Category: Start/Grow Massage Business (0 – 30K)

So, I just finished a cruise, and I was expecting to have at least 3 or 4 YouTube videos to show you about the life of a massage therapist on a cruise ship, but I have nothing.

Why?

Because I’m dumb.

I thought that I would get on the cruise ship, walk up to the spa and talk to a massage therapist.

Boom.

But, alas, I walked away boom-less.

It didn’t dawn on me that my idea of interviewing a massage therapist on a cruise ship was like thinking I’d be able to interview Goofy at Disney World with no clearance from the corporate gods above.

Hey there, Goofy, glad to meet you. What’s that? Minnie Mouse is fooling around with Donald Duck, and Pluto showed up trashed at the parade. Can you speak louder into the mic?

Uh, that ain’t happening.

Disney has a brand to protect.

They can’t have an AWOL Goofy bad mouthing their shebang.

And a cruise line is not going to risk having a disgruntled massage therapist airing out her frustrations on my YouTube channel, even though I promised to ask nice questions.

So, the spa manager on the cruise ship basically “lost my paperwork” by saying she would check with corporate and that they’d get back to me if it was a go.

Surprise, surprise, they never got back to me.

By the way, if the interview had happened it would have been so watered down that it wouldn’t have been worth it–which brings me to this: If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m not a corporate kind of guy.

Are You a Work for Yourself-er?

I understand where they’re coming from. They have a lot of legal and image things to worry about.

My objection about working for a big business comes from my gut, from who I am.

I don’t want to wear a company shirt unless it’s my company shirt.

I don’t want to park in an employee space unless it’s my company’s designated space.

And I’m not going tell Sally that she has to pay extra for a deep pressure massage because for one, that’s an arbitrary distinction, and two, Sally’s deep pressure happened to equal my light pressure. (Not saying that happened when I was working for a massage spa.)

The bottom-line is that I’m basically un-hirable.

That means I better be ready to fend for myself.

Fending for Yourself in Stages

I’m not going to sugarcoat things, fending for yourself is scary. But I can make it less scary.

How?

By giving you this tip: Fend for yourself in stages.

In other words, don’t go completely out on your own all at once. Do it in stages.

Here’s what I did. First, I worked for a chiropractor.  Then I saw some clients on the side in my apartment as I continued to work for the chiropractor. About a year or so later I went out on my own and had my first office in a fitness center.

Feeling a little better about where you’re at now?

You’re not stuck; you’re in a stage.

You’re not procrastinating; you’re being circumspective (and procrastinating a little…lol).

When you work into “being on your own” in stages you have a chance to build solid referral sources which will keep your business cranking.

By the way, here’s how you build referral sources: How to Build Referral Machines.

Do More Than Just Massage

Along with staging your way into working for yourself, here’s something else to consider: You don’t only have to be doing massage to be on your own.

Once I was doing 70% “massage on my own” and 30% “personal training on my own”.

Another time in my life I was doing 60% “massage on my own” and 40% “business development for a business that wasn’t mine”.

The feeling I had in both situations was a feeling of independence–that I was calling the shots. In the 60/40 scenario, I knew that if the part-time business development gig didn’t work out, I’d simply have to get more clients or find another part-time job.

Are you getting jacked?

Then you’re probably not built to work for the man/woman.

Are you jacked and nervous?

Then you’re probably going to be a successful working-for-yourself-er as long as you accept that working for yourself comes in many flavors and is not always a straight line.

Here’s one more thing you’ll need: A plan.

Do you need more massage clients?

I know what that’s like. Early on in my massage career I was barely making a living and it took me a long time to figure out that I needed to hone certain skills. But once I became competent with these skills, I found a good living at the end of the massage rainbow.

What are these skills?

They are (1) fostering therapeutic rapport/care, (2) applying appropriate pressure, (3) doing relaxation massage with focus work and (4) executing basic marketing.

For those of you who are just starting out with massage, don’t freak out.

