Randy’s Career Tips

Being a new manager can be a lonely proposition. Besides relationship issues, the new manager can feel big pressure to have all the answers. After all, isn’t this why you got the job?

Gather A Support Network

You don’t know everything, no one does. That’s ok. New managers need to not be afraid to ask questions. You must build a network for seeking advice and counsel. No leader is an island. Even the president has numerous advisors. New managers cannot succeed alone in overcoming the complicated challenge of taking over a department, function or entire organization. Even managers that have been around a while should still be seeking advice and trying to grow as a leader. Learning and growing as a leader should never end. Read books and surround yourself with other leaders.

Use Your Team

Invariably, you will inherit problems and mistakes left over from predecessors. While some may seem to be rather obvious, things often are not what they first appear to be. If the team that you are leading has been with the company for a while, then they can give you insight into what the problems may be and how things had been done previously. Additionally, it’s important for your team to feel ownership in their tasks and goals. By giving them the opportunity to give their input, you facilitate that ownership and can get good ideas and solutions.

Decisions and Leadership

While it is good to be knowledgeable and you should spend plenty of time familiarizing yourself with the products/services and policies of your company, management is primarily about leadership and decision making. Ask for advise, gather information, but in the end, the manager has to make the decisions. Seeking advice and having counsel and mentors doesn’t mean that a manger should not take responsibility to make decisions themselves. You should not Read the rest of this entry »

How much does a massage therapist make is the question that most people want to know when they are looking into becoming a massage therapist. The answer depends on what you need to make as a massage therapist. You can make as much or as little as you think you can – just like in any other career.

The thing that most massage schools won’t tell you is that most massage therapists start their own business. This is mainly because massage jobs don’t pay that much and good jobs are difficult to find. Even if you do get a job in massage most jobs are subcontractor positions meaning that you are basically self employed anyway.

The other thing is that most massage therapists are only able to work 20- 25 hours a week because of the physical demands of the profession. It is rare to find many doing more hours a week than that. Since the number of hours that you can work is limited it is important that you keep taking more classes and learning new skills so that you can keep increasing your rates each year until you can charge about $100-$125 a session. While many massage therapists will tell you that they don’t want to charge that much because they don’t think they can get 20 clients a week that will pay that amount, it is a process of building your self confidence until you can charge that much.

Some of the ways things that you can do to charge more is to take classes in new more effective techniques, learn to bill insurance companies, cater to the upper class by providing on call and on site massage services, start a mobile massage business, hire other therapists to work for you, learn to write and make money online by writing about massage, work with hard to fix diseases and conditions, specialize in a specific technique or a disease or condition, provide extra services like hot stone massage, paraffin treatments or something that will incre Read the rest of this entry »