Wishing Wellness Massage

After providing massage services for 6 years in Austin, Lake Pointe Massage became a thriving massage business. I'd learned many marketing techniques that proved successful and some that that weren't effective at all. Massage referrals proved to be the best source of new clients and I found targeting those who would repeat visits on a regular basis, was the most successful. I had a Microsoft Access database of all my clients and clients visits. This proved to be a valuable tool to look at trends of client visits and to keep track of referrals, birthdays, and client history of problems leading to requests for massage visits.

After taking many hours of massage training, I decided I'd like to become a massage instructor to help teach therapists the techniques I used in my successful practice. Many fellow massage therapists had told me that if I ever became an instructor, they would like to take a continuing education massage class from me. I looked up the requirements to teach massage in Texas and started to plan for getting my certification to teach. To teach hands on massage Texas required a Massage Therapy Instructor certification and also a Continuing Education Provider certification.

After receiving both the required certifications, I decided to poll massage therapists about what types of classes they would really be interested in taking. Many providers offer the same type of general classes but I wanted to do something different. So it will take some time to assess this and create the classes I would really like to teach. Some areas I've found lacking is in areas such as learning how to not injure yourself performing massage, how to market your massage services, how to setup your business from an accounting, record keeping, profitability perspective. Also about new massage modalities such as hot stone massage, Thai massage, Kodo, and one of my favorites - hot stone, deep tissue, chair massage.

Lake Pointe Massage

In the year 2,000, after a long period of medical testing and evaluation by no less than 4 different doctors, I finally was diagnosed with type II diabetes and peripheral neuropathy. I started reading everthing I could get my hands on about diabetes and nutrition. I was laid off from a high tech job and my wife, Sara, said I should go to massage school as I always had an interest in massage. I completed the massage school course and received my massage license for California. Right after completing massage school I was hired for another high tech job which lasted about 8 months and then got hit with another RIF (reduction in force) from that company as well. I had practiced massage in California on a part time basis, but we were thinking of moving to a city that would be nice for preretirement, had good job opportunities and had lots of things that we liked to do.

I've had many occupations over the years, most all dealing with some type of systems - Jet Aircraft Mechanic, Electrician, Security Systems Technician, Manager of Electronic Security for U.S. Bank, Computer Hardware Technician, Software Implementation Consultant, Business Process Consultant, Human Resource Systems Consultant, and now Massage Therapist/ Massage Therapy Instructor/Continuing Education Provider.

Austin Texas kept coming up as a possibility as it had high tech jobs, lots of live music, plenty of water for fishing, kayaking, and camping, as well as really friendly people. We decided to take a trip there to check it out and fell in love with "the little California" stuck right in the middle of Texas! It had the largest college campus in the US and the label of "Live Music Capital of the World." We quit our jobs, sold our town house in Walnut Creek California, and packed up the two cats in our van for the drive to Texas. I told Sara I really didn't want to work in Fortune 500 corporate any more, but would like to do massage, music lessons, and some kind of a wellness or nutritional business. We'd never really had any kind of small business before, but it sounded really creative and exciting. So the plan was to have Sara get another HR Systems related job and I would go into more of a wellness venture with massage, music, and maybe nutrition.

We found a really large beautiful house in South West Austin in a development called Lake Pointe. I decided to go to massage school in Austin as the licensing requirements required 300 hours to take the test and in California I had only 150 hours. I went to school for 5 months and then took the state test and received my R.M.T., (Registered Massage Therapist) for Texas. Lake Pointe Massage was born.

Sara and I have visited many bed and breakfasts over the years and now we are seriously considering buying a property and creating a wellness bed and breakfast. Wellness is a concept that is really catching on with the general populace. "A proactive preventative life style that helps prevent disease" is my personal definition of wellness.