MBS Podcast Ep 45 Mentorship Final Video Edits (00:02.616)
Welcome to Massage Business Success. I'm Amy Bradley Radford, and this is the podcast for massage therapists who want to grow their business, strengthen their skills, and create a career they love. Let's get started. You know, before I get too far in today's podcast, I want to talk about something for just a minute because I want to talk about this with you. So I had someone make a comment recently that my podcast was
Obviously written by AI and being read by the author. And you know what? They're right. So I want to talk to you about that just a little bit. I use AI to help me put my podcasts together and I read them because I'm not very good at just shooting from the hip, having this wonderful, perfectly organized conversation where everything just flows out of my mouth in exactly the order I want it to. And I wish I could do that. I really do, but I don't.
And the reality is is I do better with structure. I've tried working from bullet points. And what happens is I lose my train of thought or I freeze or I forget something really important to what I was trying to explain. And you know, the other thing is is I'm staring at myself talking and it's not the same as being in front of a classroom. So I know that part of this is my ADHD and I talk about that a lot because it's real. ADHD is real. And sometimes we have to have tools.
To help us be successful. And so this is how I manage my focus that I really struggle with. And it's just part of recognizing how I work best. So when I'm teaching, I rely heavily on a PowerPoint to keep me headed in the right direction, or I get off track pretty easily. And I have seen that frustration in the eyes of those sitting in my class looking at me when I'm not able to present clearly. And I have read.
the evaluations of what people really think of me. And you know, sometimes that's just kind of crappy. It's kind of hard to put up with people who are willing to not only tell you what you're doing wrong constructively, but kind of bully you just a little bit with what it is you try to do. So what I've learned is that when I take my time to organize my thoughts and my experience and the stories that I want to tell you, I do a better job of teaching you or offering advice through these podcasts. And I can take you through an experience and explain why it matters
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And look at it from a couple different directions and eventually get us to the point where I wanted you to understand in the first place. Now, I'm also gonna admit that some of my podcasts over the last year have sounded a lot like AI because they did. It's taken me a while to figure out how to use technology without losing myself in this process. And you know, it's funny because Chat GPT and I, we've had some arguments, and I know that sounds funny. How in the world do you argue with AI? But I have.
Because I've argued about how I want it to sound, how I want to talk, how I want this to be the way I want to present it to you. And I want to tell a story the way I tell a story. And AI wants to clean up everything and make me sound like somebody who is speaking proper English and I don't. So I'm over here telling him to stop doing that and put my words back. And chat's trying to make me sound like something I'm not. So we've worked out our differences. We have a better relationship now. And
I don't need AI to tell me what I know or replace the experiences. I've spent more than 30 years experiencing and developing. I just need it to help me organize those experiences so that when I share them with you, they make more sense. And we're getting better at that. I'm getting better at telling what I want. And I'm learning what I need to do to keep my own voice in the process. So, yes, you're going to hear me reading.
And someday I'd love to be able to sit down in front of this microphone and just talk for 30 minutes without losing my train of thought. I'm not entirely sure that's in the cards for me, but it's something I'd like to keep working towards. In the meantime, I have figured out a way to share something I truly love, which is teaching you about what I've learned without letting the things I struggle with stop me from doing it. And I think there's something important in that for all of us. We don't
Necessarily have to do things the way somebody else does them to be successful. Sometimes we just have to figure out what works better for us and use these tools that are available so that we can keep getting better. But I just wanted to share that with you because I know you've heard it and I know you've thought, why is she reading this script and why does it sound so much like AI? Because it is. And I just wanted to be honest with you about how I put these podcasts together. And yes, I just read all of that to you.
MBS Podcast Ep 45 Mentorship Final Video Edits (04:46.956)
So now let's talk about mentorship, which is what I want to talk about today because I've been trying to put together some pieces of this for a long time. And if you listened last week when I was talking to Alice and Denny of Rebel Massage, we brought up this mentorship opportunity just a little bit. And so I think there's a really interesting potential business opportunity here for you and for our profession. So we're gonna discuss some of the things about how I came up with mentorship. It's not a new concept, but the way I've put it together.
is a little different and how I got there, what I think of it, some problems potentially with it. But I just want to share this possibility with you because I think this is my next step as a business coach. I've been thinking about something for a while now and I think it's one of those things. It's like a problem that you think about, but it kind of drifts through your consciousness. It's in the back of your mind, but a solution to the problem isn't really apparent, just not completely, not yet.
And I say this kind of in a really funny way that I've stopped long enough to kind of grab a hold of those thoughts to make sense of them and verbalize the feelings and emotions that are behind this problem and truly identify it. This question comes from a lot of my own experience. And lately it comes from questions from my coaching clients because they've been asking me, specifically the people who are looking to retire or find a solution to retirement in this industry. So the question that's been floating around in my brain is how do we
Successfully sell our business and profit like other businesses. And you know, that brings up another question. How do we take everything we've spent our careers building, our hands, our knowledge, our clientele, and our business and pass it on to another therapist in a way that allows both of you, you the seller and the buyer, to be successful? I'm going to tell you my secret of when I sit down and work through a problem. My process is to take what you want the answer to be and work.
backwards from there until you find the solution, which may be that you don't find a solution. And hopefully you can find an answer that makes it all make sense. So for this situation, the answer would be the ability to sell your practice and profit from it. And then how much? And what is the value of that? And what is realistic? And can you really sell your business? So the answer to that is yes and no. And regardless of that answer, there is one truth in all of that.
