1. Pay is AWFUL. most places offer a maximum of 30% + tips. However depending on your prices, Guests often do not tip. 30% can be good, or bad depending on the prices charged for the service. However looking at forums from about 20 years ago, this is insultingly low, there were tons of posts about therapists making 60% then. But with the 2008 recession and people absolutely desperate for work, that slipped.

2. It’s fairly easy if you have a little bit of free room, to just work for yourself and make 100%. Overhead for massage is not high if you half half a brain. I can rent a space for a few $100 a month. The only expensive part is start up and you can start small like I did. I bought a massage table and some basic supplies and charged lower prices. As I made more I invested and slowly raised my prices over time. I even retained most of my clients doing this because the services improved with the prices.

3. I HARD disagree that there is a ladder to climb in this industry. Every place I have worked offers a flat % forever, no matter how long you work there. I started working at one spa right after i graduated and there was a woman there who had been working for them for 15 years and she made the same amount now as she did then. That first day when i got back into my car at the end of the day i legit cried because i felt like I had just wasted my money and my future on a dead end career.

4. Most managers I’ve worked for were not massage therapists and didn’t understand that we have limits. Most managers ask us to work full time (please never do that) we cannot. Some therapists think they can, but they end up getting hurt. Some of the people i graduated ended up with Repetitive stress injuries and neuropathy within a year and had to leave the field entirely. Some of them would even get mad when you were hurt after working 30+ hour weeks around the holidays. I had one manager threaten to fire me because I told them I needed time to recover from the RSI after the Christmas/new years rush. She was livid and threatened to fire me if i left. In my stupidity as a new graduate i stayed and endured it for another 3 months. By the time I could get the time off i needed it was too late. I now have permanent damage in my left arm that results in constant RSIs and an increased need for self care and a hard limit on 10 massage a week or i will aggravate it (its been years)
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I love being a massage therapist but all of my experiences working in the Spa Industry have been bad at best. Managers cut corners, cut costs, over work the employees, talk shit about them when they have an injury the manager cant physically see and there is no ladder to climb, no hope for raises, no thanks or respect. This is just the service industry with a degree.

I now do all of my massage business myself out of my house or rented spaces. I no longer am willing to allow another person to dictate how much I will work, how much of me i will give, and how much i deserve to make.

If you truly want to help people and make a difference. If you truly want to heal your clients and see them improve, don’t work for a spa. At least not until they get their heads out of their butts.

I had received many treatments during my travels to educate myself and make comparisons for my own knowledge and if I find something more interesting worth sharing, I often encourage my past students and staff to new ideas.

However I found that many people who are practitioners have not had treatments done outside of their classrooms AND are not willing to learn anything new because they now have a certificate and considered themselves professionals.

This makes it hard for any business to be upgraded with an unwilling staff to be progressive especially in a small remote resort.

Small minded people don’t or refuse to realize that clients do compare techniques.

The other problem with staffing is bringing new practitioners in without having any available living quarters in a small remote town.

The most successful establishment has to upgrade as a whole and if the staff is unwilling or afraid of change then you have to change the staff… Unless everyone is on the same page in progress.

It is not about that piece of paper. It is about willingness to be progressive to retain and gain new clients.