In this episode I candidly talk about the courage you must tap into to raise your rates, change your hours or clientele and walk away from your employer to start your own business. Want to connect with me? Check out the show notes below for some links.
"When it comes to your massage business, if you aren't connected to your authentic self, if you're doing something within your practice that isn't aligned with who you are, because you're afraid of the discomfort of change, you're not alone. And there's a way for you to turn it around."
https://www.facebook.com/kristi.nelsonwaltrip/
https://www.kristiwaltrip.com/
https://kristiwaltripintegrativecoaching.vipmembervault.com/
In this episode I candidly talk about the courage you must tap into to raise your rates, change your hours or clientele and walk away from your employer to start your own business. Want to connect with me? Check out the show notes below for some links.
"When it comes to your massage business, if you aren't connected to your authentic self, if you're doing something within your practice that isn't aligned with who you are, because you're afraid of the discomfort of change, you're not alone. And there's a way for you to turn it around."
https://www.facebook.com/kristi.nelsonwaltrip/
https://www.kristiwaltrip.com/
https://kristiwaltripintegrativecoaching.vipmembervault.com/
When it comes to your massage business, if you aren't connected to your authentic self, if you're doing something within your practice that isn't aligned with who you are, because you're afraid of the discomfort of change, you're not alone. And there's a way for you to turn it around. Hello, my friend. Thanks for tuning in to The Massage Project. I'm Christy Waltrip, and today I want to talk about why it can be so hard for massage therapists to make a change in their practice. My intention is to shed light on the challenges of change. I want to light the path for you on steps towards change by unpacking why we feel the way we do and how we can gain courage to take small steps that will give you big results. But before we dive into today's topic, I want to introduce two things I'm working on. One, One is the rebranding of my massage practice. I've been a massage therapist since 2006. So going on 20 years and I've come into a season where I'm working with a specific group of clientele. Now this is something I would have shied away from in the past, but it feels very clear and solid to me right now. And it allows me to connect with my clients in a deeper and more meaningful way. I look forward to sharing my Thai yoga massage practice vision with you very soon. So stay tuned. The second thing, as some of you know, I've done coaching training in the past and during COVID, I pursued coaching massage therapists and had some great success stories. Then I focused on my administrative career at a post secondary institution and began following my dream to become advanced certified in Thai massage. So after a recent year of very exciting experiences with travel and massage education, I'm ready to introduce my new coaching program. Soon I'm opening the doors to work with a select group of massage therapists and business owners in a one on one coaching program called Bloom. If you are ready for personal and professional growth, this is for you. So to get on the list, or if you just want more details, reach out to me on Facebook or email. My contact information is in the show notes. So let's get started with today's topic. Why are we afraid to make changes in our business? Here's the thing. Even if you aren't where you need to be, or even if you tried to make changes before in your business, and you've made mistakes. Maybe you've even made the mistake more than once the same mistake more than once, maybe multiple times feeling that this time it'll be different. And then maybe you hit a wall and thought, I'm just not even going to make that change anymore, but it won't leave you alone. That thought of change won't leave you alone. And it keeps calling out to you. You're not alone in this and all of this is okay. Why is it okay? Because self awareness is a journey. It's not a destination. You will have different seasons in your massage career and they don't tell us this in massage school and it's not their job to tell us this in massage school. Really. We don't always get to explore this way of thinking, especially when we're a massage student. Why? Because we're learning a trade and we're preparing for licensure and we're thinking, okay, how am I going to get a return on this investment? After I go to massage school and pay X amount of dollars and spend however many months it takes to prepare for your licensure exam and to get licensed in your state. So I really want to talk about. The season after that, once you've gotten into your groove and you've been a licensed massage therapist and you've got massages under your belt, maybe you've done some teaching. Maybe you've been a massage therapist for a year, 3 years, 15, 20 years or over 20, After talking to massage therapists and my coaching and my education travels, I want to talk about these three changes that really come up in conversation. the top three changes that massage therapists want to make, one of them is to increase Our rates that is really popular because we're in we're in this for because, yes, we love people and we want to help people, but we're also in this business because we want to make money. And that is totally. Okay. I want you to take ownership of that. So what are some of the thoughts that come about when we think. Okay, I want to increase my rates or I want to make more money. And by the way, side note, it is okay for you as a