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In order for a client to transition to another therapist who wants to purchase your clientele list, which is basically what they're buying, they might buy your office furniture, your table, and the name of your business, but they're buying what produces money. And that's your clientele list. They have to develop a relationship with that therapist. Because while your clientele is one of the most valuable parts of your business, those relationships are with you and they don't automatically transfer to somebody else just because someone bought your list.
Now, I'm going to talk about several issues involving selling, retiring, and other complicated problems that owning a service business as a solopreneur creates. And we're going to really dive into some of those problems and some of the possible solutions about our business structures that happen at the end of our careers. Now, there's been times that I've had to pause from working at the massage table several times throughout my career to recover from injuries or surgeries, some related to work and some not. I'm a little bit of a klutz.
And I've also employed therapists, worked with independent contractors, taught massage therapy for over 30 years, and worked with therapists who are trying to figure out how to make a living doing something that they really love. And when I look back at all those experiences, I realize there's something that keeps coming up. And it's a problem that I don't think we've really figured out how to address in our profession. Because when you think about retiring from massage therapy, it's not like a lot of other businesses where you can just sell what you've built and walk away with the money.
So much of our business is tied to us and our hands and the relationships we've developed with our clients. And if we can't physically do the work anymore, we have a successful business that doesn't have much value to somebody else. I think there's a problem for a lot of us because you may need to physically retire from the table, but you can't retire financially. Or maybe you never set aside money for retirement. I know lots of therapists that haven't because they didn't build that into their budget or they didn't know how to.
Or maybe you're not ready to retire, but your body isn't allowing you to work the same number of hours anymore and you can't afford to lose that income. I know that I have the complete attention of some of you at this moment. So I want you to hang in there with me through this entire podcast because I think we have some really interesting things to think about together. I've been a massage therapist since 1993, and when I think about what I knew when I graduated from massage school compared to what I know today, there is just
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Quite simply, no comparison. There's an enormous amount of information that you learn through experience that nobody can really give you. You learn things by working with people and by making mistakes, lots of mistakes, and by having somebody come into your office with something you've never seen before, and you have to just simply figure out what to do with it. And then you start recognizing things because you've seen them before. And pretty soon you're making decisions based on years of experience that you probably don't really even think about anymore.
And you just know what to do, or you at least know where to start, or what questions to ask, or how to find out what you need to make a decision fairly confidently. And that's not even getting into the business side of things because most of us have spent years figuring out how to make a living at this, also. How to build your clientele, how to keep people coming back, how to manage your business, and how to make enough money that we can actually stay in this profession. So, what happens to all of that investment?
of your time, your money, and your energy when you're all done with massage therapy. I mean, think about somebody who's been practicing for 25 plus years. They've spent thousands upon thousands of hours with their hands on people developing their techniques, practicing, learning how to work with different bodies and figuring out what works and what doesn't work. And they've spent those same years building a clientele and running a business and understanding how to do that in a way that supports them.
And then one day they just put their table away and close their business and they're done. Selling to another therapist simply does not work. So most people just leave their table and they leave their clientele and they also leave with so much value inside of them that you know it's kind of sad to see all that talent and ability disappear. I've wondered for some time now how much knowledge we're losing in our industry because we don't really have a way to pass it on to someone else. And I wonder if they're
Isn't also a business opportunity there that we just haven't really figured out how to take advantage of. Because here's the truth. If we're going to create, and this is what we have to do, create the ability to pass a business on to someone else in massage therapy, then that person has to be successful inside that business. And if we could help them become successful, could that create an opportunity for us financially where we don't just close our doors and walk away? And so this is where.
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Starting with the solution and thinking backwards has brought me. To sell a business or basically your clientele list, you need to be present during that transition. You need to be able to transition your business over to another therapist who is equivalent to you or can be trained to offer a comparable experience. And what really started me thinking about all of this was a problem I dealt with over and over again throughout my career. And I know I'm not the only therapist who's dealt with this.
So what do you do with your clients when you can't be there to take care of them? Who's going to babysit your practice? Whether you're recovering from an injury, taking time away from your practice, or even getting ready to retire, where do you send those people? How do you find somebody whose hands have the experience, whose techniques are similar enough to yours that your clients appreciate them and who actually has room for your clientele? Because that's the problem I've run into over and over again. And I think a lot of you have too.
