“It’s the best decision I have made in my life”
Leila Mazouz one of our students recently gave up her full time job as a tax inspector to become a full time massage therapist.
Leila shares how she became interested in massage and what a difference qualifying as a massage therapist has made to her life. She also shares her advice to anyone considering pursuing a career in complementary medicine.
Leila had benefitted herself from massage therapy as she regularly had massages since the age of 18 to help with her lower back pain. Having seen the benefits herself, she decided to learn more to help her mother who had a problem with her shoulders. Leila found a book and learnt the technique from it and practiced on her mother.
Shortly after moving to Englands in search of work, the mother of one of her friends asked if she would give her a massage as she was recovering from surgery and was in pain. Her friend seeing the results her mother was having asked Leila for a massage and aftwards suggested that Leila should take massage up as a profession because her massage was so amazing.
Even though she had been doing massage for 10 – 15 years she had never thought of being a massage therapist herself.
The seed was planted in Leila’s mind. However, it was another year before Leila got up the confidence to go onto the internet to research training options to become a qualified massage therapist. She had been worried that she would need medical qualifications prior to commencing her training and was pleased to find that she didn’t require any to get started, only good written and verbal skills.
She set about researching on the internet for training schools and counts herself lucky to have found Richdales.
Leila says “I chose Richdales for 3 reasons:
- It was in Hammersmith Hospital which gave it medical credibility
- I liked the Syllabus and was impressed by the profile of the teachers
- And finally it was an excellent price and I could pay by installments.”
After qualifying with her ITEC Diploma in Holistic Massage, Leila immediately set about building her client list.
Leila says ” During the course you need to do case studies and I took advantage of this to practice on a lot of people. After finishing the course many of my case studies became my clients.”
Leila continued to further her skill set by undertaking an ITEC Diploma in Sports Massage, whilst continuing her full time job and building her client list alongside.
Last month Leila gave up her full time job as a tax inspector to follow her passion as a full time sports massage therapist.
She says, “I should have given up my job before but I was scared. My first week I didn’t know how much I could earn. I’d had a full time job and I knew every month I had a certain amount of money – I knew my rent was going to be paid and all my bills were going to be paid.
That’s why it took me too long to give up my full time job – I was afraid.
The first week I was calling all my clients to see if they would book a massage that week. I worked with agencies as well and I was booked out from 10am – 10pm. But after my first week I was better able to work out my time.”
Leila truly believes her life has changed for the better.
She says “It’s amazing. I don’t need to wake up at 5am. I’m doing something I love and I’m always happy to get up out of bed. I had wanted to be a doctor a long time ago but didn’t have enough points to get to University to study medicine. Now I feel that I’m treating people, for me it’s not just relaxing people, I believe I’m treating the person. I am always happy when someone says ‘Oh I can move or I can do that’ – that brings me happiness.”
“I now have a better work/life balance. The good thing about now is that I can work anytime I want, any day I want, I can take holidays when I want. I can earn a lot – more than you can imagine. I can go for a walk in the park, I can do my shopping during the day, I can have my lunch in the park, I can enjoy the sun which I never enjoyed before. I have been here for 6 years in Englanad I never really enjoyed the sun because I was always indoors during the day and when I would go out it was dark. Now I get enough Vitamin D. I have time to train and go to the gym – I never used to have time. I had to do 15 hour days in my previous job to work overtime to earn more money as it didn’t pay enough.”
“I can do what I want”.
And finally, Leila’s 3 pieces of advice for anyone considering doing a course or pursuing a career in complementary medicine?
- Find a good school with good teachers
- You need to love your job because your client need to feel it to keep coming back to you
- Starting out, use agencies to source clients. There are also a lot of clinics that offer rooms to rent and you can leverage the clinic to build your own client list
“Just go for it – it’s the best decision I have made in my life.”
