Make the Most of Massage

Category: Motivation

  • I’m Not A Cover Band

    I’m an artist.

    Actually, I can’t paint. I don’t play guitar. And I have no spatial sense.

    But I do share one characteristic with some of the most famous artists.

    Artistic outbursts.

    That is I have an overwhelming desire to express myself.

    Unfortunately, artistic outbursts in business can bite you in the butt.

    My Business Card Outburst

    Here’s a perfect example. When I first started massage I had some business cards made up.

    Expensive stock paper. Raised printing. Pretty classy and professional if I do say so myself.

    But then I had an artistic outburst.

    I took colored pencils and magic markers and started to personalize my nice, white business cards with pictures of flowers and plants and abstract shapes.

    And, OMG, my “Would you like a massage from a professional massage therapist?” business card turned into “I might have some issue that I’ll need to talk about while I’m giving you your massage…wait, why are you walking away” business card.  

    My wife, Lisa, girlfriend at the time, did warn me that my artistic outburst on my business cards may turn people off, but I couldn’t help myself—and I handed them out.

    Funny, I can’t remember anyone ever asking me for more cards to give to friends.

    But anyway, you live and learn, right?

    Well…not exactly…

    I still have self-expression outbursts.

    The difference is now I know that I need to manage these outbursts in order to have a good business (life).

    By the way, I did say manage, not squelch.

    Because if you truly have a unrelenting desire to express yourself, it’s gonna find a way out.

    So what do you do?

    Here’s what I do.

    How to Make Self-Expression Work for You

    First, I view business as a medium where self-expression will happen.

    But then I do something a little different than allowing myself to have artistic license to do anything. I manage my self-expression.

    How?

    By being strategic. Some self-expression I’m going to let out. Other things I’m not.

    Why?

    Because for self-expression to work in the business medium there are certain rules that I don’t want to break.

    This one in particular: Don’t repel customers with self-expression.

    This rule is self-explanatory. If you drive customers away with artistic outbursts, you won’t be in business for long.

    There’s an interesting flip-side to repelling customers with self-expression.

    You can actually attract customers with strategic and properly dosed self-expression.

    For example, what would have happened if instead of drawing primitive pictures on my business cards I had a “loving to help other people” outburst.

    Well, here’s what happened.

    Massage Envy and Me

    Ten years ago, Massage Envy moved into our neck of the woods.

    I’m just going to be blunt. I don’t like their business model.

    If there business model was a totem pole with four faces on it, the top face would be a Massage Envy corporate executive, under that a franchise owner, under that a customer, and at the bottom a massage therapist.

    Lisa and I want to challenge that business model.

    So, it was time to channel an artistic outburst.

    And I got my colored pencils out and started drawing pictures of Massage Envy being eaten by a dragon…

    Haha. Not this time.

    This time Lisa and I funneled our self-expression into our business philosophy, which isn’t fancy, profound or groundbreaking.

    It’s just two words that are missing in the massage franchise world.

    Fairness matters.

    We are determined to express fairness in everything we do in our business, especially with each client who walks through the door and with each massage therapist who chooses to work for us.

    (Though I still reserve the right to draw a dragon eating Massage Envy on my business cards).

    Self-Expression and Your Massage Business

    But we’re still a little broad here, right?

    Let’s talk about how self-expression could be making or breaking your business right now.

    When Salvador Dali was asked Do you do drugs? his response was I am the drug.

    Is your website like Salvador Dali’s response?

    Do you only talk about you?

    That’s fine if you’re a brand like Erik Dalton or John Barnes.

    But if you don’t have that kind of clout you might want to engage the potential client by showing him that you get him.

    And because you “get him”, you have an answer to his problem/quest: Your massage.

    Conversely, if you don’t talk enough about you, your website will be too generic.

    I can help you sort out self-expression on your website here.

    How about this: Are you too much into your art (massage style)?

    I only do deep tissue trigger point clients, and I’m not rubbing anyone to sleep, said former massage therapist, I.M. Artist.

    I know you’re thinking that I’m trying to stamp out the artist in your massage and your massage business.

    Believe me, I’m not.

    I haven’t come to this point in my life to be a cover band either.

    We are originals.

    We want to play our own music.

    And we can.

    BUT to have success in the business medium, we need to figure out how to play in a way that actually builds a business.

    Play originals when working with the clients who like that or who can be influenced to like that.

