Category: Coaching

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Coaching SELF-IMPROVEMENT FOR MASSAGE THERAPISTS

4 Steps to Becoming a Badass Massage Therapist


Want to experience life as an awesome bodyworker, helping people and changing lives? Here are my top 4 steps to achieve this goal. Enjoy!

Find your niche

Cliffside massage? Sure there could be a market for that.

An incredibly important part of your massage business is to specialize in a more exclusive corner of the market. Clients will naturally gravitate to massage therapists with unique specialties and you set yourself apart by having skills only shared by a few.

You may find that there are clients who you won’t be able to serve due to lacking the knowledge of every specialization, but that’s perfectly fine. You don’t need to know everything for every client that passes, instead, focus on attracting the right clients who will pick you for being awesome in your niche.

Trade often

It’s like they say: “Friendship is magic.”

The best way to improve at massage is to practice and experiment, however I wouldn’t recommend practicing brand new techniques on your clients. The greatest way to get this practice in is to constantly find yourself new bodyworkers to trade with!

Constantly cultivating several massage-trade contacts serves as not only beneficial practice for you, but also gives your finger on the pulse of what the best parts of massage are. By receiving bodywork, you remind yourself of why you do what you do and maintain motivation to help others feel the same way.

Work smarter, not harder

Get a little notepad to write down all those smart things in your head!

Don’t run your fingers to the bone! It is completely fine to raise your prices a bit, as long as it is within reason for the service provided. Charging your clients a price that reflects the value you are providing them serves as an equal exchange of energy which will leave both parties satisfied and the universe in balance.

In fact, an easy way to know if you are charging too little for your work is to research local prices. If you are the cheapest massage therapist in your area, that’s not a great sign. You want to be Apple, not Walmart. When you charge the cheapest price, your prospective clients will assume that you are providing the cheapest experience. You’ll find that they treat you accordingly and unsurprisingly, it affects your perception of your work as well.

Find someone who is ahead of you

If knowledge is power then a mentor is a wind turbine.

Every day, you will face hundreds of thousands of negative sources trying to force their way into your ears and eyes, doing their damnedest to discourage and demoralize you from following your dreams. At times like these, it’s always good to have someone at your back to provide advice, encouragement, and knowledge.

Finding a good mentor or business coach is one of the best things you can do to help with your growing massage business. Investing in extra support from an expert who is familiar with the challenges you are currently facing will vastly improve your business and your results will definitely experience a quantum-leap forward!

That’s why I started Deegear Coaching and my Massage Success program, where we take these principles and apply them to the unique challenges you face in your practice. If you are interested in how I can help you avoid burnout, achieve happiness and success in your own business, you can reach me at [email protected] or join our Facebook group.

Afterward

You can be a badass therapist too! I hope you’ll take some time today to look at what you are doing now and where it is leading you. Ask yourself where you want to go and who you want to be, so you can make that course correction necessary for achieving a happy & successful career.

This originally appeared on the MassagEric.com blog.

About Eric:

Eric has been a Licensed Massage Therapist since 2010. He is an expert healer with an alternative approach, and he is dedicated to helping my clients move through a wide range of physical, emotional, and spiritual transitions in the most efficient and transformative way possible. Now he coaches bodyworkers and health solopreneurs in their journey to fulfillment. Join expert therapists and experience massage community with his Facebook group: The Happy, Successful Massage Therapist.

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Coaching

Why Hire a Business Coach?

Whether you just took the dive into owning a business, have been swimming in that pond for years, or have yet to dip your toe into the water, acquiring a business coach is an endeavor well worth pursuing.

When did you cast your rod in the rivers of business?

For those who haven’t hired business coaches before, hiring outside help in this area may not make much sense at first. However, as anyone who has taken the leap and realized the vast potential lurking beneath the surface of their entrepreneurial vessel, it is well worth the investment. That’s how you have to look at it: an investment into you and your business on a mental level. Much like hiring a personal trainer to help with physical fitness, a business coach will help you with financial fitness for your enterprise.

The growth that you will experience will be explosive, as you leverage years of experience, massive energy, and a creative second pair of eyes. Let’s look into a few of the benefits of hiring a coach.

Business coaches are your cheerleader.

