Archive for The Wealthy Massage Therapist

Want to make extra money?

May 9, 2010 Julie Onofrio The Wealthy Massage Therapist

I am starting 2 new websites to help massage therapists learn how to make extra money online.

www.massageschoolnotes.com is one of my latest creations.  My first site www.thebodyworker.com makes me about $1000 a month in Google Adsense income alone.  I basically started that site just sharing my massage school notes.  Now you can learn the process of creating a website to create residual income for your self to help support you in your career in massage.  The reason I am starting this is also that I was never a writer.  I started with collecting my notes and putting them into pages on a website.  When I first started in 1999, I actually had a hand written notebook that got me started.  I would then put the info into pages on the website.  One of the biggest concerns of massage therapists who are wanting to create residual income is the ‘fear of’ writing.   You don’t have to be a writer. All you need to be is an information junkie.

With this site – www.massageschoolnotes.com you can begin learning the process by sharing your own massage school notes, projects, test questions, study guides or any of your favorite books and resources.   When you do, the whole profession will benefit making massage school easier to get through!

My other project www.massagebusinessjournal.com is a similar concept.  I am seeking massage therapists who want to share their stories of how they are starting and building their massage business.   It will start off with your practice profile/author page and then progress to writing posts on just about every aspect that you were faced with and have overcome – finding office space, negotiating leases,  creating flyers/business cards and other marketing materials, overcoming challenges with difficult clients, creating your policies and learning how to enforce them….anything and everything you have gone through on the way to becoming a massage therapist.

I started this really as a result of hearing so many people saying things like “I don’t have any clients because of  the economy”.  The economy doesn’t need to be a factor.  There are many that are very successful and doing well.  There are so many books and resources out there for massage therapists but the one thing that is missing is the thoughts that go into taking action and getting/keeping clients.   I would love for people to start sharing that with others to help others learn that they can do it too!

With both sites you will be able to make money in various ways:

  • You can become a mentor for others and start working with local massage therapists or create an online mentoring program and promote your services on each site.
  • You can become an affiliate with various websites such as www.amazon.com and write about books that you have read or DVD’s that you have seen and get paid when people who click through your links buy the product.  (There are also tons of other affiliate programs)
  • I will be implementing a few different montetization systems testing one at a time.   One possibility is Google Adsense  Sharing which is sharing the income from clicks on Adsense ads that will be on the site.  Each author will have their own account with adsense and the ads will rotate.  The other option will be to create a membership site after I get about 30 authors and share the membership fee with them.  People will have to pay for a membership to read the full text of articles.   This will all be done through clickbank.com where you will need a free account with them.
  • You will need to promote your author profile which will have a link to the membership area and/or  a list of your articles.   Promotions can be anything from just writing a short article (300 words or so) on free article marketing sites such as ezinearticles.com.  It can also be posting in forums and on other people’s blogs with your unique page referenced attracting new readers.  The more you promote it the more you can make.

This will take time though before you are making money.  It takes about 2000 visitors a day or more to make anything substantial.  The more people write and promote, the better it will work for all.  This is a team effort!

Be sure to contact me for more info through one of those sites or through my contact form below (but go look at the sites first and let me know what you think!

Thanks

Julie Onofrio

www.thebodyworker.com
www.massage-career-guides.com
www.massageceguide.com
www.workless-playmore.com
www.massagebusinessjournal.com
www.massageschoolnotes.com

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Applying the Law of Attraction to your Massage Business

May 2, 2010 Julie Onofrio The Wealthy Massage Therapist

I have been studying and learning about the so called law of attraction for many years.  I have written about it previously on this blog and on my other websites.  I have to say I now have such a different understanding of it all and I just want to start writing about it again.

First off I am not sure who coined this concept the ‘law of attraction’ – was it just the marketers in the movie “The Secret”?  The law of attraction simply put is the idea that your thoughts create your reality or what you have or don’t have in your life.    The movie “The Secret” was one of the first to really start bringing the concept out into mainstream – or so many think.   Really the movie “The Secret” is just the creator – Rhonda Byrnes collection of current teachers of the concept of the law of attraction.   I personally liked the movie at first but the more I read and researched the many speakers and books that they referred to the more I thought it was very incomplete and inaccurate.   The basic premise they talk about is following these three steps:

  1. Ask.  Ask for what you want.
  2. Believe.  Have the utmost unbreakable faith.
  3. Receive.  All you have to do is feel good and you’ll get what you want

Sounds simple.  Sounds like anyone can do it.   Sounds like hogwash to me!

