The Massage Institute

07/21/2024

Free websites are not worth your time.

If you go for "free", you won't own the domain name, and your your website address will be too long and strange to put on a business card or sign.

I know because I build websites, and I went the free website route when I first started massage.

Here is the cheapest way I know to build a website, and it is what I do now: ;Cheapest Way to Build a Website: https://www.makethemostofmassage.com/cheapest-way-to-build-a-website-comparing-bluehost-dreamhost-and-wp-engine-for-small-businesses/

Have a great day!

04/22/2024

Hey, it's Mark.

Today I just wanted to say: Keep going.

Why?

Well, to be honest, I'm sort of giving myself a pep talk.

Yesterday, I had a moment where I wanted to give up because our business wasn't where I wanted it to be even though our business was showing all the signs of moving in the right direction.

I believe wanting to give up is a common reaction when doing anything that is hard.

If you didn't have it, then you would have a whole set of other problems.

However, if you go with your feeling to give up with every negative situation (e.g., you have a bad client week), then you are not going to get anywhere or it's going to take you a long time to get there.

Trust me. I've done that.

My giving up may look a little different than yours. My giving up usually involves starting a new project.

But now I have way to not give up before I should: I put a time limit on a project.

For instance, my goal is to triple our business by the end of 2024.

Yesterday started out bad because we had two therapists with 5 openings between them.

I was doing massage and obsessing on where I wanted our business to be.

Eventually, the day got better and 3 out of the 5 openings filled.

The thing is, even if they didn't fill, my promise to myself was to press hard for a year.

And when I look at it that way, the work is paying off. With 8 months left to go in the year, I am 25% closer to reaching my goal.

Big picture, Mark, I said to myself. It is working. Keep pressing.

And so I will.

Here's to picking an end-date to a project and pressing hard until you run through the finish line. :-)

Have a great day!

Mark

04/08/2024

An important thing I did to build my massage practice is to get good with pain-relief massage.

I explain how I do pain-relief massage here:

Massage for pain relief is what many customers want. You can master it quickly without spending money. Here's how to do it:

04/01/2024

Hey, it's Mark.

Do you feel like your not working when you are marketing your business?

I did.

The reason I did was because in the past I wasn't getting paid to do it.

But that is a very visceral response.

If I really thought about it, payment happens down the line, in the future, when I get more business from the marketing that I did.

If you're like me, it's hard to take the long perspective and stick with marketing.

It's much easier to stay in the massage room where I'm getting paid.

Unfortunately, if you stay in the massage room, you won't be able to grow your business beyond your personal referral sources.

That may be enough for you, but if you dreamed of a bigger business with employees or subcontractors, you have to get out of the massage room and market your business.

Here's something that might help you keep the long perspective in mind: As your business grows, you can start to pay yourself for your marketing work.

Then you will have no doubt you are working!

But for now, if you waver about marketing, remember you are bringing in future clients for your "unpaid" work and, if you stick with it, eventually, you will have a process that brings in clients and pays you for your marketing time.

Keep it moving!

03/25/2024

If your business is not growing and you feel stuck, read this: https://www.makethemostofmassage.com/4-steps-to-a-massage-income-breakthrough/

Hint: To make this work for you, don't skip steps 1 and 2.

They are what will keep you on target to complete steps 3 and 4.

Have a great day!

Don't think you can reach the massage income level that wanted to reach? Well, you can. Here's how. (Hint: very cheap marketing.)

01/13/2024

Hey, it's Mark.

I was looking for an electronic sign recently for PressurePerfect Massage (https://www.pressureperfectmassage.com/), and I learned a valuable lesson: When you are selling something (like massage), take time to let your emotions settle down.

If not, you may end up doing something like this:

Electronic Sign for Sale

"These signs have been used on postal sorting machines. They are solid, good sign with another 20 years left on them. They were thousands new but used of course lowers the price. You will need to get a 30 dollar remote keyboard to change the message as much as you want to like happy birthday to lunch 1200 to 1pm. This does not come with a remote, you will have to get one from the alpha company for the 4120 c display . Do not ask me for the remote or where im located , its in the post. I am selling the sign and the 10 foot power cord nothing else no lessons on how to program it no delivering it in different states no I will sell them for 50 bucks or any other lowball bs. Im getting tired of the questions . This is a good product if you want it buy it if you dont, go away.I am in Levittown Pa 19054 USA i will not ship. Know what you are buying. I lost serious overtime due to people saying they will pick up but dont show. I could have worked so if you say your gonna be there, be there or let me know you wont if you cant. What I lost in ot is more then I will make from these signs at this price ".

Not only did I not want to buy from this buyer, he turned me away from this type of sign by making it seem like a big, hairy deal to get one working. Eventually, I found an LED writing board, which turned out to be a perfect fit for my advertising needs.

Back to the ad: The ad is a train wreck. But the most messed up thing with this ad is that the seller doesn't even know it's an ad.

Which brings me to the point of today's business tip: Everything you do in the public sphere is an ad for your business.

How you respond to a good, so-so or a negative review is an ad.

How compassionate you are to the last client of a long day is an ad.

If that seems like a lot of pressure to be on best behavior, it is.

But that pressure isn't a bad thing if you are getting the goodies for being on your best behavior: happy people around you, more money and a thriving business.

