by David Palmer | Dec 19, 2011 | In the News, Touch
Touch is far more important for childhood development than technology. I was reminded of that while reading an article in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle about innovative local toy companies.A number of them explicitly sing the praises and benefits of tactile play.
One successful company featured is Folkmanis Puppets which notes that a “a puppet encourages imaginative, open-ended play, endearing hugs, and snuggly companionship.” Have you ever noticed how much puppets love to touch themselves and each other? I’ve been wondering why I have this compulsion to see the new Muppets movie.
Only in the Bay Area would there be a company called Plushy Feely Corp. that designs and promotes cuddly Kimochi dolls that helps kids learn to understand and express their feelings. The product that caught my eye was Huggtopus, a multi-limbed creature who is “very affectionate and strong and sometimes gets a little carried away by her big friendly personality. Huggs always means well but has to learn about boundaries.”
Learn about boundaries. I love it! Their animated video about hugs is priceless.
Tactile sensitivity is a learned motor skill essential to neurological development. Touch appropriateness is a learned social skill essential to the formation and maintenance of healthy relationships. Carefully selected toys can help develop both.
Of course, there is no substitute for human touch, so don’t forget to pass plenty of that around this holiday season as well.
by David Palmer | Dec 19, 2011 | Quotes of Note
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease. (1903)
by David Palmer | Dec 19, 2011 | Business
Note: This is the third in a series of four articles called “C”-ing Your Way to Success about the value of Conviction, Clarity, Consistency and Change-ability in business.
In a sense, consistency is the practical result of a commitment to clarity in your business. As you become clear about the complex nature of the services you provide and the market you have targeted, each small component of your business will add to and reflect the overall purpose and function of your business as a whole.
Consistency has something to do with integration. When anyone encounters a small part of your business, they encounter the whole. Each component reflects the larger service vision. Let’s briefly examine some of these elements.
- Language: How you talk about your business needs to be consistent with the overall intention of your work. I once saw a flier advertising a massage chair that was comfortable and easy for the “patient” to use. Since the rest of the text did not lead me to believe the business was targeting their chair exclusively for use with sick people, the choice of that word was clearly inconsistent.
- Marketing tools: Your brochures, business cards, letterhead, advertising, and even phone manner should all present the same image and message about the conviction and intention of your work.
- Professional tools: Do you use the right equipment in the right way for the market and service you have chosen? Do you use paper towels, disposable face cradle covers or linens for you head rest? Each has a place in the appropriate practice.
- Environment: Does the environment you create for your practice support or detract from your service goal? If customers find parking a hassle to find, they may feel the frustration is not worth the effort. Or perhaps they don’t feel safe walking in your neighborhood and it makes them nervous to think about leaving your office. For the internal environment, make certain that the flowers and air are fresh. Walk into your bodywork environment with beginner’s eyes and see what type of impression it makes. What do they see, hear, or smell? Get a massage on your table to see what the client will be looking at and experiencing for the length of the massage.
- Personal style: Some people simply, who function well doing chair massage in the workplace are like fish out of water at a convention center. A New Yorker may have to be toned down his or her personality a bit to be effective in California. What is your personal style? Does it fit well with the overall focus of your business?
Consistent persistence
According to Thomas Alva Edison, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” That perspiration is what I call persistence and persistence is just another facet of consistency and is an essential element for business success.
Consistency brings an essential level of stability and predictability to your business operations for yourself and your clients. Without consistency clients wouldn’t know when to call for an appointment or how to budget their time and money to make certain your service is a regular part of their lives. They also wouldn’t feel comfortable referring your service to a friend if they thought you were unreliable. Consistency means creating and sticking close to a business plan. How many clients can you expect to have this month? What will your expenses be? What type of referral network do you need to set up?
If you know you need to send out appointment reminders every week or make a presentation to the local nursing group in order to keep clients coming in, then do it. There are no shortcuts to doing what needs to be done. If you pay strict attention to accomplishing the small details of your marketing strategy, you will find yourself worrying less and less about cash-flow crises. If you take care of your bookkeeping every week, you will have little to fear from the IRS or the phone company.
When you operate a business with consistency it is easier to make changes and know whether or not they are effective. If everything is done differently every day, it is impossible to develop true expertise or intuition because you never know which actions cause which results. In a similar sense, consistency puts the qualities of conviction and clarity into a feedback loop. If a particular marketing approach does not seem to be working, perhaps it is because it is inconsistent with your overall vision or is not being communicated clearly to your market. Consistency provides a check and balance system for your business.
