Shawn White’s State Of The Massage Industry

I sit down with Shelly and Shawn White who, amongst many things, is a cancer conqueror, massage therapist, entrepreneur and spa founder/owner based in the greater St Louis, Missouri area. We mostly discuss the ups and downs of the massage and spa industry and Shawn’s methodology for transforming it. Amongst other topics we also touch on entrepreneurship, elevation and service to others.

Transcript

This is Josh DeBolt from IntegratingPresence.

Com and today I'm with Shelly and Sean White here.

And Sean is going to,

And I,

Sean and I are going to talk about the state of the massage industry and spa industry.

I really am vastly ignorant when it comes to spas.

When I was younger,

I saw and heard about these things growing up in a small rural town and I thought,

Well that's for women and rich people and that's not for me and that's indulgent and I don't have any relations to that.

But then as time went on and let's just say diagnosis later and I was looking into things like this and I visited and looked at some of these and it was obviously not what I thought and like anything else there's pros and cons.

And so I met Sean in a coffee shop and we just started chatting about this and that and it turns out he is an owner operator of a spa.

And so I thought it would be very interesting with the things on my site,

Especially the long list of healing modalities I have to just jump right in here and see what this is all about and what's going well with it and what's not.

Sean,

Why don't you introduce yourself with a brief bio and then say how you got into this.

Alright,

So my name is Sean White as this amazing gentleman just shared with you.

So I originally,

I've always had an interest in massage.

Whenever I was a young man my mother actually,

We would trade back and forth.

I would massage her back or her feet and she would do the same for me.

And when I was a young man she went to school to be a massage therapist and that was in the 90s so that's pre-regulation.

But she never got to actually practice because she had some serious health issues and inevitably she couldn't do it.

But I ended up losing track that I wanted to do it and you get lost whenever you're a young man going into your 20s,

What do you do with your life?

And I finally started settling in on that I wanted to do it again and then my siblings were like,

Don't do that,

That's for girls.

And I'm like,

Okay,

I guess I can't do that then.

But some time went by and I was like,

I ended up getting into like art realizing that I had a natural aptitude for it.

And so I ended up going to the Art Institute and I don't know if you've ever heard of that place.

I mean it's the biggest scam in the universe and we're not talking about the Kansas City Art Institute which is a reputable organization,

A reputable school.

But this is the career mill,

Art Institute.

And I went there for a quarter and I realized it was a huge scam and so I opted out of that.

But my mind was already open,

I was ready,

I needed to learn something and I was ready to engage the system as it were.

Because for the entirety of my existence I have been disappointed with the education system.

I had taken classes at like community college or something but I always audited it.

That way I wouldn't have to be beholden to the opinions of the professor.

I would learn what I wanted to learn and I could disagree without suffering the consequence of a bad grade.

So that's what I always did in my 20s.

And so whenever I finally chose to be a massage therapist I looked at the different schools and I said,

I was like,

All right,

What do I want?

Well there was one school that I looked at and it's more aligned with the spiritual side and I didn't want that.

And the reason I didn't want that was because I already had spirituality and I felt that I didn't need to be taught it.

So I wanted to go to a place that would focus more on the anatomy and physiology side and the side that focused more specifically on the mechanical benefits of massage.

And so I selected my school.

Now for just for the sake of respect and being just a good dude I won't say their name.

And the reason is because in totality I would give the school that I want to a D- if I'm being nice.

So if we don't have anything nice to say I would just prefer not to drag their name out into the street and make their law even worse.

So I went to that school and I was quite hopeful.

And I remember even the first day that I went there I was,

You know,

I drove there in my,

I believe at that time I had,

What was I driving?

I think I was driving a Lincoln Town car that day.

But like the suspension was all messed up.

So whenever I would drive down the road you'd go on like going,

Rans over everything.

And the AC unit was all messed up.

So it would kick out this maple syrup smelling air and it would cake the inside of the windshield.

And it wasn't cold.

It was always warm and sometimes it wouldn't turn off.

So I would just pretty much keep it off all the time.

And so I pulled into the lot of this school and I got out and I walked up and I saw the administration smoking outside of the front door.

And I said,

Hello,

How are you?

And they just like stared at me like I was not a human being at all.

And I was like,

Okay,

Well maybe they didn't hear me,

But okay.

So I go inside.

And inside of this place it looks like a little,

You know,

Like a bush and tree garden.

And so it's really pretty on the Paseo.

It was probably really pretty about 20 or 30 years ago.

But since that time they let it fall to its own devices.

You know,

Dust is over every rock and you can see all the grime between every stone.

And everything has this like boring feel to it.

Like whoever was in charge of it was eternally bored and they didn't want to invest a dime of energy or money to upkeep it.

And as we all know when that happens,

You know,

The world begins to fall apart when you refuse to maintain it.

And I was there a little bit early before school.

So I wanted to check out the place.

And I've already been here before.

You know,

You have like your orientation to be a massage therapist.

But I hadn't really poked around.

So I walked around the Paseo and all the little trees and their stone rock gardens.

And I smelled like some butter,

Some buttery popcorn smell.

And then I heard like popping noise.

And I peeked my head in and there was like a popcorn maker and it was popping popcorn in the administration's office.

And it paid any interest.

I just noted it.

And then I'm like,

Well,

I'll use the restroom before I go to school.

So I go into the men's restroom and it smells not so great in there.

But that's a bathroom.

It's the expectation.

You know,

When I walk up to the urinal and suddenly,

You know,

You hear like,

You know,

You're stepping in mystery puddles of whatever.

And I'm like,

What is with this?

And so I do my stuff.

I turn back around.

I try to wash my hands.

And it's only cold water,

No hot water in the place.

And I was like,

This doesn't,

This is,

You know.

And then I try to wash my hands and there's no soap.

And I'm like,

This is,

You know,

Again,

Once again,

There's like red flag after red flag.

And then there's no paper towels in order to dry my hands.

And so,

You know,

You just kind of air dry your hand and hope for the best.

And then I walk into the classroom and I use,

Leave the restroom,

Walk into the classroom.