    Play cover songs for the rest.

    But there’s so much of me that I want to express through my massage, Mark!

    By all means express yourself, BUT find other venues to express yourself when a particular self-expression will hurt  your massage business.

    Lisa and I are vegan.

    We just started a vegan education non-profit because we thought force feeding our clients green smoothies before they get on the table might be bad for business.

    Drawing stream of consciousness figures on my niece’s birthday card made me happy and didn’t hurt my relationship with my niece (I think…lol).

    Drawing weird sh** on my business cards creeped out potential clients and set me back a year or two.

    Making Self-Expression Work

    Figuring out how to express yourself in your business takes some thinking and experimenting.

    Too much of yourself and you may repel customers.

    Too little and you won’t attract them and/or you might lose interest in your business.

    It helped me out a lot when I realized that I could express things about me that could be bad for business through non-massage ways.

    If you need to reverse engines so that you can change the trajectory of your massage business, click here.

    If you just need some guiding and nudging, join my free, email group.

    I’ll send you my latest info weekly.

    Sign up below:-)

     

  • The Boss Trap

    Recently my wife, Lisa, and I helped organize vegan restaurant week in our town. We had to talk to a lot of restaurant owners and in the process we became more familiar with their business operations. One restaurant owner, Billy, was struggling to get everything together for us. Like many small business owners, he was operating short-staffed and he was wearing many hats.

    Billy hadn’t thought through the payment/reservation process for the event. He wanted people to make reservations and pay for his special dinner on his Facebook page, but there were a lot of variables that had to be factored in. For example, the special dinner was running on multiple days and for long periods of time that weren’t necessarily the same time length on each day.

    I had suggested just taking the reservations and credit card payment over the phone, but he didn’t want to do that.  So, Billy, with very limited experience on Facebook, went ahead with setting up payment and scheduling on Facebook. When he finished, his Facebook page looked like a car with way too many bumper stickers on it, and his checkout wouldn’t allow someone to make more than one seat reservation.

    Okay, now would he be willing to take reservations over the phone?

    Yes, but his business answering machine didn’t work anymore. Customers had told him that before, but he never fixed it.

    Okay, could he fix the answering machine?

    Actually, no, he was on vacation and wouldn’t be able to address that issue for a couple of days.

    His solution: It will wait until I get back.

    Wait ‘til the boss hears about that!

    Yeah, about that boss….

    Welcome to the boss trap. When you work for you yourself, you are the final decision maker and you’re not accountable to anyone else except yourself.

    From a “how you want to live your life” standpoint, that’s great. You don’t have anyone breathing done your neck. You can live life on your terms and mitigate your stress. On the flipside, if you’re only listening to yourself, don’t complain if your business is not all you want it to be or you feel stuck.

    By the way, I am the poster child for the boss trap.

    A small explosion goes off in my head every time I’m involved in a group project and I have to listen to other peoples’ opinions. To be honest, I don’t think it’s about me wanting to boss other people around. In fact, I want them to go away. It’s more about me not having the final say and not wanting to be told what to do.

    “I am the boss of me” is my boss trap.

    Regardless, the boss trap has hampered my business progress throughout my life. Here’s a simple example: The scheduling system that we were using was glitch-y and wouldn’t let us adjust the time in between clients for each massage therapist.

    We needed to look for a new system. So, initially, boss Mark…

    (a) started a spreadsheet where he compared scheduling systems

    (b) called scheduling systems when he had questions about their features

    (c) Both a and b.

    (d) avoided the decision by finding something else to do.

    Yep, it was “d”. As soon as I saw that the process of picking a new scheduling system was going to be a big, hairy deal, I was out. And who was going to stop me or say anything. That would be nobody since I was the boss.

    Here are other times in my massage career where I got caught in the boss trap:

    • It took me over a year to put up our marquee sign at our one office. I was afraid I was going to mess it up and have to pay for a new one, so I avoided putting it up. The sign brought in about one client per week. That’s a $3000 to $5000 missed opportunity.
    • I had a friend do our business website in exchange for massage. That took about a year to get done because she was busy and I didn’t want to bother her. Not sure how to measure that lost revenue.
    • Before that I had a client build my neuromuscular massage website in exchange for massage. That was a two year project that never got done because I avoided confrontation. I measure that one not in terms of financial loss but in terms of hair pulled out.

