Rely on Success from the Start for the inspiration and practical business guidance you need to enjoy a long and rewarding career in massage therapy. Business naiveté is one of the primary reasons massage therapists leave the profession. The author has written this text to provide you with the business skills you need to envision and then launch a successful career. Set yourself on your path to success—right from the start.
This is the premiere guide to managing a successful massage career and running a successful holistic business. Written by veteran massage therapist and holistic business coach Jessica Abegg (LMT, MBA, MSIB), this visual, hands-on book contains all the tools readers need. It focuses on both practical concerns (such as finance and legal organization), and intangible elements of success (reflection, balance, and self-care). It also includes vital information on marketing and the Internet: knowledge often absent in the high-touch, low-tech world of massage. Throughout, it reflects the growing recognition that it is urgently important to help practitioners manage businesses and careers more successfully, as reflected in the inclusion of Business Practices in the new Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge.
The Second Edition of One Year to a Successful Massage Therapy Practice is designed for all massage practitioners, whether they are beginning their business or need to revitalize it. This new edition includes advice from many internationally-known massage therapists and educators about how they started their own careers. The text utilizes no-cost and low-cost marketing methods in a week-to-week planning format. Readers are encouraged to be proactive in their business and perform the activities set forth in each chapter, then journal their results. The marketing tips in this book are also useful for any holistic practitioner. When I started my own practice in a small town with a population of 4,000 people in 2003, these are the exact methods I used to build my own business, where I eventually employed a dozen practitioners. My goal was to get 365 new clients every year, and these methods allowed me to pull that off 9 out of the 13 years I owned the business. The original first edition of the book was published in 2008 (by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) to detail the methods I used to do that. The introduction to this book, The Road to Success, explains some of the traditional concepts of marketing. Part I, Mapping Out Your Journey, is the real beginning of your work--mapping out your road to success by defining your goals, developing a marketing budget and calendar that can co-exist in prosperous harmony, and avoiding common pitfalls. Part II, Preparing for Your Trip, is about getting yourself ready for prosperity by being sure all the basics are covered--things like choosing just the right name for your business, making a great presentation, getting informative and appealing business literature, and using your telephone as a sales tool in the best possible way. Part III, The Path to Promotion, addresses promoting your business by utilizing everything from methods that won't cost you a cent to advertising that will cost you as much money as you may want or have to spend, and how to make the best use of your hard-earned dollars by choosing your advertising venues wisely. Part IV, Trip Tips, is a resource guide in the form of appendices (national professional associations, sources for marketing materials, Internet resources, and a marketing calendar) to help you along on your trek to success. My Personal Journey, which is the most important feature in the book, will encourage readers to try the techniques found in the chapter. The premise of this book is that the therapist has to be proactive in order to be successful; the journaling will keep them on task, both in taking action and in tracking their progress. Each journal page includes the following parts: ■ "This Week's Activity": a concrete activity for the reader to perform, based on the chapter content--taking positive action in order to create prosperity. ■ "My Goals": provides space for readers to identify their goals based on the chapter content and the activity. ■ "What's in my way?": encourages readers to explore the obstacles facing them so that they can determine if the particular activity will or will not work for them. The true exploration is in whether or not there are real obstacles, or whether the perceived obstacles are just mental blocks of their own making. ■ "What action can I take to remedy the situation?": encourages readers to move past the obstacles, real or perceived, by deciding on a positive course of action and then taking it. ■ "One Year Progress Update": provides space for readers to return to each activity in a year to let them see how each activity did or did not work for them. It allows them to refine their marketing plan for the future.The Second Edition will put you well on your way to cultivating the practice your heart desires.
Reclaim the magic of massage. If you're feeling burned out, we can beat it. If you're worried about starting your own business, we can conquer those fears. If you think you suck at massage, you're wrong. Massage is weird. There, I said it, and I'd say it again. Whether it's communicating with first time clients, figuring out how the puzzle of pain works (and why it sometimes seems impossible to solve), or creeper-proofing your practice, it can be a lot for one person to figure out all on their own. That's why we'll figure it out together! Take the leap of faith with me and we'll demystify the mysterious, bust a few massage myths, and learn how to drop the worries and start focusing on outcomes. We'll get through it together, one chapter at a time.
