Successful business practices include give and take. As a massage therapist, you are a giver. In some ways, massage is a perfect fit for givers. Givers provide great customer service by going above and beyond, which creates loyal clients. Givers also have a strong network of professional allies, because their giving extends to colleagues, too.
However, being a giver can be bad for business if you are giving away time, money and mental energy. Barring the advent of personality transplants, you can’t change your giving nature–but you can learn how to manage it to build a successful massage practice.
First, you will need to set and stick to a price that is fair for you. Then you will need to protect your time by adopting key scheduling rules. Last, you will need to insulate yourself from emotionally draining clients by employing redirecting techniques.
Let’s get started.
Stop Giving Your Massage Away
Have you ever done one of things below?
• Ray can’t afford you massage once a month, so you give him a steep discount every time he comes in.
• You haven’t raised your price in 5 years because you know some of your clients struggle with money.
• You do massages for free when someone really needs one.
Don’t worry if you have done one or all three of the above. You are not destined to fail in business. In fact, givers are good for a business. A landmark 2013 meta-analysis found “the link between employee giving and desirable business outcomes was surprisingly robust.”
The problem occurs when you work for yourself and no one (such as a corporation) is regulating your giving. And, let’s face it, left to your own devices, you will give the shop away.
Mike Precopio, executive director of a nonprofit for mentoring entrepreneurs, told me that when you are setting a price for your massage, you have to be honest with yourself. If you know you are not good at being fair to yourself, “make a commitment to price yourself at least at the prevailing market rate, preferably a little higher, and no more than 5% lower than the prevailing market rate.”
He explains that having a price-matching rule takes the subjectivity out of pricing—and in the giver’s case, the undervaluing of services. It makes complete sense, right? Follow the rule, post your price on your website and all is good—that is, until someone blows it up by calling and asking if you have a discount for seniors, veterans or people who can’t afford your price.
The answer to the face-to-face discount question is to be proactive. Decide if you want specific discounts for specific populations before customers start asking you the discount question. Then codify your decisions by writing down exactly what discounts, if any, you will be offering. Next, post the discounts on your website and in your office. When you have something to point to, it’s going to make it easier for you to stick to your pricing rules.
By the way, there may be a time where you want to make an exception to the rule. That’s OK, because you are in a habit of following your discount rules—and to break a discount rule now requires you to think about it. Thinking is friction.
Habit researcher Wendy Wood, author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick,” describes friction as a way to prevent yourself from reverting back into a habit that isn’t serving you well in a particular situation.
Friction is powerful. Imagine you have incurred some debt. You decide no more credit cards.
You are paying cash only. You about to purchase a $300 chair. You take out 15 $20 bills, tip money that you saved. For a split second, you think about all the work involved to make that money before you hand that money to the cashier. That’s a lot harder than handing over a credit card, right?
By the way, if you are using free massage as an actual marketing strategy where you are converting free clients to paying clients, you are not giving away your massage as long as you are following a plan. In that case, free massage is a means to a business end.
Now let’s protect your time.
Give and Take: Protect Your Time in the Massage Room
It never fails. Gracie says, “Can you check out my shoulder?” with two minutes left in the massage session. A giver spends an extra 10 minutes on Gracie’s shoulder, for free.
One way givers can protect their time in the massage room is to squeeze time-suck clients into tighter scheduling. With less time to give away, the giver will have to decide which client she will disappoint, the time-suck client or the next client in line.
As Precopio emphasizes, it’s important to be honest with yourself. If you play this example through your head and see yourself choosing to appease the time-suck client, give yourself credit for recognizing that.
If that is the case, try this: Text your time-suck client before her appointment with a message like this: “Hi Gracie! Looking forward to seeing you today. Just letting you know I have a tight schedule today and I will have to stay on time. Thanks, and have a great day.”
Gracie may not understand that is the new rule going forward, but now you have laid the groundwork to say to her before each massage: “Is there any other area you can think of that you want me to work today? I just want to make sure I know everything that needs to be covered before we get started.”
Eventually, Gracie should get the message—and if she doesn’t, you have enforced your rule enough that it will be hard for you to slide backward.
Next, let’s address giving time away outside the massage room.
Protect Your Time Outside the Massage Room
It’s 10 p.m., and Josier texts you: “Do you have any openings tomorrow afternoon?” You text him back, and it takes you five minutes to work out a time with him. Meanwhile, you have disrupted your family time and feel resentful that clients text you late at night.
To combat giving your free time away for scheduling, Ken Martz, Psy.D, , author of “Managing Your Emotions,” suggests blocking off two or three downtime spaces in your daily calendar to answer texts and get caught up on scheduling.
This is especially easy to do with an online scheduler. In addition, an online scheduler can cut out a lot of texts and phone scheduling. Just provide clients with the scheduling link and post the link on your website and Facebook page.
For long-time clients who are used to texting or calling you, explain you are doing scheduling though your online scheduler now. If some clients can’t adjust to that change, provide them with times in your day when you return texts and phone calls.
We have covered giving away time and money. Now we have to address giving away “you.”
Protect Your Emotional Self
Terrell, a weekly client, is always complaining. Nothing ever works right and everybody is always against him. Terrell is not a bad person; he’s just a downer. You give him your full attention each massage, like you do with all of your clients, but at the end of the massage with Terrell you are always drained.
How can you share your ear without giving away all your mental energy?
The first line of defense, says Martz, is to have the business card of a trusted mental health professional you could hand to Terrell. In the massage room, Martz suggests three techniques—sleeper, solution and positive—to redirect Terrell’s negative trajectory.
1. Sleeper Technique
When Terrell first gets on the table, let him talk, and respond as you normally do. After a few minutes, soften your tone and comments to one or two words, like “yeah.” “mhm” and “OK”. Eventually move toward silence. Basically, Terrell can’t complain if he is asleep.
2. Solution Technique
Ask Terrell to solve his problem. Examples of questions to ask are “Wow, what are you going to do about that?” and “You’ve tried a lot already. What are you going to do next?” By encouraging Terrell to find solutions on his own, you are interrupting his negative loop and redirecting his mental focus.
3. Positive Technique
Hear and reflect the positive aspects of Terrell’s stories and conversations. Examples of reflecting positivity are, “Sounds like you handled that with grace/confidence/self-respect.” and “You have such a big heart for caring like that.”
By finding the positive elements in the negative stories, you are steering Terrell away from negative thinking.
You Got This
As you can see, managing your giving is going to take some work—but think about how life could be if you had more time, money and energy. Let that feeling be the force that compels you to make rules about pricing, scheduling and emotionally draining clients.
If you follow the rules long enough, they become habits—and habits become the guardrails that will ultimately channel your giving back to you.
About the Author
Mark Liskey, LMT, CNMT, is a massage therapist, business owner, teacher and blogger. You can access his free, massage-business crash course on his business page.