    But things changed for me when we hired a great massage therapist, Sarah. Sarah had worked in the corporate world for 10 years, and it quickly became apparent that she had business skills that could be utilized in our business. So it was a no-brainer to get Sarah involved with the operations of the business. When she did, we started to get more traction.

    Why did we get more traction?

    Let’s circle back to the scheduler. I had brought Sarah in on the scheduler project. So, initially with the scheduler, I did my typical boss trap behavior and avoided rolling up my sleeves to reach a decision. But it didn’t take me too long to realize that I would soon have to explain to Sarah why I’m not moving forward on a decision. Both Sarah and I were invested in this process. Now I had some accountability.

    F***.

    So, the next thing I did was to…

    (a) avoid Sarah

    (b) take a vacation

    (c) bitch and moan

    (d) put on my big boy pants and work towards a decision

    Okay, so it was “c” and “d”, but the point is that I knew it needed to be done and that I was the hold up. Sarah was testing out the systems I was asking her to test out, but I wasn’t putting everything together and narrowing the field.

    I jumped back in and we now have a scheduling system that meets the business’s needs.

    It’s really hard to get out of the boss trap because it’s complicated. You’re a boss of yourself for a lot of reasons. And in Billy’s case, it’s mainly about creating a business that is basically about him. I don’t think he wants to get out of the boss trap—and that’s fine—but when shit blows up in his face, he shouldn’t look surprised. And since we now know that we’re dealing with someone in the boss trap, at next year’s event, we will limit Billy’s involvement to what we know he can manage.

    So are you in the boss trap?

    You can get out.

    Start by leaving a comment below or shooting me an email:-)

  • Massage Therapist Self-Help: How to Get the Passion Back

    Massage Therapist Self-Help: How to Get the Passion Back

    In my 20s I used to think there was something seriously wrong with the journey that I was on. How could Bill Nye the Science Guy be so passionate about what he did, and me not so much?

    I spent many years looking for something to be passionate about only to fall in and out love with hobbies and jobs, massage being one of them.

    Becoming Bill Nye

    But during the past 5 years, things have been different with massage. In fact, I now feel like Bill Nye the Science Guy.

    What has changed?

    I stopped believing that passion was innate, something that just happened naturally. Instead, I started to work at being passionate and discovered that when I did, it stuck around.

    Yo-Yo Passion Ride

    When I first started massage, I was ignited by the feeling I got from helping people feel better. But after a few years of working at the same place, I felt trapped and thought  I was underpaid—and out went the passion.

    My passion for massage returned when I opened my first office in a fitness center, but only to leak out of me again because my hands started to ache.

    Then I asked my dad to customize some massage tools for me. I started to experiment with the tools and my hands felt better. I got jacked about massage again!

    This lasted for a while until I had a turf war with the chiropractor who also rented space in the fitness center and had MTs working for him. Ugh, I hated confrontation. Bye-bye passion.

    More than One Payoff

    Back then it seemed like every time I got my passion back, something was there to suck it out of me.

    OR, could it have been that in order for me to sustain my passion, I needed to have multiple payoffs from massage—not just the good feeling I would get from making someone feel better?

    Multiple payoffs eventually proved to be the right answer for me.

    What I Need to Sustain Passion

    In fact, when it comes to massage payoffs, I’m a little greedy. I need a lot of them to sustain my passion. Here’s my shortlist:

    Evidence that I’m helping people; acknowledgment from my clients that they appreciate my work, to not be in pain after doing a massage; earned respect from my you, my colleagues; business autonomy; business competence; an income that supports my lifestyle choices; opportunities to start other businesses; and a massage business that reflects my values.

    A problem arises when something gets in the way of me getting one of my payoffs.

    For instance, I threw myself into helping people feel better because that was easy for me to do. But, back then, ask me to raise the price of my massage (so that I could  support my lifestyle choices) and I would forget how to speak.

    Here’s how I got around this:

    Getting a Payoff

    At one point in my massage career, I was getting resentful of the clients who I had given special deals to when I first opened my practice.

    I knew that I had to raise their price, but if I did, I was afraid that they might walk. In reality, this was unlikely. And if I dug a little deeper into my psyche, my concern was more about how they would view me (as a money-grubber) if I raised the price on them.

    Because I knew that I would crack under pressure, I had my talk therapist, at the time, hold me accountable for raising my price. Over the course of a couple months, I raised my clients’ rates. No one left (or hated me) and my passion for massage returned.

