The Answer for Massage Therapists

The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life is the latest book on the topic of the Law of Attraction by John Assaraf one of the authors/presenters in the Book/movie “The Secret”.

At first glance I thought this book wasn’t going to be much different from some of the things I already know and have written about for massage therapists as far as learning to build their massage practice that I have in the massage practice builder section at www.massagetherapycareers.com, but as I sat down and read the whole thing in about 2 sessions I came away with some really great insights into the business world.

The first part of the book explains how our brains work and how beliefs are created in our brain that just keep replaying themselves throughout our lives. We look out into the world and make meaning about what we see through these blinders or beliefs. They create our perceptions of the world. The book says:

What we see is not based on what the eye can see but on the neurological patterning in your brain. When your perception is different from somebody else’s, the temptation is to dismiss their version as ‘wrong’. Instead ask them to show you how they see what they see…When you learn how to take somebody else’s perception and add it to yours, you significantly increase your own intelligence.

The book further points out how our we think we are so in charge of our lives with our conscious thoughts but in reality our conscious brains are really very limited in their functioning. We really only have very short term control over anything. They say that a person loses focus every 6-10 seconds. It is your unconscious brain that is much more powerful and directs most of your life. It is your unconscious mind that runs the show in every way - your habits, your accomplishments and achievements and this is where your beliefs are stored and run over and over again.

The book says:

The biggest obstacle to most people’s goals has nothing to do with any external conditions or factors. It is this: They don’t believe that it will happen or that it can be done.

Beliefs trump desires every time.

Setting goals is a function of the conscious mind. Reaching them is a function of the non-conscious mind. Setting goals is a conscious exercise; achieving goals is a spiritual and nonconscious exercise.

The book goes on to explain more about our nonconscious brain and how to change the engrained beliefs that are running the show and create your dream business.

They also say there is a ‘difference between being committed to your success and being interested in your success. If you are interested, you will do what’s convenient. If you are committed, you will do whatever it takes.”

The first thing is to find something that you are passionate about- like massage is for most. Although many are massage therapists and don’t have that driving passion. Massage school and trying to start a business or find a job also has a way of making us forget just why we wanted to become a massage therapist. Taking time to remember or figure out why you are in business and what success means to you will help you in creating your business. It is not only about why you want to be a massage therapist or have your own massage business - it is what feeling do you want to experience as a result of doing so?

When you can figure that basic piece of information out you will have your purpose for being in business which will be the foundation for you to build your business and make successful business decisions. You can set goals for your business that are in tune with your needs. Setting goals such as how much do you want to make and how many clients you want to work with each week/month can help give you the motivation you need to take action to get what you need. What amount of money do you need to make each month? One of the best things that the book mentions is about creating financial goals like this stating that ‘Trying to grow your business without a concrete number as a target is like saying you’ll meet a friend but neglecting to set a time or place for the meeting. How will either of you know where to go or when?”

I think that one of the issues for massage therapists is that many get caught up in the idea of wanting things especially money as being something they don’t want to focus on. They have some idea that money is bad or that wanting to make money for doing something so meaningful as massage somehow cheapens the massage itself. The thing is if you don’t have the money that you need to stay in business and support your self and family what good is it to anyone - your clients or your self or family.

In setting a monetary goal it is also necessary to include a picture of what that money means to you - what will it provide for you, your business and your family?

In setting your vision for your massage business you will come face to face with your beliefs about yourself and success. Whatever you have currently in your life as far as money, relationships, health, lifestyle, what you do everyday is a reflection of your beliefs or else you wouldn’t have it.

To change your beliefs you just need to track your results and be able to analyze your results in a way that you can stop living out the false beliefs. It is a matter of challenging your thoughts so that you can start providing evidence that disproves your beliefs that say that you are not worthy, you are not good enough, you are not deserving. So often when things happen in our lives we just automatically add it to the list of ‘well that proves that we are not good enough’ list rather than seeing things for what they really are.

Another part of the book goes on to develop the concept of ‘your ideal customer’ which I use and have written about in the process of building websites and a massage business. It is not only important to figure out your ideal client demographically - location, age, sex, income level, marital status, education level, status but you also need to figure out what your clients want and what you want.

Many massage therapists also make the mistake of thinking that they need to take every client that calls and every make every potential client into a client. The truth is that you can not and do not need to serve them all. In the book they say this: ” if you try to be everything to everybody, you end up being nothing to anybody.”

It is more important to serve the right customers. They will become your best way of building your massage practice. You will find that the right customers value massage and your service and more importantly your time. They will be more respectful of that and show it by showing up on time for their appointments and paying you whatever you charge. They will be the first ones to always refer new clients to you.

The rest of the book goes on to talk more about finding out the difference between what your clients needs vs what they want. People’s wants drive them to make decisions more than what they need. They may need to get regular massage to help deal with stress but what they want may be quite different.

What you charge for your massage services doesn’t matter as long as you have the value to match.  Value is all relative to what people want and need.  People are willing to pay for something that they want and/or need no matter what state the economy is in.  The best section of the book is on this topic.

