Those of us who are massage therapists have invested a significant amount of money into our vocational training. Whether we took out loans, saved our pennies to pay tuition in advance, or made installment payments to our schools, getting through our classes involved a fair amount of financial commitment, sacrifice, and struggle.

So when we finally graduate and have that license in hand, the financial challenges of setting up our own practice can seem daunting. After all, for many of us, it took all we had just to pay for our training. Taking on more debt, or saving up enough to start our own practice, can seem impossible.
At some point, perhaps after working in a spa or clinic for a while, many of us can no longer resist the desire to be our own boss, and we decide it’s time to set up our own practice. This, of course, will mean anteing up once again and investing in the building and cultivation of our private massage therapy practice.    
When it came time for my husband, Shane, and me to branch out on our own and create our own private practice (in 2009, about three years after graduating from massage school), we had very little to spend on our new endeavor. But knowing that our spa jobs were never likely to support the kind of lifestyle we hoped for, we knew we had to bite the bullet and give private practice a try.
The first few years were defined by a shoestring budget, a lot of creative resourcefulness, and a fair amount of bootstrapping. Bootstrapping, for those who may not be familiar with the term, refers to improving one’s situation by using existing resources. Anyone who has built a business from the ground up without borrowing capital is very familiar with bootstrapping.
A great, although not business-related, example of bootstrapping is demonstrated by Julie Andrews’s character Maria in The Sound of Music, when she uses curtains to craft play clothes for all of the Von Trapp children in her charge. To bootstrap means, as Theodore Roosevelt has been quoted as saying, to “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Think of bootstrapping as the act of being enterprising, resourceful, and scrappy.  
Clearly, setting up a private massage therapy practice isn’t a no-investment endeavor, but it can most certainly be a low-investment endeavor. And when you’re broke and looking to bootstrap your way into a thriving practice, the question is, “How low can you go?” It’s not for the faint of heart, but building your own business on next to nothing is indeed possible, if you know some bootstrapping basics.

1. Get More Boots on the Ground by Enlisting Your Allies  
When you start your own massage therapy practice, you may not have any clients. But you do have friends, family members, neighbors, parishioners, a mail carrier, a dentist, a UPS delivery person … you get the idea.
Even if you don’t necessarily feel comfortable massaging the people in your existing network (for boundary reasons or a simple desire to avoid awkwardness), these folks care about you, and they want to see you succeed. They can be invaluable sources of referrals who can help you get the ball rolling as you start your own practice.
Offer friends, family, and other local associates some sort of referral bonus for sending their friends your way (perhaps a massage, a home-cooked meal, an evening of babysitting, or whatever else you may be able to offer). Time is money, of course, so be careful how much you throw at the referral bonuses you offer. But when you’re short on cash, time and skills may be the only commodities you can offer.
Ben Glosson, massage therapist and owner of Gentle Ben’s Massage Therapy in Marietta, Georgia, agrees that a strong social network can be leveraged to bolster one’s massage practice: “I would tell anyone starting a massage business to be involved in their community. Sing with a chorus, or volunteer for community groups, emergency response teams, sporting events, or religious functions. These are the people in your community who will help grow your business by word of mouth.”
Bootstrapping means not only making the most of financial resources, but also taking stock of, and maximizing, your collection of allies, who can serve as brand ambassadors for your emerging business.

2. Treat Your Client List Like Fort Knox
When I was a Camp Fire Girl, we used to sing a song at camp that included the lyrics: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” Not only have these lyrics stuck with me throughout the years in regard to friendships, but also in regard to relationships with clients.
Just as bootstrapping involves squeezing the most value out of all available resources, it also means recognizing, and never minimizing, the inherent value of each and every client—whether new or long-term. Just as we can’t afford to waste money or other resources, we definitely can’t afford to waste the potential each and every client holds for our burgeoning practice.
Treating each client like silver or gold, and not taking any client for granted, is imperative not only when we’re bootstrapping our way to a successful practice, but long after we’ve established ourselves as accomplished practitioners and business owners.     