So let's say I need to go on maternity leave, or let's say I need to be gone for three to six months to recover from surgery, which I've done more times than I want to tell you, or I want to be gone for a month during the summer, which is actually a goal of mine. One month off in the summer, July, all to myself. All of those situations require that I find somebody to refer my clientele to because a lot of them want to keep their body work going and they don't want to lose ground on what we've been trying to work on for either pain management.
Or they just want to keep their therapy up because it helps them in whatever's going on in their lives. The problem that any established therapist has when referring clientele is that everybody does something different when it comes to massage therapy. And I'm sure it's that way in a lot of service industries, but I still think there are more standardized ways for stylist, nail technicians, lash technicians, or even aestheticians to apply certain skills. And there's some continuity to that.
And then, of course, customer service and relationships play a large role in their success as well. But when it comes to massage therapy, there isn't that same continuity because massage can be more of an art than a set form of techniques. And nobody is trained exactly the same. Even people who go to the same school aren't necessarily trained the same because we are allowed expression in our work. We just need to be able to
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accurately describe the origin and insertion of the trapezius when we go take our test. So we are specifically taught to adapt to the bodies we touch. And then sometimes teachers change and therefore their approaches to techniques change. And change and differences are everywhere in our field. And it makes me feel bad for the poor consumer because they never know what they're buying. And that makes this career path so beautiful and so difficult all at the same time.
And then on the flip side of that, if a therapist is really good at what they do and how they take care of their clients, well, you can't refer to them. They won't have openings for your clients. So the only people you can refer to are sometimes the people who are needing clients or whose hands are younger in terms of years of practice. And to be honest, there's no comparison to somebody who's been developing their hands for years. And it's almost like this recipe for disaster to send your clients there.
In fact, a lot of the therapists I've talked to have said, I don't know who to send you to, so you'll just have to wait until I get back. And your clients honestly don't want to go to somebody who isn't you because they are not necessarily going to get the same value. And their money isn't going to feel like it's spent the same, and the results aren't necessarily going to be the same. There are just a lot of variables that make it very difficult to temporarily or permanently refer your clients to another therapist. Now
I'm not saying that an established longer at the table therapist is a better therapist than someone who's been practicing for only a year. I have found some amazing one-year therapists and some not so amazing 15-year therapists. This is not a judgment based on years at the table and proficiency. This is really just looking at this referral struggle from the perspective of the therapist who wants to entrust their client to someone they know that will provide a comparable service.
And for the client to know that they are purchasing a comparable service at the recommendation of somebody they trust, which is your therapist. And whether it is to recover, play, or retire, it's difficult to transition your clients without some kind of preparation for that transition. And another part of this is that unless you work with somebody day in and day out and you two copy each other's techniques, you don't have someone who's really similar to you.
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And it's not like you can take another professional and say, hey, let me show you what I do so you can do this on my clients and they feel like I'm still taking care of them. That's pretty much offensive, right? We don't want to be told that someone else's technique is quote unquote better than theirs. But that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to help transition a client into the hands of somebody else by making it feel similar. But there's not really a platform to do that. And I understand that because it's not really
an easy thing for any of us to shift in and out of someone else's techniques or our own techniques. It's just not comfortable, even to help someone who's been referred by another therapist feel more comfortable on our table or develop trust to try other things. I know that in the past when people called up for appointments, they would say, hey, do you do such and such technique like myofascial or deep tissue? And I'll use deep tissue specifically because
You could have someone from another state move into your town looking for a therapist to do deep tissue. And when you say, Yes, I do deep tissue, the client in their mind thinks you're going to do it exactly like the last therapist they left that they really liked, and it's not the same. And so that's hard for us as therapists, and it's also hard for the consumer. And then, you know, we have differences in how we run our business because there are all kinds of ways people run their businesses, some good and some not so good. So
For example, you may always be prompt and ready to go, and whoever you refer your clients to might always be 15 minutes late all the time. And those differences in professional standards and how we run our businesses can also create some problems. You know, I ran into this. When I went out on maternity leave with my first son, I actually had one massage therapist that I thought kind of offered a similar service. We even traded from time to time. So I asked her if it was okay, and I referred my clients to her while I was out on maternity leave.
And when I came back to work, this is the feedback I got from my clients. You know what, Amy? She was really great and her touch was very similar. However, she was always late to her appointments. And because of that, I don't want to go back to her. By the time she would show up to start the massage, I was so frustrated that I didn't even want to be there anymore. So here I found somebody whose hands were similar to mine and my clients were happy with the massage, but they weren't happy with the experience because of the way she ran her business.
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And when you have spent years developing those relationships with your clients, you want to know that whoever you're referring them to is going to take care of them. And if you offer a higher level of professionalism, that can make it hard to transition to someone who is a little more lax in their business management. At the end of the day, when we refer, we are not just trying to find somebody who has opening for our clients. We're trying to find somebody who can take care of the people that we have spent years working with.
And that's where Jenny comes into my story. So years ago, I had a hand surgery that took me away from the massage table. And you know what, people? This was absolutely the dumbest injury. So I fell at a gas station and I landed on my hands with my car keys inside my right hand. I'm probably a YouTube phenomenon somewhere, but just kidding. Somehow the keys dislocated my middle finger at the main joint of the middle finger in the hand.
