Three Ways to Earn More Income in Your Massage or Bodywork Business | Business and Marketing for Massage and Bodywork Therapists

Episode 5.

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 they do into successful businesses that they love -- all without burning out or selling. 

For the last 15 plus 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 soul, but also their bottom line.

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. That's how body workers Do It With Intention.

Welcome back to Do It With Intention. This is Episode 5 featuring the three ways to earn more income in your massage or bodywork business.

When I work with people in The Bodywork Project or in my private mentoring programs, one of the first things that I have therapists do is calculate what I call their Exhale Number.

The Exhale Number is basically your baseline income. What do you need to earn to cover basic business expenses and basic living expenses. This is the number that you need to earn each month to keep the doors open in your massage or bodywork business.

Most therapists who reach out for support are not consistently earning enough revenue to hit their baseline income goals.

So one of the first things that we do is create a plan to increase income so that they can make their Exhale Number with ease.

And here's some inside scoop: There are not that many ways that you can earn more income. It's not rocket science; it's just the way it is.

I'm going to share the three main ways that you can earn more income in your massage or bodywork business. And then I'll tell you my favorite. It's the fastest, and believe it or not, the easiest way for you to earn more.

I'm not talking about any kind of side hustles or other ways to earn more income. There are many things that you can do such as offering products, or participate in MLM (multi level marketing).

I'm focusing more on doing the work that you truly love and the work that just lights your heart up -- your massage or your bodywork. The modality that you love doing that serves people and helps them live better lives.

How can you do that work and earn more income?

The first way is to get more clients, and this is what you read about all the time online. The conventional wisdom talks a lot about how to attract more clients by, for example, increasing your SEO so that your webpage comes up higher in search results, or going to networking events so that you can tell everyone in your community about the work that you do.

My experience with networking? People just trying to give you their business cards. It’s always bombed for me.

The thing that people don't realize is that it takes longer than you think it's going to take. Always, always, always. So don't plan on getting your first 20 clients in the first month. That's just not practical.

Why does it take so long to get more clients? Mostly because you haven’t given people a chance to get to know you, to like you, and to trust you.

That doesn't mean everybody has to like you. The Know-Like-Trust factor gives people the opportunity to see whether or not they resonate with you, whether or not they feel comfortable with you.

The work that we do is really deep and intimate. People need a chance to get an idea of who you are and what kind of work you do and to see whether it will help them or not.

If you’re still in the phase of constantly hustling and trying to get new clients, I am here to tell you that phase will eventually taper off when you get these new clients in to see you.

Everyone has to do it in the beginning, but it's not the only way to raise your income. It's just one way to do it.

The second way to raise your income is what I call increasing The Lifetime Value of a Client. And let me explain what I mean by that.

Let’s say you have 10 new clients and that's your base. One of them makes an appointment, which means you've done all that you need to do to bring a client in. Say that client comes in and then you never see them again. You have to start all over. You have to start the hamster wheel all over trying to get more clients to come in.

But if you focus on that one client that comes in and you do excellent work, you create a fantastic client experience, you create a safe container not only with your modality therapeutically but also in your business.

That one person, that one new client who comes in is going to come in over and over and over again. So the lifetime value of that client increases 10 fold or 20 fold or 100 fold. So you don't have to go get 100 new clients.

You have that one client that you do wonderful work on and that client brings in more income for you.

I used to do a study circle with my clients. Those are the people who are likely to take you up on your new offers as well. So again, that's increasing their lifetime value.

They'll not only come in to see you for bodywork, but they'll also come for other things you may offer.

The third way that you can earn more revenue, and by far the easiest way, is to raise your prices. This is also the fastest way to earn more income.

Raising your prices can bring up a lot of fears and a lot of vulnerabilities.

And here's something to remember: There is no one right price for everyone. Even if you offered your services for free, there would be people who wouldn't come just because it’s free.

They’d think, “Oh, she's offering it for free. She must not be very good.”

