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

Related posts:

1. Making money with your website
2. Working Less, Playing More
3. Let your massage website work for you

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:

• Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires
• The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent: Living the Art of Allowing
• The Astonishing Power of Emotions: Let Your Feelings Be Your Guide
• Money, and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness

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!

Related posts:

1. Law of Attraction
2. The Law of Attraction
3. The Secret

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!

Related posts:

1. The Art of Getting New Massage Clients
2. Building a Solid Framework
3. Reinvention- Brian Tracy’s New Book

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!)

Related posts:

1. The future of the Massage Profession
2. Is Massage a Profession?
3. Massage Schools

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.

Related posts:

1. Sales – that dreaded word for massage therapists
2. Writing Sales Copy for your Massage Business
3. The process of building a website

In it he describes his theory of the cash flow quadrant. There are people on the left hand side of the table that are Employees and Self employed people. Employees look for job security and want employers to take care of them. Self Employed people want their independence more than anything. They often work the hardest for that independence. Their business can not run without them. It makes them indispensable to the business. It makes it harder to take time off and take vacations. SE people want their freedom and independence first over money. He calls SE people the “do it yourself” group. They end up not having the freedom that they thought they would get. Yes they can set their own schedule but most can’t just up and take a vacation today or stop working for a month to travel or just be with the family.

I would have to say that describes massage therapists to a T (and yes even myself!) I was working in photography before I went to massage school working for a guy who was building his own custom made sail boat in which he was going to sail around the world it (and did!) while I was there slaving away so he could do it!

On the right hand side of his cash flow quadrant chart are the Business People and Investors. The Businesses are run by leaders who hire other people to do the work. They are leaders. They do the thinking for the business. He says : “Leadership is the ability to bring out the best in people”.

If you have a regular business that creates cash flow and runs on it’s own with out you or if you invest in real estate or other ventures to create cash flow your chances of being rich increase significantly. Now being rich always seems to be a buzz word with massage therapists. They don’t want to be rich because they want to help others. Being rich somehow always seems to be equated with people who do bad things to get the money.

He also goes on to describe various business models and one of them is the franchise system. Systems are usually tested and put into place and work better than most other business models. McDonalds is such a system. It works no matter what for the most part. Site Build it! is a system! It is what has taught me about making passive income online and it is a great way to start learning how to get out of the SE box except you probably will need to do some of the work until you make enough to hire someone to do it all for you!

I started thinking about the Massage Envy Franchise system that seems to be working very well for their owners that is. I also think many massage therapists are happy to just take these low paying jobs because there isn’t much else out there and they are happy to have steady work and be working on many clients. How else could they be so successful?

The Franchise system is a way to reach more people and offer massage to many people. While we can argue as to the quality of massage and defend ourselves by saying our massage is better – this isn’t about that. What I am thinking about is could there be a system that gave reasonably priced massages and provided a way for massage therapists to make a decent living too? Could supervision and peer supervision be introduced into a system like this to support the therapists and create better therapists? Could a system like this reach as many people as Massage Envy does? What if they had custom websites that drove people to their companies just like mine does for me?

I have to say after reading his work, if I had know some of his principles of doing business back when I started doing massage 20 years ago, I would be more interested in setting up a business that provided massage than doing all of the massage myself all of these years.

So I am sure that many would say that they don’t want to have their own business and lead others. It is too much work or it is too hard etc. To move from one quadrant to the other it requires that you change your thinking and actions. The left side of the quadrant (the employees and self employed) are motivated by security and the right side ( business and investors) are motivated by freedom! Having job security does not mean you have financial security.

Moving into the right hand side requires that you learn about becoming a leader and business person. In doing so you can actually help more people!

It is also a process to get there because you have to learn and take the steps to get there.

Anyways I digress – getting back to the idea… I wonder if there could be a system of massage businesses that support the massage therapist while reaching many people and offering them reasonably priced massage!

hmmm… off to my massage!

Related posts:

1. Making money with Youtube
2. The Conspiracy of The Rich
3. Only 26.8% of massage therapists use websites

This concept is actually quite different from the whole massage school idea of working to relieve pain and stress.  It is also sort of contradictory to everything we think that needs to be done for people in order for them to feel better.

The idea of presence is often even difficult to understand.  Presence is just learning to become more consciously aware of our thoughts and actions. In researching online for some more examples of presence in bodywork  I found this statement on Practicing Presence from a Breema Practitioner:

“Breema is a meditation practice that I do, and the recipient is there to support me in being really present. I’m not working at giving a treatment so much as I am simply sensing the body according to the principles, and through my touch and gentle stretches, I convey a sense of reassurance. It’s quite magical.”

