Make the Most of Massage

Category: Motivation

  • How to Start a Massage Business: Remember the Pain

    How to Start a Massage Business: Remember the Pain

    How do you start a massage business?

    First, you need a business plan…wait…is that what you really need right now?

    Because that’s a checklist.

    And if you want a checklist, go here and have at it.

    Or do you need to stay motivated when trying to accomplish the tasks necessary to starting a massage practice?

    If it’s motivation you need, try this: Pain.

    What about pain?

    Remember it.

    It can help you stay on track to addressing habits and behaviors that are holding you back from starting your massage business.

    Here’s how using the memory of pain has worked for me.

    Self-Help in the ‘80s

    In my 20’s I was a self-help book junkie.

    The overall message I got from all the reading was that pain and negative emotions were bad.

    And that’s how I moved through life: I avoided memories that were painful.

    That seemed to work for a while, but the funny thing about pain is that unless you remember the painful situations, you’re probably going to repeat them or continue to be stuck in them.

    That’s exactly what happened to me.

    Then, at some point I went in the opposite direction.

    Instead of avoiding pain, I wallowed in it.

    Wallowing produced some esoteric poetry that no one really got except me.

    Oh, and it produced one more thing: More wallowing.

    So I avoided pain, then wallowed in pain. 

    Can you say hot mess?

    But my hot mess story doesn’t end here.

    You remember that I’m self-help junkie, right? And self-help junkies don’t give up on themselves that easy.

    Here’s what I accidentally discovered as I crawled my way out of the wallowing period: If I dosed myself with painful memories I could keep on track to changing a habit or behavior that was preventing me from accomplishing a goal.

    Enter the Better Husband Project.

    Better Husband Project

    The biggest mistake that I’ve made in my relationship with my wife, Lisa, is thinking that I understood myself when I actually didn’t.

    Me not knowing me led to miscommunication (no communication), misunderstanding and misrepresentation.

    I know, that’s a lot of mis-es.

    And it all culminated on our 10th year wedding anniversary.

    I so wanted the 10th to be a home run because with the 9th I had put no effort into showing that I cared.

    So, guess what I did?

    Yep, nothing.

    I even shocked myself.

    How could this happen?

    I did the deep dive into my emotions and thinking and I came up with what I thought to be the answers.

    But here’s the thing, I had done that part before.

    And when I looked back at my partner-report-card having answers hadn’t netted me A’s and B’s.

    In fact, I was barely passing, and, sadly, sometimes failing.

    Why?

    Because somewhere along the way I became disconnected to my motivation to change (or create) a behavior/habit.

    Quite frankly, looking back at my past performance and looking ahead into the future after the 10th-year-anniversary-NOT scared the poop out of me.

    I hadn’t been able to make a substantial change then, what made me think I could do it now?

    So, this time I added two new things.

    First, it was pretty obvious that I couldn’t count on just me to keep myself accountable.

    So, I asked Lisa and a talk therapist to help me with that.

    Then I wrote down everything associated with my desire to be a better husband—especially the painful and sad events that led me to wanting to make a change.

    No Recall of Pain, No Gain

    As I worked on stuff I found myself automatically going back to my notes describing the painful events.

    When I did I’d feel the sadness all over again. Immediately, the sadness would strengthen my conviction to never ever create that situation again.

    It soon became apparent to me that if I wanted to stay on track to being a better husband, I needed to recall the painful events on a regular basis.

    Celebrate the Small Victories

    I also observed that there was a downside to reconnecting to the painful events: It shook my confidence.

    That was a slippery slope because I needed confidence to keep the vision of success alive.

    So, as I worked the plan and saw myself make progress, even if it was something small, I’d pat myself on the back.

    Once I did, my confidence returned.

    How did it all turn out?

    Well, the Better Husband Project is an ongoing thing, but I will say this: The 11th year anniversary rocked:-) 

    Change a Massage Situation

    Soon after I started the Better Husband Project, I took the powerful lesson of remembering painful events and used it in my massage life.

