And here's me thinking it was a quieter week! I see from all my posts - which are always in response to requests and exploration in our Facebook group - that this has been a busy week exploring concepts and ideas to get more students, and grow your business. Membership is open any time, just go to this link to sign up.

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On How To Cope With Failure
Failure is learning in disguise. As a mentor to this group I assert that I must be able to fail even at the strategies I advocate. The role is not to be a hero (I am no hero), my role is to facilitate creating a space where each person stands up for what they believe and want, and uses the group energy to be accountable to their own Self. I give my opinion, but decisions are yours, and failure is a possibility. Failure is your learning option - when it isn't a viable option, it ceases to teach and you cease to learn. Important to give failure permission to be - for one thing, it helps to mitigate disaster. A mind open to failure is a mind open to reality. I have failed many times in my life - sometimes magnificently - and I am ready to do so again and again and again - for as long as it takes me to learn what I need to learn. I am thankful for that.

On Whether To Cancel A Workshop With 3 Attendees
I say go ahead with the workshop - that would be my choice. Why? With one or more of those three, you might develop a strong, long term professional partnership; they could also tell others and increase your local bandwidth, there's only benefits to be had. Being in the work - helping others - is truly one of the works of a CHO (Chief Happiness Officer).

On The Challenges of A Niche Strategy
The niche strategy is fraught with it's own obstacles - having the original passion and interest being the first of many personal challenges for an Alexander Technique teacher. Building your niche into a community is another. That's a long term strategy, which I am learning all over again in LA. We are working with the niche of actors, singers, more broadly "performers" - but finding them, appealing to them, converting them is proving slow. Getting a niche is no magic bullet, but it is a proven strategy with examples of success. You must ensure you have the time and resources to implement it.

On Does My Niche Have To Match My Experience?
Not "have to" but the more affinity you have with the people you are communicating with, the easier your job becomes. It's akin to an actor being "type-cast" or being challenged by a role (s)he has little in common with. You can do both, but the former is a lot less work. Less research is necessary - you already guess their inner life. When you choose a niche of people who have had similar experiences to you - writing is so much easier, gaining their empathy is so much easier. However, that is only one factor in choosing a niche. It's critical, but not limiting. I'd say the other essential factors are: can they (then how) afford to come from both a time and monetary perspective?

On Researching Which Niche Within A Niche To Go To
Use FaceBook for your research - are nurses dividing themselves into niches by creating a FaceBook home? Look for a vibrant, busy group where people are posting regularly, and there are lots of likes on the posts. THAT's your niche. Join in that page, then as you get the feel for them, open your page and tell them about it. Be ready to post content DAILY, to stimulate activity. Tell us which of the nurses niches seems to be viable...

On Getting Information
Thanks for that real world data view of Pinterest Adrian - it's so important to make decisions based on some connection to known information. Critical in fact. Enthusiasm will take you to the door, facts and numbers show the way through.

On When To Act With Your Niche
Open your mind - even though they are busy in this season, what could you do now that would fit with them? It doesn't need to be workshops, it can be just about building relationships, networking, collecting ideas. Wait to January? No. You can't wait. You can't afford to wait. You must act.

My Personal Mission Statement
My website is part of my vision to make Alexander Technique available to people the world over, by empowering Alexander Technique teachers to learn the ABCs of business, marketing and sales as it applies to them. I had my first lesson when I was 16 years old, and all my life has been spent studying, teaching and working to have Alexander’s discoveries better known in the world. I want to help teachers succeed because that is the way more people will benefit from Alexander’s work. Teaching Alexander’s discoveries is a way to have a truly wonderful life. You will never regret your decision to become an Alexander Technique teacher, but you may regret you did not use these skills sufficiently to benefit others. My mission is to help you help others leave our individual worlds in a better place than we found them.

[NOTE: This second half of my blog is a paid area describing practical ways to implement what has been described above in a Facebook group with over 40 other teachers and students. You can join anytime to be part of their discussions.]

Posts below the pay line are more personal and specific to the members who asked them. This is my advice to over 40 teachers building actual Alexander Technique businesses all around the world. We have an amazing time in there - consider joining us.

