We have kind of  a weird situation in North Carolina. Our state no longer accepts the National Certification exams for entry-level licensing. We exclusively accept the MBLEx, unless you’re moving in from out of state and you’re already Nationally Certified. In that case, you don’t have to take the MBLEx, but you do still have to prove that you’ve had the proper amount of education. It’s strange to me that the NCBTMB exams are considered okay for citizens from out of state, but not our own citizens.

There are still many states that have the minimum 500-hour education requirement. My state does. However, we’re picky about how that’s broken down. If your 500 hours from out of state doesn’t match up to the breakdown of our 500 hours, you can be refused a license until you bring yourself into compliance by taking additional classes at a community college or through continuing education. While moving is a choice for most people, I feel particularly bad for those therapists who are moving with a military spouse and not able to get licensed in their new state without jumping through a lot of hoops and going to a lot of expense. READ MORE…

In Tennessee, HB 2387/SB2249 seeks to remove the massage therapy board from under the auspices of the Department of Health Related Boards and move them to the Department of Commerce and Insurance. What this does is basically reclassify massage therapy from being a health profession to a “trade.” Insurance companies don’t pay tradespeople; they pay health care professionals.You can find your TN legislators here.

I cannot urge you enough to pay attention to this, no matter where you are. When something detrimental like this happens, it just paves the way for other states to follow the leader.

Even the acts of searching for, and reading legislation or proposed legislation, is a tricky thing. A prime example is that when you search for the bill in Tennessee, this is the description: READ MORE….

I  haven’t had much to say on the legislative front for a few months…when the legislators go home for the summer, not much is happening; then there tend to be shorter sessions in the fall before they take a break for the holidays and not much happens then, either. Well, the break is over, and how.

I received a press release from the NCBTMB yesterday announcing what amounts to a win for them in the state of WV. Here it is:

The National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (NCBTMB) is pleased to share the news that Nationally Certified Massage Therapists in West Virginia will continue to have their services covered by the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA). Initially, the PEIA Finance Board considered discontinuing massage therapy coverage altogether as a cost-savings measure, but with input from NCBTMB, the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) and practicing therapists, it will still cover active employees and non-Medicare retirees who visit massage therapists with national certification.

The new financial plan goes into effect July 1, 2012. Certified therapists must also carry $2 million in malpractice insurance as well as follow treatment guidelines of the AMTA.

“NCBTMB commends the Public Employees Insurance Agency for providing their employees with access to nationally certified massage therapists who commit to a code of ethics, standards of practice and pass a national credentialing exam,” said NCBTMB CEO Mike Williams. “We see this as a win-win situation for both PEIA employees and Nationally Certified Massage Therapists in the state of West Virginia.”

“PEIA has an obligation to state employees to cover necessary medical treatments, but also an obligation to the state of West Virginia to be fiscally responsible,” stated PEIA Executive Director Ted Cheatham. “We stand behind the PEIA Finance Board and its decision to only accept massage therapy claims from therapists who meet the new criteria.”  READ MORE…

I have a good spam filter on all my email accounts, so basically most of those trashy emails advising you on how to enlarge your anatomy, how to collect the $40 million that the dead person in Nigeria has left you in his will, and offering to sell you cheap prescription drugs get trapped there.

What usually doesn’t get trapped there are all the unsolicited mailing lists and newsletters from massage therapists and other health practitioners who have taken the liberty of adding my name to their list. Most of them are people from Facebook or LinkedIn…they apparently just harvest the e-mail address from everyone they see on their networks, and add them on. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s just plain spam.

You have to ASK me in order to be added to any of my mailing lists. My websites have the little click-on feature for that, if you want to be added, but just visiting my websites is not going to cause you to receive any e-mail from me.

I use Constant Contact for my newsletters and group e-mail. I have it set to automatically give people the link to unsubscribe if they wish, and to allow people to share it on their networks, if they desire. It’s $30 per month, but I don’t have to be concerned  about removing people who ask to be removed; it’s done for me. If you are sending group e-mails to anyone, whether it’s from a company like Constant Contact or just through your own e-mail, you should have a simple link for people to unsubscribe. Some companies make it such a hassle, by sending you to a new website to create a new account and answer a couple of captchas, before they will allow you to unsubscribe to something that you never subscribed to to begin with. I think they count on it being such a hassle to unsubscribe that you’ll just choose to stay on the list. READ MORE….

