Angela (Guest Blog)

Angela’s Story I was born a month premature in the North of England, December 18th 1968. My birth was traumatic. I was an emergency Caesarean section as a result of placenta previa and placental abruption. My mother and I were not expected to survive. Yet somehow we both did. My first weeks were in a Special Care Baby Unit, jaundiced and weak. Hence I have a very immature MORO reflex! It all makes sense now. Five years later my sister was born. Age 7 we went to live in Bahrain for 1 year. Followed by 7 years living in Dubai. I loved living in the U.A.E. It most certainly broadened my horizons and gave me a ‘can do’ attitude. We watched as Dubai began its journey of development at a rate of knots. I went to school with other expatriate children. This gave me a truly international perspective. A love of life, a love of learning and a love of travel. I have fond, fond memories of my life overseas. At times I have felt as though I don’t belong in the UK as my mindset is very different from those who haven’t travelled or experienced other cultures and ways of living. I am so grateful for the experience and understanding it gave me of myself, my life, my family and the vision it gave me for my future. When I arrived back in the UK aged 15, I was in shock. I never really settled in the north of England. That to me is not ‘home. When I think of ‘home’ , I think of Dubai 1979-1984, my formative years. Life was full, fun, happy and sunny. My energy was good, school was fantastic. We had young expatriate teachers straight out of Teacher Training College. They were enthusiastic, inspiring and encouraging. Fast Forward to September 1984 England. I wanted to join the Sixth Form at the local Grammar School. My parents wanted me to go to same private school as my younger sister. And so it was. I hated every minute of it. The teachers were Dinosaurs who had not a spark of life / energy left. I was uninspired, bored, lonely and depressed. I managed somehow to scrape through my A-levels and achieve the required number of points to begin training as a therapy radiographer. Wow, that was a difficult journey. I’d wanted for a long time to begin this career. But it wasn’t turning out how I’d imagined it. Christie’s Hospital in Manchester is a leading oncology hospital and one of the largest specialist centres in Europe. What harrowing sights I saw. Spending many hours with very sick children being treated with radio and chemotherapy proved too much for me to bear. I thank my Mum for noticing and having the foresight to call the Head of Training. I was mortified to be called in to her office but ultimately relieved that I was then able to pour my heart out and explain that I was unhappy and wanted to leave to pursue a career in Diagnostic Radiography. I’d met such an enthusiastic and fun group at college. All the radiography students from the North West came together 2 weeks out of 4 for the theoretical side of the course training which I was loving. What I wasn’t loving was the clinical placement at the Christie. It sounded much more fun in the diagnostic world of radiography. An interview was set up with Head of Radiography Ken Blencoe and Dr Hawarth and it was agreed that I could transfer straight away to Withington Hospital and continue the course with no extension. Hurray! Three years followed . To my horror I failed one of my final exams by 2 points. I had a permanent job lined up and they had to give it to someone else! By the time I qualified six months later, there were no permanent jobs to be had locally. I took a maternity cover post at The Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan, beginning on my 21st Birthday. Great fun and a lovely crowd to work with. I was offered a permanent post, but wanted to return to Withington. As a university teaching hospital I felt it had more to offer me in terms of work experience. During my temporary post working in Wigan, I had applied for a position with British Airways as a stewardess. I had the travel bug and thought it would be nice to have a paid Gap year. I was taken on as the last crew prior to the Gulf War working for British Airways out of London Gatwick. Fantastic destinations such as the Caribbean, India, Hong Kong, Dubai, USA, flying 747s and DC10s I was in my element seeing all these wonderful places, staying in 5* hotels with long stay overs. What a great year I had as a 22 year old. I realized that I needed to do a ‘real’ job soon. I applied to Jennie Reeves agency to get back into radiography. My first agency assignment was working in a Dark Room in Harley Street for Dr Pemberton. Great location and great pay! Next I was an agency radiographer at St Thomas’s Hospital, loving the work, the social life and the people. I was offered two permanent positions at the same time, one at Guy’s Hospital and one at St Thomas’s. Tommies won and I spent some glorious years working at this historic hospital listening to the chimes of Big Ben. Happy Days! I was quickly promoted to Senior II radiographer and also trained as a sonographer here in conjunction with Kings College Hospiatl. Déjà vu when I failed one of my finals by 2 points causing a six month delay to my qualifying as a songrapher and seeing a permanent post go to someone else. But by a strange twist of fate, an old college friend bumped into me at St Thomas’s Hospital and told me about a sales job for a Pharmaceutical company selling radiology contrast agents and devices to hospitals in London. A larger salary plus company car sounded very appealing, I went along for the interview. And got the job! I loved selling and the autonomy of having my own territory and being so responsible and independent. The more I worked, the more I earned, excellent! I was headhunted to work for another company which also was fantastic. I then moved myself to work for an imaging company to broaden my knowledge base. The only female in a male sales team was a