That's whenever I meet this other gentleman who's starting on his first day.

And we chatted up and I learned that he's a carpenter and he's trying to get into the massage industry because,

You know,

His job is pretty brutal and he wants to be a part of something that's more meaningful than what his job is now.

And so we sit and we chat and then like another student comes and we chat a little bit more.

And we keep talking and eventually,

You know,

It's time for class to start.

But there's no instructor.

And a little bit more time goes by and he finally shows up.

He looks disheveled.

The dude looks like he just got out of bed and ran into work.

And you know,

He walks up and introduces himself.

Now in the context of this,

I'll call him Mr.

Lowndes instead of his real name.

And from the very beginning,

Mr.

Lowndes set a terrible example for what massage is supposed to be.

And in this example,

This is a man who day one,

Eight o'clock showed to the class that he was unwilling to answer questions or engage with the students.

So he assumed that everyone knew everything that they needed to know and that they had read the chapter on the first day.

And so in the very beginning of the course,

We were in the nervous system.

And there was a student there who didn't know what a cell was.

And so when we started talking about what neurons are,

She didn't know what that meant.

So she raises her hand and she says,

What's a neuron?

And he's like,

It's a cell.

And then he continues to talk.

And she's like,

I don't know what that is.

And she raises her hand again.

She's like,

So what is a neuron?

He's like,

Did you read the book?

And he's like,

She's like,

No.

Well,

You were supposed to read the book.

She's like,

What's my first day?

How was I supposed to read the book?

He's like,

Well,

Wait until the end and I'll explain it to you.

She's like,

And so it goes a little further and we're getting more complicated.

And she's like,

Raises her hand.

She's like,

I'm lost.

Can you help me understand?

And so he turned back around and I go,

Well,

You earlier,

You said you were a baker,

Right?

And she's like,

Yeah,

I'm a baker.

Well,

Every,

As I'm talking,

Suddenly he goes,

Sean,

He goes,

What's your name?

I go,

Sean.

And he goes,

Well,

Sean,

I'm the teacher here.

I answer the questions.

And so I'm like,

Okay.

And then she asks a question again.

He's like,

Well,

Talk to me after class.

And so,

You know,

Then we go into interacting.

She never got her answer,

Her question answered.

He would always,

Anytime that we would ask questions,

He'd say,

Are you reading your book?

And then we'd say,

Yes,

We read the book.

And he's like,

Well,

If you read your book,

You wouldn't have to ask questions.

And then he'd break it down into this crazy data mining thing where he's reteaching us how to study.

And now another key detail about like my first day of massage school was,

You know,

This teacher,

Mr.

Lowndes,

Was like,

We're getting ready to go do hands-on for the first time.

And he's like,

He looks over at the male student who I was talking to,

And he's a pretty muscular guy.

And he goes,

You,

You would be a perfect candidate to be here to see how massage is done.

And so he's like,

All right,

So step around the curtain,

You know,

Behind the privacy curtain and undress it onto the table.

And so he gets onto the table and he pulls,

You know,

Once he's on the table and secure underneath the sheets and stuff,

You know,

Mr.

Lowndes is like,

Oh,

Look at how sexy these muscles are.

Oh,

These are so.

And you could,

Like he's sweating,

You could see little droplets of sweat on his face.

And,

You know,

He's just breathing really low.

And I'm like,

This is creepy.

And like that should not be,

That should not be,

You know,

I'm thinking to myself,

There's something serious or lay wrong here.

This is not,

Like,

I'm not a massage therapist and I know the nuances of like how this person shouldn't be teaching what they should be doing.

And so this guy,

It was my introduction to massage school was brutal every single day.

The guy was creepy every single day.

Sometimes you would have students like one of a one story,

Like,

And maybe I'm going in too much depth here.

Do you know what I mean?

Well,

I think this illustrates kind of what the cons are,

The industry and it all starts with education,

Right?

So I think it's foundational.

So again,

Go ahead.

So the,

Like another example of how he would treat the,

Treat the students.

There was a girl one day,

She was like,

I feel sick.

I don't want to do hands on massage.

He's like,

Well,

Are you pregnant?

And she's like,

What?

Are you pregnant?

She's like,

I just feel like I'm sick.

Because if you're pregnant,

You have to tell me.

And she's like,

She didn't want to answer.

And he's like,

Now you guys know that if you get pregnant,

You have to tell me,

Right?

You know,

You have to tell me,

Right?

And like,

I'm thinking to myself,

What is it in your business?

And then she ended up crying and leaving,

You know,

Leaving the room because he wouldn't stop pressing,

Wouldn't stop pressing.

And so there was like,

He would never answer questions.

He would like tell us that our work was,

You know,

Massage school was super easy.

And it didn't compare to his training because he's going to school to be a chiropractor.

And that,

You know,

We have it,

We have it lucky.

And then he would argue with us about how easy we had it and never answer a question.

And it's,

You know,

That's how it began until eventually we had this point where I said to him,

As I look,

Man,

The way that you're teaching class isn't working for me.

I hate coming into class.

I know the other students don't like it,

But I can't speak for them.

This is what is hurting me.

Can you stop doing this?

This is some of the things that you could do.

And you know,

I'm doing this in private because I don't want to embarrass the guy.

I don't want to disrespect him.

And so he ignores me and then it just keeps going.

So eventually I write this email and I send it to him and I say,

Break it down piece by piece of everything that he's doing.

And like the guy did all sorts.

I would,

You know,

I've written it into my book about like what is,

But put the email right in there.

You know,

So the next day I come into class and he printed off my email and he says,

Read this out loud to the class.

I said,

Are you sure you want me to do this?

He's like,

Read it out loud to the class.

So I do.

And you know,

The students are losing their mind because they're now having to relive every single horrific thing that he's done to them.

And you know,

We get to this one point where I talk about how he before class one day was talking about how the,

You know,

The girls don't come into,

Like one of the times he had said is that you know,

Or Sims like sitting in class and he says,

You know why the girls don't come into class sometimes,

Right?

I go,

I ignore him.

And he's like,

Do you know why?