You can compete with LMTs who have been doing massage as long as I have—25+ years. (I stopped counting when that number spoke more about my age than it did about my experience.)

In fact, I think you can “add” 5 years of experience to your massage in a short period of time (6 months) IF you work my plan.

Ready to try?

First, repeat after me: I will channel all my energy into developing the following skills and won’t waste time with other less important skills.

Now, let’s focus on these essential skills starting with therapeutic rapport/care.

Four Essential Skills To Get More Massage Clients

Skill #1: Therapeutic Rapport/Care

You may have noticed that I didn’t say just “therapeutic rapport” or just “care”.

Why?

Well, to me “therapeutic rapport” is about caring for the client when she’s in the office.

“Care” covers all the other times, like:

Do you return clients’ calls quickly? Are you nice on the phone?

Do you follow up with the client after the first massage to see how he’s doing?

Does your advertising show that you care about clients and their needs?

Caring goes a long way with getting and retaining clients and is easy to amplify since we, LMTs, are natural, caring people.

So, go deep with caring.

This article will help you out.

What about hands-on massage skills?

Yeah, they’re pretty important, too.

Skill #2: Pressure

A top one in my book is being able deliver the appropriate pressure.

Hell, we even named our business PressurePerfect.

The right pressure relaxes the client.

The right pressure helps relieve pain.

Want to make it so that your client will never leave you for another LMT?

Then nail the pressure and have outstanding therapeutic rapport.

This video will help you out with getting the pressure right.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERhl08hkZi4[/embedyt]

Skill #3: Relaxation Massage With Focus Work

The last essential skill to cultivate is being competent at doing a relaxation massage with focus work.

When you’re competent with this skill your client will get off your table feeling relaxed and in less pain/discomfort than when she came in. And that’s some major selling-your-massage-without-ever-saying-a-word. By the way, relaxation massage with focus work is my bread and butter massage.

And no, you don’t need to know MFR, NMT, MAT or anything special to do good focus work.

You just need to have a basic understanding of anatomy and be spot on with your pressure.

Tight traps?

No problem. Spend more time working the traps with the pressure that provides pain relief.

Low back pain?

No biggie.

Focus on the QL and lower-back, spinal erectors nailing the pain relief pressure as you go.

Taking My Potential Clients

Now that you can snag my current clients with your souped-up skillset, you need to be able to take my potential clients, too.

You’re going to do that by getting customers to walk through your door before they walk through my door.

How do you do that?

Step #4: Execute basic marketing.

Here are two straight-forward strategies that will take care of basic marketing for you.

The first one is: Get noticed on the Internet by making a website that is engaging and is optimized for a Local Google Search.

A big, hairy deal?

No.

Some work required?

Yes.

But it’s upfront work.

Your phone will continue to ring after the upfront work is done.

In other words, once your website is good to go, you’ll reap the reward of new clients for many months to come without having to touch your website.

Here’s how you build a website that makes you money: My Easy Massage Website Guide.

The second marketing strategy is: Get noticed in your neighborhood by building referral sources.

This is simple.

Get your butt out there in your community and start making connections with people and businesses who can refer clients to you.

But, Mark, I want to stay in my massage room and get more massage clients.

Been there, done that.

Psst…it doesn’t work.

This is how you create referral machines: Get Referrals.

More Massage Clients in a Nutshell

Getting a little overwhelmed?

Let’s break it down to make it easier.

To take my clients hone these massage skills: (1) therapeutic rapport/care, (2) appropriate pressure and (3) relaxation massage with focus work.

And as you’re fine-tuning your massage throw in some basic marketing.

Start with your website or building referral sources in your community.

Okay, now that you know how to take my current and potential clients, how about showing me a little love and leaving me a few:-)

Need some more help?

This is a DIY website, but sometimes you may need some more guidance.

It’s a free class: How to Build a Massage Business Crash Course.

Need even more help?