Jack Blackburn at www.presencingsource.com talks about it like this:

The Body and Presence: The body, it can be argued, exists only in the present moment and is reflecting the present moment continually to its owner as sensation and awareness. In that sense “the body never lies.” Experiencing presence is possible because we are in bodies.

Suzanne Scurlock-Durana describes it like this:

Our work is richest when we can be in each moment with our clients –in that space of compassion that enables us to receive and give in every session. That’s when we move beyond offering a collection of techniques and become a complete conduit for healing.

To be able to be present with clients requires that you have enough support and outlets for getting in touch with your own emotions so that you don’t take them with you into a session but rather allow the client space for them to have theirs.   Taking care of yourself in the way of taking vacations, getting regular massage and participating in supervision or peer supervision groups are some of the many ways that you can learn about practicing presence.   Taking care of your own needs allows you to be more present and not needing to get the attention from your clients.

It is a continual process of becoming more present.  Most of our lives are spent living in unconscious programming and we don’t even know it.  We adopt our beliefs early in life in order to protect ourselves and get along.  We continue to surround ourselves with people and careers that support our beliefs.  It is when one can see from the outside how you look on the inside and be the observer of your life and ways you can begin to learn to practice presence.

Resources for Practicing Presence:

What is Presencing articles on www.presencingsource.com

Full Body Presence by Suzanne Scurlock-Durana

Anyone have any other good sources of learning about presence?

Related posts:

1. The therapeutic relationship
2. The Wounded Healer massage therapist
3. A New Earth for massage therapists

My way is about charging what you need to make that while working a reasonable number of hours doing so.  It can also involve using your website to make an additional stream of income and also to create an online business on something related to massage (or not!).  Some ideas are a website for a local continuing education calendar, a website on a specific technique or method you use, a blog on how you built your practice or a site on something totally unrelated – another hobby or pasttime, an activity or sport, a specialized area of knowledge or interest you have – hiking, cycling, knitting, cooking, a specific disease or condition that you are an expert at dealing with or that you have yourself and are struggling with.  Whatever it is you can make $100,000 a year and more if you clear out all of the limiting beliefs you have about yourself that keeps telling you that you can’t charge $85 or more a session.  It is getting clear about what you do desire and why.  It is about becoming more conscious of what holds you back – your unconscious thoughts and beliefs.  We all have them.  But most just don’t know it.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned some other massage therapists who were talking about this possibility.  I also have been talking about this on the job forums at indeed.com.  The people there are so skeptical but also so broke that they are shut down to opportunities and changing their realities.  But that is OK too.  We all have our blind spots including me!

My challenge to people who don’t believe it start with something smaller that they do believe – like $50,000.  The key to all of this is paying attention to your feelings and judgments that come up when you think of a massage therapist (or anyone else fo that matte) who is making $50,000 or even $100,000 a year as a massage therapist.  If you are feeling angry, disheartened, discouraged or anything else but love/joy you can know that you are buying into an unconscious belief about your own self worth and value.  It is your money making blueprint that was created at an early age that needs to be changed.  The way to change it is to become aware of it and start making baby steps towards always feeling better even if you are broke and can’t pay the bills.  If you focus on being in debt and broke it is really asking for more of the same because it feels so heavy and draining.

Change to focusing on the solution which can just bring the slightest relief in the feeling and keep coming back to the solution when that heavy feeling comes back in!  It isn’t easy sometimes when you are feeling bad!  Sometimes you just have to let yourself feel bad for a while until you just get sick of feeling bad or you get sick even!

So what ways can you think of to start making more as a massage therapist?

• Teaching classes on massage to couples
• Offering to lead church groups in learning massage
• Setting up a continuing education calendar in your area
• learning to make money with affiliate programs through your website
• Charging more so that you don’t feel resentful of doing massage.  (That can change the feeling big time!)
• Charge for no shows or last minute cancellations so you are not wasting your time (and enforce the policy!)

Stop defeating yourself by saying it can’t be done and humor me and just let yourself think for one minute that it can be done!

Related posts:

1. Did you make enough this year with your massage business?
2. The People Pleasing Massage Therapist
3. The Struggling Massage Therapist

Money is such an interesting topic.  When you think about it money touches everyone’s lives in some way or another.  Money has a way of bringing up so many personal issues about self worth and self care.  You need money to pay your bills, keep your business running so you can provide further care to clients, pay for vacations, taxes and save enough to retire without having to worry.

Massage therapists don’t want to be sales people because they think it takes away from what they do. They are hesitant to charge what they need to make to stay in business and take care of their families.   What you are being paid for is not your caring but your time.  How much is it worth for you to spend your time with a person giving them a massage?  So many people say they value their family but then spend all of their time away from them at work.

Making money as a massage therapist is just basic self care.  It is so interesting that so many struggle in a massage business or even in finding a job that pays more than $40 an hour.   If you can’t take care of yourself, how do you think you will be able to care for others?  What good will you be when you are burned out and have to close your business due to lack of money?