He's like,

Do you think they're going to be here today,

Sean?

And I'm like,

I don't know.

It's not in my business.

And he's like,

What is your business?

Because when they don't come into school,

It hurts you.

I'm like,

I don't see how it hurts me.

And he's like,

Well,

You know why they don't come into school?

I'm like,

I don't care.

And he's like,

It's because they're on their period.

Girls don't like to come into class when they're on their period.

And I look up and I'm like,

How do you know that?

And who would tell you of all people?

And I'm like,

This,

You know,

This kind of go back to my work.

Another time,

Like we had,

You know,

Of course they weren't happy about that.

And then we have this other point where he's like before class,

He was trying to explain his definition of different racial slurs before class.

And you know,

The students did not like that.

He somehow felt that he was,

He's like,

Well,

It's not like a,

He went into this,

I'm not going to go into it.

But it was just insane.

You know,

Eventually got to this point where I'm going through these things and he's trying to get the students to go against me and trying to blame me for all the hardships in the classroom.

He's like,

Sean's trying to get you to pit you guys against me.

Sean's the problem in the room.

Sean's the one who creates all these issues.

Do you want to hate anyone?

Hate Sean.

And he reaches this point where he threatens me.

And he says,

He's like,

I'm going to make sure that you never get your massage license.

And you know,

In a wrap out that time,

Everyone stormed out of the room.

Now,

I could have probably let it go.

I could have let it go with just like it being all crazy and a heated emotional response.

But once he threatened me,

He turned on my,

You know,

He flipped the switch that this is go time.

And so I compiled all the stuff that I had been writing because I journaled every single day.

And all the crazy stuff that happened in the classroom,

I wrote it down.

And then I went to the administration and I presented it to them and made my case.

And the next day we come into the school and the administration interrogates us,

You know,

Individually.

They spent about like 20 minutes with all the other students.

But I was in the room for like probably an hour and 20 minutes,

You know,

Talking to three different people,

Asking the same question over and over because they're trying to get me to trip up,

But I don't.

And at the end they say,

Well,

Mr.

Y,

What do you see happening with Mr.

Lowndes?

I say,

What do you mean happening?

What kind of disciplinary action are you looking for?

They go disciplinary action?

You know,

What do you want to see happen from this?

I go,

Well,

Nothing short of his resignation of termination.

And I go,

Okay.

And then three days later,

He resigned.

So you would expect,

And that was a win,

That was a big win,

And you would expect things to turn around.

That school would have some teachers who actually cared,

But they didn't.

One teacher that they replaced,

I call him like the sleepy teacher,

And he would come into class and he would sleep.

He would sleep during class.

And he wouldn't do,

He wouldn't teach any body mechanics,

He wouldn't teach any hands-on stuff.

It was just all academic.

And in the course of the class,

It was like,

He would ask some crazy questions sometimes.

And he was just not a good mentor.

He wasn't a good teacher.

He was probably one of the laziest teachers I've ever had.

There was another teacher who was an A&P teacher,

And he was pretty good.

He was just never there.

He was like there once a week.

So when you have a five-day-a-week class,

And four of those days is a teacher who is not invested and doesn't care,

Isn't spending any quality time teaching massage therapists how to do massage,

I mean,

That's a pretty big deal.

And another big problem of my school was it was clear,

You're guaranteed to graduate.

You're guaranteed to make it through the program.

And cheating was rampant.

And I reached this point where,

You know,

What do you do?

I mean,

I already went to war with this other dude,

And it led to this.

And during this time,

There's another detail that's going on is I don't know it,

But I'm dying of cancer.

And I feel like I'm having tremendous amounts of pain.

And it's manifested as anxiety.

So I think I'm just having depressed or I have anxiety or something during that time.

And I'm like,

You know,

I mean,

This is crazy level of pain that I'm feeling every day.

I'm trying to go to school,

And I'm trying to navigate like,

What am I supposed to do?

And I'm working at the same time.

And I reach this point where I'm having to reflect on what do I do?

Well,

Give you an idea of like what I mean by cheating is rampant is,

Let's say that you take a test,

And you fail that test,

They'll let you retake the test,

But the next time you take it,

It will be open book.

And when you fail it again,

They'll put the answer key at the end of your desk.

So yeah,

So how do you fail?

How do you fail in this scenario?

And what am I to do?

How do I fight back against that?

I'm not the administration.

It's not my job to keep trying to fix things in the school that I am paying for to go to.

And I end up just being like,

Look,

I can't do anything about them.

Ultimately,

I don't care about my grade.

I went to school to be the best.

I went to school to achieve my dreams and discover my purpose.

And ultimately,

Whenever I graduate,

It was to help people live the highest quality life they could.

So I just chose to compete against me because that was the only way it was going to be fair.

And I know life's not fair.

But in the context of a learning environment,

There should be value to the coursework that you do.

When you know that someone has failed the same test three times,

But their GPA is higher than you,

If you get pulled into that,

Your heart will break and you'll just wash out.

And I didn't want that.

Yeah.

And this paints a very vivid picture of,

I guess,

The most foundational starting point for all this would be schooling,

Right?

Absolutely.

To get a license,

Right?

So that's where it all starts and becoming disillusioned with this and see what's really going on and how it is.

And it just seems like it's almost like a mill to churn out license for mainly corporations,

Right?

Would you say most of the massage therapists are going into corporate massage?

Not really.

Not really.

I can break the numbers down a little bit.

Sure.

And before we go into that,

Just do you guys get to know the depth of Sean's cancer journey he goes into details on podcasts,

On other podcasts that you can look up because it is truly inspiring and stunning story.

And it's not for the weak of heart either or sometimes a weak stomach either.

Some of the things that I've heard Sean mentioned about that.

So okay then back to,

Yeah,

Just the way the industry works as far as,

And then once after school,

Once the school churns out a license,

Right?

And then I guess we'll eventually go down the road into what are some suggestions for improvements in the schooling system.

And then people I think,

Yeah,

That'll be good enough to get.

So I'll do a final abridge,

A bridge up the last part of that one so you can get the idea of how it ends instead of being this long crazy story.

