Meetings

Having productive meetings where everybody has some input is essential to keeping the group practice on the same page.  During my tenure as a group practice owner I required a mandatory meeting the last Saturday of the month.  I expected everybody to be there so we could discuss problems with clients, things that were broken, and how we were going to get more business.  What kind of advertising did you do in the last thirty days for yourself to bring in more business?  This is the question I usually started with so that each person could talk about things they had done to bring in business and the new people would get an idea of what they could do to build their business.  This would usually lead to the fact that some of the better paid massage therapists were dong nothing extra.  This would sometimes lead to well why should I do anything then?  I would try to remind the new therapists that the more they do for themselves the better their business would be.  I also reminded them that the longer you stay with something the bigger the pay off will be.  Some other things we would do in the meetings would be get volunteers for health fares and other functions people had called in wanting MT's to come out for and I would try to get them arranged.   Gift certificate sales are another big topic at meetings especially around the holidays.  Gift Certificate sales are what kept us going in the winter months.  We would try to come up with advertising ideas as a group.  This way every person in the group could help with marketing.  We also dealt with items that were broken.  Like wallpaper peeling, stools broken, faucet problems, CD players not working these were all things that we needed to keep the place looking nice and running well. Talking about problem clients was another meeting topic.  Sometimes we would have clients that would not show up or that were doing things like playing with themselves or in some other way making the therapist feel uncomfortable.  We would try not to rebook clients who made the therapists feel uncomfortable in any way.  As the owner I would get to speak to them and let them know why they would not be coming back to my business to get massage.  Confrontations are not one of my strong suits. Although, I am getting better.  My business was like my baby and the mother bear would come out if needed.