3. Know Where—and Where Not—To Allocate Funds
One of the trickiest parts of bootstrapping is deciding how to spend the little money we do have. It’s important to save where you can, but you shouldn’t be afraid to spend where you need to.
As for Shane and me, nearly everything that went into our first practice space had been acquired for free or next to nothing. Thrift store finds, Craigslist buys, and neighbors’ castoffs were the foundations of our décor.
But, while we had determined that the physical objects in our office need not be an area of significant investment, there were other areas we deemed to be more worthy of funding. For us, those areas that deserved a prominent place in our shoestring budget included the following.
Legal Fees  
Our most important investments included expenses such as our state licenses, liability insurance policies, occupancy permits, and other legal obligations. Even continuing-education costs could fall under this category, because, of course, continuing education is necessary for maintaining our licenses. Without these licenses and permits, we couldn’t even have gotten out of the starting gate.
Rent
We had decided to embrace the old real estate mantra “location, location, location.” For our first clinic location, we chose an area slightly more expensive than others, but which boasted centrality and a wealthy neighborhood demographic.
But we were also careful to not bite off more than we could chew too soon. We started out sharing one treatment room and were later able to increase our spending by each renting our own room.
Andrea Fleming, LMT and owner of Green Lotus Bodyworks in Austin, Texas, substantiates the necessity to avoid taking on more rent costs than are absolutely necessary: “My advice to someone just starting out would be to not overextend yourself in renting an office space full time by yourself. If you don’t have any clients, start small by renting a day or two in someone else’s clinic, splitting the rent with colleagues, or doing outcalls to build your revenue up first. Then, you can obtain a full-time clinic space when your clientele base can support it. It’s always easier to expand because you have so much business, rather than being overwhelmed by rent payments on a space you aren’t using consistently.”
Communications
Shane and I knew we needed a reliable and professional way to facilitate communication with our growing clientele. We chose to budget for an account with Constant Contact, which allowed us the ability to send out email newsletters and other correspondence announcing special offers, events, and other relevant happenings.
We also signed up for an online scheduling service, which facilitated the booking process for our clients and ensured that, even if neither of us was available to answer the phone, our clients could still book themselves quickly and conveniently online. We chose BookFresh, but there are many options available; for instance, ABMP has a red carpet relationship with MassageBook.
We opted to use a cell phone as our main business line, so our cell phone bill was something that had to be accommodated in our miniscule budget. This allowed us to answer the phone at all hours and wherever we were. Especially back then, we couldn’t afford to miss a single call from a prospective client!
Of course, we also needed access to the Internet in order to use our email service and our online booking system, to correspond with clients via email, and to process credit card payments. So, Internet access was yet another bill that we made room for in our meager ledger of expenses.
Table and Linens
We invested in the best-quality portable massage table we could afford while we were still in school. Fortunately, it served us well as we transitioned from school into private practice.
While we purchased clearance blankets at discount stores like Ross Dress for Less and Marshall’s, we decided that investing in the very best sheets we could afford was important (after all, 90 percent of a client’s time with us is spent in contact with our sheets). We purchased several sets of luxurious microfiber sheets from Comphy Company.
Our clients raved about the comfort of these lovely spa sheets, and much to our pleasant surprise, we found that investing in them has actually saved us money on laundry detergent, water, and utilities, because we can wash and dry so many of the compact sheets in each load.
Professional Expenses
Another non-negotiable for us was hiring a qualified tax preparer. Doing so, of course, was more expensive than preparing our taxes ourselves, but it has surely saved us in expensive mistakes in the long run. Sometimes it pays to do it yourself, but sometimes (especially in regard to bookkeeping and tax preparation), bringing in a professional is well worth every penny.
Areas where we decided we could scrimp and cut corners (in addition to the acquisition of furniture and décor items) included the following.
Housekeeping & Laundry Service When we were first starting out, we decided it wasn’t necessary to pay a housekeeper when vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, and dusting were well within our own capabilities. And why pay a laundry service when we had plenty of free time to wash, dry, and fold laundry?
A Receptionist
Not everyone has this luxury, but when Shane and I started out, we shared one treatment room and while one of us was with a client, the other one would be at the front desk, answer the phone, and greet the next client. Whoever was posted at the reception desk could also spend that time writing email newsletters, promoting our practice on social media, and writing press releases for local media outlets.
While Shane and I are a husband-and-wife team, this kind of symbiotic arrangement can be created between any two likeminded practitioners who are willing to share space and support each others’ practices.
Refreshments
While it may not seem like a major expense, bottled water can, in fact, get quite expensive. Not only can the cost of bottled water add up, driving to the store, packing up the car, and toting the cases of water to your office requires a tremendous amount of energy. And bottled water delivery is also very costly.
Instead of providing our clients with bottled water, we opted instead to purchase a set of pint glasses, custom screen-printed with our business name and website, along with a countertop ice machine and a faucet-mounted water filter. This one-time investment allowed us to serve filtered ice water to our clients for years to come (replacing the faucet-mounted filter periodically created only a minimal expense). And the environment appreciates the reduced carbon footprint.

