Direct to Consumer
I’ve been having this stuggle for a few years now. After Intro Thai, Table Thai, Phase 1 & 2 I knew that I’d only given students a basic template to go through material I was teaching them. Since we’d accomplished that I decided to start the subscription.
We have a private facebook group for subscribers and I put out 600+ hours of video instruction on top of the 700 pages of sequence manuals and 9 dvds of template, sequential content.
Now what?
When I did a webinar years ago it nearly shut down because all the students wanted suspension. They literally ignored everything else I was teaching and wanted to skip steps. I was deflated. I continued adding to the vault getting materials ready for release and we do so on 1/3/2021 with a masterclass course in addition.
4 camera angles, filtered audio and anatomy on screen. I’ll work with those students until the end of April then go back to 6 hour CE classes on various topics.
I’ve continued sharing and teaching and have what to my knowledge is the most documented bodywork practice in history. We release new footage each week and as things grow I’ll work with students, supplement, organize and do a host of other ventures to help students along.
Still I’ve been horribly frustrated.
I’d have conversations about how students don’t get it. They’re not growing as fast or as far as I’d like etc. It’d been so persistent for so long I was getting personally annoyed that I’m banging my head against a wall trying to get things that frankly aren’t really reasonable.
I kept repeating, “I can turn on my cameras in 30 minutes and teach a global audience live.” Crickets….
I can share info with you for 75% less daily, I mean, Every Day. Crickets…
You see. I’ve fundamentally broken massage education. I know no one sees it yet but I’m tired of dragging massage therapists along who tell me, “but..we can’t learn online.”
That is to me the complete doldrums. I spent years setting up my current studio and learning software to do what I’m doing only to blaze a trail so far so fast that I’m told what I do isn’t massage and furthermore that the students can’t learn online anyway.
I believe that’s wrong. I will continue working with Lmt and deprogramming them slowly but there’s no need to argue. I knew deep in my gut that something had to give.
The Thai massage jam® ran for 8 solid years and only shut down due to covid. It’s odd because it never made $, in fact it cost me more to run than it made, but it’s the thing I’m oddly the most proud of. I started considering why and it’s just that I showed up, mats were put down and we all got to work.
The public showed up never asked about certification never asked about licensure and were eager to learn and work on each other. Lmt made up a small amount of our group but most were from the Austin acro community. In all the years that we worked it was well attended and just grew or the facility that we were in grew tired of us and kicked us out. We were misfits. We didn’t really belong anywhere.
So why did that make me happy?
It’s not $. I thought a lot about this and yeah I need money and it helps me do other things in the business but why did I get a buzz off of the jam? The answer at its core was that the attendees were excited.
I’m regularly getting murmurs of, “the Austin massage community hates you.” I always ponder that if it’s true and why then realize that the Austin massage community and money from classes I taught it what helped build the business. I mean sure some do but many just don’t like the constant video production and made an assumption based on something else someone said. In other words, low level fame.
With all this swirling around I kept feeling frustrated. Massage therapists on the whole aren’t really interested in what I teach. I’m told too often it’s not massage and frankly they’re not really interested in change. The change I represent is so fundamental that I can sorta understand my regulators, school owners and other educators or Lmt dislike me. It’s challenging to be challenged by someone saying something so contradictory to the foundations we were taught in massage school.
I used the internet to go direct to consumer. I bypassed rules regulations and geographical hurdles to sell most of what I do for $7 a month. There’s no credit for that though. It’s not even recognized as a legitimate way of teaching. It’s worked but not enough for my taste.
Head meet wall.
For 2 years I’d been pondering this then recently it hit me like a flash. I’ll continue serving the Lmt community and teaching. I’ve considered teaching other groups like pilates instructors, yoga teachers or personal trainers but those audiences will have additional questions. Can I do this legally? I don’t know get a lawyer is always my answer to a bunch of very unsatisfied students.
The answer after having gone direct to consumer is just to find new consumers.
I want to teach the public directly.
They’ll likely not argue that they can’t learn online. They’re not interested in licensure or regulation. They just want help. Couples massage on steroids coming up.
In addition I can work with individuals using my camera setup to help them work on themselves and build new audiences to reach out to.
This seems simple but after dragging Lmt for years I feel free again. I don’t want to be frustrated and I particularly don’t want to fight therapists. Working with new audiences feels fun and it’s a new challenge with different issues that I feel more inclined to deal with.
Most of what I’ve done going direct to consumer can now just be applied to a new audience. 🙂 I’m very happy to shift focus and work with new groups of students.