You know,

I end up going to clinicals.

It doesn't get better.

You end up being a far worse teacher.

I start coughing up blood.

Or we can cover a little bit on another one if it could make it that way.

But I ended up coughing up blood.

The teacher won't let me sit to do my massages.

I'm running out of breath.

The whole clinical parts of the school thing is in all complete disarray.

They're not teaching draping.

They're not teaching body mechanics.

There's no massage therapists or the students are encouraged to do book learning instead of doing hands-on trades in school.

So at that very beginning,

The very beginning of my school,

I graduated with lower skills of massage therapists than I entered because what it did is it broke down my intuitive ability and replaced it with nothing.

And so whenever I entered the workforce,

I had to retrain myself.

I taught myself all my own body mechanics.

I taught myself all my own massage skills.

And most of the stuff that I was taught was wrong.

That's a phase that you'll enter as a massage therapist when you leave the industry.

There's a point when you see the stuff that's real and you see the stuff that they taught you.

And once you reach that threshold,

You go through an identity crisis and it's very hard.

And a lot of people never navigate out of it because your whole fabric of being is snapped.

And you're like,

Whoa,

So all the stuff that I was taught was wrong?

This is not applicable?

I don't have the skills to do this?

So now we go to the industry.

I don't have all the statistics in front of me,

But I do have them.

There is a general,

Okay,

This is one statistic I can say.

Okay,

So there's this licensing exam that's required in order to be a massage therapist.

The pass rate on that,

It's overall,

All of the total number of times that people take it is 67%.

To me,

That's terrible.

And you need this to practice massage legally.

Now that's one problem.

But in the state of Missouri,

The really big problem is our provisional license.

A provisional license will allow you to practice for up to one year after graduating from massage school without having to pass that minimum state licensing exam.

Now why is that a problem?

The problem is you've not shown that you're actually competent enough to perform a massage without that test.

That's what the test is for.

So you have these terrible schools not teaching their massage therapists enough to succeed,

And then they fail.

Okay,

Because that means just straight out of school,

This would be an absolute concrete thing.

You have 33% of everyone who is in your class will not become a massage therapist one year after graduating.

Now that number is higher.

It's closer to 50% because you have an additional percentage that's going to hurt themselves or burn out because of the spiritual component of massage.

That inner heart thing is essential.

And if you don't know how to navigate it,

You will be crushed.

Now the schools,

I'm in the firm belief that schools want you to fail.

And the reason they want you to fail,

Or traditionally they've wanted you to fail,

Is because the companies need massage therapists.

And this is across the board right now.

Everyone needs massage therapists.

So as the demand for massage increases,

Because it has continually increased over the last 30 years,

As it continues to increase,

There's not enough massage therapists who's being produced.

And then there's more people who watch out.

So here's a cool statistic for you.

Okay,

So in 2019,

There was roughly 6,

500 massage therapists in the state of Missouri.

In 2020,

At the start of 2020,

There was roughly 4,

500 massage therapists.

And at the start of 2021,

The last time that I checked,

It was roughly like another drop by another 30%.

Okay,

So in 2020,

The number of graduates nationwide was roughly 20,

000 massage therapists.

So if you looked at amongst 50 states,

If your industry is hemorrhaging over 1,

000 people a year and you're only getting 500,

I mean,

You're in dire straits at that point.

Now another thing you got to look at too is that the massage schools are dying.

And they're like,

I believe,

I can't remember,

I think in 2007,

I think that it was 1,

600 schools.

I could be wrong,

It might have been 26.

But it doesn't matter,

Even at 1,

600.

Now there's roughly,

I think,

960 schools that are in the United States.

The highest point of graduate,

Like the most number of graduates that graduated into the massage industry was in 2004.

And I believe that was roughly 70,

000 massage therapists students had entered.

And it's been in a steady decline ever since.

And you would say,

Well,

What's the problem?

Okay,

Well,

The problem is that the schools are terrible.

Now there are a few schools that are really good.

There's one school,

I'm not going to say their name because I don't say any school's name,

But there is one school in St.

Louis that is really good.

The rest of them are really bad.

And when you only have one school that's generating decent or great massage therapists,

That's not a good scenario.

So it is in the schools.

The students are not prepared for how to professionally navigate their career.

They're not taught how to last more than a year.

They over place over emphasis on the MBLEX,

Which is that state licensing exam,

Which is pretty worthless.

Truly,

It does not reflect anything that you need to know to practice as a massage therapist.

I know if you're a massage therapist or if you're on the board or you're on one of the other professional associations,

You'll probably hate me for saying that.

But it's true.

It doesn't reflect what a massage therapist needs.

A 100 question exam can't do that,

Especially one that doesn't have history on it.

Oh my God,

You don't have history built into the culture,

Like into your profession.

If you don't know what's happened in the last 20 years,

Let alone the last 200 years,

You have no influence in controlling what's going to happen next.

And you say,

What's going to happen next,

Sean?

Well,

What's going to happen,

In my opinion,

You can say wrong.

And I hope that I'm wrong.

I pray that I'm wrong.

But the industry is going to die.

It's going to die brutally.

And a lot of hearts are going to be broken in the process.

And it's all because the root of our industry is that the schools are a cancer.

Too many people look at the mega chains and blame them.

They're just a necrotic waste to what the cancer is.

They're a byproduct of the ineffectiveness of the school system.

Because if those students were taught culture,

If they were taught how to navigate their own life,

How to take charge,

And how to be good at employees,

They understood and had at least a modicum of business acumen.

They could survive.

But instead,

You have these students who graduate and instantly want to have their own business.

And I tell you what,

As an entrepreneur,

That is the worst choice you can make.

If you want to start your own,

Wait.

Get yourself some actual education.

Find a mentor.

Create a business plan.

And really,

You should do it at least seven times.

You should spend at least 12 months brainstorming your business plan,

At least.

And you need to put it before people who will tear you to pieces.

And whenever you start your own business,

You will face unlimited unknown unknowns.

And they will tear you to pieces.

Another big thing that I say is this.

