Selling Retail Products in your massage business

Selling retail products in a massage practice is very controversial. There is no right or wrong answer to this issue- only what is right for you. Each situation requires different policies and procedures to protect the client/therapist relationship. The main thing to keep in mind is what you choose for your practice will have an influence on the profession as a whole.
While the supposed intention is to create additional income for the massage therapist, there is also a risk involved. The risk is the possibility of jeopardizing the therapeutic relationship that happens between a client and the massage therapist.

Selling products can be seen as a form of manipulation. You may think that selling a product may show that you just want to be helpful and that you are concerned about their welfare. In certain situations, it may be seen as manipulative in the way that it is really more about you- the person selling the items.

When you start suggesting products to clients when they are on the table, you are taking away time from the session. Giving a massage is about the client on the table. When you are 100% present, your presence works to build a therapeutic relationship - one where that client feels safe enough to experience whatever they need to at the time. When a massage therapist starts talking about a product, they risk violating that trust by giving your advice about a particular product ( or any advice for that matter). When you are busy giving advice and promoting products you are not present.

Nina McIntosh addresses the issue in her book “Educated Heart” :

” The main ethical issue isn’t whether it may benefit the client to use the product that you sell, it’s whether you are unfairly using the power of the therapeutic relationship. Is the client really free to refuse, ow would she make a purchase mainly to please you?”

She goes on to say:

Another issues is that selling anything to a client other than the professional services you have contracted for creates a dual relationship, which is inherently problematic because is complicates the interaction between you and the client.”

Cherie Sohnen Moe also addresses the issue in her book “The Ethics of Touch“:

“Clients assume you are an authority and may feel influenced to purchase products to please you or because they think you know everything”.

“The major issue here is:are you influenced in some way by the money the product sales generate, or are you selling products to clients simply because they need or want them?”

Part of the problem is that when selling such products it creates a dual relationship which always is confusing no matter how well it is handled.

The issue may be further compounded when the product is a nutritional supplement which is outside of the scope of practice of a massage therapist.
I also think that the amount of money you can make from selling a few products to the maybe 5-7 clients you see a day doesn’t seem worth the risk.

While therapists always seem to need to make more money, there are much better ways to do that like charging more for your service, selling affiliate products through a website (which would make the product available to everyone reading) that may or may not be massage related and doing what you need to do to take care of yourself financially. The constant financial struggles for massage therapist is the underlying motivator for selling products. It had more to do with the beliefs one has about what value they have and selling products just interferes with the clients right to have your attention. They are paying you to hold the space for them.
There are various levels of client/therapist interactions and each case can determine if there is a risk in violating the therapeutic relationship. For instance, a spa where people don’t come for regular weekly massages but is catering to people on vacation who are just visiting the spa once will have a reduced risk of violating the therapeutic boundary as the client is only there once and it is not an ongoing relationship - but it still is a therapeutic relationship even though the person only comes in once.
This is especially important at this current point in time as massage is becoming more popular and we are taking more responsibility by doing things such as medical massage and wanting the public to accept massage as a legitimate profession.

For other articles and info:

Massage Magazine

Posted in Building Your Practice, Ethics, Massage Marketing, Peer Supervision, Recommended Reading, Starting Your Practice, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | No Comments »

Proof of Harm?

What proof is there that massage can harm others?

Not much according to Keith Grant who wrote this exceptional white paper on it called “Review of Issues in Massage Governance”

Licensing does little to protect us from harm from any practitioner.

The Seattle Times Article “License to Harm” outlines the various healthcare providers and how many cases were sited of harm being done.

If licensing doesn’t protect the public, then what will?

The only answer in my opinion is to make more massage therapists accountable through the process of supervision. Massage therapists are not trained much in such things as ethical relationships or about the therapeutic relationship that occurs.

Posted in Massage Schools/Students | 1 Comment »

Being able to Bill Insurance Companies - is it worth it?

Here in WA state we have something called the Every Category Law which tells insurance companies that they have to allow massage therapists, naturopaths and acupuncturists to be contracted providers for HMO’s and PPO’s.

As contracted providers we are very limited in having any say in such issues as what we get paid. All of the insurance companies except one in particular pays less than my going rate of $75.00 for cash clients and doesn’t even come close to my medical massage rates of $100.

This is the law.

This is some info from the insurance commissioners office.

And an article from massage today

The every category law is constantly challenged and each year we have to defend our right to be contracted providers and I am not sure it is worth it to be able to bill insurance companies who don’t pay us and respect us. They are actually in the process of creating a definition of a medical massage therapist for us because we don’t have anything defined as a profession.

Posted in Building Your Practice, Insurance Billing | No Comments »

Everything You need to know to feel Go(o)d - Candace Pert

What if wellness were all in our heads?

If thoughts create our reality, what does it say about what is going on in our heads.

While it’s not to say that everyone that has pain or an illness is creating it consciously -how

does one discover just what it is that the body is trying to say.

Candace Pert in her new book And Candace Pert in her new book Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d
says “Our bodies are our subconscious” and she goes on to prove it scientifically. So if that is true what are we doing when we work with people to take their pain away and “fix” them. The massage profession is really full of fixing from the beginning of massage school to working with insurance companies who won’t pay unless a client improves and massage is medically necessary.

Our bodies are trying to tell us something by creating pain, disease and illness.

Posted in Ethics, Recommended Reading | No Comments »

The Science of Getting Rich

I have finally started really studying the online course called

The Science of Being Rich from www.scienceofbeingrich.net and I am really getting some eye opening experiences.

What the class does is help you become aware of your thoughts and beliefs about making money and how to change them through thinking differently.

It’s not any different than what I have been saying on here and on my website, www.massagepracticebuilder.com.

Your thoughts become your reality. What you focus on is what you will get. If you focus on illness, paying bills, how much money you don’t have or how many clients you don’t have, you’ll stay stuck having nothing.

Our thoughts create our feelings. We act on our feelings. Our actions are really coming from our thoughts and beliefs.

If you don’t know what you believe, just look at what you have in your life.

Thats why aligning your thoughts and actions is so crucial to success.

And Candace Pert in her new book “Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d”

goes on to prove that our bodies are our subconscious. To get to the thoughts we need to feel the body.

It is quite mind boggling when you start really thinking about it. It is the basis of why massage works. It helps people feel so that they can see themselves differently and get in touch with themselves more.

Posted in Starting Your Practice, The Code of the Caretaker, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | No Comments »