Signing up for a continuing education class should be a time of opportunity and excitement for professional massage therapists and bodyworkers. After all, continuing education courses can be wonderful stepping stones toward an improved career and increased income. By choosing your next continuing education class wisely, you can be closer to your own dreams as a professional massage therapist or bodyworker.
For all too many hands-on practitioners, gaining new clients can be difficult, as can the prospect of creating repeat business among the clients who come through your door. As the economy toughened from coast to coast and more people began to tighten their own budgets, many practitioners took a hit in terms of the number of new and returning clients booking appointments for massage therapy and bodywork.
The desire to draw more clients to one’s practice can be a big drive when it comes to selecting your next one or more continuing education courses. If you are one of the large number of massage therapists and bodyworkers who would like to be booking more sessions more often, then you may want to consider this motivation for seeking the right continuing education classes.
However, the kind of continuing education course that might be necessary to attract new and repeat clients to your practice may be different from the continuing education class another practitioner might need to take. For example, a lack of marketing may be what is holding you back from booking more appointments, whereas a lack of appropriate skills may be the problem for your fellow massage therapist or bodyworker.
Extending this example, if you are aware you have not been making much of an effort to market your practice, then you might be wise to start looking for continuing education classes designed to teach touch therapists how to properly market their services. Such a continuing education course may be able to help you create press releases, book lectures in appropriate venues, build a website, master social media marketing and more.
For another practitioner, the problem may be the local market is already saturated with his or her services. As an example, if a massage therapist only offers Swedish and deep-tissue massage, she may be competing in the same pool as hundreds of other skilled practitioners, depending on the area in which she works. In this case, beginning to take continuing education classes on a modality that is not currently available in the local community may be a savvy business strategy.
Of course, no massage therapist or bodyworker should take a continuing education class on a modality he or she does not find interesting. Fortunately, with the number of continuing education courses available to today’s practitioners, finding one that covers a new modality you do find appealing should not be much of a problem. The key here is to also take the time to think about what modality might be in demand in your region.