Podcast

Sometimes we get in our own way when trying to set up tools in our business. Let’s stop doing that.

Sponsored by: Acuity & The Jojoba Company.

Transcript:

Sponsor message This episode is sponsored by Acuity, our 2018 software of choice. Acuity scheduling is your online assistant working 24/7 to fill your schedule. No more phone tag. Clients can quickly view your real-time availability and self-book their own appointments and even pay online and reschedule with a click. Handle all of your forms before the appointment so you can get right to doing the massage you do best. Look and act professional by offering convenient scheduling to your clients that matches your brand and your voice. Customer support is a delight, and Acuity’s style will help you relax and have fun running your business again. Check out the special 45-day free offer at massagebusinessblueprint.com/acuity.

Allissa Haines Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Massage Business Blueprint podcast, where we discuss the business side of massage therapy. I am Allissa — I am stuttering over my own name.

Michael Reynolds (Laughter) I am blerg Michael Reynolds.

AH (Laughter)

MR And we’re here to talk business.

AH I am Allissa Haines, and I am a professional podcaster. (Laughter)

MR Oh, boy. This is episode 227? Is that right?

AH Episode 227, yeah.

MR We’re still not very good at this are we?

AH We’re hitting our four-year anniversary, Michael.

MR Oh, we are. Yeah. Hey.

AH What?

MR That kind of blew right past us, didn’t it?

AH And — it did. We don’t — we just — we have too much going on in the spring to be able to deal with that. But so yeah. We had over 30,000 downloads last month, so that’s pretty exciting. That’s exciting to know.

MR Yeah, yeah.

AH And in celebration of that, I am not doing any work this episode and letting you handle it.

MR Beautiful.

AH So Michael, you have informed me that the topic for today is there is no perfect system. Would you like to expand on that?

MR I would love to. This is going to be more of a short little rant on my part. So thanks for bearing with me. So I’ve been thinking recently and I’ve been kind of encountering this over, you know, the two decades I’ve been in the business world in general in that I’ve always found that people are always looking for a perfect system or a perfect tool or perfect app or the perfect software to do the thing they want to do. And it’s always caused trouble because it doesn’t exist.

So this is more of a kind of pep talk today because often we get really hung up on okay, we want to bring in clients and our online scheduling in a certain way, we want the intake process to go a certain way, and we want exactly what we want. Or we want to have an accounting system or a money system or a financial tool or billing system or something physical in our office. Maybe we want some piece of equipment to work a certain way, and there’s always something that we want to do something for us. And we always get really hung up — or we often get really hung up on searching so much for that perfect tool or perfect app or perfect system that we end up kind of going down this infinite road of never-ending analysis when we could just be getting by with what’s good enough and moving on about our business.

One example that kind of brought this up for me recently is there is a software tool that I was helping someone else in a consultative role, I was helping them figure out what software app to get to do a certain thing. And they had all these specific requirements and a long list of things it had to do. And their process was so strict that when we started looking at all of the software and the tools out there to do this thing, it became apparent that there was no one tool that would do everything they wanted to do. And so we kind of went down this road of well, we’re searching for all these tools, all these apps, all this software, and nothing’s going to do it. And I think we often all kind of get into this mindset where there’s got to be something out there, there’s got to be a tool or an app or a software platform out there that’s going to do exactly what I want. And frequently it doesn’t exist, and we need to kind of get over that and move on and be willing to accept the 80% of what it will do and kind of go about it and run our business. So that’s kind of my general rant to start off with. I want to do a quick halftime and then I want to kind of talk about how to deal with this and kind of how to overcome it.

So with that, Allissa, who is our halftime sponsor?

AH Jojoba. And jojoba’s coming to you with a very exciting June 2019 offer. You can get 20% off — I said it wrong, darn it. You can get 20% off orders of —

MR It’s just an exciting deal. You can’t contain your excitement.

AH I can’t control myself right now. 20% off orders of $35 or more when you shop through our link massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba. But what — why would you want to use jojoba? Well, I want to use jojoba because it’s the only company in the world that carries 100% pure, first-pressed quality jojoba. And we learned this when we were hanging out with them at an event recently. Other companies try to squeeze as much extract as they can from the seed, but The Jojoba Company does a light press, called a first press, on the seed. They don’t get as much in quantity, but it is by far a better-quality jojoba on the market. It won’t leave your clients — I’m going off script today. It will not leave your clients slimy. You can use a very little bit — I’m actually going to be posting on my Instagram what — how much I use. I fill a bottle every two and a half weeks. It is all that I use. I actually tracked how many clients I saw with an 8-ounce bottle and took pictures of the beginning of that and then went and took pictures of it when I refilled it, and I use less than 8 ounces every two weeks. So I fill like, essentially, two bottles a month tops. So I’m going to be posting pictures of that. So you use very little and it goes a long way. You can get more glide or less glide. You can get exactly the amount of friction that you want. It doesn’t leave clients feel slimy, which is a really big deal when we’re like in weird muggy, wet spring around here, and clients don’t want to feel slimy when they leave the office, and especially through the summer so their skin doesn’t feel gross. And in the winter, it’s super conditioning to the skin. So that’s my off-script jojoba ad. Again, massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba, June 2019, you will get 20% off all orders of $35 or more. You can stock up because jojoba does not go rancid. It can sit on your shelf for years and not be gross, so stock up now. And if you’re sad because you missed this special in June, please know that you can always get 10% off. So even if you miss our June 2019 special, you can get 10% off in the future. And that is what I have to say about jojoba, Michael.

