Podcast

Setting goals, even arbitrary ones, can be a useful tool to build motivation in your massage business.

This episode is sponsored by:

• Center for Barefoot Massage
• PurePro Massage Products

Transcript:

Sponsor message This episode is sponsored by the Center for Barefoot Massage. The Center for Barefoot Massage offers Ashiatsu continuing education classes across the country. They focus on a unique blend of anatomy-driven, game-changing, career-saving “FasciAshi” courses that will “toe-tally” empower you to provide massage techniques with your feet. With this alternative to wearing out your fingers, wrists, and shoulders, they’ll work to invigorate your career and enhance your quality of life. And it all starts from your foundation: your feet. Visit massagebusinessblueprint.com/barefoot to visit more and sign up to win a free day of training. That’s massagebusinessblueprint.com/barefoot.

Michael Reynolds Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Massage Business Blueprint podcast, where we discuss the business side of massage therapy. I’m Michael Reynolds. 

Allissa Haines And I am Allissa Haines.

MR And we are your hosts. We’re glad you’ve joined us today. And for once, we have a reason to talk about the weather. Because it’s insane.

AH I can’t even. I am sitting here waiting for the snow to stop because this is going to be our fourth northeaster in like —

MR Nor’easter?

AH — nor’easter, we’re getting a nor’easter — in under 2 weeks, under 14 days. I think it’s 13 days now. Yeah. I’m so tired. I have to shovel out even after the plowing to just get enough parking spaces in my parking lot because we keep losing a space every time we get a storm, and I’m just struggling, people.

MR In my head, your house is buried in snow, you’ve got to shovel out, you’re in the big burka thing, and you’re eating gulag, and —

AH I know.

MR — and you’re in hysteria.

AH It’s not even that bad. It’s just a couple feet of snow pushed to the sides of everything. It’s not even that the amount of snow has been terrible, although it hasn’t been great. Just the force and the power of these storms — it’s the wind. There’s so much wind and the snow has been so heavy — it’s not the light, fluffy snow — that trees are downed. You can pretty much guarantee we’re going to lose power because trees, like hundred-year-old trees are uprooting because of the weight of the snow and the power of the wind. So we can handle a snowstorm. These are powerful, windy nor’easters. These are like hurricanes, only with snow. It’s crazy 70-, 80-, 90-mile-an-hour winds. So anyhow, that’s my weather report. I am — the snow’s going to start in about an hour. And there’s another storm predicted for the end of the weekend, although that one seems to be not a big deal and maybe rain. So that’s where we’re at in New England. How are you in Indianapolis, Michael?

MR Oh, not quite the same. We just have an inch of snow on the ground and everyone’s talking about it on Facebook, so I figure that gave us license to talk about it too. Other than that, we’re fine. Yeah, it’s pretty mild here. Just a little bit — just a dusting of snow really.

AH I’m definitely hitting the end of winter. Even though spring started yesterday, I’m having an end of winter depression situation where I just want to hide under my electric —

MR I know. We’re just done.

AH –yeah, yeah. I managed to fend it off all winter, because it’s definitely a seasonal thing. And we’ve talked about my depression here on this podcast before, so I’m just going to share it with everyone. I’m having a hard two weeks where I just want to crawl under my electric blanket and not come out until there are daffodils everywhere. That’s where we’re at this morning, people. And we’re recording in the morning. Yay! So I’ve had plenty of coffee. And why don’t you tell us about our topic today.

MR I will tell us about our topic today. Our topic is a quick goal-setting tip for massage therapists. Yay! Goal setting. I like nice, quick, actionable things, so I’m on the edge of my seat today.

AH Right? And this is so — if you’ve already rolled your eyes and felt like you’d be bored by this topic or my weather report, just stick with me because this is a super quick one, and that’s what I like about it.

