ATSuccess 2nd Fortnight - May 2014 • It's the Niche, stupid

After some time away, things are revving up among ATSuccess members. For some people the summer is a time to stop, for us it's a time to think. Thinking is what happens when you are NOT at your computer. It happens in the park, on a walk, while reading a book for PLEASURE. Summer is a great time to hop onto the ATSuccess train to start making your biz the place you love to be at. Click here now to find out how to join ATSuccess. Going Into A Empty Niche Yea! That sounds REALLY promising. The first question that pops into my head as a red flag warning - Why hasn't anyone else gone into that niche? Why is it empty? Is there a reason? How To Build Your Niche In what to do while you wait for your workshop: 1) --> you can be creating content, products that will appeal to those Yoga teachers. In Japan, whenever the words "teaching methods" appear in any blog or Facebook post, Michiko tells me that our stats shoot right up. "How To Teach A Yoga Class That Gets Students To Keep Coming Back" may be a popular auto-responder series you could offer the Yoga teaches, or anything else you have handy. This gives you an easy upsell from your workshop to get them into your list, and they can tell others about it to; 2) Darling - don't wait, propagate! YES!!! Talk to other Studios by all means, but go with the mind set: what do they need? How can I help them? That may be the puzzle you need to solve first, before you approach them. Positioning Your Self In A Niche Positioning your Self as the expert will happen as you continue to post great information to your blog, develop "email seminars" off that to attract people in, get the buzz going in the market. There are courses out there - Brendon Burchard (sp?) ran one once - on "How To Become An Expert In Your Niche" If you are facing this problem, it might be worth focusing that academic mind of yours on a more conscious program of positioning your Self as the Expert. Segmenting Your Niche List You segment your list - it's in my book. i.e. you send out a message about a topic, then invite people to OPTIN as Ryan suggests, and using tags slowly build a more detailed profile of who is on your list, and who would be interested in your latest service/product. Pro Membership of ATSuccess Pro membership simply involves us having a specific but wide ranging conversation about the development of your biz. We talk as often as you wish, although each call brings out clarity on the leverage points to focus on, and as that fades you schedule another call. As one member wrote recently: it motivates and holds you more accountable to implement the stuff we talk about. Paying a higher fee has this magical effect of bringing more congruity into your biz decision making. I also get to ask you lots of questions that would be impossible to handle by Facebook posting - we talk. It's that simple really. Email Marketing By Ryan Diess I recommend watching this video for any of you that have a reasonably sized mailing list (500+) and have a simple product (a 1Day workshop, an Intro, a download booklet for $7) as a next experiment in email marketing. It takes a bit of work to accomplish: 1. A working list 2. Ability to set up step emails 3. A landing page with Paypal/payment button 3. Understanding how to set off a segmented set of step emails. Advanced stuff, but some of you are ready… http://followupmachine.com/is-email-marketing-dead/ *** ATSuccess Facebook Group [NOTE: Today's blog contains posts from my ATSuccess Group in Facebook. They contain personal or specific information that is inappropriate for non-members. You can join the group by becoming a member. Participants of enjoy the protection to express private opinions openly to the group. It gets interesting. Being within a walled garden - knowing who else is there - creates a context to take risks. In ATSuccess no-one cares where you trained, they only care you succeed at it.]

*A Recent Insight One of the recent insights I have been having with my students and ATSuccess is getting clear on who DOESN'T qualify for your niche. Yoga is huge, so I cheer you on thinking the way you are. The more focused the niche definition because - providing it remains a financially sustainable size - the powerfully you can connect and gain both traction and loyalty. It's so wondrous to watch your evolution Cecile - I am in constant admiration! *Email Seminars You want to move your niche from the blog into a "email seminar" on a hot topic, with a CTA (Call To Action) at the end of the series into a paid Intro or 1Day workshop. Have you got an auto-responder series in place? The key is to capture their name and email. Until you have that, it's always more difficult to sell them directly into a product from your blog. Like dating, take it in stages. It works out better. *Building A Biz in Brighton Mark - I'd be interested to know if you have any statistics, or hunches, on the longevity of an average student? Once you alleviate their pain, do they stick around? If so, what percentage stick around? And on average how long? A - Do these people give you referrals? Have you got any mechanism in place to support them being your personal emissary towards others in pain? B - Do you have a "life change" program for people who have got past the pain? Where I am getting to with all this is looking at your back-end biz. Once the pain is dealt with, what keeps them sticking? Or they don't stick? (Hence my questions above) C - Growing your group work, I like that. Have you figured out how you will do that? Please share when you have time. Well worth the analysis. If you can know how long a person is statistically likely to stay with you, and how much they will spend with your over that time, you can make a surer financial plan for the proposed mortgage (I am guessing you don't plan to buy outright). You can also see that you may be spending more time, effort and money in putting people into the front end, then (for example) losing more than 50% of them before 20 lessons are done. Not good for the long term. The point is - get clear first on the exact picture of your biz. With groups I was thinking more of the biz model, less about the content. Although the two are interdependent (e.g. life-change model). Are you groups integrated with your 121, or are they two different streams? How do you get people into them? That's the kind of information I was seeking... *How To Endure Lucy - by being behind everyone, you get the benefit of all their wisdoms too! Keep in there girl, I am amazed by your capacity to endure, knowing what I do about your personal circumstances. *Who Do You Really Write For? As much as I'd love to peek into that Journal David, the only person you are writing for is you, my guess is you know that. Peter (BTW) is a GREAT person to reach out to. I have him marked as being my teacher in things as he moves along - looking forward to that day. *Dana's Sales Letter I am attaching a document I created in word of your SL using the Review tool so you can see the edits I suggested. In the doc, I also ended with this comment: FINAL NOTE The last part of the message seems to be repetitive Saying the same thing twice in a different way is fine, I am all for that. It just doesn't feel like it flows. It's like you just threw a lot of stuff on paper hoping some of it would stick in their mind. Better if you can engineer a more logical progression in your writing that brings them to the conclusion: "I gotta go to this class with my friend!" https://word.office.live.com/wv/WordView.aspx? Click here to view the document online (without the editing showing) *An Educare Niche Alain - I am not entirely clear on the niche "people with neuropathic pain and Neuropathic condition." Are these people ALREADY gathered together as a community? Do they have a magazine, a conference, a place to share with each other? My hunch is not, in which case you are trying to stitch together a disparate group of people who may not naturally cohere as a community. Community is a backbone of the ATSuccess model - it ensures continuity, long-term students, back end biz and a retirement plan. HOWEVER, you can still work in this niche. The model is different and moving away from the ATSuccess model. In this model you offer highly effective, expensive "educare" for people in need of it. This is where I lose the plot - how long does a person need treatment/care/education? Specialist doctors, physios etc are the model to emulate here. By all means do that. Just know that you need to make all your money on the front end, and that is a different challenge. *Thinking Big Oh your LMS is wonderful Cecile - think big, and you'll get half as much more than thinking small. Alexander's discovery has the potential for you to bring this about. Credit for the innovation goes to FM, credit for it's implementation goes to you. *** Anything you want to bring urgently to my attention? I’m working to maintain a delicate pace - not too intense, not too relaxed. Keep the string taut, but don’t let it snap: that’s how we make our music! https://www.facebook.com/groups/ATCSProMembers/