    At one point, Lisa and I each increased the size of our private practices to help fund another business we had started. And I took some clients just for the money, and I dreaded working on them.

    For a while, I pulled out the therapeutic rapport and did my best to push on, but because my values and personality were so different from theirs, the mental stress eventually became unbearable.

    That’s when I put the pain (of having to work on them) on paper. I went back and connected with the pain frequently so that I would continuously have the emotional drive to change the situation.

    And it worked.

    Because I kept lighting the emotional pilot light, I pushed myself to find ways (more writing and teaching gigs) to replace these clients and I didn’t lose any money in the process.

    Start a Massage Business

    Creating multiple streams of income is no different than starting a massage business in terms of staying motivated.

    If you want to or are trying to start a massage business and are stuck on a task, try this’:

    1. Remember and feel the painful events associated with your current work situation.

    2. Write them down.

    3. Recall the painful events every day.

    4. When you feel yourself losing your motivation to change, go back and reread your Painful Events notes.

    You’ll quickly reconnect to what’s at stake if you don’t follow through.

    5. Give yourself plenty of pats on the back for each positive step you take.

    My Work in Progress

    I continue to make plenty of mistakes as a spouse.

    And I can still fall into old, unhealthy habits, but when I do, I harness the unpleasant feelings around the situation I want to change and then I have the motivation to stay the course.

    Your Work in Progress

    You can use this same strategy to start and grow a massage business.

    Need to talk to that wellness center about renting space per massage but you can never get around to it because of X, Y and Z?

    In other words, you habitually don’t follow through, and you need to change that.

    Let’s take a peek at your painful events list…

    Oh, looky: Four deep tissues in a row without a break on Monday. By the way, doesn’t this happen at least once a week even though you’ve told the front desk only to schedule 2 deep pressures in a row?

    Need more?

    How about management giving showing you little to no respect for the work you do?

    Okay, let’s not overdose you.

    You get the point.

    Use a therapeutic dose of pain to motivate you and to keep you moving in the right direction.

    If you need external accountability ask a partner, friend or colleague.

    And if you need more than that, click here.

    One more thing, I have an email group.

    It’s free and I’ll send you my latest info weekly.

    Sign up below:-)

  • The Biggest Mistake in My Massage Career

    What was my biggest mistake in my massage career?

    Wait, just one…I’ve got 4 screaming Pick me! Pick me!

    Okay, just one.

    Here’s my pick: Mission creep.

    Specifically, I didn’t stay focused on building a massage business.

    I kept chasing other business ideas instead.

    Why did I chase other business ideas?

    Because I wanted to be more than Mark massage.

    I wanted to be Mark writer.

    Mark audio history business owner.

    Mark Renaissance person.

    But there’s more to my mission creep than me just not wanting to be boxed in.

    Though I wanted the independence of working for myself, being 100% responsible for bringing in the business scared the pee out of me.

    That’s why a chunk of my massage career was punctuated with side jobs, like new business fitness center consultant and personal trainer.

    Don’t get me wrong, having a job outside of massage is not a bad thing at all.

    But a potential trap of adding another job is that you may be bailing on your massage career/business.

    The Insidious Bail

    The thing about bailing is that it’s sometimes hard to know when you’re actually doing it.

    In my work life bailing wasn’t: I’m out of here!

    It was more like: I can make a few extra bucks doing this.

    The “this” paid some bills. And so I did more of “this”.

    Meanwhile, the more I did “this”, the less time I had to get massage clients.

    You see where this is going.

    It’s a slow bail with an inevitable outcome—your massage door slowly closes.

    Talk about a catch-22, right?

    The additional job is paying bills and provides emotional security. But the additional job starts to pull you away from your massage career. And the next thing you know, you’re thinking about getting out of massage altogether because it’s not making you enough money.

    At this point, it’s easy to jump to this question: So, how long should I try before I give up on the idea of having a successful massage business/career?

    My answer: I have no idea.

    Sure, you can set an arbitrary timeline around the question, but I don’t think that is going to put you anywhere closer to success.

