Arizona MT's

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Comment by Brian on September 21, 2009 at 8:26pm

Jennifer,

Start talking to fertilization clinics and naturopaths. They could be a goo source of referals for you. The hospitals seem to want employee's and would probably want you to do whatever massage they wanted. Don't think that would be good for you since you want your niche to be pregnancy related.

How much do you think you will be charging? I would concentrate on Scottsdale or other higher income area's to start. Once you build up a good referal system, then you can branch out to lower income folks and cut them a break. Get your base set up first in a higher income area since this is a cash only business. You can't get a doctor to bill for you and give a cut as that is a kickback (in case you didn't already know that).

Comment by Maria Troia on September 21, 2009 at 5:04pm

Brian,

Interesting, and thanks for clarifying. I've never heard this about zoning classifications in Phx. I had sublet within a spa in Ahwatukee (within a medical plaza) and was told there was no business licensing requirement. Looked at a sublet within a PT practice in a high rise downtown and was told no business licensing there either. I had no separate signage at the spa, but we did co-advertise. Also, I know people with practices in private business condos in Phx with no business licensing requirements, so my guess is these were all Zone A situations. None were in shopping malls.

Personally, I found Scottsdale to be a nightmare when I had my office there. I guess it depends on the individual experience. I had a few false starts with getting my business license. And then we had the "oldest profession" move into our complex and had a real hard time getting cooperation from the authorities to clean it up. The situation left me with a real bad taste.

Chandler is also tough for a start-up (up to a 3 month wait before getting city license so you can practice... rent goes out and no income comes in during that time).

A lot of the laws here are maddening. Coming from NY, I've seen a few things that have made my head spin. Our state board is still in its infancy though and so I don't know how much we can expect at the municiple level just yet. Baby steps, I guess. We're ahead of where we were five years ago.

Thanks again for the clarification!

Comment by Liz on September 21, 2009 at 3:17pm

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Comment by Brian on September 21, 2009 at 1:44pm

Maria and Jennifer,

That's not entirely true about phoenix. In phoenix, you can only open an office in a location that is zoned as A, those are industrial areas. In order to open in an area zoned C, such as a shoping center, it will cost you a $600 fee just to submit to the zoning commision with no guarantee (or likelihood) they will give a variance. Massage Envy can do it because they had the money to jump through all the hoops, including lawyers to get it done.

Now, if you work out of a salon in phoenix, you can avoid all of that but the majority of the business must be salon and not massage and you cannot legally advertise that you are there which means no signage.

This might have changed in the past few months but I doubt it, so it is best to call the city of phoenix licensing division and they can tell you exactly what the requirements are and can mail you the zoning laws for phoenix.

Scottsdale is by far the easiest. You are not limited by zoning laws. Yes you have to get an establishment license each year which is about 300 or 400 dollars and a business license for $85 per year (technically but this can be avoided easily). The prices in scottsdale tend to be steep but if you look around, you can find places that are less expensive.

Glendale and Peoria seem to be the worst with idiotic laws. You can't be within a 100 feet of a tatoo parlor in one of them but I forget which one now, how stupid is that? They have other stupid laws as well. Phoenix's zoning laws are archaic.

Once you know the laws of both cities you can figure out the loop holes.

Do you have a clientele or do you need to build it?

Comment by Maria Troia on September 21, 2009 at 12:45pm

Jennifer,

Just as a heads up, it's easier to establish a practice in Phoenix. No business permits needed, you just set up shop and start working. Scottsdale, red tape, permits, fees, lost time, etc.

Not sure if they're still around (it's been a while since I've been a member), but google the Arizona Holistic Chamber of Commerce. You might be able to find someone with a room to rent there.

Good luck!

Maria Troia, MSEd, LMT, NCTMB, CH
www.KIRAHolistic.com

Comment by Brian on September 21, 2009 at 11:28am

Jennifer, have you looked at craigslist and backpage? There are usually some space rental listings under the health care and also a couple of other headings.

Are you in the phoenix area? what area of town are you looking in and what price range?

Comment by Maria Troia on September 20, 2009 at 4:21pm

I would like to invite anyone interested to join the AMMA Therapy group I have created:

www.massageprofessionals.com/group/ammatherapy

AMMA Therapy(R) is a form of Asian Bodywork. More information can be found at the AMMA Therapy(R) group.

Maria Troia, MSEd, LMT, NCTMB, CH
www.kiraholistic.com

Comment by Maria Troia on September 19, 2009 at 2:31pm

Hi Andrea,

I keep a FaceBook page, but find it hard to keep business and personal separate there. I'm told that's the point of FB... to give people a different glimpse into who you are.

I do use Twitter for both my CE seminars and my chair massage business and I also have the chair business on Linked In. I find all those easy to keep separate.

Personally, I haven't see much come from the social networking sites and for me, not sure how worth the time investment it is. But I know people who swear by them. It is certainly time-consuming, so you have to set limits I think.

I put most of my internet marketing into my website and SEO efforts to increase my Google ranking. That yields the best results for me. The only things that work better than the website for me are word of mouth and getting an article published.

Maria Troia, MSEd, LMT, NCTMB, CH
www.kiraholistic.com

Comment by Andrea McCully on September 19, 2009 at 11:59am

Hello and thank you to all who have joined this group specifically for AZ MT's. I hope all is going well with you and am looking forward to some thoughts about what is going on in your lives or businesses.

As for me, I have been working on reconstructing my social networking pages so this has been a little time consuming. Anyone else on myspace or facebook? Or does anyone have any input/ideas/advice on the subject?

Comment by Andrea McCully on September 9, 2009 at 10:53am

Hi! I'm not sure which AZ group was first to start but as for this one, I didn't see any others listed so I started this one. Sorry about the confusion!

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