Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Schoeck.
Hi Amanda, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I feel like I started long before deciding to go to massage school. I reflected early on in owning my business that my other jobs, training, and experiences all felt like they set me up to be able to do this. Even the two massive head injuries I had through college resulted in 8 years of schooling but no degree and left me looking to start a career at age 29. I started Georgia Massage School in the fall of 2015, and I legally started my business in March 2016 during my last month of school.
It is fairly common for a Licensed Massage Therapist to create a business entity, even if we plan to work for someone else. I did that and planned to be completely mobile, working at gyms. To help with paying the bills while I built up my clientele, I picked up work massaging at a chiropractic office. I was building my clients slowly on the side, but only 7mo into having my license, my trajectory completely changed. I met another LMT who was close to retirement and wanted to phase me in to take over her clientele. It seemed too good to be true! It was. The partnering only lasted a little over two weeks, but it was just long enough to make me realize I wanted my own brick and mortar rather than to be mobile. I rented my own room and got to building a small practice where people came to me. I started planning my exit from the chiropractic clinic so that I could focus fully on my own practice.
My time at the chiropractic office also changed my path in unexpected ways. I met an incredible chiropractor there- Dr. Bree Graves. Her adjustments were phenomenal- specific, gentle, and very productive. I also connected with her as a friend immediately. When Bree and the owner parted ways only a couple of months after I started, we stayed in touch.
In the months after Dr. Bree left, I felt the way my client’s bodies changed. The owner’s chiropractor had taken back over adjusting, and I was shocked how quickly I could feel a difference in my clients. Let’s just say it wasn’t positive. But that experience of being able to feel such a difference, consistent across so many different bodies, was invaluable. It made me pay attention to the bodies differently. It’s what led to my discontent with the standard business model- a 30min massage just before or just after an adjustment. If the massage came first, I would feel like I wanted to come back to massage an area after the adjustment. If it came second, I would feel areas that seemed to need a “touch up” adjustment. It sounds corny, but I really had the thought, “There has to be a better way!” I think I even laughed at myself as I had it.
As I transitioned to focus solely on my practice, I was eager to run an alternative chiropractic model by Dr. Bree and see what she thought. We met at The Marietta Diner over a delicious piece of chocolate cake (I’m convinced this is where all good decisions are made!). I shared with her my ideas and asked questions about the expectations for chiropractors- pay, hours worked in a week, etc. Deep down, I was so hopeful she’d want to work together, but I didn’t want to pressure her, so I just stuck to my questions. Much to my relief, she was in! Near the end of our meeting, she told me “Amanda, everyone is always trying to figure out the ‘next big thing’ in chiropractic. I think this is actually it!” In that moment, Bree became the fire behind our forward progress.
There were a few problems with getting this new model started. I had no money, no ability to get money, and very very few clients. Oh, and I couldn’t have a chiropractor in the space I was renting. Bree pushed for steps forward anyway- we decided we should at least try it out to see if bodies responded how we suspected they might. We got a few friends and family together for a test drive in her basement. It was… amazing! It went even better than we thought it would! The bodies responded so differently- so much better- to our treatments when we interlaced them. As a practitioner, it was a delightfully nerdy moment! But I still had the same roadblocks. Again, Bree pushed. A few months later, we started offering our combined services in my apartment sunroom for 3 hours every other Saturday. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough. Six months after our meeting at the diner, I was on the hunt for a new place to build our clinic. Bree reminded me that it didn’t need to be perfect. “It just has to be our next step.”
I got the keys to our first clinic on February 10, 2018. It was thrilling and terrifying, but that rental contract was real, so I had to get to work. There were moments as we got settled where I’d just stand in the entrance and feel this overwhelming sense of appreciation that this place was mine and I got to do this thing. Over the next 2 years, our team grew, our client list grew, and in Feb 2020, I was just starting to feel stable. I was even looking at properties for a second location. Thank goodness I hadn’t signed anything!
The weird thing about April 2020 was that we couldn’t provide massage services, but chiropractic care was considered essential, so we were partially open. At first, we only saw the patients who were in pain management. Anyone who felt like they could wait did. I will never forget the daily fear of what would happen to my business and my employees or the surprise when we got a new client less than two weeks into the shutdown. People were in pain, and they didn’t want to go to the hospital. By mid May, almost all of our clients had returned, most with new pain issues from working at dining tables at home. Between the genuine need for our services, governmental support, and the generosity of those around me, we got through.
So much changed in 2020. In a podcast, I heard someone say that we were surely headed for a recession. Then he said that recessions do not weaken businesses but that the weaknesses of a business cannot hide in a recession. That stuck with me. We began overhauling our website, our CRM, our internal processes… everything. I wanted to be ready. Looking back, it’s funny to me that I thought there would be an endpoint for working on those things. There’s not. You don’t just finish them, launch them and move on. My business is always evolving, so those major pieces are always evolving to support it. But we’re set up to evolve now, and that’s something I value.
