April 23rd, 2008 Julie Onofrio
The two best ways to get the clients you need to keep your massage business booming are getting referrals from current clients, physicians and other health care providers and Search Engine Optimization for your website.
Getting referrals from others is about learning to ask for what you need. Lynn Grodzki of Private Practice Success speaks of it this way:
But in a small business, letting other people know about your business needs is a necessary interaction. As business people, we need a way to communicate our legitimate business needs, such as our need for referrals (the life blood of our business), in a way that matches our sensibilities and ethics.
The best way for people to find a massage therapist is to go on referrals from their friends, neighbors, coworkers, physicians and other health care providers - or just about anyone. There seems to be some hesitancy with massage therapists to ask for referrals from clients or others because they don’t want to be seen as being salesey or pushy yet they continue to say they don’t have enough clients to make ends meet. There are a few ways you can go about getting referrals from clients such as creating an incentive program for people to refer to you - like if they refer 3 people or something like that they would get a free half hour massage. I think that works for some, but I actually think the best way to get referrals for your massage business is to just do the best massage of your life with each client. When people go back to work or home or wherever they are off to and are feeling their best- it will show and they will be talking about how good they do feel. That is the best kind of referral.
Getting physicians or other health care providers to refer to you requires that you build a reputation for yourself. The best way is to actually find a someone that you would want to go to yourself or refer others to. You don’t just want any old person referring to you. You need to get referrals from people who understand and match your values and philosophy on healing otherwise there will be too many possibilities for misunderstandings. I used to get referrals from a chiropractor who wanted people to come in 2x a day -5 days a week. I just didn’t agree with this type of service. He only did it with people who were in car accidents who had insurance companies with open pockets waiting to pay him. I would tell people that they just have to go by what they feel and most would want to leave his care causing some difficulties between us. So it is important to find someone who works in a similar manner to you. Would you send your mother to this person or would you go yourself? That is the litmus test.
Also once you find someone you trust - go to them for care. This is the best way to find out more about what they do and tell them about what you do. Actually you may not even have to tell them anything more than you are a massage therapist down the street from them. This is the way I build most of my practice when I first started. I started seeing a chiropractor and the next thing I know his whole family was coming to me and then he started referring all his patients.
The key to asking for what you want is to build relationships with others just based on wanting to create a relationship -not just about asking for referrals.
The other way to get a constant stream of clients is by having a website that gets you new clients every week. That means you have to have one that search engines find and that people click on. To do this you need to create pages that are optimized for the search engines using the most popular keywords (most likely some variation of ‘massage, your city’). To create a page that is optimized you also have to know how to create file names with the keywords as well as metatags -descriptions and keywords. I have a page on my website about formatting pages to help you get an idea of what it is about.
Some other ways of getting your site found are to just create as many pages as you can writing about what you do. Have a separate page for each technique to explain it in detail and share your experiences with this technique or method. Share why you trained in it and what you feel you can do with it. The more content the better for search engines and your readers.
Getting others to link to your site also helps create traffic. There are many ways to do this but the first thing is to get health care providers that you refer to to link to your site by first giving a link to them! I have written more about creating links on my website www.workless-playmore.com
Keeping yourself focused on what you can do for yourself and your practice rather than just complaining that you don’t have enough clients is to keep focused on these two things. What can you do today to take one step towards getting a referral or building a website? If you don’t have the money for a website makes me wonder just how committed you are to being successful.
I of course use and recommend Site Build it! for webhosting because it is much more than just a webhost. It takes you through a process of thinking about your business and creating a plan for success. While I have talked about SBI! extensively in all of my websites and forums, it can be very overwhelming. It took me 2 years of hearing about it before I took the leap and created my first site. I did start out with a free webhost and then moved up to Front Page. It wasn’t as scary taking the leap to SBI! So even if you can’t start with an SBI! site start with what you can do. Create a free site or use another template driven site. Do whatever you have to do. You can start with this Free Manual from SBI! about taking your Service Business online and apply it in any way you can.