Click here.

Understanding failure can lead to more massage money.

I bet you think I’m talking about lessons learned from failing. I’m not. I’m talking about something more nuanced. Here’s what I mean.

You’ve failed at something. I’ve failed. We’ve all failed.

After the failure our brains add the current failure onto a list of failures. Nice brain… As the list grows, we start to think: Nope, not even going to try.

But here’s the thing, when you “failed”, did you actually fail—try something and not succeed?

Or did you just not show up?

There’s a difference.

Why You Didn’t Fail

Think back to a “failure”.

Oh-oh, me first!

Once I had a side gig as a new business consultant for a fitness management company. My job was to get this fitness management company in the bid process for managing corporate fitness centers.

I was pretty good at getting us in the bid process via reaching companies over the Internet. But when it came to developing local business relationships face-to-face, I didn’t deliver. In fact, I spent a year avoiding any of those face-to-face interactions because I hated schmoozing.

Eventually, it was “Adios, Marcos.”

I was replaced by someone who would do the face-to-face interactions.

Added to my list of failures was new business consultant. But in retrospect, it can’t be any more obvious that it wasn’t a true failure because I literally hadn’t shown up to do half of my job.

Showing Up = Chance for Success

Recently, Kat, a client of mine, reminded me of what can be accomplished if you show up.

Kat is currently ranked 12^th in the nation in singles tennis in her age group. When I asked her about the key to her success, she smiled and said that are plenty of people better than her, they just don’t show up.

If you don’t show up, you have no chance of succeeding. Period.

2 Showing Up Keys 

For me, showing up involves two key things:

1. Recognition.

You first have to recognize when you’re hiding. Then you need to start

2. Self-negotiations.

By self-negotiations I mean that you make the “showing up” less painful for yourself by giving yourself outs.

For example, when my wife, Lisa, and I were doing an on-site massage business, I wanted to connect with local hotels, and there was a hotel association in our area that had a social every month.

Yay…more schmoozing…

But if I wanted to get to know the people in the industry, I had to schmooze, right?

The socials happened at night when I was busy doing massage. This made it convenient for me not to go. And I did that for awhile until I recognized that I was hiding.

Then I started to negotiate with myself: “I know you just got done work, but there’s an hour left to go at the social. Just go for 30 minutes.”

So I went to my first social and when I got there, things were worse than I thought they’d be. The handful of people I knew weren’t there.

I looked at my phone: 28 minutes and 22 seconds to go.

“Okay, if you introduce yourself to 3 people, you can leave anytime you want.”

I did and with 7 minutes and 13 seconds left, out the door I went!

When the next monthly social rolled around, I had zero interest in going back.

“Okay, Mark, just go to this one and you won’t have to go to amother one.”

I pinky-locked on that one fast.

This next social turned out to be easier, and when the third one rolled around, I went willingly, but I gave myself an out: If for whatever reason I want to stop going, I can.

You can see where this is going. Though I never loved the socials, they got easier, and I never used my out.

How to Make More Massage Money By Showing Up

Here’s another way showing up has helped me make more massage money.

By showing up to the marketing table (consistently working one marketing strategy) for a year, I nearly doubled my weekly income.

Did I want to show up?

Hells no.

I had to negotiate with myself like crazy.

“If you don’t get a referral after 3 months, you can stop.”

How You Can Make More Massage Money: Show Up

If you’re a little in the dumps because you think you’ve failed at marketing or starting a side business or taking your business to the next level or asking for a raise, think again. My guess is that your “failure” might be directly related to NOT showing up.

Give yourself a chance.

Recognize when you’re avoiding “showing up” and then try self-negotiations to stay on track.

Let me know what I can do to help you.

If you haven’t joined my email group, jump in.

You don’t have to say anything or do anything.

I send you links to my latest information. If you’re working on something specifically and want to let me know, I will send you links to material that can help you out.

It’s free and you can sign up below:-)

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