challenge, hard work but ultimately rewarding and were good times. As I had my first daughter, I realized I wanted some time off and asked for redundancy. I was so pleased to get it! Being a Mum at home was a very special important time. When Heather was 1 years old I worked one afternoon a week for six months at St Albans City Hospital. Then Heather was bitten at nursery! And I found I was expecting Grace, so I became a full time Mum at home until we moved to Surrey. My girls were both at school by this stage, and I was asked to go and work at St Peter’s hospital in Chertsey by a colleague. I loved it! I love obstetric scanning, and really enjoyed the connection with colleagues and patients. Life was sweet until I just couldn’t shake off this ‘sore shoulder’. I was signed off work ‘sick’ for the first time in my life in the summer of 2007 with a Right Upper Limb Work Related Musculo Skeletal Disorder. Two months of no scanning saw my shoulder starting to heal. But when I went back to scanning, within half an hour the pain was back. I could have cried. What was I going to do? I resigned my post with a heavy heart, feeling it to be the only option to retain what was left of my physical health. My superintendent told me about Alexander Technique. At that stage I would have done anything, or paid anything to be rid of this constant and draining pain which was now affecting every area of my life. OMG the first lesson, my pain went completely! And it stayed away for days! That was it, I knew right away that it’s actually my mission in life to teach this work. I enrolled onto a teacher training course 3 months later, training with Ron Colyer. And here I am , now teaching this amazing work to others. This is my true calling. My career and life experience leading up to this point was all absolutely relevant to who I am today, who I teach, how I teach and how I can help people. All my seeming disasters are in fact beautiful gems in the rich jewellery of my teaching. Hurray! My Comments On Angela’s Story…

This is a great story, and written beautifully. My following comments are on how you can reshape this story for your niche. When the story is solely for radiographers, the details of your work is relevant here – it builds your credibility with them. However, it is not a cv. You know what will be impressive to them, so leave that in and cut out the rest. It’s too much detail at the moment. I enjoyed the drama of your story – and I think there is room for making more teaching points around this. We know you failed critical exams twice by 2 points, and lost a full-time job both times, but why? What was happening to you, that you guess is happening to others? Did this set up for your later career crisis? Your story is not a litany of events – although you do need a loose framework – it is a metaphor for your clients. It’s saying 1.I am like you, I felt this way, this happened to me; then 2.I tried all these solutions (that your niche has probably tired too) and none of them worked; then 3.I changed this because I changed my thinking and I finally found salvation (in AT) and you can too. (If you do this = CTA!) Will they identify with your early life? Maybe, maybe not. It could serve to alienate them from you too. Think it through… The underlying notion can be “I was an outcast” and that works if your avatar has that kind of self-image. Then your story is really saying: “I know what it is like when no-one understands your situation.” Readers feel you can empathize with them, even if their situation differs from your own. The underlying emotional alienation is the same. If you problem is their problem, then your solution can be their solution too. But they have to identify with you first. The juicy part of your story – how pain ruined your career, how AT saved it – occupies only 247 words out of a total of 1,472. In other words, only 17% of your story is about Alexander Technique, and how it transformed your life. Story telling can jump back and forth between time past, time present and time future: introduce the end (salvation) at the beginning (I will tell you how). Introduce the AT part of the story much earlier, and return to it as a binding theme, building up the various ideas you want people to get as you let your personal story evolve. I also suggest you develop the drama of your aching shoulder and sinking career. Show how it developed – surely it didn’t just “start” one day. When you were studying hard, fearful of failing – were you tightening it then? Of course you were. It is good to show the origins of pain – people will start to wonder “It could happen to me.” This is what I mean by building your theme. You also want to wake people up to a nightmare that can be avoided: “You don’t need to go through what happened to me. I can help you can avoid that, but you need to act now.” This is your CTA (Call To Action) of course. Your CTA can be implicit – with no direct thing to do, but the clear implication that they will need to do. Or your CTA can be explicit – go here and read this, book into my workshop or intro. It all depends on where the story is being situated in your sales funnel. Thanks again for writing this Angela, and I look forward to the niche version of the story when you get time to rework it. What We Will Do This Month These stories will carry on intermittedly this month, with my comments, which means this month we are focusing on story telling as an element of sales letters. In fact, this is a mild sales letter – a communication with a message built into it that calls people to interact with you. Also be using your time to catch up with the many tasks and career building processes that you are already have. I will also be blogging on issues you request, so be alert that you can make a specific request to me. I have a few already, but there’s room for more. I will also be warming up to next month’s theme towards the end of this month… Look forward to that!