Massage Therapist Success Mindset

Success Principles for the Massage Therapist Entrepreneur

Richard J. Platt

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781623173111
• eBook ISBN: 9781642798722
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Massage Therapist Success Mindset is an eye opening, practical guide for success which focuses on a crucial element that is not taught in massage school; mindset.

Within Massage Therapist Success Mindset, Richard J Platt leverages his knowledge and experience of being a massage therapist business owner and a clinical hypnotherapist for nearly a decade. He applies this information to educate and empower massage therapists to become change agents within their industry. Richard's approach is centered around raising awareness that career success is created through a multitude of subconscious beliefs picked up from childhood, which is responsible for 95% of the results. Massage Therapist Success Mindset shows readers:

• How to become aware of and shift out of old limiting beliefs
• How to identify their unique niche within the massage industry
• That any massage therapist can thrive with the applications of these tools
• And more!

Massage therapists who read Massage Therapist Success Mindset will not only be empowered with a much better understanding of themselves, but also have the knowledge of creating worthy goals that propel them toward the career they have always wanted.

“You know that without a doubt, you can be doing something you love, earning more while working less if you trusted that image in your mind. But then you sabotage it with fear of the unknown.”

Chapter 1

The Struggle is Real

Why is it that so many massage therapists fail at entrepreneurship before they even start?

How is it possible that someone with fantastic education in a specific field, can be held hostage in their career because they don’t know how to move forward with something more meaningful?

Do you wake up each morning knowing that you must go to a place to work where you’re not happy? Do you feel that your work doesn’t fulfill you in a way that you would like? Or the way you had hoped? This is by far one of the most unsatisfying emotions that someone can feel in their career.

Too often this happens to massage therapists, and too often the ones who are experiencing this do nothing about it. Sure, you can always get a better paying job at a different clinic, spa or center. You’re more than qualified, you’re good at what you do, and you genuinely enjoy helping and healing people; that’s why you’re in your massage therapy profession in the first place.

But something is missing. You want more. This wanting usually comes from knowing that you don’t have the power or control to make big decisions within your place of employment or even your career in general while you’re working under someone else.

To make matters worse, you don’t control a large amount of the income you bring into that business. On average, most massage therapists give up around 50% of their client earnings and hand it right over to the business they are working for. If you work for a spa, that’s even lower!! Most spa massage therapists are fully qualified to work in a focused therapeutic setting, but instead feel as though where they are currently is stable for the most part and is guaranteed income. I was chatting to a massage therapist the other day who worked at a spa where she has been for a few years and she only makes 30% of her earnings. THIRTY PERCENT! This massage therapist had 4000 hours of education under her belt along with a bunch of other complementary modalities, but she chooses to work for 30% and to top it off, she sometimes works 12-hour days.

CONFIDENCE BLOCK

When I asked this particular massage therapist if she ever considered opening up her own practice and having people work for HER instead, her reply was something that I hear so often and even felt myself, “I would love to, but I’m too scared that I will fail, and I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.” So, because of this limiting belief, she stays locked into the routine of what she knows she can accomplish, within the safety net of her current employer.

I know you can relate to her; we all can! You love your job and even the people you work with, well, most of them anyways. But you want something more. You want to be able to have that full autonomy where you can dip into your creative ideas of how you would run your own massage therapy business, earn more money and have other therapists paying YOU to work out of YOUR space. You want to build your own dream and not someone else’s.

There is just one problem, the “how.” How can you create this type of business? You may have some existing debt; you’re not making all that much money from working where you currently are at so saving is tough. Then there is the problem of not having any experience in running your own business. Then WHAM… dream crushed, too much risk and not enough direction so you stay stuck exactly where you are like so many other massage therapists do.

JUST IMAGINE FOR A MINUTE

But, just imagine for a second and entertain that thought that you fast forward a year or two into the future. You picture yourself being exactly where you want to be. You took the leap and you decided that you were going to go for it. You decided to believe in yourself and start your own business. In this image, you have your business and everything around you is set up EXACTLY how YOU want it. You look through your online scheduler and you see that business is good! You have clients on waiting lists to get into your business. Maybe you have a reception staff, other massage therapists working on clients out of your place of business and happily paying YOU so they can do so. Your business is thriving, and you are continually growing it, bettering it and feeling fulfilled in what you do. The best part for you is that you have a massive amount of passive income coming in from the services you offer. You want to take off for a couple weeks? Done! You still have money coming into your well-oiled business machine.