Do you like yourself?

This is about the entrepreneurship.

Do you like yourself?

And you'll probably say,

Well,

You know,

There's things about me I could change.

OK,

So yeah,

You like yourself.

Don't be an entrepreneur.

Like,

Why?

OK.

The reason is,

When you run a business,

Either you bend or your business breaks.

So one year in,

You might not be unethical.

You might not be immoral.

But you won't be the same person anymore.

And if you're not OK with the foundational building blocks of your soul becoming something else,

Then you don't need to do it.

And as massage therapists,

We're here to be servants.

You will be the ultimate servant whenever you're the entrepreneur.

And it's going to steal you away from all those golden,

Gooey,

Beautiful parts of your soul where you get that instant gratification of helping someone through their hard times.

Because the more that you get sucked into that business angle,

The more difficult it is to transition from the cerebral into that intuitive state that you need in order to provide the best massage experience of your client's life every time.

And if your goal is anything less than that,

You need to get out of the industry.

Because we live as massage therapists to help you feel at your best,

To serve as your guide so that you can help yourself feel amazing.

And if I'm giving you anything less than 100% every second of your session,

Then I'm not there for the right reason.

Sean,

You couldn't have said it better.

Wow,

There's so many things going on,

So many areas for improvement with the whole industry.

And yeah,

I couldn't agree more with the entrepreneur advice.

Some of the things I've heard is like if a lot of people say it's really challenging to get into business with something you actually love doing,

That can be even more challenging.

Because then they say if you have to do it all day long,

Well then you kind of lose interest in it.

But then again,

Then there's other people who they know their path immediately.

That's all they live and breathe and they're dedicated for it.

So you mentioned some of the solutions to this.

What would be some of your recommendations starting at the schooling?

Like scrapping the whole thing?

Should we do more online courses?

Should the teachers be screened better?

And then it seems like the whole industry isn't really,

I'm not fond of this word sustainable,

But it just doesn't,

The picture you painted with the statistics,

It doesn't seem sustainable the way it's going now.

And I would say it's like that for a reason,

Right?

I would say so.

So okay,

This is the first one I'll say.

I don't think there should be 100,

000 massage therapists in the United States.

I don't think there should be 80,

000.

I don't think that there's 50,

000.

I think the number across the United States is probably around the 35 to 40,

000.

It was never meant to be 300,

000 massage therapists.

I'm going to tell you what,

Like the skill that it requires to be a massage therapist is a diamond in the rough.

And there's so much that goes into it.

It's more than just poking and prodding and squeezes.

There's so much more that goes into every second of the service.

And the reality is,

As a massage industry has been,

It's all fattened up with people who shouldn't have been in it in the first place.

If you have a dark soul,

If you genuinely are not supercharged at the end of helping someone,

You're in the wrong business.

And at the end,

If you feel,

And if you've never,

Say like you perform a massage and you're uncertain whether or not you did what the client needed,

Then you probably are not in the right place because you need both of those things.

You need to feel supercharged and in doubt because humility is the core,

Truly is a core virtue of being a massage therapist.

If you lack it,

You can't do it.

You're a pretender,

You're a tourist,

And you're never going to provide this out of this world transformative massage experience.

And that is the goal.

In my opinion,

It should be the goal every time to provide someone with the best massage experience of their life every time.

So humility is like the cornerstone of that.

And you know,

Well,

How do I know if I'm being humble?

Okay,

Well,

You know you're being,

Pridefulness is the opposite of humility.

Now it's okay to take pride in your work,

But whenever it slips into arrogance,

When you begin to,

When you start taking on this God complex,

Which a lot of therapists do,

I've had people,

I have a guy come in and interview once and he said he was the Jesus of massage and I instantly disqualified him.

Because once you believe that you're on the top of the mountain,

This is true of wisdom when you think you're the wisest,

When you think you're the best.

Once you're at the best,

You're sliding down the other side.

And wisdom knows that,

With wisdom,

You know that everyone is probably wiser than you are.

You may know stuff,

But as soon as you start putting,

Elevating yourself above others,

You have failed.

I mean,

That's why like wearing a hat or a kippah is one of the great ways to remind yourself that there is something greater than you.

You wear these things whenever you're learning because it's easy to believe that suddenly you are the master of something or everything and you lose sight that there is someone or something or some great force above all of us always.

And that acknowledging that helps humble you.

Now humility,

And I've written extensively about humility and how to exercise is in order to achieve it far too much for this podcast.

But the second virtue that you need is empathy.

Humility is more important than empathy.

And the reason it is,

And I know that it's strange to just say in that same context,

You can,

The reason why humility is more important is because with empathy,

Sometimes we can mistake people and think they have empathy when they don't because it's not quite empathy if you have personally just experienced a horror and you're just identifying with it.

That can be simulated.

And that's why humility is more important because you can,

Even if you have no empathy whatsoever and you're a humble dude,

People will love you.

They'll want to be around you because you elevate others in a fair way.

Now,

Humility is not down talking yourself.

Humility is not talking about yourself in a poor way or making fun of yourself all the time,

But you have a realistic understanding of your place in the world.

All right.

So with that,

You don't have to be able to empathize with anything,

Anyone,

If you understand your place in the world and people will respect you,

The words you have to say,

Because they know that you'll never hurt them on purpose.

And the likelihood of you doing it by accident is relatively low because you know you're not better than they are.

Well,

Humility is a lot more obvious to people anyway,

Right?

It is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

You know,

Empathy is really important though.

Humility is really important for massage therapists because we have to be able to imagine what this feels like as I touch you.

So there's times whenever like a client would be like,

I hurt here,

It's doing this.

And so I'll be like,

Okay,

So say their leg is hurting.

I want to,

When I'm doing my massage,

I may turn my leg to the side,

Explore it,

You know,

And be like,

Okay,

It's that muscle.

This is probably what it feels like.

This is what we need to do.

All right,

How's this feel?

Does that feel like it's hitting the right spot?

I'm imagining what it feels like and adjusting what I'm doing based upon what they're saying.

