Podcast

Episode 228

Jun 14, 2019

Continuing their annual-ish tradition, Allissa and Michael share their favorite podcasts for your summer listening! Psst- it’s not all work stuff.

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EPISODE 228

Continuing their annual-ish tradition, Allissa and Michael share their favorite podcasts for your summer listening! Psst- it’s not all work stuff.

Allissa

Michael

Other resources we mention:

Sponsored by: Acuity & The Jojoba Company. (Take note of the special June 2019 offer with Jojoba! 20% off orders of $35 or more through June with this link!)


Transcript:

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

Allissa Haines And I’m Allissa Haines.

MR We’re your hosts today. Welcome, welcome. Summer is upon us.

AH Oh —

MR So, well is it?

AH — heavy pollen season, so I’m sorry about the sniffling today.

MR [Laughing] Well, we’re sorry for the sniffling, but we are going to have some fun with our annual-ish tradition of —

AH Yeah.

MR — sharing our favorite summer podcasts for 2019. I like this episode. I have a lot of fun with it.

I really — I’ve had a really good rotation of podcasts in the past year, so I’m excited to share more. And I’m going to just point out now that in the show notes, we are going to have links to all of our podcasts as well as two other pieces: last year’s podcast about our summer listens and then I had written a blog post about seven podcasts that make me — they’re non-massage podcasts that make me a better massage therapist. So I’m going to put links to all those in there too. So if you’re just starting to get hip with podcasting — which Michael, can you do a quick description on what a podcast is?

MR I would love to.

AH Wait, no, people are listening to it, so it’s not like we need to do that, but go ahead.

MR Oh, you’re right. [Laughing]

AH I’m an idiot. All right, everybody.

MR So meta. [Laughing]

AH Sorry, if I was writing an article or talking to new people, I’d be like, Michael, tell people what a podcast is. But y’all are listening to it, so we just got real meta.

MR A podcast is this thing you’re doing right now. [Laughing]

AH And not for nothing, but we’re recording first thing in the morning, I haven’t finished my coffee, and Michael’s being a really good sport because I was like all right, we got to move this earlier, and this the topic we’re doing, get ready. Because I have to shoot out of town in a hurry to deal with some stuff and help some people with some things, and so Michael’s being a really good sport as always.

MR Bring it.

AH And I apologize for thinking that y’all needed to know what a podcast was.

MR [Laughing]

AH So let’s just jump in, shall we?

MR Let’s do it.

AH Okay. So I’m going to go with mine first. And I have a bunch of them because I’ve had a really good podcast year, like I said. So my very first recommendation — and this is probably — if you’re only going to pick one, this is the one I would ask you to pick — is a podcast called Hidden Brain. It’s an NPR podcast. It’s by a journalist named Shankar Vedantam, and it is — I’ll use their description “uses science and storytelling to reveal unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices, and direct our relationships.”

Now, it sounds like this is going to be a really heavy podcast, and it’s not. They take really important ideas and studies and research and they make it, like, real easy to understand. And it’s specifically important for massage therapists because they are really starting to bring in that whole bio-psycho-social approach to how the body feels and our reactions. And as an example, there’s a great episode, a couple episodes ago, about poverty and the ideas of inequality, and it actually talked about the physiological effects of poverty and how that stimulates the fight or flight response and how certain types of feelings when you witness inequality affect the body. It’s so important to us. They have an amazing episode about the placebo effect. They have a phenomenal interview with Alan Alda about communication, and they have a really good episode with Dr. Atul Gawande about checklists and systems that they’ve created to improve healthcare. So it’s really — it’s a good, fun listen; it’s interesting, and you will learn a ton that will pop up later and inform your work. So that’s my first and biggest. the Hidden Brain, people. And the links to think will be in the podcast notes.

Okay, so now for some different ones.

MR I’m intrigued. I’m going to check it out.

AH It’s really good. It’s just so good and it’s not crazy long. Most episodes are around a half an hour, I think. And some of them will top out at 50 minutes, but they’re easy listens and important, I think.

Okay. So the next one is just fun, and it’s called Last Seen. It’s all about the art heist that happened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which as they say, is the Holy Grail of art crime. The podcast looks at why not a single piece of artwork has been recovered from that thievery. So know a lot of people are into real crime podcasts. I can’t get into them because I don’t like violence or scary stuff. But that’s what’s really great about this particular podcast, Last Seen, is that it’s not violent or scary. It’s just intriguing and amazing.

MR Oh, my wife will like that one. Ariana likes true crime stuff. She’ll like that.

AH Yeah, it’s so good. And then when you guys visit Boston we can go to the museum, which is really great. Walt and I went several months ago. We got a library pass and went for almost free, and it’s really cool because it’s her house. It’s Isabella Stewart Gardner’s house. And she had a really amazing, eclectic taste in art, and the whole history of her is really interesting. And I’d live around her my whole life and never really gotten into it. And this crime happened, I think when I was in high school, but I had no awareness of it at the time. Anyhow, Last Seen.

