A Message for the Great Manager Community
Understanding Recent Changes
As I've mentioned, I've made changes behind the scenes. I wanted to take this opportunity to provide more information on why I did this, what the changes are, and how it will impact you.
TL;DR - you will continue to get the Great Manager Newsletter. If that is all you care about, then you can stop reading.
Why Change?
Two major reasons.
First, unless you go with the most basic website, it is a lot of work. Maintaining the website was taking up too much of my time. My website will still exist, but it will be more of a marketing tool than a community platform, which saves me time.
Second, I've always wanted to build a community of Great Managers. A community needs to be more than a program, but ways to interact so we can learn from and support each other. The tools on my website just never quite worked to build the community (hard to build, clunky to use, etc.).
Once I identified those two issues, it was a matter of finding the best way to continue my work.
What Now?
In order to share my message and build the community, I am going to start to use YouTube and Substack more.
With YouTube, I plan on creating more video content that really shares the nuts and bolts of the Great Manager Program. On my YouTube page you will find:
Longer videos (7-15 minutes) that will go into depth about the processes and concepts of the Great Manager Program. My plan is to release 1 video a week.
Shorts (1-3 minutes) that will focus on 1 key concept. My plan is to release 1 short a week.
YouTube not only lets me go into depth on topics, but it will give me access to a much larger audience of potential community members.
The videos on YouTube will be free.
You may have not heard about Substack before, but I guarantee you've probably gotten content from someone using its platform. It started as a way for writers to share content (it was originally a fancy blog site). However, they built the platform in many ways so now it can be written word, video, podcasts, audio, and more.
From a creator perspective, it offers 3 benefits.
Easy to use with lots of different tools.
Effective ways to build a community.
An easy way to build in different tiers of users - essentially, I can create a free site and a paid site.
I plan on using it initially to offer the Great Manager Newsletter, a weekly general blog topic, and a weekly In The News blog.
Subscribers to the free tier (which is where you all are at now) will get the Great Manager Newsletter and the weekly general blog topic delivered to your inbox.
Subscribers to the paid tier will get those two things and the weekly In The News blog. I will be adding more community-based things to the paid tier during the year. Stay tuned.
A subscription will cost $5/month or $50/year. This revenue will be used to defray some costs of the content as well as build new tools that benefit the community. Your support is greatly appreciated.
My individual and group coaching will still be my primary source of revenue.
Call to Action
If you love the newsletter and want to keep receiving it without all the other stuff - you don't have to do anything because you will still get that.
If you want my deeper dives on video, subscribe to my YouTube channel - that is free as well.
If you want to support the community and take advantage of the members only content that will be starting and growing, become a paid subscriber.
If you want individual or group coaching, reach out to me at bwatkins@btomconsultants.com.
Most importantly, share these resources and encourage other managers to join the community. The larger we get, the bigger positive difference we can make.
My mission remains the same: Rid the world of bad managers.
Thank you for being part of this community.