How to enforce your massage business policies

Massage therapists love to make people happy. That's why you went into this business, right?

To make the world a better place by reducing pain and increasing range of motion, movement, peace, relaxation and so on.

So what do ya do when your massage clients are a pain in the butt?

I have a long Groupon story that I'll save for another day.

Suffice it to say that the experience taught me to stand up for myself.

Here's what I learned to do. You can do it too.

1. Create rules. This would include things like no call/no show, late cancelations, showing up late, etc.
2. Think of your worst client and all the thing he tries to get away with. Make policies for your massage studio about those.
3. Ask other massage therapists what they have problems with. Search FB groups. You'll find a lot of complaints there. Make rules for those.

Ok, you have your massage business rules. Now what?

Create a written policy incorporating all. the. things.

Publish it on your website. (you have a massage business website, right?)

Use a big fat headline

and say something like "Policies you need to know" or "These are my rules" or "Read this or Die". (Just kidding, although that's the name of my friend Ray Edwards' book.)

Have a link to this web page in all the emails you send out if you feel like it's needed that often.

So far, so good?

Now for the hard part...

Someone breaks a rule.

You can enforce your policy by saying something along the lines of, "Hi Frank, Unfortunately I have a policy on XYZ that I need to enforce. Therefore _____ (insert fee or whatever the end result is).

What about short cancelations when you can't schedule another massage client?

I give my clients a grace of 1 time mess up. Like when a client the other day got a reminder of his appointment, but he was out of town and forgot about the appointment because his Google calendar had been deleted.

Sounds fake, but he had actually told me about the deletion a previous time. Yes, he's a knucklehead for not preparing some other way. But he's a good guy and I know it was legit.

And if they're sick, I don't want them in my office. I've had sick clients come in before because they didn't want to get charged a cancelation fee.

But I don't want to get sick or pass that crud on to any other bodywork clients, friends, family, etc.

So it's a pass.

Wanna charge them? OK! Do it.

If you have a scheduling system that allows people to prepay, that's an easy way to collect payment. Or you can invoice them-I do it in Square.

What if people take advantage of your kindhearted nature?

How do you feel about it? If you really don't care that much because you like Sally, then you do you.

If you're annoyed with the massage client because they don't respect you or your policies, then they're not the client for you, are they?

I'd rather have an hour free and not get paid than ruin my physical and mental health working on someone who doesn't want what's best for me and my biz.

If you're wanting to run a massage therapy practice that makes money and still allows you to feel like you can be a sweetie pie, it IS possible.

I know it's time to charge for missed time (or cut their time short if they're late) if I'm irritated. If I don't care, I'm more flexible.

But start with creating the policies.

Write them down.
Publish them.
Make them known.

Good clients will respect you and honor them.