These are actual cheerleaders, which are nice to have too.

Every day, you will face hundreds of thousands of negative sources trying to force their way into your ears and eyes, doing their damnedest to discourage and demoralize you from following your dreams. In times like these, it’s nice to get a little external positive affirmation, and with a business coach you can be sure that you’ll get a hell of a lot of it! Whether they are cheering you own from the sidelines or delivering a compliment sandwich, with a coach, you can be certain that somebody has your back.

They serve as your advisor.

All hail the king!

Running a business is like overseeing a medieval fiefdom, you are the lord of your dominion and within your borders, your word is the law. However, just like a medieval fiefdom you need to expand and conquer new territories, making big decisions can be mentally exhausting with every factor having to be thoughtfully weighed and considered.

Enter the advisor: a confidant that helps you with the weighing and can even bring up factors that you overlooked in your haste for riches. You need who knows the lay of the land and can give guidance for your decisions or serve as a receptacle for honest feedback, something medieval lords have killed for. Business coaches are even better because they usually have experienced running businesses and are intimately familiar with similar, if not the same, problems you are facing.

They are a great source and sounding board for fresh ideas.

Don’t do this unless necessary, it is a waste of chalk.

Sometimes we hit slumps that drain our mental energy, leaving us creatively bankrupt. With a business coach, you will be provided that extra angle to bounce your brain off, and into the basket of manifestation. This is one of my favorite things about being a business coach, giving my clients the flour for baking up fresh new ideas. Sometimes that manifests itself as back-and-forth texting which puts teenagers to shame or multi-hour brainstorming phone calls.

Summary

Whether you are in need of advice, ideas or motivation, business coaches are the right choice to make. Just like a personal trainer can spot you, create nutrition plans and give you the high-five after a tough workout, coaches can help train your business sense and give you a healthy diet of successful habits.

When we finish our phone call or facetime meeting, you will have the tools and direction needed. You can be sure that you will be able to end our sessions with a clear goal and an executable action plan.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the incredible amounts of deep inner work that are required for life and work. Change happens one step at a time with Deegear Coaching.

About the author:

Eric Deegear is an entrepreneur, author, therapist, motivational speaker & business coach. He holds a psychology degree and several therapeutic licenses. After creating and applying successful principles in his personal life, he began to utilize his skills professionally to help those looking to change their lives for the better. Drop him a line for any questions, comments, or love-notes.

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Books Coaching Mastery Series

The Art of Self-Mastery (1 of 3)

Robert Greene’s Mastery is the cornerstone of an entrepreneur’s education. This fantastic book is filled with dozens of key points of masterful cognition, concisely packed alongside examples from history, both recent and long past. We will delve into the topic of Mastery in a 3 part series outlining a few golden nuggets which are highly necessary for crafting your self-mastery.

Levels of Mastery.

When under times of extreme stress such as a deadline, you may find yourself able to work with energy and gusto previously thought impossible. This last-minute fervor for the task allows you to complete the assignment, task or mission in an incredibly short period of time. Harnessing this energy; becoming able to unleash it without a moment notice on unsuspecting duties, is the crux of mastery.

There are three distinct levels of mastery:

  • Student: Beginner and dabbler in the subject of interest.
  • Practitioner: Moderate skills in the area of interest. Knows field moderately, not specialized.
  • Mastery: Specialized and skilled in particular sections. Massive knowledge in areas of interest.

As humans, we are super adaptable; everything we imagine is achievable given a reasonable amount of time. Time is what leads to mastery. View your passions, because what they are is what will most easily become your mastered skill. Mastery is not a bygone relic of the past; Discard this view that has been shackled to you by society and embrace the idea that you can and will become a master in what you work on.

This is because, above all else, your particular combination of atoms will never happen again. You are a super unique phenomenon that cannot be replicated. Celebrate your uniqueness, know who you are and don’t let others change your mindset. Be responsible for your life.

Monkey see monkey do.

When you observe someone performing an action your brain can mirror their process in your head, allowing you to learn intricate skills merely by watching others. This valuable evolutionary tool benefits us immensely, because seeing another individual perform actions gives us a head-start in learning new techniques or methods.