After 4.5 years in our first real location, it recently became time to move our clinic- to take our “next step.” I’m once again thrilled and terrified and motivated by a new (more expensive) contract. My biggest motivator though is my team. I have a team of 8- two are full time and another is about to be. Another wants to be later this year. No one ever prepares you for the feeling you get when you first realize you are fully supporting another individual’s entire income. It is such an incredibly odd feeling to know quitting is never an option. It’s a weight, but it’s almost relieving. It can be stressful, but it can also help clear things in times of major stress. One foot simply has to go in front of the other, so you just take the next step, even if it’s not in the direction you planned.
It feels surreal to be “where I am today.” So much has happened. This is definitely not what I imagined when I was starting out, or ever. Looking back, these are the moments that changed my course the most.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Hahahaha! No. It’s never smooth. But if you just roll with it, the bad is not always bad, and the good is not always good. I try to learn from every single struggle. I’ll share some of my favorite or most difficult struggles…
Favorite: The first day Dr. Bree and I saw patients together in my apartment, I couldn’t take money! I had looked at over four dozen scheduling tools and landed on one. It ended up being a giant pain to set up (we’re talking over a month working on it), and I didn’t get to test-run it before our start date. When we got to checking out the first patient of the day, I realized it didn’t have a POS system! I had to ask everyone that day if I could invoice them midweek and then spent all of Monday and Tuesday finding and setting up something better. We still laugh about this today.
Most Meaningful: I had to learn to embrace failure. Individual failures aren’t the only struggle. The mental game of dealing with failures can be a more difficult struggle- it definitely was for me. I got coaching to help, and ultimately, it was seeing the evolution of my failures into successes that helped me redefine my relationship with failure. The easiest for me to see was when I designed some community workshops where very few or no people showed up. They were free, and I couldn’t figure out how to get people there. But marketing them eventually got me approached by someone to put together a specific series workshop and get paid for it. It was an opportunity I was ready to take because of the work I’d put into the projects that “failed.” Seeing that really helped.
Longest: Owning a hands-on business during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were changing laws, accounting and tax changes, worries about keeping my team and my patients safe, decisions on what policies to have and enforce, and varying levels of patient comfort and discomfort with said policies to navigate. It was a lot. It was hard, and none of us were prepared for it.
Most Difficult: The absolute most difficult struggle has to be replacing a team member who was an amazing fit. Even when we’re all celebrating their next steps in life, the hit to the business is real. I suspect it is felt especially deeply in such a small office where we work so closely together and our patients really get to know everyone.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Life Moves Manual Therapies?
Like I mentioned, we have a different chiropractic model than most clinics. We provide a unique layering of massage and chiropractic in our treatments. A session is 35-45min long and is a back-and-forth between a massage therapist working soft tissue and a chiropractor performing adjustments with movement, stretching, and stillness used throughout to help the body process more completely during the session. We can work more gently while still creating more change and longer-lasting change.
For specialty areas, I focus on having a diverse team. One of our chiropractors is certified in Webster Technique which is a specialization for prenatal and postpartum care. Some of the massage therapists have advanced training in treating TMJD and tension headaches. All of our team has advanced training in orthopedic assessment for injuries. And several on our team are certified in corrective exercise and trained to assess functional movement patterns for stabilizing after an injury and overall improvement of day-to-day wellness. The way we layer our services also helps us get exceptional results with back pain and whiplash injuries. Finally, I might be most proud of how we approach the body as a whole and as a result, the results we can support for patients who come with unbalanced nervous systems. These are the most complex cases but also the most rewarding.
I’d want readers to know that we don’t believe in loyalty when it comes to health. If we’re not the right fit for someone, we’re not offended, and we’ll happily try to help them find someone who is.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
Usually, they don’t know that I’ve had a ton of injuries and I have a typical Type-A personality, so I struggle with a lot of the same health and wellness challenges they do. I had 30 years of having no clue how to best care for my body before becoming a Licensed Massage Therapist, and I pushed it hard in sports. I also have a way of talking and being now that others find soothing, so it’s often a surprise that I have so much going on under the surface. It’s literally been my job to relax people for the last nearly seven years, so it’s my default demeanor now. My team knows me though, and I got the nickname “duck feet” because of it. I think these things help me relate to what my patients go through as they try to recover from injuries or pain issues and make healthy changes.
Pricing:
- New Client Package – $179
Contact Info:
- Website: lifemovesmt.com
- Instagram: lifemovesmt
- Facebook: lifemovesmt
Image Credits
Amanda Schoeck
