:28:29]:
This is I’m I’m playing agency rules, right, where I have the agency to decide if I’m gonna keep publishing myself. Am I still learning? Am I still getting better? Do I still think that New York contract might be in front of me sometime? I guarantee you, if you hit the top 100 in the store, zero publishers are gonna go back and look at can we like, did you submit to us at one you know what I mean? Like, it’s just not even important because your sales are now the proof that they need that whatever you’re doing now is working. The problem is pre indie revolution, there wasn’t any proof that that could happen. The proof was always in favor of the New York rules publishing, venture capitalist publishing, which was if you don’t take off right away, you’ll never take off. And then they’d use all of these examples as as proof. And it’s like, right. But you didn’t give them a chance, but they can’t afford to give chances because they spend so much money trying to play the game and win so much money. So, again, like, it’s They
Jim Azevedo [00:29:35]:
can’t afford to take a risk on every author.
Becca Syme [00:29:37]:
Can’t take a risk on every author. And you really can’t afford to develop people’s careers unless they can prove that they can sell on some level. So people who have these longer, you know, arcs in their research and development phase, they were really not getting the benefit of that experience. And now we can do that because we are in control of our own careers. And that to me is the best news. Nothing that can happen can take away your ability to have a career that you want at some point in the future. It may not be today. It may not be tomorrow.
Becca Syme [00:30:13]:
It may not be next year, but that doesn’t matter because the rules of the game you’re playing and, again, this is the field. Like, get your head out of the tackle, Drew. It’s gonna be okay. Look up the field. There’s a longer play here. The play is you don’t leave the game. You don’t check out. You don’t tap out.
Becca Syme [00:30:33]:
You always understand there could be more in front of you in the future. As long as you have somebody around you who understands the game and reminds you to look at the horizon, you can continue to do this for forever. It it
Jim Azevedo [00:30:48]:
is We have Yep. I’m just gonna repeat something you said. We have agency. We are in control. Like Yep. That was your mic drop moment. It’s so true. How many best selling indie authors do we all know who are like, yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:31:02]:
I got rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection, but I just kept on writing. And then I had 10 books under my belt, 15 books under my belt. And then my sales started trickling up for some reason. And then those those early adopters, all those early readers of those books began looking for my other books, and then it just started to Yep. Expand.
Becca Syme [00:31:25]:
It’s so important to know the game you’re playing. Like, this is why we talk so much about gamification around the BFA over the Better Faster Academy. Because if you don’t understand the game you’re actually playing, you can think you’re playing a different game. And you can think, like, I’m playing the game where if I don’t sell today, I everything is lost. I’m going to, you know, fail forever. I I can never get it back. If my if Amazon, takes my rank away for the day of my release, I can never recover from that. It feels so catastrophic.
Becca Syme [00:32:00]:
Right? But the reality is if you look at the long game, that’s not the game you’re playing. That’s just a play. And if we don’t have that reframe in terms of somebody there to help us remember, you don’t have to worry about the play, Drew. You can worry about the field. Right? You’ve gotta get your head up. If we don’t have that sometimes, we cannot survive. And there are so many people who’ve had twelve, fifteen, seventeen, twenty five year research and development phases where they’ve been publishing for a long Syme. And
Jim Azevedo [00:32:34]:
even for
Becca Syme [00:32:35]:
people that are, like, publishing at a very low median level, who had maybe early publishing contracts with New York or something but were never a breakout. And then all of a sudden, they hit the right book at the right time, and then they’re making a million bucks. And, again, this isn’t to say it will happen to everyone. But the point is, and this is so important, you don’t know that it won’t be you. You do not know that. So the only reason you should ever give up is if you don’t want to go through the learning curve anymore, and that’s reasonable. Like, not everybody wants to go through the learning curve. This is a hard business to be in.
Becca Syme [00:33:14]:
It’s going to take even more difficulty. It’s not gonna get any easier. And and just to segue into, like, the high earning authors. Right? That’s often the conversation I have to have with high earning authors, which is they they feel unallowed to talk about their difficulties because they’re now making 7 figures, maybe mid 7 figures, maybe 8 figures. It is the, I’m not allowed to have problems because I’m Uh-huh. I’m making so much money or no one wants to hear about, like, oh, this, you know, 7 figure author complaining about how hard their life is, etcetera. And other people are judging them for having problems. And so a lot of them come to me feeling like, I don’t know why I feel this way.