A good recourse policy is the best guarantee of consistency. Having a recourse policy, such as a money-back guarantee, says that you believe in the quality of your service and trust that the client will appreciate it. When you trust a client, particularly a new one, it is easier for them to trust you. If you don’t have a recourse policy there is no way for client feedback to alert you to problems with your business.
The impact of consistency on the success of your business is undeniable. Consistency provides the nuts and bolts, day to day operational stability that keeps you going in the direction intended. It is a type of consciousness that brings together the motivation provided by conviction and the communication provided by clarity into an organized plan of action. Without consistency your business is merely a ship without a rudder, tossed about by the waves and going in no particular direction.
by David Palmer | Dec 19, 2011 | Business
This is one of the most common questions I hear from customers. It’s an important question and the response needs to be considered carefully because the answer will set the character and tone of all future interactions with that customer. I am going to offer a response that I have found creates the healthiest relationships with my customers.
The real question
Any question containing the words “should I” is always directed toward someone the inquisitor thinks is an “expert,” that is to say, someone more qualified then himself or herself to offer an answer. And, while some of my egocentric, “Dear Abby” parts just love it when people ask my advice and treat me as an expert, the truth is, in this case I am not.
I actually feel totally unqualified to tell someone else what his or her needs are in the way of massage or touch.
Perhaps I would feel differently if I were a massage “therapist” treating a particular problem or condition and could guarantee that a fixed number of sessions would result in the problem being resolved. But I am not a therapist. I am a simple massage practitioner providing structured touch to people who are seated in a chair or laying on a table and want to feel better.
From that perspective there is only one, quite definitive way to respond to the question, “How often should I get a massage?” and that is by asking for more information.
“If time and money weren’t considerations,” I query the customer, “how often would you like to feel this way?”
While this reply often engenders momentary confusion, the reply, often accompanied by a little laugh, is most often something along the lines of, “Why, every day, of course.”
Thus, the customer arrives at the best answer to their original, literal question, but we are not quite done yet. We still have to find the answer to the underlying question that they were also asking. “So now we know how often you should get a massage.” I say. “Now factor in time and money and you can figure out how often you can get a massage.”
Don’t miss the moment
Since skilled touch practitioners are primarily educators, let’s not miss this significant “teachable moment.” By not answering their question directly, we teach people some important lessons:
- They are the ones in charge of their bodies, not some perceived expert.
- For better or for worse, they are in charge of the feelings inside their bodies.
- They can change how they feel for the better at any time utilizing a simple tool called “massage.”
Realizing that, to a great extent, how one feels physically and mentally is a choice can be transformative. The pace of change in the external world is so fast that literally no one can keep up with the flow of information and innovation that surrounds us leaving most of us feeling powerless and out of control.
But, what we do have control over is our internal, subjective world. Massage is an effective tool for managing our inner experience in a way that almost always effects our external world for the better. Structured touch reduces stress, induces the relaxation response and allows us access to states of awareness that enhance our coping, caring and problem-solving abilities.
Don’t tell your customers how much massage they need. Let them tell you and you will probably end up with more frequent visits from people who understand the true, personal value of massage.
by David Palmer | Dec 12, 2011 | Business
Laura Allen recently blogged about the reasons why some practitioners have a difficult time getting repeat customers. One section mentioned how some practitioners try to sell energy work or other non-massage techniques to people who think they are buying massage.
That reminded me that one question rarely addressed by massage schools and the profession as a whole is the ranking of the commercial viability of various approaches or techniques in massage.
Here is a list of some obvious hierarchies here that, when addressed realistically can contribute to success.
- More people would prefer to lay on a table than on the floor when getting a massage.
- More people are looking for simple relaxation/stress reduction/circulation massage than a treatment for a particular condition.
- More customers are able to pay $15 for a chair massage than $75 for a table massage. As Massage Envy and the thousands of Chinese immigrants in malls across the country have irrefutably demonstrated, massage consumers are highly price sensitive.
- Rolfing, Trager, Feldenkrais, and Rosen work (to name a few brand-name styles of bodywork I love) have, typically, far smaller potential audiences than more generic approaches to massage like Swedish or acupressure.
- There are more potential customers of massage then there are clients. There are more potential clients of massage then there are patients. Choose your language and intention carefully.
- And, yes, when people pay for a massage, they don’t expect long periods when they are not being touched or the hands touching them are not moving.
To be absolutely clear, I am not ranking one approach to massage as “better” than another. I, personally, love them all. I am simply noting how markets for massages services narrow or broaden depending upon certain characteristics. Schools do not do their students any favors by pretending that all approaches are equal in this regard nor by pretending that the more approaches they teach the more successful their graduates will be.
Any other additions to this list?