I also am available to help you create a website for your massage practice. I charge $600 for an 8 page website (in addition to the $299 hosting fee with SBI!)which is more than half of what you would be charged by a SBI! webmaster. The reason why I am charging so much less is that I know the massage business and I want massage therapists to be successful and be able to get the clients that they need.
Posted in Building Your Practice, Starting Your Practice, The Wealthy Massage Therapist, Websites for Massage therapists | 1 Comment »
April 21st, 2008 Julie Onofrio
I don’t know if it is just me or if it’s my writing or my sites, but I can’t tell you the number of struggling massage therapists who contact me telling me how much they are struggling to build a massage practice. I know I struggled for most of my career until I started writing and creating websites and making money from doing that.
With so much information out there like all of the books and programs and articles and resources - how couls anyone really be struggling? What is it that makes the difference between someone who struggles along day to day as a massage therapist and one who is highly successful? And then I hear so many massage therapist saying this unbelieveable statement
It isn’t about the money
So why are you then driving yourself around and around in circles, beating yourself up because you don’t have enough clients to make ends meet? If money isn’t important why are you working two jobs in addition to trying to build a practice and working for free or working low paying jobs in massage therapy just to pay the rent? If money wasn’t so important why are you charging for your massages at all?
And then there are those massage therapists complaining about things like “our school didn’t have an externship - that would have guaranteed me a job in massage’ or ‘the insurance industry isn’t paying me what I was told they would’ or my employer just takes advantage of me and only pays me $15 an hour when I deserve so much more. Then there are the “I told them everything I knew about massage and they still wouldn’t get a massage or I gave them all the exercises to do and they didn’t want to do them.”
The reason why so many massage therapist fail to build a successful business has more to do with their beliefs and the ego. Your ego is the unconscious part of you - it is all of your beliefs that are really running the show and creating the struggle for you. Your ego is telling you that you aren’t worthy of charging what you are worth. It is the one who keeps complaining of all of the things outside of yourself- it’s the school’s fault, it’s the economy’s fault - it isn’t your fault! Actually it isn’t really your fault. It is a result of your early childhood upbringing where your beliefs about yourself were created. While it isn’t about blaming parents and caregivers - it is about becoming more conscious of these beliefs that were created at such an early age. The way to get in touch with your beliefs is about getting in touch with what you are feeling. What are you actually feeling the second before you complain about something else as the cause of your struggling? That is where the heart of getting out of the struggling lies! In feeling the pain, grief, saddness. Those are the feelings of the ego. Whenever you are feeling anything but love, joy and happiness you can know it is the work of the ego.
So how does one release the hold the ego has on you ? Just acknowledging the fact that you know it is your ego is the first part. But sometimes it takes time to realize that. It may be a few days later and you can say “oh there is was the other day when I was complaining that I didn’t have any clients”. The more you can become aware of the fact and practice becoming aware then one day you will be about to complain or try to give someone advice and you’ll notice that it is the ego trying to cover up a feeling and you may even be able to just feel the feeling first without having to act on it.
If we are complaining that our businesses are slow because of the economy or because we think that people just don’t want to take responsibility for themselves we can know it is the ego sending us a message. We can begin to challenge our beliefs about ourselves and learn that what we see in others or complain about is really a reflection of a part of ourselves. Somewhere inside what you see in others is really what is going on inside of you. Is it true? is what Byron Katie asks in her book “Loving What is: Four Questions that can change your life”. Is it true that it is the economy to blame for your slow business? 100% true beyond a doubt, beyond anything else and is your business slow totally 100% because of the economy? (or could it be because you didn’t market your business or do the things you need to do?)
For more resources:
Why we fail?
Posted in Building Your Practice, Changing Your Beliefs, The Code of the Caretaker, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | 3 Comments »
April 13th, 2008 Julie Onofrio
I am doing quite an overhaul on my websites and have been finding some great articles and putting links to them from my site.
I didn’t have a place for these but they are timely since tax day is here. Even though these are a little outdated they are still good resources.