Becca Syme [00:33:59]:
And I’m like, it’s because you think you’re not allowed to talk about the things that bother you. Mhmm. And, actually and and this is just being objective. The pressure of the problems that you have at high six figures and seven figures and bigger are often so much more stressful than the pressure that you were having at lower levels that people don’t stay. They don’t stay in that area because it’s just so much pain up there, and it’s so much responsibility, and then there’s so much danger. And and nobody understands that because those people generally aren’t allowed to complain about things or talk about what’s difficult. And so then a lot of us think all my problems will be solved if I can just get to seven or six figures, and it’s like, oh, then they just begin. Like, the problems just begin.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:52]:
Yeah. Because you’re not gonna stop working and then that workload, that pressure, it leads to anxiety pressure. Other health issues. Yep. Okay. Yeah. I knew this that that the time is gonna fly by, so I wanna make sure I get the Sure. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:35:05]:
Go ahead. Questions. Gosh. But this is fantastic. I’m having so much fun. Yeah. Me too. I love doing this stuff.
Jim Azevedo [00:35:13]:
A question from Beth Bliss. Beth asked, does Becca have recommendations for an order to watch her videos, and can we start anywhere?
Becca Syme [00:35:20]:
Yeah. So I would watch them topically. So we have a whole bunch of topical, lists on the YouTube channel in terms of, like, if you’re in burnout, watch the burnout videos. If you’re having writer’s block, watch those, etcetera. Like, I would start topically first. And if not topically, if you’re not having a specific issue, I would probably start with videos one, two, and three on the quick cast, like one zero one, one zero two, and one zero three, and then go from what is recommended in YouTube in that order because it’s gonna basically give you, like, here’s what most people watch afterwards. But yeah. Yeah.
Becca Syme [00:36:02]:
Great question.
Jim Azevedo [00:36:03]:
Good. Good. Good. There’s another one. Ari Morley says, I think that the quote, if I don’t sell today, I’ll fail forever is a public school trauma, to be honest. Because, failing any section and chapter of curriculum and not getting a chance to do over and understand set us up to
Becca Syme [00:36:24]:
always fall behind. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:36:26]:
Yeah.
Becca Syme [00:36:27]:
So it it really depends on the person. And and this is super important again going back to the kind of, like, you can’t coach Kobe and Caitlin the same way. So everybody has a place that their responses come from, like, the way that they respond to crisis comes from. And so everyone’s gonna have a slightly nuanced version of this depending on what their strengths are and other pieces. But we definitely do see public school trauma stuff happening with people who are high in learner, people who are high in strategic, like the the, strategic thinking strengths because they were so judged based on their intelligence. Right? And so their inability to perform something that they couldn’t figure out on their own to perform, you know, was like, that was a big trauma for them. But it really depends on the individual person. But, yeah, absolutely that there’s a lot of coding that we get depending on our strengths from failures that have happened in the past, and then it’s really hard to unlearn those things because they have worked for us in the past.
Becca Syme [00:37:33]:
So the coping mechanisms that I have around that public school issue has worked for me when I was in school, don’t work for me anymore now, but it’s hard for me to let them go because they were so helpful in the the past. So yeah. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:37:49]:
Okay. Are are there any common misconceptions about coaching or working with coaches that you wish didn’t exist or that Syme to come up? You’re like, oh, that’s not true.
Becca Syme [00:38:00]:
So the all coaches are created equal thing is not true. As much as I wish that I could just say, you know, hey. Any coach will do, just like I can’t say any therapist will do. There have been more damage done by bad therapists than there ever will be help done by good therapists. And so I would say it’s really important when you’re looking at coaching, and and trying to choose a coach, to look for what you specifically need. So, like, understanding and, again, that that’s why I kinda broke that up. Right? When you’re in a younger in your in your career area, you’re more likely to have more coaches that will be helpful for you because your learning curve, you’re you’re you’re earlier in the learning curve. So there’s a higher number of coaches that will be able to help you.
