Massage Magazine Editorial Q&A on Learn More to Earn More
Renee Gladieux Principe, NCTMB, Comments in Blue
Vice President of Sales, The Pressure Positive Company
Lauriann Greene, CEAS, Comments in Green
Author, “Save Your Hands” 2nd Edition
1. How can massage therapists best teach clients about your products for home care between sessions?
Everyone suffers from muscle trigger point discomfort at least some of the time, including massage therapists. The best foundation for understanding and teaching your clients to use our tools is to be able to use the tools yourself to successfully self treat in your own home. Understanding your own trigger points, their referred pain patterns and the perpetuating factors that keep them active will enable you to connect with your client in a profound way. You will transcend the more traditional role of delivering direct hands on treatment and also become a “self- care coach”. Show them how to use the tools in your office either during or after treatment. Have them try two or three techniques that speak directly to their problem areas and have them available for purchase after the session is over. Once they know they are doing things correctly they will be more likely to comply with your recommendations and get excellent results in a home setting.
2. Describe how learning to use your product or service can increase a massage therapist’s revenue?
Selling quality products that represent your core beliefs and enable you to connect successfully with your clients needs will increase your revenue. Remember that absolutely nothing can replace personal experience or knowledge when it comes to selling a product or yourself. Transferring that knowledge to your clients drives successful business in a number of ways. For one, educated clients tell their friends what they have learned and who they learned it from, bringing in referrals. Secondly, educated clients tend to spend more money because the results they are getting make it worth it. Thirdly, educated clients are more likely to reschedule on a regular basis. Finally, The Pressure Positive Company product line offers wholesale and heath professional discount opportunities that expand your profit center and increase your profit margins.
By learning effective self-care and injury prevention techniques, therapists can avoid symptoms and injuries that can interfere with their ability to make a living in massage. The Save Your Hands! 2nd Edition book and continuing education courses offer therapists hundreds of proven prevention strategies and tips they can use every day in their work to stay injury-free. As a Save Your Hands!® Certified Injury Prevention Instructor (CIPI), massage therapists can earn additional income by teaching self-care and injury prevention workshops to other therapists. This affordable, 50 CEU training program gives therapists a great way to help others in their profession prevent injury, and teaching gives their own hands and bodies a break from hands-on massage work.
3. Provide advice for massage therapists to offer retail products in their practices.
There are many factors to take into account when considering whether or not to offer retail products in your practice. Whole books are written on the subject! Keep in mind that products can and do enhance the health of your clients and create an alternative revenue stream that supports your hands on work. In general, do not offer products for sale in your practice unless you have used them yourself and understand fully the indications for their use. Make sure that your office space is suited for product and information display. Don’t let the sale of the product interfere with your primary role as hands on therapy giver.
4. What should massage therapists focus their continuing education on?
There are so many opportunities for learning in the massage field. It really depends on your goals and the setting in which you practice. But if you want to be able to talk to your client knowledgably about self care, look for a program that will give you instruction in identifying and treating the underlying causes of muscular pain and in teaching practical self-care techniques to address those factors that could be perpetuating the pain cycle. Programs that specialize in Myofascial Trigger Point Therapy are especially good in this regard because the client protocol emphasizes the importance of taking a complete and thorough client history before therapy ever starts thus giving the therapist insight into how to tailor an effective care plan.
Since injury is quite common among massage therapists, learning to recognize the risk factors for injury and to use effective prevention techniques in their practice is vitally important. Continuing education courses that offer evidence-based information and proven injury prevention methods can help therapists protect and prolong their careers. These courses also help them become better therapists by developing an understanding of their clients’ work-related symptoms and injuries and how they can be prevented and treated.
5. What questions should a massage therapist ask a vendor or supplier in order to choose the best products for his/her practice?
How should you decide on which products to sell in your practice? Some basic questions to ask potential vendors are:
• How long has your company been in business?
• Does your business sell strictly to massage therapists or other health professionals also?
• How does you company support the massage therapy profession?
• What makes your product different from all the rest of the tools out there?
• What are the suggested retail prices and price breaks on your products?
• Are there any clinical studies or research studies available concerning your products?
• Do you offer display units appropriate for an office setting?
• Do you offer any customer guarantees?
• Does your company provide samples for me to try out before I buy a wholesale order?
These are just a few of the criteria you will want to employ before you invest in product inventory.
6. What are up to three of the most important developments in the massage field related to learning or education?
Licensing requirements and the standardization of massage programs. The contribution of research to the body of knowledge of the manual therapy professions. Increased acceptance by other health professional specialties. I would add that there is now a greater awareness of the importance of practicing effective self-care and injury prevention throughout one’s career, a greater understanding of the importance of teaching evidence-based self-care and injury prevention methods as an integral part of the massage therapy curriculum, and a greater emphasis on developing teaching standards in the profession in general.