And empathy is kind of like the,

Is an amazing tool because it helps you,

Helps you fight against like false intuition.

A lot of people,

Like there's this,

In a massage,

It's really important that you switch on and off your clinical reasoning and your intuition.

You have to do it throughout the entire massage.

If you operate purely on intuition,

You will easily assume a God complex.

You know better than they do.

I'm going to tell you a reality here.

Your client,

They've lived in their body their entire life.

They know it better than you do.

You should just be their tool to feel terrific.

And if you're anything more than that,

Then you're not their tool to feel terrific.

You're gaining some kind of power from it.

And it's an arrogant power.

And then it slides you away from humility.

And then once you're sliding away from humility,

Your massage is dropping.

The third virtue of massage,

Which is absolutely essential,

Is creativity.

A massage therapist who isn't creative cannot perform an amazing massage.

Okay.

Because I can teach you,

You know,

I could teach anyone how to do my routine.

But if you lack the creativity to make alterations based upon what the client's needs are at that moment,

It won't be great.

And it also creates variety.

So my time at the Art Institute was really important because I learned some foundational stuff that built upon my art background.

And in every massage,

It has parallels to the techniques that are employed.

One is that there are elements and principles of art.

And those translate very well into massage.

And one of the big ones is like variety.

If I keep rubbing your arm the same way,

Your mind will get bored of it.

And you'll be like,

Oh,

Dude,

Stop that.

Stop doing that.

And all of the elements have value.

And so you want to,

Like if you,

I believe that massage therapists should have a creative outlet outside of massage,

Something that gets their imagination rolling and infuses them with this beautiful energy so that whenever they go into the treatment room,

They have a power to them,

This creative passion that flows into their massages.

Because if it's not there,

You can feel it.

And it becomes rote and boring.

And in every massage,

Truly,

Every massage should be completely different.

Every massage should be custom tailored to meet the needs of their client.

And I tell you what,

You go to a lot of these mega chains,

They will be the same massage every single time.

So like you'll say you see Robert Flamanjo,

It's not a real person.

So it's a wacky name so that I don't accidentally call someone out.

Robert Flamanjo,

If he does six massages in a day,

They are all the same.

The only difference is the first massage he does is the best.

The last massage he does is the worst.

And because he doesn't know,

He doesn't know that there are like,

That there is more to massage than pokes,

Pours,

And squeezes.

Because he probably is one of those people who shouldn't have been in the industry in the first place.

That doesn't mean,

That's not necessarily always true.

A lot of people just don't know.

They don't know what they don't know.

They're unknown unknowns.

But I firmly believe that when we look at rebuilding this industry,

When we look at transforming how the schools work,

The first thing that we need to do is focus on these three virtues.

Now,

I'm the only person who I've ever heard articulate it whenever you break it down.

I'm not saying,

Oh,

I'm the smartest dude in the world.

I don't believe that.

I just think that I have been given these beautiful gifts in life.

And with these beautiful gifts of like,

It has made me think about the future and the things that I want to do.

Now,

I'm going to go into this cool thing in a little bit more detail,

But I want to give you a little understanding of why it is that I'm so intense with my analysis of massage.

I've been given the opportunity to taste the barrel of death.

I've lived for years thinking I was going to die.

It was only until recently that I've given up on,

That I've begun to push it away.

And whenever you know,

When you have a little bit of an awareness of your survival prognosis,

Whenever you're looking at your life,

And then those are in single digit years,

You begin to look at what you can accomplish.

And whenever I had my lung removed,

It's a magical moment,

One of the most magical moments of my life.

I was learning how to walk around and breathe again.

And I was with this amazing man,

His name is Hans.

I was walking no more than maybe 100 yards from my sister's house up to this big rock.

And we get to the rock and I sit down.

Hans is this,

He's the most masculine man I've ever met.

And then we do this guy,

I wish that he was still on this earth because like,

Such an inspiration and transformed so many lives.

But he had this like beautiful Dutch accent.

And I'm sitting next to him and I'm like,

Look,

I go,

I feel like I've wasted my life.

I feel like I haven't accomplished anything.

You know,

I'm like 35 years old,

What have I accomplished?

And he's like,

He said,

Well,

Shaun White,

You know,

I've been around the world,

I've met a lot of people,

You're ahead of the game.

You're ahead of the game.

And maybe for some people,

That wouldn't mean anything.

But that was a transformative moment that took me from that dark pit of despair and showed me that there was,

That I could do something.

And that,

You know,

This man who I looked up to and deified in many ways,

I see him as like my second father.

I love him intensely and dearly.

And that put a fire back into my furnace whenever I was looking down the barrel of death.

And I was in excruciating pain,

But realized that I could do something.

And that,

Those words carried with me as I continued to push forward,

You know,

Even whenever I had to go through chemotherapy.

And I'm like,

Okay,

All this pain is happening for a reason.

All these horrors are happening for a reason.

These are gifts,

And I could use them to help others.

And it was through that journey that I learned that every hardship that we face is an opportunity to learn how to help others.

And so even whenever I was in absolute agony beyond imagination levels of pain,

I was like,

I had these moments where I'm like,

Okay,

We can tap into this.

This will show you a pathway that will help other people see the light in otherwise completely dark seconds.

They are seconds,

And those seconds will pass.

And you can always have hope.

And hope,

We all misunderstand what it is.

We all end up thinking that hope is like,

Oh,

We're going to survive.

We're going to make it to the end.

That's all garbage.

Hope is making the most of your moments.

It's knowing that life is hard.

You could be like all of us sitting around out here.

We can lose hope here and there,

But you can still have it.

It's not knowing that you're going to survive to the end of the day.

Even if you're on your deathbed,

You can still have hope.

And my mother showed that to me when I was like 25.

My mother,

She died of pancreatic cancer.

And I'm glad that she's,

They give her like three months to live.

She died in a month and a half.

Thank God,

Because that is such a horrible disease.

And she showed me in her last few weeks of her life that you can have hope and you can give love and you can share beautiful,

Just the beauty of the world with others.

And she did it because she loved cruises.