Becca Syme [00:38:49]:
The farther you get in, you really need to find people who are being coached by people, if that makes sense.
Jim Azevedo [00:38:57]:
Right?
Becca Syme [00:38:58]:
Like like, there’s a reason that CEO coaches tend to coach more CEOs. Right? Because they they have a higher level of success with the people that they’ve coached and then they refer. So but but it really is frustrating to me that not every single person who is a coach is equally good at it. And there are certain things I really suck at coaching in terms of, like, I will say no sometimes to coaching when people are asking for certain things because I’ll say like that. I’m not your person for that, because there are areas I can’t coach either. So yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:39:36]:
That’s always the mark of a good coach as well or a good practitioner of any sort when you can when you can be humble enough and, And realistic enough. And realistic enough. I don’t understand that part. I might not be the best person for you. Yep. I wanted to go back to your analogy, your sports analogy when you’re talking about being in the middle of a Syme, and there are all these different players running around. You’ve got a tackle coming at you, and you’re kind of focused here, and you have all these different distractions, but a coach can see everything widely. And I think that’s so analogous, and that’s such a perfect metaphor for authors who are growing their careers because, especially today, there are just so many distractions out there.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:18]:
And there’s so much noise, and there’s so many service providers. And there’s there’s also a lot of best selling authors who are giving classes and giving their advice and expertise. And I think a lot of Syme, authors are sort of kinda told, no. This is the right way. Like, this is the one true way. This is how it works. This is what you need to do. It’s this.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:38]:
This. It’s this. It’s this. But then somebody over here says, no. No. No. That’s bad advice. So it’s so distracting, and it’s so frustrating.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:46]:
Yeah. So that’s why I’m saying it’s just it’s what you’re saying here, is just making so much sense to me.
Becca Syme [00:40:54]:
Yeah. The more you know about yourself, the more you’ll start to recognize the patterns of language that resonate with you and the ones that don’t. And and the key for me when what you described in the field is I’m scared. When I’m when I’m behind the the center, if I’m the quarterback, and I see the pocket is open and there’s somebody coming at me, I start to get scared. So I tense up. I I lose connection. Not the good players don’t. Right? Like, the the players who’ve worked themselves out of that space don’t.
Becca Syme [00:41:26]:
Yeah. But, like, the tendency is to be to focus on the tackle and to get afraid. And so anything that we can do, everything that we can do as individual people to cancel out the fears that we have that we feel, to solve the ones that are actually real in terms of, like, there are some things we should definitely be conscious about, but there are no life and death emergencies in publishing. So when we get into a feeling of, like, this is life and death. I can feel myself starting to go into fight or flight. It’s like, okay. Nope. The only goal
Jim Azevedo [00:42:06]:
my hand. That’s the point I’m telling you.
Becca Syme [00:42:08]:
The only goal when I feel that way is to get out of fight or flight. You can’t listen to what your brain is telling you in that moment because it’s looking at the tackler. It does not know what it can’t afford to focus on anything else. We have to solve the fight or flight problem.
Jim Azevedo [00:42:25]:
Yeah. Self preservation like I don’t wanna preservation.
Becca Syme [00:42:27]:
Yep. And and, again, I repeat, then Claire Taylor was the first one to say this, and I think it is worth repeating. There are no life and death emergencies in publishing. So anytime you start to feel like there is, the goal is to get above the line again. So you’re you’ve gone below the line into your fight or flight response. The goal is to let that feeling pass and then get back into a space where I have connection fully with both my negative and positive emotions. So that’s one of the key reminders. If you’re in a space where you can only connect with negative emotions, you can’t connect with any positive emotions.
Becca Syme [00:43:08]:
The goal is Syme out, get above the line, get regulated, and then don’t listen to anything your brain is saying when you’re down when you’re below the line in that space because it is not being logical. It sounds real logical to you in the moment because, again, you’re in the pocket with the with the tackle coming at you. So it’s gonna feel logical to be, like, tense, protect, tackle. Yeah. But the goal is we gotta get above the line so we can move. Because you can’t move when you’re below the line. You cannot pivot effectively. You can’t you you’re you’ve lost connection with your logical brain.