    There’s a better question to ask and it’s this: How hard should I try before I give up?

    I have an answer for that one: Harder than you’ve ever tried.

    Market and do massage until it hurts and then do it some more.

    The Way “Hurt” Has Worked for Me

    When I went all in with massage, I was forced to figure out the “bringing in more clients” thing.

    And I did.

    Here’s what I did.

    Then when I had so many client that my arm went numb and my elbow wanted me out of command central, I was forced to figure out the body thing.

    And I did.

    Here’s how I did that. (Btw, another solution would be to hire people to work for you. We did that, too.)

    The point is that you don’t get to be a successful parent unless you stay the course and work harder than you’ve ever thought you could so that you have the opportunity to figure out the challenges of parenting.

    And you don’t get to have a successful massage business/career unless you work your butt off bringing in and working on clients.

    The Price to Pay

    Does avoiding mission creep, being focused on your massage business/career, mean you have to give up your free time?

    Yes, but only for a very short period of time in the grand scheme of things.

    Once you get your massage business/career to where you want it to be, you then have the freedom to create other revenue sources or use your time elsewhere.

    Ask my massage therapist friend, Bobbi. She goes away 3 months of the year and returns to her massage business as if she had never left.

    Is it Mission Creep or Time to Add an Additional Job?

    So how do you tell the difference between mission creep and a legitimate need to add another job?

    Well, first you need to ask yourself what part of your income do you want massage to represent? 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100%?

    If it’s a 50% or below then obviously you need another job, too.

    And if you’re hovering around the 75% plus range and you’re current massage income isn’t enough to pay the bills, then, yes, get that 2nd job.

    But beware of mission creep because this is what’s going to happen next.

    You’ll be dead tired from working that extra job and you’ll feel like you’re working hard enough to bring in clients, but the truth is you won’t be.

    Accept the pain.

    Do more.

    By doing you’ll create the perfect environment for figuring out how to build a massage business/career that works for you.

    Need more help bringing in clients?

    If you’re starting your business or have a business that is making less than 30K, go here: Jumpstart.

    If you have a business that is paying the bills, but you want to take it to the next level, go here: Accelerator.

     

     

  • How to Stop Feeling Like an Impostor

    How to Stop Feeling Like an Impostor

    Do you need massage confidence? Then do this:

    1. Get reliable feedback about your massage.

    2. Then tweak your massage if you need to.

    That will give you confidence 80% of the time. For the other 20% of the time…

    3. Do a high-power pose.

    High-power?

    Yeah, think Wonder Woman pose. (Believe it or not, there’s science to this.) 

    Seriously, Dude?

    I know this seems way too simple, but here’s how all this looks in real life.

    You have some solid confidence because you got good feedback and tweaked your massage.

    Then one day during a massage you press a couple of spots that make your client squirm.

    Ruh-roh.

    You start thinking: Is my pressure off?

    Next thing you notice is that your client’s breathing is shallow.

    So you slow your stroke down, anticipating your client will start breathing deeper, but instead you get a head adjustment.

    Is she hating on my massage!?

    Then you lift her arm to put it under the sheet, but she won’t let it go and does all the work.

    OMG, I suck!

    Your fingers now feel like wooden sticks. Your strokes are awkward. And you can’t get out of your head.

    And that’s precisely when a high-power pose can snap you back into that “doing not thinking” mindset.

    But before we get into high-power poses, let’s talk about steps 1 and 2: Evaluating your massage and tweaking it if necessary.

     A Massage Confidence Struggle

    Jim was in his late 40’s when he graduated from massage school. He was a hard worker but his massage needed improvement and he knew it.

    In fact, he thought he was so bad that he felt like an impostor.

    I put together a plan and we started working on his massage issues. Soon his massage started to get better, but Jim still had that little voice in his head telling him that he was an impostor.

    Looking for Massage Confidence

    Here’s some more background about Jim: He wasn’t so good at relationships.

