I always know two hands will shoot up before I have barely finished my sentence:

"Has someone got something they want to explore with me?"

Welcome to Basil's Music ProCourse - BodyChance's Teacher Education course exclusively for musicians. This is the niche experiment at it's finest: a band of enthusiastic students intent on developing their skill by leveraging Alexander's Discovery in their playing.

This post describes an online course for Alexander Technique teachers and students on how to teach and market groups. It is running in November 2013, than remains available after that to anyone who joins my online coaching group. You can join here now:

http://atsuccess.com/membership-plans

My journey with group teaching began in London back in 1980 when I formed YAAO with Duncan Woodcock to run evening classes. (YAAO stands for Yet Another Alexander Organisation).

Some people have already jumped on board for next month's workshop on teaching that is marketable. Joining today (Oct 27th) gets you an extra month's membership for free.

Those of you who follow my blog are familiar by now with my mantra - niche, niche, niche. This is easy to say, vast to implement. It's not just a marketing thing - it is a service thing, it's how you teach, how you implement in your lessons. Many companies spend vast amounts of time and money simply developing new products, and Alexander Technique teachers are not exempt from this law of the market place.

To respect the person you want to attract, you need to stand with them.

Of course to "stand with them" may mean voicing an opinion that causes controversy amongst others. My declarations about chair and table work fall into this category.

Véronique is ATSuccess's resident muddle-headed wombat. I am chief muddle-headed wombat - but as a muddle head, I'm not quite sure if that's right. Hmmm.

You probably have no idea what I am talking about do you?

I have often written that the incubation time for landing a new student in our Alexander Technique business can be long, and Dawn Robinson is living proof of that fact. Her incubation from a lecture about Alexander Technique to taking her first lesson was fifteen years! Take heart everyone – start building your list, you never know who might lurk there for a long, long time until finally taking up one of your offers.

Cool and trendy people in Tokyo read Cocoro, or at least the younger ones do.

A few years back they sent a curious journalist along to BodyChance to catch the word on Alexander Technique. My introductory group – that my journalistic visitor witnessed - turned out to be especially varied: a dancer exploring a leg lift, a shopkeeper concerned about his cash register manner, a salaryman fearful of his boss and a yoga exercise on the floor; among many others over the course of 90 minutes.

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."

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: