Throw A Party

If you don't know, I live in Washington DC. We have been shut down as a city for the last 2 days because of Hurricane Sandy. This, of course, did nothing good for my business!

The worst of the weather was Monday night. By Tuesday, everyone was coming out and assessing the damage (we had none, blessedly). I had a wide open schedule staring me in the face. I decided to throw a party.

Specifically, I threw a "Hurricane Sandy Massage Party". I figured that people who could walk to my home office might be also stuck at home, also needing a little R&R, and might like to learn that there's a massage therapist mere blocks from their house.

I put a notice on the home page of my website and Facebook. I sent notices to neighborhood listserves. The notices said it was for only 1 day (today) and it was Name Your Own Price.

How many responses did I get? Exactly 1. But that's one more than I would have had otherwise and now there are a couple hundred people who've learned there's a massage therapist in their neighborhood.

Cost to me?  $0 and about 3 hours (updating website, sending notices).

Will that client be a regular? No. After our session he complimented me on my work but explained he needed something slightly different from what I can offer. I said I'd email him the names of several MTs I think he should try. He was surprised and pleased by my offer. That email has gone out. He will remember me when someone mentions that they wish there were MTs in our neighborhood.

Is it time for you to throw a party??

Multiple Choice: Who's Really Your Client?

A man calls you. He wants to set up weekly massage appointments for his 85-year-old mother, who lives in a nursing home. The son will be paying you and has strong opinions about the best massage for his mom; specifically, he firmly believes in the value of deep tissue and insists that you do deep tissue on his mother.

Unless his mother is unusually robust for an 85-year-old who lives in a nursing home, deep tissue would be contraindicated. Do you tell the son that? Do you agree with the son and then do what you professionally deem best? Do you ask the mother to explain it to her son?

Who are you responsible to? The mother is receiving the massage but the son has hired you and is paying you. Who is your client? Money or massage? What trumps – the business or the work? 
 

Your client is not the person paying you. It's the person receiving the work. Your professional obligations are always to the body and spirit under your hands.

What do you say to the son and his deep-tissue insistence? Arguing is probably not going to be productive. About all you can say is “I'll give your mom the best care I can and use my best professional judgment.”

And if the son insists? You may engage him in a conversation about why he believes deep tissue is best. Talk a bit about the physiological differences between the average adult and an older adult.

But in the end if the price of working on a client is working outside professional boundaries, the answer has to be “no”, no matter how good the money.

Telling Your Story

I had (another) great conversation with my friend Kitty today. Kitty does a lot of geriatric massage. She was recently telling a robust geriatric client about going to the funeral of an older geriatric client. This led to a conversation about the difference between how Kitty works with these two.

It must be tough, he said. You never get the satisfaction of “making them better”. She explained that “better” is not her goal. “My goal in those 30 minutes is to make that client as connected and happy and as part of the world as he can be. What I want is that he and together would be in the moment.”

He said “you know that’s not my goal, right?” Kitty laughed and said “your goal is to get back on the golf course as quickly as possible and I’m OK with that.”

What a great way to explain her work! Most MTs I know struggle to explain their work in a compelling and compact way, especially if their work is outside the standard image of massage therapy. One friend has been working, diligently, for most of a year to explain her energy work.

Having our “message” about our work is so important. We need to be able to convey the essence of our work succintly, generally in 20-30 seconds, maybe a sentence or 3. That’s quite a communication challenge even for professional communicators.

Don’t be surprised if you can’t do it right away. Don’t be surprised if it actually takes you years to hone that message. Don’t be surprised if it changes and mutates over the length of your career. Kitty has been in practice for almost 13 years. I know that her explanation would not have been that elegant 5 years ago. She would have had a good explanation but I was really impressed with this explanation. It’s compelling. It’s visceral. It’s emotionally real. It’s simple.

It also doesn’t focus on techniques or technical skills (which most non-MTs aren’t all that interested in). It captures the heart of what she does.

Those are all good elements of a “message”. You don’t have to be slick or have a gimmick, though you can if that’s authentic to you. Depending on the audience, when people ask me what I do for a living I say “I rub naked people”. Trust me, people remember and they want to know more! But I also have a more serious message if that’s appropriate. What’s really important is that it sounds natural coming out of your mouth.

Kitty’s message wouldn’t sound right coming out of me. I’m not sure Kitty would ever say “I rub naked people”. They are both accurate for what we do but they don’t reflect our different personalities.

What about being unique? Saying something that no one else would ever think of saying? That’s great if you can do it. However, most of us are doing some variation on the same thing and there are only so many words in the English language so that might be tough. It doesn’t have to be utterly unique but it needs to capture the way you approach massage.

Don’t worry if you are always trying to hone your message. I’m still working on mine after almost 13 years. Keep playing with it. It’s a hugely valuable part of your marketing effort. There’s no better marketing opportunity than when someone, face to face, asks you about what you do. Work on being ready.