When your marketing looks like everyone else’s and when people can’t really determine the true value you provide your service becomes just another massage done by another massage therapist.

In the absence of information about value, potential clients will default to the lowest price as a differentiator.  If you don’t find a way to differentiate yourself, then the only way left is to compete is price.  And if your business has gotten to a place where it can compete only on price, it is time for you to get out of business.  It has become a no-win situation for you, because there will always be someone willing to undercut your price.

OK and as I just typed that quote from the book “The Answer”, it suddenly dawned on me that this is why places like Massage Envy and other massage franchises are doing so well - because most massage therapists don’t differentiate their practice or inform clients as to how their massage practice is different from a Massage Envy massage.

Of course my favorite way and now even more important way is to write articles for your website doing just that - making you the expert massage therapist and informing people that you have the experience to deal with whatever condition or problem that they are looking to solve.

Could this be the demise of low paying and cheap massage place?

Posted in Building Your Practice, Changing Your Beliefs, Massage Marketing, Starting Your Practice, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | 2 Comments »

Targeted marketing for massage therapists

One of the weak spots for most massage therapists is writing flyers, brochures or website content with the purpose of selling their services.  Selling often conjures up this bad image.  ‘I don’t want to be pushy’.  I don’t want to do sales.   I don’t want to market my practice.  I just want to do massage. ‘Summer is always slow’.

The thing is that even people who have jobs in massage need to be sales people whether you like it or not.  Sales is just really getting your message out to those who need your services and need to know about you.

One of the first things to do is to start thinking about who your massage client is?  Why do people come to you in the first place.  Ask some of them.  You might be pleasantly surprised.  Is it because they are right down the block from you?  Is it because they love your massage?  Is it because they love the aromatherapy or hot stones that you use?

Once you find out that information start writing from that perspective and start with the words “You”.

Learning everything you can about marketing your practice and building your practice is about taking responsibility for your business.  It takes a commitment to doing whatever it takes to get the results that you want.  The first thing is knowing what you want.  If you don’t know what you want exactly you are leaving it in the hands of others, the economy and whoever else you may want to blame your lack of success on.  Wanting is not bad as you may have been taught.  It is wanting that leads you to take the actions that you need to be successful.  Actually, I could take that a step farther and say it is having desire.  Desire is a step up from wanting.  Wanting implies that you are lacking in something.  Having desire comes from your heart.  When you desire something you are also taking control of your own experiences.  You have a better chance of receiving what you desire than what you want.

Asking for what you want from people who are most likely to use your massage services is really just targeted marketing.  It is the way out of making excuses for your lack of business.

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

Marketing Your Massage Business

Marketing your massage business is an ongoing process. In order to have the clients that you need to be successful, you need to continually be learning about marketing and doing something every week if not every day to create your ideal massage practice.

Massage School offers very little in this way so it is necessary to read and study all that you can and to participate in as many online groups as you can as well as creating your own support group if necessary.

There are a good many of online massage marketing programs and I actually recommend that you get them all and work through them at your own pace. I recommend just doing one at a time so that you can really immerse yourself in each program and do all of the exercises and projects that they recommend.

Here are a few of my favorites. I only write about those I have purchased and used myself.

• The Passionate Training - offered by Alexandar Kohl of Australia has created an ebook and workbook to help you get clear about what you want from your practice and how to create it. Using some theories from the law of attraction, he has created this marketing program to get you started on the path to creating a successful massage business.
• Bodyworkbiz.com created by Eric Brown of Canada, offers a 101 day training taking you step by step through many various ways to build your practice. He focuses on overcoming the psycho blocks as he calls them and getting out of your own way to create a successful practice.
• Massage Therapy Success by Amy Roberts of Australia offers a series of ebooks to cover different aspects of building a practice. Includes ebooks on these topics:

  Ignite Your Massage Therapy Business

  Business Check-up

  Marketing Secrets For Massage Therapists

  Planning to Succeed in Your Massage Therapy Business

  How To Write Advertising for Your Massage Therapy Business

  Marketing Diary for Massage Therapists

  Advertising your Massage Therapy Business Workbook

  Understanding Your Client

  Target Market Workbook

  Target market Excel program

There are also some good free resources for marketing and building your massage practice.

www.thebodyworker.com- Marketing section, business section

www.massagetherapycareers.com - massage practice builder section

Join my Yahoo! Massage Practice Builder Discussion Group - where you can communicate with massage therapists all over the world who are doing the same thing as you.

Posted in Building Your Practice, Changing Your Beliefs, Massage Marketing, Starting Your Practice | 1 Comment »

TMJ and Massage

One of the projects I am working on is creating pages on www.thebodyworker.com for various conditions that massage can be helpful in treating. I already am on page three of of google for thoracic outlet syndrome which I think is pretty darn good but could be better as I get pages for some of the other conditions. What I want it to be is a place to educate people as to how massage can really help with these things.

I am also creating some new pages for my clinic site and when doing my keyword research using my Site Build it! Brainstormit! software, I discovered quite a few good keywords for tmj and related keywords. Literally every major city there were many searches for ‘the city, tmj’ or ‘the city, tmj treatment’. If you know how to work on tmj problems and have a website, this could be a great informational tool for getting clients.

