In developing the course of alternative selling  and marketing techniques, there are 2 questions that might help in providing structure for the course:

1. What is the course?
2. What is the course's purpose?

Two other questions that might help include:

1. Where am I going?
2. Who is going with me?

What is the course?  The course is a combination of my upbringing, aptitudes, education, training, work and life experiences, and probably more.  My upbringing including watching my father do estate planning and worked independently for most of what I can remember.  Thus, he was pretty self-motivated and disciplined.  My mother was an ecouraging force in the process and was resourceful.  Growing up in Silicon Valley, I was exposed to entrepeneurship, where it is almost engrained and accepted as a part of me, not something I strove to come to.  Education was a big part of my self-esteem growing up.  Once in the work force, it was a struggle to find a job that gave me pleasure, reinforcement and structure that school provided, although the freedom it has provided has been a pleaure.  Most of my adult life has been about finding work that I can belief in and felt confident in my ability.  It has ranges from marketing, selling, admin in small businesses, many of which have been my own families' businesses.

My education started in Economics and Intl Relations which then led to living overseas in Taiwan and Hong Kong for 1 year.  China has been a big part of my adult life and has been a gateway to learning about Eastern philosophy and health, not to mention culture.  Going to Asia helped me do things differently upon my return to the US, which led to counseling and my MA in Pschology.  Old ways of doing things didn't seem to work, both in my personal life and work.  Willing through it wasn't enough.  Training at PTI along with reading about Buddhist principles and other self-help books has helped shape this content.  Trying to find my ideal work has led to a kind of love-hate relationship with sales.  Although traditional sales jobs didn't seem to be in the cards for me, it always seemed to be part of my resume and where I was attracted. 

After considering a job as a counselor, I returned to sales but never in the way I did it before.  Gone were the days of doing more cold calling.  Books like Zen Selling and law of attraction concepts I learned at PTI seemed more interesting and emjoyable.  Sales jobs that called for making 150 calls per day while being put in a boiler room with other pit bull closers became less and less appealing, not to mention feasible.

Along the way, my therapist suggested I attend aptitude testing with the Johnson O'Connor Foundation: www.jocrf.org.  At first, I was a bit hesitant, fearing it would be telling me something I didn't want to hear like I should be teaching.  Well, it did say I should be teaching but that wasn't the only thing.  It explained why selling and counselfing was not quite satisfying in and of themselves.  Yet, experience can also be valuable so I haven't given up all I received, as was a pattern I used to have.  Here I learned what aptitudes make successful counselors and salepeople, not to mention engineers and artists and conductors.

Having lived in Guangzhou China two of the past four years, I have been able to see the creativeness that is allowing millions of immigrants to survive the transitions going on in China.  Living in China exposed me to different sales styles along with different learning and teaching styles abd cultural differences.  Thus, this course embodies all of me and what I am about and what I have learned and experienced and what I am good at and excited about.

What is the course's purpose? The purpose is to provide a medium for me to help others sell their products and services.  There are lots of sales techniques out there, some of which utilize alternative and spiritual techniques.  Many of them are successful and not just one way of doing things.  As I learned at PTI, technology and content is only 10% of the solution.  The other 90% of the solution is the being part of the deliverer.  It is the relationship between teacher and student and professional and client.  Thus, like technology, it is a medium, much like this blog and LMS on www.WeBridge.org.    It is something I feel strongly about and believe in.  I believe in my planning skills while working with others, along with the information I have gathered along the way.  It is the reactions I have had while doing the Create our Desires exercise.  It is the experiences while following the sales process for small deals of $10 and as large as $500,000.  It is also come from observing different business owners and seeing their styles and methods of doing business work for them. 

The course is a medium for me to express who I am and what about work is exciting to me with the hope that this rubs off on the people I work with so that they get excited about what they are doing.  For the most part, my work has been about selling other people's services.  Although that still might continue, this is about me selling my services.

The course is a medium for business owners to learn, practice and remember how to communicate with their customers and clients (not to mention their employees and suppliers) about their products.  In today's ever competitive environment, we are getting more and more specialized where it is easy to be mis-understood.  The sales process is a way to connect and exchange goods and services in a win-win outcome.  "Not Selling" is a bridge for sellers to communicate with their clients.

Where am I going? These next two questions come from Mr. Thurman who taught at Harvard and was mentioned in Fire in the Belly.  What follows is some random thoughts that hopefully will be coherent and relative to the course development.  I am going to a place that allows me to do what I love to do while letting go of things I don't, all the while making a good living ($100,000 per year).  This entails using my aptitudes of patience and verbal communication skills, intuition, education, adult life and work experiences and upbringing, training, desire and good fortune.

I have read I am going to a place where I set up roots and will reach my goals.  It is unclear whether most of my time will be here in No. California or China in a place called Kunming.  It is a place where I feel good about what I am doing, making a difference and working with as many people as possible.  A long term goal is to help with world hunger.  Does this mean I will be going to Africa for long periods of time?  Could I do this remotely?  Will I be doing more and more project management?  Will I be helping people and groups achieve unique, insightful and creative results?

Who is going with me? My hope is that people who hope to work with me will be going with me.  People that complement me.  Hopefully, my life partner will want to work with me and that life allows for this from a financial and resources point of view.  I have worked with my family quite a bit.  Although this could continue to happen, I wonder if what a Buddhist monk told me that I not only need to help my mother but also others.  I have also heard I have a gift to help people plan as long as I know when to stop, so maybe I can have an impact on many people indirectly.  That would probably mean moving on out of the area.  That is why China seems to jump out at me, although the Bay Area is comfortable to me.  The spiritual bonds along with family and friends I have here are strong.

So who is going with me are ones who are motivated, want to work with me, are willing to pay me the price I hope to make, who are good at what they do.  People who want to grow.