There is an important distinction between marketing and selling. Marketing is about getting them to your front door, selling is about asking them to come in.

There is something way more confronting about selling. It's the moment: "Will you give me your money?" Up until that time, one person (the seller) has been working hard to make it fun for the other person (the buyer). That's all marketing. Now it's time for the potential buyer to take another step, make a commitment, show they care. Selling is that moment of asking them to do that.

Giora Pinkas has just sent a letter to the besieged AmSAT SoCal teachers – as I suspected in my previous blog on this topic, John Baron's first letter was just an opening shot in a sustained campaign to defame BodyChance and my own reputation.

If you don't ask, the only answer is no.

Where is that true in your life? For me, I learnt this lesson as an awkward adolescent, wondering if I was gay since I could never find a girlfriend, and being attracted to woman but having no idea what to do. I found a mentor in my life long friend Ali, who was fascinated by my reticence, and coached me in the delicacies of romantic advancement.

I started to ask.

Success is guided by the right strategies, but it is powered by your structure as a person.

You need to be the person who believes you can, yet sometimes you wake up overwhelmed and doubtful. A confident, self-loving person gets an amazing amount of work done in one day. You are that person, unless you are believing something about your Self that convinces you otherwise.

Those teachers in my 30 Day Challenge are heading into overwhelm now. It is like the grief process – whenever you decide to jumpstart your life (business) there are identifiable stages that occur.

First comes the roaring excitement, the enthusiasm, the joy in finding another 32 teachers just like you: who couldn't care a tiddle where you trained, but rather want to know how your deep passion for the work can be expressed concretely to garner an income, to have a life worth living.

We all have to have them – if you don't, it's like owning a business without a telephone – but it's extraordinary what barriers of mind appear when the thought comes "I need to make (update) my website."

I am not immune to this disease – I suffer from it.

BodyChance's website in Japan is long overdue for renewal. I made a big push and finally got a quote: $45,000. I thought "That's ridiculous." So I went to the States, found another vendor, asked for the same thing: $43,000. "Impossible. I am not paying that."

This morning I was selecting a top to wear. and shuffling through the neat plastic packets that my Japanese laundry service provides, and I heard my Self thinking "Oh, I should wear that brown one today because I am working at home." Then I noticed: "But I want to wear the blue one!" The contrary thought was: "Save that blue one for teaching, you should wear the brown one today."

I wore the blue one.

Alexander Technique teachers are usually proud of their multi-niche market. They happily tell you they have "… Medical professionals, therapists, business people, IT personnel, yoga teachers, personal trainers, parents, pregnant ladies, musicians, cyclists, dancers, air crew…" to quote one teacher's range of students.

Day Four – Clarity

Amirel is an Israeli property investor living in Mullumbimby, and we often chew the fat about business, life and our families. Like me, he married a Japanese woman and has two children at our local Steiner school. One day he excitedly told me about a piece of paper he'd found hidden amongst his belongings.

It was a document he wrote years ago detailing the concrete details of what he intended to achieve with his property investment over the next 10 years. What got him most excited was:

As soon as he could walk, Zopa was always trying to run away. He was a little Nepalese boy living in the Solu Khumbu valley, and drove his mother nuts. Finally, when he was around four years old, she decided to let him run away...

So off he marched, up a hill and through a confusing labyrinth of pathways till he arrived at the hermitage cave of a famous deceased Lama. To the astonished onlookers, who had followed his intrepid pilgrimage up the hill, he sat down, crossed his legs  and solemnly announced

"I am the Lawudo Lama."