We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Neille Solomon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Neille, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
I always wanted to help people heal, I was either going to be a massage therapist or a psychologist. I was a sponge at school and doubly so in massage school quickly learning and excelling to the point where I was teaching my fellow students to fill in where the teachers weren’t able to communicate. The body and the brain intrigue me to no end. So to find myself doing hour after hour of mind numbing Swedish massage at a fancy resort in Manchester was disappointing to say the least! Then I had a client who came in for yet another Swedish massage but was complaining about a chronic shoulder pain. For whatever reason I decided to ask a point blank question this time, “would you rather have a full body Swedish massage of fix that shoulder pain?” The client looked at me curiously and replied “I didn’t know that was an option, is it OK because I didn’t book a deep tissue?” At that moment I decided that I no longer cared what the client had booked I was going to give them the session that the truly wanted, that they truly needed. Not wanting to lose my job I told the client that “as long as you tell the front desk you loved your massage we can do any kind of work needed.” At the end of the day the front desk asked what I had done because the client came out raving, asked to see the manager to give me accolades and as it turned out left a rather generous tip more than covering the difference of what I would have been paid for the deep tissue upgrade. This simple decision to do the work needed regardless of the official title of the massage started me down of road of only being willing to offer excellence in what I do for others. Now 19 years later I am in a private practice able to make my own decisions, I offer no paid upgrades or additions as what I value is my time. I simply won’t allow a situation where someone has to choose between my best and less than my best because I will only give my best. This philosophy has created the momentum that along with many mentors, friends and hard work has left me with a life I never dreamed possible. So I say to you choose what is important find a way to stand your ground and expand upon that philosophy within your life whenever possible!
Neille, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
They say some people are born with a knack, an inborn natural skill. For me that knack is helping people heal. For as long as I can remember I’ve always been able to tell where someone was in pain and how to make it go away. Growing up I was always the counselor for my friends and family… but where my skill has always been strongest and most fulfilling to me is therapeutic massage. Finding where someone’s acute or chronic pain is coming from and knowing how to help them let it go is something that just flows naturally for me.
Headaches, pain in the back, neck or shoulders even sciatica and carpal tunnel syndrome are all just fun puzzles for my brain to solve. I am what you might call an anatomy geek, when others might have been watching sports games or following celebrity magazines I spent 1000’s of hours immersed in anatomy and physiology books. Intrigued by how the myriad of little pieces inside our bodies all interconnect and where these systems break down. What I feel sets me apart from other therapists is my ability to see where these systems have formed maladaptive patterns, help the body release these patterns and then guide clients to see what actions in their lives are creating and reinforcing these patterns. Once we identify these patterns it is much simpler for people to correct them and go back to living a full and healthy life.
What I am most proud of throughout my career is the number of lives that have been positively affected by my work. So many people who can sleep well, play catch with their kid, snuggle with a significant other all without pain because of the work we did together. All of this has inspired me to both start teaching workshops on how to do this work, and what will perhaps become my crowing achievement I have just created travel friendly self massage tool call the PSolo that will allow people to become their own best massage therapist. Empowering others to care for themselves has always been my deepest joy and I am so happy I now have a way to share that on a drastically larger scale.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
Finding Tim Ferris and Chase Jarvis interviewing each other on Spotify has definitely been one of the biggest influences on my entrepreneurial thinking. After doing a deep diving to their interviews with each other and other entrepreneurs I realized that everyone starts without the skills needed to start a new venture. The concept that your first hundred attempts are probably going to be sub-par and that they are necessary steps to get to that first magical success. This has led me to a deep understanding between the difference of being bad at something and simply being inexperienced. Turns out you can’t know if you’re bad at something until you’ve tried it 100 times and are still not gaining any skills! I return to the Chase Jarvis live podcast on a regular basis, essentially anytime I need a reminder that the most successful people we see are the one’s who failed that most time and kept going!
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
Over 14 years into my private practice nothing has been more effective that word or mouth to grow my clientele. I tried doing everydoor direct mailing to all the local neighborhoods, sent out emails, put ads in papers none of the amounted to anything significant. Getting the first clients through the door I used Groupon which was all the rage back then, and mostly producted one time clients looking for a deal. I expected that to a certain level but still gave every client the same gold standard treatment even after 299 massages that earned me about $18 each I still kept giving exceptional service to each client and it worked. About 10-15 of those original 300 stuck, and they were so impressed that they started to send in their friends, their family members, and even Bob, Jen and Michael from the office who also had elbow or neck pain. It turned out that the secret sauce was being really dropped in and making sure I asked what each client was hoping to achieve in the session, setting realistic expectations and then blowing those expectations out of the water. Figure out what service you can do that for and you’ll succeed.
Much later on I found a second secret that really surprised me!! It turns out that once I had a solid client base that only wanted to work with me going on a long 6 week vacation boosted my clients base every time I left. It turns out that if people love to talk about you when you’re available they will talk about how much they miss you even more! So go build that business and then take a nice long well deserved trip to Indonesia, it might just be the best business decision you ever make!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.anewbodymassage.com www.psolo.com
- Instagram: Psolomassager
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neille-solomon-089a9615
- Youtube: @psolomassager
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/a-new-body-massage-san-diego?osq=a+new+body+massage