4. Carefully Weigh Time Against Money
Investing one’s own time in lieu of money is an important bootstrapping skill and a great strategy in the early days of a private practice, but it’s important to recognize when this tactic no longer makes sense.
During the infancy of our practice, Shane and I had more time than money. Cleaning the bathroom, washing water glasses, folding laundry, and other such tasks were undertakings we were happy to take on.
However, eventually our practice grew to the point where our books were much fuller, and we now have much less downtime. We have also increased our fees significantly over the years (not only in response to inflation, but also because our skill set and level of expertise has expanded). Our time, therefore, has become more valuable.
Wearing as many hats as possible during the beginning of one’s business is an essential element of successful bootstrapping and should most certainly be embraced. But as one’s practice evolves, wearing only those hats that correspond with the most highly paid positions, and hiring someone else to do the rest of the chores, makes good financial sense.  

5. Pick a Few Brains
When you’re bootstrapping, you inherently have more time than money, and one of the very best ways to use that abundance of time is to learn everything you possibly can from the folks who have blazed the trail before you.
Read business blogs, follow the social media accounts of industry leaders, listen to podcasts, watch videos, attend webinars, read books, devour industry magazines, and harvest insight from any and all quality sources you can find. Learning from others’ successes and failures is really the only known shortcut to success. So why not glean all you can from those who have “been there, done that”?
And connecting in person with those who have already done what you’re trying to do can provide an even more powerful education. Choose a few local professionals whose accomplishments you admire, and contact them to see if they might be open to sitting down and sharing some of their wisdom with you. Make sure these would-be mentors know you’re not approaching them as an adversarial competitor, but rather as an eager and curious apprentice, and you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised by how willingly they will offer up some of their hard-earned insights. As Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, says, “Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.”
But don’t limit your corral of mentors exclusively to professionals who inhabit the massage profession. Seek out all types of entrepreneurs from a variety of fields. Stepping outside of our professional bubble can provide a broader perspective that will give us a unique and powerful edge.

6. Take Inventory of—and Leverage—All Your Assets
While we have a lot to learn from MTs who have been in the profession for many years, we should also take stock in what we, ourselves, already know, even when we’re first starting out. While we may have less expertise than longtime veterans, we still know more about the therapies we offer than our clients do. In this regard, our knowledge is actually a valuable asset we can, and absolutely should, leverage.
Since you’re likely to have plenty of time on your hands when you’re cultivating your practice, it can be advantageous to spend that time creating educational content to share with existing and prospective clients (via articles, blog posts, diagrams, email newsletters, infographics, podcasts, presentations, videos, and other formats). Creating and distributing this educational content can help you establish professional authority and help clients better understand how you can help them.  
Phil Cutrell, massage therapist and owner of Michigan Auto Injury Massage Therapy, LLC, in the Detroit area, acknowledges that sharing your knowledge can be a great way to attract clients: “I would tell those who are just starting out to network, network, network. Put yourself out there. Create a short presentation about your business and offer to speak at appropriate venues (women’s clubs, support groups, etc.).”  
Another important element of bootstrapping involves taking an inventory of—and maximizing—all of your nonmonetary assets, such as time, creativity, network connections, and knowledge.