And I ended up with surgery and it took me almost a year to recover. And yes, you heard me right, it was my middle finger. And you know what's funny is anytime someone asked me, gosh, what happened to your hand, I would tell them I got in a bar fight just to see the look on their face. Or I started telling people that it was an overuse injury. Well, I'll just let you think about that for a minute. Because of that injury and the fact that I still needed an income eye in less than 30 days from injuring my hand.
started employing massage therapists because I still had a business, I had a large clientele and a waiting list, and there was an opportunity. And you know, that business model for me only lasted about 18 months. I ended up with around five, I think, employees at the time. And I eventually turned them over to being independent contractors. And I'll explain why I did that in just a minute. But there's another piece to this story that I think is really important. And I learned something very valuable in that time of my life.
One of the massage therapists who came to work for me had a sister-in-law who was a massage therapist. She was moving to the area and was looking for work, and her name was Jenny. And Jenny was a deep tissue therapist. We'd actually gone to the same school, so we had some similarities in the way we worked, and that was helpful because I was looking for somebody who could work with my clients in a similar way that I worked with my clients. But when I hired her, I had an idea, which led to a very interesting and specific conversation with her. When she interviewed, I said, hey.
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I'm actually looking for someone who's willing to go into sessions with my clients and be my hands. And I asked her, would you be willing to be my hands with my clients? I have clients that I don't want to lose the ground we've gained with their pain management treatments, and I need someone to help me work with them in their sessions using my own technique. And you know what was amazing is she was willing to do that.
And learn how to do some of this PPS stuff. So we agreed to work this way and also agreed on a 50-50 split of income from those joint sessions. And I want to point out something right here because it's really, really important. Who Jenny was as a person made the difference in why working together was really comfortable and easy. If it had been somebody else who had been less willing to work that way, I don't think this situation would have worked out because you're asking another professional to set aside.
some of the things they normally do and learn how somebody else's approach to massage therapy works. And that isn't necessarily an easy thing to ask someone to do. It's pretty much taboo to ask someone to do that. But I asked and Jenny was willing. And she was also able to start earning an income immediately from it because I had a full clientele. And it got her hands on people. And because it got her hands on people, those people started referring other people to her.
So we worked closely together inside shared client sessions for about six months. And then she started taking care of my clients until I came back, which is about another six months later. And then also her own clientele, which really flourished quickly. One of the things that came out of that relationship that I didn't expect was what Jenny told me later. She said that experience completely changed who she was as a massage therapist, both in business and at the table.
So, yes, she learned my techniques and how I approached working with clients, and she got one-to-one, you know, experience applying those things as we worked together, but it let her see something that many of us don't get to see. She got to see what it took to be a successful therapist, regardless of the technique. She got to see what you did inside the room, what you did outside of the room, how you ran your business, how you tracked your notes, how I tracked my notes, how you interacted with clients.
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And the level of customer service required to have repeat clients. And all of those things that go into running a successful massage practice that you don't necessarily think about when you've been doing it for years. She'd never seen any of that. Her business had not achieved the level of success before she moved. And her previous employment opportunities obviously had never shown her all of the behind-the-scenes work that it takes to run a business. And just being able to observe that.
shifted her entire outlook on her business. The whole process became this blueprint for her that was so valuable to her success. But somebody who hasn't had that experience doesn't know what that looks like, let alone what it feels like. You know, I didn't really have a name for what we were doing at the time. She was just basically saving my butt. And I was trying to figure out how to keep my business going while I couldn't do massage. And Jenny needed a place to work
And to build a clientele. But we found something that worked for both of us. And looking back now, I think that was one of my first real experiences of what a business mentorship was and could look like inside a massage practice. So my experience with employment is what you would call a look at both sides of the coin. As an employer, by the time I paid my employees enough, there wasn't a whole lot left over to run the facility or to pay myself.
For running the facility. And because I had been a massage therapist for so long, I wouldn't start somebody out on a low wage and let that therapist suffer in a low income just so I could cover my expenses and have an income as well. And I think massage therapy is one of those service businesses where we have a unique problem because most of us can't work 40 hours a week at the table. We're limited by this ceiling of energy. And by the time we have a full schedule,
we still may not be making enough money working for somebody else. So when I started coming back to the table after I had rehabilitated my hand, I had a meeting and let them know I was no longer going to be employing them. They had the option to leave or become independent contractors. But inside of that, I would teach them what I knew about business and clients. And because of that, they all chose to be independent and stay with me, with me helping them.
