Massage Collage

From a business standpoint, I’m always excited about beginning a new year, and looking ahead to what I’d like accomplish in the next twelve months.  Although I’ve only been in the massage business for a decade or so, I’ve been a business owner for most of the last thirty years.  One thing that has served me well in all that time is having concrete goals.

I left my job as a massage school administrator a little over four years ago and opened my own clinic.  Since the first day, my goal has been to gain one new client a day, 365 days a year.  Since we’re closed on Sunday, that means gaining two some other day of the week.  I’ve exceeded that goal again this year for the fourth year in a row.

I have not accomplished this alone; I have a great staff of therapists who share in that goal.  Every year on January 1, I write the magic number on a sticky note and it stays on my computer screen so I see it every day.  As I make a file for each new client, I give thanks for getting one person closer to the goal.  I keep the staff informed about how close we are getting as the year goes by.  They share in my desire to make it and my excitement when we do.

Another goal of mine, and it’s very concrete, is to have a good time every day at work.  I want to laugh every day, and I want my staff to laugh every day.  Enjoying your work is one of the most important things on the path to success. 

As any of my esteemed colleagues on this blog could testify, succeeding in business is largely a matter of perseverance.  When setbacks happen, you pick yourself up and dust yourself off, and get your eyes back on the prize.  Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” 

I often hear from therapists who have been in practice for a year or two, or sometimes ten, and they’re still not where they want to be financially or still not in the work situation they’d like to have.  Most of the time, I’ve found the problem comes down to their not having concrete goals.  They have dreams–”One of these days I’ll be doing so-and-so or making this amount of money,” but they haven’t given it the breath of life by turning it from a dream into a goal.

If you have a dream you haven’t realized yet, I want 2008 to be your year.  The first step is to write it down in specific terms.  Then put that where you have to see it every single day–your appointment book is a good place, or make it the screen saver on your computer.  Then remember that law of physics, that something will stay on the same path unless a force acts to change it, and realize you have to be that force in order to change your circumstances.  The Small Business Administration has a great piece of advice on their website (www.sba.gov), and that is never let a day go by without doing something to market your business. 

Schedule a half hour every day when your only focus is going to be marketing.  That can mean anything from working up a new advertisement to sending welcome cards to new clients, to calling up old ones who haven’t been in lately to see how they are and jog their memory that it’s been awhile since their last massage.  The point is, do something. Set your goals, and take some action.  Believe you are going to succeed.  Act as if you are going to succeed, and know that success depends on your actions.  Another unknown philosopher said “There are people who make things happen, people who watch things happen, and people who wonder what happened.”  Decide to be one of those people who makes things happen!

May your New Year be filled with peace and prosperity,

Laura Allen

Posted on December 28th, 2007 by Laura Allen
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How do you deal with difficult clients?  99% of clients who come in our door are happy to be there, and just as nice as they can be.  Then we get that other 1% that I’d just like to choke!  Since my practice is in a small town where news travels faster than the speed of sound, you just have to bite your tongue most of the time.  Here are a couple of examples:

A woman called for an appointment and said that she had a gift certificate for sixty dollars.  I explained that was for an hour of massage.  She made the appointment, and when she arrived, informed me that she wanted to break that up into four fifteen minute sessions.  I politely told her she hadn’t said that on the phone and therefore the therapist had booked her for an hour.  She quickly became very rude and said that the next time, she’d tell her husband to get her a gift certificate somewhere else.  I remained polite in spite of my urge to wring her neck.  The therapist turned out to be just what she’d been looking for, and she ended up purchasing a package deal for fifteen minute sessions, but it was a rocky start to our business relationship.