Since money touches everyone’s lives it is a very common place to project the many feelings of low self worth and it is easier to blame your lack of money on the economy rather than taking responsibility for yourself.  It is easier to say there just aren’t any jobs out there than to do the work to create a job for yourself.

Uncovering your beliefs about money can help you come out of the money fog and learn to have a better relationship with making money and even spending money.  Your feelings are what will help you to uncover those beliefs.  When you judge others for having money, making money and having money it really is a indicator of your beliefs about money.  Start taking the time to notice how you judge others for having money.  Judgments are usually more about you really than the person you are judging.  It takes some time in just watching your judgments to start to discover the hidden meaning that they have for you.

Do you think your work as a massage therapist is ‘holy or sacred’ work and think that you can’t charge for such work?

Do you often put your clients needs to pay less or not pay a no show fee or come late before your own needs to run a successful business?

Do you let your clients dictate your schedule working Saturdays or other days that you are not scheduled to work just because you think if you don’t work it you will lose them as a client?

Do you say things like “It isn’t about the money” mainly because you don’t have any money?  It is about the money because you need money to survive and even thrive.

What other thoughts and practices keep you stuck from having what you desire?  What do you think when someone tells you that you can make as much as you want even $100,000 as a massage therapist?

Related posts:

1. Making money with Youtube
2. Making money with your website
3. It’s not about the money

1) Create a vision for yourself. What exactly do you want to get out of your massage business? Create a vision for how many clients you work on each week, what you make each week after you create a spending plan for yourself. How much do you need to make each month/year? After you get the derails down then you can start asking yourself for what reason do you want those things. While the first answer is usually the obvious – “I need the money” – the underlying reasons are often filled with needs such as the need to be recognized, appreciated and the need to help others so that you feel good about yourself. When you can begin to understand the deeper reasons underneath why you are even doing massage, you can then learn how to get those needs met in your personal life taking the pressure off clients having to fulfill those needs. When that happens massage therapists often find that they become more effective massage therapists and building a business comes more easily.

2) Create a vision of your “Ideal Client”. You can start with any specific demographics like they live or work in the neighborhood. You can also choose a specialty if you have one – pregnancy massage, sports massage, injury massage or whatever it may be or some combination of a few specialties. When you specialize you can then create a marketing plan that is directed towards that specific population. You can also take it a step further and ask ‘What does my ideal client value and understand?”. They value their health and well being and are willing to pay for massage. They understand that they are responsible for their health and well being and are committed to doing whatever it takes to do so.

When you have a vision of your “Ideal Client” you can then create a marketing and networking plan to support your vision for your massage business. Marketing is nothing more than just telling people what it is that you do. It is letting your “Ideal Client” know what you have to offer matches their needs and wants. When you know who your ideal massage client is, marketing becomes less scary and more of just a way to let people know what you do.

3) Have a website that works. A website that works is one that gets you to the top of the search engines for your keywords ‘massage, your city’ or ‘massage, ballard’ or whatever keywords most people would use to find you. When you have a website that can do that, potential clients can find you. They are already looking for a massage therapist so you don’t have to do much selling. What you do have to do is provide enough information that they begin to trust you enough to make the call for an appointment. A website is one of the best ways to educate people as to what exactly massage can do and what you can do for them.
A website that works also provides you with additional income. You can make extra money by selling products through affiliate programs such as amazon.com. That way you don’t have to carry and products or jeopardize the therapeutic relationship by trying to sell products to clients. You can also create a niche website on a topic that you are an expert on that may or may not be related to doing massage.

4) Self Care. Massage is 10% technique and 90% about you. How you care for yourself in every way – financially, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually will influence the level of success that you will be able to achieve. Your beliefs about success and money are what create your reality. When you find yourself struggling to get by begin to wonder what must a person believe about themselves that would create that reality. Our beliefs are mostly unconscious. What tells you what your beliefs are is your feelings. Whenever you are feeling angry, sad, depressed you can know that you are buying into a false belief or an old belief that is trying to tell you that you are not good enough. Your beliefs about money are reflected in your thoughts you have when you see someone driving down the street in a Bentley or see someone living in a mansion. They are reflected in what you charge for your massage and how you create and enforce your cancellation policies. They are reflected in how you run your business.
When was the last time you had a massage and paid for it (and didn’t have to give one in return)? How you take care of your physical body is another way to show people how to take care of theirs. You can’t expect to have clients that come every week when you don’t get massage every week. Setting an example is the best form of marketing. Engaging in other activities for your physical well being such as Yoga, exercise, mediation or other things also then become emotional, mental and spiritual self care.
Massage therapists come into the massage profession for many reasons. One of the main reasons is to ‘help others’. They find themselves saying that it isn’t about the money but about helping and being rewarded for helping. While that is all well and good, helping doesn’t pay the bills or build a retirement account or put the kids through college. Looking into the deeper reasons that one becomes a massage therapist can free yourself from ‘caretaking’. (“When we caretake, we assume responsibility for our clients’ healing. When we caregive, we support clients in assuming responsibility for their own healing.” -Jack Blackburn of presencingsource.com)

