Your career as a massage therapist or bodyworker not only depends on your hands on techniques and gifted quality of touch—it also depends on your ability to manage a successful business. This is especially true for those massage therapists and bodyworkers who practice independently and those who own their own massage clinics, possibly employing other practitioners and staff members.

However, it even rings true for those massage therapists and bodyworkers who are employed by others, in settings such as spas, resorts, clinics, hospitals and so on. After all, your value as an employee and provider of healing touch does depend on managing your own personal business practices the right way.

At times, massage therapists and bodyworkers have been known to perceive the word business—and anything to do with business concepts and principles—as too complex to be considered in very much depth. Fortunately, this is not the case. Many of the most critical parts of running a business—whether it is just you or a full staff of employees—are fairly simple and straightforward.

One of the easiest and most important business principles to put into practice right away is the notion of protecting your career from the unpredictable nature of working with members of the public. This risk comes with opening up any business where clients come to your property for goods or services. The risk seems to increase for those who provide services that physically affect clients. Examples of such service providers include doctors, chiropractors, personal trainers and, of course, massage therapists and bodyworkers.

You are probably familiar with the fact that doctors carry liability insurance to protect them from the possibility that a patient may one day sue them for malpractice. To a somewhat lesser extent, massage therapists and bodyworkers run this same risk, which is why they need to protect their practices with high quality massage therapy liability insurance.

Perhaps because the chances of a client claiming damage or injury due to something that occurred in your session room are fairly low, the cost of massage therapists liability insurance is fairly low, too. For less than a couple hundred dollars per year, you should be able to put this primary business practice to work for you and provide proper protection for your practice. In addition, the fees for massage therapists liability insurance are typically tax deductible as a business expense.

When you possess the right massage therapists liability insurance, you and your career will be covered for all the “just in cases” that come with doing business with the public. For instance, if a client happened to trip over the throw rug in your waiting room and hit her head on the edge of a table or chair, your massage therapy liability insurance would be there to cover the damages. This portion of your massage insurance policy is known as general liability insurance, or “slip and fall” insurance.

As another example, if a client happened to have a severe allergic reaction to the massage lubricant you used during a session, the product liability component of your massage therapy liability insurance policy would be there to cover the damages.