Now just think, if you saw that image inside your mind and it excited you and scared you at the same time, fantastic! Even if it wasn’t that exact image, but something equally as rewarding for you within your career, also fantastic! You know that without a doubt, you can be doing something you love, earning more while working less if you trusted that image in your mind. But then you sabotage it with fear of the unknown, fear of not knowing how you’re going to get there.

Some of the greatest, most successful entrepreneurs had very little money and very little idea of how they were going to accomplish building their business empire, or even where to start. But what they did have was the vision in their mind of what they wanted and the desire to keep moving towards it.

I UNDERSTAND

I know where you are at right now with all of this because I was there too. For me though, the excitement of having the decision-making power to do what I felt was best for my business was enough to keep me thinking about what I wanted. Like you, I wanted my very own space to work out of where ALL the money I earned went back into my dream and my business, not someone else’s. I wanted someone paying ME to work out of MY clinic.

I figured out how to move through those self-defeating thoughts of not being able to do it, not being smart enough, not having enough money and that fear of embarrassing myself through public failure. Through this process, I learned how to accomplish any goal I set out to reach. I became happier and more fulfilled. I earned more money and because I was now at a place where I wanted to be within my career, my personal life improved dramatically as well. My health was much better, my relationships were more meaningful, and I had more time for the things that really mattered in my life.

Throughout this book, you are going to find a lot of fantastic, mind-expanding information that I coach my clients through. This information is going to help you understand that through your own self-image and beliefs, you will be able to create something for yourself that you previously didn’t think was possible.

I did.

“The focus I had on my unhappiness was keeping me in the same spot and restricting me from freedom.”

Chapter 2

My Story

How I decided on my own goal, with the help of getting fired.

I worked hard for my massage therapy certification. There was a lot of studying anatomy and physiology, alongside medical intake knowledge and the understanding of contraindications that come along with any sort of massage therapy treatments. I knew that I was working towards a certification that would dramatically improve my own life and open many doors for me, and that was enough to keep me dedicated to the study and art of learning massage.

When it came time to graduate, like many other new massage therapists, I leapt at the first opportunity that came my way to work out of a space with other qualified massage therapists and complimentary practitioners/modalities. I didn’t know a whole lot about negotiation of wages, or even the types of clients I wanted to work on as I was still getting my feet wet in this new industry. I do remember though, that my first ever paying client was a 7-month pregnant lady whom I had to perform side lying technique on. I was terrified that I was going to kill her baby, or even worse, both her and her baby! Now obviously my fear came from my own lack of skill and experience, but I was quickly forced to step through that fear and give the best massage I could at the time. The baby did not die, and the mother survived as well, so even though my fears were very real in my mind, the outcome was a very different experience.

THE JOURNEY

For over a year, I worked out of a small clinic in my hometown of about 20,000 people at the time. The clinic was run by two individuals who were both experienced massage therapists and who clearly had a dream and goal of creating something larger. I rented a room which was based on client percentage split of 50%, that had no cap on it. This meant that I paid 50% of my earnings to the clinic so I could operate out of their space, and if I had a good month, then I would still have to give half of that to the clinic. I was happy that I was able to be working out of somewhere, but there was this feeling after awhile of being restricted on what I could do and how much I could earn. I felt like I was trying to run through molasses.

After several months, I started to get restless with the sense that I felt I could be doing more. It was frustrating for me to work out of someone else’s space and pay them 50% of my earnings. I had very little autonomy in decision making for how I ran my routine. I was told when to work, how many clients I had to take in a day, and sometimes I was even asked to cover for another therapist if they called in sick. Even though I very much enjoyed what I did and the ability to earn money based on commission, I didn’t enjoy giving half of that income away while not having much say in how I ran my own career. Now don’t get me wrong, I was and am very grateful for this time in my life because I learned a lot about the industry working there, including how to run a business, and how not to run a business.

After six months, the owners of the clinic had let me know that I was getting a 10% increase in my commission, so now I was on a 60/40% split; 60 to me, 40 to the owners. While this was good news, it still didn’t correct the fact that I was giving away a large chunk of money for a small space and very little business decision making power. In fact, I very much felt like an employee within my own career and that just wasn’t sitting right with me. I didn’t want someone controlling my hours, how much I could charge, how I dressed, and the routine they thought I should have with my scheduled day.