I created this page on www.thebodyworker.com with reference to many online articles on tmj and massage which are quite informative and could be used as reference for clients.

My goal in doing all of this is to educate the public and also physicians as to what massage can really do.

So if you have any other resources on TMJ or have a good page on your site about TMJ consider sharing it here (which also gets you a link on the blog which makes you look good to search engines.)

Posted in Benefits of Massage, Health and healing, Massage Marketing | No Comments »

Massage Business -Creating Policies and Procedures

As a massage therapist, creating a solid framework for you business is like creating a solid foundation for a building. The clearer and deeper you go, the taller and larger the building you can build.

So many massage therapists avoid creating policies like cancellation policies, late fees, no show policies and when they do they have a difficult time enforcing them.

By creating these policies it will let your client become more informed about who you are and what you do. They can then decide if you are a good match for them to work with. It also gives you the opportunity to choose who you want to work with and create your ideal massage practice. I struggled with these things too for years as a massage therapist thinking it was what I needed to do to get and keep clients. I thought that by not charging for missed appointments or working longer on people when they are late for an appointment that I was making an extra effort for them to like me and keep coming as a client. I thought I needed to take everyone as a client regardless of whether or not they fit in with my ideal client. In doing that for more than 15 years, I can now see that it was part of the causes for my burnout in the mid 90’s. Giving away your time, money and energy is just downright draining. Period. You may think it is doing the client a favor and helping them more.

I wrote about this previously and mentioned a readers poll done by Massage Magazine last year about their cancellation policies and the ways they enforce their cancellation policies. There is of course such a wide variety of ways and answers.

The thing is to find out what works best for you in supporting you as a business owner and as a person. On one hand you need to make money to pay the bills. Since the number of clients that you can see in one day is limited and having just one client not show up or cancel at the last minute can effect your income significantly. Enforcing the policy sometimes and not on others can be confusing to the clients. As Dr Phil says - “We teach people how to treat us.

While things do happen to people - getting stuck in traffic, sick kids, sick themselves, issues at work - who is responsible for the clients actions? Them or you?

Setting strict cancellation policies may end the relationship. The question is do you really want someone as a client who does not respect you or your time?

Creating well thought out policies can help you create a stronger massage practice.

-What is your policy for when someone cancels with less than 24 or even 48 hours?

- What is your policy for working on someone who arrives late to their appointment? Do you work longer if you have the time? Or do you stay to the alloted time frame?

-What do you do when someone just does not show up period. They just forgot for whatever reason. Then when you call them, they are not apologetic but blame you for not calling to remind them or say they don’t want to pay for something that they aren’t receiving?

- Do you have a cancellation policy that is clearly written and placed on your website and intake form? Do you verbally state your cancellation policy?

There are a variety of ways to handle these situations:

• Charge a minimum fee like $35 or half your session fee for a no show.
• Charge your whole session fee for a missed appointment.
• Choose to work on someone who is late for the full appointment time if you have the time.
• Give people one session to forget and then remind them of the policy and charge them for any further missed appointments.
• Don’t charge anything or say anything and you just eat the cost for the lost time and energy.  (How does that one feel?!)
• Allow for extra-ordinary circumstances such as sickness, deaths in the family, real emergencies.

I also just did a quick search for ‘massage cancellation policies and found a variety of ways that people are communicating their policies some of which are very interesting with one person even apologizing for having to enforce the policy.

Here are some examples that I just copied off some websites ( I know- don’t get upset.)

Everyone’s time is valuable, that’s why we have to follow a few simple rules.

In today’s hectic world unplanned issues come up for all of us. We recognize this fact, but we respectfully request that you cancel your scheduled appointment by phone or e-mail a minimum of 24 hours in advance. That way the open slot can be filled with someone needing an appointment.

Failing two scheduled appointments in a row or three appointments within six months will result in a scheduling hold for Massage Appointments being placed on your account. This means you will not be able to schedule appointments with the Massage Therapy department.

You can also just do a search yourself and use some of the examples you find to create your own policy.  The most important thing to think about is what you need to create a solid massage business.
I guess I am always amazed when people think they won’t have to pay for a missed appointment or have any obligation what so ever for their commitment (which just happened to me only for the second time in 20 years which is why I am writing about this again!) I think that people do feel bad for missing appointments but it may just be too hard to admit that they do. The feeling will overwhelm them and move them into a defense mode - blaming you, blaming traffic, blaming their boss rather than accepting responsibility. Most doctors have cancellation policies. If you book a flight and miss the flight you have to pay a large fee usually. If you get tickets to a symphony and miss it or are late, you don’t get reimbursed.

While creating these polices will be a very personal thing and enforcing them another just keep in mind that what you do is also affecting the massage profession as a whole.  Letting people get away with no shows, late cancellations and late arrivals is teaching people how to treat us (massage therapists) as a whole.  What policy do you need in place to create a successful and rewarding massage practice and profession?

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