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We put everything into kind of a rental package and we shared all of the expenses and they made more money and that made more sense to them. But here's what was interesting about that experience. They wanted to understand how to manage themselves inside a business, wearing all the hats and doing all the things, including the laundry, and still be successful without being overwhelmed. And I think what made that relationship work for all of us was that they had somebody they could ask questions and we still worked together as a team. And I realized
There was something to that relationship that nobody had ever really taught me before. Because when you get out of massage school and you decide you're going to be self-employed, you're suddenly responsible for everything. You're responsible for getting clients in the door and keeping those clients coming back and the scheduling and doing piles of laundry and your finances and your expenses and all the little things that go into running a business that you don't actually know about yet. And it's one thing to learn how to do massage therapy. It's another thing entirely to learn how to make a living.
Doing massage therapy. And they didn't have to figure everything out on their own. And they didn't have to learn every single lesson by making a mistake first, like I did. And what I recognized was that the guidance I was giving them had value beyond the space they were renting or the business arrangements we had. And I think that's where I really started recognizing that people coming into massage therapy really need some help in that little window of their life. It's that space between graduating.
And running a successful schedule and business. Some people truly do need guidance until they can do it on their own. And it doesn't necessarily come from just watching some YouTube videos. You need a live person in front of you showing you. And they need somebody they can go to when they just don't understand something, or somebody who's already made some of those mistakes and can help them avoid making the same ones, or somebody who can show them what it actually takes to be successful. Sometimes that's a little shocking.
And when these therapists graduate and go out on their own, they're in a really hard place because they're still trying to learn how to apply their skills to every type of person who comes into the office. And they don't have a school behind them anymore to set up all of those different factors or even a teacher available to ask questions so that they can be successful. You know, and sometimes they don't even know what questions to ask. All they know is that they're trying and they don't know enough yet.
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If you've never been involved in a business before, and I know that's why a lot of you listen to this podcast because Amy likes to make it real, there's a whole other set of laws, tax laws, and skills and things that need to come into play that you may not know anything about. And then there are so many facets of running a service-based business that you learn by making mistakes most of the time. And those mistakes can really impact how much money you're able to make.
So you're trying to learn more about massage therapy while you're applying it. And at the same time, you're trying to run a business you've never run before and maybe don't even want to be a business owner, but that's your potential for making money. And then you turn around and you don't understand how to provide customer service on top of all of that in order to get your clients back in the door, which is your bread and butter, your repeat clients. Because it isn't enough to just get somebody to come in for a massage. You've got to be able to take care of that person in a way.
that they want to come back. And you've got to learn how to develop those relationships while you're learning everything else. So there are a lot of things stacked against somebody heading into that situation that can cause failure. And I see failure all the time because it's so multifaceted. It's not just that you can't do massage or that you aren't a good massage therapist. That's not it. It's because there are all these wheels running at the same time and you're learning how to operate all of them at the same time.
But the thing that's supposed to be running those wheels is your massage therapy and how successful you are at applying it. And if you don't have enough time in your hands, enough training, then you're starting out with two strikes against you, and maybe you only have three strikes. You know, and understanding all of this helps us understand why, from my observation, a lot of people are failing within the first two to five years of being a massage therapist. This is one of those places where we have to recognize what massage school is actually designed to do.
And not do good or bad. And I don't think we're going to change the educational system anytime soon. I would like to see some changes. But I also don't think that means we can't do something about it after graduation. Because in a lot of ways, we've made graduating from massage school feel like the finish line. When in many ways, and I really want you to hear this, it's only the starting line. As someone who has spent years in this profession, I found myself wondering how we can help people coming into this field.
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Get the experience and guidance they need without expecting an experienced therapist to simply give away everything they've spent their careers learning. I think there needs to be some way to create an opportunity for those of us who are seasoned in this field to take a younger therapist under our little wing and help them while at the same time it's helping ourselves, whether it's to retire or have the ability to quote unquote sell our business or have maybe an additional income stream.
Or simply have some options so we can leave our table to go play or travel and just know that our clients are taken care of. And you know that opportunity happens by creating a relationship for someone new to the field to work along somebody who already knows how to be successful in a massage therapy business that's set up in such a way as to benefit both parties. It's more about simply mentoring someone for success on many different levels at the same time, just like I did with Jenny.
Now I'm gonna jump tracks here for a minute because there is something else, and this is kind of tucked tightly away in Amy's little heart, but there's something else I think that fits into this opportunity that isn't money or business based, and it's intention. You know, I've often wondered what other cultures do when they bring someone into a profession, especially when it comes to healing. And I know this isn't quite the same thing, but you think about like the medicine woman or the traditional healer and how in some cultures,
They bring someone alongside of them and work with them for years. And through observation and questioning and on the job learning, this person is teaching them everything they know. And that person who is learning is watching what happens. And they're learning what to do and why they're doing it. And eventually they can apply that knowledge themselves. And there's something about the very natural transfer of knowledge from one person to another through experience that I think is kind of cultural. And I wonder if we've
lost some of that in our own culture. I have wondered if massage should have more of a culture like that to help us become more of what we could be as an industry. And the process of that cultural transfer reminds me of apprenticeships where someone learns like a trade or a skill by working along somebody who already knows how to do it. They're actually participating in the work while somebody with experience is there to help them understand what they're doing.
