By Sue Shekut, Owner, Working Well Massage, Licensed Massage Therapist, Certified Wellness Coach, ACSM Personal Trainer
I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions because I don’t think they work and often make people feel guilty about taking a stand without really having a concrete plan to back up lifestyle changes. Changing habits takes a lot more than just making a statement. it takes a lot of planning and effort. And often, support from a coach, a personal trainer or other wellness support staff. I am more into planning and goal setting (which is natural from my coaching background!). The first day of a new year is always a good time for reflection and planning for me.
2011 in review
This past year has been a great year for Working Well Massage. We’d added some new team members to our happy group of professional therapeutic massage therapists: Aaron, Jennifer and Allison. And we bid a fond farewell to Janice, one of our chair massage team members, on her way as she travels to India for four months. We added a new Assistant Manager, David McClinton, to our chair massage stations in the Fall of 2011. David has done a fantastic job of sprucing up our booths and keeping things running smoothing for both our massage therapists and our clients.
In 2011, our corporate chair massage team has continued to provide many stressed out and sore office workers with relaxing chair and table massages in their office. This arm of our business has continued to grow and we are both grateful for the business and happy that our many corporate office worker clients have management teams that are progressive enough to know that providing in-house massages to their staff can mean more productive, less tense employees. (Note: I don’t mention the names of our corporate clients to preserve their anonymity. We enjoy our relationship with our clients and don’t want to exploit those relationships for promotional purposes.)
In 2011, we tried out a new business venture with Whole Foods Market’s new Wellness Clubs in Lincoln Park. Sadly, the idea of adding a table massage location to our already successful chair massage business in the store proved to be less desirable for clients than we had anticipated. Most of our chair massage clients appreciate the convenience and location of our chair massage stations. Few people wanted to venture upstairs to the Mezzanine level of the Lincoln Park Whole Foods Market to get a table massage so, rather than scatter our resources further, we quickly closed the table location and let the Wellness Club focus on the nutritional counseling and fitness needs of shoppers upstairs while we do what we do best, walk in chair massage, on the main floor.
On this blog, Working Well Resources, in 2011, I wrote 94 new posts, growing the total archive of my blog to 395 posts. I uploaded 194 pictures in 2011.. The tops posts accessed in 2011 were as follows:
My most commented on post in 2011 was Helping Chicago Get and Stay Calm-Calm Chicago. My blog was viewed about 39,000 times in 2011.
The busiest day of the year was April 12th with 230 views. The most popular post that day was Find the Top Tweeters on Nutrition.
What’s Ahead for 2012?
In 2012, we at Working Well Massage plan on continuing to grow our corporate chair massage business, providing quality massage professionals with access to corporate office clients and providing office workers with much-needed (and much appreciated) stress relieving massage sessions. We are also looking to add some yoga classes and other fitness options to some of our corporate client sites.
In 2012, we are going to continue to improve our WWM chair massage stations inside both the Lincoln Park and Gold Coast Whole Foods Markets in Chicago, Illinois. We will be changing the carpeting, adding some new art and stretching posters and incorporating some of our new team members into the lineup at the two stores. I will personally be offering some new training and advising opportunities to my WWM team, to keep us all up to date on the latest research on massage therapy and best ways to help our chair massage clients enjoy our chair massages in the stores.
At Working Well Massage, we aim to not only give our clients the most relaxing and enjoyable chair massages and corporate massage experiences, but to help our highly skilled, professional team of massage therapists connect with great clients!
As far as the blog goes, this year I plan on providing some new video content to give our readers visual tips on workstation ergonomics, relaxing videos of amazing nature scenes, and some helpful illustrations of how to use the Miracle balls as well as tennis balls and the yoga bolster to stretch muscles and relax your nervous system. I will also aim to provide new info on the latest massage and fitness research.
In 2012, I will personally continue to work towards my master’s degree in Clinical Professional Psychology, to give me more tools to help my clients relax and deal with stress and to help make me an even better coach for my current clients, massage therapy team and potential new coaching clients. I will also make the extreme sacrifice (wink) to continue hiking and taking photos of wonderful natural forest preserves and other nature spots to share with you in this blog!
Happy New Year to our team, our clients and of course, to all our loyal readers of our Working Well Resources blog!
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