How to Achieve Massage Business Goals

How do you achieve your massage business goals for the year?

Here’s a simple strategy that has worked for me: (1) Identify the one massage business goal that outweighs all other goals AND then (2) put your focus on accomplishing that goal for the year.

Nothing like setting that bar at your ankles, Mark.

Haha. I’d agree with you IF success was measured by simply adding up the number of goals achieved at the end of the year.

But I think success, more specifically the feeling of being successful, is more complex than that.

Each goal you set has a distinct emotional and psychological payoff associated with it. Some payoffs are small. Others are big.

Get a big emotional and psychological payoff and it’s almost impossible not to feel successful.

I was not always a one-goal proponent.

In fact, I was a multiple goal setter for most of my 25+ year career as a massage therapist.

And the result I’d typically get would be that I’d accomplish 3 or so dinky goals from a 10+ goal list.

It was only in the past couple of years that I’ve gone for the mother-lode goal. And the results have been great.

Let me explain:

Massage Business Goals Deconstructed

Here’s what my massage business goals list in the past years would look like:

  1. Get 2 new clients per week.
  2. Invest in 3 low cost ways to advertise, like more signage.
  3. Send a monthly email to clients.
  4. Post on my Facebook business page once a week.

And the list would go on.

I’d start out fine with goal #1, but as month 2 and 3 rolled around,  I’d begin to freak out because I hadn’t started the other goals.

So, I’d pull my attention away from goal #1 to work on goals #2 and #3.

About half way through the year I wouldn’t know what needed my attention the most because all my massage business goals seemed equally important.

As January approached, I’d cut my losses, and go after one goal, but by that time it would be too late. And I’d have accomplished a handful of massage business goals that didn’t lead to a feeling of success.

So, a while back I said enough.

Pick one goal and go for it.

But which goal?

Hmm…they all seemed important.

Ranking them didn’t help.

So I asked myself this: What was the motive behind all my massage business goals?

Answer for last year was that I wanted to make more money than the year before.

So, “make more money than the year before” became my massage business goal in 2018.

How I Accomplished This Goal

The tricky but potentially liberating thing about this one goal approach is “how I’m going to  accomplish this goal” is not spelled out.

So, for example, when I made the switch to going after one big business goal (make more money), I could’ve put more effort into low cost advertising, but I wasn’t obligated to do so because doing low cost advertising wasn’t a goal.

This meant I had freedom to experiment.

And checking off boxes (as in task accomplished) took a backseat to figuring out which tasks actually resulted in making more money.

Here are the tasks that helped me make more money that year:

  1. Make myself available to do more massage.
  2. Figure out how to handle longer massage days.
  3. Answer the business phone before it goes to voicemail.
  4. Respond to new customers customers and clients quickly.
  5. Deepen relationships with referral sources.
  6. Take workers’ compensation.
  7. Focus on one office, not all three of our offices.

You can guess by now that this is a dynamic process. Some things that I thought I needed to do, like giving equal time to all referral sources, had to be amended or deleted entirely.

And at the end of the day, my weekly income tally told me if what I was doing was working or not.

Making The Massage Business Goals Not Approach

So the “make more money” goal worked for you, Mark. But will it work for me?

Why not?

Trust me, I’m not special.

And here are some tips that I think could help you out with that goal:

1. Pick a number.

How much money do you want to make above what you made the year before?

Be specific.

Is it $5,000 more than last year? 10K?

That number will help you determine how many additional massages you need to do to meet your goal.

Or, if you have multiple streams of income through your massage business, it will help you figure out how much each income source needs to produce.

For example, if you sell essential oils you may reach a 5K goal by adding 25 new clients and selling 20 essential oil kits to clients.

When you have a number to shoot for you can start doing tasks to achieve that goal which leads to tip #2.

2. Is the task you’re doing leading to more money?

If posting weekly on your Facebook business page is not leading to more money, then try something else.

If it is, double-down on it.

Figuring out which task is working and which one isn’t takes time. If you want to make things go faster do this:

3. Take shortcuts.

I’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting already when it comes to shortcuts by creating a process for figuring out which tasks bring in more money.

Here’s the process: Massage Marketing Tips: How to Pick the Winners.

But what if “making more money” is not your mother-lode, massage business goal?

Maybe having more time off from work is your biggest goal.

My Friend’s Mother-Lode Goal

I have a massage therapist friend who goes away (and leaves her clients behind) for 3 to 4 months of the year.

Guess what?

When she comes back she still has a business because she’s figured out how to keep her clients happy.

Here’s how that works:

  1. First, she’s a good massage therapist and her clients love her.
  2. Before she goes away she refers each client to a specific massage therapist that she’s vetted and thinks would be a good fit. (I’m a beneficiary of that:-)
  3. Before she comes back, she sends each client a letter with a one-time, massage package deal, like $30 off for a massage 3-pack.

That’s it.

Her mother-lode goal of wanting to do her own thing for 1/3 of the year drove her to figuring  out what needed to be done.

Getting goose bumps?

I am.

So much so that I have to tell you my massage business goal for 2022.

My Goal for the New Year

Actually, it’s not “to make more money than the year before.”

It’s to be bolder than I was in 2021.

In 2021, we added another wonderful massage therapist and office assistant to our PressurePerfect Massage business. We moved the business to an awesome location and grew it. That was great, but it took and continues to take a lot of time to run the business.

This year I don’t want to be tied to the daily operations as much as I am. But here’s the thing, I’m a little bit of a control freak. Being bolder than I was in 2021 would be for me to hire people to replace me at the jobs that are not the best use of my time.

Also in 2021, I grew my teaching reach by publishing a book, The Pain-Free Massage Therapist, and writing 8 articles. I was also interviewed on 3 podcasts and 1 YouTube channel, and I laid the groundwork (with Krista Dicks from The Radical RMT) for a Take Care of You for Massage Therapists event in 2022.

That was bold for me (an introvert).

But if I really want to positively impact the lives of massage therapists through my teaching, I need to be bolder and put myself out there even more.

What does bolder in the teaching world in 2022 look life for me? I’m not sure, but the goal “to be bolder” gives me room to explore, make mistakes and then adjust.

Okay, enough about me. Let’s get back to you.

Think about trying this formula for success in the new year.

Massage Business Goals NOT Formula

  1. Pick one massage business goal that motivates you.
  2. Define it and start doing tasks to accomplish it.
  3. Jettison the tasks that aren’t leading you to accomplishing your goal; double-down on the ones that are.
  4. Take advantage of shortcuts when you can.

I’m confident that you can get that mother-lode goal for 2022.

If you need help growing your massage business, check this out: Accelerator.

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