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And that got me wondering whether what I was describing was actually mentorship or whether it's more like an apprenticeship. Because when I think about mentorship, I think about somebody who's available to like answer questions or offer guidance and help another person become more successful. And that's certainly part of what I was doing with those therapists who were working in my office. And then Jenny actually became my hands and I stood beside her during sessions. She was learning those things while she was doing the work.
She was also seeing things about running a business that she didn't necessarily know to ask before because she'd never experienced them. And that's much closer to what I think of as an apprenticeship. But I also think when I hear the word apprenticeship, it's for somebody who hasn't finished their education yet. Like my son is becoming an electrician, so he's in his apprenticeship. He hasn't finished his education yet. So they're still learning their trade, so they can eventually be qualified to do it on their own.
But I'm talking about somebody who's already graduated from massage school. They're already a massage therapist. They've got their license, they're qualified to practice, and now they're trying to develop the experience and gosh, the confidence that comes from actually working with people. So here's a fun question for you about all of that. If we're required to have supervised clinical experience before graduation, why would we simply drop people after graduation and say, hey, good luck?
Instead of offering guided professional experience after they become licensed and are heading out into the world. Where is that part? They can't gain their hours without having someone there, but the minute they graduate, nobody's there. And there's an enormous difference between knowing how to perform a technique and having enough experience behind you to understand when to use it, how to adjust it, and what to do when it doesn't work the way you expect it.
Not every massage therapist needs to go through an apprenticeship after graduation, and I'm not suggesting that what we've learned in massage school is invaluable, but I wonder whether we've put so much emphasis on getting people through school and qualified to practice that we haven't really prepared them for what happens next. So maybe there's an opportunity for those of us who have spent years developing our hands and building our clientele and learning how to run a business.
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To bring somebody alongside us and pass some of that experience on. And it's not necessarily to make them an exact copy of you, because I think there's still tremendous value in this artistry of massage and allowing people to develop in their own way of working. But how about simply giving someone an opportunity to learn from somebody who's already spent years figuring out things that they're just beginning to encounter? So there's really two things going on here. One, helping someone who's new to massage therapy, and two.
potentially having the opportunity to share what we have spent our careers developing, the knowledge, and whether there's a way to pass it along that could be beneficial for both people. So this is where I started thinking about mentorship and taking it one step further into creating kind of a business model around it. Could something be created that sets the framework to help a scenario like this work? When I don't know about you, but I think I do. While I think this is a great idea, I can't work for free to help somebody.
And I bet you can't either. And I'm not sure that I really want to. And that's just reality. My time has value. What I'm offering in my hands has value. And me working with someone to help them succeed, that's valuable. It would be like giving someone a massage for free. And I don't know about you, but I have learned that when I give someone a massage and they don't pay for it in one way or the other, whether it's money or barter, the therapy itself just isn't successful because it lacks value to the person who received it.
They also don't value you and your time. And sometimes it just becomes a bit of an energy suck. And when I started looking at all the different situations massage therapists find themselves in and things people have talked to me about in coaching, I think there are a lot of places where a potential mentorship could step in and help. And some of those situations are, and you'll probably recognize yourself in this. And we've kind of hit on some of these, but I just want to line them up because even if you're new coming into this, you have something to think about down the road.
So maybe you've been practicing for 25 or 30 years and you need to retire from the table, but you can't retire financially because you still need an income. And you've spent your entire career making money with your hands, and now your body's telling you that you need to stop, but you don't have another source of income ready to replace it. So what if an option would be to take on mentees and train them over one to two years and then ongoing with that with new therapists rotating in so that you still had an income source from massage?
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Yes, you would be responsible for people more as a contract situation, but you could infuse who you are into these people and create a successful location. Maybe you've built a really successful business and you're financially ready to retire, but you don't know how to sell it. You've got a full clientele, you've spent years building these relationships, and you know that what you have built has such significant value, but how do you actually sell that to somebody else? Well,
What if you found one or two mentees to transition your business over to for one or two years with a like let's say a payout at the end of the business, if that's possible? I actually ran a bunch of numbers through Chat GPT and you'd be better off to just get more mentees. But that's a conversation for another time. Maybe you're not ready to retire at all. Maybe you just need to reduce the number of hours you're working at the table because your body just is tired and it's not tolerating the same workload.
But every hour you take off your schedule is income you're not earning. And you can't really afford to do that either. So what if bringing on a mentee allowed you to transition some of your workload and at the same time increase your pricing because now there's a different option for your clientele. There's the mentee learning at this price, and you're at this price because you're more advanced. You know, sometimes that can help you raise your prices and goes along with some of the other things I've taught you through this podcast.
Or maybe you've tried employing therapists like I did and discovered that by the time you pay them enough to make a living and cover expenses of running a business, there just isn't enough left to make it financially beneficial for you or anyone. And I can tell you from experience that I would much rather have a team of people working with me as mentees and independent therapists than employees. I would rather have the opportunity to infuse my knowledge into those who wanted that knowledge instead of.
