About Me- Julie Onofrio, LMP
I'm Julie Onofrio (like the actor but without the D'). I have been a massage therapist since 1988 and have had my own massage business in downtown Seattle. I started out with my business in a health club and worked my way into various office situations through the years and now work in a space with a few other self-employed massage therapists. In 1999, just for fun, I started a website -www.thebodyworker.com where I just started putting everything I learned in massage school into a website. One of the reasons I started it was because I had been collecting all of this information to create an apprenticeship program for a friend of mine who wanted to go to massage school but who already had a significant background in science and anatomy. I never created it but the website is the result. It also became my therapy for recovering from burnout which I have since found out is very common in the massage profession. In about 2002 I created another site www.massagetherapycareers.com which was a site that talked only about what it takes to become a massage therapist and information to help people decide if they wanted to become a massage therapist. I wanted to tell the truth about becoming a massage therapist. I write about the side of the profession that no one seems to want to talk about. While I love being a massage therapist and have come a very long way, there was not much support for the process of starting and building a massage business. I now still do massage 2-3 days a week but prefer writing about it on my websites mainly because I can just reach more people this way. If I was starting my massage business now, I would be sure that I had multiple streams of income to allow me the freedom to do create my ideal massage practice right from the start. The massage profession has been all about personal and professional growth which is all for the best but something that is never talked about. No one told me how hard it would be to get and keep clients. No one told me that I would end up burned out if I didn't take care of myself more than I tried to take care of others. My mission is to share that information with others so that they can have support along the way. You can make $50,000 or even $100,000 a year as a massage therapist and you deserve to make that much but you will also need the support of others to take you there. For many the massage profession is a calling - something their soul asks them to do. With that often comes the challenges of becoming more aware and working to find fulfillment and happiness outside of one's work (as with any career or vocation). In Sept 2008, I ended up selling that site -www.massagetherapycareers.com for a decent amount. The only reason I sold it was because I knew I could do it all over again and I also knew I could do it better with the help of this website/business building system that I use to create this site. Within two months of starting this site, I already have a good alexa rating and am getting about 100 visitors a day. My other site had about 300 visitors a day so within a few months I should be right on target. I also wanted to add the steps to starting, setting up and running a successful massage business as well as teach people about starting and running their own peer supervision groups and getting individual supervision. I started a peer supervision group with a few of my friends in around 2002. When I asked these friends to join me, we had no idea where it would all be going but I now contribute my success with my websites and my continued success as a massage therapist (who successfully recovered from serious burnout!) The results are now part of this website which is always a work in progress! Let me know what questions, feedback or comments you have about anything and everything. To Your Success! Julie Onofrio, Licensed Massage Practitioner PS. To read more about me and my journey with Site Build it! || FAQ's || Career Guides || Websites || Supervision || About Me ||
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