After studying and learning to apply the law of attraction I can now say I think there is no secret and there isn’t a law of attraction.  I would rename the law of attraction- the law of unconscious attraction – because that is what it is really.

I started my studies of the law of attraction with one of the earlier writers about the concept – Wallace Wattles.  He wrote a few books -one called “The Science of Getting Rich”.   I read the book (it is Free online now because it is in the public domain) and took an online class studying the book and concepts more in detail called “Practical Geniuses” by Rebecca Fine.   It is a great way to start really looking at the unconscious thoughts that run most of our lives.

I also found other authors from the past and present who were all writing about the same ideas.  Napoleon Hill and his “Think and Grow Rich” and many others that you can find on my website at www.workless-playmore.com

Somewhere along the lines I found Esther and Jerry Hicks book -The Law of Attraction
and then that is when this all really started to make sense.

Your emotions are your physical indication of your relationship with your inner being.  In other words, as you are focused on  a subject and have your specific perspective and opinion about it, your Inner Being is also focused on it and has a perspective and opinion on it.  The emotions you feel are your indication of the match or mismatch of those opinions…..

Your emotions are letting you know whether or not you are in the process of creating something you want or something you don’t want…..

Instead of trying to monitor your thoughts, we encourage you to simply pay attention to your feelings.

I went on to read most all of their other books:

In the book “The Amazing Power of Emotions”, the Hicks shared their insights into the movie “The Secret” which is really quite interesting.   The idea that there is a secret comes from Napoleon Hills classic book “Think and Grow Rich”.   He instructs people to look for the secret about 24 times throughout the book. But if you get the Unabridged addition you will find that it was actually edited out of the many editions that were the most popular.

The same thing happened to the Hicks!  They were asked to be in the movie “The Secret” but they unfortunately were edited out of it because they talked too much about the concept of ‘vibrations’ which is the real secret to the law of attraction!

So what does vibration have to do with creating and living your life or building your massage business?  Everything really is a vibration of energy.  The bulk of the Hicks work is about using your emotions as an indicator of  where your vibrations are at.  The goal of course is to feel joy, inspiration, happiness.   Whenever you are feeling anything less you can know that you are out of sync with your inner being.  Your feelings are giving you a message- and a very important one at that.  On the inside everyone is a precious being that has been bombarded with the many rules and regulations of growing up.  We develop a critical false self that keeps our true selves protected from the many losses and hurts of growing up.  These things become a way of living for most.  We develop thoughts that we just aren’t good enough, smart enough, worthy enough of having the many things in life like enough money, loving relationships and good health.

It is your feelings that tell you when you are out of harmony with your true self!  The thing is that most of us are not even aware of what you may be feeling at any given time!  We don’t pay attention to the little inklings or moments but let the critic run the show!  Once you really understand though that it is your emotions that are telling you when you are off track and you can start to change your conscious thoughts to change your feelings to more positive emotions.  When you take action in your massage business or in life that are more from a place of positive emotions and vibrations, things will be less difficult and even will start being easy to do.

All of the things you put off in the way of marketing and building your massage business will get easier and easier little by little.

The hard part is of course becoming more aware of all the things that you are unconscious of.  After all they are unconscious!  The negative things seem so real – and they are for the time being.   When you start really looking at the deeper underlying beliefs by tacking or watching your feelings and reactions then you can begin to change your beliefs to ones that are more supportive.   You can start believing that you are ‘good enough,  smart enough, ” or whatever it is that happens to be your false belief.

