Starting and running a massage business is not an easy thing to do. So many start and try but get nowhere. Some blame it on their limiting beliefs or that they don’t have the right mindset. The whole concept of mindset is just one theory. Then there is the positive thinking way—just think positive thoughts and you will get what you want.
I used to follow all that and put hundreds if not thousands into books, classes and learning the ‘law of attraction”. I even put up a website at one point on the law of attraction.
Then about 10 years ago or so, I found the writing and words of Barbara Ehrenreich who talks about how positivity is a joke.
We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking.”
So what are we to do
The whole you have to change your mindset, you have to be more positive is just another way you are beating yourself up. It is OK to feel bad, to not have a positive mindset, to not have a growth mindset. At the basis of positive mindset and growth mindset theories is usually the beliefs you have about yourself that are mostly unconscious. It is the little voice that is always saying some version of “You are not good enough. You are a monster. You don’t have what it takes.”
Can you ever really get over that, change that and get rid of it once all? Personally, I don’t think so after 64 years, 25 years of therapy, 20 years of supervision, years and years of reading every self help book around. (If self help books worked, we wouldn’t need them anymore.) It will always be with you in some form or another. The thing that we can do is come to know what that ‘not good enough’ voice is running the show and do what needs to be done anyways.
Here’s the key: You can have those beliefs, you can have whatever kind of mindset, you can be positive or negative and guess what— You can still be successful.
What you do need is commitment.
Are you willing to do what it takes to start and run a massage business? That could mean just about anything:
- Are you willing to work a part time job or even a full time job while you build your business?
- Are you willing to work long days, weekends, evenings and at other times to accommodate people’s schedules? (yes you might have to in the beginning.)
- Are you committed to figuring out a marketing method that will work for you to bring you the clients you need? That could be learning to use Facebook, learning to create a website, learning to use Google Business, learning to use Groupon, learning to do free events (yes), learning how to build repeat clients, learning how to get referrals and whatever way or method YOU find or create that works for YOU. (Any one of these things takes 6 months or so to learn or more.)
- Are you willing to keep trying and learning from each failure? Did you try a Groupon and get exhausted from the number of clients and low pay? Did you try to ask a few people to rebook for next week and it didn’t work so you gave up? Or did you ask every single person until you perfected the art of rebooking clients? Did you try one free event and feel like you got taken advantage of? Or did you try and try again until you perfected the art of turning free events into getting clients?
- Are you willing to go to the office everyday even if you don’t have clients?
- Are you committed enough that you have set up daycare, your home life and your schedule to make your business first?
- Are you willing to show up even in the face of things like deaths in the family, struggles in your personal life,
You probably reacted to some things on the list and were taught otherwise. Don’t do groupons. Don’t go to the office if you don’t have clients. Don’t work all hours of the day. Work only on your ideal client. I don’t know where all that is coming from but it requires that you start understanding that it is a business after all.
“What is the one thing that would upset me if, at the end of my life, I do not attempt, do, or complete?”