Next week I'm teaching a 4-hour class on business plans for massage therapists. It's at 8 am and I've got 35 people signed up. Let me say that again: at 8 am. They must want this bad. I often see clients until 9 pm or later so there's lots of days I'm just waking up at 8 am! I'm going to have to get a good night's sleep the night before this class!
I'm pretty confident I can deliver material that will be useful to everyone in that room. I'm passionate about making business knowledge accessible to MTs, explaining things in language we can understand. Translating "standard" biz concepts into something people like us can work with.
I would like to say that it's the result of my degree in business or my extensive experience managing obscenely profitable businesses. I possess neither of those. I have no formal training in business. I have (1) real-world experience in building (and re-building) a modestly successful practice and (2) a gift for learning new stuff and translating it to the general public.
10 years ago I knew virtually nothing about business. Then my alma mater, the Potomac Massage Training Institute, got desperate for someone to teach business practices and asked me if I'd take it on. That request gave me a moment's pause (see: "uneducated in business", above) but then I thought "what the heck, I bet I can figure this out" and I proceeded to do just that.
In the process I discovered I'm really fascinated by the subject and (more importantly) by making the subject accessible to other MTs and microbusinesses. I was born to teach, baby!
What about you? What are you not doing right now because you don't have formal education in it or didn't go to college or "only" have a GED? What have you convinced yourself you're not smart enough to do?
(Note: I do not mean passing yourself off as competent in something you've never studied, like lymph drainage or visceral manipulation! Don't go there, don't do that.)
In our culture right now we are absurdly obsessed with the idea that a college degree is the way to health, wealth, and happiness. You must get a college degree if you don't want to end up hungry and homeless.
I have a college degree (BA, Journalism) and I have this to say about that: bullcrap. I know way too many people who are brilliant at what they do who do not possess a college degree.
There's so many things we have to learn on our own in this industry. Our training programs are struggling to keep up with the changes in the profession and the rising expectations put on us. We simply need (and want) to know more than we did 20-30 years ago. It's a natural problem to have as a profession matures but it means we often have to educate ourselves about things like research, business, new insights into how the body works, etc.
Telling yourself you're not smart enough or educated enough to do that is like tying your shoelaces together and then trying to go for a walk! Not going to get far.
If you are a practicing massage therapist, if you finished a professional training program, you are smart enough. Find places to learn the things you need to learn. Find people with the information you need and learn from them. Find the books, websites, journals, blogs, and conferences that can feed you the info you need.
Go out there and get yourself smarter. I know you can do it!
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