Admittedly, I’m extremely left brained. I’m good at analysis (and used to do that for a living), and like getting into technical things. Every now and then I get fascinated by numbers, and thanks to the requirement for national recertification, I have some very interesting numbers which show some interesting trends.
There are a series of requirements that one needs to continue to be nationally certified through the NCBTMB (National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork), the only people that do this. (There is no national license, but many states are adopting the NCBTMB test as the qualification for local licensing. Having national certification would make it easier to get licensed in any state I might move to, or work in as long as they recognize that standard. It would mean not having to retest, or retake classes if I wanted to work in that state.) The first is to have taken 50 hours of classes 25 of which has to be from a national provider. The second is to have two hours of ethics and professionalism by a national provider. The last (and this was one I had not known about) is to have worked at least 200 hours during the period of certification.
Now, my certification is not up until September 2006, but since I had all the educational requirements, I figured I’d get a jump on it. The working hours requirement floored me as I didn’t know about that when I looked up the requirements. I was concerned whether I had worked 200 hours or not. (Now, I could always substitute teaching hours for work hours, and keep in mind this is all on the honor system. But if they did audit me, I’d have to supply them with my student’s names and addresses. For a group that maintains that ethics and privacy of information is of key importance, it sure seems like supplying them with that information would be an invasion of privacy. In fact I see it as none of their fragging business.)
I remember Rita, whom I used to work with at my day job. She and I used to have a ton of friendly arguments over the things she required for the company’s accounting, all the teeny, tiny, little useless details. Unfortunately, she was so into her work that she let her health go, and died one day, almost right there at her desk. She is probably looking down at me right now laughing her astral butt off. You see, I have been so anal about how right my accounting has to be that I am probably worse than she ever was. but this time it saved me because I could run a report and see all the work I had done since I have been licensed. (And if I get audited for that, the report will give the NCBTMB the information they need to qualify as proof that the work was done.) What it told me was that I had worked 232 hours since getting my national certification in September 2002. Wow. I could have let it go for several more months if I had not done enough, but it was nice to see I had. Of course if I were operating at the level I want to (20 -25 bodies a week), it would take only a couple months to meet the number required.
But since I had compiled the numbers for over all, I decided to look at what I had done last year and this year. What I found was very interesting and enlightening. Keep in mind that my shop opened in April of last year, so my measuring starts at that point. Last year’s numbers show 10 months worth of work. This year’s shows only six. That comparison will tell a lot too.
Last year, I did 58 hours of massage to 70 (so far) this year. That shows an increase in work in a shorter period of time (which is what I need it to show). Both years, I did 10 Reiki sessions, four chakra balancings, and one energy cleansing (or that have been recorded as such and not thrown into something else). Last year, I taught five ‘other energy’ classes to five students, while this year I have taught four classes to four students. Last year, I taught nine Reiki classes (measuring across all levels) to 28 students. This year, I’ve taught almost as many classes, seven, but to fewer students, 14. That shows more effort being put out for less people. Last year, I sold 25 gift certificates while only six this year. (I expect that will go up near the holidays). I was tipped 55 times last year, while 42 times this year, and I gave 63 discounts last year, and 40 this year.
I do have the massage breakdown, but that isn’t a good measure because I have changed the way I sell things now. For instance, I now add a lot of Lomi Lomi moves to the Swedish session, so I now bill it as a Combo massage instead of a Swedish massage. MFR is new this year, so I have no comparison. Lomi Lomi was new at the end of last year, so there can’t be any comparison there either. The one thing that surprised me was Hot Stone massage. Last year, I did seven sessions (which is not a lot by any means). This year, I haven’t done any.
These numbers show important trends. It shows that I am doing more work, which as this is my second year in business, I should be getting busier. It also shows where my time is divided, and that has to be looked at with some consideration as I have changed how I bill things. I probably won’t get an accurate measure for a couple more years (provided I don’t change things again). J
Well, my analytical brain has had something to do, and it is now happy. So I guess the next thing to do is just do what I can to bring in business. But, I will have to come back here in a few months and see how things are progressing.