MR I like it when you go off script.

AH Thank you. Thank you very much.

MR You should do that more often.

AH Okay.

MR So wrapping up — told you this would be kind of a short rant today, but I want to wrap up with a little bit of a pep talk on how to get past this mindset of hey, there’s a perfect tool out there that does what I want that I just have yet to find it. No, you won’t find it. So here is kind of how to get past that.

First, be willing to change your process. If you have this certain set of things in your mind that you think it’s how it should work, but the software that you’ve been looking at or the different — the list of software you’ve been looking at, nothing really matches exactly what you want, be willing to change your process. If you have a certain online scheduling process that you want to happen and nothing does exactly that, be willing to be flexible. Tweak your process to match the tool that you’ve chosen. There is nothing wrong with that. Often, we just get in our own way and we don’t let that happen.

If there is an accounting system or bookkeeping system or the way you invoice or the way you want to do something else in your business, if it’s that your process is so strict that it keeps you from picking something to match it, try to match your process to the software. If you are in the mindset that you want to have one tool that does everything, for example, you want something that does online scheduling and SOAP notes and intake and marketing stuff and email marketing and everything, and you’re having trouble finding something that does all those things just the way you want, be willing to use more than one tool. Use, maybe, MailChimp or Sendinblue or something for email marketing and maybe use Acuity for scheduling and maybe use Google Drive for intake and notes and — you can mix and match stuff and that is okay. That is what most people — and everyone else really, does.

So I really just want to kind of reassure a lot of our listeners that if you’re having trouble finding the perfect tool or the perfect software for a thing in your business, it’s because it really doesn’t exist. So be willing to be flexible, modify your process in the way you do business to kind of match the leading tools out there that doe these things already, and be okay with maybe buying more than one thing. Maybe you need two or three different apps to do your whole client intake and billing process. Maybe you need four or five different apps, and that is okay. As long as they do the job well and you have your own system and process for plugging them in at the right points along the way, that generally is a very good solution. So seeking perfection will frustrate you, but seeking the 80 to 90% of good enough will often be what it takes to keep your business moving forward with good momentum.

And that’s my rant. What do you think?

AH I totally agree, and I see people get suck in this and it becomes a decision-fatigue issue when you’re trying to choose software or tools or whatever. Nothing is ever going to be perfect —

MR Right.

AH Unless you decide to hire a software team and develop a system that’s exactly right for exactly what you want it, it’s not going to be perfect. It just isn’t, and there’s a reason — and here’s the thing. Even if someone creates a system that does all of the things, you’re probably going to be annoyed at how much it costs. That’s just the reality. (Laughter)

MR Yeah.

AH So — because I see it — I think about what I use for scheduling and charts and some people use separate paid systems for scheduling and SOAP notes and bookkeeping and blah, blah, blah, and you think about what you pay for all of that together, and it’s probably like $200 a month. But if someone offers a full-on system that’s like $200 you’d be like, oh, that’s way too much money to spend. So there’s that —

MR (Laughter)

AH — there’s the fact that we cannot — whatever. And the reality is, if that system existed, it’s not going to do exactly the thing that you want it to do. So you just need to get over it and adjust a little bit and accept that it might take you an extra minute after ever client to flip screens and keep your SOAP notes in a different place from your schedule, but it’s a minute and you can do SOAP notes for free on Google Drive. Or like you just got to get over it and accept that there’s just going to be a certain amount of stuff that you have to do sometimes. And just do it. Just make it ritual and do it, and it’s going to save you all of the aggravation of feeling angry that there’s not a system that does exactly what you want it to do. (Laughter)

MR (Laughter) Don’t be angry.

AH It’s just a reality. Yeah, just get over ourselves sometimes. And that’s okay.

MR That’s okay.

AH And that’s all I have. I think you’re absolutely right and I think this was worth an episode because we just can’t get out of our own darned way.

MR Story of my life sometimes.

AH Finished is better than perfect.

MR There you go. Take it away.

AH Progress, not perfection. I’m done.

MR Take it away, Allissa.

AH Oh, that’s right. I’m supposed toc lose out the episode today.

MR You’re hosting today, right?

AH Yes, I am. Badly. I’m badly hosting today.

MR (Laughter)

AH This is why you’re normally in charge of it. So I’m usually in charge or rants, and you’re usually in charge of hosting. So anyhow, this has been your hopefully efficient and helpful pep talk. If you have stuff you want us to cover, business and marketing related questions in your massage practice, you can email us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. And that goes to me and Michael. We will totally get back to you. If you find us helpful, please go to your podcasting outlet and leave us a review. And if you don’t find us helpful, then just turn us off and that’s fine.

MR (Laughter)

AH So everyone, podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. We’re happy to help you. We think you’re great. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day.

MR Thanks, everyone.

AH Bye.