    Don’t get me wrong, Jim was a kind person and everyone liked him. His issue was staying engaged with and connected to people.

    In some ways, I saw massage as a way that Jim could connect with people through helping them, and it could serve as a template for deepening his personal relationships.

    And I had a feeling that Jim sensed this, too.

    So, to me this was not only a massage mission, it was also a life mission.

    Reliable Plan and Feedback

    That’s when I brought in reinforcements–fellow MTs who could give Jim reliable feedback.

    After a few sessions, Jim knew he was getting better because his colleagues were giving him good reviews.

    Even so, Jim refused to work on a paying customer.

    Quite frankly, the little voice in his head just wouldn’t shut the f*** up.

    Fighting the Little Voice

    I tried countering that voice by reminding Jim that he had graduated from massage school.

    I also reminded him that though he wasn’t the massage therapist he wanted to be at the moment, he was on track to being that therapist.

    He agreed with me, but still wouldn’t budge.

    So, I pulled out the guilt card. In a nice way I let him know that I’d put a lot of time in with him and that our goal wasn’t to just massage MTs. It was to massage a paying customer.

    That’s when I asked him to do me a favor and work on a paying customer even though he felt like an impostor.

    Unknowingly at the time, I was asking Jim to fake it (pretend he wasn’t an impostor) till he made it (felt like he was a massage therapist).

    Jim hated me at that moment, but agreed.

    Fake It Till You Make It

    Faking it, pretending to be something that you’re not feeling, will actually create physiological changes in your body.

    For example, if you hold a pen in your mouth (which forces you to smile) it can make you feel happy.

    Researcher Amy Cuddy, in her moving and powerful TedTalk (a game-changing must see video), explains that pretending to be powerful can actually make you feel powerful.

    In her experiment participants were asked to hold a high-power pose (e.g., Wonder Woman stance) or low-power pose (e.g., arms drawn in) for two minutes. Participants’ testosterone and cortisol levels were measured before and after they posed.

    Powerful and effective leaders have high testosterone (which means they’re assertive, confident and optimistic ) and low cortisol (which means they don’t freak out in stressful situations).

    High-power poses produced a rise in testosterone and a lowering in cortisol, the hormonal characteristics of powerful leaders!

    Cuddy concludes: “Our bodies change our minds, and our minds change our behavior, and our behavior changes our outcomes.”

    In terms of massage, assuming your massage is on solid footing, if you fake it, pretend you’re a competent massage therapist even though you don’t feel like it at the moment, you can do more than make it—you become what you’re pretending to be.

    Dude, are you telling me to do a Wonder Woman pose when I’m working on a client?

    Not Wonder Woman.

    Find your own.

    For me, a high-power pose happens when I get vertical and can raise an arm in the air.

    That arm raising is not only a good stretch, it also feels strong and empowering to me.

    I typically hit a high-power pose 5 to 15 times during a full body massage.

    It’s such a habit for me that it feels unnatural not to do it.

    Jim Nearly Snapped My Shoulder

    Oh, about Jim, well, he “faked it” and the client loved the massage:-)

    A few weeks later, he nearly dislocated my shoulder when we high-fived to celebrate his first repeat client.

    As Jim accumulated more wins, his confidence grew and that little voice was put in it’s place:-)

    Here’s the recap.

    3 Steps to Massage Confidence

    (1) Find someone objective in the field of massage who will act in your best interest and give you reliable feedback about your massage, like a fellow MT, a friend (who gets massaged regularly), a teacher or a coach.

    (2) If you need to tweak your massage, go ahead, but make sure you have confidence in the tweaking plan and continue to massage as many people as you can.

    (3) If you feel an impostor moment coming on hit a high-power pose.

    It’s not rocket science.

    It’s body language science.

    Now that you’re confident with massage, let’s make sure you get confident with bringing in the business.

    Get my how to build a massage business course right here: Jumpstart. 

  • Advanced Dreaming: Did a Wheel Fall Off?

    Advanced Dreaming: Did a Wheel Fall Off?

    Is your dream slipping away?

