Day Seventeen - This Week in ATSuccess

Every week I am publishing some of the comments made in the hidden Facebook group (ATCS) with the 47 teachers and students working together on building their Alexander Technique businesses. Some of the comments are public, and the rest are in the paid area of my blog. You can join us now for less than the cost of one Alexander lesson with me a month. Note to members - some of these have been lightly edited since I first penned them inside Facebook. Any post more specific to the business of a teacher is posted in the members area, although all these posts are comments to a particular teacher's question in our group... On Becoming The Marketing Czar Of Your Business You can not - nor can anyone in our group - give the marketing job away. It is ALWAYS your job, and it falls to you to be as well-informed and clever at as your desire and intelligence allows you to be. Every business is first about marketing - or there will be no business. It's simple when you think about it: how can it be any other way? Glad the light has come on - for all of you here. It took me 25 years to get here. On The Simple ATCS Approach To AT Biz Building Settle on a niche, stick to that niche, build it by blog, belly and bluster. It's simple, but not easy. However, if you follow consistently over time, zigzagging creatively while staying within the niche as you do, it will work. On Deciding If New Niche Will Work Financially Go through the list of 12 points. It's about math and numbers first, psychology later. Don't waste your time if the numbers don't add up. On How To Research A Niche The key to knowing if a niche spends money on self-education is to check out who else is selling to them. Get their magazines, look up their websites, check out the banners there, the adds that display (if any), note any adds that appear when you search for them etc. First step is the wondering, but to find out an answer you need to move beyond rhetoric and imagination and get grounded in the reality of numbers: e.g. how many arts and crafts people are there? And what do you mean by that term - be specific, list their professions, check out what trade organisations exist, how many belong to them? Imagine you wanted to market to AT teachers - could you gather this information? Sure you could. Use internet, talk to people, ring up AmSAT, ATI, talk to Paul at DIRECTION. Reverse engineer those steps to your niche. You won't find the answers you need by asking here. They will just be imagining it like you. You will find here a method to find answers - which itself is pretty big, because almost no-one bothers with that! This is the only sensible way to go about building your business. Ask good questions, then the leg work is yours. On How To Build Your Biz Online Use online education as a free service in the beginning. Using me for example, I blogged about half a million words over 9 months to get this online paid service going, but I was never aiming for direct contact as a final goal (although I will be doing that in London on Jan 18th!) So you can do start with an informative blog for your niche first to build readership and your email list, THEN re-offer it as a free seminar by email to entice more people to join your list, THEN offer it as a workshop series over time once your list is big enough. On Building A Business For Professional People You can teach exclusively in groups - but the challenge you face is that Professionals are time-challenged, not money-challenged (mostly?). You may like 121, then I would make that VERY EXPENSIVE, so the option to groups is a no-brainer for money-challenged people, the lessons clearly designed for time-challenged people. In the longer run, your business will have much greater flexibility if you structure it around "intensives" over a year for example. Professionals would love an opportunity to combine a holiday with a seminar - they get a holiday, a tax deduction AND sort their pain issues out: THAT is the business I would be building! On Convincing 121 Students To Behave Appropriately In Groups! If you enjoy it, they enjoy and there's learning to be had - let it be the way it is. We have plenty of people who will not volunteer an activity in BodyChance, and so they sit in a group for upwards of THREE MONTHS! before they start. They all eventually do start, and when they do it is like they took a major step to be in charge of themselves, to take over responsibility, and the wait was the learning for them. That said - THEY NEVER HAD ANYTHING ELSE - and your group has, they are used to chair work, table work, lots of 121 “hands on” attention. It is easy to give people a new concept when their mind is blank to what you are offering, but REALLY HARD to reorganize a concept that has already nestled in. I would go with the flow, but try to set up a direct-to-groups classes and see if you get the same difficulties there…? On A New Walking Activity Play My guess she is leaning back because she is frightened of falling as she walks down the hill, but her leaning back INCREASES her chances of slipping when her heel touches the ground and careening to the ground. Amazing. On Twitting Why not tweet? It is good discipline. I love Mark Twain's comment: “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” On My Opinion Of A New Name For Your Business I feel like a broken record, but the only way to know if you have a good name for your business or not is to test it with the niche. Ask them. I am not your customer, do not have their needs - so what do I know? Does it talk to me - I don't know, I’m not your customer, and this is the only opinion that matters. You can ask Mum, Dad and your associates and they will all have an opinion, and they don’t know. Your customer knows. This is my stock reply to this kind of question about the name for your business. ASK. YOUR. CUSTOMERS. Test it. On Posting to the Group Keep up the reporting to us. The truth is: you are reporting to your Self. Have any of you noticed that sometimes, after posting, you re-read what you posted? That is what I mean when I say: "You are reporting to your Self." It works, who knows why, who cares? It works. On Using Google Adds I would be looking at FaceBook adds, not google. You can reach the same people for a fraction of the cost. That won't last for long, right now the internet guys are salivating at the mouth, they are so excited by the possibilities it offers at the price. On A Blog As A Diary of An Imaginary Niche Character I think that is a brilliant idea. I'd make it a "feature post" on the same day every week - weekend is good. Start a following for it, but still keep blogging on other things too. A blog can more easily happen if you design designated days for different things to happen. It is less overwhelming to keep up 3 posts a week, which is a good rhythm to aim for. On Producing A Giveaway Product Actually "blogging" is how you produce your E-book. Plan it out as a series of posts, and go write it. Anyone you are enticing is new anyway, and most people like to have material neatly collected together. Remember - long is not necessary a plus. People like the initial information in easy to digest bullet points. Get it done. Get it up. Build your audience. [NOTE: This second half of my blog is a paid area describing practical ways to implement what has been described above in a Facebook group with 47 other teachers and students. You can join anytime to be part of their discussions.]

