Every massage therapist has a story they only tell people they trust. This is two of them.

One starts with a Craigslist ad, a friend from massage school, and a parking lot safety plan held together with text messages and sheer determination. The other starts with a referral from someone Tabitha loved, a hundred dollar bill on the counter, and a name she typed into her own system without once reading what it said.

Both are funny. Both are real. And both taught her something she could not have learned any other way about what grooming actually looks like in a treatment room — and why your nervous system is one of the most important clinical tools you own.

In This Episode

• Why Craigslist seemed like a completely reasonable marketing strategy at the time
• What it means when a new client requests specific muscle groups by anatomical name before you've even said hello
• The text thread that unraveled an entire marketing campaign in real time
• What grooming actually looks like in a treatment room — and why it doesn't always look like what you think
• The hundred dollar bill, the jealous wife, the grandchildren at Purdue, and the Google search Tabitha wishes she could erase from her search history
• How to shut it down cleanly, professionally, and without losing your footing
• Why your nervous system knows before your brain does — and what to do when it goes off

Quote From This Episode

"I still believed people were inherently trustworthy. Not surprising if you look at my dating history. Turns out being raised by a narcissist does impact how you run a business. Who knew."

Resources Mentioned

• Soma Massage Clinic
• CEU Communication Course — coming soon

About Your Host

Tabitha MacDonald is a Licensed Massage Therapist, Intuitive Coach, and wellness entrepreneur with a brick and mortar clinic and an online program. She has been in the massage and wellness industry since 2002, full time since 2012. She helps massage therapists make more money doing what they love and stick around long enough to keep doing it.

Connect & Support the Show

If this episode landed for you — if you laughed, if you cringed, if you immediately thought of someone who needs to hear it — please take sixty seconds and leave a review. Reviews are how other massage therapists find this show and every single one matters.

Hit follow so you never miss an episode. And share this with the MT in your life who has their own version of this story. You know who they are.

Coming Soon

A communication course built specifically for licensed massage therapists — covering boundaries, hard conversations, ethical sales, and everything else they didn't teach you in school. More details coming very soon. You're going to want to be first in line.

Keywords massage therapist podcast, treatment room stories, massage business boundaries, client grooming massage, massage therapist safety, LMT continuing education, massage career advice, treatment room confidential, massage therapist burnout, conscious communication, massage business owner, Tales from the Table