With the holiday season upon us and the new year just around the corner, I wanted to take a moment to wish you the happiest of holidays and a bright, sparkly new year grounded in health, well being, love and the successful pursuit of your dreams.

Thank you

It is with the deepest gratitude that I thank all of you for making this past year an amazing one for MassageBook and taking us significantly closer to realizing our vision. Our team remains steadfastly focused on building a success system specifically tailored for bodyworkers that allows practice owners and practitioners to build and grow successful businesses and careers. Having experienced it myself, I know how hard it can be to navigate one’s way to building a healthy practice. Our team is devoted make sure your success depends more on your skills as a practitioner than on your business and marketing skills. We’ll take care of simplifying business and sending you new clients. You focus on taking care of your clients.

What you may not know about MassageBook

MassageBook has no investors or outside influence distracting us from our goal to help you succeed. I started MassageBook because I want to give back to the profession that has given me so much. Here’s the background. My motives are simple and unclouded by money matters. As a result, we have no board of directors, no outside investors, no corporate red tape – nothing to distract us from focusing on our goal. I care deeply about making sure the best bodyworkers have a better chance of making a good living doing what they love and also supporting the healthy growth of our profession by providing the public a better way to find great bodywork talent near them.

Why is so much of MassageBook free?

Little did I know when deciding to make all the core scheduling and SOAP notes features free that it would make so many people skeptical about our motives. I can’t tell you how often we hear “It’s too good to be true – what’s the catch?” There’s no catch: It’s our gift to the massage and bodywork profession and those just starting out who need all the breaks they can get.

Sure, we hope that many of you will recognize the value of our premium features and upgrade at some point, but for the practice owner just getting their business off the ground, every little bit of cost savings helps. Our goal is to help you and our profession as a whole succeed and grow.

The MassageBook directory is for everyone.

The public has a problem. That problem is preventing more people from receiving massage and bodywork services. Just try doing a google search and finding a helpful list of MTs, reflexologists or other bodyworkers near you. How confident are you that they’re good at what they do? Are there junky results that aren’t what we would consider to be “professional”? Can you find someone who offers the modality you’re looking for? Can you view their schedule and book or request an appointment easily? Probably not.

The MassageBook directory solves these issues, lets the massage seeking public find exactly what they’re looking for quickly and easily, and then allows them to book or request an appointment.

We need your help.

Did you know that a MassageBook directory listing actually helps your existing website if you have one? Did you know that even if you don’t use MassageBook’s scheduling feature, you can still get free appointment requests from your listing?

While the MassageBook directory has grown by leaps and bounds this past year, we need help spreading the message that having a comprehensive list of bodywork professionals on MassageBook helps everyone and our profession as a whole by giving the public an easy to use and effective tool to find you and other talented bodyworkers. More massages being received is the result, which helps them feel better, helps your business grow, and helps our profession grow as well. Smiles all around!

So if you don’t have a listing active on MassageBook yet, please help everyone out by taking a moment to get it completed.

What’s coming in 2015

We have an exciting and aggressive plan to enhance some existing features and to roll out several new features that will continue to help attract new clients, get your existing ones coming back regularly, and manage all your business tasks. I’d offer more details, but don’t want to spill the beans quite yet. (Look for an exciting announcement in January.) We greatly appreciate your feedback and actively use your suggestions to continue improving MassageBook to be the absolute best and most helpful tool for bodyworkers, so keep your ideas coming!

In shared success and with best wishes for the New Year!

Mark Volkmann Founder and CEO of MassageBook