Nine times out of ten, it isn’t that they’re not a talented massage therapist that leads to their failure. Most of the time, it is a lack of careful planning that leads to the demise. Here’s a reality check:

Almost no business is profitable during the first year. Those folks who work from their home or who only do outcalls may be exceptions, but if you’re operating a massage business out of your own storefront, planning to do so, or  or even as a renter or independent contractor in someone else’s space, there are a lot of things to consider.

I’m going to get the independent contractors out of the way first. You are a self-employed person who performs your services in someone else’s space. You don’t have all the same overhead that a person in their own space does, but you still have certain expenses, and you’re working in someone else’s environment. They may–or may not–be throwing you a lot of business.  If you don’t have all you need or want, and it’s because you’re just sitting there waiting for the owner to do it all for you, you’re missing the boat. You still need to market yourself. That doesn’t mean taking out a big ad in the paper. It means you are actively engaged in trying to increase your client base on a daily basis, by networking, giving out business cards, getting yourself out there by performing community service, introducing yourself to people and telling them about the benefits of massage. Instead of blaming the owner for your lack of business, look at what you could be doing to increase it. READ MORE…

Nine times out of ten, the accusation was of a sexual nature. 99 times out of 100, it involved a male therapist. I’m dead certain there are female therapists out there performing sexual favors every day, but most men won’t come forward to complain about it. Go figure.

My question to myself at those hearings was always this: “Did this person have an intent to do something evil, or was this a communication breakdown or simple mistake that could have happened to you or me?”

If you’ve been practicing longer than a year or two, the chances are good that in spite of your best efforts, you have accidentally exposed a body part. Or you have said something that the instant it left your mouth, you thought “why did I say that?” The very first massage I ever gave, I accidentally touched the man’s penis. I went to tuck in the drape, and all I can say is there it was. He was supine on the table, his eyes were closed, and when my hand grazed it, I saw his eyebrows shoot up. I said “I’m sorry,” and carried on. If I had made a big deal out of it, I could have just made it worse than what it was.

If your only intent is to give a therapeutic massage, then your major obligation is not just about giving the massage; it is clear and direct client communication. READ MORE….

Each year when Christmas draws near, I find myself remembering a lot of Christmases past. Some of those memories are sweet, and some are upsetting. When I was younger, my favorite thing at Christmas was the gathering of the clan at my grandparent’s house. All the aunts and uncles and cousins gathered. The cousins and I played music, we had turkey and  ham and all kinds of good country cooking. Now that my grandparents are gone–and some of the aunts and uncles are too–the whole family doesn’t come together like that anymore, and it’s kind of sad. We still see each other, but we’re never all in the same place at the same time anymore like we were back in those days.

As an adult, another tradition developed. My best friend and I spent time together on Christmas Eve for about 18 years. She was suffering from clinical depression, and some other emotional problems. Suddenly one year before Christmas, she sent me a letter saying she didn’t want to celebrate Christmas anymore, that she just wanted to be alone.  I responded with a letter about her depression being the cause and begging her to get some help, and she got mad at me and stopped speaking to me. For the next decade or so,  until she died, I would send her a card every year telling her how much my memories of spending Christmas Eve with her meant to me, and she never responded. It was a hurtful thing, but I know that her illness was behind it, and I just had to not take it personally.

I have childhood memories of some favorite Christmas gifts. When I was 3 or 4 years old, I got a small white grand piano. That was my first musical instrument and I loved that piano. A neighbor child who was playing at our house broke it and I was crushed. Fast forward a couple of years, and my stepdad’s parents gifted me with a real piano. That was the real beginning of my lifelong love of music. When I was nine, my mother got me my first guitar with Green Stamps. In case you’re not old enough to know what Green Stamps are, they were stamps that were given out at the grocery stores. You had to collect them by pasting them in little booklets, and they had a catalog of gifts you could get by collecting so many of them. I know there’s a picture of that somewhere, and I’d like to find it. That same year, my oldest brother played a trick on me by giving me a Christmas present that was in a huge box that a television came in. On the inside was layer after layer of newspaper wrapped around something. It turned out to be a bottle of Scope mouthwash. I could have choked him. I was all excited thinking I was getting a television for my bedroom. READ MORE…