*On Google Adds I am currently in the process of spending $1,000 of dollars on Google adds to stop BCLA burning cash, so I will keep you posted about that. I can tell you want I have learnt so far: if you are going to do it, YOU MUST BECOME THE BEST AT IT. Only the top 5% of people make any money - all the rest subsidise Google. Perry Marshall is the guy to go to - he is the top Google Adds consultant in USA, and next January I am spending a day in his home in Chicago plotting our Google and Facebook add campaign to bring BCLA into profit within the next year (before all my money runs out). I could do a month on that, but it would be too nerdy for most people here. (But tell me if you want it). At the very least, sign up for his free automated 5 Day email overview offered at his website: http://www.perrymarshall.com *On Using Testimonials Lucy! (If not already) you MUST get his testimonial about how you saved his career, then post it with you “new blog series” about breathing and the discoveries you have made “working with musicians.” This will go viral (with a little posting help from you to Facebook groups, and comments on other blogs) and supercharge your blog and eventually your business! *On Price Setting Eve - that's a great approach to creating "wiggle room" as you say. At BodyChance all the prices are initially put high, so this means every now and again we can offer a "special deal" and, because we don't do it as a regular thing, our customers know IT REALLY IS a special deal! *On Jennifer’s Name For Her New Business I will say that “The Art of Freedom” is quite broad, needs some specifity of a niche benefit in it. Compare that to this message Basil created for his School Music Band niche (notice how drilled down that niche is!): Non-Violent Music Education. Like Jennifer’s, it is four words, but those words really speak to the niche. They are so frightened by the violent ways of their teachers, this name brings an immediate response: “Oh, I really want to know more about that.” So the best name for your business will connect to the problem you are solving in a way that has meaning for your niche when they see it. Does “The Art of Freedom” do that? *On Getting A Niched Biz To Work In A Small Population I see that some guy managed to make a business of drumming in Cornwall. Amazing. And here's me thinking Cornwall is too small for a niched biz like drumming to ever take off. I know, I know - special circumstances, other people pay etc. It is still an amazing thing! It gives me hope that Cornwall is not as backward and impossible as I had been imagining it! *On An Effective USP Aniko - your USP is clearly about being effective where other techniques have not been. So building a guarantee within it could be powerful, if legal... For example "Back Pain Gone in 24 Lessons Or Your Money Back" and then quoting from the BMJ study. But your USP should also let them know you deal with THEM, not just any kind of person in pain. You understand THEIR pain, THEIR demands. Give it a go... *On How To Market To A Niche - NOT! Your comment: "They are not known to be very embodied which is also why I switched from teaching academia..." reminds me to make a critical point about this: Never, ever start a marketing campaign beginning with the premise that these people need to be told how they need to be different. Aside from the fact that it is a complicated position to begin with, no-one likes to be told they are not "embodied" and they need to be. If this is a need THEY ALREADY BELIEVE, great. If not, give up on it as a marketing ploy. It may well be a result you have in mind as you work with them - a "hidden benefit" they discover - but start out by giving them what they believe they need. What do (they think) they need? *On A Keeps You Awake List for Your Niche Great start Dana - now turn that into an email seminar, with Subject headings that tempt them to read. Write that, then you have subjects to run some blog posts too. Get it all going - give it a name - and test is on your list. Wait. Do you have a list? Then use this to gather one! *On Writing An Email Seminar Good point Annie (about the burst out laughing) and reading your post - you are using the "Alexander-is-a-feeling" model first which is fine, except that's not what I am writing about now in terms of getting groups going. If you were doing an email series, and wanted to follow that method, then advocating semi-supine with a "manual" on how to do it would be your first few emails. So go ahead and tell us SPECIFICALLY what steps you would do next. The answer is not "it depends on the student" because YOU. HAVE. A. NICHE. So you already can guess the sequence you will take a person through. Of course, in the absence of a niche, this is a problem. Not one I know how to solve that well - so choose a niche for your series. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ATCSProMembers/