I am blessed with a staff of great therapists who are usually booked well in advance.  There are always those clients who never book in advance; they just call when they wake up and can’t turn their head and want to be taken care of right then.  One client who is notorious for doing just that called last week.  I offered to put her on our cancellation list.  During the course of the week, I called her on three different occasions, could only get through to her voice mail, and left her the message that I was willing to hold the appointment for half an hour and that I would then be calling to offer it to someone else.  She called back on all three of those occasions after I had given away the appointment.  The third time, she rudely said that  I should be able to accomodate walk-in clients.  I replied that my therapists weren’t willing to give up their steady appointments in order to sit around and take a chance that someone might walk in, and that all of our treatment rooms were filled with people who had booked in advance.  She was very huffy about it.  I referred her to another therapist in town who is just starting out and suggested that she might have better luck getting in with her on the spur of the moment.  She was incredulous that I was trying to send her somewhere else.

My 20-plus years in the restaurant business have given me plenty of experience in customer service, but thinking back on that I remember plenty of times when I wanted to dump someone’s plate on their head!  I never did that, although I was sorely tempted.  It’s better to take the high road and let the customer be the one who’s behaving badly.

I’d love to hear some of your stories about difficult clients and how you rose to the occasion.  I hope you’ve all had a prosperous holiday season, and wish you a healthy and happy New Year.

Peace on Earth,

Laura Allen

Posted on December 20th, 2007 by Laura Allen
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My friend Susan Mccallister cast aside the body that was no longer serving her a few days ago.  Pancreatic cancer snatched her away at the tender age of 54.

Susan was an equine massage therapist who loved her horses.  She liked to ride off into the woods and camp. She also loved to dance, to good old rock-n-roll by the likes of Delbert McClinton, Van Morrison, and her husband Kenny Ray’s band, Drop of a Hat.  She had a tiara and sparkly shoes. She loved good wine, and her friends, and her dogs, and all animals big and small.  She worked part-time in an animal hospital, and part-time in administration at a massage school.

Susan was in a lot of pain for most of the past year, pain that even strong drugs couldn’t take away, the kind of pain that doesn’t let you eat or get good quality sleep.  She passed away peacefully at home surrounded by friends and family.  She’ll be missed by us all.

Happy Trails, Susan Mac.

Posted on December 13th, 2007 by Laura Allen
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How many pieces of SPAM do you receive in your email every day?  Am I the only one who is irritated by this?  Am I the only one who thinks it’s an unethical way to advertise?  I’d like to hear how others feel about this.

A couple of months ago, I received an email from a chiropractor, who is an approved provider, advertising his courses and books he was selling about carpal tunnel syndrome.  The occasional unsolicited email doesn’t bother me; once in awhile it even turns out that it’s something I’m interested in, but this man emailed me three and sometimes more times a day for weeks.  When it first started, there was no disclaimer on his ad and no way to unsubscribe, so I just started replying and putting “REMOVE” in the subject line, which is the standard practice.  It had no effect.  It went on for weeks.  Even though I put him on my SPAM blocker, he apparently used several different addresses for his mailings and it kept coming through.

He finally put instructions on the email that unsubscribing takes two weeks.  What’s the excuse for that?

After a couple of months of receiving three or four emails a day from him with no regard for my repeated requests to be removed, I called the phone number on his email and left a less than polite message about being removed from his mailing list.  It had no effect; the spam continued to arrive three times a day.  By this point in time, I was so irritated by it that I wouldn’t buy anything from him or attend a class of his if he was the last provider on earth.  I finally wrote a letter of complaint to the National Board.  I don’t know if they took any action or not, or if he finally just got the message that I wanted to be removed, but his emails finally stopped–until today.  This morning, once again, he’s the first person in my inbox.  Out of spite, I immediately sent him a dozen emails telling him to remove me.  If I get another, I’ll send two dozen!  I’ve decided to just give him a taste of his own medicine.

I’m an approved provider myself.  My advertising channels are magazine ads, my own website and some others I have paid to be listed on, the AMTA website, and email.  My email advertising is only sent to people who have attended my classes before and given me their email address specifically because they wanted to be notified that way, and I also have a link on my website for people who request to be added to my mailing list.  My website does not harvest cookies, and a visit to my site does not mean you are going to start receiving email from me.  You have to ask, and if you ask to be removed, it happens immediately, not two weeks from now.

