Financial Security: About Those Therapists Making $100K a Year… |

Business and Marketing for Massage and Bodywork Therapists

Episode 21.

MINDY TOTTEN: If you're worrying about paying your bills, having the light shut off or being able to make enough for you and your family to live on. There is simply no way that you can be 100% present for your clients.

MINDY TOTTEN: Welcome to Do It With Intention, the podcast for massage and bodywork therapists. I'm your host, Mindy Totten, a mentor and coach for bodyworkers who want to turn their passion for the work that they do into successful businesses that they love, all without burning out or selling out.

For the last 15+ years, I've created a successful six figure CranioSacral Therapy practice in a small city in coastal North Carolina. Over those years, I've met so many skilled, big-hearted therapists who are struggling to make their bodywork businesses work for them, not because they weren't terrific therapists, but because they didn't know how to make the business side of their practices work.

It became my mission to help other massage and bodywork therapists build practices that support not only their souls but also their bottom lines. On the Do It With Intention podcast, we'll dive deep into what it takes to build and to sustain a profitable massage or bodywork business.

We'll have honest conversations about what really works (and what doesn't) as you create the ideal practice for you.

After all, you do great work in the world, and you deserve to make a great living doing it. But you've got to be intentional about it, not only in your modality, but in your business too. And THAT’s how bodyworkers Do It With Intention.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Do It With Intention podcast. I’m Mindy Totten, and today I want to talk to you about sort of an elephant in the room and our industry — and that is making a lot of money.

In the years that I've done this work, both as a CranioSacral therapist and as a coach and mentor for other therapists, I've spoken with people at both ends of this continuum. And what I mean is at one end practitioners who want to work for free, all the way to the other end, to therapists who want to bring in $1 million or more every year.

And the one thing that they all have in common that they all say that they want is financial security. Yeah, that's a lot. Whoa.

What is financial security? Well, let's unpack some of that for just a second here. I've spoken to massage and bodyworkers who feel guilty charging anything at all for their services.

This is called the Sacred Poverty mindset. And the logic is that if you have a service that you offer that helps others, then you shouldn't charge for it. You should live with not enough because that's the only quote-unquote honorable way to share your service with the world.

Well, as you can probably guess, I could not disagree more. In order to do your best work, you have to come from a place of having a full cup. You cannot give what you don't have. And if you're worrying about paying your bills, about having the lights shut off, or being able to make enough for you and your family to live on, there's simply no way that you can be 100% present for your clients.

There's just no way — therapeutically your work will suffer, and your clients won't see the results that they're hoping for. And you know, I could go on and on about this. I've even written an entire module about mindset in a masterclass that I offer that's called Raise Your Rates: Increasing Your Prices with Intention and Integrity, which you'll be hearing more about in the next few episodes.

But for right now, let's presume that you are ready and willing to make a good living doing the work that you love in your massage and body work business. So if that's you, one of the things that I hear a lot from therapists is that they will consider themselves a success if they can just make six figures in their business. That's $100,000 a year.

Okay, let's talk about that for a second. A hundred K a year. Is that even doable? Absolutely. It is absolutely.

Is it practical? Well, possibly.

Is it necessary? And there's the question — that all depends, right?

Let's break it down even further. What would it take for you to earn $100,000 a year in your business?

Before we look at the logistics of earning $100K, I want you to know that that number is 100% absolutely, completely arbitrary. You might not need to earn anything near that to make a go of it in your business, or you might need to earn much more.

I've worked with therapists in my Private Mentoring Program who needed to earn $25,000 a month in revenue because the cost of living was so high where they lived. On the other hand, I've worked with therapists who only needed to clear, you know, one or $2,000 a month to pay their business expenses and break even because they weren't the primary breadwinners in their families.

So the first thing I want you to take to heart is that $100,000 a year can be a thing that's kind of about ego. You know, not many massage or body workers make it to that six figure mark, so it can have a sense of, you know, like, Hey, look what look what I've been able to do. Right?

But it might not be what YOU need to be truly sustainable.

And a quick aside here, if you're curious about what you need to earn as your baseline income, I invite you to check out episode five. I created a bonus for that episode. That'll help you figure out what I call your exhale number. That's the number that you need to make to be able to breathe easy. Again, you can find that episode at Mindy totten.com/podcast/episode five

Remember, it's not about you. It's about the people you're serving.

Making $100,000 a year just for bragging rights doesn't help you become a better practitioner, and it certainly doesn't help your clients see better results.

Let's jump into the numbers. As scary as that can be, looking at your numbers is so important and it's really not that hard. If I can do it, you can do it. I used to be an English teacher and math was never my favorite subject.

I have a T-shirt that says “I'm an English major. You do the math.”

You don't have to be an accounting expert to get a handle on some of these numbers.

Let's take a look at earning $100,000 each year. You would need to bring in $8,333.33 every month.

At first that might seem completely off the charts to you, but it’s doable.

Let’s add in that you want to take two weeks of vacation every year. That means you'd be working 50 weeks, and if you wanted to make $100,000 in a year you'd need to bring in $2,000 each week to hit that six-figure mark and still take your two week vacation.

Put another way, you could see 30 clients a week, six clients each day for five days a week, and charge them $67 a session. That would put you at a $100K.

Or -- and this is what I always advocate -- you could see 20 clients a week (five each day, four days a week), and have an extra day off.

If you charged $100 per session instead of $67, that would certainly give you a lot more time for your life.

Or you could do something other than hands-on work.

You could offer workshops or other programs and you could hit your goal even faster.

A workshop for 10 people at $250 per person gets you $2,500 rather quickly, and you've exceeded your weekly income goal.

Next week's episode takes a closer look at some of the different ways that you can earn revenue in your business.

But right now I want you to see that while it isn't always necessary to hit six figures, it certainly is possible.

In my work mentoring and coaching therapists who've made $100,000 or more, there is one thing that every single one of them does. They are consistent.

They're consistent in their marketing, they're consistent in their customer service, and they're consistent in their follow-up.

They're constantly putting themselves out there and detaching from the outcomes, earning enough money to do the work that they love and to be of service to others -- and they also have a life.

What about you? Are you where you want to be in your business or are you just sort of phoning it in?

There have been times in my 16 years of private practice that I've just been phoning it in.

It's important to give yourself grace to say, “Okay, now I know better. I'm going to do better, and hold myself accountable.”

Being willing to do the work, getting clear on your intention and taking consistent action will allow you to crush your business goals -- whether it's $1,000 a month or $25,000 a month.

Now, if you've got a vision but you're not exactly sure what you should be doing, I’ve created a free checklist called 100 Ways to Grow Your Bodywork Business. Download it from the show notes.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me today. I know what it takes to find time to fit something like a podcast into your busy day, and I so, so appreciate that you tuned in and listened to all the way to the end. We've got all the links from today's episode in the show notes that you can find over at MindyTotten.com/podcast. That's Mindy Totten, T O T T E N.com/podcast.

If you really enjoyed today's conversation, I'd love for you to take a quick moment to leave a review on Apple podcasts. And make sure that you subscribe so that you can download each episode as soon as it comes out.

That'll help us get this podcast in front of more massage and bodyworkers like you, so that we can all work together to make the world a touch kinder.

Okay. That's it for today. It's my pleasure and my privilege to be with you on this journey. I'll see you next week, same place, same time. Until then, get out there and Do It With Intention.