Prosperous Massage Practice
Helping You Create a Prosperous Massage Practice
6 Tips to Avoid Burnout
Sep 3rd
Many people experience burnout at some point in their lives. Massage Therapists are even more likely to fall prey to burnout especially when they are self-employed because the buck stops with them. If you feel as if you’re starting to burn out here are some things you can do to avoid it.
1. Take care of #1. If you’re run down, you’ll burn out faster. Make sure you get enough sleep, eat right, exercise and de-stress on a regular basis.
2. Make the time to do nothing! We all need to take time to relax, refresh and replenish. Don’t keep pushing yourself. Keep regular business hours and take breaks during your work day. Make sure to schedule in time off and vacations on a regular basis. You’ll come back with a fresh outlook and perspective.
3. Get back in touch with the things you value. Is your work fulfilling and meaningful for you? If not, check in with your values. What’s missing? Where are you compromising? What needs to be eliminated? What are you merely tolerating? Re-assess and re-adjust your priorities as needed. If you work for yourself, you’re in control. Make the choices you want to make by honoring what’s important for you.
4. Think out of the box and challenge yourself consistently. If work has become a chore or you’re in a rut, try spicing things up a bit! Find innovative ways to do mundane tasks, create new products or services to add to your offering, improve performance, or tweak what you do best and make it even better.
5. Establish realistic expectations for what you can and cannot accomplish. If you find that you’re driving yourself too hard it may be time to let go of unrealistic expectations and readjust. Shorten your to-do list, give yourself some slack when needed and know when to let up on yourself and others.
6. Learn how to communicate clearly. Resolve conflicts, don’t run from them. Let people know what you expect from them, and ask them what they expect from you. Be clear and concise with what you say, and how you say it. Listen closely to the people around you, it will teach them to listen closely to you.
August Giveaway: Website Winner
Sep 1st
And the winner is…. Julie Deramo of a 5-page website! Congratulations!
Julie I will send you an email with all of the details.
How to Add Video to Your LinkedIn Profile
Sep 1st
LinkedIn is just one of the many ways to market yourself and your massage business on-line, but are you using it to its full potential?
In this short screencast video, you will learn how to add video to your LinkedIn Profile. Why add video?
1. Excellent way to get back links to your website.
2. Share your marketing message with your target audience.
3. Make your LinkedIn profile dynamic.
Anyway, here are some steps:
1. Login to LinkedIn
2. Add the Google Presentations application
3. Click the grey “Create Presentation” button. (Note: You must have a google docs account to do this. If you have a gmail address, you’re halfway there.)
4. From “Google Presentation” select Insert > Video from the main menu
5. Search for the video you want (Note: Obviously, your video needs to be uploaded to YouTube. I’m going to assume you have knowledge of how to do this for the sake of brevity, but if not, let me know and I’ll provide instruction.)
6. Click “Save & Close” in the upper right corner
7. Back in your LinkedIn window select the presentation and click “Post to Profile”
You’re Done!
or you can watch the screen cast video here.
Here’s what the video looks like on my profile.
Quite the ornament don’t you think? Make sure you click “view full profile” to see the real thing.
You Become Who …
Aug 30th
Welcome to Motivation Mondays! Here is your quote for the week.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” –Jim Rohn
Creating a Success Journal
Aug 27th
According to the Law of Attraction whatever we focus on expands. All too often we concentrate on what is wrong with our bodies, our relationships, our lives, and our businesses. If we are focusing on what is wrong and the Law of Attraction says that what we focus on expands aren’t we getting more of what is wrong? What a vicious cycle and totally avoidable.
How you ask? I want you to stop being critical of yourself and I want you to focus on what is right – your successes. You will journal these successes – the “ups” of your life into a “Success Journal.” Journaling is the act of writing out your thoughts. By writing your successes, you train yourself to see what is working, relieve stress and tension, and multiply your successes, creating a “delicious” cycle as a former instructor of mine used to say. Remember that what you focus on expands. Since we are now focusing on our successes, we will draw more successes.
Some people find journaling difficult in general and now I am asking you to write only about your successes. Just in case you may be having a little difficulty, let me give you some ideas about what could be successes in the various areas of our lives:
Regarding our bodies
1. I went on a 30 minute walk first thing this morning.
2. I ate very healthy yesterday – all day!
3. I looked dynamite in my little black dress when my husband took me out to dinner last night.
4. My complexion looked very healthy this morning after my shower.
5. I lost two pounds this week without trying very hard – just by eating healthy and walking a few times a week. This is so different from the previous times I have tried.
Regarding our relationships
1. My husband and I had a great time at dinner last night. He took me to my favorite restaurant.
2. I love it when my daughter helps me with the breakfast dishes as she did this morning.
3. My son and I had an enlightening conversation about why I should let him borrow the car this weekend to take his girlfriend out. He was so entertaining, I am seriously considering it.
