Advice for Chair Massage gig

[-Mitch]

This is my first post, and I think I've read all of the CM posts, so I hope I'm not duplicating anything.

I work full-time in an administrative assistant position at a large university and have recently become licensed and nationally certified to do massage here in Missouri. I approached our Wellness Center to get advice on how to set up a chair massage program here in the building I work in. They said they would promote my services as long as I was charging "a minimal fee." All I needed to do was secure the location. I first approached Business Services in September of this year to ask permission. After six weeks I got a "maybe" and a request to have the Board of Curators of our university added to my insurance if it is approved (shouldn't be a problem). It has now been another five weeks and I followed up with another email asking if they had an update on the approval status. I haven't heard back yet.

I have two questions:

1. Is this an insane amount of time to take to give me an answer?

2. How important might the "promotion" by the Wellness Center be? I do know that they employ one massage therapist to do table massage and he is paid less than $1/min, which is a bit low for our geographical area. After reading all the posts about charging more than $1/min for chair massage, I wonder if I should charge what I feel is appropriate and do my own marketing??

 

[Hem]

It is taking a long time, but I have found that the larger the organization, the less organization is involved and the longer EVERYTHING takes.

The university here wants massage therapists to work for much less than the market, and supply the table, linens & oils. It must be common.

I think being promoted by the wellness center isn't needed. With chair massage, being visible is more important than any other promotion, in my experience. If you have the choice to go ahead and set up and do your own marketing, charging what you believe is the right rate, you'll do fine. If you let them choose your location and "promote" you and set your fees, it's a gamble. Someone knowledgeable and helpful could do a great job for you, while someone who just wants to hide you will certainly manage that. *That* is no fun!

 

[Scotty J]

Do you need premission from the wellness centre to set this up. I find that people in the wellness industry who have no training in any particular modality tend to move very slowly. You have to hold their hand every step of the way for setting things up. Saying that it can get worst after you set things ups.

 

[Seth H]

I think being promoted by the wellness center isn't needed. With chair massage, being visible is more important than any other promotion, in my experience. If you have the choice to go ahead and set up and do your own marketing, charging what you believe is the right rate, you'll do fine. If you let them choose your location and "promote" you and set your fees, it's a gamble.

This.

 

[cabel l]

I don't "need" permission from the wellness center, per se, but I thought it might be useful for me since they send out monthly Wellness Newsletters to the entire campus and could include my services on them.

The MT I mentioned before who works for the Wellness Center was one of my instructors in massage school, and he does mostly table massage, but occasionally does chair massage for various departments. I would hope the Wellness Center would not object to any "competition" I might pose, as one MT is not nearly enough for a university that employs tens of thousands of employees.