Inside My Failed Bid for 5 Massage Therapy Clinics: What Every Chiropractor Can Learn
Lessons in pay, overhead, and simplicity.
A few months ago, I found myself deep in the midst of a bidding war for a massage therapy business. Five clinics, all humming along, and, as it turns out, a crash course in what chiropractors could learn from the competition.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t get the deal. Someone with deeper pockets (or a higher risk tolerance) swooped in. But I walked away with a notebook full of insights and a renewed sense of just how much the chiropractic profession could borrow from our massage therapy friends.
Let’s start with the obvious: Massage therapists are getting paid. Not just “cover your rent” paid, more like “keep 70% of what you bill” paid. Compare that to the average chiropractic associate, who’s lucky to scrape together 40-50%
Chiropractors complain about how hard it is to hire good associates, but the numbers don’t lie. If you want to keep good people, you have to pay them well. As I’ve written before, maybe it’s time to stop treating associates like profit centers and start treating them like partners.
Now, about those satellite locations. The massage clinics had smaller, simpler satellites-lower rent, less overhead, and fewer headaches. It’s a model that works, especially if you’re not trying to build a chiro-cathedral in every suburb. Sometimes, less really is more.
The clinics ran lean: One centralized call center, no bloated head office, and an absentee owner pulling down nearly $200k a year in SDE. No “visionary operator,” just a system that worked well enough to keep the lights on and the owner on vacation.
After rent and wages, the single biggest expense was laundry. Yes, laundry. Almost $200,000 a year across five clinics. That’s a mountain of sheets and a reminder that your biggest costs aren’t always where you expect them. The owner had never shopped around for a different laundry provider and I think he was getting fleeced. If you’re not tracking every dollar, you’re missing the plot.
Marketing? Practically nonexistent. They were still 50% booked just by being there. No Instagram gurus, no SEO consultants, just a steady trickle of clients who knew what they wanted. It’s a reminder that word-of-mouth still works, but also a missed opportunity. Imagine what a little strategic marketing could do if you actually tried.
Therapist turnover was high. Therapists cycled through every few years, but with three massage therapy schools in town, there was always a fresh batch ready to step in. It’s a revolving door, but when the supply is endless, the model holds. Still, it’s worth asking: What would happen if you actually invested in keeping your best people?
If I’d won the bid, my playbook was simple:
Close one of the weakest clinics,
Reinvest in the therapists (especially the ones moonlighting elsewhere),
Start marketing,
Attack the biggest expenses.
So, what’s the takeaway for chiropractors?
Pay your associates fairly. You want loyalty? Start with their paycheque.
Keep your operations lean. More locations don’t mean more headaches if you keep them simple.
Sweat the small stuff. Laundry, supplies, admin-these costs add up fast.
Don’t sleep on marketing. Even half-full clinics can do better if you actually try.
Systems matter more than personalities. You don’t need a rockstar at every clinic-just a process that works, even when you’re not there.
Invest in your people, even if the talent pool seems endless. Retention is always cheaper than recruitment.
Chiropractic can learn a lot from clinics like this. We can stick to the old way of underpaying associates, overbuilding clinics, and overlooking the fundamentals, or we can take a page from the massage therapy playbook, where smart simplicity and fair pay keep things running smoothly.