And here’s the moral of the story: is that setting goals, even kind of arbitrary ones, can be really, really helpful if you’re struggling with your mojo. If you’re struggling to light a fire under yourself and just get stuff done, and if you’ve fallen into complacency, if your numbers are just a hint too low, but not so low that you’re worried about paying your grocery bill or your rent, sometimes little goals can be super helpful to just push you and light a fire under your butt. In a perfect world, we would all sit down and we would make business plans and marketing plans, and we’d structure our time really well and be organized and grow our businesses smoothly and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we do not live in a perfect world, and we are real people with real lives with imperfect systems and certainly imperfect habits. So while I love the notion that we’re all going to do things really ordered and structured from the beginning, that’s not reality.

So my mission for you this week, my mission for you with this episode is to just pick one simple goal. One goal that you can easily state and measure, something that’s so easy you don’t even need to write it down to remember it, although I’m going to suggest you write it down. Pick that one goal and then choose two things that you can do to make it happen. Two little tasks related to it to make it happen. I’m going to give you some examples. And then do those things every day for a certain period of time.

So here’s my example. At the end of February — or the beginning of — or, pardon me — the end of January or it might have been the beginning of February, I decided that I really wanted this podcast to hit 20,000 downloads in a month. We’d come close to it; we were averaging between 10- and 20,000 a month, but I really wanted it to hit 20,000 downloads in February. So I thought about the things I could do to make that happen. And I did this without even talking to Michael. I was just like, in my head, this should be a goal. And then I was like Hey, Michael, I’m going to make this a goal, and he was like, Yeah, whatever. Do what you want. I got stuff going down.

So I was, okay, I want 20,000 downloads of this podcast in February. What are the things I need to do? I need to religiously post each new episode on Twitter and on Instagram. Michael already has them posted on Facebook; that’s part of his tasks. And then what’s the next thing I want to do to help me reach 20k, 20,000 downloads in February? I can ask for help. I can ask other people to share our podcast links in order to increase the number of downloads and in order to increase the number of people listening to our podcast. So I did that. So that’s two things. All I had to do was make sure I posted each new episode on Twitter and Instagram, and then ask for people to help.

So I did that. I made some notes in my bullet journal to remind me to do this stuff every day. And not every thing I had to do every day. This actually took me way less time than I thought. I made sure every time a new podcast episode came out, I posted on Twitter and Instagram, and then I shared with my little tribe of massage therapists, Hey, if you’ve been listening to the podcast and it’s helped you, could you just be sure to share episodes when we post them? And then I did the same thing in our group of premium members, our private Facebook group for premium members, and said, Hey, when we post these podcast episodes or you have a favorite episode, can you share it with your massage friends? And it turned out that a whole bunch of people didn’t realize that the podcast was free and available to everyone because they’d never accessed it from the website or they’d only listened to it from iTunes. And so it turned out that this was a really good educational opportunity and just sharing it with people and asking for help helped them realize that they could, in fact, share it and tell more people about it.

So there was a little bonus here where Michael got on board — he was always on board, but it was just my project. And we had an extra interview episode that we weren’t sure if we were going to publish at the end of February or at the beginning of March, and Michael was like, No, no, no, I really want — it was a couple days before the end of February and he was like I really, really want to get us to 20,000 episodes, so let’s get this episode out this week. And he stayed up a little later to get that episode ready to publish so that we had one more episode to publish at the end of February, and we totally hit more — we hit like 21,000 downloads in February.

MR I’m such a martyr.

AH You’re such a martyr. And it was really great, and it made us feel really good, and it made — it’s not just about how Michael and I feel, it helped us — doing this little push helped us reach more massage therapists. That’s our goal here. We want you to have happier lives and more successful businesses. And the more of you that listen to this, the more of you are going to have happier businesses and successful lives. It was borderline arbitrary. This wasn’t a huge thing that was dramatically going to change the course of Massage Business Blueprint. But it was fun. It was easy to execute. And I felt so good and so motivated about it that it’s carried through into the next couple of months and to how we are promoting our podcasting. I’m doing a lot more tweeting about it, a lot more instagramming, I’m talking to a lot more people about what they want to hear on our podcast, and it’s really had a positive impact.

