If You Have No Students, Are You Really A Teacher?

I’ve spent a long time making a fool of myself.

Publically, loudly and with a lot fanfare. Or at least that is how I felt sometimes (foolish) and that is how I was told by others (sometimes). Yet as Brené Brown rightly points out – while risk taking opens you to the possibility of ridicule and hurt, it also opens you to all those other juicy emotions like vitality, joy, enthusiasm, love.

You can’t have it both ways: either you take the risk, or you shut down. Everything.

One of the areas I was “foolish” was my unfettered enthusiasm for writing sales letters. I see now they were clumsy, inappropriate efforts of persuasion that put off more people than they attracted. And in doing this, I discovered a new art form. I woke up to a new reality, one that is profoundly important to me today. And to you. (Although you might not know it yet – read on)

What makes the sales letter unique is that it is speaking into the unknown.

Unlike giving a workshop, you have no idea who is reading, listening or watching your sales pitch. And yet, unless you can accomplish effective communication into that unknown space, how else will you convince people to come to you? It may be your website, a flyer, your blog – it is how you communicate what you do.

In our work, the art of communication can be thought of in two ways:

1. To the person you know
2. To the person you don’t know

Teaching is about educating the person you know.
Marketing is about educating the person you don’t know.

Like we do with the mind/body thing, we split communication into the different camps of teaching/marketing and treat them as they were distinctly different things. We say we are attracted to teaching and averse to marketing, all of which makes as much sense as saying your attracted to your body while being averse to your mind.

We preach mind/body unity, yet continue dividing our communication skills into the separate categories of teaching and marketing. My guess is that marketing was not a central topic during your training? However, consider this: when you fail to communicate Alexander's discovery to an (as yet unknown) future student, how are going to practise as a teacher?

Answer: you don’t. If you want a student to teach, then a new question to answer is:

How do you find and communicate effectively to a person who is unknown to you?

Great question. And on to the centre of the stage arrives… (drumroll)

FACEBOOK

You hear a lot of people complaining about Facebook, social media and relentless volume of the 24 hour news cycle. Get over it. That’s how it is. Luddites still want rotator phones while I’m telling Siri – “Call Grace.” The world has changed.

Facebook is a new human-devised utility. Actually, it is an incredible gift to teachers of Alexander's discovery. Maybe I leaped too quickly for you there? Let me take it back a step.

You can’t communication effectively if you have no idea who is listening.

At ATSuccess we solve that riddle by asking our members to find a community of people who are bound together by an activity they all love (like playing the French horn). Now you can start to guess what is on their mind – when it comes to playing the French horn.

However, how do you find players of the French horn? Well, there are conferences, magazines, newsletters and…

FACEBOOK.

Yes. These days, they are all mostly there. And the ones that aren’t on Facebook are friends with the ones who are. Facebook has got them all covered, and it takes only a few nickels to get your message in front of them.

Sadly, French horn players are not getting themselves all worked up about getting in and out of chairs. And maybe it’s too big a jump to expect them to understand that lying on the floor for 20 minutes a day will improve their playing. And certainly they are not going to be knocked over in joy by reading about inhibition, sensory appreciation or primary control.

Forget it.

To communicate (market) effectively means reengineering how you teach.

French horn players want to read about how to make a perfect embouchure. They want to discover 5 things that cause them to lose air. They want to understand methods to speed up their skill acquisitions. Alexander's discovery can do all of that, don’t you agree?

So tell them! Explain it in a way they can understand.

Communication is whole. It does not divide, just as mind is a part of body, and body a part of mind. Marketing and teaching may have different aspects – just as an arm and an emotion are different – and it is still part of one whole.

One of the consequences of separation is decreasing effectiveness.

One of the benefits of thinking holistically is increasing effectiveness.

Why would communication be any different? We are one person doing one thing in one moment. Communication is exactly like that. When you divide communication into teaching and marketing, you lose an ability to be effective, without even realising that you just did that.

Except you do know. Just as the person in pain does know that something is not right – why am I in pain? They seek out answers and if they are lucky, they find us.

What is the sign of pain around ineffective communication?

No students. No friends. A lonely, separated teaching life.

In ATSuccess we have a simple, brain dead definition of a teacher: someone with a student. Visualize teaching to an empty room and you can recognize the consequences of having an unhealthy, divided attitude towards marketing.

Unless you can attract a student to come to your practise, you don’t have a practise.

The way out is by taking a risk. This opens a door to something inconceivable to you when you start. Little did I know when I starting writing my foolish sales letters, that I would be helping to energize teachers to reengineer their thinking and way of teaching as I am today.

We have more than 20 teachers studying every week on our annual coaching program. They struggle, they make fools of themselves, and they grow. Wow – do they grow!

In the coming months, I plan to offer three free webinars to accustom you to this new way of thinking about your teaching/communication matrix. ATSuccess will also involve a webinar on how to use Facebook to motivate more students to come to you.

Sign up below now and I’ll keep you posted.