massage therapist to have this thought, this feeling, and this desire that you want to make more money. Okay, so some of the thoughts that can come up when we start to think about increasing our rates is how will we do that? How will we tell our existing clientele that we want to increase the rate of pay that they've been paying us sometimes for years?, I will say that this is a pretty common theme among massage therapists who have their own practice. Now, if you work as an employee for someone, I would say it's pretty common for employers to raise their rates. Typically, I don't know if it's once a year, once every three years, but it happens. And we don't have a say in that if we're working for someone else, right? It's almost better. I would, I would think that some people would say if someone is going to raise the rates for us, we don't want it to be on us. Right? We don't want to be the bad guy. So what will that look like? If I have my own private practice and I'm the one that set my rates in the 1st place, how can I ask for more? Right. It's so funny. It's so simple, but it really puts us into this uncomfortable feeling. So also, what will that look like? How will I tell them? How much will I ask for? How will I tell them? How will they react? Will I lose clients? That's going to be 1 of your 1st thoughts, right? You're going to think, well, if I'm charging X dollar amount, and I want to increase my rates by 15, what is that? And I can hear some of you go. Whoa. Hey, maybe you want to charge more. Maybe you want to add additional services to your. Sessions. So here's the thing. You're providing value with a dollar amount when you give a massage. I'm just going to go with the basic 60 minutes. We're going to talk about an hour. Think about what you charge for your hour massage. How does that sit with you? How long have you you have to take a lot of things into consideration? How long have you been in practice? How much experience do you have as a massage therapist? What kind of investing have you done in continuing education in your career? What type have you done? Has it been online classes? Have you gone in person? Have you done extra study on any specific type of modality? What is your location like when people come to get massages from you? Is it convenient? Is it convenient for them to book? Do you provide, extras for your clients? What do you provide during your massage sessions? Do you use hot towels? Do you use hot stones? Do you use aromatherapy? I'm not saying these things are necessary. I'm asking you to take an assessment of what your current services are for your basic. One hour or 90 minute massage really dive deep into this. We don't think about this after we've been doing it for a while and we could be on autopilot. But if you are thinking of increasing your rates, you have an obligation to assess the services that you are giving right now. What is it like to be in a client's shoes from the moment that they walk from the moment that they reach out to you for an appointment? Until they leave and they're rebooking their next appointment. What is that client experience like? Why is this necessary? Why am I even talking about this? Because you are asking your clients to pay more for the services that they already have. I'm not saying that you don't deserve it. Not at all. I am saying, I want you to gain confidence in increasing your rates and I want you to actually think about the value that you are providing right now. And if I had to guess. You don't have to do anything different to increase your rates. You have already provided all of the value. You may be undercharging right now. There's a lot of what ifs in the way I'm talking right now, right? Because we all have different, we work in different states. We offer massage to different target markets. So what are you doing? Who is your target market? Who are your clients and what is the core reason that you want to increase your rates? So the number one top change that we're talking about today is increasing your rates as a massage therapist. Now it's on you. I'm putting the ball back in your court. Assess, what you are offering right now. So within that increasing your rates, It might not be increasing your rates, but you want to work less. Well, if you want to work less and make the same amount of money or make even more money, you're definitely going to have to increase your rates as a massage therapist, right? So think about that. What does that look like? What do you really want? You really have to get specific with your thoughts. Now, another way that you can increase your confidence and increasing your rates is to invest in continuing education. Whenever you invest in something, you get a return or you want a return on it, right? So I, 10 years of my massage career, I was going for the cheapest In continuing education classes that I could go to, I was doing it to check a box off a list. I had to do 12 hours a year and that's what I looked for. I would look for free opportunities. I would look for teaching assistant opportunities. I did not want to pay for a class. If I absolutely didn't have to now, is that a bad thing? No, it's what I needed to do to get by. So as I've gotten older and I've been in the industry a little bit longer, I had to tackle that mindset. So what I began to do with the help of,, being in a community and talking about these challenges that I had and some mentorships, I started to invest in my continuing education and what happened was, was I scared to invest my money in continuing education? Absolutely. But it gave me confidence and. In that confidence, I was able to turn around and say, okay, I've invested in this class, in