Milestones

Anytime I reach a milestone, whether it’s one of those birthdays that ends in zero or some other momentous occasion, it causes me to stop and reflect on the things I’ve done. I see what worked and what didn’t….what I coulda, shoulda, woulda done given another chance. And I pat myself on the back for those things that turned out well.

Next Monday is the 8th anniversary of my clinic. In 2003, I had been working for five years in the massage school I attended. I loved my job. I loved the students. The only thing I didn’t love was the pay. I wanted and needed to make more money. An opportunity presented itself when a couple of friends who were MTs asked my husband and I to go into business with them. We moved into a brand-new professional building and set up shop. Two months later, they decided being in business wasn’t for them…their parting words were that they could see our office was never going to support four people making a living. For the past five years or so, it has actually supported at least a dozen.

I’ve had a lot of therapists ask me how I built my business, so here’s my philosophy in a nutshell: The road to success is usually long and winding. There are curves and potholes, and sometimes roadblocks. But as is the case with a real road, whenever you hit a roadblock, you find a suitable detour that still leads to where you want to go. You don’t just quit.

I got another massage therapist to join us. When she got saturated, I got another one, and so on. Today we have six full-time and a part-time Rolfer.

A couple of years into the business, I got an email out of the blue from an acupuncture student in Colorado who had seen my website, was intending to move to this area, and expressed an interest in working with us. She’s been on our staff now since 2005. Around that same time, a friend of mine who is an RN and was nearing retirement expressed to me that she just couldn’t sit around retired and that she’d like a part-time job. She had taken many classes in naturopathy over the years…as her retirement loomed, she upped her class schedule, became trained first in aesthetics and later went to Upledger’s training in manual lymph drainage, and she joined us too.

The second year we were open for business, we hit another milestone when I took over an adjoining suite of offices and turned it into my classroom facility. I had been renting hotel space to hold classes in and really wanted my own space, so I got it. I also gained another treatment room and a nice kitchen and break space for the staff.  I spent a lot of money purchasing tables and chairs, anatomical charts and models, a projector and screen, and all the other things I wanted, which pretty much wiped me out of drawing a good salary that year, but I felt good about it and still do. It’s a nice facility and I’m proud of it.

A few years ago, another milestone occurred when a friend of mine who is a chiropractor and fellow musician dropped into see me. He has a practice in another town about 30 miles away and was passing through and just stopped in to say hello. That discussion ended in him joining us part-time and being able to offer that service, as well. Initially, he worked in the classroom behind hospital screens. But the following year, the universe smiled on me again when the adjoining suite of offices was vacated. READ MORE...