Are YOU ready to start your massage business?

Do these questions sound familiar to you?

Where do I find Referrals? How can I get more people to find me?

How do you get clients to come back? I need repeat clientele to make my business work for me...

How do I make enough money as a massage therapist? I need more revenue and a future that looks more financially secure. How do I do that?

These are the questions that as a business coach for massage therapists I have heard over and over again. Having been in this business for 30 + years, its interesting to me that regardless of online progress or the available tools for business owners, the answers to these questions have not changed. 

These questions typically match different but specific times of your evolving career and business.

These landmarks are what I call the Referral, Repeat Clientele, and the Revenue phases and I and going to bet that you are in one of these phases right now with questions about how to make it through it!

In this 1st of a 3 blog posts, we are going to talk about the how to get referrals through your door.

THE REFERRAL PHASE

If you are in this phase, you are likely consumed with one thing: finding clients ....like....YESTERDAY!

I remember when I started out as a massage therapist, I had no idea where I was supposed to find new clients. How did you advertise for them? Where did you advertise for them? How did they find you? What would inspire people to come get a massage from me?

The questions seemed so daunting and depressing that I contemplated giving up before I ever started my business!

I remember throwing coupons out like candy and trying everything I could to get people to buy gift certificates, packages, ANYTHING to get people in the door and none of those things worked well enough. 

It was after my first 3 months in business that I learned something very powerful about getting people to try massage. It was so simple it was slightly dumbfounding but I just started to ASK people if they would like to come get on my massage table. And guess what ? They did!

Now this was before social media was a thing so it was done the old-fashioned way. Face-to-face. I had to put myself into social situations where I could ask people to come try out my massage services. Sometimes people booked appointments and other times I had to offer some incentive and allow them try my services for 30 minutes for free. In most cases, that was the best 30 minutes of advertising I could have ever offered that person, many becoming lifelong clients from that free 30 minutes. 

Either way you look at it, I had to step out of my comfort zone and invite people to be willing to try out a new service with me. Once I started doing that, I had more people scheduling in with me then I thought possible. And once more people came to me and realized how massage could benefit their lives, they started referring people they knew.

Once I saw how well personal referrals worked, I started asking my clients for referrals.  And this brought even more clients to my business until I was full and could not accept new clients anymore.

Can you feel the difference between trying to go out and "find" people and what it feels like to be open and ASK those around you to try your services? Sure - I was turned down by some but just as often I had people take a chance on me. 

The same goes for you in your new business and you will never know until you try. 

If you would life a free PDF guide on 3 tips for creating a referral system in your massage business click here: The 3 Tips for Setting Up a Referral System.

Now get out there and invite people to your massage table and business!

Amy Bradley Radford