And she planned this big,

Beautiful cruise at like three weeks before she died and took the whole family.

And we had our last time together as a complete family with my mother as she was dying.

And then we came back.

And then like after we came back,

She died a week later and I was able to die beside her.

I mean,

She was,

I was able to be beside her as she died and hold her hand in her last breaths.

And the way she died helped me survive going through my cancer journey.

She showed me the building blocks of what hope was and then how Hans lived his life,

This guy,

Out of this world,

Amazing.

This dude was a painter and he would like,

He would drive around the Mediterranean and he would paint people and that's how he fed himself.

And like,

That's how he would buy whatever he needed.

And this guy lived everything to the fullest moment.

And so when he died,

And he died in a terrible motorcycle accident,

I love him dearly,

But his death was easy to mourn because I knew that he made the most of every moment.

He lived every sensational second.

And I was like,

Okay,

He died the way.

He died doing what he wanted to do.

And so with those two people,

Those two enormously pivotal human beings in my life between my mother and the things that she taught me and her end of life and the way that Hans lived,

I put those things together and discovered what actual hope was.

Now my purpose is built into that.

And then my purpose is I'm,

You know,

I exist because I want to make this world better in some meaningful way so that whenever I leave this earth,

I've had a contribution.

And but I can't affect the whole world.

I have to influence some kind of microcosm.

And what microcosm do I love the most?

I love massage.

I have a lot of peers who sometimes say,

And they listen to me talk because I sound,

You know,

I'm really intense guy and I'm hypercritical of my own industry.

They're like,

If you're so burnout,

Why don't you leave?

I go,

Because first off,

I'm not burnout.

I just see things that you can't see because I'm on a timeline.

I have a time period that we're looking at.

I'm not going to share it with you because it doesn't need to be said.

But there's a,

But whenever you have like the viewpoint that you have a shorter rope,

Whether it's real or not,

Right?

My probable statistical survival rate is different than what everyone,

Most other people are who's listening to your podcast.

So whenever you're looking at those digits,

You're like,

Okay,

I have a limited period of time.

I need to accomplish,

Make the greatest amount of contributions in the shortest amount of time and I'm going to burn my wick at both ends until I make it happen.

And that's how I've graduated from five years ago.

And you know,

After graduating,

Have my long-term move,

Going through chemotherapy,

Entering the workforce,

Realizing that the industry was just junk on every level and then saying,

I'm done with this.

I'm going to transform this industry and I'm going to make it better than it ever was.

And,

You know,

Now I own my own spa.

I have the best massage therapists in the industry working for me.

I have a company where,

You know,

We're known for providing the best service experience in the industry and it's not going to stop because I'm here to transform that industry.

I started my business to transform the massage industry.

So when you say,

What are you doing?

Well,

I created my spa as that beginning point to say it can be better.

Getting an opportunity for massage therapists to pursue their dreams,

To live a life as a professional where you're treated like a professional.

But that comes with consequences,

Right?

When I treat you like a professional,

There comes the expectations that you will be professional.

And putting the emphasis on education.

My next step that I'm going into is I'm working on a school,

Okay?

Since I said the schools are the problem,

Well,

I know how to fix the problem.

I've been working on a curriculum since February.

After seven iterations of a curriculum,

I found what I was going to do.

Now I'm working on the lesson plans.

And those three virtues permeate every facet of its existence.

They have to.

Because if they don't,

Then it's not genuine from surface to center.

And the mind looks for incongruencies.

If something is different,

It's a con.

In our loving industry,

It must be pure from one side to the other.

Because if you're not pure all throughout with your intent,

The clients feel it.

And the last thing we want is for clients to feel uncomfortable,

For them to lose trust in it,

Or their perception to be that it's not going to provide them the benefits that they want.

So my quest right now I'm moving into,

Which is I'm starting to do some tutorships with massage therapists.

Not necessarily hands-on stuff,

But we're going to cover academia if they need holes filled in terms of those gaps.

They can watch me do massages if they would like.

But of course,

It's like a volunteer basis.

I'm not going to massage a client in front of you,

But I might have a volunteer.

And I will share with any massage therapist,

Any massage technique that I have,

I don't care if you work for me or not.

That's another cultural problem that we have.

Every massage therapist thinks that what they have is a secret.

I'm going to tell you what,

Guys,

If you're a massage therapist,

You think your techniques are secrets,

Then you've lost sight of what the gift that you've been given.

God gave you those techniques,

And you're supposed to share them with the world.

Because whenever you hold that stuff back,

All you're doing is hurting our industry.

And you're preventing other people who have the same dream as you from achieving their dreams.

We're servants.

As servants,

Shouldn't we be sharing what we know with people who love the same very things that we do?

And so you discovered those.

Like I've said earlier,

I had to create my own techniques,

But really,

They were gifts.

I was put in a scenario where the only way that I would have learned them is if I were facing those hardships.

And you've done the same thing in your life.

The stuff that you've learned,

You've had to work your butt.

You took us off in order to get it.

Don't you want to save someone else the hardship of going through all that horror?

Wouldn't you rather just give them love and be like,

Hey,

Look,

This is what I had to do this.

I don't want you to have to go through this.

You'll have your own hardships,

But let's build upon the hurt that we've had so that we can become better than we ever were before.

That's the only way that our culture gets better.

And now we talk about what do we do with the culture.

I tell you what,

I don't care about the massage industry as it stands because I think that here's something like this,

And that's going to sound like an incongruency with what I just said.

Now,

Massage therapy,

By and large,

Your survival rate with remaining in the industry is 50% for one year.

It's going to be about 70% washout rate at three years and 90% washout rate at seven years.

So most of the people who are in the industry right now are going to wash out.

So I'm not a big fan of throwing money in the waste bin.

I'm not a fan of burning money.

I'm not a fan of wasting time.

As you can have talked about before,

I think time is of the essence,

Not just for me,

But for you guys.

Like everyone seems to think that you have this infinite amount of time to procrastinate and you don't.

All right?

Because whether or not it's your beauty,

Your intelligence,

Your physical strength,

Whatever time it is,

It drops and you lose it.