No matter what your prices are set at, they’re not going to be right for everybody. So you need to really go deep into your heart. Do the work, the preparation work, to raise your rates so that you can do it with intention and with integrity.

Let me give you an example. Let's say that you see 10 clients each week and you charge $75 per session. That gives you an average income of about $3,000 a month. Because we're going to assume that you get to take four weeks off just for you every year for vacation, right?

Boom. You’ve got your four weeks built in there. So you're earning about $3,000 each month and that's terrific.

But let's say you increase your rates to $100 per session. That’ll earn an average of $4,000 each month. That's $12,000 more every single year without having to find a single new client. It's the fastest and the simplest way without question to earn more income.

But just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy. Therapists I talk to are always afraid to raise their prices.

But after going through this myself several years, I'm no longer afraid to raise my prices. I do it now every other year and my clients have come to expect it. They know it's going to happen.

It's not something that I take lightly, but it doesn't have to be crippling. It doesn't have to stop you. Remember, you’re creating a sustainable practice that will support not only your soul but also your bottom line.

The underlying fear is that if you raise your rates everyone is going to leave. The truth of it is some people will leave when you raise your rates, but here's the wonderful thing about that.

You won't need as many people to keep your income at a steady rate because your prices are higher. Also, the people who leave are probably not your ideal clients anyway.

They may have been what I call PITA clients. I’m sure you’ve had pain-in-the-ass clients you just don't click with. Those are the people who are going to fall off, and because they are gone, you have this wonderful void that's opened up so that the universe can send you the people you really do want to work with, people who will really resonate with you and will get so many wonderful results from the work you do.

The number one thing that you can do wrong when you're thinking about raising your rates is to not do it with intention. What I mean by that is you just look around and you see what everyone else in the community is charging, and then you charge somewhere along those lines.

That's not the right way to raise your rates because you know everyone's got their money issues. It's really important to raise prices with intention. And with integrity.

So how do you go about doing this? I go into this in really deep detail in a masterclass that I've created called Raise Your Rates: How to Increase Your Prices with Intention and Integrity.

For now let’s focus on one piece of it because I want you to be able to walk away from this podcast episode with something really solid that you can use to move forward.

I challenge you to figure out how much you would need to charge to earn what I call that Exhale Number, that baseline amount that you need to keep your business doors open each month inside the ratio rates masterclass.

I've got a calculator that will help you figure out what that is. But for right now, just come up with a ballpark figure. That's your first task. What's the ballpark figure of what that baseline income would be that you would need to make to keep the doors open?

Once you've got that, I want you figure out how much you need to charge based on the average number of people you see every week to get that exhale number.

And I've got a downloadable PDF that you can use that's attached to this episode. It's in the show notes that will walk you through this step-by-step so that you can get an idea of what this exhale number is for you.

That's one piece of the pricing puzzle. What if you want to earn more than just this baseline income? What do you do then?

Or when should I raise my rates? Or how do you actually let your clients know that the prices are going to go up and how do you deal with clients who no longer want to come in?

I answer all of these questions in the Raise Your Rates Masterclass, and when you decide that you're ready to earn a sustainable income by raising your rates with intention and integrity, I invite you to check out this class.

I'll put that link into the show notes.

Because you guys are podcast listeners, I'm going to let you in a little behind the scenes scoop. I’ve got a flash sale coming up to show my gratitude for all of you who are going to make the world a touch kinder.

To wrap it up here today, whichever way you decide to earn more income, whether it's trying to get more clients or increasing the lifetime value per client, or to raise your rates, I encourage you with all of my heart to take that first step today.

As I said last week, the people who you can serve are just waiting, just waiting for you to get over your fears around marketing, around raising your rates. You can do this and I'm here to help. I'm holding you in my heart. I've got your back and I know that you can do it.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me today. I know what it takes to make time for something like this in your busy day and I so appreciate that you tuned in and listened 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.

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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.