great_spa_therapist

Traits of a Great Spa Therapist by Jo Halpert

When I think back many years ago to the time when I had graduated from Skin Care College and got my first job, I remember how unsure I was about myself. I spent so many hours in college learning all of the basics to become a good Skin Care Therapist studying Anatomy and Physiology, Bacteriology and Sterilization, etc, but I still didn’t feel like a great therapist. I knew that there was still a lot that I had to learn before I would be really great. Luckily, with my first job I also got a great mentor. To this day, I still think of her and all of her support and confidence in me. She took a big chance in hiring me and I could see that she wanted me to succeed for both our sakes. She invested a lot of time, and money, into furthering my education and even treated me like a daughter. I will always be grateful to her for all that she taught me and did for me. With my mentor taking a chance on me, giving me all of her guidance and encouragement, I was able to feel more self assured. Over time, I had developed the technical skills necessary to be a great skin care therapist and also developed a solid business sense. Soon my mentor was leaving town for weeks at a time, entrusting me to run her business for her in her absence. I was able to build a very solid clientele of repeat business within my first year and became a superstar retailer. I was very lucky. Today, I see a lot of young women and men, newly graduated from Skin Care or Massage Therapy College in an industry with a lot of competition and few mentors.

So what does it take to be a truly great therapist in today’s spa market and how do you get there? I would like to discuss two areas that I think are essential for a spa therapist to become great. The first area of greatness, is achieved through superb technical skill from your hands. The second area of greatness comes from your head and heart.

Achieve Technical Greatness with Your Hands
Whether you perform facials, body massage, body treatments and/or hair removal services, you have to be the best to keep clients returning. The only way to become technically great is through Post Graduate Education and by exposing yourself to anything spa. Seek out national or international post graduate education, trade shows, trade magazines, local schools and private educators, or even internships to help give you a jump start into your new career. Absorb any and all advanced training that you can afford. Work on building your own library of books, videos and DVD’s to refer to. Build binders full of information on each and every topic that you can think of by pulling information off of the internet and from print. Continuing education is essential to becoming a great therapist technically.

Achieve Greatness with Your Head & Heart

Do You Take Responsibility? When things go well and we are successful, we look inward to take credit for the achievement. We readily take responsibility for the success. But when things go wrong, it is difficult to take responsibility. We react to the failure sighting something external that has caused it. We are late for work because of traffic or the train was late. The client didn’t like my treatment because she is too picky. The Microdermabrasion Facial couldn’t be performed because the machine isn’t working properly. The fault belongs to something or someone else. To be a truly great technician, we have to take responsibility for all our successes and failures on a daily basis. We have to work to repeat our successes consistently time and time again and to also work to minimize our failures. We have to realize what part we have played in things going wrong and see where we can change our behavior and our routine to correct our mistakes.

Do You Think That Your Way Is Better? Upon starting a new job; all employees are given a Policy and Procedure manual or at the very least are told about the rules of the company, the dos and don’ts. I have seen spa employees make the mistake of ignoring a rule or two thinking that it was okay to bend the rules or do things their own way. For a period of time, the employee will get away with bending or changing the policies, but eventually not following the rules will cause a problem for all concerned. A great therapist knows all company Policies and Procedures and follows them. She or he knows that it is important to respect the decisions of the spa that she or he works for and realizes that these Policies and Procedures are put into place to protect clients, employees and the spa’s business. A great technician knows and respects the wishes of the owner(s) or spa corporation that they are working with.

Do You Allow Personal Problems To Interfere With Your Work Performance? All of us have a story. We all have happenings going on in our personal lives, some good, and some bad. A truly great therapist, while providing a treatment, is very present with their client focusing 100% on the client’s relaxation and stress reduction. If a therapist does not focus on the business at hand, and is not able to separate her or his personal life from her or his work life, it could affect the quality of work and the therapist's standing with the company and clients. Consider separating your work life from your personal life, mentally and emotionally, as much as possible allowing your work life to be a break from your personal life. Focusing outwardly on someone else instead of always being inside your own head and thoughts is a wonderful generous thing to do, and can actually be considered a therapy in a way, escaping our own world temporarily. Focusing on others is a great gift to give yourself.

Do You Manage Yourself? In a spa, there are usually systems set in place that work to keep the business functioning well. If the therapist knows and follows the systems properly, success will be achieved. When things tend to go wrong, it is usually because of a miscommunication in some way or when a standard operating procedure was not followed. If you are a spa therapist, most of the time you are working one-on-one with your client in the treatment room and both the client and the management of the spa trusts you to know and follow the standard procedures. This means that the management is expecting you to manage yourself and your business in the treatment room that you are working in on a consistent basis. This is what being a professional really means. A therapist who can manage her or himself, keeps on time to and while at work, gives a full product and treatment recommendation for each client, follows treatment protocols, communicates to management any changes or concerns, screens for contraindications to treatment, protects the client’s safety, maintains equipment, does not waste product and more. A great therapist takes part in the success of the business by working well within the team culture of the business, while also managing his or her own individual success from one client to another.