2 Massage Business-Building Lessons – From My Daugher & Bill Gates
Today, I’ve got 2 very profound massage business- building lessons for you.
Both of which can radically alter your massage practice, income, and life in general.
One is from my 5-year old daughter, Gabriella, of all people. And, the other is from Bill Gates (certainly much more appropriate).
Let’s start with the lesson from my daughter.
I call it the Happiness Rope Trick.
A few weeks ago as I was doing a little bass fishing in the canal in my backyard (ahhhh, the benefits of the Sunshine State), my daughter came over to me with a piece of yarn about a foot long, and said, “Daddy, can I show you a trick?”
“Of course you can show me a trick, baby”, I replied.
“Okay, watch this. Here’s a smiley face.”, she then said, as she held up each end of the piece of yarn; making it into what looked like a smile.
“Oh, so cute and innocent”, I thought to myself.
“Let me now show you a sad face”, she continued.
At which point she tried to form a frown by pulling down on the ends of the yarn, while attempting to keep the middle part up.
But, thanks to gravity, no matter how hard she tried to position the piece of yarn into a frown, she just couldn’t do it.
There was no way for her to keep the middle part of the yarn up, while pulling down on the ends to make a frown. You just can’t do it.
So, what does my daughter do?
She looks at me, shrugs her shoulders, and says, “Let’s just do the smile.”.
Then, she goes right back to positioning the little yarn into a smile again.
And it was right then that I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be great if we all operated that way everyday?”
Wouldn’t it really alter the way we go through life if we didn’t allow ourselves to frown. But, instead in place of frowning we smiled and looked for the good in situations.
Anyway, it’s worth thinking about. Sometimes we can find the greatest lessons from the cutest of little children.
With that said… now let’s talk about the killer business-lesson every massage therapist needs to learn from Bill Gates.
Here it is:
Bill was once quoted as saying something along the lines of, “Microsoft has had lots of competitors over the years. It’s a good thing we have museums to record those moments in history.”
Ouch. Not a good thing to think about if you were one of those competitors, that’s for sure.
But, you certainly don’t need to be a competitor of Microsoft to feel the sting of business competition.
With the quantity of massage therapists in practice today, and the quantity of new therapists coming into the profession every year, I’m sure you’d agree, it’s a pretty darn crowded and competitive massage marketplace out there.
The numbers of therapists leaving the profession every year, simply because they can’t make their bills, certainly confirms that.
So, how does a massage therapist go about being on the winning side… the success side… of business competition, instead of on the losing, struggling side?
DIFFERENTIATION.
Meaning: in order to excel in a crowded profession, you must be able to show prospective clients and active clients what makes you and your massage services different from every other therapist out there.
Mainly, you must offer them benefits and unique value they *can’t get anywhere else*.
And, if you really want to protect your practice and income from current competition and any future competition, you must learn how to position your massage practice uniquely in the mind of consumers.
In other words, you’ve got to learn how, through your marketing, to have prospective massage clients view your massage practice compared to others, as if comparing apples to oranges.
This only happens when you take proactive action to create that differentiated, unique positioning.
Sadly, most massage schools never teach this concept to graduating therapists.
Therapists then go into an insanely competitive marketplace, with tons of practicing therapists, struggle to build their practices, and end up tremendously frustrated.
Can you blame them?
I certainly can’t.
Which is why, about a year ago, I spent so many hours putting together a live 3-hour presentation on just this topic alone.
Because without this knowledge, I believe therapists will continue to struggle.
But, with the proper understanding of how to avoid competition (permanently) with positioning and differentiation, I believe therapists can experience a fairly easy time building and sustaining a super-successful practice.
Personally, I believe this course is the second most valuable course I’ve published. (Second to the Mega-Success System For Massage Therapists: http://www.GetMassageClients.com/system.htm)
Anyway, I don’t talk much about it, but we actually give therapists the opportunity to get their hands on the home study version of that live presentation.
It was orignally named “The Creative Massage Practice”, but I later changed it to “Outwitting Your Massage Competition”.
If you’d like to understand exactly how to make your practice stand out from the crowd, and keep it that way, you really should own this course.
You can get it here: http://www.TheCreativeMassagePractice.com
Talk to you soon, Todd Brown 
P.S. Please don’t make this mistake…
Don’t think that people are just going to beat a path to your door because you’re a caring, compassionate, fantastic massage therapist.
I wish the world worked that way.
But, it doesn’t.
Instead, *create* that stampede of clients coming into your practice, by using the Outwitting Your Massage Practice course to make your practice stand out from the crowd.
