I have an embarrassing confession to make. Every client, friend and even my spouse said don’t work for a friend. They told me over and over again and I didn’t listen. I had no doubts about this choice after finding out that for almost double the pay I would earn the right to be a partner, get a chance to build a business, have a safe place to work with my closest friend and a chance to really grow my career! I would not be dissuaded. I quit the toxic, low paying job and focused all of my energy on building Schmidt’s business. I didn’t like the $40/massage hour promotion she did when I first started. For two months I had to overcome prejudice, and I still wasn’t consistently booked. I averaged about half booked. That made me nervous. But I was committed!
While talking with Schmidt about my decision to focus just on her business, her reaction was the opposite of what I expected. She was trepidatous. That reaction didn’t help my nerves about my leap of faith decision. In the first week that both of us were only working for her business, she had just stepped in to help me flip my table without me asking. I will be honest, I don’t remember the exact innocuous question she asked me to start the conversation, it was probably something like, “How is your day going?” What I do remember in clarity is when she changed the topic to say, “I am so nervous. I just keep telling myself that your clients from Massage Chain will follow you here. And then I will get to work on those clients. Then I will have new clients.”
