www.thebodyworker.com

1. Find out what education requirements there are in your state of if you live in CA - in your city.
2. Find out if the school needs to be accredited.
3. Figure out what you want. How much can you spend? How much time can you spend? Do you need it to be close to home or can you move to another state?
4. What is your learning style? Do you like the more technical aspects of the massage profession or the more emotional/mental/spiritual?
5. Do you want to start your own business or find a job? If you want to start your own business, look for a program that has a larger number of hours dedicated to business building.
6. If you are thinking about a business, start saving now to start one. The biggest mistake people make is not planning. It takes a few years to start a business. You either need savings, a loan or another job. Most schools recommend not quitting your main job until you have a enough massage work to pay the bills. I find this to be contradictory as you can’t really get enough massage clients until you quit your day job. When you take the leap, you have to be committed enough to do whatever it takes to make it a success.
7. Research job salaries- It is not what most people think or are told. While massage therapists charge $60-$75 and even more, there are business expenses to take out of that. Job salaries where you actually work as an employee are around $12-$45 per hour. With such a large range and fewer jobs in the $45 range it often is more lucrative to start your own business. You may want to find a job in the beginning just so you can learn the ropes.
8. Ask the schools you are interviewing how many graduates are working in the profession right out of school and how many are working 5 years later or even 10 years later. Accredited schools are supposed to keep track of those statistics. Ask to see the actual study. The reason why you need to ask this is because there is a high burn out rate in the profession and many fail before they make it to 5 years.
9. Talk to graduates, current students and others working in the profession and ask them where they go to school. Find out as much as you can from people who are actually going to the schools you may be interested in.
10. When it comes down to it, you will have to use your intuition and just see what feels right after you have collected all the data. Even then you may run into obstacles but it is just preparing you for becoming a massage therapist. A massage school doesn’t really teach you how to be a massage therapist just like law school doesn’t teach you how to be a lawyer. It is a process and it all depends on you and your level of awareness and self confidence.

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There are literally thousands of marketing ideas you could be doing with your massage practice. The thing is to design and develop a way of marketing that fits with your values.

For the most part marketing is really a hit or miss game. You won’t really know if one thing will work more than another. One thing that works well for someone may not work well for someone else.

The important thing is that you try different things and keep trying them until you get them to work. Just because you sent one flyer out and didn’t get any response does not really mean it wasn’t successful. If you tried it once a month for 2 years and didn’t get any results, then I would say give it up. I would also suggest that you change something each time until you can learn what it is that will work.

For some of my massage marketing tips you can visit my website www.thebodyworker.com

and start getting some ideas of your own and sharing them here.

You never know what will happen when you start sharing your successes as well as what didn’t work.

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One of the biggest challenges is finding pictures that really represent the massage profession and what we do. So many massage schools and advertisements show these spa and relaxation massage settings. Most of the models have their heads turned to the side which I would never have a client do and most of the massage therapists have such long nails that you just know that they aren’t massage therapists.

I have found a place where they do have high quality massage photos at a reasonable price - $1 a piece! Istock Photo is what I have found and I have created a lightbox of my favorite massage photos there.

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I can’t tell you how many times I have heard massage therapists say something like

“I don’t want to do marketing. I am just not a sales person. I just want to do massage.”

Well to do massage you need clients. Even if you have a job somewhere your job may depend on the number of repeat customers you get. (If it doesn’t, it should.)

Marketing is nothing more than asking for what you want. What you want are clients who understand the value of massage and are willing to take responsibility for their health and get massage regularly.

So often we let our fears get in the way of marketing our massage business. What is your biggest fear about setting up your own business and marketing your business?

• that no one will show up
• that you won’t get any calls
• that you aren’t good enough to sell your services
• that your services aren’t good enough so no one will come

These are just a few of the things that come to mind when contemplating opening your own business. The thing is that they aren’t true and you won’t know if they are true unless you just do it - like the saying.

Marketing is nothing more than telling people about yourself.

I have a whole section on marketing on both of my websites.

www.massagepracticebuilder.comÂ

www.thebodyworker.com

and there are a few great books on marketing your massage business in the recommended reading section or in my amazon.com bookstore.

The way to overcome the fear of something is to take the fear out of it. Learning everything you can about marketing and also planning your steps carefully can help reduce the fear enough so that you can feel the fear but do it anyway.

The fears are really part of our false belief systems that we made up as kids to be able to survive. They keep us stuck and keep us suffering and struggling.

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Stephen Covey in his book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People says that creating a mission statement you “should begin with the end in mind. He suggests that people visualize yourself going to Your funeral and visualize all of the details -who is there, what they are saying and what you would like to be remembered for.

Just the thought of visualizing my own funeral is daunting and hard to image but he says that when you start thinking like that it really puts you in touch with your inner guidance system - what others call your true self.

By doing this you can start to see what really matters to you and create a mission statement based on that. A mission statement will guide you when the going gets tough and to help keep you on track. You will know what clients you want to work with and which clients to turn away….yes imagine that - turn people away.

When you stay true to your values and build a values based practice it will make a stronger framework for you to build a practice that will last longer and beat the odds of being one of those 50,000 (ABMP metrics) massage therapists a year who leave the profession.

He further goes on to talk about how creating a business based on values and principles it is really just taking responsibility for ourselves instead of letting others run our lives. “When you have a sense of your mission, you have the essence of your own proactivity. You have the vision and the values which direct your life.” The proactivity he refers to is in his Habit #1 - which is about taking personal responsibility for your feelings and actions. Until we take personal responsibility and become more aware of ourselves, we will just be projecting our feelings onto others.
While there are lots of things you can DO to build a practice - what things will take you closer to what it is that you want?

For more information on mission statements at www.massagepracticebuilder.com

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