this course, in this modality, and now it is time. I am under obligation as a massage therapist and a business owner to increase my rates because I've invested my time and my money. To bring this improvement back to my practice. So I say that to say if there is a modality out there that you are looking, that you are really passionate about and you wanna more learn more about it, you owe it to yourself to invest in it financially and with your time as well. But if you do that, if you go and you invest in continuing education, you have an obligation to yourself and to your business and to your clients to raise your rates. But if you've made that investment, you need, you are under obligation to ask for a return investment on that. Okay, let's go to the second topic. We want to work with a more specific clientele. Now, it could be a little different than that statement I just made about working with specific people. It could be about working with specific clients who have specific needs. Okay, so what do I mean by that? Maybe you just want to work with prenatal clients. Maybe you want to work with geriatric clients. Maybe you want to do trauma informed massage. Maybe you want to work exclusively with cancer patients. Or maybe you want to rebrand your business to hold space for diversity, equity, and inclusion, whatever you are passionate about. And this usually happens a little bit after we've been a massage therapist, right? After we graduate from school, we get our license. We're out there in the world and we're just massaging the world. And then we kind of find our heart pulls us towards who needs us the most or who we want to help the most. The most and connect with the most. Okay. So what are some of the thoughts or feelings that come up when you think about working with a more targeted or specific clientele? Some of them can be, what if I. Lose clients like, will I be able to financially make it if I only work with a specific clientele? Well, let's talk about all the things that we need to think about when that thought comes into play. Let's say you want to work on prenatal clients. What are the pros and cons to that? Well, the pros are there's always going to be prenatal clients, right? There will always be a need for that. Well, what if some of your clients don't fit that mold? Or am I saying to get rid of those clients? No. What I'm saying is if you have a pull to work with a specific clientele, then you owe it to yourself and you owe it to your future clients within the organization. This specific target to go to continuing education classes. So you can be educated on how to bring a high quality experience and a massage session with these clients. So what I'm saying is if you want to work with prenatal clients, you need to go to some in person prenatal continuing education classes. And then guess what? None of that is going to do you any good if you will not talk about it to people. If you don't share, That you want to specialize or become advanced certified or whatever language you want to use. If you don't tell people that you want to work with prenatal clients, if you don't share that vision with the world, no one is going to know. And you're not going to get the return on your investment. And then guess what's going to happen. You're going to give up the dream because you're going to get discouraged. So you can work, you can literally do anything you want. In the massage industry, as long as it's not illegal and you're not hurting anyone. I've said that from day one, when I started doing my coaching, I believe anything is possible when it comes to a massage business idea. However, if you don't tell people about it, no, one's going to know about it. And that's not on them. That's on you. That's on you for not talking about your business and who you want your target market to be and who you can help. And some people might think, well, I don't want to. Make it too specific because then I feel like it's not inclusive. I get where that line of thinking could come in. However, that's why community is important with the massage therapy world. If I'm not someone who works. With cancer patients, or that's not my passion. I'm going to have a network of massage therapists that I can refer a client to. So, and that's another thing, don't be afraid to form community with your fellow massage therapists, and don't be afraid to give up one of your clients to another massage therapist. Okay. So I think I've talked about that enough. Let's talk about the third change massage therapists want to make, and this is a big one. I remember going through this one, transitioning from an employee to self employed. Now, there's a lot of different fears that could come up with this. If you've worked for someone, and I'm just going to speak from my own story because I know that one the best. When I graduated from massage school in 2005, and went and got my license. I never wanted to have my own business. That was not the dream. I wanted everything done for me. I wanted to show up, do the work and go home. I did not want to look for clients, make appointments, buy sheets, buy. Anything, any supplies that I needed as a massage therapist, I just wanted to show up and do the massage. That was all my brain would allow me to think that was possible for me because I had a lot of issues with self doubt and I had no self confidence as a massage therapist or really for what my purpose was in the world at that time of massage. Now, once I started working as an and I really had to sit with that. And that took about. Three years, I want to say working in spas, working for chiropractors and those Typically those thoughts came when I had a busy day