I’m going to give you guys an example of how this could be implemented in an actual massage business because I don’t like to teach marketing based on how we market our marketing business because I hate that. That’s so annoying. But before I do that, Michael, tell me about who our halftime sponsor is today.

MR We are giving a shout-out to Pure Pro today.

AH Yay, Pure Pro. So Pure Pro is one of my faves. It’s the product that I use. And I think today we’ll talk about the pedango.

Sponsor message For over 24 years, Pure Pro has distinguished itself by adhering to the values of quality, purity, efficacy, and education. And one of my favorite Pure Pro products is peppermint pedango foot cream. Partly because it’s really fun to say “Pure Pro product peppermint pedango foot cream.” Almost every massage I give at my office ends with a foot massage that includes a little dab of pedango, and clients love how it calms and cools tired legs and feet. It is packed with activated arnica extract to reduce tenderness and swelling, and it’s just a great cooling feeling if your feet have been stuck in thick shoes and socks all day — like it is here in New England in the winter that I’m continuously whining about — and it makes your feet feel really good and perky and peppy for the rest of the day. It’s also really good for varicose veins, low back pain, and sciatic soreness because of all that arnica. And I can attest that it keeps my feet and legs happy all through a long day of giving massage. All Pure Pro products are vegan, cruelty free, nut free. They make your job really safe as a mindful practitioner. You can trust Pure Pro because it’s made by massage therapists for massage therapists. If you want to get $10 off your next order, you can go to purepro.com and use the one-time discount code BLUEPRINT at checkout.

AH All right Michael. Did I cover that? That was enthusiastic because I really do love pedango.

MR Well, that’s because you love Pure Pro —

AH I do.

MR — so I think that’s a very authentic sponsorship.

AH Thank you. Thank you.

MR [laughs] Which is — we’re all about being authentic here.

AH Yeah. So what we’re popping in to next is an actual example of this goal-setting for your massage business. And we’re going to use an example named Jane because that’s the name I came up with when I was making notes.

Jane wants to improve her rebooking rates. They’re inconsistent. She looked back at her schedule and saw that about 45% of the time, clients will rebook at the time of the appointment, and then another 15% or so call or rebook again randomly over the next 6 weeks. That’s about 55-60% or so of her clients. But she really wants to increase that. She wants 70-75% of her clients rebooking within 6 weeks.

There’s two things that she can do to improve her rebooking rates. And not rocket science here. She’s going to make sure that she asks every single client if they want to book their next appointment. And I’m always shocked when I talk to people and find out that this is not something that everyone does. But it’s not something that everyone does. If you haven’t always been asking people to rebook, now’s the time to get on board. Whatever you need to do to remind you and nudge you to do it, do it. Put a bright, shiny sticky note on your computer or your calendar or anything that you touch when you deal with post-massage stuff. Attach it to your Square device, put it in your cash drawer that you always open, whatever you got to do to remind you to say, “Would you like to book your next appointment?” And if someone doesn’t book their next appointment — if they say, “No I’m going to wait. I’m going to check my schedule and book online,” ask for permission to reach out in a certain number of days. So Jane’s going to say, “All right. Do you want me to check in with you in a week or so and send you that online booking link to remind you to book?” And if they say yes, then you can do that. All Jane’s going to do is ask every single client if they want to rebook and reach out in a certain number of days with that scheduling link if they didn’t rebook when they were in the office. And she’s going to do that viciously, religiously, strategically, for every single client.

So when someone says, Sure you can touch base with me in a week, she’s going to make a note for whatever a week away is, and she’s going to say Reach out to Bob about making appointment via text, via phone call, via email, whatever Bob prefers. And then after a month of doing that, doing that really, really well for every single client, she’s going to look at her rebooking rates and maybe by then they’ll be up to 70, 75%. And if they’re not and Jane still wants to continue with this mission — which I think she does because she’s going to start seeing the money come in and she’s going to like that — what’s the next step?