    Massage Therapist Self-Help

    The step-by-step of what I did looks like this:

    1. Pick one thing about massage that is not working for you.

    This download What Do You Want From Massage Quiz may help you figure out what to focus on first.

    1. Write down how you can change this one thing and then make it a goal.
    2. Write down a due date to accomplish this goal.
    3. Give me permission (mark@makethemostofmassage.com) or a friend, family member or adviser to be your friendly auditor, to help you stay on track.

    The Rest of Your Life

    Maybe, ultimately, massage is not right for you. But if you think your loss of passion for massage is because you’re afraid to tackle the challenges that come with massage, here’s what I would do:

    Identify the multiple payoffs that you need from massage to make you happy. Then pick one that hasn’t come to fruition. Write down what you’re going to do to change it and give yourself a due date. Ask someone to hold you accountable.

    Then go for it. Seriously. Go for it.

    It might be the nudge that pushes you in the right direction to sustain passion for massage–and other things in life, too:-)

    Need More Help?

    Join my email group.

    I’ll send you my latest info. It’s free:-)

  • How to Protect Your Time and Make Money Doing Massage

    How to Protect Your Time and Make Money Doing Massage

    I was caught in a massage catch 22.

    Initially, massage gave me freedom (time to do what I wanted to do), but not much money. And then when I started chasing the money, I lost my freedom.

    It took me many years before I discovered another way where I could have both freedom and money doing massage.

    What’s the way?

    Going all in.

    It seems counter-intuitive, I know.

    But it works.

    This is how it went down for me.

    My Massage Catch 22

    When I first started massage I didn’t invest a whole lot of time into my business and this is what occurred:

    Minimal time investment = not many dollars.

    I had plenty of freedom (time), but not plenty of money.

    Then I kicked up my time investment a notch and I got this result:

    Moderate time investment = a moderate income increase.

    The good news was that I still had more freedom than my friends working 9 to 5s, but much less time than I did when I was making less money.

    To be honest, I wasn’t any happier with a moderate income increase because in order to keep that increase, I had to make a moderate time investment each and every day.

    So, I’d bounce back and forth between minimal and moderate time investments without being happy with either one.

    Massage Catch 22 Revisited

    As time went on I had to face the reality of either making more money doing massage or finding another career.

    So, I thought what if I just went all in, like seriously all in, no-holds-barred.

    I did.

    And to my surprise, this is what happened:

    3. A lot of time invested = a lot more money  + time back.

    No More Massage Catch 22

    It sounds backwards, but it’s not.

    Going all in is front-loaded.

    You lose a lot of time at first because you hand over huge chunks of time to generate clients BUT once your business is really cranking, you can reclaim your time back.

    For me, I spent many months working my butt off to generate more business.

    I was doing demo massages, business events and running massage specials.

    I got my website updated and I fixed my SEO.

    For a while, I was so busy I could barely keep up with clients coming in and my marketing efforts.

    I was back to the massage catch 22.

    More money, but no time.

    Again, the time investment didn’t seem worth it.

    But after about 8 months, I noticed a shift in my business.

    Clients were coming in steadily. And the drastic, weekly ups-and-downs were gone.

    Hmm…I wonder what would happen if I did less demo massages and other promotional stuff and just focused on what was working to generate clients?

    What happened was my business remained steady AND I could start to reclaim my time because I didn’t have to chase down clients any longer.

    Before you go checking my About Page, let me just tell you, I’m not special.

    Other MTs do this, too.

    In fact, one of MT friends has gotten to the point where she goes away for 3 months and returns to a very busy practice.

    Are you in a massage catch 22?

    Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

    Go all in.

    There’s no doubt that going all in will be frustrating at first.

    You’re going to be thinking that you’re wasting your time because you’re not going to see a big bump in income immediately.

    But then you’ll have a really good week.

    Then a couple weeks later, you’ll have another good one. And over the next few months, the good weeks will get closer together.

    At this point, it’s time to double-down on the referral sources that are working and to shelve the ones that aren’t.

    Boom! You gain some time back.

    And within a few more months you’ll have good, predictable and steady income.

    But you’re not done.

    Put those key referral sources on maintenance mode. Voila! Even more time back!

    This article will help you get started going all in.

    And if you need more help, sign up for my email group.

    I’ll send you my latest everything about making more money and staying out of pain.

    It’s free.

    Sign up here:-)