The Internet has made the world a small place.  I use it for research on a daily basis.  I love being able to communicate with friends and acquaintances across the world without having to pay for a long distance call.  I appreciate every email I get from the massage therapists who contact me for one reason or another; sometimes it’s a comment on my writing, or a hello from someone I met at the national convention, or a catch-up email from a former student.  I love those; I don’t consider those SPAM. 

I do consider what the above-mentioned chiropractor is doing to be SPAM, and I think that’s an unethical way to advertise.  If he had sent one email, and then honored my request to be removed, I wouldn’t be mad, but three times a day for weeks on end is just over the line. 

Thanks for letting me vent, and I’d love to know how others feel about this.

Peace & Prosperity,

Laura Allen

Posted on December 6th, 2007 by Laura Allen
Filed under: General | 1 Comment »

Do you have a policy in place for dealing with no-shows and last-minute cancellations? 

The first year I was in business for myself, I operated without such a policy.  By the end of the second year, when several more therapists had joined forces with me, I was appalled to see how many wasted appointments (and thus lost income) were caused by people who either waited until the last minute to call and cancel, or heaven forbid, didn’t call at all.  I decided to take a hard line when I saw that a year’s worth of blown appointments added up to over 8,000.

I put a notice on our website, another in our newsletter, a prominently displayed sign in the lobby, and added a paragraph to our intake form explaining our cancellation policy, which new clients must initial, and therapists inform all new clients of our policy.  We allow everyone one freebie per year–one missed appointment without penalty.  Even the best client will sometimes have a brain freeze or oversleep, or have a genuine emergency.  After that, if they miss they’re going to pay.

We maintain a list of people who are not welcome to make an appointment at our office unless they gaurantee it with a credit card.  Our cancellation policy states that if you are asked to gaurantee with a card, you can assume you’re one of those people we consider a repeat offender.

I haven’t lost any noticeable business, and the incidence of no-shows went way down after I put that word out about the policy.  The one or two people who defected were the above-mentioned repeat offenders, and we don’t want them anyway.  I worded the policy in such a way to make people realize that while one person may not think blowing off their appointment is a big deal, if three or four people in a week do that to a therapist, there goes someone’s groceries, their car payment or their rent.  Maybe it just made people think of it in a different way, but it made a positive difference. 

Busy physician and dental offices commonly overbook appointments, secure in the knowledge that a certain amount of people are going to cancel.  Massage therapists really can’ t do that, so you need some way to protect your income.  Having a cancellation policy, and enforcing it, will serve you well. 

Peace & Prosperity,

Laura Allen 

Posted on December 2nd, 2007 by Laura Allen
Filed under: General | 2 Comments »

No, I’m not talking about the end of the world, but it got your attention, didn’t it? I’m talking about December 31, the end of the tax year. 

If you’ve been less than diligent in keeping your financial records nice and neat this year, you’ve still got time to get your ducks in a row.  Make it a point during the next month to straighten out your files and start organizing things for your tax person.  Staying on top of your tax situation is a must, and that goes double for the self-employed and independent contractors among us. 

I had a shock last year at tax time because I wasn’t paying enough attention to the bottom line.  I had paid my quarterly estimated tax.  At year’s end, I took my neat little pile to my accountant and asked her to give me a ballpark figure of how much I was going to owe (I always want to owe a little; if I overpay enough to get a refund I feel like I’m loaning the government my money interest free).  She gave it the brief once over and announced a figure I was okay with.

