In 1996, when I first started doing massage therapies professionally, the complementary therapy world was a pretty different place.
I was already working and recommending other therapists from the outset. And then I was fortunate to hand-code my first website in 1997. Not that surprisingly now, but I ran with tech as an integral part of the business development, which then was also far less common.
My original aim for The Therapy Agency was to try and help change the world for the better. I wanted to get great massage therapists into workplaces, and provide regular treatments to all the staff there as often as possible. Not only was this of course better for each individual (massage is proven to be good for you personally), but I hoped that perhaps just one time, we could massage a senior decision maker just before they made a decision that was going to harm others, but just maybe if we could get them into a more relaxed and mindful state, perhaps they would make a more ethical decision.
I also was surprised by the complete lack of ‘professional associations’ to do any kind of background check or significant selection criteria for their new paying members to pass to join. I knew there was a need for a national agency, I couldn’t find one, so I made it happen.
I made sure all therapists were very carefully selected to work with us after a detailed and multi-layered application process. The basis of selection was ‘would we feel comfortable with this therapist working with our most important client and decision maker’, and only if there were no hints to the contrary would they be accepted to represent us.
In February 2002 we were asked to provide two professional massage therapists per location, in up to 50 locations across the UK, for a product launch event just 6 weeks later. This we did (we covered 46 locations, someone else had already scheduled the other four).
In 2003 I invested £13,000 in a hugely sophisticated custom database system to manage massage bookings online. This had different logins for staff at workplaces, branch managers, and regional managers. Staff could pay in full, have treatments partially subsidised with Therapy Credits, or have treatments fully funded by the workplace. Nothing like it existed at the time.
Therapists also had their own login for treatment records of all their clients, a shared online secure community space, and more.
Even our website html was using cutting edge html to automatically display differently on desktop computer screens, set to print, or via the very early mobile phone browsers. Optimised for fast loading times by hard-coding the html and CSS manually, and images rendered at their lowest resolution for each purpose to reduce data transfer time. We were page 1 on natural search listings for so many key words for years.
The database system also used postcodes and the ‘Streetmap’ website (as it was before Google) to identify local therapists for individual clients directly via our website. When Google Maps first started, we developed custom maps for our reference, that Google subsequently used to populate their newly developed business listings.
Our website was the first for a national registery where bookings could be made entirely online, with payments via a secure payment provider, and texts sent via an international carrier (as that was the only option at the time).
We also subsequently added a Therapy Voucher system that used 16 digit alpha-numeric codes, randomly generated but omitting the common mistypes of 1IL0O, etc. and vouchers could be given as gifts in special pillow-pack displays. Vouchers were also specially printed in a four part process to make them near impossible to physically copy at the time. And our vouchers could be redeemed towards workplace massage treatments too.
We wrote extensive Codes of Ethics and procedures as a Therapy Agency, that the Standards Institute wanted to run with as a new British Standard.
We had massage therapists working throughout the UK in workplaces, therapy rooms, at events, and also mobile treatments to people’s homes. Plus a small team of incredible people helping run and manage The Therapy Agency in what became an office extension to my home in a converted garage!
With just one of our business clients : when we started massaging at their workplace they had less than 10 staff. 10 years later they were over 150 staff and we had a dedicated massage room in their office for the increased frequency of regular treatments.
Over the years we rubbed the shoulders of well over 100,000 people, in so many environments, sectors, jobs, wealth levels, ages, abilities, etc.
And we had so many incredible therapists working with us for years.
I earnt more money myself going to do massage treatments than I ever got pulled as ‘manager / owner’ from the business itself. In reality as business owner I made a loss. The focus was always to ensure the workers were the ones who got paid the most for doing the work.
And then Covid happened.
We couldn’t ethically put our therapists or our clients at risk of Covid nor Long Covid, and realistically we couldn’t work out a safe way of providing massage treatments in ongoing pandemics.
When mask mandates were removed and the media messaging spin was to put Covid in the past tense only, we knew it wasn’t going to get any better anytime for the foreseeable.
Finally the hard decision was reached to fully close The Therapy Agency.
We know there are now many other types of agencies, both in the UK and around the world, who are doing at least some of what we set out to do in the first place.
It’s been an incredible period of years of being in complementary therapies. But it’s time to say goodbye to it for me at least, at least in this iteration.
I wish you all the best, health and happiness, in whatever you are doing with your life.
Take care.