Massage therapists are millionaires waiting to happen. Each and every massage therapist has the capability of becoming a millionaire through various business opportunities. This book, "How to Make a Million Dollars as a Massage Therapist" depicts the opportunities available to massage therapists that compliment their core business services. This book does NOT promote MLM opportunities, rather, additional forms of social, promotional and income-generating activities that promote incredible wealth and ongoing income every single month - even while a massage therapist sleeps. This book shows you EXACTLY how to accomplish all of that, while making a million dollars in a reasonably short amount of time (1-2 years). Learn about how to start collecting email addresses on your website, branding, identifying your ideal client, advertising on a budget, ways you can advertise your site for free, how to increase traffic to your website, the millionaire formula (chapter 3) that shows all the different avenues of income available to you that you should be taking advantage of, time management and delegation so you only work a reasonable number of hours per week, word of mouth advertising, referral networks, business to business advertising, how to make money while educating other people, how to expand on your current service and product offering, staying efficient and productive, how to benefit charities while making a lot of money in the process, how to write an eBook, pay-per-click advertising and how to keep your ad costs to a minimum, secrets and tips (best practices) to using each social media channel like Pinterest and Instagram, creating the best videos for your business, app development, making a membership-only section of your website, self-care, unique selling propositions, how to sell, cross-selling and upsetting, how to get people to share your posts, how to sell to women specifically and how men choose to buy things, and much more. Learn about what you, as a massage therapist, need to do to correct your marketing plans, how you are leaving money on the table with each and every service, how you can educate others and earn thousands of dollars even if you're in a massage session or sleeping, how to promote your business without discounting services, how to drive traffic to your website without spending a fortune, and much, much more. This book focuses on diversification of income-generating opportunities, including how to be efficient, delegate and be incredibly productive. You can make money through self-care, too! Build expertise, improve your reputation dramatically, build an unbelievable following on social media, and be a creator of amazing materials and avenues of media for your clients and the world to benefit from. Pick and choose which channels of income work best for your business in the formula initially while you get other creative elements ready for sale to compliment your business!
A practical and easily accessible guide for bodyworkers and movement teachers, including massage therapists and all other complementary therapists, to the setting up and running of a private practice in order to make it into a successful business. This book is for people who wish they didn't need this book; for people who wish that their passion for their work was all they need to run a business but have learned that it is not. This book provides guidance to give the reader a head for business while maintaining their heart for their work. Filled with practical real-world explanations of basic business skills, it is written with warmth, humor, and an appreciation for the heart-led work of everyone in the health and wellness world. From bookkeeping to financing, business plans to contracts, the reader will find answers to the most basic questions: where do I start and how do I do that? When you love your healing work and need to learn how to run your business this book is the friend you need.
Present this quick, effective method for assessing and managing common medical conditions! The central tool of this text is the decision tree, a simple flowchart that helps students quickly determine the optimal massage therapy approach for specific medical conditions. A Decision Tree is included for each of the more than 50 conditions discussed in the book, with massage considerations listed for numerous additional conditions in brief. Also unique to this text are questions therapists can ask clients during the interview process to help the therapist understand not just the medical condition, but how it presents in a particular client.
Massage therapists need basic, practical business advice such as low to mid-cost marketing techniques, taxes, and recordkeeping, but there is also no denying the benefits of “been there, done that” information that can only come from someone else’s experience. How to Start a Home-based Massage Therapy Business offers a gold mine of tips and ideas that can lessen the learning curve, stimulate thinking outside-the-box, and increase the odds of having a wildly successful practice.
Reflects all updates made to the 2nd edition of the text, and features teaching tips, suggested activities, and answers to self-tests. Certain chapters also include activities that the instructor can copy and hand out, such as crossword puzzles, labeling exercises, and flash cards. A test bank on CD-ROM allows the instructor to mix questions to create and print unique tests.
