12 Steps That Lead To Financial Success For Alexander Technique Teachers…

If you are reading this for the first time, you will notice that the order of the steps shown below does not reflect the order that my posts are presented in the blogs immediately following. That is because this is a work in progress, and since writing what you see below, I changed my mind. On Jan 1st, 2013, I launched my free online course, and it will carry on through to March. Enjoy.

1.     *Recognize Your Success Drivers

What drives you? What do you love to do? Is money part of your wish? An Alexander Technique teacher seeks to cease trying to be who they imagine they should be, to live who they truly are. Until you know your Self, your actions are often dictated by others’ opinions.

2.     Find Your Niche to Start In

I was asked - how do you attract and motivate students to come? Answer: you build a community, so eventually they are selling you, not only you. You also need The Story of You. Finding something of common interest to you and your students acts as a magnet for other people too. That is all a “niche” is - something of common interest.

3.     Decide On Your Location

Alexander Technique teachers often idealistically pick an impossible location and then wonder why they struggle to make money? If you want to be financially successful, you need to factor in location. You can go to a small town, but your options will be severely limited, and your strategies for financial success may not sit comfortable with you.

4.     Develop Your Service Product

Table and chair work by itself won’t cut it - sorry. You need to craft a service that speaks to the needs of your niche. Niching Alexander Technique into music or voice communities for example, is more easily successful than non-niched teaching.

5.     *Connect With Trustworthy Mentor(s)

No successful person ever “does it alone”. Alexander built a myth of a singular man with a mirror in an isolated room for 10 years. While it was a great marketing story, it didn’t actually happen that way, which insiders now know. Find your go to person!

6.     Write Your Story

Writing develops with practise, that's all. Start and get better. Spend 10,000 hours and you are great. Mastery isn't born into us, it's acquired. Writing for marketing is an objective skill that can be studied. You need to start, there’s no way around it.

7.     Build Your List

Websites, social media, E-zine, mail lists, Auto-responders, FaceBook/twitter chatter, books - how are you rolling all this together? Is it a messy what-do-I-feel-today plan, or a consciously designed, deliberate strategy? You get to decide that.

8.     Build Your Back End Business

Eileen Troberman, a teacher in San Diego, told me that 80% of her income comes from long-time students. Your back end may be as simple as that - seeking out and building long term relationships. However - you need to know your back end that supplies your profitable income. Do you want to spend your entire career chasing new students without strong resources to support that?

9.     *Undo the Stories That Bind You

The only belief that you need to question is any belief that would stop you being as magnificent as you truly are. Real business success goes to the seekers, those that question anything that would block realizing their dreams. This is the work.

10.  Launch Your Marketing and Sales Funnel

Have you got a clear path: a big, wide funnel that catches a lot of people, so you can slowly qualify them to the ones who match you closest? These are the people who support you building a sustainable, long term practise. Have you got that figured out?

11.  Nurture your Authority/Celebrity

Success breeds success - as you become “known” in your niche, you start to become a big fish in a small pond. Authority eventually morphs into celebrity: this attracts people to you, gives them another reason why they would study with you. There are ways to do this - it is the next step you take…

12.  Make Joint Venture & Affiliate Deals

With a wide following and a great reputation, you have the credibility to start making all kinds of creative business relationships that are win-win for you and others - this is how you spread the great discoveries of F. M. Alexander! Isn't that what you want to do?

So keep reading, and over the next 12 days I will expand on each of these points, adding information and suggestions that I have not mentioned previously in my posts. Hey - I might even make it a booklet for you if you ask.

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