Worth.  An interesting word when you think about.  What is worth?  What is the true worth of something?  Is there even such a thing as the true worth of something? Who gets to decide what something is worth?

For massage therapists, the questions get a bit more personal: What are you worth?  How much are your skills, training, knowledge and time worth?  I think for many massage therapists these can be uncomfortable questions.  And the most uncomfortable question of all, probably because it directly confronts your self-esteem; how good are you?

I think a lot of the discomfort could be avoided if you realize that these questions have, in fact, very little to do with you.  You are not selling your services, you are selling an experience.  Your clients are not buying your skill, they are buying the experience of being relaxed, or the experience of being in less or no pain, or the experience of greater range of motion.

How much they are willing to pay is mainly a function of how much value you create for them, not how much you think you’re worth.  A client who pays you seventy five dollars to help relieve their pain will get more value from your session than if they paid someone else forty dollars and didn’t experience any relief.  So as far as the client is concerned, your session was worth far more.

I’ll talk more about setting and raising rates in the near future, but for now I would encourage you to spend less time pondering your worth from your perspective and instead consider your worth from your client’s point of view.  Keep asking yourself the following two questions; how much value are you creating for your clients?, how are you contributing to their quality of life?

            The necessary first step in shoring up your financial health is taking a long, hard look at all of your underlying beliefs about money.  Your beliefs about money will determine your perspectives about money.  And your perspectives about money will determine your experiences with money.

            A fundamental belief that I think every healthy person shares is that to some degree, deep down they’re a good person.  Another belief that most massage therapists share is that the work they do can be very beneficial to their clients.  So, we can conclude that most massage therapists believe that they are good people doing good work for the benefit of their clients.  This is all well and good unless you also have the belief (and some of us do) that money is the root of all evil.  Now we have a major disconnect.  If you’re a good person doing good work, you’re probably going to have a lot of discomfort around accepting money for the work you do.

            What if instead you were able to alter that last belief?  What if you believed that the money your clients give you is their way of saying “Thank you”?  Does that change anything?  You bet it does.  Change your beliefs, that will change your perspectives and that will change your experience.

            Almost every massage therapist in every discipline has been told about the importance of self care.  Our teachers told us, “You cannot help others unless you take care of yourself first!” and it is absolutely true.  To date though, this has been almost exclusively construed to mean physical or energetic self care.  There is however a third aspect of self care that needs to be considered, especially for the self-employed and that is financial self care.

            In the same way that personal self care will help you maintain a strong and balanced vitality sufficient to take care of many clients, a strong and wholesome financial discipline can help keep your practice running smoothly for years and help you meet your financial goals.

            No one becomes an MT so that they can deal with cash flow challenges but as a future business owner, you will encounter them eventually.  It just makes sense to be prepared.

            Let’s try a quick experiment; what if I were to ask you to spend ten minutes a day just thinking about your financial health?  Would you do it?  Do you think it would make a difference?  What if I were to ask you to spend those ten minutes a day thinking about the possibility of you developing a serious, life-threatening disease?  My guess is you wouldn’t do it, and you’d be right not to.  So why not spend that time dwelling on the possibility of prosperity and abundance?  Take my word for it, it works!