In 2023, the cost of a discounted, generic massage (Swedish or Deep tissue) in most places costs $80-$90 per hour. The cost is higher if it is a specialized service or in a more upscale location.

The actual cost and profit of massage is always a mystery and always seems expensive to folks who aren't practitioners.

We start this story with the fact that I am temporarily setting up an office in an unconventional space (I am converting part of a conference room) for a month as a "try it and see how it goes" arrangement. Beggars can't be choosers and as an independent, your choices are more limited than most realize.

What you probably don't know about renting commercial office space and massage therapy is that it isn't as simple as it looks. Here's how this works for independent therapists and why it is so hard to find them now.

Actual working hours in practice versus potential working hours on paper

On paper: if you have an office you can work from 8 am to 9 pm, 7 days of the week. If you do a massage every hour, that is potentially 10 massages per day with two hour breaks for lunch and dinner. Looks good right? Here's how it actually works.

(1) Start with built in "lost time":

For every massage you do, there is 30 minutes of additional time lost around the appointment so a 1 hour massage is actually 1.5 hours in office time and a 90 minute massage is actually 2 hrs in office time.

This is because there is a 15 minute gap of "lost time" at the beginning of an appointment that is for the 'set-up' of the office and table that must be done to prepare the room, your own self care before the appointment, interview-intake-assessment of client needs and allowing them enough time to get undressed and on the table without rushing them. This is a comfortable 10-15 minutes that is required, no matter what. 

After the appointment, there is another 15 minutes of "lost time" which will include waiting for the client to redress and exit (at their own speed - you can't rush people), cleaning the room after they leave, and then writing your session notes so that you have them for records and reference in the future. Assuming you type fast and don't write extensive notes, this can be usually done in 10 minutes or less. If you type slow, write it out by hand on paper or have alot to say, the 15 minutes may become closer to an additional 20 minutes. We are also omitting any time you need for self care after the appointment in this formula right now. 

Any therapist with experience doing back to back appointments can tell you how they must move faster than the cartoon mouse Speedy Gonzales between appointments and then start each new appointment looking relaxed and calm as if they had all the time in the world. - and that is to ONLY lose 30 minutes or less between appointments instead of adding more "lost time" for reasons explained above.

(2) High volume means short career

Inexperienced therapists and individuals who have NO experience doing the actual work only see what looks possible in terms of volume. Younger, eager and new therapists don't know enough about the profession to see what experienced therapists have experienced or seen in other therapists who have been forced to retire from their careers. For them, there's no reason they couldn't or shouldn't be able to do 5-10 massages every day if the work is available!

The global reality is that high volume work increases the early onset of repetitive strain injuries to the therapist, creates early "burn out", and reduces the sincerity with which you are able to deal with your clients during appointments almost immediately into a high volume schedule. It is simply impossible to offer authentically present and mindful work when your practice has become an assembly line of bodies passing through your schedule at high volume and you must move with the efficiency of a robot to keep up with it. 

If you need an example, think about the last time you saw a doctor in the USA. Less than 10 minutes with you, a fast exchange to get needed information (and no more) from you and then on to the next patient because they are typically scheduling 3-4 patients every hour. How personal do those visits feel for you? And this is a high volume, robotic efficiency approach is from someone who isn't putting their hands ON you for a full hour! They won't lose patients because of their lack of personal attention but a massage therapist will. We can't afford to be mentally absent during massage because people feel it and don't come back.

This is why massage therapy, traditionally, has never been an inexpensive service even though it seems far less demanding than labor work like pipe fitting or intellectual work like insurance actuary. The cost of the service must also factor in the limiting costs of operating which include working with less volume, self funding our disability and early retirement (since this job is physical and has a limit in either daily volume or future length of career) that we must pay and plan for ourselves, the education required to be able to perform this work with any integrity and/or stay competitive and the costs of licensing, insurance, etc. that are not requirements of other "service" jobs like office work, restaurant servers, labor work, etc. And this is only part of the formula for determing an hourly rate for service. We haven't even touched on the cost of real estate needed to have an office inside of since we aren't going to be doing massages in parking lots or warehouse storage spaces.

(3) Now, here is what an actual massage schedule looks like

In this business, we are at the mercy of our client's schedules and availability. This means that the reference to "peak" massage hours or office traffic really means consistent times that the majority of folks want to schedule their massage. Those days and times are pretty Universal everywhere and here it is.

Peak days of the week:

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

We rarely see folks scheduling their appointments on Monday, Friday or Sunday. The reason is that Monday is the begining of the productive work week so folks are busy and not thinking about giving giving themselves down time. Friday and Saturday nights are typically "date" nights. While there are some folks who will start their weekend early on a Friday and come in for massage, if they do, it is between lunch and dinner on Friday. Sunday is church or football day and usually the day that folks are preparing for the week ahead and then doing as little as possible when it comes to leaving the house. 

Peak hours of the day:

12 pm then 4pm to 7 pm. Except Friday or Saturday - then it is only between 12 pm and 3 pm.

The reason is simple. People want to stay relaxed after their massage so they try to schedule after their work is done and they don't have other things to do or places to go. Friday and Saturday day time will see appointments but mostly Saturday day and much less so on Friday because iti s a work week.

There are exceptions but when it comes to having a full schedule of appointments in your book to support yourself with, we aren't basing our business on exceptions.

This means that the actual working hours in a massage therapist schedule works out to 4 days a week and 3-4 hours per day. Or simply put, only 16+/- hours a week of predictable appointment hours desired by clients.

Now, deduct the "lost time" for each hour of massage that is unavoidable and you are left with about 12 actual hours of paid work per week. From those reliable 12 hours, we have to make enough money MINIMALLY to support ourselves, pay our overhead (rent, utilities, supplies, etc) and hopefully have enough left over to fund our emergency disability-retirement funds since we are self employed and if we lose our ability to do physical things, we lose our ability to work at all.

IF we only charge $50 an hour, this means you are only reliably (if you are solildly booked in advance), making $600 per week or $2,400 per month, gross income. That might seem reasonable (depending on the cost of living in your area) but this is based on being booked solid at a minimum of 12 hours per week and we haven't deducted the cost of commercial rent yet.

Now, let's take a look at the realities of commercial rent for independent therapists vs businesses that are exploiting massage therapists as an "independent contractor" labor force.

Continued...