Two weeks later when I went to collect my returns, that amount had increased by almost 7,000.  I nearly croaked!I had spent the year on a debt reduction mission, really cut down on my spending (translation, tax deductions), and subsequently the business kept a good bit more money.  Since I was spending that money on reducing debt instead of giving myself a big raise and living the high life, I really didn’t feel like I had more money, and I didn’t pay enough quarterly tax.  I’m happy to say I’m more on top of it this year.  I still won’t get a refund, but hopefully I won’t have to spend the family vacation money making up a deficit caused by carelessness.

I hope you have a wildly prosperous holiday season, sell more gift certificates than you ever imagined, and remember to save enough to pay Uncle Sam. 

Laura Allen

Posted on November 28th, 2007 by Laura Allen
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As massage therapists, most if not all of the conditions our clients present with have a stress component.  Even conditions that twenty years ago were thought to be purely pathological are now known to be caused and/or contributed to by stress.  If you’re stressed for long enough, you’ll get sick, and if you’re sick, you’re almost certainly stressed by it.  My insight into these words of wisdom didn’t help me a bit this last week or so when I got really sick for the first time in a long, long time.

I had an inkling this was coming on a few weeks ago when some lymph nodes swelled right under my jaw.  Thinking I’d nip it in the bud, I asked the lymphatic drainage therapist on my staff to work on me.  The next morning, I awoke to find it had moved out of my neck down to the axillary area.  Normally, I’m the last person to go to the doctor, kicking and screaming all the way, but I had a really busy schedule coming up and just couldn’t take the time to be sick (so I told myself) and forced myself to go.  I’m sorry to say she didn’t grasp the concept that my lymph had been moved by human hands, and due to the swollen nodes at the side of my breast, she insisted I go get a mammogram asap, even though my annual wasn’t due for another four months.  It turned out to be a cyst.

Things escalated in the next few days with a sore throat, coughing, sneezing, some stomach upsets, and all the usual things that accompany a good old-fashioned “sick spell”, as my granny would have said.  I’m on the mend now, but it’s a reminder of a lesson I seem to have to relearn every few years:  when you think you don’t have time to take care of yourself, stress will usually force your hand.  I was allowing a few things that were totally beyond my control to stress me out, obsessing over the fact that I had a class to get ready for and a publishing deadline to meet and people coming for Thanksgiving to cook for and the house is a mess, and I was a great success at making myself sick.  At least I recognize it, LOL!

I have a friend who’s fighting cancer right now.  A family member is in drug rehab trying to straighten themselves out.  Another family member recently had a flooded home that is costing thousands of dollars and backbreaking work to dig out of, and this Thanksgiving there are a lot of people with loved ones who won’t come home from the war.  It makes my problems look pretty ridiculous in comparison, so I’m going to take a deep breath and let them go.

I’m going to stress less and be well, and I hope you do the same.

Many Blessings,

Laura Allen

Posted on November 23rd, 2007 by Laura Allen
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We have been accepting insurance in my group practice since the day we opened. There was no immediate rush of insurance clients coming in the door, but over the past four years it has steadily grown to the point where insurance clients account for about a third of our business.  The paperwork is time-consuming, and every time you call the insurance company for a pre-authorization you get the same speech: “this is just an authorization, not a gaurantee of payment.”  Seems like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?  And we have so many forms for the client to fill out–an intake, an assignment of benefits, a practitioner’s lien, a release form and so forth until they surely feel like they’re applying for a mortgage just to get a massage.

If you can afford to wait to get paid for your services, insurance can mean an increase in business, because many people who couldn’t afford to pay for massage out-of-pocket will take advantage of it if they can get it for a small co-payment.  Just be sure you’re not depending on that insurance check to arrive in time to pay your rent.  There may be hoops you need to jump through in order to be a provider for some insurance companies.  For some of the companies we deal with, sending in a copy of our massage licenses and liability insurance was enough; others have had us send in photographs of the entry, bathroom and treatment rooms, I suppose to be sure we’re in compliance with the ADA (or to see if we have a clean office; who knows?).

