Do you Have Singularity of Purpose?

I am writing at the end of a harrowing and hollowing day of beauty at my Costa Rica Mastermind.

I am getting a brain operation here. It’s about being vulnerable and admitting where I am weak. Admitting that I am failing to deliver on the grandiosity and hope I use to pump myself into action against the crisis and disappointments that tend to wake me up.

Not to belittle my accomplishments though.

I created and direct the largest Alexander training organisation to date. In Japan that involves: 4 different schools; a full-time staff of 10; another 40+ part-time; 165 teacher trainees; 3 studio locations; and hundreds in workshops and membership programs. Overseas I launched ATSuccess - a business coaching program for Alexander teachers. Currently 19 teachers pay $3,000 annually to practise the process of attracting more students. We promise they will earn that back with our program – if they do what we request. More on that later.

So, not bad.

And yet - I am sitting in a room with guys that make a million dollars a month. I am out of my league, and loving every minute of it.

So what’s my take home learning?

When you wake me up at 3am in the morning and ask: “What’s the single purpose of your business?” I don’t know how to answer you.

I need to optimize for singularity of purpose? I am not even sure what that means…

"Have you got a one page executive summary of your biz?” (one guy asks me).

“Well, I better google what that is, then I can tell you.” I answer. Check out liveplan.com he says. They keep asking me questions like this, and I keep not knowing what to answer:

“Have you got a business plan?”

“I’ve got a budget.” I answer “Is that what you mean?”

I get a feeling of exasperation in the room. I feel small, almost an idiot.

What am I not getting here? I am not an idiot, so why do I feel like that?

“Have you got goals? Do you know what you want?”

“Well, yes…” I answer. “It’s all in the budget.”

So what are my goals? Hmm, I can’t answer, they are not in my head.

“THEY SHOULD BE IN YOUR HEAD!!!”

Oh.

And so it goes on like this for a while, me red-faced and confused and really not getting it. I know they are seeing something I am not seeing, and I still don’t know what it is…

Another guy says:

“I started taking notes about your sales funnel, and then at some point I stopped because it all got foggy. What’s your strategy?”

And then the penny drops.

Oh. Now I see. I have BodyChance’s budget, the enrolment targets for the different training schools and ATSuccess. And I have a whole bunch of metrics that I track:

- how many new opt ins to our mailing list?
- how well do we convert studio comers to join our membership program?
- how many new enrolments this month?

Things like that.

But I have no real plan. What’s the strategy?

I set the targets, and I track what is happening – and between those two points a fog descends. There are Facebook ads, a maze of mailing lists and free email seminars, booklets to download, blogs to read, introductory workshops and lectures to attend, some online stuff.

Yadda, yadda, yadda. How does it all fit together?

Here’s an insider’s look into the consequences my epiphany for members of ATSuccess. There’s a thunderbolt effect that will echo into the way we conduct our coaching program.

(BTW: ATSuccess members are reading about this for the first time! Breaking news from Costa Rica. Listen up!)

A bit of background first.

We made a promise to our 19 members. The latest group pay £2,000 for the year, or £200 monthly for 12 months. It’s a lot of money for a teacher who is struggling to pay the rent. How can they justify spending all that money? Here’s what we tell them:

You will make that money back in a year. However, you need to meet our milestones. And we set milestones every month. Providing you hit them, and you don’t make your money, we will let you stay in ATSuccess until you do (without addition fee). We make this promise to put pressure on ourselves. We are not delivering information, we are delivering a result. We want you to be earning real money. Cash in your back pocket real.

And today, I suddenly realised, we need an even clearer strategy than the one we have.

I did think we already had a strategy. Just as I (did) think I had a strategy for BodyChance Japan.

Trouble is – what I am calling a strategy, and what these guys in my mastermind are calling a strategy – these two are as different as kindergarten and a phD.

Guess who’s in kindergarten?

Not any more. Firstly – if you woke me up at 3am in the morning and asked me: what is the purpose of my ATSuccess coaching program – here’s what I would answer:

“Each member earns an extra £2,000 from teaching Alexander's discovery within the year.”

Simple right? Clear, measurable, time-defined and easy to evaluate. That’s the first part of building an effective strategy: singularity of purpose. The title of to-days blog.

What’s yours in relation to your Alexander practise? I bet you are in kindergarten too. Maybe high school, even University. But phD level? I doubt it. If you are, quit reading right now, send me a msg and I will make a deal with you on the spot!

Our ATSuccess money goal was there. However recently, both Peter and I started to feel concern. A lot of our members are still quite a distance from that goal. In the first group, which still has 5 months to go, the goal looming closer and closer...

It. Will. Be. Achieved. = Singularity of Purpose.

Out of that, talking after my mastermind, Peter and I realized: we need a strategy to achieve that. We need to focus our group on that goal. Our ATSuccess coaching group – which is secret and inaccessible to the public – is almost like a garden party. It’s fun, engaging and quite rich. But not rich in things that make money. Yes, people can safely vent, share, talk about their fears in a bubble of secrecy, confidentiality and trust. There’s something wonderful about that: it’s refreshing, confidence building and new.

And there is no singularity of purpose. Consequently, there is no strategy emerging…

Now finally – congratulations in reading this far – we want to create that strategy. ATSuccess members take note: your program is about to go through a radical reinvention. We are going to do two things:

1A. Pro 1.0: Focus on the strategy of how to make $USD3,000 from teaching by September 30th, 2016
1B. Pro 2.0: Focus on the strategy of how to make £2,000 from teaching by April 30th, 2017.

2. Peter and I will only engage in coaching that directly furthers that goal.

That means a lot of things – and how that works will be posted in the secret groups. This is the singularity of purpose thing – and it generates practical steps. However, there’s still the question:

How are they going to earn their cash in the pocket by their date?

We have two ways for our ATSuccess members to do that:

1. Build a list of 1,000 fans by the deadline and sell online products
2. Design, schedule and deliver workshops and fill the classes by that deadline.
3. (Optional) Do both.

Of course, some ATSuccess members want the freedom of not heeding to this particular goal. No problem. They have the option of opting out, and some members already have. It’s OK to learn and take longer to absorb and implement.

Peter and I – because of our promise – must remain opted in and focused. We need to lay it out for our members who need to ern back their fee this year. There is the goal, there is the strategy, and then there’s what you need to do TODAY. An unbroken chain of tasking that delivers the results you want.

Of course those two steps above are going to be broken down into monthly targets, weekly targets that feed our key indicators which – at any moment of time you ask (even 3am in the morning) - will tell you with total clarity:

I am realising my goal. I am not realizing my goal.

We plan to increase the clarity for members in ATSuccess. And I will work on increasing clarity in BodyChance.

Compared to ATSuccess, BodyChance is more nuanced to figure out. How I go about that, what I do will be a recurring topic of this blog.

Stay tuned. Costa Rica mastermind that just shook my earth. Again.