What the Heck Happened to EBA?

Not too long ago, I received an email that went something like this:

Hi Ruth,

I’m so confused. I’ve been hearing about Elite Blog Academy for such a long time, and I was so excited to finally take the leap this year and get started with my blog. But now you’re telling me it’s not available, and that I can only join ACTIVATE. But I don’t get it. What exactly is ACTIVATE, and what the heck happened to EBA?!!!

Sincerely, Amber B.

My guess is that Amber is not the only one confused by this major change in our business, so I thought today I’d take a few minutes to explain exactly what ACTIVATE is all about, as well as why we made the decision to shift gears from Elite Blog Academy® to the ACTIVATE Coaching Program this past year.

What exactly is ACTIVATE? 

Put simply, ACTIVATE is a completely comprehensive, interactive program for bloggers designed to help you build a profitable and predictable online business as quickly as possible. It combines the best education with unlimited live coaching sessions to not just give you a clear path to follow as you grow your business, but to help keep you motivated and keep you taking the focused action that will get you the fastest possible results.

How is ACTIVATE different from Elite Blog Academy®?

Elite Blog Academy was originally developed as a self-paced, pre-recorded online course. There was no set syllabus, or time limits, which allowed students to go through the curriculum at their own pace, knowing that they would always have access.

It was a system that sounded great in theory, and in fact was a huge selling point of the program—the fact that you could get lifetime access to the course curriculum.

But after a while we discovered that while some of our students did great with the self-paced program, many others did not. They would get stuck or get caught up in perfectionism and analysis paralysis and forget to keep moving forward. They would get distracted by all the bright shiny objects and opportunities vying for their attention in the blogosphere and move from one thing to another without any clear focus. They would start listening to too many voices, often people claiming to be “experts” who were actually giving out bad advice. Or they would simply get overwhelmed by work and quit.

ACTIVATE is very different from Elite Blog Academy in that the curriculum is only ONE piece of the puzzle. Yes, you still get the essential step-by-step education you need for building an online business, but you also are given a clear timeline and deadlines to keep you moving. Not only that, you have access to unlimited LIVE coaching sessions where you can get all your questions answered, receive a kick in the pants if you need one, and get the ongoing encouragement and motivation that will keep you going. 

While you’re still following your own timeline within the program, you’re not operating inside a vacuum. Instead, you’re moving at the same pace as the other students in your level, which gives you an amazing sense of camaraderie and community.

Not only that, at ACTIVATE we get you moving MUCH faster than most people will ever move on their own. We don’t let you get stuck or frustrated, or caught up in analysis paralysis. It’s not an option. Everything in our program is designed to keep you moving forward. And it WORKS.

How long does it take to go through ACTIVATE?

ACTIVATE is an ongoing coaching program, which means that if you wanted to, you could stay in the program indefinitely, but one full year in the program is designed to get you to the point where your business is both predictably and profitably generating real revenue.

That said, progress at ACTIVATE is split into 3 levels, each with its own focus, curriculum, and timeline. 

Level 1 is for beginners who are either brand new to blogging, or starting from scratch, and our Level 1 students spend the bulk of their time going through our EBA® Foundation curriculum. This curriculum is designed to take 13 weeks (one full quarter) to complete, at which point you are ready to move to Level 2.

With a solid foundation in place, our Level 2 students are ready to rock and start making some actual money in your business. In Level 2, which is designed to take 6 months (2 full quarters), you’ll spend your time going through our Product Launch Playbook Academy™ (PLPA) curriculum which guides you through the process of developing and launching your core offer. This is also when our students see their first sales come in—usually about 6-8 weeks after starting Level 2.

Once they’ve successfully launched their core offer, our students move into Level 3, where they will work indefinitely on improving their results. There’s not currently a set curriculum for Level 3 students, but our advanced coaching workshops and tools are designed to help Level 3’s continually level up in both their business and marketing skills.

So now the only way to get Elite Blog Academy is to join ACTIVATE? 

Yes, ACTIVATE is now the only program that we offer.

ACTIVATE members have access to our latest version of the Elite Blog Academy curriculum, which is called EBA® Foundation. This new curriculum replaces our previous version, Elite Blog Academy 4.0. 

Joining ACTIVATE is the only way for NEW students to get access to the Elite Blog Academy curriculum.

Of course, if you were already an Elite Blog Academy student before ACTIVATE was developed, you still have access to both EBA 4.0 and the new EBA Foundation curriculum in your course portal.

If you’ve already taken Elite Blog Academy or are already making money online, should you still join ACTIVATE?

100% YES! If you’ve already taken EBA or you already have an established blog or online business, then you can start in ACTIVATE at Level 2 rather than Level 1, and dive straight into Product Launch Playbook Academy.

We’ve found that across the board even our students who were already earning substantial revenue from their blogs before joining ACTIVATE have dramatically increased their revenue—in some cases doubled and tripled their monthly income—after joining the ACTIVATE program.

If you haven’t started your blog yet, will ACTIVATE be too advanced for you?

Not at all. Our Level 1 Curriculum is designed for beginners, and will help you build your blog from the ground up, and we also have live coaching sessions for Level 1 students that are tailored only to beginner-level questions.

Why did we decide to make this shift to ACTIVATE?

I’ll be honest—completely changing our business model was a really big deal, and not something we did lightly. 

It was, quite frankly, a little terrifying. And yet I knew it was the very best way to serve our students and help them get the best possible results.

You see, last spring, after the pandemic hit, as a way to help my EBA students navigate the crisis and because I had more time on my hands, I offered a series of live training sessions, as well as additional office hours. While not all of my students took advantage of these additional training sessions, I noticed that the ones who did were making SO much more progress SO much faster than students who chose to do everything all on their own.

Then, in the fall, based on what my EBA students were telling me they needed, I launched Product Launch Playbook Academy to help teach them how to develop, launch, and sell a core offer. Again, I taught it live, and again the progress I saw my students making was off the charts.

I started dreaming about creating a NEW program, something that was all-inclusive and much more interactive than anything I had ever offered before—a program that not only included the education component to teach people what to do, but also the ongoing encouragement and motivation and support they needed to make REAL progress as fast as possible.

I started dreaming about ACTIVATE. 

And once I got it in my head, I couldn’t shake it.

I knew in order to make ACTIVATE work, we would have to go ALL IN and make it our ONLY focus. That meant saying no to a lot of other good things. We retired the Do It Scared® podcast and the Doing it Scared membership, as well as Elite Blog Academy and all of our other programs. We stopped writing new blog posts or worrying about publicity or social media, and we put Living Well Spending Less completely on autopilot.

I’m not gonna lie—it felt a little crazy and a LOT scary.

And yet, it was completely worth it!

ACTIVATE is not just as amazing as I hoped it would be, it’s 10,000 times BETTER! Our students are making such incredible progress at such an incredible pace—faster than I even believed was possible.

So how can you join the ACTIVATE program?

We only open the doors for the ACTIVATE program once every 3 months, just before the start of the new quarter. For the sake of all our students, we only open up a limited number of new spots each quarter in order to make sure that we can continue to provide the highest quality experience.

If you know you want in during our next enrollment period, we recommend you opt-in to our email list so that you’ll be the first to know when the doors open! 

So there you have it, the full scoop! 

If you were feeling confused, I hope this looooong blog post helped answer some of your biggest questions about this big change in our business and what it means for you. That said, if you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to our support team at support@ruthsoukup.com!