The Last Day of 2013

As 2013 closes off, there are lots of retrospectives being written. Are you writing yours? Why bother looking back when all you want to do is go forward? The past is the past, right? Wrong. The past is right here being you right now. Everything that happened is you right now. I think that all that matters now is what you do next, but you need to know what is and isn’t working for you… Are you going to repeat 2013 or do something different? It’s worth considering, this question. What Happened To Me In 2013 My 2013 began with a decision to write a book about everything I had learnt from transforming my modest Japanese ATA Alexander school into a much larger BodyChance college of Alexander Technique Teacher Education. You can read my first excited blog post - I went on to write 83 more posts resulting in a 200 page book available for free to any member of my ATSuccess group. And oh yes, I started ATSuccess. I started my regular blogging because I wanted to find partners to expand BodyChance beyond Japan: to present a new business model to Alexander Technique teachers that might inspire them to do things differently. To help me in my quest, I signed on with an American biz consultant at $30,000 per year whose job was to help me increase my Japanese college and translate that into an English speaking environment. And I wrote. Every day information flowed out of me as I gradually realized how much I had learnt in the 7 years I had been building BodyChance to its current status in Japan. I was also overcoming my deep sense of loss with the ending of my marriage and the beginning of being single again after 14 years. One person who helped me magnificently through this period was Byron Katie, so I booked into her School for the Work in March and headed off to LA to attend. There I met Brett Hershey, and the concept of BCLA was born: a BodyChance studio in Los Angeles. It was unexpected and initially wonderful. Then slowly it became a time-consuming, unwieldy mammoth that brought back many old stressful feelings that kept me awake at night. Last week I decided to end it, and told Brett to close down the studio. So I end 2013 with what I started - a dream to expand, but no success in doing that. I am a friend of failure, and one aspect of my retrospective is to ask my Self: what I could have done differently? Now do you see how important this question is? At any level, it is true we have lessons available to us when we are prepared to listen. This BCLA seed didn’t sprout, because I did not nurture it well. However, I still have seeds to harvest and I am learning what these seeds need to grow. I am by no means finished yet. Using a more familiar military metaphor: the battle is lost, but not the war. The “war” in this case is against ignorance, overcoming the lack of knowledge of Alexander’s great discovery, and the watershed implications for society if his work is elevated into the status of a viable, main-stream profession. It remains my vision. My BCLA Story [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.] Clinton’s successful bid for the Presidency in 1992 was marked by Campaign Manager James Caville’s simple phrase to focus people’s attention on what matters: “The economy, stupid.” I learned in 2013 that I lost focus: “The niche, stupid.” BCLA had no niche.

I was stupid enough to think that with enough planning and money, I could build a multi-niched business as I originally did in Tokyo, than later use that base to build deeper and more successful niche-based businesses. The strategy would have worked if I had more time and money to spend, but by December BCLA was running out of both. In Japan, I built my business slowly, without any working capital to support it. I could only pay for what I earnt, nothing more. In Los Angeles I thought I could defy that model, now having enough spare cash to fast track building a niche. So I employed a full-time manager, fitted out a glamorous studio, put together an automated online system - all before I developed a niche to inhabit my creation. It’s not like I ignored the niche question. I discussed it a lot, just as we do in ATSuccess, and I did resolve to focus on the “Performers” niche. I approved an ultimately costly series of evening entertainments to which we invited every contact we had… They came, they saw, they left. We got very few sign-ups, although some did join ProCourse, so we kicked off a month later with 8 people of varying commitments to become an Alexander Technique teacher. At the same time, BodyChance’s credibility was being assaulted by a small group of Training Directors, which quickly saw the initially friendly LA teachers abandoning any association with our Centre. Teachers recommend their students, but few in the LA community were likely to recommend BCLA to their students thinking to train. We were on our own. I had thought (but not researched) that there must be a base of people who wanted to train, but found the full-time, three year program too challenging. Maybe they are there, but I could not figure out a campaign to find them in the 5 months I had to do it in. In the absence of finding people like that, I had not carefully built up a niche following over an extended period of time - something I am constantly recommending you to do! I didn’t follow my own advice. I thought with enough cash I could overcome this. I was wrong. In the end, the person who caused the failure of the studio is me. It’s my sobering lesson for 2013 - I was drunk with the idea of success, without a careful niche plan on how to get there. Yet, at the same time as I am closing BCLA, I am rushing about Tokyo, looking to purchase a second property to expand our studios in Japan. I am failing and succeeding at the same time. It’s a schizophrenic experience. What was your 2013 like? https://www.facebook.com/groups/ATCSProMembers/