Your Client Or Mine?

I read several massage trade pubs but my favorite is probably Massage Today. I find them more honest about conflicts and changes in our industry and their columnists are more likely to be addressing my reality than the columnists in the AMTA Journal often are. I’m also always up for a good rant by Ralph Stevens even when I don’t agree with him!

Cary Bayer has a business coaching column in Massage Today and this month I agree with half of his column but disagree with the other half. Both halves are about referring clients out to other therapists:

Cary's Rule #1: Don’t automatically refer a client out because you can’t book them right away. They may have the flexibility in their schedule to wait a week or 3 for you. Ask them. I think this is good advice.

Cary's Rule #2:  Don’t refer out for free. You should always get a cut -- in perpetuity -- for every (potential) client you refer to another MT. In fact, you should establish an ongoing relationship with one other MT who will pay you a percentage of everything they ever make from clients you refer to them.

Yes, that second perspective is the one I have trouble with. His argument, laid out in numerical detail, is that this referred-out client is worth possibly thousands of dollars over the course of several years, and you are losing out every time that referred-to MT touches them. You deserve a piece of that action.

He calls this kind of thinking “prosperity consciousness”. I call it living from a “position of poverty”.

Here’s the problems with Cary’s rules, in my opinion:

1. I can’t lose what I never possessed. This is like asking me if I miss my pony....the one I never had. (This also applies to the "you're losing equity by renting!" argument).

2. I don’t “own” clients, even the ones who see me weekly and never see anyone else. Thinking you “own” them often leads to complacency around service and marketing and that will come back to bite you in the ass, trust me!

3. If my schedule is so full that I can’t take on any new clients, what do I gain by calling “dibs“ on one more? Didn’t Aesop wrote a fable about this, featuring a dog and a bone?

4. Focusing on the money someone else is making (and I’m not making) is living from a “position of poverty” (that is, seeing the situation only through the lens of loss or 'not enough'). Nobody lives well living from a position of poverty. It’s just another way to make yourself anxious.

5. What service am I providing -- in perpetuity -- that I’m being paid for? What effort, work, skill, or talent am I being reimbursed for? I think it is reasonable to expect some goods or service in exchange for a payment. (Yes, I know this is a common practice in some other professions. That doesn't make it relevant to us.)

6. How can I (reasonably) ever confirm that I’m getting paid properly? How can the other MT not come to resent paying me for not doing anything? How can we end up with any relationship other than one of suspicion and resentment?

Cary does make one reasonable argument in defense of his position: most of us have a physical limit to how many sessions we can do in a week and that may not generate as much income as we’d like. I agree with him, especially as I get older! Are there ways to respond to this situation, though, that honors the kind of values many of us hold dear -- cooperation, communication, abundance, etc?

Imagine the following scenario instead: you have a full practice and can’t take on any new clients. But you’re still getting phone calls from potential new clients and this has been going on for a while.

You realize you have a valuable resource. You “adopt” a new therapist, sharing office space with them, mentoring them, teaching them how to build their own client base, while you also refer your overflow to them.

In exchange for the office space, the mentoring, the referrals, and sharing resources (linens, oil, etc.) the therapist pays you a percentage. You are clear that you are acting as an incubator and that this arrangement is time-limited (for, say, 2 years). After 2 years, you expect the “adopted” MT to be able to move out on their own (and maybe one day adopt their own new MT). If you still have overflow, you “adopt” a new MT under the same arrangement.

That’s not the only possible response to the “schedule’s full but the phone keeps ringing” scenario but it is a response based on a “position of abundance”; that is, a position of having enough to share (and experiencing the joy of sharing and helping someone else grow). I bet you could come up with a different response but one still based on a “position of abundance”.

Which way would you rather do business in this world: from a position of poverty or a position of abundance?