What are your hours?

[Frankie Baby 82]

Just curious as to what hours you keep and which hours seem to be most preferred by your clients?

 

[vikki94]

I take appointments between 8am and 7pm Tuesday through Thursday, 8am to 4 pm on Fridays, and 8am to 2 pm on Saturdays. But, I am not there all those hours, only when I have appointments or if there is some down time between appointments.

I do my best to cluster my appointments and when I have 5 or 6 appointments for the day, I stop booking appointments. I generally dont hang out in my office for hours and hours if I dont have an appointment. That is the nice thing about owning my own businesses!

 

[BritneyHill]

I'm just getting started, so it is a mixed bag. Lately my appts seem to run later in the day, starting at 3 and I prefer to finish by 7. Saturdays from 9-3. I'm always available from 10am to 7pm, but just don't seem to fill those early day slots.

I don't hang out at the salon when I don't have appts, which in the salon world seems a sin. The stylists and nail techs grow clientele by waiting for walk-ins, but I don't feel that massage is a "walk-in" kind of business. I've had a couple of walk-ins, but not enough to make me hang around waiting for more. I prefer to work by appt., and spend my off hours marketing.

when I have 5 or 6 appointments for the day, I stop booking appointments

GreatttLakes, I would die and go to heaven if I had 5 appts a day!

 

[Lizzie]

Ditto everything Pete wrote, including the DSL/insurance/30 minute sessions, etc. Except that I take appts from 9-2 on Saturday, and try to hold out an entire day free during the week. (usually Thursday.)

 

[bearsma90]

Christine, do you find you have a lot of people who want to come in at 8am?

Oh God, YES!! I end up coming in for 8am appointments every saturday and at least 1 other day a week, sometimes two.

I am not a fan of mornings, but since I had quite a few clients asking about them, I changed my hours.

 

[Gone !]

11am - 8pm (or later -- I do not list this on any paperwork - but tell regular and out of town clients who may need these later appointments) - Wednesday through Friday

2pm - 6pm (I book these hours first and then book into the morning as overflow once these are filled up and again, I don't advertise anything except the posted hours) - Saturday

My clients like more lunch and afterwork hours. Of course there are a few who wish I was in the office in the morning, but I am not a morning person and would rather work until midnight (and do so on occasion) than get up to fight rush hour traffic. I drive almost an hour without traffic to get to work, so that would be an hour and a half just to get there - with traffic. No thanks!

 

[NecropolisXR]

Now that I have my office all to myself (roommate is gone, woohoo!) my new hours are:

Monday 9am-7pm
Tuesday 9am-7pm
Wednesday 9am-5pm
Thursday 2pm-7pm
Friday 9am-1pm
Saturday and Sunday vary based on my schedule but I try not to book people

Now, I'm not in the office all of those hours, I'm only there if I have clients and of course, I get the occasional client that needs a time I'm not normally in there but hey, I have to accomodate them! It's nice to have a "set" schedule though so I can schedule other stuff around it.

 

[M.Shadows fan]

i pretty much work whenever i need to. i take appointments starting at 9am (occasionally earlier if someone needs to) and stay as late at 7 or 8. i take appointments 7 days a week. i block off time if my daughter has something going on with school and i try not to schedule more than 5 clients in a day. my schedule varies from week to week but i usually find myself in the office every day. i try not to work too many nights in a row because i like to be home with my little mama.

 

[Gmoney1000]

I work Tuesday through Friday:

1st appointment: 10:30 AM
Last appointment: 5:00 PM

I understand why some people choose to be available more hours when they're first starting out (to catch every appointment they can.) But that can be so exhausting. Even doing just one massage per day 7 days a week would burn me out in no time. I need time off that I KNOW is time off, rather than being constantly on-call. I also need more than one day off in a row to truly rejuvenate and stay enthusiastic in my career. That's why I've always worked the above schedule, even when I first started my practice. I never worked evenings or weekends, and I've never regretted that decision.

 

[Jassy]

7am-8pm m-f
8-5 s-s

That said, I have lots of time off.

When someone calls, I do not seem quite so available. "I've got just a little time left on Friday..."

 

[loose change]

My hours are evenings and some weekends. The only daytime hours I work are on Tuesdays, when I have a full day every week at senior apartments. That day is FULL - I work 10 am - noon and 1:30 - 8:30 pm.

I am a night owl. I hate mornings. I don't even like morning people. :? I don't dislike them personally, just the general chipper attitude...(just in case you are a morning person ), and I have clients who love to roll off the massage table and into bed for the night. We're glad we found each other.

 

[mr. macfriendly]

Mine are M & W 9:30 (first client) to 7:45 (last client). Fridays are a bit shorter, with my last client starting at 4:00. Occasionally I'll come in for a client or two on a Thursday evening or a Saturday morning but that really depends on my family schedule. My regular days are usually full in the morning and the late afternoon/evening, which gives me time for lunch and any errands I might need to run where I don't want to tote kids along with me. Or, of course, to get a massage myself.

mamejen

 

[banananose_89117]

Hours are: 12noon-6pm Tue-Fri and Saturdays 10am-2pm with Sundays and Mondays off. I rarely work past noon on Saturdays and I am usually home by 6:30-7pm during the week.

 

[piink]

I work MWF 10-2, TuTh 5:30pm-10pm and Sunday 10-6. This way, I get to meet the needs of daytime/evening/weekend clients without sacrificing time for myself or my family. Tu/Thur is a little difficult though, after being with a 5 year old and not-yet-2 yr old all day!

 

[Emily W]

When we're on break from school (like right now--yay!), we take appointments starting at 10:30am and the last appointment gets done by 11pm on weekdays, Saturdays starting at 10am & finishing up by 7:30pm, and Sundays are special cases only, or if we've had a slower week, or as a favor for a regular client, we'll do a 10:30 or a noon appointment. But we're done as early as possible.

When we get back into school, classes will eat up our daytime hours except on Fridays, when we have a half-day at school. ("School" for us is chiropractic school which is JUST like med school except in the 3rd & 4th years you learn more assessing & adjusting than pharmacology & surgery--it's 28-32 hours per week class time plus an hour each way commute). The plan is that our hours will most likely be:
Monday 8:30pm (that's our only slot) (8:30-10pm) We'll book this day last, if possible.
Tuesday 6:30 & 8:30pm slots (6:30-10pm) (those are our most popular slots with regulars, and we have a small following of Tuesday regulars.)
Wednesday & Friday 2:00-10:00pm
Thursday (probably same as Mon or Tues, not sure which yet)
Saturday 10-8pm

Like others, we try to cluster appointments together efficiently. We always put a half hour in between (to wash stones, change sheets, do soaps, schmooze with clients before or after, etc), and with new clients, we ALWAYS build an EXTRA half hour in between, because they're invariably late (haven't been here before) and do things a little differently than the "competition". This works out GREAT for us.

Oh well, just my ramblings again...thunderstorms especially tend to do that to me.
Hugs,
~Jyoti

 

[Ballet Dancer]

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 9:30 AM - 7 PM
Tuesday 9:30 AM - 5 PM
Friday - sometimes 9:30 AM - 12 Noon - depends on whether I am teaching classes in Columbus [1 hr drive away] that week/month - if no classes, then sometimes I take afternoon appts as well

Anything else is by special arrangement between the client and myself.

Working from a home office makes it easier to be accomodating, but, I don't go nuts making exceptions just because the office is so darned handy.