I Am Still Quite Mad

I wonder if anyone noticed that I’ve stopped my series?

I write these things, it goes into this virtual abyss, and very little bounces back at me. So I wonder. Do me a favour and let me know if you want me to continue with it or not…?

So I have been away from my Blog, and in a swirl of constant creativity through exploring ways to get the business going in Sydney. What a challenge this is proving to be. Yet now it is starting to look simple. Now I am wondering why I thought it was difficult.

As regular readers of my blog know, I recently passed through my night of despair. Breaking my wrist and requiring surgery was the symbolic cry for help that alerted me to that I could not keep on going the way I was going. So I made major personal decisions—which are not for this blog—so that now interesting, unexpected consequences are manifesting all around me. The real truth is that exceptional results require a little magic.

These days I am filled with possibilities, and overwhelmed with the idea that if I even succeed by 1% of my vision, there will be no teachers available to teach. In Japan we are already examining the issue that we can not educate teachers fast enough to meet the demand we are achieving. 35% sales growth in an economy that’s tanking. This is a nice problem, but a major structural fault of the business—without teachers, how do we expand? And this is a school that currently has 80 people in ProCourse (Alexander Technique Teacher Education), but all at various stages of achievement.

And while sales roar ahead, costs grow even faster—50%—which makes for another impossible problem. The cost structure of the business is lethal—way too many human resources are needed to generate the sales we get. No business can survive long term this way. Are we like the internet companies of the past—more intent on expansion than making any money? No—we are too small for that. We will never make it out the other side.

Of course—what do you do when you’ve got too many clients and not enough teachers? Raise your prices of course. Or introduce a higher end service that makes profit.

Not that I have that problem in Sydney yet, or Japan—but I can see if my latest Oz marketing plan works, we will quickly be overwhelmed with people knocking at our door. To make it happen is going to require a 24/7 focus from me for a sustained period of time. How can I achieve that?

Well, I need something to keep me awake. So will you be surprised to learn what that is? I am going to stop eating dinner. Once I have made my first million—cash in the bank—I’ll start again. Why use the money as the measure? Good question. Because it is real. It’s substantial. If I can’t do that, who am I kidding?

So despite a broken arm, despite collapsing into myself for awhile, despite two major health scares in one year—I am still quite mad.