So find that thing that gives you purpose in life.

Sink your teeth into it and run because the longer that you wait is the longer that you waste.

You don't know when you're going to perish.

And I'm not going to try to scare you to think that you're going to die anytime soon,

But live your life like you're going to do something because whenever so many years pass by and then at the end of your life you're like,

Woulda,

Coulda,

Shoulda.

And regret is the worst pain you will feel in your entire existence.

And luckily,

And I say this to old people all the time,

I say,

I was luckily,

Thank God,

I was given the gift of taste and death at such a young age because it gave me the knowledge that old people have but they can't do anything with it.

So I would love for other people like yourselves to think about that.

What do I really want to do?

What do I really want to accomplish?

Because it can't wait.

You're going to get old,

Your knees are going to start hurting,

You're going to end up getting married,

You end up having kids,

Suddenly you have grandkids,

You got bills to pay and then it's gone.

Now you're like 76 years old wishing that you would have done this thing.

And like I said,

Regret is the worst pain you can ever experience.

So shoot for a proactive prevention of regret.

Do the things that you want to do now,

That way you don't regret not doing them later.

I love this question that asks people,

Well,

If you had all the money in the world,

You had all the resources,

You never had to work another day in your life,

What would you do?

What would you be doing?

And then,

I mean,

Some people will know,

Some people won't,

But then you can just say,

Well,

Why don't you do that now?

Right.

It's nothing like,

I mean,

I can't imagine this death how,

Obviously it puts things so in perspective,

Right?

I mean,

And this is why there's a death contemplation because it's not to get bummed out,

It's to realize to take every moment and take it to its fullest and not take any moment for granted.

But when we don't have that immediacy of death,

It just doesn't seem as,

You know,

It's like a top priority because,

Oh,

We'll just live,

Well,

You know,

We're not going to die now,

But there really is no guarantee that I will make it through the end of this next breath.

I mean,

I really don't know a hundred percent,

Right?

There's really no way to know.

And so it's just such an inspiration and to be able to meet those people,

And it doesn't necessarily have to be something amazing or,

I mean,

Something so over the top to get encouragement and inspiration and empowerment.

I mean,

Just the kind of the admiration you had for this guy and just,

It seemed to understate what he said,

But I know what you mean,

But when you really look up to somebody and they just say something that really resonates with us,

I mean,

It's kind of hard to convey how much of an impact it can have when other people just don't see it right away too.

Sean,

This has been such an eye-opening experience for me,

Especially the creativity.

I didn't obviously realize how important that was,

But once you break it down like that,

It makes so much sense because,

Yeah,

It would get boring.

You know,

I mean,

In another advice that I was given was that for my own ego to have an outlet,

To have a creative endeavor,

Because that gives my ego something to do.

So then when I go into my work,

I won't necessarily take that part of my ego with me into whatever work I do.

However,

In this case,

It seems to flow together.

So your creativity builds upon creativity,

Builds upon creativity.

So now I guess before we wrap up,

Maybe we'll do another one sometime because I had questions about maybe this will be a teaser about myofascial science and then different hiring criteria about pregnancy,

Going to a spa when pregnant,

And the dangers of identifying as a healer.

Maybe you might want to jump in on one of those,

But well,

And take that back.

And then one more,

I guess,

To give people something they can use right now is the supplements.

What kind of supplements would you recommend if you feel that's important to list about and then whatever's going on with that,

Just in general?

I threw a lot of stuff out there,

So we can set whatever you want aside for maybe a part two.

We can do a part two.

Do you want me to give you one of those?

Sure,

Whatever you'd like.

And then I guess we can start wrapping up with anything you'd want to leave people with.

Yeah,

So of all those,

I would pick what I think is the most important,

Which is I don't consider myself a healer,

And I don't consider massage therapists healers.

And the reason that I say that is because whenever we work on people,

We aren't healing them.

They are healing themselves.

And it is a sign of arrogance to assume that you have the magical ability to heal others,

Or guides,

Or helpers,

Or servants.

We help facilitate an opportunity for them to be in the space so that their body can repair themselves.

When you call yourself a healer,

It puts you on a slippery slide where you will let go of your humility.

A lot of people who are healers begin to think that they are God's gift to the universe,

That their hands are magical,

That they're sorceresses,

And that's not a good way to go.

Instead,

You're creating space.

You're occupying the energy with them.

You're encouraging them to achieve their highest level of wellness.

But whenever you take the time to be like,

You know what,

I'm not creating this pleasure for them.

They wouldn't be experiencing the pleasure at all if they hadn't come to see me.

They're the ones who's doing the work.

They're the ones who are investing their time in order to feel good.

Like I said,

You're a tool.

And in this instance,

I mean,

It's a beautiful tool.

But if they weren't the ones doing the work,

Then that wellness would have never been achieved.

And so that's like an exercise of humility.

People may feel like they've been healed.

They may feel wonderful.

But it's really important that a wellness practitioner can isolate themselves out of the equation and pass on that accomplishment to the person who needs it more.

And that's the person coming to us to feel wonderful.

Well,

Lovely,

Sean.

Yes,

I couldn't agree more because you get into these complexes.

But the healer,

It really is about just creating the space for the body.

The body knows how to heal itself.

Absolutely.

When we remove all the barriers for it,

The body can heal itself.

And that just helps facilitate it,

Obviously.

So all right,

Well,

I guess we can leave it there,

Sean.

It was an eye-opening experience learning just the ins and outs of the massage industry with such firsthand experience and then having the added,

I guess,

Qualifications of just knowing all the extremes of a personal life that go into having your unique perspective.

But not only just unique perspective,

But one that is really at the forefront of what I feel is the best thing I've heard so far about how to view this industry and then what can actually be done to,

I guess,

Take it to the next level,

Right?

While letting things that no longer serve us fall away.

And I so appreciate the service to other mentality where,

I mean,

Some people will kind of just use that as window dressing as another marketing message.

But I know people can hear the sincerity in your voice with that.

Thank you.

I appreciate the compliment,

Sir.

You're welcome.

All right.

Thanks for joining us.