Several key areas exist in which you can improve and condition yourself.

  • Find pleasure in completing your tasks. – Chasing pleasure for its own sake and going from one day to the next trying to get a new fix will only lead to sorrow and disappointment
  • Set 1-2 priorities and stick with them. – Don’t try to do too many things at once as it muddles your focus and narrows your vision. You need to keep a clear goal in mind to truly succeed.
  • Focus on learning new skills – Embracing a skill deeply allows you to learn related skills faster and easier than ever before.

Learning vs people-pleasing.

It can be tempting to try to please others in what you do rather than work on what fulfills your own life.

People are only around you for a short time, coming and going at random, while any time and effort invested in yourself will be there for the rest of your life. Give yourself an education in your field of interest. Fight for it, pushing and clawing your way to the top of your subject of choice (or several fields, see skill-stacking).

To do anything well you must cultivate a deep understanding of it and a no-compromises attitude to get what you want. Here are 2 further tips to attain complete mastery in a subject:

  1. Child-like learning – Young children are great learners because they sustain a welcoming and open attitude to all knowledge received. Become humble and accepting when you learn from peers and teachers as a sense of false superiority will only hinder your learning.
  2. After learning, practice – You will know that your time as a student is over when there is no more to learn. After you master a skill, practice it. Do not become stagnate and fester away, practice to keep yourself sharp.

Click here for Part 2 of our Mastery Series.

About Eric:

Eric Deegear is an entrepreneur, author, therapist, motivational speaker & business coach. He holds a psychology degree and several therapeutic licenses. After creating and applying successful principles in his personal life, he began to utilize his skills professionally to help those looking to change their lives for the better.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the incredible amounts of deep inner work that are required for life and work. Change happens one step at a time with Deegear Coaching.

Categories
Books Coaching

Three Reasons For Why You Should Strive for Financial Success

The more you benefit others the more you will benefit yourself. This article borrows concepts from Magnetic Wealth Attraction by Frederick Dodson.

1. The World Won’t Hand It To You.

Life can be hard. In this belief, you will be compelled to take initiative and not wait for the world to serve you but spring at the chance to serve the world. By taking responsibility for your life, you will gain satisfaction with the work of your hands and maybe even happiness. Dodson emphasizes that it is okay to not be happy all the time; There is no need to even try, you can’t.

If you behave like someone who has completed his financial goals, accomplishing this task will arrive upon your doorstep and you will not need to go to it.

2. You Become More Valuable.

Providing others will be a benefit that they can exchange money for or something else of value to you for or the inverse, trading money so that others may benefit you. These transactions never place money as the end goal, but rather as a means to an end; money is never a goal as it shouldn’t as goals revolving around money are about what you can buy with it.

No matter your setbacks you will be able to remake progress lost at any time as it is not the progress or wealth that matters but the knowledge and experience of gaining the progress or wealth. It is also important to discard the belief that making money is the same thing as taking money. You cannot make money without providing a service or benefit to others, as long as you offer something worth paying for no matter your price you will find someone to pay it because the only thing that matters to people is what value you can give them.

3. Life Becomes Better.

Take this as an encouragement! From where you stand, you could go in a million different directions. That even if there are obstacles you can instead of complaining about your path blocked you can, discover the solution (something also touched on by Anthony Robbins in Awaken the Giant Within). If you merely complain and only think of your inhibited progress you will get nothing, but complaints and your progress be furthermore inhibited. However, if you instead look for a solution and work towards finding the solution you will get what you have opened yourself to attracting; you cannot get anything that you do not attract.

Dodson ends with a little bit of fortune cookie wisdom, writing: it is important to do all the difficult things first in the day, as the longer you avoid a challenge the worse it becomes. Correct your mistakes quickly and immediately or they will compound and overwhelm you.

Summary.

The book is filled with questionnaires that will help you discover where you stand in your journey, and what aspect of yourself you may need to correct. The book itself makes for a quick read, maybe 3-4 hours in length a cost I can highly recommend affording.

About Eric:

Eric Deegear is an entrepreneur, author, therapist, motivational speaker & business coach. He holds a psychology degree and several therapeutic licenses. After creating and applying successful principles in his personal life, he began to utilize his skills professionally to help those looking to change their lives for the better.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the incredible amounts of deep inner work that are required for life and work. Change happens one step at a time with Deegear Coaching.