There are many ways to begin tracking your thoughts and feelings:

  • start with enrolling in the ““Practical Geniuses” – Practical Geniuses online course.
  • start tracking your income and expenses in your business and personal life.  Making ends meet is just a math problem.  When you start tracking you can begin to see all of the feelings come up around making purchases and around your income.  Taking the emotions out of finances helps bring clarity in your goals and marketing efforts.
  • start tracking your judgments about people with money.  What thoughts and feelings do you have when you see someone living in a mansion, driving a Bentley, or making $100,000 as a massage therapist?   Keep a journal for a year of all the times you notice the judgments you have about money.   Start looking at them and asking the question – what would someone believe to have that judgment about someone?
  • Start reading and learning about the process of becoming more conscious and how we get to be so unconscious in our daily lives.
  • Start reading about the law of attraction from people like the Hicks, Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy and others listed on my website

Share your stories or understanding of the Law of attraction and how it affects your massage business and life by making a comment below!


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Book Yourself Solid

March 27, 2010 Julie Onofrio Build Your Massage Business, The Wealthy Massage Therapist

“Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling” is one of the best books I have read on learning to promote yourself in the service industry.  I started reading it after speaking with Woody Haiken from The Growing Practice who is a Book Yourself Solid Coach.  What is amazing about this book is that just about everything he says in it can be found somewhere on this blog or on one of my websites but he has put it all together in one place!

The concept of the “Ideal Client” is one thing that he talks about.  I only learned about that idea in about 2000 or so when I started in the process of supervision.   One of the first things we worked on was developing a vision of my ideal client.   The ideal client is one who nourishes you and that you look forward to working with.  When you work on clients that are less than ideal you end up drained, tired and most likely broke!   I have another post on the concept of the ideal client.

Some other of the things he talks about is how service professionals tend to think about the sales process as something that is not congruent with helping others.   Many massage therapists just want to do massage and they don’t want to do all of the work to get and keep clients.  They often have an idea that clients will magically appear.  Promoting yourself is really just letting clients know what it is that you do so they can decide if it is something that will help them.   People are looking for a solution to their problems.   I first learned about that from building my website with Site Build it! When you learn to create your website and other marketing materials and learn to talk about what you do from the perspective of just wanting to educate clients and create relationships the sales process becomes less fearful!

The main thing in ‘sales’ is building trust and establishing yourself as an expert.  That is the way of Site Build it! too – the system I use to create websites.  It taught me about building trust with potential clients by providing information.   (Who would know that a website building system would actually be my business mentor?)  They teach you how to write and create a website that does that.   I can’t tell you how many clients I get who read my massage clinic website and say that they can resonate with it all and that is why they are choosing me!

Michael Port’s basic process for getting yourself booked solid uses these simple steps:

  1. Networking
  2. Direct Outreach
  3. Build Referrals
  4. Website!
  5. Speaking and demonstrating
  6. Writing
  7. Keep in Touch

A few other great quotes I like from the book:

The book yourself solid paradigm of sales is all about building relationships with your potential clients based on trust.  It is, quite simply, about having a sincere conversation that allows you to let your potential clients know what you can do to help them.

If you don’t believe you are worth what you are charging, it is unlikely that a lot of people are going to hire you based on those fees.

Becoming comfortable with the sales process requires that you let go of your limiting beliefs you may have about being worthy of the money you are earning and requires a shift in your perspective of the sales process yourself.

The book is a great resource for massage therapists in learning to overcome the challenges of promoting themselves.  When you start understanding that it is just about building relationships and trust it won’t seem like sales.  When you create your vision of your ideal client and create a marketing plan that goes along with it people will value what you do.  Setting boundaries around that vision is how you take the necessary actions to create what you want!


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Massage Franchises- The Impact on the Profession

March 23, 2010 Julie Onofrio Build Your Massage Business, The Wealthy Massage Therapist

After reading an article in Massage and Bodywork called “Massage Franchises – The Impact on the Massage Profession” I at first was deeply saddened thinking that it might all be true- that the self employed massage therapist was in danger of becoming extinct! (Well that’s what the article said anyways!)

To me, being a massage therapist was about a lifestyle choice of being my own boss and not having to work for someone else right from the beginning but back in 1987 when I went to school -there were no massage jobs at all!  I went with 250 hours of training right into starting and running a business.  I had some experience in customer service working previously in photography but didn’t know a thing about starting a business.   It was essential in the beginning to network with other massage therapists and help each other out.  I learned how to bill for car accidents and workman’s comp from my friends.  I learned about leases and how to negotiate them and find office space.  I learned by doing mostly and by sharing with friends.  There wasn’t much help in the way of massage school.  They didn’t teach much at all about starting or running a business.

