Hello. How are you doing these days, in the coronavirus situation? Here in Korea our government has been well managing so far but since the big protest in August by some extreme right people, we got a high rising number of infections. so we had an enhanced social distancing for 2 weeks. I know most of the countries have difficulty living a normal life these days. I hope we will face this hard time well together.

I'm so please to shre my stry. I studied AT at the Tommy Thompson's training school in Boston in 2007. Now I do AT lessons and run a training schoolin Korea. The has been 2&a half years.

Today I'm going to share my story, 'How I have many students.'

How do you collect your students? It might be so different depending on how long you've taught AT lesson. New teachers have more difficulty to do that.

To let people know what you do, do you advertise yourself?

 Do you use internet? like writing on the blog? facebook? youtube?

I'm not an expert for advertisement. Most of us, after the graduation the training school, We are very disconcerted.

Since I came back to Korea and worked as a full time teacher, I also had a hard time collecting new students. I've been in Boston for 7 years and when I came back, there was one AT training school here in Korea. It was about 5 years old. There were a few full time AT teachers at that time. Of course, not many people know about it. Right now there are 4 training schools including mine here in Seoul Korea. It's really fast growing comparing the situation 6 years ago.

With the lack of social connection, it took me time to have new students. Thanks to my friend who introduced me to learn AT, he introduced several colleagues, dentists, organizing some lessons.

I started lessons with a small number of students. Interestingly, people found me to learn one by one. At that time, I was writing about AT on my blog .

my blog was not good enough but mine shown up on the internet because there weren't many teachers. And people who were interested in AT came to me. But I had lived hand to mouth, with some students who were recommended and a few others who saw my blog.

But more and more new teachers came up and I got lazy about writing blogs. What is worse this year was that people didn't want to move out and spend money because of the coronavirus. at the first half of this year, I barely ran the training school with 2 or 3 students . The same as private students.

Then the big event happened at the end of June. There is a TV show which shows the Korean celebs' single life. And one of the top famous actors appeared on the show and there was the scene he had an AT lesson.

isn't it great? AT work on main public broadcast? the most famous actor taking AT lesson?

It happened seriously.

Mostly, it was a lying down lesson and he was almost in asleep.

But people got so curious about what he did. his house, his furniture as well as what he did got sensational at that time. the number of searching AT online was increasing up to almost 80,000 a month. it means people searched AT on line 80,000 times for a month. it was a lot of number comparing to the usual number of searching AT before. It was usually around one hundred.   800 times more than before. isn't it incredible?

People who needed AT lesson got to know the AT. well, people who had insomnia and mental instability mostly contacted me because the actor mentioned about it was helpful for that. I felt so strongly the power of mass media.

Thanks to it, the number of my students increased about 5 times than before.

This is a happy ending story so far. But not for everyone.

I heard that not every teacher has got many students after the TV show. When people search AT online, if you don't show up, nobody will contact you.

In my case, I didn't like to write on my own blog and when I had a small number of students in March, I took the suggestion that gives the free lessons to blogger and they write a review of my lesson on their blogs. I thought it was a good idea for advertising AT to people who don't know it. So they came and took my lessons and wrote the reviews on their blogs. And the review on my lesson accumulated online. When people got curious about AT after the TV show, they Searched it, found the reviews, and contacted me. So I was shown online at the right time.

But the teachers who weren't shown online, this lucky thing didn't happen.

I'm sure more AT teachers will be lucky soon because more and more people get to hear about the AT and it helps people, then they will need more teachers.

I know every country has a different situation. This is the circumstance in Korea. AT is at a relatively early stage. Most of the teachers are junior teachers. we had a similar starting line.

The evitable thing to collect a student is we need to be shown somewhere. online is the general trend. If you can't write a blog for yourself, there are other options like what I did. 

I think we can't work without an online channel even if we are not familiar with online communication.  I always tell my trainees that start writing on their own blogs right now. even if they have time to graduate. it takes time to build your own blog to be shown.

I'm a pretty slow person to go forward. At first, it made me anxious and worried. But I can't go fast. I am who I am. I need to believe in myself and go for my own pace.

but I know what I want, and I'm doing what I can consistently.

I had many lucks. one of them was that I found a wondeful place to teach in the center of Seoul, in Gangnam. But it doesn't matter where you start to teach. it could be a small room at your house. the more important thing is what you want, what's your attitude and consistency, i think.

So please start whatever you can to let people know what you are doing if you like to help people with wonderful AT work.

We are in the middle of a fast shift in the world. Some teachers already do online classes. I also started it for the pregnant in a group. it's my challenge.

 I believe if we are aware of us in the given environment, and the given what you're doing, we'll get through whatever situation we face.

Thank you for listening to my story. I hope you stay peaceful and well. hope to see you in person, in the near future.

And I don't know if people can write comments, if possible, please write a comment on what's your way to advertise and how you let people know what you do. it will be so great to share them with others.