W10.04 The Personal Story That Integrates Your Celebrity With Your Business

NOTE: Two blogs were wrongly posted over the last two days so I deleted them, and this is the one that should have been posted. Sorry about that. They will reappear next week!

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Previously I explored four essential qualities that give celebrities their authority to influence those that follow them. You consciously decide to utilize these qualities in relation to the students in your niche. Some marketers put it this way: you want your students to know you (fascination), trust you (values resonate) and love you (they care too) and then they will buy what you offer (if it has value).

How To Get Your Niche To Know You, Trust You And Love You

The key – as I keep repeating endlessly – is them: what is frustrating them? Can you show how you have personally overcome this? Here are several different ways you may situate your Self in relation to your niche….

The Radical With A New System Approach

Many people reading my blog are frustrated that they can not earn more from their Alexander Technique practise. I have succeeded in doing that, and I am telling you how I did. I talk about money in a world where it has a bad reputation. It makes me an odd mixture: a left-leaning guy who unashamedly loves making money. So I am a radical with a new approach for Alexander Technique teachers to follow to make a successful career…

Can you situate your Self in your niche this way? “Success” is defined by eliminating your niche’s frustration, have you managed to do that?

“But I am not a ….” you moan, “How can I do that?”

The Journalist Looking In…

Look at Roy Palmer. Early on in his book Golf Sense, Roy discloses that… he doesn’t play golf! You’d think that would disqualify him from being a golf coach, right? Wrong. He has taken a very different position to the one I take. He is the Investigator, the Observer, the Movement Analyst. He creates authority from his knowledge of science, his application of known movement principles, his insightful explanations of key frustrations that all golfers feel, and the knowledge he has gained from this lesser known genius F. Matthias Alexander

Can you situate your Self in your niche this way? Interviewing other celebrities and authorities in your niche is a simple, powerful and effective way to position your Self quickly in this way. If this doesn’t work, here are some other positions you can take:

The Stern But Loving Parent (Or The Warm And Fuzzy One)

Ilana Machover, with her book The Alexander Technique Birth Book: A Guide to Better Pregnancy, Natural Childbirth and Parenthood uses this kind of authoritative positioning in her niche. Can you think who takes the warm and fuzzy version of the same? Maybe that’s you.

The Provocateur

Don Weed of ITM fame is good at this one - I dabble here a little too: my blog the other day smashing down the fatuous use of authority to regulate behaviour is an example of this.

The Deep Knowledge Specialist

David Gorman’s used his book The Body Moveable to carve this position in the AT community. Also just recently Ted Dimon, oops – Dr Theodore Dimon – is now in a process of creating Authority - starting with adding Dr, and using his full name. This is a smart personal re-branding move to reinforce to his Neurodynamics followers that he knows a lot of stuff. Read his Jane Doe blog that he uses to articulate his new positioning… He does a great job.

The Prophet

I also use this one – painting a bright future for Alexander Technique that lifts people out of the despair that a century of false starts can easily incite in the anhedonic Eeyores amongst us. This could also be The Seer like Katie Byron who changed her world after a cockroach walked over her foot – she has many Christian critics as the link on her name tells.

How Do You Know How To Situate Your Self?

It all begins with your personal story – you need to find the narrative that most resonates with your niche. For example, I have my true story of BodyChance: the business was imploding, I had two young children to feed - was helpless in a foreign country- so I had my epiphany and sought help, decided to become business savvy, spent huge amounts of money on my education, turned around BodyChance into the most successful business in the history of the Alexander Technique community, and so here I am wanting to help you to do the same. All true, but can you see how my narrative integrates with my intention to coach?

What is your story going to be? You need to know this to establish your position of authority, and blossom from there into being a celebrity for your niche.

Do Your Students Know You, Trust You and Love You?

This will take time – as I will explore in the Sales and Marketing Funnel topic next week: the longest stage of your marketing and sales process is establishing an authoritative relationship with your followers.

A truly successful list in any niche can reach into thousands of people, so it is not possible for you to have individual relationships with each person.

However, they need to feel they have an individual relationship with you. This is what a celebrity is: a person people identify with; are fascinated by; take strength from; trust for getting something they value (entertainment or education or adventure or all of these).

You achieve this by genuine honesty: bravely sharing your Self, and your stories. Of course this means you need to have your narrative figured out. You also need to accept you are becoming a public person. You will be exposed in ways that non-celebrities are not. You actually want people to be talking about you in cafes, in offices, at home with friends: repeating your stories, telling their friends, looking forward to hearing from you again. And sometimes people will be trying to smash you down – expect to be criticised, but don’t worry. Those people never give you any money, so you can safely ignore them. I do.

Next week, I start talking about building a big Marketing and Sales funnel that actually starts pumping some money into your bank account. At last!

TOMORROW: Kimberly Peterson is next in the growing line of courageous teachers willing to expose their careers for analysis based upon my 12 Steps That Lead To Financial Success.

Comments will get my feedback if you post them directly to my Facebook page:

www.facebook.com/AlexanderTechniqueCareerSuccess

NOTE: If you are wondering where some of my blogs have gone, and why this one suddenly appeared, I was getting someone to help me post these blogs, and she started posting the wrong ones on the wrong days - so I deleted them, posted this one today, and will find someone else to help me! It means ones that I posted this week, will reappear next week when they are due.