To complement “Passive Income: 3 Ways to Set Yourself Up for Success” in the December 2015 issue of MASSAGE Magazine. Summary: By renting out your office space when you’re not using it yourself, you can set up a stream of passive income to help boost your cash flow.
If you own your office space, or rent it and are allowed to sublet it, you’re sitting on potential passive income—and this applies even if you’re completely booked with clients. That’s because even the busiest massage therapist who is doing, for example, 30 weekly treatments uses the space no more than 40 hours.
Add Up Potential Passive Income
Let’s say you use your office from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekdays; your office is vacant on weeknights, weekends and early in the morning.
Do the math. Your space could be used from:
- 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. on weekdays—10 hours per week
- 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on weekdays—15 hours per week
- 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on weekends—28 hours per weekend
That’s 53 hours a week, or about 212 hours a month.
Rent Out Your Space
To get passive income out of this underutilized resource, rent your office to another therapist during those hours it would otherwise spend unused. Since that therapist would have access to it for more time than you’re using it, charge accordingly—or at least charge what you’re paying. Many therapists, of course, won’t need it that often. Some might only have an evening or weekend clientele. That’s OK; rent it out with a weekend option, a weekday evening plan, or early-morning option.
Every city has different real estate rates, so I can’t presume to quote a one-price-fits-all situation—but the cost to rent your space for one session should be much higher hourly than if a therapist rents it, for example, every weekend. If your area’s going rate for massage is $70 per hour, then it’s fair to ask for $15 to $20 for one hour’s worth of massage space rental.
If your community’s going rate for massage offices is $1,000 per month in rent, that’s about $33 per day. A therapist who wants to rent your space for one Saturday per month, for example, should probably pay $60 to $75, while a therapist who wants to rent it for every Saturday should pay about $200—or $50 per Saturday. If the therapist wanted to rent it every Saturday and Sunday, a fair price might be about $350.
You can adjust these numbers as you see fit, but realize that your space is very valuable to many therapists whose massage businesses are too small for them to afford their own space. Your office may give them all they need.
Work Out the Details
If you look at these calculations, you can see there’s plenty of possible ongoing passive income available for using your space when it’s vacant.
To find therapists to rent your office, you can make announcements at your local massage chapter meetings, put the word out to therapists you know, or advertise in your state or local massage newsletter.
You’ll need to figure out how to handle details such as keys, linens and oil, but once you get a plan in place, you could be looking at potentially thousands of extra dollars a year.
About the Author
Coach Cary Bayer is a keynote speaker and marketing coach. His three dozen publications include the Grow a Rich Massage Business series and two DVDs. His 15 continuing education seminars and webinars—especially “Build a $100,000 a Year Massage Business in Just One Hour a Day”—are popular among therapists. He wrote “Passive Income: 3 Ways to Set Yourself Up for Success” for MASSAGE Magazine’s December 2015 issue, and “Create a Win/Win Referral Program to Get More Clients” for massagemag.com.