Shedding light on the administrative part of my work
This was not the first longer post I thought I would publish. I have drafts of posts with certain topics from the field that I am very excited about, however as we do not live in a vacuum, world’s current state has an impact on the majority of us. I would not believe it but a war at the Eastern edge of Europe affects the operations of a freelancer massage therapist (and the clients) in the Netherlands practically in the form of inflation. This post is about money and increased prices, and gives reasoning to why I have increased my prices too, despite wanting want to keep the services at an affordable level. I am still always willing to give individual offers and discounts.
Updating massage treatment prices from May 2022
One of the most concrete impacts of the increasing instability and insecurity in Europe is that prices have increased. I am now deliberately focusing on this aspect only and not going into the effects of growing tensions and not feeling safe, or the emotional load and consequences of this all. I recognise my own privilege of having freedom of speech, expression, travel… I am still lucky to have food and a house with hot water and electricity, but there is a noticeable change in the stocks of shops, and in the costs of products and services.
From May 2022, my treatment prices will be increased by 5-8%. The changes will be updated on the website and my publicity accordingly. Any bookings prior to May or current individual deals in effect will not be affected. Before the decision about increases, I had already adjusted the discounts. It was not easy to advance from that, but finally I concluded to raise the base rates, after one of the massage web shops I use informed its clients about a price increase of 10% on its products. In my case, for example, the 1h Vitality Experience will go from 48€ to 52€. Without VAT, this is 42,98€. I understand that it looks quite generous for an hourly rate. Let us go beyond that.
In a nutshell, individual clients are my employers. Familiar with holiday pay, sickness coverage, pension, weekend compensation, and so forth…? This is all reflected in the treatment prices and comes directly from the clients. In order to streamline the pricing and thus reduce administration, the rate depends on the length of the treatment instead of its type (relaxation/sports massage) or the time/day of the appointment. The hourly rate goes down the longer the massage is. I have tried to calculate a reasonable average price with some buffer. I strive for a non-money driven world, and wish that one day money would be less of a concern or determining factor. Meanwhile, I honestly want to include as much solidarity as possible into my ways of working, but without forgetting that aiming to only cover the expenses does not provide much food on the table. You can see the rough turnover of this year a bit lower down in this post.
New prices (old prices in brackets):
1h Vitality 52€ (48€)
1,5h Indulgence 70€ (66€)
2h Bliss 88€ (84€)
As you can see, Vitality has increased the most.
In Amsterdam, one-hour massages at dedicated salons generally are 60-70€. We will see how this develops…
For each treatment, in general, additional work of 10-30 minutes is needed for administration and practicalities. I wish that really the only thing that this work takes is a good heart with sensitive and receptive hands!
First about practicalities:
- ensuring that towels, oils, and so forth, are ready to use and neatly available
- preparing the post-treatment drink
- referring to the (confidential!) client file to make a plan for the upcoming treatment
- strongly related to the previous point: adjusting the height of the massage table. This is way easier when I already know the client, but with new clients I am shooting in the dark. I would need to know if and what kind of stretches and mobilisations will potentially be done. Most of them ideally require a lower table height than the massage itself. Too high or low of a massage table affects my health. At the moment I do not have the possibility for a hydraulic treatment table, which would, of course, eliminate this dilemma.
- cleaning before and after, including doing laundry
Administration:
- creating invoices and receipts
- maintaining and updating client registry and client files
- additional communication with new clients prior to their first appointment
The above is in addition to all of the other operations of running a small business alone. Some examples of miscellaneous direct costs, most of which require also a noticeable amount of working time:
- website and booking calendar (~180€/year)
- online advertising, f.e. Marktplaats and Google (~912€/year)
- restocking oils, creams, towels, suitable working clothes, hygiene products, client gifts (~40€/month)
- liability insurance (87€/year)
- Masseurs Netwerk Nederland membership (25€/year)
- accountant consultancy
- laundry and cleaning; if the price of water, electricity, or cleaning products goes up, so does the price of each load of laundry
Miscellaneous indirect costs, mostly in terms of time:
- communication and advertising (face-to-face, personal, and online, for example, by blog posts). I receive plenty of inquiries via phone, messages, and emails, and a fraction of those actually lead to booking and realising an appointment. I have also faced harassment.
- in terms of restocking, a significant amount of time is spent on looking for new possibilities, combinations, and offers in the pursuit of combining quality, sustainability and ethics
- creating and calculating individual quotes upon request
- administration such as confirming received payments, book keeping, quarterly VAT declarations, keeping the calendar updated
- business development, although small, but f.e. optimising booking and administration, reduction of no-shows, consulting an accountant, training&learning, etc.
From the above, it might get clearer that if I divide all the work that I do outside massaging across all the appointments, the hourly rate is way less than it looks like. It is also important to mention that most of my clients pay a reduced rate due to their life situations or the offers I have established, and so the average hourly net income on paper is closer to 30€. Each cent contributes to my salary, though, and as everyone, I have expenses, most of which have increased which is exactly the reason behind this post. Although offers and discounts will be kept, they will be in accordance to the new base rates.
More about my bits-and-pieces income
Massage work is my main income at the moment, from TME and part-time employment. Some other bits and bobs come from art-related work. As I am a student and need some stability and certainty, I purposefully seeked part-time employment. If TME was to be set truly profitable, I would be doing much more aggressive advertising which would also require more investments. Having an assistant could be a feasible time-saving option but also a major expense. Even if it there was a balance between the income and expenses, anyone running a business knows that building a solid regular clientele is a slow process even without starting in a new country during a pandemic whilst doing a demanding Master’s degree and requires quite some initial capital. Quite interestingly, the less time I have, the more time it takes to get organised, but I am not compensating for lower direct working hours by increasing the prices. Below you can see the ratio of earnings and expenses.
From January 2022 until today (30th April, 2022), the net income (without VAT) of TME is 553,60€. Net business expenses alone are just over 730€.
The salary from my part-time employment has not gone up either, however some of the treatment prices have increased. I do not know for sure if some of the employer’s legal costs have gone up or it is more related to the hidden costs (materials, advertising…), but the clients feel it in their wallets. The employees do not – until going grocery shopping and noticing that they get less with the money they earn.
… and something about the impacts of corona
From mid-December 2021 until mid-January 2022, massages were banned due to corona regulations. I was also out of active work for two weeks because of corona soon after massages were allowed again. My luck was that I have an employer (unlike during the three-month ban on massages the year before), but without that, I would not have received corona compensation anyway because I only started at the end of 2020. In the Netherlands, only freelancers and businesses that had been operating by March 2020 were possibly eligible for support.
I hope that this lengthy post contained at least some interesting or useful information to you. I am curious to hear about your thoughts, and more than anything, I am looking forward to seeing and feeling you at Tuulia Massage Experience in Amsterdam Noord 💙
Edit 7th May, 2022: The net expenses of 2022 Jan-April were updated, I had forgotten Google Ads and booking calendar costs.