    Just to be upfront, I’m not here to convince you to pursue your dream.

    I’m here to ask you a question: Did a wheel come off?

    Wheel?

    Yeah, if your life is a car, did a wheel fall off?

    In other words, did something in life throw you for a loop?

    Like did you lose a job?

    Get hit with a big, unexpected bill?

    End a relationship?

    It’s an important question to ask, especially in regards to your dream because losing a wheel can stop a dream dead in its tracks.

    The Double Whammy

    Do you know what makes losing a wheel even worse?

    Seeing someone who never loses a wheel.

    But here’s the thing, everyone loses a wheel at some time.

    The person who look like she has it all together all the time just doesn’t know when a wheel has come off.

    My wife, Lisa, and I have a friend, Felicia.

    Felicia’s an executive and is used to making big decisions that impact lots of people

    Her husband, Jose, only 62-years-old, was rapidly declining with a rare form of dementia. And when Jose started to become a threat to his paid companions and himself, Felicia decided to institutionalize him.

    She also sold her house and started to build a smaller one so that she could handle long-term care if Jose needed it.

    Basically, Felicia had a checklist and she methodically ticked off the next item to be done to ensure that she did everything she could to take care of her husband.

    When Lisa and I went to visit Jose on New Year’s Eve in the nursing home, he was slumped over in his wheelchair. He had moments of lucidness but the majority of the time it just seemed like he was existing.

    In the TV room next to Jose sat four women. It was unclear if they were actually watching TV or just existing, too.

    Yep, this is where the old people (and now Jose) go to die.

    Lisa and I had this overwhelming urge to throw Jose over our shoulders and run out of the nursing home with him.

    Bulletproof Felicia

    Felicia showed up a little later. She had brought non-alcoholic champagne to have an early celebration of the New Year.

    As we were drinking the bubbly and gathered around Jose bent over in his wheelchair, Felicia went on in detail about Jose’s precipitous drop in health.

    Then she stroked his back as she calmly explained how this was the best place for him in his condition.

    So, contrast Lisa and me wanting to break Jose out of the nursing home and Felicia, his wife, completely together, calm as a cucumber.

    Well, there’s more to the story.

    When Felicia toasted The New Year with us she didn’t have non-alcoholic champagne in her travel mug.

    She had cranberry juice and vodka.

    It’s her drug of choice that she uses day in and day out to numb the pain so that she can pretend a wheel hasn’t come off.

    Hot Mess

    When I was 28 all my wheels came off, like “bouncing down the road” off.

    I wrote dark and depressing prose.

    I did self-destructive things.

    And Lisa, my girlfriend at the time, had a suicide watch on me.

    (I guess this would be a bad time for me to pitch my coaching service, huh? Lol.)

    It was a horrible period in my life, but I learned something valuable about when a wheel or two or three or four fall off.

    You can put them back on.

    And when you do, anything is possible again

    This realization has become my recipe for not giving up on my dreams.

    The recipe goes as follows: This time in my life sucks and at the moment I see no possible way of fulfilling my dream BUT this is temporary situation because I’m dealing with stuff that’s clouding my vision and once I take care of business, I’ll be back on track to pursing my dream.

    Or the quick recipe: It’s the wheel that’s the problem, not the dream.

    So, as you may have guessed by now, I lied.

    I AM trying to persuade you to stay on course with your dreams.

    Which brings me to this question: What’s stopping you from pursuing your dream right now?

    Is it actually a wheel that’s off?

    All your time is spent taking care of your kids or your parents.

    You injured your neck.

    You had to remortgage your house.

    The person you had thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with is no longer there.

    Things hurt more because you’re older.

    You got in a relationship you don’t want to be in.

    Remember a wheel off doesn’t mean forever.

    And it certainly doesn’t mean The End.

    Start to put that wheel back on.

    And whoomp there that dream is.

    Still having trouble dreaming click here.

    And if you dream is to have your own massage business, sign up for my free massage business crash course: Jumpstart. We’ll get ‘er done:-)