Business Spotlight: Professional Massage Training Center

by Brent Lawrence

SBJ Reporter

blawrence@sbj.net

Some jobs are more hands-on than others, but no job is more hands-on than massage therapy.

Professional Massage Training Center, which opened in 1994, specializes in training new massage therapy students. The school, which currently has 68 students, offers three program schedules that take between seven months and one year to complete. Students then must pass a national certification before being licensed by the state of Missouri.

"Our students tend to do very, very well (after graduation)," said co-owner Juliet Mee. "We're talking about placement from the very beginning Where are you going to work?' How are you going to work?' Are you prepared for working?' and What is the consumer demand?'

"And we're also putting them through the paces here at the student clinic, where they have to see a bunch of clients here ahead of time and get graded on how they do with those clients."

The class work includes anatomy, kinesiology and business.

"The biggest misconception by people who come into the program is that learning about massage is all about a back rub," said Mee, who has been a massage therapist for 21 years. "They don't realize they have to be completely prepared as a businessperson and a health-care provider we are licensed as health-care providers. There's a lot more involved in massage therapy than most people have any kind of a concept of."

Mee said the people who have the most success as professional massage therapists and students are people who are already successful in another field.

"If they have been really successful in another field, even if that field is food service, but they've been a really great hostesses or a nurse if you know customer service and have some additional job skills around it, you can just soar," Mee said. " Everyone needs to understand how to be profitable you've got to make more money than you spend. The people who have basic business and budgeting knowledge just do great."

Mee said about 75 percent of the school's graduates go into the field for full-time employment. Eighty percent of students are female, and the majority of students are between 27 and 47 years old, Mee said. The school program costs $7,500 and the school has financing options available, Mee said.

"We have a wide spectrum of areas such as spa businesses, health clubs and a lot are in the medical field such as in chiropractors (offices), doctors (offices) or hospitals, and a lot of them are going out and starting their own business," said co-owner Stephenie Schultz. She noted that the school also has a placement program.

The school recommends that massage therapists charge $50 an hour for massages after graduation.

Baby boom-ing

The field of massage therapy has been booming in the last seven years, thanks in part to the baby boomer generation.

Twenty-one percent of adults received a massage within the previous year, a 13-point increase from 1997, according to an August 2003 survey by Opinion Research Corporation International.

The survey, commissioned by American Massage Therapy Association, also noted that 22 percent of people ages 55-64 had a massage in 2003, up from 13 percent in 2002.

"It's the aging of the baby boomers that is driving the trend," Mee said. "People don't want to feel their aging, and massage therapy helps you be able to cope with basic aspects of aging that occur."

Massage therapy also is being seen as a viable alternative for chronic pain relief. Forty-seven percent of those polled had had a massage at some time to relieve pain, according to the survey, and 84 percent of those 65 and over believe massage can be effective in reducing pain.

Mee also touts the positive effects of massage therapy in business, too.

"What we're finding is that it enhances performance and not just sports performance, but business performance, also. Massage therapy has been shown to increase the accuracy in accounts work. There are a lot of performance-enhancing benefits of massage."

According to a 2000 survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 14 percent of Fortune 200 companies offer massage as part of their employment benefit programs.

In the beginning

Originally, Professional Massage Training Center wasn't intended to be a long-term business.

"It was a fluke," Mee said. "We needed some people to hire and we intended to run one class just so we could get some people to hire into our clinic Natural Touches. Since then we have shut down Natural Touches and continued to train because that became much more lucrative. It was never planned."

Gayle Spoetstoser Rice was part of the first class in 1994. She now owns Alive & Well and specializes in pregnancy massage.

"It was really wonderful, all the inspiration they gave us," said Rice, who previously worked in the airline industry for 15 years. "It was kind of like graduating from high school they gave us all the basic knowledge, but from there you could go anywhere. There are so many different fields you could go into."