Day Twenty – Story

I heard recently that for the first time, a new generation of teenagers emerging in the States are not rushing out to get a driver's license. When all your friends can be texted, videoed or walkie talked from your bedroom, who needs a license to drive a car? So Daryl Joyce, an Alexander Technique teacher from the UK who once visited BodyChance in Tokyo, has decided to join as a Lite Member of ATCS to focus on increasing his online presence. Smart move. I went to Daryl's website to have a look, and his current home page is headed "The Alexander Technique." This is common to most sites in AT land, and the implicit assumption of this marketing is that "They are looking for The Alexander Technique." Then Daryl's page is perfect. But what if they are not? There's an interesting graph that Google generates, that I shared previously on this blog, that shows the net number of people searching for "Alexander Technique" online has been diminishing for years. A huge spike in 2008 when the BMJ study was published, but even that did not reverse the trend, which continues on unabated today. (Except in Japan I am proud to say. Here the trend is the opposite. Thanks to BodyChance.) When your website aims to capture people who feel comfortable arriving at your site to read an explanation about The Alexander Technique right off the bat, who is doing the job of letting them know they need to be reading this in the first place? STAT? Newspaper articles? Books? Talk shows? Radio interviews? So why not put yourself in the driver's seat? Jostle your Self to the front of the crowd. Be the one who educates the others. Don't be content to pick up the crumbs: be the person who makes the sandwich. This is the role I assign BodyChance, and it needs to be the role you assign your Self. Here's what the media love: a story. A really good story – a hero's tale in fact, with drama, enemies, darkness, turmoil, determination, incredible odds and final triumph. PS Daryl - you'd be smart to spend the $48 and come into our back room in Facebook, where you can communicate daily and be guided and inspired by a passionate group of 34 teachers who want to do exactly what you want to do. Then you can read what comes next... Your Task – How To Write a Midnight Story That Will Have Customers Banging On Your Door At Night

First you have to know who your students (customers) will be. The niche. The avatars. What kind of story will resonate with them? Now you understand better why it is critical for you to define your students, because only when you know who they are can you start putting together the story they will be moved by. Moved – as in, give you their email, come to your Intro, pay for your service. My story, when it comes to you lot (you can have many stories) is a family man with two young children and a wife who didn't work, watching his business implode around him in a foreign country speaking a language he couldn't understand. It's a David and Goliath story, a man against the odds. Oh yes, and this man (me) is trying to make a living doing a thing that 95% of people have failed at for 119 years. John Coffin quoted this on Facebook yesterday:

John Coffin Carrington's memoir (title? A Time to Remember?) had an attempted list of ALL the original training course students, from 1932-1955. As I remember--not having the book on hand--the number of non-finishers and subsequent inactive teachers was depressing.

All of this can be part of my story. Write it well enough, and the reader is convinced the bailiffs are just around the corner. Zoom forward 8 years and you have the most successful business in the 119 year history of our work, a business barely beginning with an unprecedented opportunity to change the world. And here you all are, riding this tsunami into a future of unparalleled wealth and opportunity. So maybe that's over the top – but doesn't it make you feel good? You can feel: yes, I am in the right place. Any smart Alexander Technique teacher who wants to succeed should be here. This is the leading edge of our profession – we are the 5% who make this work, work. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to share the bare outline on Facebook of your true hero's story that your avatars/niche will be ignited by. Inspire them. Inspire you. Wake up the world.