7. Stand Out From the Crowd
When you’re starting out, it’s imperative that you’re able to differentiate what you are offering from what others are offering. You should spend some time crafting a one-minute elevator pitch that clarifies what sets your practice apart from the rest. Focus on the value you are able to provide to your prospective clients.
By the time Shane and I were ready to set up our practice, we had both finished not only our initial massage therapy training, but also a clinical massage therapy program that focused on pain relief through trigger point therapy. This became the specialty on which we have built our private practice. “Pain Relief through Clinical Massage Therapy” became our quick, to-the-point slogan that tells potential clients what we provide as quickly and succinctly as possible.   
Amy Grimes, massage therapist and owner of Float Nashville in Nashville, Tennessee, agrees that clarity in one’s professional identity and marketing message is essential: “The best thing you can do for yourself when starting with a small budget is to do thorough planning, particularly when it comes to your target market. Be very clear about whom you are serving, as well as their age, gender, income, preferences, where they live, where they work, what activities they participate in, where they shop, and what magazines and websites they read. Once you are clear, choose a location that is logical for your clients. Know what they want and make it convenient and easy for them to use your services.”
Bootstrapping means being efficient not only with your money, time, and energy, but also with your marketing message, which should be laser-focused.

8. Be Competitive and Creative With Your Pricing
While I would never suggest that any massage therapist attempt to define a practice by consistently undercutting other practitioners’ prices, competitive pricing can be used strategically to convince new clients to give you a try.
One of the ways in which Shane and I cultivated our fledgling practice was by partnering with Groupon. We decided that taking a temporary pay cut was worth the hefty influx of new clients Groupon was able to provide.
Through Groupon, we saw nearly 500 new clients over the course of a year, and enjoyed a nearly 70-percent return rate among those clients. In fact, we still have many weekly clients who have been coming to see us since they first found us via Groupon nearly six years ago! Having been approached by so many other MTs regarding our Groupon experience, we later went on to produce an audio book about the entire process.
Another way to be creative with your pricing is to offer prepaid discounted packages of massage sessions. By paying upfront, clients enjoy significant savings on each session, and the lump sum that you receive can go a long way toward bolstering your bank account.
We have also had some success with offering a “send three, get one free” offer, wherein a client who sends in three referrals is rewarded with a free session. Doing this can motivate existing clients to spread the word about your services and provide them with a nice reward for having done so.
Mark McKenney, a.k.a. Mark the Spa Man, of McKenney Spa & Wellness Consulting in Dallas, Texas, suggests bootstrappers make the referral process as fluid as possible: “Make it easy for others to recommend you via word of mouth, but make it seamless and get it into a digital format. Ask peeps to help you out!”
As Tony Robbins puts it, “Success is not about your resources. It’s about how resourceful you are with what you have.”
As you embark on building your own private massage practice, you will quickly realize that you can, in fact, cultivate the career of your dreams without large sums of startup capital. Resourcefulness, gumption, scrappiness, and determination are all assets that may actually be worth much more than a sky-high credit card limit or the help of an angel investor.
After all, in addition to supporting your first step toward private practice, these characteristics will sustain you throughout the duration of your entrepreneurial journey. While credit and cash flow may come and go, the ability to bootstrap one’s way through tough times is an enduring quality that will always be an invaluable asset.   

Susan Epperly works with her MT husband, Shane, in their East Austin clinical massage therapy practice, Tiger Lily Studios, LLC. In addition to contributing her massage comic, A Touch of Humor, to Massage & Bodywork magazine, Susan and Shane create a variety of educational products in both digital and physical formats (ebooks, audio books, videos, and more) for their fellow wellness practitioners. Their products are available for purchase on their website, www.tigerlilystudios.com.