Tax Makeover by Cherie Sohnen Moe from Massage Therapy Journal
Give Yourself a Tax Break by Clare LaPlante from Massage Therapy Journal
Posted in Recommended Reading, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | No Comments »
April 12th, 2008 Julie Onofrio
One of the ways I make additional income for myself is selling an Ebook called “The Truth about Becoming a Massage therapist” on www.massagetherapycareers.com. I started that site in about 2002 and wrote an earlier version of the ebook then and started selling it within about 2 months of setting up the website. I am now working on many other ebooks and am encouraging massage therapists to start writing their own to make a little extra money on the side each month.
I am in the process of creating a whole section on www.workless-playmore.com about how to write, create and promote ebooks. I have been reading and studying everything I can on ebooks.
If you don’t have a website, I am also looking for people to write ebooks and I can sell them through an affiliate program for them. That means I can put the ebook for sale on my website and when people buy it I will get paid a small percentage of the fee and the writer makes money too. Both win! And as a profession we really are way behind in Ebooks. Both my sites are already am on the first page of Google for ‘massage ebooks’.
I have tons of ideas for Ebooks that can be written by massage therapists. I wish I could write them all myself but there is only so much time in the day!
We need more writers in the massage profession who are massage therapists. We already have Paul Ingram in Canada writing tutorials that he sells on his website to clients who is booked for 3 months and charges $150 to someone who just needs to get in sooner and of course massagenerd.com is the king of ebooks and he started giving some of his away for free.
Ebooks on massage are needed to start educating the public more too as well as having more information for massage therapists.
Posted in The Wealthy Massage Therapist, Websites for Massage therapists | No Comments »
April 8th, 2008 Julie Onofrio
When I first started doing massage back in 1987, no one really thought of trying to go out and find a job in massage. There just weren’t that many. Becoming a massage therapist meant that you started your own massage business right out of massage school.
The current salary statistics that I mentioned in an earlier post on the future of massage don’t make the massage profession look very appealing. One of the problems is that we don’t really have accurate statistics about massage jobs because there are so many massage therapists who do start their own practice.Today there are more and more places hiring massage therapists - Franchises like Massage Envy, Day spas, destination spas, hospitals, chiropractors, clinics, hospices, nursing homes, dentists, chair massage places. With more places hiring massage therapists, the more competitive the job markets.
I am also seeing a trend through my website www.massagetherapycareers.com of more high school students looking at massage therapy careers. The current average age of massage therapists is 45 according to ABMP and AMTA. With more younger people joining the work force they are taking the entry level jobs that pay $12-$15 an hour.
So what is the key to finding a massage job that pays $30-$45 an hour which is a fairly decent wage level?
People seem to be blindly searching for massage jobs out of fear and desperation rather than taking their time to figure out what it is that they want for themselves.
One of the things I recommend to massage therapists that are just starting out is to go to a variety of places and get a few massages there. Find out what it is like to work there by being a client there first.
What kind of place do you want to work at? A spa, chiropractors office or other clinical setting?What are the current employees like?
What is the atmosphere like?
Is this a place that you would like to work for?
After you know more about a place you can then set up informational interviews with the managers of the places that you would most like to work for. Ask them questions about the business so you can get more information about whether or not you want to work there or not.
Most people go about it the other way approaching places looking for a job and waiting to see if they get hired there without really knowing what they are getting into.
The other thing that massage therapists seem to forget is that even though they are going to work for someone else, they are the reason why people come back for more massages and refer all of their friends and keep the business going. You still have to have good customer service and marketing skills to educate clients as to why they should come more often. You also have to be able to tune into clients and find out what they really need. Spas are more difficult to work at in some ways because you only get one hour to make a connection with a person as many are only coming in for that one a year massage treat. All massage businesses depend on repeat clients and referrals and is mainly a result of how good the massage is, the connection between the massage therapist and client and the client getting their needs met.
I am in the process of writing a new ebook on finding a job in massage therapy. What challenges did you or are you having finding a job in massage? What things are you finding from working for a massage employer that you didn’t expect or do not like? What are you finding out about the massage job market and employers that you would want others to know so that they can look out for these things in an interview or informational process?
Posted in Massage Schools/Students, Massage Therapy Jobs, The Wealthy Massage Therapist | No Comments »