There is another podcast that I know I’ve mentioned before. I want to mention again. It’s called Therapy for Humans. It is our friend, a former massage therapist and current psychotherapist, Rowan Blaisdell. And he’s real talk. He takes actual listener questions and answers them in a very therapist matter-of-fact way. He shares his insight. He gets real. He calls it “20 minutes of irreverent therapy…what could possibly go wrong.” That is Therapy for Humans. It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s informative, it helps me get outside my own head and think about how other people perceive things. It’s really good.

Then there is a podcast called ZigZag that I recently got Michael into. It’s Manoush Zomorodi and Jen Poyant, and they used to produce a podcast called Note to Self, which I totally recommended last year, and it was about where tech an humanity kind of merge. But ZigZag is more of an honest look at the culture of business and what needs to change. What I really like about this —

MR Can I — oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to comment but I’ll wait until you’re finished, and then I’m going to comment on something.

AH Please do. What I really like about this is they publish by season and each season kind of has a theme. The first one is all about their startup, and it also dives a little bit into cryptocurrency and how cryptocurrency — they tried to do this funding project with a journalism startup involving a crypto-venture situation. It was really — I can’t describe it well, but it helps me understand a lot, and it was also just really interesting. Season 2 is mostly about startups. Season 3 is about the life cycle of ideas in a business. And Season 4, which we’re in now, is talking a lot about new kind of business. But what I really love about this podcast is that it’s women-led, it’s a woman’s perspective. They talk — it’s not like an overly interview-y kind of podcast. I don’t love interview episodes. But it’s — when they do talk to other leaders, it’s a lot of women. It’s a lot of a younger — and a women’s approach to being leaders and being bosses, and I love it.

Michael, what were you going to say about ZigZag?

MR Well, yeah, I think I need some help with this one. I listened to one episode — the one you sent me — which I really liked partially. I love the concept of it. I love the fact the podcast is women-led. It’s about the Silicon Valley startup culture and all that stuff. But about halfway through I got impatient because they went down this rabbit hole of random conversation that kind of went nowhere. So is that kind of the style of the whole thing or is that —

AH Well —

MR — not usual?

AH — I think if you were to listen to some of the — not even necessarily every episode, but some of the episodes in season 2 and 3, those conversations would make more sense because the episode is part “here is a topic we’re covering” and part “here’s a little bit about where we’re at with this” because it’s — the podcast is covering interesting topics and at the same time it’s a documentary of this podcast startup.

MR That makes more sense because they keep talking about themselves.

AH Yes.

MR And I was like well, okay, that’s not the topic I was thinking — okay.

AH Yeah, so it’s —

MR So I’ll listen to more episodes, then.

AH — kind of halfsies. It’s kind of like flipping our banter around and if we actually gave focus to our banter about our businesses. [Laughing]

MR Imagine that.

AH Who knew. Yeah.

MR Got it. Okay.

AH So the last grown up podcast — I have two kids recommendations too — is I’m going to give a shout out to our very own Michael Reynolds —

MR Aw, shucks.

AH — a financial planner and advisor for entrepreneurs. And I’m totally not just blowing smoke or trying to suck to Michael. It’s a really helpful podcast. It’s called The Elevation Project. It is an offshoot of his Elevation Financial firm. It is a new podcast just for small business owners who want to get savvy with their financial decisions. And it’s a little bit of a podcast-y business coaching in a soft way. The — so if you — you know, you’ve read some stuff about retirement options but you need a refresher and you’re like, I know that the solo 401(k) was a thing, hey, he just did an episode on it. And there’s a couple others. And it’s only — you’re only what, like four or five episodes in —

MR Yeah. I think episode five just dropped.

AH — and I’m really — yeah, I’m really excited to see where this goes. Some of it’s just Michael sharing wisdom. Some of it’s interview. I like that there’s a mashup there.

MR Well, it’s actually co-host. I try to not —

AH Co-host, sorry.

MR I’m with you. I don’t really like interview style at all. Well, not at all, but I’m not really a fan of interview style, so I try to do co-host style where we’re both kind of contributing to a topic. So if it doesn’t come off that way, then maybe I need to work on it, but — [Laughing]

AH No, it totally does. My verbiage is just not clean tonight. This morning. See? I don’t even know what day it is right now.

MR [Laughing]

AH What time of day it is.

MR It’s the pollen. We’re blaming the pollen.

AH Yeah. No, it’s just mayhem. So yeah. It’s probably me not articulating that well. Co-host. It’s very clearly a co-host situation.

MR Well, thank you. I appreciate the shout out. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and you need to come on the show too. We’ll have you on.