*On Why To Start A Blog
The best time to start a blog is now. A blog is a tool with multi-purposes. For Alexander Technique teachers, it is the beginning of finding a way for you to articulate what you do across long distances. I believe this ability to communicate over distances - EFFECTIVELY - is a quality of that a successful teacher needs in our times. Whether people read your blog in the beginning does not matter much: you are writing to you, explaining to you what you do. You are like a child finding out how to walk: falling over, laughing, picking your Self up. First you crawl, then walk, until eventually you're running with your business into a bright and happy future.

*On What To Write In Your Blog…
Who do you want to be reading it? Even if you don't have a niche yet, go back to this blog and do the avatar task. Then imagine that avatar and ask: What do they want to know about? And write that. If you have those kind of students already around you - ask them! It's likely that the things your current students want to read from you would equal what future students would want to read from you...

*On Getting Students From Your Blog
It's the first of many - you know where there is one, there is another on the edge too. Victoria are you converting them to your mail-list? It would be good to know the numbers: how many read the blog? How many have jumped to your mail list? With those numbers, I could give you advice on how to move the strategy along further...

*On Researching The Viability of A Pregnancy Niche
One other item to add to your research is to find others who are selling services to this group: discover how they are doing? If you can't find any that are doing well, that is already a big sign. If you can, then look at the product (time, place, cost, frequency, content, payment system) and use that as YOUR template to go into the market. You can also ask other AT teachers - Ilana Machover for example - what they have discovered around this issue of availability. It's a HUGE issue, and it can be a biz breaker if you don't get it right.

*On How Long A Story or Sales Letter Should Be
It's a question a lot of writers ask: how long should my sales copy be? The answer: as long as they are reading it. There's a famous story of a 168 page book that had a 82 page long sales letter selling it, and it sold millions. Never could track down the actual book/sales letter, but the person telling the story was reliable enough. Stories like that are legend in sales copy circles. David Ogilvy, who built one of the largest advertising agencies in the world, was the guy who convinced marketers of the merits of long sales letters.

*On Why Do We Have To Use Words Like "Last Offer"
Some things are wired deep into human beings - scarcity is a reason people act on something they want to act upon, but keep putting off. It's the intention behind the scarcity call that matters to me, not the scarcity call itself. Mothers use it with their kids, lovers use it with their partners, and marketers use it with their clients. It's biological.

*On Niching Down To "Spiritual"
The biz person who gathered the "spiritual woman entrepreneurs" is STILL APPEALING to people who want to make money, which is itself a powerful niche. Making money ethically is a variation of this niche strategy. To adapt this strategy to musicians, one relevant question for you to ask is - do musicians have ethical challenges around playing music? (people do around making money).

*On How To Use Referrals
I like that Dana: "...the point is to have it in mind and to find a way to encourage referrals." Absolutely. It is different for different people. At BCLA we offered "Foundation Memberships". Anyone who joined could have a friend come for the same period they paid in advance for the same tuition. People loved the offer, but as it turned out nearly all of the "friends" did not continue, some did not even come. It's another stream to have flowing into your lake, but only one of many. I love Constance's idea of a sign! A creative intention to discover how you can implement a referral strategy as a permanent feature of your practise is part of working ON your business rather than just IN your business.

*On Reading Stories Posted Previously
If you look at the top of ATCS FaceBook group you will see directly underneath the face photos a Tab that says "Files". Click that, and all the stories that have been posted to the group are there. Some people did not want their story published, so there are stories there that do NOT appear in my blog.

*On Receiving Praise
It's an odd thing, but I don't THINK of my Self as a leader, although I consciously know that is what I am doing. My own self-image is of a person struggling to understand, struggling to discover a truth that keeps eluding him. I go down and up a lot, and find it difficult to accept praise because I keep thinking inside: "Oh, if you only knew. I don't know that much, really I don't. There's people who know way more than me." Odd how the inner and outer so often have this dissonance. And thank you too. It DOES go in.

*On Going Against Conventional Wisdom
Jennifer - when Basil was starting out, he got told by a lot of people "This is not right. You giving away too much. You have to do this, and that..." and most of the advice was "conventional wisdom." Basil ignored them all and did what worked for him. He can probably say more about this, but these days no-one says that to him anymore. Now they ask him: "What should I do?" So stick with your truth while staying connected to the real numbers (Are people responding? Are people reading? Are people joining my list?) and you will break through to your real work, and joy and continue being able to live a life truly worth living.

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