Sometimes I feel like my sister's dog, Lao Tzu: she lives in Oakland, CA, sleeps on the sofa, loves to eat in the morning, sometimes gets along with her neighbors, loves having her belly rubbed and does some pretty amazing tricks. I can totally empathize with this, though the agility course might be lost on me.
It's time to tackle those hoops.
I've been working, with the help of Ben, on starting my own private voice studio. I love to teach and am pretty good at it, but the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship don't come naturally to me. I have to step outside that comfort zone to advertise and reach out to acquire students. I have to sell my product.
Today I re-worked some of the wording on my website with the help of everything I learned from The Copywriter's Handbook to transform the information from "features" to "benefits". That is, less talking about myself, less jargon and MORE addressing people's needs and wants.
This is a really helpful exercise for to re-think how people read the website. I realized that I'm not advertising with myself as the audience -- as I'd written it -- but out to other people who I want to eventually contact me for lessons, gigs and other workshops or events. All in all it's a great idea that I'm becoming more comfortable with pursuing. It's part of doing what I really want to do.
So far I've had minimal responses, but I've only started to post flyers in my neighborhood. It's time to reach out further and I have a few ideas:
-post flyers all over the city
-advertise online
-merge product into social networking (create a Facebook fan page, Twitter with other teachers)
-mention my studio in every conversation in which I find myself.
-ask for referrals and recommendations from my own network
These aren't difficult things to do -- most take only a few moments each day. The key is persistence, because my best work is that which I do for myself.
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