All the initial newness of being in my career and being able to develop my skills and learn about how I like to run things was amazing, but the restricted nature of working for someone else started to take its toll on me. During my client sessions, I found that I was daydreaming more about what my own business would look like and how I would operate it. I started to realize that I was an entrepreneur and that part of me was unsatisfied with my current situation. I wanted to earn more, do more and create more with my career and have the freedom to make the decisions on where I was headed.

SHIFT IN AWARENESS

So, I spent months feeling unhappy, unsatisfied and under the control of someone else’s business. I was building someone else’s dream and I wanted to have my own! However, I wasn’t really doing anything about it other than just wanting. This wanting and feeling of being unhappy started to show up in other ways for me. I felt irritable, and I began feeling more defiant about the decisions the clinic owners were making. I was voicing my opinion more and more.

I found myself one night while at home on my computer, browsing the internet when I came across an article that talked about depression and understanding yourself through hypnotherapy. There was a clinical hypnotherapist in my area and because I resonated with the information in the article, I decided to book a session.

This is when my life completely changed, as this experience shaped me into who I am today and sparked a new passion that I didn’t even know I had.

A powerful awareness and learning happened in that session that gave me a brand-new concept around how my mind processed information and why I was feeling the way I was. I learned that my focus on my unhappiness was keeping me in the same spot and restricting me from freedom. I learned that the beliefs that were instilled in me from when I was a child and throughout my adolescence from my environment, were already creating my results on a deeper level.

Don’t get me wrong, I have amazingly supportive and loving parents, but like anyone, they also have their own beliefs about success and accomplishment that were adopted by the influential people in their lives.

THE PUSH TO DECIDE

A few weeks after that hypnotherapy session, I was asked to stay behind for 20 minutes after wrapping up my last client for the day. I had a feeling something was up because of the strange tension I had been sensing leading up to that moment.

“Richard, this isn’t working out and we don’t think you’re a good fit for working here.”

I was devastated! I felt betrayed, hurt, rejected and like I wasn’t good enough. I knew I was an excellent massage therapist, so it didn’t have to do with my skills. It had everything to do with the fact that my true nature of being an entrepreneur was trying to get out. Near the end of the meeting, their parting words to me were, “If you’re thinking about going into business for yourself, we are your largest competition and will put you out of business, so you should save yourself the time and energy and go find another clinic to work out of instead.”

Something inside of me woke up in that moment. I went from feeling like a victim to feeling like I now had a mission to prove everyone wrong. I didn’t like being told what to do before this, and that was a big part of why they were letting me go. So, that wasn’t going to change now. I wasn’t going to let them tell me what I should or shouldn’t do even after I left! I decided in that very moment that all the imagining and mental planning I had been doing for the past year was going to be turned into a solid goal and action plan!

I was scared, oh man was I ever! I felt like I had zero clue on how to run my own business and even know where to start. What if I fail? What if they are in fact my biggest competition and they put me out of business within the first year? What if I cannot afford to do this? What if I look like a complete fool?

While all these were legitimate fears I was having, I had felt these emotions before and overcame them. In fact, I have felt those same emotions around anything new and big that I was about to undergo. It reminded me of my very first client, the pregnant one that I thought I was going to kill through my massage! The feeling was EXACTLY THE SAME; it just had a different dialogue attached to it. But, overall, fear is fear regardless of the story around it.

Also, at this point, I had to make a major decision between two options right away:

Take the leap and start my own business, even though I didn’t have a plan or know how I was going to do it OR…

Start handing out resumes and hope that another clinic would pick me up.

See, the problem with the second option is that it would just be me going right back into t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Struggle is Real
• Chapter 2: My Story
• Chapter 3: “Success is not a secret, it’s a system”
• Chapter 4: Your Big Goal
• Chapter 5: The Power of Paradigms
• Chapter 6: Habits
• Chapter 7: The Dream Killer, or the Internal Compass?
• Chapter 8: Self-Image
• Chapter 9: Your Business Niche & Ideal Client
• Chapter 10: Success through Service
• Chapter 11: The Power of Many
• Chapter 12: How to Succeed
• Chapter 13: Putting it All Together
• About the Author
• Thank You!