Day Eighteen - Blending

Last month I was lucky enough to attend a final performance of Carlos Acosta at the Coliseum in London. He was accompanied by many of the principal dancers of the Royal Ballet, but even at 40 he cast them into the shadow of his greatness. As a student of Alexander's Discoveries for longer than this man has been on the planet, I took it upon myself to analyse what made his movement so superb. What differentiated him from the other dancers, themselves at the pinnacle of their profession? The answer surprised me. Carlos Acosta stopped being Carlos Acosta. With all the other dancers, there was a sense of a dancer who was dancing to the orchestral music. As I watched Carlos, this kind of perception dropped away from my attention. Carlos was the orchestra, the orchestra was the dance. Identities were gone, action took it's place. I was transported, I wasn't there either. Wow. I flashed to an old Zen saying "There is dancing, but no dancer. There is watching, but no watcher." That was it. That was how he did it. The noun was gone, all that was left was the verb. How in heavens name did he do that? He blended into the music. When the music went twang, Carlos went twang. In a ten second period, there may have been 25 different moments he could move in exact sync with the music, and he hit every moment precisely. The other dancers missed 50-80% of those cues – by only a few nanoseconds, but enough to wake me up from my dream to think "Oh, they are to dancing to the music." They separated themselves out. Identities were recreated: mine, theirs, the orchestra and the ballet. Carlos Acosta blended. There was just one thing. Which was no one thing. Your Task – Where do you blend in your marketing and sales?

I want to get you thinking about what you are good at, and how you are leveraging that for your business? When it comes to marketing and selling, there are many different approaches. The approach you choose should be based on the proclivities of your personality. For example, the engineer types do it all sitting in a chair at home with Google adds, landing pages, email lists and websites. Or the garrulous types get out into the community, swing their tongues, make some deals and pull in people that way. That's two examples. What are you good at? What are your strengths? I say – forget about trying to develop who you are not. When something is essential (like a website) and you can't, it may be more economical for you to invest in getting help (elance.com is a great resource for that) while you focus on building your business doing what you are good at. Again, what are you good at? There are lots of ways to market and sell – some will suit you better than any other. Here's a list based on some material that Perry sent recently in my Mastermind group: METHODS TO MARKET (traffic to your website) Blogging Building mailing lists Writing and placing articles Social Media Discussion Forums YouTube videos Google or Facebook adds Search Engine Optimization Events and publicity stunts Advertising in offline media Rental of mailing lists Inbound links Affiliates Joint ventures Adds in E-zines Banner Adds Popups Viral Marketing METHODS TO SELL (getting them to yes) Relationship building via email – invite to live events Belly-to-belly: Live Introductions Live chat (phone, skype, whatever) Sales letters (video, written or both) Teleseminars Audio recording Streaming videos Fanatical A/B split testing (of landing/sales pages) Today mission (should you choose to accept it) is to decide on ONE method to market and ONE method to sell and become a master at that. You do not want to be well-rounded, you want to be focused. Don't be a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Become a master of one. Once you have that skill mastered, move on the next. Choose wisely, choose the method that matches who you are so well, that the action becomes you, and there's no friction, effort or push in doing what you are doing. Just like watching Carlos Acosta. Find your harmony.