Becca Syme [00:43:50]:
And so many of us are just living our lives constantly in fight or flight, and we don’t realize that that is get out of fight or flight. That is not you don’t solve the problems that you see in fight or flight unless they are actual immediate life and death problems. So actual immediate life and death problems get solved in fight or flight. Everything else in fight or flight is get out of fight or flight. Fight, flight, freeze, Fawn. Right? Like, get out of that feeling. Because once you can get above the line, you may be able to have field perspective yourself. You may be able to connect with, oh, right.
Becca Syme [00:44:29]:
You know, I really do have these plans that I want down the road too, and I can you know, etcetera. But when I’m in the moment and I’m so scared, I can’t get into that place. And what I’m here to tell you is it is safe to get above the line in the moment. It feels like it’s not safe. You’re gonna wanna argue with me. You’re gonna wanna talk
Jim Azevedo [00:44:49]:
a break. It’s okay to take a break. Like Yep. Step
Becca Syme [00:44:52]:
back. Okay to pause, walk away, let yourself get above the line, and then reengage in the conversation again when you’re back above the line. But if we try to make decisions when we’re below the line, all we’re doing is giving in, giving in, giving in. And by the way, some of you and I’m gonna look in your eyes when I say this.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:12]:
I’m playing pointed at right now, but okay.
Becca Syme [00:45:14]:
Some of you not Jim because this probably it’s probably isn’t you. But some of you need to get the absolute crack off of social media. You need to get off. Because I don’t know if you know this, but psychologically, when when people are dysregulated, the body’s response is to want everyone around us to be dysregulated. So when I get freaked out about something, my goal is to make other people confirm that this is indeed a lion that I’m seeing here, and this is indeed scary. This is indeed life threatening.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:52]:
Safety in numbers.
Becca Syme [00:45:53]:
Yep. And so if I can dysregulate everybody else and, again, this is not conscious. Nobody knows they’re doing this. But biologically, if I can dysregulate everybody else, it confirms that this is indeed a lion, and I am indeed correct in being so scared of this. And no one realizes that when we are behind our computers getting more and more and more dysregulated, that is the opposite of what’s helpful for us in that situation. We need to find physical human beings to connect with and get regulated again because just being behind the keyboard, being dysregulated is not helping anyone. And in fact, so many of us are so dysregulated by what happens on our computers that we are not conscious enough to be able to get regulated consistently. And it’s so, so, so, so important to remember, when I’m starting to feel dysregulated, I start to notice I’m tensing, I’m in fight or flight, I’m getting too stressed, I’m getting afraid, whatever it looks like, that I need to break that pattern and disrupt that pattern.
Becca Syme [00:47:07]:
So if there is something important for me to pay attention to, I can do it when I’m above the line. This is not the space to do it.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:15]:
Excellent point. Do you have a couple more minutes, Becca? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Becca Syme [00:47:17]:
Yep. Go ahead.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:18]:
Okay. I know you gotta get going soon. I just wanna bring up this oh, wrong one. This one. From, from Barbara Campbell who says, you know, Becca convinced me to get off social media, one of the best things I’ve ever done. Even started a new highly successful company without social media. That’s awesome, Barbara.
Becca Syme [00:47:36]:
I love hearing that.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:38]:
Hey, Becca. Yeah. Quick question. So when it comes to, like, those feelings of being overwhelmed or those feelings of, having imposter syndrome. Mhmm. Are those universal, or are they more are are certain personality traits more susceptible to those?
Becca Syme [00:47:54]:
Certain personality traits are more susceptible. In in fact, I have a video, and it should be free actually on our Patreon right now. It’s patreon.com/beccasime. And there’s a free video on there where I talk about how imposter syndrome, that imposters can’t have imposter syndrome. So if you feel like you’re an imposter, it’s just evidence that you have personality traits that care a lot about being competent and about doing what you’re supposed to be doing to do it right. Right? So that is the evidence that you care is that you will have imposter syndrome. This isn’t to say if you don’t have imposter syndrome, you don’t care. It’s to say that the people who are wired in this way in particular are always gonna feel that way because of how much they care about belonging and doing it right.