And I've heard this from a lot of people, so I'm gonna say it, babysitting employees. So sorry, however, that reference is really accurate for me. Then there are the therapists who need to leave the table for a period of time because of an injury or surgery like myself or maternity leave or whatever else is happening in their lives, and they simply don't have anybody they feel comfortable referring their clients to. What if you created those people you could refer to and knew that your clients would be taken care of?
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What if you just want the opportunity to give what you've spent years developing your hands, learning how to run a successful business and figuring out how to take care of clients and you just really want to pass some of that knowledge on to somebody else rather than closing your doors and walking away? I think there has to be a way to create a relationship that's beneficial for both people, whether that's financially or being able to reduce the number of hours you're working at the table, or simply having someone you can trust who can take care of your clientele when you're not available.
If you become a mentor, the question then becomes, how do you make money out of all this? And that's the part I've been trying to put together. And I I don't necessarily think there's one way to do it, but the more I've thought about how this could work, the more I've realized that there are some pretty significant questions that have to be answered before anybody jumps into an arrangement like this. And so this is where we need to have another part of this conversation because I have spent a lot of time thinking about this, talking about what could be good about this kind of relationship.
And there's some things that could be difficult about it too. So let's talk about this. You know, part of me is like, let's just go for it, Amy. Let's just train people to be mentors and we can train mentees and you could just see this whole domino effect and just see how it works out. Because I've experienced what can happen when you bring somebody into your business and help them be successful. And it was successful for both of us. But then there's this other part of me that's saying, you know, Amy, have you really thought through the rights of both parties? Let's get legal.
Have you thought about their values, their circumstances, money, the potential ethical issues that could come up? And those are really fair questions because when you start bringing another professional into something you've spent years building, well, there are two people who have something at stake now. And both people need to benefit from that relationship, but they also need to be protected inside of it. So let's talk about where I see this could go sideways for both parties.
So let's say you have an established therapist who's more interested in making money off another therapist than they are in actually teaching them how to become successful. That's not what this is. There would need to be an agreement that limits the amount of time you spend in this arrangement. And at the end of that time, the mentee is released from the contract to either work, continue to work in the same facility or find their own space and take the clientele they've earned with them.
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And you could have a new mentee coming into the business who wants access to your clientele and everything you've built, but isn't really interested in learning how you do things or maybe honoring the agreement you two have made. What if you can't work together? If this is the case, then you would have to end the mentorship relationship. So I think one of the first things that we have to look at in this type of business arrangement is whether the two people are actually a good fit for each other. And I'm going to say this really gently.
I think there are a lot of experienced therapists who could benefit from a relationship like this, but I don't think that necessarily means every experienced therapist would make a good mentor. Because having 20 or 30 years of experience doesn't automatically mean you're good at teaching somebody else what you know. And just because you've built a successful practice doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be comfortable having another therapist come into that practice and begin working with your clients.
You have to be willing to set aside time to teach. You have to be willing to answer questions and explain why you do things the way you do and give somebody an opportunity to develop their own skills while they're learning for you. You've got to set up those times, like Jenny and I did, to work together on clients. You have to be able to work with one another professionally without expecting them to become an exact copy of you. And I think the person coming into the mentorship has some responsibilities too. They have to be willing to learn or adapt.
And possibly change in order to assume your clientele. They have to be willing to show up, do the work, take care of clients in the way they expect to be taken care of because you've trained them that way. And understand that the person mentoring them has spent years developing the business. They're being invited into. Because if you're going to build a business relationship where both people have something to gain financially, well, then both people also have something they can lose. And that brings me to something I think is.
absolutely necessary if you think about doing something like this. And that is you have to have a contract. You know, Jenny and I had a written and signed contract. We understood what we were agreeing to before we started working together. And I think that was a very important part of why our relationship worked. Because without a contract, there isn't the clarity you need to maintain the professional boundaries between those two people. What happens when the new therapist starts developing their own clientele? What happens when they become more successful?
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What happens if one person isn't following through on the responsibilities? And what happens if the relationship just doesn't work and one or both people want to end it? Those are things that need to be worked out before you start, not after somebody's upset or feels like they've been taken advantage of. And I think the contract has to be very specific to those two people because their circumstances aren't necessarily going to be the same as everybody else's. So the agreement has to be specific enough that both people understand what they're responsible for.
How they're going to be compensated, what they're working towards, and what happens as this relationship develops. And most importantly, when this contract ends. Because I don't think mentorship should be this arrangement when somebody comes into your business, you help them become successful, and then you just continue earning money off that person indefinitely. That's not what mentorship means. What I've been working on is a structure that has expectations, financial progression, and an opportunity.