Regarding our lives (work, financial, health or whatever else you want to write about here)
1. I saved $10 at the grocery store by using coupons.
2. My client thanked me for helping him feel better. This acknowledgement made me feel appreciated.
3. I am having a massage after work today. I am looking forward to the relaxation. I deserve it.
4. I got 5 new clients this month and we still have two weeks left in the month.
You don’t have to write for an extended period of time, unless you want to. I recommend writing for 2-5 minutes each day. I do, however, recommend writing first thing in the morning because you are writing about your successes which will set you up for more successes throughout the day. Remember the Law of Attraction says whatever your focus on expands! Go ahead, end that vicious cycle, create a “delicious” cycle!
Here are some other tips to get you started:
1. Get yourself a journal dedicated specifically to record your successes. Journals come in all varieties. You should get one that appeals to you. Below are some resources to get you started.
2. Find a quite, clutter-free area to record your successes.
3. Remember only record the successes! And be sure to report back and share your experiences.
Do you have any tips for journaling? Be sure to share them in the comments. I’m always looking for ways to improve my journaling experience.
How to Differentiate Yourself from Your Competition
Aug 25th
Is business a little slow for you? Whether your business is slow due to the economy or any other factors, there are some things you can do to differentiate yourself from the competition.
There are a couple quick things you can do to your LinkedIn profile to optimize it for SEO. These tips will help make your LinkedIn profile more marketable against the competition, and to make your profile work for you by sending some SEO authority (think links here) to other pages on the web that you choose.
The video below explains it all and shows you exactly how to do it in about 5 minutes.
Customize Your LinkedIn Profile
After you’ve customized your LinkedIn Profile, post on facebook your successes! Or you can also post your comments here :0)
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Living Magnet
Aug 23rd
Welcome to Motivation Mondays! Here is your quote for the week.
“You are a living magnet. What you attract into your life is in harmony with your dominant thoughts.” Brian Tracy
Review of The Spirit of Tao Te Ching by Richard Warner
Aug 20th
Looking for something different? Try “The Spirit of Tao Te Ching”.
Richard Warner’s diverse musical influences makes each of the nine compositions on “The Spirit of Tao Te Ching” noticeably different from the others.
Some of the selections (“Thunder” and “Heaven”) reflect oriental musical styles, while one (“Earth”) is definitely colored by African traditions and others (“Sunrise”, Water”, “Mountains in the Mist” and “Wind”) sound more New Age-y (is this really a word?).
Warner combines acoustic winds, electronic keyboards, nature sounds and light percussion to evoke moods inspired by the eight trigrams of Taoist I-Ching symbolism: heaven, earth, fire, water, thunder, wind, lake, and mountain.
Less oriental-sounding than might be expected, this gentle combination of acoustic and electronic sounds in both traditional and modern musical styles took me a little while to get used to. Now I find it to be refreshing and delightful listening.
My favorite track is the last one, “Tao”, which showcases Warner’s meandering, hypnotic, wooden-flute improvisations with only chimes in the background.
You can get a copy of “The Spirit of Tao Te Ching” at Amazon by clicking on the link below.
If you do get one (or already have a copy), what do you think of it? Post your comments below, I would love to hear them.
What other music do you recommend?
Are you connected?
Aug 18th
It’s a mistake that I see all the time.
Colleagues, coaching clients and friends who are in other businesses tell me that they created a twitter profile, facebook group/profile/official page, etc but no one joined them there.
Let me tell you, “if you build it they will come” is not true for social media!
So you created a twitter account – does anyone know about it? How could they possibly find out? We already discussed the idea of linking to social media in your email signature. But what about your website?
For this tip, your mission should you decide to accept, is to add social media links to your website, a good place is probably your bio or “About” page. You can see an example of mine here. As you can see I kept it very simple, with links to the sites that I’m active on.
You can jazz it up by adding logos, but plain text links work just as well.
If you don’t update your website yourself, just send your webmaster links to your social media profiles and my site as an example. It should take less than an hour, and you’ll soon see more visitors to your social media profiles.
Don’t have a website? Isn’t it time to hop on board? For the month of August, you can enter to win a website designed by me (a $500 value) by purchasing my book “Creating a Prosperous Practice” from the CAPP website. If you already have a website you will receive a website review (a $99 value) should you be the lucky winner.
Don’t want to miss out? Go to Creating a Prosperous Practice now and order your copy today!
8 Fast Ways to Write Blog Articles
Aug 17th
Do you spend hours researching books, the internet, etc. to come up with great information for your clients? Or maybe you have always wanted to start a blog but haven’t found the time. Time actually is a huge factor of why people don’t start or often abandon their blogs. But doing a blog for your massage practice has its benefits
Personally, I’m in the first boat. I always want my articles to be perfect (for you) and spend hours writing and editing and editing my edits. So when I read this article 8 Ways to Write Quick Articles for Your Blog, I was so excited! And I had to share this information with you.
If you don’t have a blog, did it inspire you to do one? Do you will that this will make your blogging easier? If you do have a blog, what other tips have you found for creating quick articles for your blog. Please post your comments below. I would love to read your experiences.
