What to do, what to do

As a male massage therapist in the South, I'm often stymied as to how to successfully market my services. "Successfully" as in, not marketing myself as a gigolo. Which, honestly, would be very fun to be.

But since I'm not that, I sometimes get a little stuck. I'm in business with a classmate of mine, a wonderful woman who is very connected in the medical community, and we also have one other woman associate, a massage therapist who is not yet a partner. Additionally we are allied with three other women who do adaptive yoga, Feldenkrais, lymphedeme therapy, and a lady who does stress reduction classes. So, I'm the lone guy, albeit a gay one.

Whenever we market our services together, invariably the ladies get all the calls, or when people want to redeem their gift certificates or make an appointment, they want a gal and not me. Here's pretty much how it goes:

Last Wednesday we went to our local Senior Center to do an hour's presentation on massage therapy for the geriatric population. To work with seniors, a massage therapist has to know what not to do in order to avoid hurting the client. Too, seniors need a lot more attention and hand-holding in general; not true of everyone, certainly, but its'a trend that seems to hold true. It's a bit of a specialized population. Anyway, we gave a wonderful presentation, gave out gift certificates to everyone there for a half-price hour of massage ("first 1/2 hour free when you book an hour!" we crow), and waited for the massages to roll in.

Tuesday I took a call from a woman with whom I'd spoken to at the seminar, and she asked what we had available. I said I had blah, blah, blah open this week, and then she hesitated. She said, "do I get to pick my therapist? I really wanted a woman." to which I replied, "sure thing! No problem. I'll give you their numbers so that you can book directly with them." This seemed to rattle her a bit, and she went ahead and booked with me anyway. She came in Wednesday of this week, I spent at least 30 minutes doing an intake, and just before she was to get on the table as we were talking about all of her aches and pains she said "I'm not sure you can get to all of that in a half hour!" Arg. I explained that the appointment was for an hour with the first half hour free. She wasn't prepared to pay that day, she said, but she'd book an hour to make up for it. Ok, I said, and we proceeded with the massage. A very good massage, indeed.

Afterward she was very complimentary of my work, relaxed and happy with the massage and then she asked, "is it just Russian roulette as to which therapist I get when I call?" and I answered that no, she could request anyone she wished when she left her message requesting an appointment. To which she then replied that she'd come back in November for her hour massage "and give one of the ladies a try".

*sigh*

So. An hour's worth of marketing gone, at least an hour's worth of massage time gone with nothing at all to show for it except for bolstering my partners' businesses.

I've been looking at myself and into my beliefs, energetic setups, etc., as to why this scenario is so familiar and has happened to me so very many times in the ten years I've been a massage therapist. Being the Good Southern Boy, I do my best not to irritate a client, especially an elderly lady client, since if you irritate them, they just go away and don't come back. Then talk about you all over town behind your back.

In our business, our individual income streams are separate, so I do not get any money from massages that others do. For corporate accounts that we all do, it's a different story, however. But most of our income is individually derived. Hence my conundrum.

I feel sort of like Edison did when he said (to paraphrase), "I know 10,000 ways it doesn't work". And, like Edison, I keep casting about for ways, likely and un-, in which it might work. I wish I knew how he felt when he was searching, though. I feel almost a little desperate, especially in this economy: it's getting harder and harder to bring the ends together at the end of the month. Maybe I'll find the "magic filament" soon, though :-) It would be great if I could truly "turn my talents on" in a lasting, wonderful way. I keep searching.

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