Becca Syme [00:48:42]:
So when you and, again, this is the coach perspective. Right? It’s get your head towards the horizon, understanding that imposter syndrome is not a signal that you are an imposter. It’s a signal that you’re below the line. Because you’re listening to your brain, your brain is lying to you. Because it’s afraid of what’s gonna happen if you are actually an imposter, but it doesn’t know that the presence of the thoughts of imposter syndrome is evidence that you are not one. So we need to just get you back above the line in that moment so you can get back to your competent self and start taking action again. But, yeah, those those things are, some and and just the overwhelm thing really quick because this is also important. There’s a particular strength called intellection in the CliftonStrengths where and 58% of writers have this, so a lot of us who are listening will have this, where overwhelm is actually a feature, not a bug, where you will take in a whole bunch of information and overwhelm is the signal that you’ve taken in enough information.
Becca Syme [00:49:46]:
Now thank you. You need to go think about this stuff that you’ve just taken in. So rather than us seeing the overwhelm as being a signal of some kind of dysfunction in ourselves, we’re constantly making ourselves feel guilt, dysfunction in ourselves, we’re constantly making ourselves feel guilty because we get overwhelmed. Overwhelm is a feature. Like, it just I feel like
Jim Azevedo [00:50:03]:
I have a constant smile on my face during this entire interview because I’m like, oh, that’s me, and that’s me, and that’s me.
Becca Syme [00:50:08]:
Yeah. It’s and so much of it is just we don’t understand what’s going on in our brains. And this is why I said earlier, like, I have such a passion for doing this because I feel like so many of us are getting these results over and over and over again that we don’t want to have, but we don’t know how to fix the problem because we just don’t have enough perspective about how our brains really work. So anytime I see these overlapping traits that happen consistently, I try to do a video about it. And I’m like, okay. Let’s do a video about, you know, imposter syndrome. Let’s do a video about the bread machine writer. Let’s do a a video about all these things.
Becca Syme [00:50:45]:
And then I try to make them topical so that people can find them, that they’ll resonate. But so much of what we think is wrong with us is actually just something that’s perfectly right, but it’s not what everyone else does. So we may be in, like, a 18% or a 17% minority of people who think that way. But it’s actually perfectly right for that 17% because guess what? 17, when you’re talking about 17 people, yeah, it’s only one or whatever, two or whatever. When you’re talking about 8,000,000,000, 17 percent is continents of people. Right? So when you think about having the same trait as a small percentage of people, but then as you look at what the numbers are, you are not an outlier if you’re 12%, fifteen %, seventeen %. That’s just another pattern. And this is what bugs me sometimes about the way we talk about, like, oh, that’s an outlier.
Becca Syme [00:51:49]:
That’s a unicorn. Like, somehow Sarah J. Moss is a unicorn. Nope. There’s so many thousands of writers that are wired exactly like her, and they need to use her as a model and just disappear from everything. That’s how they’re gonna write their best books. But because we think that these numbers are so tiny, like, well, it must just be me. Nope.
Becca Syme [00:52:11]:
It’s it is millions of people that are wired that way. Like, you’re not alone in it.
Jim Azevedo [00:52:21]:
That’s such a good point. Yeah. Oh, we’re coming to the end of the hour. So I wanna make sure that I do the right thing and give people a way to get in touch with you. So Oh, sure. Yeah. Go to betterfasteracademy.com. Right? And then from there, they could get to your YouTube and learn more about your classes and your courses and books and everything else.
Jim Azevedo [00:52:41]:
Right? Would would this be the the first place
Becca Syme [00:52:43]:
you would send people? Yeah. Yeah. It’s got all of the resources kind of in one place. And I just wanna address, two questions. One that Fran asked just now and then one that had been asked a little earlier, which is, are there a set of strengths that writers have? Right? Like, is there a set of strengths that, quote, unquote, good writers have? And it’s so important to me that, the human population is so diverse in the way our brains work. It’s so diverse. There are 378,000 different types of people just according to strengths. When you add in Enneagram or other personality traits or anything like that, age, culture, background, things like that, gender, you’re looking at millions upon millions upon millions of different types of people.