Categories
Books Coaching

The 6 Simple Steps To Success

Summarized from “Awaken the Giant Within” by Anthony Robbins

1. Decide what you really want, and what is preventing you from having it.

There may be a few more rocks in the way than you planned.

The first step is deceptively simple: sit down, search within yourself and find out what your true, most inner desire is. Doing this soul-searching is imperative to help you find your path in life. A map is useless without two points of interest: where you currently are and where you want to be. By knowing where we are headed and where we stand, we then have something to set our compasses by and are able to begin imagining the journey that lies before us.

Discovering this ultimate mountain peak of dreams is vital in life, as the years slip away and you end up somewhere and as someone that you never wanted to be. The second part of this step is looking at what is preventing you from having your dreams. What roadblocks do you see in front of your goal?

2. You get what you focus on: good or bad.

You can do it!
Life will be as challenging as you think it is.

You must next choose to change your focus; it will greatly affect your journey. The roadblocks you found in step one, they aren’t a hindrance but an opportunity to grow, adapt, even to profit! The world is truly what you make of it. Life is as hard as you think it is with the challenges as daunting as you make them out to be.

3. Interrupt the pattern.

People have a tendency to sink into a pattern, sticking to the same routine day to day, then finding themselves unsatisfied with their life’s direction. What do you do that is keeping you from your dreams? Toxic relationships, bad habits or unsatisfying work routines are among the most common.

Whatever it is, the important part is to hit the brakes on the train and shortcut the system. Drive a different way to work. Change up your wardrobe. Move your bed to the other side of the room. Go on a vacation. You need to clear the slate for your mind and open the space for new plants to grow in your mind garden.

4. Create a new empowering alternative.

You need to change out your negative behaviors, just like a software engineer debugging code.

When you stop a negative behavior or addiction you need to replace it with something that offers the same benefits that the behavior provided. You had that behavior for a reason and the new behavior needs to provide the same or more benefits than the old behavior or you will slip back into your old behavior.

For example, smartphones and the addictive applications they hold offer a ready source of dopamine with their constant blings, pings, and boops of social approval. To remove the constant cell phone checking behavior, you need to find a beneficial source of dopamine which creates the same mental reward while also resulting in a subsequent step toward success. This new habit will be personal to you and your journey.

5. Condition the new pattern until it is consistent.

The fifth step is working the behavior into your pattern, repeating it until it continuously produces the desired result and becomes second nature.

The opinions differ on how long one must repeat the new pattern until it has been recorded as a habit in your mind. Researchers at University College London found that it took a little over two months for a habit on average to become conditioned.

6. Test the new pattern and check back with the other steps.

Make your new behavior a consistent part of your pattern.

The final challenge I give to you is to go over all of the previous steps like a checklist and then really dig deep in answering these questions:

  • Is the new behavior helping you towards your goal or overcoming a roadblock or challenge? Does it help you grow in a positive direction?
  • Has the old behavior been removed completely from your pattern?
  • Is this behavior a better alternative or should it be replaced?
  • Is this new behavior consistent and part of your pattern?

Closing thoughts

We are simple creatures; each of our decisions comes from what we associate with pain or pleasure. The secret to taking control of your own life is to combine appropriate neurons to the relevant stimuli, creating unconscious habits that benefit you in the long term instead of the short term.

Sometimes the pain comes from a memory, in which case, you can replay the memory for yourself as if you were watching a movie, then again as an old silent film complete with musical score. Try recalling the same memory over and over again until you can no longer remember this incident without the additional positive layers you have created. This causes you to disassociate pain with the memory and instead associate a little pleasure to it the next time it comes up in your mind.

Your path to sucesss is before you, I can only show you the door, you must walk through it.

Eric Deegear is an entrepreneur, author, therapist, motivational speaker & business coach. He holds a psychology degree and several therapeutic licenses. After creating and applying successful principles in his personal life, he began to utilize his skills professionally to help those looking to change their lives for the better.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the incredible amounts of deep inner work that are required for life and work. Change happens one step at a time with Deegear Coaching.