how does this pay sound?

[Gabrielle Bell]

i will soon be graduating from massage therapy school and have been offered a job at a brand new spa that is opening soon. we are in a rural area so average massage for one hour around here is about $60.

pay would be 50% of what client pays for service, plus commission on any retail sold. no hourly rate. but she would provide everything, including oils, linens, etc.

she hasnt set price for massage session yet, but i'm fairly certain it will be more like $65 or $70 per hour as she is marketing it as a high-end spa with more luxury products.

even though it will be brand new, they are anticipating mt's being very busy, as the one other spa in town is always booked solid, even though people aren't real happy with that spa anymore.

does this sound like a good deal for an employee of the spa?

i am still debating the offer, since i always thought i would do private practice on my own.

thanks!

 

[Yellowcake .]

My understanding is that is pretty much how the spa industry works, so for a spa job, it's standard. What makes it good pay or not is how busy you will be. That is impossible to know until you open and see if the expectations are correct. If it isn't busy, you're making student loan payments (if you had to take any) out of minimum wage. However, if that happens you can always only be available to them part of the week and work elsewhere and/or build your own practice the rest of the week.

Good luck, whatever you decide!

 

[bigdon49245]

It may be slow-go in the beginning.

A possiblility is asking for hourly wage if you answer phones/ do laundry?

Ask if you're going to have to be there for the possiblity of "walk ins"
that would be a lot of time spend NOT getting paid.

If you're "on call" make sure to set up rules for this- like they have to give you an hour's notice for appts, stuff like that. Not that you're at home in your pj's still and they want you to give a massage in 5 mins.

 

[XcutieX]

Is it common for spas in your area to have no-compete clauses? Would you still be able to do private work if you were at the spa part time?

 

[Carefree :))]

Just fyi, I'm at a spa now that pays much less than 50%. They are the biggest game in town (in a big town), and the reason it works is because I know that when I go in for a shift, I'm busy straight through. Oh, and the tips are good. They charge higher margins for the services, starting at $85.00 for a 50 minute massage and going up from there. So I do ok with the rate.

I also get a commission on retail products sold, although I have little interest in selling products other than maybe Biofreeze. This place has no minimum requirement of product sales for mt's, where some others do.

One thing that happens in some of the bigger spas around here is that they charge a useage fee! The perceneforum.xxxe is higher at these places, but then they take it back to "cover the cost of linens, cleaning, etc". It's quite a racket, but again, these places come as close to guaranteeing steady work as any.

Smaller places here do either 50% or 60/40, but they're going to be more on-call, and some may require mt's to supply linens and oils.

Beware the "No Compete" agreement! Especially in a smaller town, it can make it very difficult to do anything anywhere else!

 

[No.]

Is it common for spas in your area to have no-compete clauses? Would you still be able to do private work if you were at the spa part time?

Not all non-competes are alike. Some will restrict where you can work (for instance, not closer than 10 miles from their location), some restrict who you can work on (basically protects their clientelle list) but I don't believe that there are any that can say you can't do private work period as long as it is within their guidelines.

Non-competes that are too restrictive are usually thrown out in court, so they need to be reasonable.

Angie

 

[hottemp]

I worked for that pay scale at a spa and was very happy with it. In fact, when I tried to get some work at spas to save some money for a big trip, I went to some spas to get hired, that pay scale now was hard to come by. Most of them wanted to pay 25-30% a massage with no hourly rate and have me sitting around doing laundry.