M02.03 Niche Definition (for an Alexander Technique Teacher)

This morning on the Pro Members Skype call, "niche" was our topic front and centre. Rossella is doing well targeting the Yoga people in her small English town of Canterbury. Franis stumbled into Hawaiian Hula dance and discovered a massive, thriving market of rabid people with all ages, crazy about Hula to help restore the culture of Hawaii – a great match for Franis. Sara was still wondering about hers, but she drilled down to American lawyers. Well, they've got money and stress, just no time – but a realistic possibility (just resist making the lawyer jokes please). Eleni was out on a new group teaching job in Brazil, but wrote earlier to say how she got her wake up call, stopped trying to find her perfect niche, and got on with her Music niche as a license to make money. I love that girl! Pro Members can listen to this morning's call in the Skype Directory, and both Full and Pro members can check out my Niche interview with Basil in the Audio Directory. However, what came out in our interview of each other is too important to restrict from our Lite members, so here's the essence of it… We defined a niche, an Alexander niche, and I got clearer than I have ever been. First we can define a niche as any group of people held together by a desire, problem, cause or hobby. There are four main categories that can generate income: health, hobbies, money and sex, and each of those can be divided into almost endless niches. You can also compound niches and invent markets that no-one thought of tapping yet – sometimes known as blue markets. Based on this thinking, a lot of Alexander Technique teachers fall into the trap of thinking the "pain market" is a great niche for them. I thought so for many years, but I also kept wondering why it felt like I was running uphill all the time? Those of you niching to pain will notice that you don't keep so many of those students… Because when they get well, many of them go! Which is great for them, but terrible for you. It takes a huge effort to find one new student, so one of your strategies must be discovering ways that you can keep them coming. It's also kind – this work only deepens with time, offering more and more juice. We know that, but our students might not realize it in time… So how do you keep them coming? By linking your work to something they are passionate about. A good Alexander Technique niche is a compound niche – it means pain + passion in basic simple terms. Eleni is in São Paulo niching to musicians in pain. Once the pain is gone, the musicians stay, because as they lose their pain they discover that their music sounds better. So when their desire for lessons to rid their pain ends, their desire to improve their performance takes over. An Alexander niche must have the potential of creating a community around a passion, an interest, a developmental need or a cause – anything that empowers people to stay, and keep on staying. Anything that creates a "topic" to support disparate people feel connected and comfortable together. After completing my previous task about niche finding, apply this simple question to your result: will this niche form a community? Communities are how you create "stick" so that is what I will pursue next...