Making a Living with Massage Therapy pt4

This job pays x (insert rate here). Is that good?

I don’t know, is it? Asking this question is putting the cart before the horse. There are a couple of things that must be considered before this question is asked.

1. How much do you need?
2. How much work can you do?
3. How busy will you be?
4. What do comparable establishments with comparable clientele pay?

How much do you need?

The first and foremost item that needs to be considered is what you need to live. If you are young, single, and living at home with mom and dad, your expenses may only be a few hundred dollars a month. On the other hand, I had a student that had over $9000 a month in expenses by paying 2 mortgages and the like. Obviously their needs would be very different.

Start by figuring out your bills and obligations on a monthly basis. Rent, car payment, gas, insurance, cable, phone, memberships, etc... add it all up. Don't forget to include annualized costs as well like car registration, magazine subscriptions, or that annual family trip you take (just divide by 12 for a monthly cost). Also, estimate what you spend irregularly on things like clothes, new shoes, and the like. Try to average it out into a monthly cost. The important thing here is to put a number on your lifestyle, NOT to give yourself a bare minimum budget that you can just barely survive on. It is good to know the bare minimum that you can scrape by one, but you don't want to live that way all the time. You can even plan for the future by adding in the things that you aspire to - new car, starting a family, starting a business.

How much work can you do?

Because we work directly with our clients, and generally we can only work with one client at a time, we MTs are inherently limited in the quantity of work we can do. There are also physical limits as well. Although I've done 10 massages in a day before, I certainly wouldn't and couldn't keep up that pace on a regular basis. Personally, I found my comfort zone to be about 15-20 massages a week. What is your number? It may be higher or lower, but how many appointments a week works for you? Without putting your body, your health, or your family/social life at risk? There are 4.33 weeks in an average month, but using 4 will help you to play it safe and estimate higher.

How busy will you be?

Before you can determine if you will be able to live off of the income from your practice or that job you applied for, you need to know how much work you will be getting. This isn't as important if you are making a set hourly wage, but it is vital if you are paid by commission or per client. This is so important that you should never leave an interview without finding out how many appointments a typical MT at a business does a week. Why? Because it may sound great that a spa will pay you $60 an hour, but if you're on-call (or worse, sitting around) and only getting 3 appointments a week, you're making a lot less than $30/hr at 10 appointments per week. Also find out the cycles of the business. Some places are relatively steady, others are feast or famine. Make sure you see the big picture.

What do comparable establishments with comparable clientele pay?

If everything is working for you in these other questions, this one isn't so important. If you ain't broke, don't fix it! But it is good practice to know what comparably experienced MTs, in comparable establishments, working with comparable clientele, and in comparable locations are paying their MTs. Minimize comparisons between massage businesses that seem similar but are not. A small day spa that caters to locals in a ritzy resort town won't be comparable to the huge, posh spa at the resort up the hill. Compare apples to apples. Still, the difference isn't as much as you might think. Cost structures in massage businesses can vary widely - how the business is run and the cost of overhead can be very different from place to place. Spas are expensive to run, so don't expect the lion's share of what the client pays.

Another common mistake is to compare what the business charges the clients. Sure the sticker price of the services can give you a good idea about the clientele, but it isn't necessarily an indication of how they pay their MTs. My wife and I took a look at working at the Ritz-Carlton Spa in Half Moon Bay when it first opened. We were shocked to see that they only paid their MTs what amounted to $10-15/hr in commissions (on a service price of $100+). The 10% they were paying wouldn't have been bad if they were charging $300+/hr, but they weren't. They claimed they had interest from MTs as far away as Utah, and my immediate thought was they would have to be from out of state and have no idea about the cost of living here! Needless to say, we passed on it. They wanted their MTs to rely on tip income, which in my experience, no matter the setting, is unreliable at best.

Summing it up

Once you have answered these questions, then you'll be equipped to determine whether the pay is good or not. If a job isn't going to make enough for you, then you either should pass on it or you'll need to supplement it. If it will keep you busy but the pay is low, how will you have time to supplement it? Or if you are already doing your limit in appointments per week, how can you add more to make more money? These questions will allow you to figure out if a job or practice will allow you to live the way you'd like. A good job or practice will balance all of these elements.

• Digg this
• Add to del.icio.us
• Stumble It!