Becca Syme [00:53:34]:
Right? But it’s also important to acknowledge that success is not limited to type. So it’s not like there’s a top five strengths that all the successful writers have. So if I don’t have those, I’m somehow out. Or that, like, all writers are exactly the same and we’re somehow this weird, you know, segment of humanity. Like, nope. Writers are people. Like, everybody
Jim Azevedo [00:53:55]:
the question that you’re addressing? I wanna make sure that
Becca Syme [00:53:57]:
was the the most recent one. Yeah. And then I saw one earlier that was about how how many is there a top five that is most common among writers among successful writers? And there isn’t because the distribution of strengths in the population is so significant. Like, 12 to 19% is the distribution of each individual strength and how often it occurs in the top five because there’s 34 of them. So there are people with all 34 strengths that are writers, artists, CEOs, business people, NBA basketball players. Right? Like, there are people with each of the strengths that are everything because it’s how are you gonna be successful at it. And then, unfortunately, writers don’t have as much in common with each other as we think we do. So a lot of things that we think are universal to all writers, and that’s where we get a lot of these rules of, like, don’t write as you go.
Becca Syme [00:54:53]:
You know, if if it’s not if it’s boring to you, it’ll be boring to everyone. Like, all these rules that we have, that are just not the case because we don’t understand how diverse everyone’s brains are and how unique everyone is from each other. And then that makes us feel like somehow we’re wrong if we’re wired differently. So, yeah, it’s it’s such a complicated world, but it’s worth figuring out, I think. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:55:20]:
Let me bring up your YouTube channel too.
Becca Syme [00:55:23]:
Oh, great. Thank you.
Jim Azevedo [00:55:25]:
Yep. For those of you who are not watching but listening to the podcast, that’s www.youtube.com/@beccasign. That’s beccasyme. And finally, for those of you on Instagram, you can find becca at instagram.com/becca_syme. Yay. I know you have to get going soon, Becca, and I so appreciate you being here. Yeah. Thank you.
Jim Azevedo [00:55:59]:
I can you come back every week, you think?
Becca Syme [00:56:01]:
I know. Right? I Is that what you’re saying? I do actually do live coaching on our crowdcast also. So if anybody sees this in a recording, if you hit the first week of whatever month, you can come and find us. And, and we’ll we’ll help however we can. Whatever perspective we can offer.
Jim Azevedo [00:56:20]:
Sign me up. If if you like this conversation as much as I did, can you do us a favor and like the video, comment, and subscribe to Drop the Digital’s YouTube channel? Because it helps us get people like Becca back on the show again. And then you could go to ddd go to d2dlive. That’s the theletterd,thenumbertwo,theletterd,live.com. If you bookmark that page, then you can see who our guests and topics will be for subsequent weeks. And for those of you who may just be kinda checking out self publishing for the very first time, did you know that you could sign up for a free Draft2Digital account simply by going to draft2digital.com? To all of our viewers out there
Becca Syme [00:57:06]:
Huge fan. Draft2Digital rocks.
Jim Azevedo [00:57:08]:
We’re we’re we’re a huge fan of you too, Becca. The door is always open for you, so come back and see us again, please. Please. Please. Please. For our viewers out there, you guys, thanks for joining us week in and week out, and welcome to the new viewers out there who are joining us maybe for the first time. Welcome. We’re going to end this.
Jim Azevedo [00:57:28]:
Let’s see. Oh, I always have to find our commercials. Like, where where did I put this stuff? I’m working off a new laptop for the first time today. So, like, where where is that thing? Here it is. So, Becca, thanks again. If you can hang out in the in the green room for a second, I’ll meet you back there. I’m gonna play our quick, outro here. If I could figure out how to do it.
Jim Azevedo [00:57:46]:
I’m so smooth with this, I tell you. You’re doing great. You’re doing great. Work. Work. Why aren’t you working? Oh, well, we’re just gonna end it this way then. Good times. Bye, everybody.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:58:00]:
Ebooks are great, but there’s just something about having your words in print, something you can hold in your hands, put on a shelf, sign for a reader. That’s why we created D2D Print, a print on demand service that was built for you. We have free beautiful templates to give your book a pro look, and we can even convert your ebook cover into a full wrap around cover for print. So many options for you and your books. And you can get started right now at That’s it for this week’s self publishing insiders with Draft2Digital. Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with your will be author friends. And start, build, and grow your own self publishing career right now at draft2digital.com.