 

Maybe If I Dance Just A Little Bit Faster

I'm on mailing lists or Facebook for a number of other business-oriented sites. I get a few emails / FB posts from them each week. Sometimes it's enlightening and engaging. Sometimes it's downright exhausting.

The tone of these messages is often breathless, anxious, or demanding.

You must read this (and this and this and this and this)!

You must study this (and this and this and this and this)!

You should be using this (and this and this and this and this)!

Why aren't you doing this (and this and this and this and this)?!!

I sometimes find myself over-stimulated, anxious, and even depressed by these messages. I feel like I'm being pushed to do more, faster, sooner, quicker! But I'm only one person who has to do everything my practice requires. I resent the push to do more more more!

I have a friend, another MT, who recently said in an email "I'm running on fumes". And she is. She has a tendency to over-commit and to take responsibility for things that really aren't her responsibility. And then she has a terrible time backing down from those commitments and responsibilities.

I'm worred for her because she's done this before and she usually ends up very very sick. She knows that but it's still so hard to ignore the demonic voices in her head saying "if you just worked a little bit harder / longer / faster".

I've said it before in this blog and I'll say it again -- you are the most important asset your practice has. Everything else -- everything (even your clients) -- can be replaced and you'll still have a practice. Take you out of the equation -- through excessive fatigue, illness, or overwork -- and you've got nothing.

It's tough. Our validation as massage therapists comes when someone else is happy, when we've made someone else feel better, made someone else's day.

There's also a lot of people out there saying that a "real" business / practice looks like x, y, or z. Their x, y, or z is often a business quite different from ours -- a doctor's office or a retail operation or even a multi-therapist practice (if you aren't a multi-therapist practice). If you don't look like that, you aren't taking yourself seriously as a business (dammit) and you need to step up! Work faster! Harder! Longer!

Who needs sleep and rest, after all, when you're building a business!!!!

I'm still recovering from the hospitalization for severe appendicitis three weeks ago. It's taking an age for my stamina to re-build so all those faster, faster, faster messages are falling on deaf ears here. It's physically impossible for me. But when I'm healthy......sigh.

When you're tempted to give in to the faster / longer / harder / more more more messages, stop. Sit. Tune in to your center. That center will tell you how much you need and how hard you actually can work. Ignore it at your own peril.

Crap Happens, Day 7

Here's what today should look like for me:

• Wake at a friend's house near Portland OR.
• Help her get ready (last chemo treatment last Thursday) and drive her into a doctor's appointment and lunch with her friend (who will help her get home).
• I'll go on to have lunch with my favorite accountant and get a tour of the Oregon School of Massage
• And then on to a frenzied ecstatic wallet-draining romp through my most favorite bookstore in the world – Powell's World of Books.
• Return home, spent and elated.

Here's what today will look like:

• Met with the medical team doing their rounds (they're so young!) very early. It's Day 7 of my hospitalization for severe appendicitis. They gave me some good news: I will be released from my constant companion IV pole (switching to oral antibiotics). I will be able to go to the full liquid diet (not just the clear liquid diet), and I will likely go home tomorrow.
• Once released from the IV pole, take a full, unencumbered shower.
• Take a walk beyond the loop of this floor.
• Continue to take necessary naps.
  
  
  This also means that, no (whimper) I will not be presenting "Biz Plans Deciphered" that the national AMTA Convention on Thursday as planned either. (sigh)

But I can't even be too wedded to these plans. I'm a human body fighting off a huge infection in a delicate place. My pain continues. My colon is still healing, Things change. Crap happens.

So it goes with our business. If you're the Planning Type, this will drive you nuts. What's your best response? Flexibility and (ironically) planning. It's a different kind of planning though. Plan for what you want and then plan for things you could not have anticipated (like appendicitis). Plan to not have all the resources you need or need all the resources you have. Specifically.....

Plan for how much money you need to make this year and plan for what you'll do if you don't make it.

Plan for how many weeks / days / hours you'll work this year and then plan for what you'll do when they don't come through.

Plan to take time off for training, holidays, and illness. Add 1-3 weeks for other events that will keep you from working that you don't yet know about. 

Let me give some true examples from my own life – in one year: car stolen, parent hospitalized, won a trip to Japan, offered a move to Australia that was later rescinded, moved a very ill friend out of her apartment and into ours (permanently, it turns out), received notice that our rent was going up 35% and began house- and mortgage-hunting, a blizzard, death of a parent, moved remaining grandparent into nursing home.

Ah, 2005....

You have to plan for (or at least make room for) the un-plannable because it's going to happen to you anyways.

I suppose I should call this the Plan B Plan Approach but I'm so found of “crap happens” because, as I'm sure you can tell, that captures the visceral feel so much more accurately.

Confidential to SP (because I know she reads this): sorry I didn't let you know what was going on. I was simply unable to do more than the most basic communication.