Back to the person who threw up his emotions in his ad that he didn't know was an ad: What if he gave himself some time to process his emotions? His ad might have sounded like this:

These signs have been used on postal sorting machines and were thousands of dollars new. They are solid, good signs with another 20 years left on them.

With the sign I am selling, I am including a 10-foot power cord. However, you will need to get a $30 remote from the Alpha company for the 4120 c display keyboard in order to change the message on the sign. Go here for that.

For learning how to program the sign, go here.

Shipping this sign is cost prohibitive; so, this item is for local pickup only.

I am only asking $50 for this powerhouse of a sign; so, there is no room for negotiating.

I cannot provide anymore technical or manufacturing information about the product than I already have. If you have questions about the product, go here.

Last, please check out the pictures and videos of the sign that I have provided. This sign will get peoples' attention, and you won't have to worry about replacing it for a long time!

What do you think of my rewrite?

Granted, not an ad masterpiece, but a lot less angry and more user-friendly, right?

Last, thought: I believe being aware that I am a walking ad for my business has made me a more thoughtful person than I would have been if I didn't have to care what other people thought.

I'll take that byproduct any day. :-)

Have a great day!

Mark

01/06/2024

Hey, it's Mark.

I had a bad day yesterday.

It started out to be a great day.

All our therapists were booked through the weekend, then things started to unravel.

One no show.

Then another no show.

And another no show.

A call for a couples massage on a day when we had light coverage and couldn't accommodate the request.

Our landlord thinking that we agreed on a rent increase on January 1. (He was wrong.)

More things happened, but I'm going to spare you the details.

I felt deflated, and my mind started to spin a tale of how I should give up my 2024 goals for the business.

But then I remembered a book that I had read last year: Chatter.

The book is about managing the self-talk in your brain (in my case, yesterday, the negative self-talk) through scientifically proven strategies.

One strategy to manage negative chatter is to zoom out and look at the big picture.

In other words, my bad day was one day in a 365 day year.

Also, if I looked at other things going on with the business, they were mostly positive, like bookings increasing.

Did that "zoom out" put me in a good mood.

No.

But it did help me from jumping off the deep end and pulling my attention elsewhere, away from the the business.

If your self-talk is bringing you down or pulling you in a wrong direction, I recommend reading Chatter.

Have a great day (and good conversations in your head)!

12/25/2023

Happy Holidays!

Enjoy your family and friends, and when you are back in work mode, think about this: Selling gift certificates, especially before holidays. (There are a lot of holidays throughout the year. New Year's is around the corner.)

Why gift certificates?

They sell themselves.

You just have to let potential customers know you have them available.

At our PressurePerfect Massage location in Phoenixville, we sell them online through Square and at our office.

If you already sell gift certificates, sell more.

How?

In this updated post--Sell Without Selling: Gift Certificates--I explain the ways I sell gift certificates in a totally non-sales-y way:

If you’ve tried to be a salesperson and it’s absolutely not you, don’t sweat it. There are ways to sell massage without really “selling”. Gift certificates play an important role in the sell-without-selling game plan. I’m Not a Salesperson When I was young, I had a sales job at a local e...

12/18/2023

We are grinding it out.

Specifically, we are building our Phoenixville office to compete with the franchise massage spas in the area.

In other words, lots of massage therapists and lots of rooms.

Years ago, I wrote a blog post about competing with the big, franchise massage spas--and what I said then still holds true to how we provide our service and market our massage business today.

I think it is worth a read:

I have a “that’s good, but wtf?!” feeling towards national massage spas, like Massage Envy. The “good” part is that they provide steady work. The “wtf?!” part is everything else: Low wages, a churn and burn business model, and the soul sucking break room where if you weren’t already ...

12/11/2023

When you have your own business, you may not have a lot of marketing money.

Whether you have money or not, you can still develop and execute a robust marketing plan by focusing on the people who help you grow your business.

For instance, if a chiropractor refers a lot of clients to you, send her a holiday gift. If you don't have any marketing bucks, give her a gift certificate for a massage from you.

The same if you have someone working for you: Give her a bonus--or if you don't have any marketing dollars, give her a gift certificate for a free massage from you.

The idea is to use marketing money, ingenuity and creativity to strengthen the relationships you have with people who help keep your business running.

Hand & Stone can run a commercial to drive business through their doors, but they can't develop ironclad relationships like you can.

Double down on relationships with your community, customers and employees and my bet is that you will grow your business like nobody's business.

Have a great day!



11/20/2023

My wife, Lisa, and I were having a discussion last week.

I asked her what her "now Lisa" would tell her 18-year-old Lisa.

She said: To try harder in some things and not as hard in others.

That perfectly summed up how I felt, too.

The problem with life is that you often don't know what things to be more persistent at until you are older.

In business, I learned this hack that helped me figure out what to do sooner than later: Turn up the pressure.

This revised post explains what I mean:

Starting is a massage practice comes with a lot of pressure. But if you have a plan, don't let the pressure stop you. Here's how I use pressure to grow my business and not my worry..

11/13/2023

It's okay to be afraid as long as you are not paralyzed.

Massage talk therapy session starts now. Unrealistic concerns will hold you back from building the massage life you want. Let's talk this out.