AH I totally am. We’re going to do it. I’ve got like ten ideas for it.

So I wanted to throw in two podcast recommendations if you’ve got kids because I’ve been schlepping kids around, and I found that listening to podcasts is a lot nicer than listening to, I don’t know, kids music that stinks. So one, the Stories Podcast. And it literally is called the Stories Podcast. It is a weekly free podcast delivering family-friendly stories read out loud by Amanda Weldon. Super sweet. All kind of based on fairy tales and fables and stuff like that. And they add music and they make it funny, and there’s voices, and it’s really sweet and fun. Appropriate for littler kids, although the 10-year-old really likes it. The 12-year-old, she can kind of get on board if she’s not in a mood. And it’s really good.

And then there’s a second one that we started listening to. It’s also an NPR podcast. It’s called Wow in the World with Mindy Thomas and Guy Raz. And they “guide curious kids and their grown-ups on a journey into the wonders of the world around them.” So Liam and I just listened to an episode the other day, and it was all about smell. And it was awesome because it was, like, a little bit gross because they talk about the mucus membrane of the nose but all about different smells, and it’s hilarious, and it’s kind of like they create these fictional fun situations and stories around a particular topic that they’re trying to teach you. And it’s so fun. The olfactory one was hilarious. So yeah —

MR That sounds like fun.

AH It’s really fun. Wow in the World. Your Eli might be a little too young for it, but soon. Very soon. And those are mine.

MR Love it. I’m going to check out The Stories Podcast for Eli. I think he might like that.

AH I think that would probably be good — age appropriate. And they’re pretty short too. They run like 10, 15 minutes. And it’s cool because around different holidays, they have themed ones. They had a hilarious St. Patrick’s one. I think they had a Valentine’s. It’s just really — it’s really, really fun. You need to listen to the one about the boy who had a golden screw in his — instead of a bellybutton. And it sounds like the weirdest story —

MR Whoa.

AH — it’s hilarious.

MR Sounds very steam punk.

AH It is. And they — I think it was their April Fool’s episode, and it’s hilarious.

MR [Laughing]

AH All right, halftime.

MR All right. Halftime today. Our halftime sponsor is our friends over at Acuity.

AH Yay, thanks for sponsoring us, Acuity. You are our scheduling software of choice.

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AH Michael, tell us about your podcasts.

MR All right. So what I’m listening to now — you’re going to see the theme here. It’s a lot of money stuff, so stay with me. I promise it’s not all boring. But I’m also going to leave out all the financial advisor-specific podcasts I listen to because there are like five of them. But these are the ones that I think that our community might enjoy.

So first off, everyone knows Dave Ramsey Show. That’s my top podcast. It’s been that way for years. I’ve got to get it out of the way. So I love the Dave Ramsey Show. You love him or you hate him. But I think he has excellent, kind of, motivational advice and good, practical advice on money as well. He’s been around for like 25 years. A lot of our listeners, I know, are Dave Ramsey fans. His stuff is very — like I said, very down to earth and very practical in a lot of ways. And so I kind of like the motivational aspect of it as well, and it’s just fun to listen to. He just kind of like yells at people on the air, and it’s kind of fun to listen to. It’s a very entertaining/educational podcast if you want to learn about money. So that’s my favorite or one of my favorites.

Speaking of money, I listen to the So Money podcast with Farnoosh Torabi. I also love this one. I actually had the privilege of cohosting with her a few weeks ago on the podcast, so that was a lot of fun. And she is a different spin. So she is a little less in your face than Dave Ramsey. She’s a little more kind of focused on lifestyle and speaks to millennials quite a bit as well and has a really cool brand and just a really wonderful person. Like I actually spoke to her personally when we were doing the podcast prep, and she’s very gracious and brings on people on the show all the time as experts and co-hosts. And there’s really been some cool stuff with her Stacks House project as well where she goes around the country and does these pop-ups that teach people about money. And so — yeah, it’s So Money. Just look for So Money on podcasts, and it’s a great show. I really like listening to — it’s entertaining as well. She’s kind of funny too. And Allissa actually turned me on to So Money, so thank you, Allissa, for introducing me to Farnoosh.

And next I’m listening to Brainy Boss. Our friend Annie, who’s one of our community members in Massage Business Blueprint, runs a business/podcast called Brainy Boss. And I like Annie. Annie and I get along really well because she really focuses on productivity and time management for micropreneurs like a lot of us are. And so I really like her show because she does both interview style and what she calls, kind of like, her Power 10 or mastermind versions where it’s like a shorter monologue style episode as well. And she’s very practical, very articulate, very smart. And if you’re looking for practical tips on time management and productivity, she really focuses on that and has a lot of good stuff to share. So check that one out, Brainy Boss.

