Black Lives Matter and My Massage Business – Doing What I Say I’m Going to Do

I hesitated.

I was editing our massage business website and I had written a sentence. The sentence was edited and ready to be published, but my finger hovered over the publish button.

The sentence was factual.

It was what I thought.

It was what I felt.

You could say I was the sentence.

Yet I wavered.

The sentence was: We support Black Lives Matter and are taking a community approach to fight racism.

I did hit the publish button, but I can’t deny the unmistakable pause, the flinch, the micro-retreat in the face of perceived danger because I feared, I feared what I couldn’t predict.

And what I couldn’t predict was this: Am I going to lose clients? Am I going to go out of business?

Sure, Ben & Jerry’s can speak up because they know who’s buying their ice cream—people that support their views or people who are so addicted to their Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough that they don’t give a f*** what Ben & Jerry’s think.

But my marketing team (me) was a little underfunded to understand our customer avatar.

So, I don’t have a good guess as to what’s going to happen next.

I also won’t have a good guess as to what will happen after I create a website page that’s dedicated to explaining how we’ll fight racism as a business.

And I won’t have a good guess as to what will happen when a long-term client says something that seems innocuous on the surface but underneath is steeped in racism, and I politely tell her that her comment is not tolerated here.

There’s a reason why I’ve kept activism and business separate all of my life.

It’s called I don’t want to jeopardize making a living.

I don’t tell clients I’m a vegan.

I don’t tell them I marched with women in DC.

And I certainly don’t tell them I’m an atheist.

Did you just feel the sink-your-business effect?

Just one of those alone, veganism, women’s rights or atheism, may make you want to stop reading my blog right now.

Shut up, Mark.

You’re out of your box.

Stuff it.

Stuffing it is what I’ve done in the massage room for most of my career.

Besides preserving my job, stuffing it does have another benefit.

If when you stuff it, you can step away from your reaction, there’s an opportunity to actually listen.

And as one seasoned massage therapist wisely reminded me last week: When a client is on your table and you provide her space to talk out loud without judgment, there’s room for her to change.

In the vegan world there’s an evolutionary psychologist, Doug Lisle, who has a phrase for this subtle form of “activism”: Getting along without going along.

De-escalate. Insert your thought, feeling, or example in a non-threatening way. Step back and let the person work it out herself.

Massage, having to establish therapeutic rapport with a client, naturally sets us up for getting along without going along.  

Denny, was a client of mine who was a dentist. We shared a connection around human rights, and he talked a lot about his experiences of discrimination as a person of color both growing up and professionally.  

During some of the human rights conversation he’d talk about his faith and his strong connection to Catholic church. Then one day he boxed me into a corner about my beliefs where I either had to out myself or lie to him, and I knew he wanted the truth.

So, reluctantly, I told him that I wasn’t a believer.

He was shocked and then blurted out: How can you be so nice?

Our business relationship didn’t end. Our passionate conversations didn’t end. But what did end was his perception that all atheists are d****.

In the vegan world there’s an activist, Gary Yourofsky, who uses the opposite approach for change. It’s the enough-is-enough approach.

The enough-is-enough approach is blunt force. It’s an assault. It causes guilt, shame and trauma to activate change.

The video of the murder of George Floyd is this.

Watch it once and you’re outraged, disgusted, and angry.

Watch it again and you’re even more outraged, disgusted and angry.

Watch again and again and again and you have to do something to make that video (now in your head) never happen again.

Gary Yourofsky tells young adults not to look away from the videos of cows being punched and kicked, and baby chicks being ground alive.

Chris Cuomo on CNN tells viewers not to look away from the police officers who slowly and tortuously murdered George Floyd.

They know that trauma and re-trauma make you feel bad emotions, like shame, guilt, and sadness. These emotions spur brain change.

After the Women’s March in DC, I was working on Bob, a client of 20 years. Bob is white, in his 70s and a nice guy.

When he entered the massage room and as I closed the door he said: Wow, that person that just left was the prettiest woman I ever saw.

He then went on and tried to engage me in locker room talk, assuming that since I had a penis, I shared his thoughts.

I shut him down. Cold.

Bob’s face turned red. He was embarrassed and ashamed. And he knew he would have to work his ass off to restore cred with me.

He immediately apologized and went on about how he had never done that with me before.

I let him talk without saying a word. Eventually, he stopped by saying that he would never do it again.

He hasn’t.

Has he changed?

I don’t know.

To me, that moment wasn’t about facilitating change. That moment was enough is enough, time for the hammer on the head.

Both Denny and Bob stayed as clients even though I used different tools, getting-along-without-going-along and enough-is-enough, to handle the situation.

But you should know that the enough-is-enough example with Bob is a little misleading. I had a long-standing relationship with Bob and we had tough conversations. You’re taking a risk if you choose the enough-is-enough method with a new client.

For me, I’m consciously adding more enough-is-enough tactics into my business model.

A statement supporting Black Lives Matter and a webpage dedicated to how we as a business are going to fight racism are outright enough-is-enough tactics.

Since I can’t predict how people landing on my website will feel about this I have to accept that I may lose some potential clients.

If that happens, there’s a remedy: I’ll put my energy into finding  clients through other forms of advertising, like referral sources.

Not allowing, Susan, a long-term client to say a veiled, racist comment is an enough-is-enough approach.

If I lose Susan as a client, I’ll find another client.

I know I’m sounding callous, and I do care about my clients deeply.

But here’s what I care about more: True equality.

Sorry, Susan, I’m not waiting another 10 years for you to make a modicum of change towards being less racist.

My four godchildren will be 11, 15, 17, and 19 by then. They need equality now.

Well, that’s where I’m at with my anti-racism checklist for my business. How about you?

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