Teaching Workshops and Doing Presentations to Build Your Practice
Getting a massage for the first time can be a scary experience for people. When they call you for an appointment for the first time, they don’t know who you are, what you look like, what you do during your massage, or what you are like as a person. They don’t know anything about you at all. They are calling a complete stranger. It’s a wonder that anyone calls for a massage appointment!
And this is why it is so important to help potential clients get to know you as a person. Now, you are not going to go from door to door through the neighborhood introducing yourself to all your neighbors. But you can increase your visibility in a variety of other ways.
Presentations and massage workshops are incredibly effective ways to introduce yourself to a large number of people. Not only are you introducing yourself to people, but you’re meeting people who have an interest in what you have to say and are predisposed to using your services.
As you host your massage workshop, people have the opportunity to learn about you as a person. As a result, their comfort level rises along with their level of trust. As a result, many workshop participants will book an appointment with you if you ask them to do so. So workshops are a great way to get new clients and build your practice.
THE BENEFITS OF TEACHING MASSAGE WORKSHOPS: Teaching workshops can provide you with an additional stream of income, but it also positions you as an expert, provides opportunities for press coverage, bring new people into your practice, and have fun!!
Even if you are not paid directly for a workshop or presentation, they can add significantly to your massage income. For example, let’s say I do a short one-hour presentation for a local business on back pain and massage. Let’s say that 30 people show up for my little “lunch and learn” presentation. If 10% of them, just 3 people, become clients and each book six appointments at $90 over the next year, then I’ve made $1,620 with no advertising expense. So I invest one hour of my time, and I make $1,620. That’s a pretty good return on the time I’ve invested. And this doesn’t take into account further sales to those three people, as well as referrals and gift certificate sales that I could possibly get from the whole group of 30 people.
It may take some work, but massage workshops can become a lucrative revenue stream in and of themselves. I’ve made as much as $6,000 for a weekend of teaching, and my usual daily speaking fee is $2,000. You could even do a private workshop (maybe better labeled as a tutorial) in your treatment room for a couple, whether they are friends or partners. You can charge as much as you do for a treatment or even more without doing any real hands-on work.
Doing a massage workshop also positions me as an expert. Only experts teach workshops. And people love experts. It adds to your credibility, which is very attractive to potential clients. They are not just booking any massage therapist. They are booking with a massage expert. It’s better yet if someone sponsors the workshop for you. That way, you have their implied (or maybe even explicit) endorsement of you and your services.
Workshops also open up the possibility of media coverage and positive PR for you and the industry. It’s hard to get a reporter to write a story about you as a massage business owner. It doesn’t hold that much interest for their readership. No offense, but it’s boring. But they certainly would be interested, for example, in publishing a story about a Couple’s Massage workshop that can get couples reconnected with one another and rekindle the flame of romance. Now, that’s an interesting story! I’ve gotten lots of press coverage – newspaper, radio, and television as the result of various workshops that I’ve taught. The press wouldn’t have given me that much attention if I hadn’t been so visible.
Personally, I think the biggest benefit I get from teaching workshops is just the joy of seeing people learn and discover. It’s a blast. Sure, the money is good, but it’s really just a side benefit to something that I have a lot of fun and enjoy doing.
There are so many great reasons for teaching massage workshop in your community, including getting more clients and building your massage business, developing another income stream, and becoming a recognized expert in your community. So start thinking about groups you’d like to teach or areas of expertise that you have that you could share with others. Then, begin to develop some ideas so that you can get out there and start benefiting yourself and others from teaching workshops or doing presentations.
There is a bit of a learning curve to teach a group workshop. That’s why here at Massage Mastery, we’ve developed a CE course called “Teach Touch to Your Community.” It’s unique in that it’s partly instruction on how to teach a workshop and manage participants, and it’s partly a workshop kit that comes with teaching notes and illustrated handouts. And the workshop I outline is super practical: All the techniques in this workshop are done over the clothing and are taught with the participants sitting in standard chairs. This makes it incredibly accessible to anyone and allows you to offer it pretty much anywhere at all. So check out this course on teaching massage workshops here.
Article by Eric Brown
TEACH MASSAGE TO YOUR COMMUNITY – 2CE COURSE: Learn how to teach a workshop with this workshop kit that comes with teaching notes and illustrated handouts for a practical massage class done over the clothing in standard chairs. MORE INFO