Part of a good self care package also includes creating a set of policies and procedures that support your massage business. This includes setting your fees and how you follow up when you don’t get paid. It includes your cancellation and no show policies and how you enforce them. It includes how you create a therapeutic relationship with clients and create a healing container for them to support their process.
Setting and keeping your boundaries around money is just also just good self care. It is OK to charge for what you do. It is OK to raise your rates every year too. Taking the stance of “Noble Poverty” – the idea that you don’t need any money or much money when you sacrifice your time for others will leave you burned out before long. Mikelann Valterra author of “Why Women Earn Less” (could be called Why Massage Therapists Earn less !) explains noble poverty as part of the unconscious beliefs that people have about money. “They often assume that anyone who has made a lot of money must be unscrupulous, or the way in which the wealthy made their money must be unethical, or rich people in general cannot be “nice” people.”

5) Get the support that you need in the form of individual and/or group supervision, peer supervision or find a mentor that you can work with. Supervision is a fairly new concept for the massage profession. When you first hear the word supervision, your first thought is probably “I don’t want someone telling me what to do”. Supervision is actually just the opposite. It isn’t anyone telling you what to do. It is about getting the support and appreciation that you long for in your practice. It is about finding out that you are not the only one who has feelings that come up around dealing with clients who are late or don’t show up. It is finding out that others also struggle with raising their rates and running a successful massage business. It is about getting whatever support that YOU specifically need to run a successful business or be successful in a job.
When I first made the commitment to engage in regular supervision, I felt a sense of relief that I no longer had to struggle and go it alone. This sense of relief has carried over into all areas of my life.
Supervision can be helpful for whatever stage of a massage career you are in – whether you are just starting out and struggling to get clients or you are a seasoned massage therapist wanting to take your massage practice deeper or to find higher levels of success. Some reasons that massage therapists seek out supervision are:
• Feeling stressed out, burned out or frustrated with the struggles of building a practice.
• Feeling like you are always giving and giving – of your time, energy and skills- and not being fairly rewarded for doing so.
• Feeling resentful of clients or employers.
• Always struggling to make ends meet and wondering where your next client will come from and when.
• Feeling like you are the only one who can help your massage client?
• You find yourself working longer on clients thinking that will make them want to come back or tip more?
• Feeling that your work is meaningless or invaluable or ineffective.
• Not having a cancellation policy or having one but it is difficult for you to enforce.
• Find it hard to charge people who are older, really injured or in the lower income bracket your usual rates. Is it hard to charge anyone for something like massage that is so wonderful and caring?
• Do you set your rates by figuring out what you need to make each month or by what you think people would pay you?
• Just thinking that you need to take every client who calls rather than working towards having a practice full of your ideal massage client – one who values your time and efforts and respects and values their bodies enough to take care of it by getting regular massage.
• Finding you are behind in bookkeeping, billing and other important paperwork that is needed
• Do you find it exhausting to keep saying yes and feel guilty when you say no?
When you have the support that you need, you will be able to take the steps you need to get the clients and income that you need to also survive the uncertain times that are coming towards us. You will feel better about charging what you need to make to make a Great Living and upholding your policies and procedures that support a successful practice.
The more support you have, the more you are able to reach out and do what marketing and networking you need to do to run a sustainable business or one that can even flourish in a challenging economy. Professional support groups can provide the nurturing that you are looking for in your massage practice. Because we work with people who are in a vulnerable state and the current economic challenges are creating more stress and vulnerability, we owe it to our clients to get the support we need to be able to support them in their process. These stressful times seem like they were created just for the massage profession to show them our stuff!
For those massage therapists who are looking for jobs or are in massage jobs the same steps can be applied. When looking for a job it is important to create a vision of your ideal massage job and go out and find an employer that you want to work for and show them what you will do for them rather than having your job hunt be focused on what a job can do for you. So whatever your stage in starting or building a business or finding/creating a job these 5 things can help you to stay on track to creating a successful and rewarding career.
Julie Onofrio has been a massage therapist for over 20 years and is the author/creator of two websites for the massage profession: www.thebodyworker.com and www.massage-career-guides.com. She also leads supervision groups in the Seattle area, provides business consultations and is an expert at creating websites. Her massage office website is www.massageseattle.net.

Related posts:

1. Proof of Harm
2. Creating Your Vision
3. Business Plans – Writing Your Mission/Purpose Statement