One of the most basic things to do when starting or building your masage busines is to create a simple massage business plan to keep you focused on what you want to achieve and outline the steps you want to take to get there. It doesn’t have to be a comprehensive plan with detailed financial statements unless you are looking for small business loans.
A business plan will keep you inspired to move forward even in challenging times. It begins with having a vision for yourself and your business.  What do you envision for yourself? What will make a successful massage business? A successful massage business has the required income it needs to be able to pay the bills and have the things you desire while also providing meaning for each business owner. You can be financially well off but not be personally satisfied.  Your vision will include what it is that will bring you a feeling of satisfaction or meaning in your life. Without a business vision to inspire you, your chances of ending up in a state of burnout increases.
A vision statement is a one or two sentence statement about what you see is possible for your business. Bill Gates started with the vision of “A computer on every desk’.  I know when I first started out my vision was that every person in the world should be getting a massage once a week and that would lead to world peace! While that may seem a little grand it has lead to me writing extensively online about massage, becoming a massage therapist and supporting other massage therapists in building $100,000 a year businesses. I actually never thought I would be writing when I first started out, but I did believe in that vision and still do! (Maybe Obama is looking for a minister of massage?)
Your business vision will require that you take steps to learn and continually improve yourself in some way. Your business plan will then complete the process on how you will achieve that.
You can also start with a simple massage business vision of ‘having 20 clients a week that pay me $100 per session”. That may or may not fit for you. It may bring up many feelings of I don’t think I can charge that much or want to charge that much. Set a goal that you feel that you can achieve. ‘I have 10 clients a week that pay me $60 an hour’. As you achieve your goals you will build self confidence to the point where having 20 clients that pay $100 per session is not that far off.
Your vision should call to you and pull you along. It should inspire you to take the steps you need to take to achieve it. Reviewing your business plan every week and making adjustment or adding a project will help you to get to where you want to be. Then you start it all over again with higher and bigger goals?
What is your vision for your massage business? What is your vision for the massage profession itself?
Read more about Massage Business Plans on my site at www.thebodyworker.com
February 5th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Very helpful and inspiring! Thanks
February 11th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
[...] a massage business plan begins with creating a simple vision statement as I talked about last week. The next step is to weave it into a mission and purpose statement which often gets confusing [...]