I don’t want to get too far past that. I’ll throw out a couple ideas in case you want to actually use this example. My next step would be to run a targeted Facebook ad that links into my email list so that only people who are on my email list see that targeted Facebook ad to remind them to rebook. Because if they weren’t responsive to a text or an email about rebooking, maybe they’ll be responsive to a Facebook ad. That might be my next thing. But it’s not a huge thing. This is not a thing that’s going to require hours of planning a marketing plan. It’s deciding she wants more clients to rebook more regularly and then taking one or two steps to make sure they do that. Period. What do you have to say, Michael?

MR Really the key is to be single-minded in your focus, and that’s what you’ve outlined. Most people try to do too many things at once. They try to do 5 or 7 or 10 different things at once, and they get overwhelmed. And if you pick one thing at a time and you focus on that one thing with everything you’ve got, you will accomplish that one thing.

AH And that’s really it. Don’t make this a bigger thing than it needs to be. And it might inspire you to do a bunch of other things. But I’d suggest you just makes notes about them and then hit them when your month is over.

MR Right on.

AH And that’s it.

MR I like it.

AH That’s it. You know what? I had an idea. It reminded me of a thing I’m doing and I may have shared this already. But one of my bigger weaknesses was tracking new clients coming in and also tracking in a way that I could easily access my appointment numbers week to week. So I made a page in my bullet journal, or you could do this with just a piece of whatever — paper or chart or graph paper. You could do it on your computer. I do better if I have a piece of paper showing in front of me. You could hang it up somewhere in your office that only you see. I made a little chart of my weekly numbers for this month — pardon me, for this year. And at the end of every week when I’m totally up my money, I make note of how many appointments I had, how much new money that brought in, and how many new clients were in those client numbers. And it’s been so helpful for me to, at a glance, just have that one page in my bullet journal that I look at every week as I’m doing my money stuff. And it’s really lit a fire under my butt to get my client numbers back up because it’s been a terrible winter with the flu season and all of these storms, and I’ve had a lot of flu cancellations and then snow days I’ve had to cancel, so my numbers have been way down for this quarter. But just having that list there and being able to see really quickly what my client numbers were last week helps me, helps motivate me to take action to bring them up for the next week if I have to. So whatever you need to do to put something in your line of sight, do it. I’m done. For realz.

MR Love it. For realz?

AH For realz?

MR For realz. [Laughs] All right. We’ll wrap there. Hey, I’m going to do something — I didn’t ask you if it was okay, but I’m going to go ahead and do it. At the end of our podcast episodes, we occasionally shout out to our reviewers. And we’ve gotten some new reviews. Do you mind if I share one?

AH Do it. I could use the boost.

MR All right. [laughs] Well, we love our reviews, by the way, so we do look at all of our iTunes reviews for the podcast, and the latest one is from a few weeks ago. It’s from Jen. And Jen said — she gave us five stars, by the way. Thank you, Jen. She said, “I started listening to Allissa and Michael a few months before I started massage school, and I haven’t stopped since. That was almost three years ago, and the value that this podcast and MBB premium membership has added to my massage business is priceless. They address real business issues head on. They coach and guide you to be the absolute best you can be. They are no BS and cut to the chase” — I think that’s accurate — “to take your business to the next level. This podcast is a must.” We really appreciate that, Jen.

And that’s just an example of some of the reviews we’ve gotten, and we really appreciate that and any reviews that are forthcoming. So if you have a review for us, whether it’s good or bad — we want to hear honest feedback, so if you have something you’d like to see us do better, give us a note on that as well. We really appreciate iTunes reviews and it helps other people like you find us. So thank you, thank you, thank you for that. We’ll wrap it up there. Our website is massagebusinessblueprint.com. If you have topics or questions for us that you want us to bring up in future episodes, email us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. Until then, we’ll see you next time. Thanks, everyone.

AH Bye.