This year started out with a bang when we made a trip to Miami to participate in the Massage School Makeover organized by Angie Patrick of Massage Warehouse. What started as a little project of Angie’s snowballed into one of the most magnanimous displays of generosity throughout the massage world. The Educating Hands school ended up with over $80,000 worth of equipment and supplies donated by industry partners. As they were moving into a brand-new building at the time, it was just a fresh start for their well-respected school. It was a joy to participate in it and to see so many of my friends from the profession at the festivities. I also got to visit my youngest brother on that trip, and got to see a dear friend who used to live here in NC that I  hadn’t seen for several years. That one was bittersweet since her husband, who was also a friend and former business partner with Champ, had passed away suddenly a few months before, but it was a wonderful visit.

I was honored at the American Massage Conference this year as the Massage Therapist of the Year…and that wasn’t even the highlight of the conference. Getting up to play a few tunes with Errol N Schroeder at the dinner dance was the high point for me. I had a blast! Scott Dartnall and the rest of those Canadians came out of the gate running and made their first American event a resounding success. READ MORE…

The most common things people contact me about are clients who don’t rebook, and not having enough business in general. They will give me a list, of “I’m doing this, this, this, and this, and I’m still not making it.”

Let’s look at the first problem: Clients aren’t rebooking. There are a lot of reasons why clients don’t rebook. The biggest one is probably that the therapist doesn’t ask! Besides “Thank you,” the most important phrase for your business is “When would you like to schedule another appointment?” When I was a brand-new therapist, I was worried about appearing too pushy if I asked a client to rebook. Get over that immediately, and ask every one at every appointment.

If you are asking every client to rebook, and either they aren’t doing it at all, or it’s a very low percentage, I’d look closer into that problem by taking a searching and fearless inventory. Perhaps your technique–or your level of expertise–is just not what they were looking for. Not every person who gets a license to do massage is a great massage therapist. In my traveling around and getting massage in different places, I’ve had massage that’s mediocre, and unfortunately had some that was downright bad….then again, massage is a subjective experience. The massage that I thought was unskilled and sloppy might suit another person just fine. So how do you know?

There are some indicators. If the majority of people come out from the massage praising you to the high heavens, that’s an indicator. READ MORE…

A friend of mine who employs other therapists in her practice was upset last week when an employee gave clients a reminder call from her own cell phone on her day off, instead of calling them from the office. The issues there were ownership of the client’s information and a concern about HIPAA violations…and two clients actually called the office to ask why they were being called from the therapist’s cell phone, since previous calls had always come from her office.  She not only fired the employee, she also went to the police about data theft and filed an ethics complaint with the NCBTMB. The business is in an unregulated state, or she would have filed an ethics complaint with the state board, as well. She had plainly stated in her policies and procedures manual that taking the phone numbers and or other information of clients was prohibited, and discusses that fact with each new person she hires. The therapist had done more than just take the phone numbers; she had also downloaded all the treatment notes, etc–including those sessions performed by someone else that she was not involved in. The owner was perfectly within her rights to fire the employee and take the other actions, based on that policy.

I run things differently in my office. Nearly all of the half-dozen therapists who work at my clinic as independent contractors have the phone numbers of their regular clients in their cell phones (remember, my friend’s staff members are employees). It’s our procedure to ask clients if they would like a reminder call or a text message, and it’s my own desire for the therapists to make those calls personally instead of depending on me to do it. I’m the office manager and chief bottle-washer at my place of business, and in addition to the therapists, I also have an acupuncturist, a chiropractor, a clinical herbalist, and an aesthetic nurse there. I make the reminder calls for the chiropractor. I expect everyone else to make their own.

Some people would say that I am making it easy for them to steal clients, in the event they were to leave my practice and go elsewhere. That’s true, but I choose not to look at it that way.  First and foremost, my staff is what has made my business successful. I’m just the ringleader. Everyone there genuinely likes, supports, and refers to each other; it’s a family atmosphere. Staff turnover has happened so rarely that in 8.5 years of owning my business, I can count on one hand the number of people who have ever left. READ MORE….