and I was only making 50 percent of what was coming in, or if I had a slow day and my employer wanted me to wait for a walk in to come in the door, but not compensate me financially. So I won't tell all the stories that, you know, made me finally aware, like, wait a minute. I can do this on my own. Even if I made less money, I would be working less hours. So that's how those thoughts started to come to me when I wanted to transition from an employee to self employed. So this is a big one. This is a scary one. If you have this pull on your heart, Let me tell you, then it is meant for you. Don't let it die. Don't let that dream die. What I encourage you to do is I encourage you to stay connected with people who will help you speak success to that vision that you have. Okay, 1 thing that you can do is you can, you can listen to my podcast. You can reach out to me. I would be more than happy. to give you some words of encouragement. I also have a free course called the empowered massage therapist that talks you through a lot of these feelings that come up when you're just starting out in the business, or if you're a seasoned massage therapist and you're ready to make another change. So don't give up on this. And I know that this can be scary, but you need to take pen to paper. And again, I'm going to use that word assessment. Where are you at right now with your current employer? How much money are you making every week? How many massages are you doing every week? How much money do you get paid by the hour? What would it take for you to transition? How much money do you need to make in your own business? And then let's talk about overhead. Are you gonna be a mobile massage therapist? Are you going to rent a space somewhere? Or are you going to, form an alliance with another massage therapist and share a room? You've got to assess where you're at now and where you want to go. I will recommend that you do not make a hasty decision and just leave your job one day. I'm not saying that because I don't believe that you can do it. That's not it. I just don't recommend it. I think that There's a lot that can be said for assessing where we are. Where are we now? Where do we want to go? And don't be afraid to make a mistake. So those are just some of my thoughts on changes that massage therapists somewhere in their career are going to go through. You're going to want to change your rates. You may want to work with a more specific clientele. And you might want to transition from an employee to self employed. And then maybe one day we won't go into this right now. You become so successful that you think about creating a team. And that's the season that I'm in right now. And it is really a wonderful feeling and something I never could have dreamed for myself. So final thoughts. My three final thoughts are number one, write it down. It doesn't matter the change that you want to make. You need to assess where you are. You need to look at it, whether, and if you're, I don't write things down fine, type it, open a Google doc and just start typing. Where are you right now? What is the money you're making? What are the hours that you're working? What do you love about your job? What do you hate about your job? Write it down is number one. Number two is take one step. What is one step that you can take One actionable step that you can take to set this in motion. This is not an overnight decision. None of these are overnight decisions. I'm not asking you to go say, hey, I'm going to charge this and you never look back. I really want you to your, your clients are valuable. You are very valuable. And your business is valuable. And you need to take the time to make well informed decisions. So number one is write it down. Number two is take one step. Number three is get support. Support is very important. Massage therapy, if you have your own business, can be a very lonely place. I don't say that to be a Debbie Downer. I say that because It's just reality. If you're not renting a space with other therapists, you might be running a space with other therapists, but y'all just don't collaborate because of life. We're all busy. And maybe you just don't take the time to do it. And maybe you're not in the habit of going to in person, continuing education classes or seminars. So you don't get to connect with other people. I will say that this is a very important part. of our career as massage therapists is to collaborate with other massage therapists. And that's where the ideas come from. And you really learn about a lot about yourself when you spend time with other massage therapists and hearing them talk. So my last thought, courage to make a change in your business. Courage only comes when you begin taking action. So give yourself permission to make mistakes. Don't be afraid to make a mistake. It's going to happen. Anyway, if you're one of those people that wants everything to be perfect, or you can't put a social media post, or you can't do a live video until you think it's going to be perfect. You got to let that go dear, because that is just going to hold you back from all the changes that could come with your massage practice. If you're too afraid to make mistakes. You're already defeated. Don't let that get to you. Stay connected with me on this podcast. Go to my Facebook page and send me a private message. Let me know what this, episode is meant to you. If you have any questions or concerns about anything, I do these podcasts so I can connect with other massage therapists. So don't think you're bothering me. Oh, well, she's too busy. I don't want to bother her. Please bother me. That's what I'm here for. It's great talking to you until next time.