Your entrepreneurial ideas don’t have to be fresh and original. You can take something that could turn into a career but put an entrepreneurial spin on it. Let’s say that you’re passionate about healing others, but you don’t want to become a doctor or a chiropractor, something that would take many years of education; instead, you would rather become a massage therapist.  

 

If you decide to become a massage therapist, then you could go about it in one of two ways: work as an employee in a side office or as an entrepreneur in your own office with a massage bed. 

 

The education and training will be the same. What’s different will be what you do with your newly acquired knowledge and skills. 

 

Training to Become A Massage Therapist 

 

After you go through bodywork training and learning about the structure and function of the body, then you will have to get a certificate and a license to practice. This process could take a few months or as long as two years. The duration depends on the type of school you attend. 

 

Option #1: Working As An Employee 

 

After you’re fully qualified to practice as a massage therapist, a number of career options open up for you.  

 

You could work for your local physician or chiropractor, helping them build their practice by also offering massage services. You would be given an office space, perhaps a back room in their larger office.  Since you will not need to do any marketing or promote the business in any way, all you’d have to do is take care of people who would like to augment the treatment they are getting from your employer with the healing benefits of massage therapy. You would enjoy plenty of job security and get a small salary for your services or a percentage of the business. You might also have a regular schedule and a benefits package, too. 

 

Another option is that you could work in a gym or a spa. You would get a different set of clients, people with strained muscles rather than people seeking pain relief from a serious illness like fibromyalgia. Your benefits might also be a little more interesting and might also include free use of gym equipment or discounted fees for the beauty treatments at the spa.  

 

And a third possibility is that you could become a massage therapist on a cruise ship or work at a world-class holiday resort. Now, you’ll be able to enjoy the pleasure of traveling around the world or living in an exotic locale.  

 

Option #2: Working As An Entrepreneur 

 

If you decide to deploy your massage therapy skills as an entrepreneur, you’ll open up completely different possibilities.  

 

Now, instead of things starting out easy and then becoming more predictable, things will be difficult in the beginning, but then become increasingly easier and interesting as your business grows. 

 

The first thing you would need to do is to create an excellent business plan so that you can get a business loan from a bank. Once you have obtained the loan, you would establish a legal entity, rent a commercial space, and buy the equipment you need to provide massages. 

 

Since you will earn two to three times more than what you would earn working for someone, you will now be able to put money aside for the future. Once you have saved up enough capital, then you could rent a bigger space and hire people to work for you.  

 

After some time, you will have a model of how to run a successful clinic. You can then scale this up by opening another clinic based on the same business principles that made your first clinic work. You can stop at two clinics or build more or start a franchised massage business. 

 

A World of Difference

 

In conclusion, you could take two completely different routes with the same skillsets. One would be difficult to start but end up as highly profitable, the other would be easy to start but only provide you with a modest income. By taking the entrepreneurial route, you could earn six, even seven figures a year. By comparison, working for someone else, you would probably just stay at five figures until you retire.