Part of becoming a successful massage therapist involves
making the money that you need to be successful.
Everyone
has issues around money because money touches everyone's lives.
From an early age your beliefs about money are created and will
influence how you make money and deal with money.
Many massage
therapists find it difficult to charge for massage services or
charge enough for massage. They often think that something
so wonderful should be free or low cost and that everyone should
be able to afford a massage. Often this is well
intentioned but it is also filled with unconscious programming
about making money.
As a massage therapist you deserve to be paid and to be paid
well for your massage services. Since your career
will be limited by the number of hours that you can work and the
condition of your body/mind/spirit, you will need to be able to
charge enough so that you can succeed. Even though you may
be just out of massage school you have just gone through one of
the most vigorous trainings learning anatomy, physiology and
massage theory. You might start out charging on the low
end for your community but as you gain experience and knowledge
each year raising your rates will lead to being able to make a
great living.
Keeping yourself in the best physical, mental
and emotional shape will allow you to do more massage sessions.
Many massage therapists limit the number of massages that they
do to take care of themselves rather than working out, eating
right, getting weekly massage and all of the other things one
needs to do for support like supervision and therapy.
Massage therapists also will find themselves in draining
situations where the client/therapist boundary becomes blurred
making it more draining to deal with such cases.
Setting guidelines
right from the beginning and letting clients know up front what
your policies are will keep relationships clean and functional.
Setting policies for missed appointments, your fee structure,
rules for trading, rules for when clients want to date and
become friends will help you set yourself up for success and
avoid burnout.
Creating a
monthly/yearly spending plan will help keep you on track.