7. What should massage therapists teach clients about?
Therapists should teach clients about their bodies. We do not come with a user guide and it is the rare allopathic health care professional who will take the time to educate their patient about all the intricacies of their inner workings. As massage therapists, we treat our clients through touch. This gives us a special opportunity to teach them about why their bodies perform or don’t perform according to their expectations. While we do not diagnose, we have an obligation to accurately recognize abnormalities and direct our clients appropriately.
Most clients do some kind of work: typing all day on a computer, picking up heavy boxes, cleaning the house, etc. Many of the symptoms and injuries that massage therapists treat every day result from the physical and emotional demands of their clients’ work. The more therapists understand about the risk factors for work-related injury, the warning signs of injury, injury prevention and injury treatment, the better they can educate clients about the need for ongoing self-care to counteract the effects of their work.
8. Describe why learning about self care is important for massage therapists.
Learning about effective self care treatments is beneficial from both a personal and professional standpoint. Personally, by learning and practicing self care techniques the massage therapist can avoid or heal their injury. Professionally, by teaching their clients proven and effective self care techniques, they can expect their clients to get better faster. When clients’ symptoms improve they are more likely to develop complete trust in their massage therapist’s advice.
Massage therapy is a physically demanding profession. A recent study performed by the co-authors of Save Your Hands! 2nd Edition showed that 77% of massage therapists experience symptoms or injury as a result of their massage work. Injury prevention techniques exist that have been proven effective by decades of research. To protect their investment in their career and ensure that they can stay in the profession they love, therapists need to learn these effective techniques as students and use them throughout a long, healthy career.
9. Describe some techniques for being more successful as a student.
Certainly a successful student, in the classic sense, goes to all her classes, completes her assignments, listens and asks questions and does well on her tests. But in a much broader sense, as massage therapists, we ought never to stop learning and in this regard we are still students. The successful and evolving student should be reading trade publications and journals to understand how research impacts their practices and how they can translate that into knowledge their clients can really use. Be realistic about how to integrate the latest therapy techniques into your practice. Ask yourself if the technique you are learning is merely a gimmick or if it truly does have therapeutic value. Will a weekend or on line seminar really give you the expertise to treat your client confidently and effectively or is it meant to whet your appetite for a more in depth commitment to learning? Learn your techniques well, learn all there is to know about that technique and you will be successful.
Students need to start practicing effective self-care and injury prevention techniques from the start when they’re in massage school. Begin a physical conditioning program to develop the necessary physical capacity to start doing massage work without injuring yourself. Learn about the risk factors for injury, how to use your body efficiently as you massage, and how to set up your table and workspace so you’re able to use good mechanics. Practice keeping enough focus on yourself as you work on others that you can recognize and find solutions for any tension or discomfort that occurs. Everything you learn about taking care of yourself is totally applicable to your clients, and will make you a better therapist once you’re out of school. It will certainly help you have a longer and more successful career.
10. Anything else you would like to say about learning more to earn more, education, retail sales, continuing education, products that inform clients, systems of teaching involving products or online learning.
In these difficult economic times, therapists definitely need to protect their investment in their career and make sure they can keep practicing and earn money. One of the main reasons that therapists leave the massage profession is physical burnout due to ongoing symptoms or injury as a result of their work. So learning effective self-care and injury prevention methods is one of the best way therapists can preserve their income.
Therapists also need ways to earn more revenue. But not every therapist can simply take on more hours of hands-on massage to increase their income. In fact, surveys show that the average massage therapist does only 20 hours of massage per week, for various reasons including symptoms and injury. So therapists need to learn other skills that will generate income. Teaching is a great way to earn additional income in the massage field, and save your own hands and bodies at the same time. That’s why we created the affordable Certified Injury Prevention Instructor (CIPI) program, designed to train therapists to teach Save Your Hands!® self-care and injury prevention workshops to massage therapists and bodyworkers in their region, or at spas, schools or clinics. You’ll also learn how to market yourself for maximum success as a CIPI, and you’ll get ongoing marketing support from Save Your Hands! As a CIPI, you will learn more and earn more.
Additional sources of income that will encourage the growth of your practice may have less to do with actually massaging and more to do with establishing yourself as an expert at what you do. Certainly retaining your current clients is the foundation on which growth is possible. Understanding the community you work in and having a plan by which you intend to market yourself will build on that foundation. Look for opportunities to speak about massage in the context of self care. Many companies are quite interested in occupational safety issues. Could you develop a 30 minute or 1 hour self care class and present during your slow day? Would a self care workshop offered through your local gym generate enough interest to make it worth your while? Is there a newsletter or local paper that would be interested in having you write a regular column on self care tips and techniques? The key to a strong and thriving practice is to educate and challenge your self on a continuing basis and to transfer that education to current and potential clients through all means available.