For the person being mentored to become more successful and then eventually move beyond that relationship with them. And at the same time, there needs to be a financial benefit for the experienced therapist who's providing the training and the business system and the opportunity. And mentoring takes more than just having a contract written down. I think it really has to be who you choose. That person has to be the right person for you. And you have to have a working relationship where both people
understand what's expected and follow through. The contract is there to establish those boundaries and protect the agreement, but the people still have to be able to work together. And of course there are legal questions involved in how somebody is employed or contracted. You can't tell them when they're going to work. They have to select their own hours and how they're compensated and what they're allowed to do inside that business. That's part of why I've been working through this rather than telling people to just go out and start doing this.
I believe there needs to be a framework around this idea that protects both people, but I think it needs to also fit the people who use it. So I'm sure right now you're like, okay, Amy, you have talked and talked and talked about mentorship. And the question that might be in your mind is, why does Amy think this is so important? Why did she do a podcast, a long one, about this topic to encourage me with an idea and then talk about all the ways it could go wrong? What does she want me to get out of this conversation? You know.
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We all have different ideas about the future of massage therapy. There are plenty of therapists who are just perfectly happy running their businesses, taking care of their clients, and doing their work. But then there are some of us who think about the profession beyond our own businesses. We want to see it grow. We want to see the people coming into this field become successful. And we want to know that some of what we've spent our careers learning might actually benefit someone else. I'm one of those people, obviously. I talk about it on this podcast.
I want to see our profession grow and stabilize and become part of healthcare, but in our own way. And for people to truly know massage makes a difference, a big difference in this touch-depleted world we live in. And I want to see therapists make it through those rapids they get thrown into right out of school when they don't even have any idea how to swim. And I want to see more hands be successful because I recognize that we
As an industry and the educational system that gets us licensed as massage therapists, we are missing something in that space between graduating and having a practice or business that can support you. I've watched too many of my own students fail. And they simply failed because it was so overwhelming in the beginning. And I just don't think it needs to be that way. So this idea is about looking at what you've been given, what you've learned, and what you've built, and thinking about what happens to it after you.
You might be a therapist who loves taking care of your clients, who's built a really good business, and who would simply like to know that when you're no longer at your table, that those clients that you have built relationships for years are still being taken care of, and what you have built doesn't just simply disappear. But to be a mentor, which I think fills this gap that I'm talking about, I think you have to be willing to look beyond what you're going to get out of it financially and ask whether you
Can create an opportunity for someone else to become successful too. Because if they're not successful, the business arrangement isn't going to be successful for you either. And I'm asking you to consider this opportunity because I want to pilot a mentorship class and test whether we can create a framework that actually works for both therapists and gives our profession another option for building successful businesses. So here are some questions for you.
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Do you have a business that's successful enough to bring somebody into it? Do you have something you can teach them beyond simply giving them access to some appointments? And are you willing to spend the time working with them, answering their questions at the tables and helping them develop their skills? And are you comfortable sharing something you have spent years building while understanding that this person is eventually going to be successful on their own? Because if you're not, this is not for you. And then you have to think about.
Who you would actually want to work with, not just somebody who needs clients, because there are plenty of therapists who need clients, but somebody whose personality and professional standards and willingness to learn and goals are gonna fit with yours. And I don't think you know all of that from having one conversation with somebody. I think you have to get to know them. So I've been spending time working on how to interview potential mentees, how we establish expectations, and how to use a written agreement that clearly outlines the relationship.
And so that's really what this pilot is for me is does this paperwork work? Does it have enough in it that it sets the foundation in a way that it helps you be more successful? So I've been working on a training and a contract structure that I think could help experienced therapists create these kinds of relationships inside of their own businesses. And what I want to do now is work through that with a small group of therapists to see how it applies to their different circumstances. I want to know what works. I want to know what doesn't work.
What are the things we haven't thought about yet? And what needs to be adjusted so that both people have an opportunity to be successful? And you know, maybe we find some things that don't work and maybe we discover there's pieces of this that need to be done differently than I originally thought. And I'm okay with all of that because this is the part of figuring something like this out. So if you've been listening and you made it through this whole podcast and you're recognizing yourself in some of the situations we talked about.
Whether you're trying to figure out how to retire or how to reduce your hours or how to sell your practice or how to pass along what you've learned, I hope you'll spend some time thinking about whether this kind of relationship is a good fit for you. There's a business opportunity in here, but there's also a responsibility to the person you're bringing into your business and to the clients who have trusted you with their care. And you know, personally, I would love to think that when I finally put my hands down, which I don't want to, but when I finally put my hands down,
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Some of what I've spent in my career building and learning could continue through another set of hands, and that there might be a way for both of us to benefit from that. My hands get infused into another set of hands that then get infused into another set of hands. It's a culture to pass on what we know hand to hand. So that's what I've been working on lately, and I'm sure I'll have more to share with you as I learn more about it. But if you're interested in more information or joining my pilot course, there's a link.
you can click on in the show notes. So thanks for spending this time with me and my wild brain idea today, and I'll see you next Tuesday. Thanks for spending part of your day with me. If today's episode helped you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with another massage therapist. To learn more about today's topic, explore continuing education, coaching, and free resources, visit amybradleyradford.com. And until next time,
Keep building the business and the career you love.
