Finding the right fit: Cindie's second career as a Massage Therapist

A second career, a second chance.

Cindie has always been a planner. At any given time, she has a 3, 5 and 10-year plan mapped out. But she also knows how much power lies in one decision and how it can affect the success of those plans or change them entirely. So after 17 years as a corporate travel agent, she decided to chart a new course - to start a new career. And with that decision, Cindie, like many before her, found Massage Therapy as a second career. But before she found her path to success, excited at the possibility of a change, she decided to use a career assessment tool to see what her new career should be.

The career quiz indicated she should work in healthcare, and she was anything but thrilled about that. Because for her, “for all the pros of the healthcare system, there are equal amounts of cons”. After 6 months, she retook the assessment, and her second results leaned even more heavily towards healthcare. And it made sense, it was in her nature to care for other people, but she didn’t feel that the skills she had developed from her time as a travel agent were transferable to massage therapy. However, the idea of helping people to stay well, relieve stress and prevent injury resonated with her.

Taking that under consideration, she weighed the preventive measures of various healthcare streams and found Massage therapy to be the most preventive healthcare occupation. So she researched programs and got started.

Transitioning from employee to owner.

Cindie spent the first four years of her new career running someone else’s facility. She enjoyed being both a massage therapist and manager, but actually making changes was an uphill battle. Because she had no control over the business, implementing new ideas was a constant struggle, and the payoff wasn’t worth it. In addition, the work environment was sapping her energy, and there was nothing she could do to change it. And while the owners were good people, ultimately, she was not as busy as she liked, and after making a career change like that, later on in life - she wanted more.

At the urging of a friend, she decided to strike out on her own and start her massage practice. Cindie began researching and instantly knew a massage clinic in her neighborhood would take off because people could afford massage and they had the benefits to cover it. But how would she manage a busy practice all by herself?

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"I know what I don’t know, and I get help when I need it."

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Cindie contacted an accountant, a lawyer and a realtor to get the insight she needed. 16 weeks later, she was open for business. Essential Health Massage Therapy was a quick success, and today Cindie has 8 massage therapists working there with her.

Finding the right software fit for her business.

When it came to managing her clinic, Cindie started right away with ClinicSense. She had worked with MindBody in the past but found it to be too overwhelming. She felt because it was designed for everyone - including fitness studios and salons - it was too cumbersome and not a good fit for her massage therapy practice.

This is one of the reasons it was an easy decision to go with ClinicSense, which is designed with Massage Therapists in mind. And Cindie feels great about her decision because she never has to worry about solving technical issues on her own because she finds the ClinicSense customer support team to be very down-to-earth, friendly and quick to respond.

She appreciates that ClinicSense seems to get that massage therapists are generally not IT people. And more importantly, she has found a company that matches her values in prioritizing one’s natural ability to care and empathize in all areas of their business.

Even more, Cindie loves that ClinicSense is also easy for her clients to use, because after 30 years in customer service, she did not want to be chained to her phone to book appointments.

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"What I really like about ClinicSense is how user-friendly it is for the end-user."

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Since being a ClinicSense customer, Cindie’s business has grown fast, and her practice is now thriving. And ClinicSense is there to make sure she never has to worry about years of paperwork piling up and the challenge of keeping it all organized.

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