One Year to a Successful Massage Therapy Practice - Paperback

by Laura Allen (Author)

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.