In spite of the extreme diligence I use when filling out claim forms–they want every i dotted and every t crossed–there is still the occasional time when a claim is turned down because the authorization number was written incorrectly, or the time frame expired or some other reason.  Insurance companies are in the business of saving themselves money, and any legitimate reason to refuse a claim means more profit for them, so of course they will refuse any time they can.

Not all insurance companies pay for massage, particularly in states that don’t yet have licensure, and even among those that do, their policies on paying can vary greatly from state to state.  Many Floridians move to North Carolina.  Apparently several of the major companies that don’t pay for massage here do pay in Florida.  I have more than once had a very upset person in my office who was used to getting their massage paid for before they moved here.  One big company will only pay here in North Carolina if the massage is performed in a chiropractor’s office–a totally ridiculous policy–that the same company doesn’t have in South Carolina, less than twenty miles away. 

There are definitely a lot of pros and cons to accepting insurance.  I’d love to hear what kind of experiences other therapists have had with it.

Have a great Thanksgiving, and don’t overlook it as a marketing opportunity.  A gift certificate makes a wonderful gift for the hostess that’s been slaving over a hot stove to make a meal for friends and family.

Laura Allen

Posted on November 16th, 2007 by Laura Allen
Filed under: General | 1 Comment »

Last night we had our fourth annual open house at my office; it’s actually an event publicized by our Chamber of Commerce called Business After Hours, and it’s always a great way to get new people in to see what we’re about.

I persuaded my mother to make ham biscuits as part of the refreshments; this is the South, and hey, the announcement of ham biscuits will draw a crowd like flies to honey!  Myself and a few of my musician friends played a few tunes to entertain while our staff members worked the room, welcoming people and telling them about our services.

The best thing about an open house is that people who have never been to your business will come; they might be drawn in by the announcement of free food and music but then they’re a captive audience.  And it’s not just good for us; it’s good networking for the whole community.  It’s nice to see people who have businesses and services that can benefit each other make that connection.  Last night, a new person in town who’s building a house met a craftsman who sells recovered building materials from period architecture and they struck up a deal for a marble fireplace right here in my office.  A person who just started a publishing company connected with a lady who has written some as-yet unpublished children’s books.  It was great to see people enjoying themselves and doing good for their own business while doing good for ours. 

You don’t have to get fancy with the food and entertainment.  If you’ve never had an open house before, give it a try.  Even just a few new people coming in is going to enhance your business.

Posted on November 9th, 2007 by Laura Allen
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Greetings, colleagues! Halloween is the official start (to me, anyway) of the holidays. Apparently at least one customer agrees - I sold my first Christmas gift certificate of the season Halloween morning.

If you’ve been in business through more than one Christmas, you know how that goes.  In looking back at Christmases past, I see my gift certificate sales have steadily increased every year, and that reminds me to get ready for the next season—Redemption. Try to remember that money from gift certificate sales is money that you have received that you are going to have to give someone something in exchange for later on, and don’t go crazy spending it all on your holiday shopping.  During the month of January there’s no cash coming through the door, just a bunch of smiling people coming in for their free massage, and meanwhile your expenses go right on.

Recently a number of states have enacted new laws governing gift certificates and their expiration dates.  Just to mention a few of these, in California, Connecticut, Montana and
New Hampshire, no expiration date is allowed at all unless the certificate is for more than 100.00.  In Rhode Island, Washington, and Florida, certificates cannot expire unless they have been donated to a charity.  In Illinois, the expiration date must be five years from the date of sale. Some states actually have laws requiring you to turn money over to the state for your unredeemed certificates after a certain period of time.  It seems to me like it’s just one more way for big government to squeeze the small business owner! The laws vary widely from state to state.  You can find out about the laws in your particular state by visiting the National Conference of State Legislatures website at http://www.ncsl.org/programs/banking/GiftCardsandCerts.htm

Be sure your gift certificate policies comply with the laws in your state, and Happy Selling!

Posted on November 6th, 2007 by Laura Allen
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