One of the most disturbing things mentioned in the article was the fact that Corinthian Colleges are now supporting Massage Envy Franchises and supplying them massage students!  I can see it is a good business decision for both – the massage school wants to keep students coming in the door promising them jobs and ME wants more …well I was going to say ‘slaves’ but was looking for a nicer word – I guess simply employees.

Franchises can be a good way to start for some.  There are many younger massage students these days coming right out of high school.  The massage schools have also increased significantly in the last 10 years .  (See the increasing number of massage schools through the years on my site.)  That would be an interesting topic to study – why were all these schools started?  Was there a need for them or was it just dollar signs in school owners eyes as they saw how much money they could make putting students through school.  (Yes I know there are some who take it more seriously and are genuine about creating compassionate, successful massage therapists.)

Was there really a demand?

So now there are all these massage schools trying to stay in business with the economy crashing and people not knowing what to do with their lives – so walahhh- the low cost massage was created along with low paying massage jobs!

At first after reading this article as I said in the beginning of this post I was saddened.  I actually just thought it might be time to get out of the profession seeing it come to that!  Then of course some time went by and now I am more inspired and committed than ever in writing and teaching massage therapists that they can actually start and build their own business if they want and there are other choices to low paying jobs.  You can use them to get you where you want to be- with your own business or you can just skip that phase and jump right in with both feet to starting your own business.  In fact set up shop right next to them and put up a big sign – “I fix $59 (or whatever it is in your area) Massages!”  (Ok I also hate the word “fix” because that isn’t what we do in general -but it works for marketing!)

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Sales process vs caring for massage therapists

March 13, 2010 Julie Onofrio Start Your Massage Business, The Wealthy Massage Therapist

I was thinking today about the process of promoting one’s self to the process of building relationships and it suddenly hit me that the two are quite similar.  I don’t quite have all the connections but bear with me and let me know what you think about selling and building relationships.

I was reading some general steps to making a sale that are outlined in various ways by various people.  The general process goes something like this:

  1. Greet and introduce yourself
  2. Create Trust with the other person
  3. Establish a need or get info from the other person to establish what it is that they do need so you can address them.  Find out what they value.
  4. Offer a solution based on your own values that will fulfill their need or solve their problem.
  5. Ask for the sale (or appointment in a massage therapists case)

For some reason massage therapists don’t like the idea that they are selling or need to sell themselves.  Because they are caring people, selling is usually equated with greed, deception and not caring.

The process of caring and building relationships with someone is quite similar to selling.

If you are at a party and are meeting new people who are potential friends or even a date what do you do?  Pretty much the same!

Since caring is at the heart of a massage business -how can you care and promote yourself too!   I do it by sharing as much as I can about what I know about massage right on my office website.  I get so many people calling and becoming clients and saying “I want you for my massage therapist” even though I am farther away in downtown Seattle and cost more than most massage therapists in other areas.  By writing down all of the things that you are talking about with clients anyways it will show you know what you are doing and that you care!  When you get a client who is already valuing your service when they call, you don’t have to do any hard selling.  People will be attracted to you when they know what you are about and can see what you value!  You then find out what they value in the intake and session so that you can relate to their values – which is usually something around their health and wellbeing since they are coming in for a massage.  When you can understand what they value and link it to your values selling isn’t that bad selling anymore.  It is just telling people what you do so they can make an informed decision.

Go out and look for a massage therapist yourself and look online or get referrals and take a look at the process that someone goes through to find a massage therapist.  I do this all the time and it is scary out there what people are doing to ‘not sell themselves’.  I find websites with no information what so ever about themselves.   The basic things that you want are:

  • An about me page -full biography including your philosophy on healing, why you went to massage school, what you love about doing massage
  • A full page description of every type of massage that you do – deep tissue, swedish massage – you name it.   People really don’t have a clue about many of the different therapies.  They just want to know if it will work for their pain or stress.
  • Show them how it will work for their pain, stress or condition!

Getting new clients is all about creating relationships and yes -selling yourself but doing so with heart – by connecting your values to what you do and telling people about them.

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