Hands-on business keeps him in touch.

• Position: Joel Tull; Human Touch

When Joel Tull shows up around tax time at an accounting firm or the Internal Revenue Service, he's a sight for sore eyes - and backs and necks.

"Those IRS and accounting people - the musculature of their backs is really tight," Tull says. "I'll put a finger on the middle of a back, and it feels like a rock."

Tull, 39, and his massage staff knead stiff necks, shoulders and arms of uptight office workers. Companies such as Greensboro accounting firm Robertson Neal & Co. have hired him to bring in a portable massage chair and let his hands go to work.

On-site office massages make up a small part of Tull's business at Human Touch in Greensboro, but they are becoming increasingly popular, he says. He also does individual and group sessions, workshops, classes and table rentals and sales.

Tull has been developing his technique since his days as trainer for his high-school track team in Arkansas. He would have done it for a living back then, but its image rubbed him the wrong way: "I was not comfortable being a masseur, and I didn't want to be a physical therapist, working on sick body parts."

He graduated from Arkansas' Hendricks College in 1972 and taught seventh grade for a year before heading to Massachusetts to work as a counselor on a farm for troubled boys. In 1974...