Alexander Niched. Why Don’t You?

Just off a call with ATSuccess member Xiaosong in Buenos Aires, talking about her niche of Tango dancers. It seems most Tango dancers don’t read email, they culturally avoid committing to even meet for a coffee tomorrow – let alone joining a long term learning program! – and, well, they don’t behave in the nice, neat ways that ATSuccess has developed for the Japanese and Western markets.

This is why I love coaching Alexander teachers how to attract students! It’s never boring. The ATSuccess 12 Steps is a set of guidelines, not a template. You still need the brain work, every niche. Each niched community offers its own behavioural challenges.

Are you an AT teacher or trainee wondering how you can develop a good practise?

This was Xiaosong’s challenge. She joined the year coaching program we run. She is in the mecca of Tango – how can she compete with these people as a “Tango/Alexander” teacher? This is Argentina and she’s Chinese for heavens sakes!

And at ATSuccess we don’t make her challenge any simpler – quite the opposite.

One of the tweaks we ask teachers to make in ATSuccess is to stop teaching Alexander Technique. Get that name OFF your flyers, emails, websites and blogs! Instead, replace it with the authority of teaching the niche how to do what they love.

Start with your niche of Tango, Yoga, wind instruments or breathing – be a teacher of THAT.

Your niche is not interested in Alexander's discovery. Period. They are fanatical about their loved motor activity. Peter Jacobson – ATSuccess Director – increased his mail list through Facebook by a 1,000 people (in the space of a few weeks) by having one post go viral: “9 things every singer needs to know about their body”.

Singers do want to know about their body – so tell them that’s what you offer. Of course Peter’s post was dripping in Alexandrian ideas, all of them arresting and novel in that market. That’s why it went viral – “Hey, this is NEW stuff” the message goes.

And that is the way to communicate – not “Alexander Technique” (please no!) but the amazingly rich, deep, effective and innovative approach that Alexander's discovery offers! Any individual in pursuit of a skilled motor activity wants to hear about anything that will help them develop it.

It is fascinating at this point to remember how Alexander was well known in the theatrical circles of Sydney and Melbourne at the turn of the 19th century – he was “the breathing man”.

Alexander niched.

He niched to actors, singers, performers: people who were passionate. Passion turns quickly to desperation when you can’t do what you want to do: it makes for a ready audience of desperate people. These are usually the early clients you first attract.

The “pain” market seems a natural place to gravitate, yet it’s lethal to building a sustainable practise unless you have the “skilled motor activity” behind it. Alexander’s initially was voice, what is yours?

You need to come up with a strategy to overcome that. One way is to go into a niche – where people are already passionate/desperate to do something – and ride in on a white horse and put your stake in the ground.

Xiaosong started off with a “Tango clinic” so along came people who couldn’t dance anymore. Trouble is, she sorted them out so well, that they quickly rushed back to their Tango classes, sending her an effusive message that basically said: “Thanks and goodbye.”

Not good for business.

In the ATSuccess model, we’d say “you need to switch their thinking.” We know we are not about fixing things, and do they know it too? They won’t if you don’t tell them. This is one of your key messaging or positioning tasks. You let your niche know that your work is about accelerating, enhancing and deepening their ability to dance, do yoga, sing or whatever heck else they want to do.

The way you get that message across is by extensive blogging, building a list and going through the process of:

1. Getting known
2. Getting liked
3. Being trusted

Once you have trust – and this can take anything from 3 months to 3 years – your prospective students will start thinking about spending money with you.

However, this time you’ve got there by “switching” their thinking before they spend. Now you are able to more easily invite them into a “programme” – a prolonged learning environment that is quirkily different from their usual Tango class and yet - hey! How about that? They discover they can become more effective and beautify their Tango dancing.

This biz building is a gradual journey – it’s industrial. It takes a a consistent investment in your time resources, focusing intelligently towards a select group of people i.e. your niche. That is the ATSuccess approach.

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And what if you don’t like writing?

What if building an email list, writing a book, offering a regular blog is not in your skill set? For Xiaosong the problem isn’t that, the problem is she grew up in China, speaks English and has to teach in Spanish. She can do all that – but writing in Spanish too!? Forget that.

What do you do?

I know there is a sizable group of teachers who feel the same: “I cannot write.” For them a non-social media model emerging in Buenos Aires – swing your tongue. Talk to people. Build relationships with Professional dancers, starting first with those that:

1. have studios
2. have a load of students
3. like what you do

Already she has inserted herself into one community, and is in a dialogue with another lady opening a more upmarket studio, with the “staying fit and healthy” message being in more prominence. Xiaosong can do fit and healthy, no problem.

Don’t you love Alexander's discovery? It dovetails into any message, and that’s part of our curse too. When you can be everything, people don’t trust that. They feel there must be a con in there somewhere…

I think they are right. The “con” is that we can do it for you… We can’t. We can only show you how – you have to do the brain work, and many people live in a victim mind that seeks a saviour. We have to be their saviour, then NOT. That’s the switch.

And yet, in another way – we are saviours. It’s odd.

Building a business by your swinging your tongue– along with some well positioned flyers that embellish your message – is a model that I used in the 1980s to build my first studio school in Sydney. There was no internet back them, it wasn’t really a choice. It was a have too, just as it is for Xiaosong in Argentina. If you can’t write in Spanish, what else can you do?

Today, if you are good at building relationships, and you are in a community-based niche with dancers, Yoga instructors, martial artists, musicians etc, one way for you to gain traction is to put rubber to the road and start negotiating people.

When you don’t have money to advertise, and you do have a resource of time and skill, use that to negotiate a financial return by building mini communities within communities through offering your niche-focused Alexander's discovery classes.

Rather than despair the competition, salivate. Where’s there’s competition, there’s students to be found.

ATSuccess members are inventing new business models – it’s pioneering work. The longer we go, the stronger it becomes for the new comers. As you adapt modern technologies with ancient word-of-mouth mechanisms and produce sustainable businesses (based on the platform of FM's fundamentally simple discovery) it demonstrates the efficacy of your work.

Your first step is to sign up below and get familiar with the 12 steps of the ATSuccess plan. This is less a template and more a set of guidelines. Just as Xiaosong is doing in Buenos Aires, Eleni in Brazil, and many of the 32 teachers currently in our coaching programs – your job is to invent a new business model for Alexander's discovery.

The old model of private lessons given in a spare room of your house, growing by word-of-mouth may still work – but who has a spare room these days? If it’s not in a niche, how powerfully will word-of-mouth work?

A niche amplifies every endorsement, in a way that Doris talking to her fellow office workers around the water cooler can never do. The niche creates a context where many, many others hear Doris speak and it speaks back to them later in their heads. They talk more, ask more, want to discover more – the snowball rolling down a mountain is precipitating a landslide of income.

The primary innovation of ATSuccess is encouraging teachers to find their niche. That is a first step – a critically important one in our 60 Day program. When that step is complete, are you ready for the real deal? This involves actually building your niched biz. That is our one year coaching program - admission is by invitation only.

With ATSuccess we are gradually creating a culture of success around Alexander's discovery, replacing a culture of struggle, obscurity and of being misunderstood.

It’s a noble enterprise, and people like Xiaosong, Eleni and the other 30 members of ATSuccess are engaged in its pursuit. I hope one day you can join us? Start by signing up below and getting an insight on the 12 steps, which is getting on insight on how you create your own successful practise...

These are universal biz truths that are essential in creating a retirement plan for your life’s work.