Steven's Big Strategy
Even though I often feel as if I have a tiger by the tail, I am grateful that I’ve always had a strong sense of mission in my life. If anyone asked me to summarize what it was, I would say that my aim has simply been to bring the light of evolutionary astrology to a wider audience. In pursuit of that goal, I’ve naturally had some hits and some misses. Writing a monthly Sun Sign column for ELLE magazine is an example of the latter. That was probably “the height of my fame” as far as sheer audience numbers go, but much of the soul of astrology was lost in translation. That episode only lasted for a couple of years. That’s when I decided I would rather try to be Carl Jung than Justin Bieber.
Publishing my first three books with Bantam Books was a big win. Those volumes represent serious astrology and, with Bantam’s marketing muscle, they quickly reached a lot of people. Meanwhile, my apprenticeship programs lasted for twenty years and touched a couple of thousand people on four continents. That felt like another win – but I had to admit that the constant travel was wearing me down. It was also tough on my homelife. I remember being on a flight somewhere, maybe in 2016 or so, and thinking big thoughts about my future and what new directions I might take. I knew I wanted to travel less. I also realized that I was getting older and that I needed to start thinking about how this sacred work might live on after I was gone.
“Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.“
– author Richard Bach
When in doubt, always look for that north star: what is the true core of your mission? What would you be a fool to compromise? For me, once again the bottom line was bringing evolutionary astrology to a wider audience. I didn’t care about impressing other astrologers. I cared about reaching people who didn’t already know about it. On that flight, five miles high over God only knows what land or ocean, I began jotting down some ideas. First and foremost, I knew that before I died, I needed to “write down everything I had learned about astrology” – impossible, of course, but that dream is what led to my four Elements books, which I started writing in early 2018. I also began musing on how I might continue my teaching, or even expand it, in a way that didn’t involve me being on the road so much. An online school was the obvious answer, but I knew very little about how any of that worked.
Angels came to the rescue, as they often do when you follow your heart. With my progressed Moon in the 12th house, I knew that I should run on faith and be open to a new vision. Covid-19 helped me let go of my beloved-but-exhausting apprenticeship programs, along with half of my private counseling practice. I used the time to dive into completing the Elements series – 1728 pages in three years, which is a lot of writing! Just two months into that lunar progression, I had my first meeting with Jeff and Catie, which led to the founding of the FCEA. Our program launched a few months after my Moon progressed into the 1st house – right on schedule, in other words.
We’re proud of the FCEA, but my age-old dilemma still remains: how to reach more people? How can we bring this kind of illuminated astrology to a wider audience? It can be so helpful, and yet so few people are aware of what we can offer them. There’s also a lot of dumb astrology out there, further muddying the water.
Angels helped there too. In 2017, former National Football League great, Ricky Williams, became a student of mine, as well as a dear friend. His wonderful wife, Linnea Miron, soon followed. Together, they had an idea for a serious astrological cell phone app based on my work – and we’re talking about genuine “date, time, and place” astrology, not just Sun signs. We met over the last weekend of January 2018 and Lila was born. Ricky and Linnea had connections and resources beyond what I could imagine, and skills far outside my domain. They soon assembled a fabulous technical team. Meanwhile, I started writing the actual content. Here’s a link to a 3-minute video about the Lila vision, in case you are interested:
Ricky Williams is hugely famous in the sports world, with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and a stadium in Texas named after him. We’ve also got the AstroTwins – Ophi and Tali Edut – working with us. Their astrostyle.com website gets 12 million visitors each month. Ophi and Tali are “popular astrologers” for sure, but they also know what they are doing astrologically. Blessedly, they think of themselves as evolutionary astrologers and they know my work well. I really liked them both right away. Interestingly, their Jupiters and my own are almost exactly conjunct. They now write that same column for ELLE that was once mine. Karma!
Between Ricky’s marketing power and that of the AstroTwins, we think Lila has the potential to get very big. Lila is definitely a glossy commercial project, but 99% of its actual content is my own. In preparing the material for the app, I’ve basically written yet another book in the past year or so. It’s a simpler kind of astrology than what we do in the FCEA, but it is still honest evolutionary astrology.
The point of my saying all of this is that Lila offers the missing third ingredient in my grand strategy after the first two, which are the FCEA and my Elements books. That third ingredient is outreach. Between Lila itself and the support of the AstroTwins, we anticipate a lot more attention being drawn to my existing work. A likely side-effect is that the school will grow rather dramatically over the next two or three years.
I want to thank all of you for being part of this process, for helping us smooth out the technical wrinkles in Moodle, and in getting our teachers, tutors, and material up to speed before we start growing. You are the first wave. Among you, I am sure, are some future teachers in the FCEA. I feel as if we are making history, and I appreciate your faith in us and the support you have offered.
One more quick point. Beyond writing the Lila material, I’ve been busily creating videos and written content for the more advanced FCEA courses. We’re excited about what’s in store next for you in the program. Once all the school material is created and Lila is launched, my own life will change a lot. For one thing, I will have a lot more free time than I do now – and if my personal history can be trusted, that time will quickly fill up with other projects, one of which will be more active, higher-level teaching in our school. I look forward to seeing more of all of you when the pages of that chapter start turning.