So next, Made You Click. If you are interested at all in marketing, this is my favorite marketing podcast. The caveat here is that — first of all, let me back up a little bit. This is — the hosts are — the co-hosts are Allison Gibbs and Stephanie Fisher are two friends of mine who I used to work with at my former marketing agency that I sold last year. So they are now with the company that acquired my marketing agency, and Allison and I used to co-host our podcast for about three years and had a great time with it, a lot of fun, really grew it. And then Allison kind of stepped into it with Stephanie and took it even further, and it’s even better now. It’s way better; they’re doing a great job. [Laughing] I am so happy and proud that it’s even gotten better and better, and they’re having a blast doing it. The caveat here is their company, Mojo Media Labs, focuses on bigger businesses, so they’re really focused on big companies. So don’t let that turn you off because there are still some really good marketing nuggets that everybody can learn from, and they’re just fun to listen to. It’s not your usual stuffy marketing or tech podcast where it’s like people just lecturing about tech or whatever. They have a blast. They’re just a lot of fun. They’re just a delight to listen to. And I think our audience will really resonate with them and really connect with them. So check out Made You Click. It is a great marketing podcast.

AH I had no idea they were doing this. I love Allison and Steph. I am so excited.

MR They are a delight, yes. So I’m glad — if nothing else, I’m glad you’ve discovered Made You Click now today.

AH Yeah. Oh, and you know what, listen. We’re all just crossing our fingers for when Allison really does do her side project — that’s current events with Allison — because she has some amazing takes on thing that go on in the world every day.

MR Yeah.

AH And I cannot wait for her to at some point leave the marketing world and just do her freestyle hot takes because I will watch that every day of the week.

MR [Laughing] Allison is fantastic. Yeah, that’s true.

Next, I am really enjoying — I’m kind of getting into this slowly, but I’m really enjoying Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn. He really focuses on similar audiences that I — Allissa and I kind of resonate with, which is micro-businesses, small business owners, virtual companies as well. And he really focuses on — well, I mean, what it says — passive income — being able to create businesses that are lifestyle businesses that you don’t have to spend 60 hours a week on and growing this massive team. It’s more about scaling and creating systems and processes that create income that you can kind of manage on your own that are more passive and more — things like courses and membership and software and things like that. It may not resonate with everybody in our audience, but if anyone listening who’s a massage therapist would like to maybe add additional streams of income to their practice, there are some really good nuggets in here that could be really helpful. And it’s just a fun, generous guy. He’s just vey no-nonsense, very down to earth. He’s not snooty. He’s like, hey, I’m a real dude and here’s some stuff I do that can help, and I love it that you’re here. He’s really — that’s his attitude. So Smart Passive Income. Check it out.

Next to last, I am also occasionally listening to Eventual Millionaire. Don’t let the name turn you off. It’s not totally cheesy. It’s actually really interesting business interviews with great business minds. Jamie Masters is the host, and she does a really good job of digging into really sound business growth principles that can apply to many people in business, not just the types of companies she works with. So if you’re a massage therapist and you’re looking for just some really solid nuggets of wisdom on how to grow, she has some really good guests on and some really good insights. So look up Eventual Millionaire if you want to check that one out.

Finally — I know, I’m mostly business. I get it. But there’s a fun on at the end for me. And I think maybe Allissa, maybe you turned me on to this one as well, The Dream. You listen to that one, right? You like this one?

AH Yes. I’m sorry, I was muted.

MR Yeah.

AH Yes, The Dream was amazing. I can’t believe I forgot that.

Yeah, so I really enjoyed The Dream. It is kind of a documentary-style podcast with one season and the season is all about digging into the kind of sordid underbelly of multi-level marketing and network marketing companies. And it’s really fascinating. I think a lot of us have strong opinions about MLMs and networking marketing. Some people do great at it; some people hate it. It’s a very controversial topic. And she really does a good job of digging into a lot of the history and the government relationships behind it and how people get scammed and how people — some people find success, but there are a lot of, you know, scam happening out there. And she interviews all sorts of people from people that are in the businesses — as in the distributors and reps — from people that run the businesses, from people in government, from people in legislature — all sorts of angles. And she really goes after it. So if you really like that style of podcast and you want kind of a fascinating behind the scenes look at a very controversial, mysterious industry, it’s very entertaining and very interesting. So I really enjoyed it. So check that out as well. It’s called The Dream.

So that’s my list.

AH It’s a lot.

MR So I think — yeah.

AH I don’t mean —

MR Well, I picked seven just like you. [Laughing]

AH I don’t mean that yours were a lot. I mean our combined is a lot.

MR Oh, true, yeah.

AH So people, you have a lot of listening to do and I’m sorry. Except I’m not because it’s riveting.

MR Well, pick and choose. Pick a couple that you think would resonate with you and try them out if you want. Or not. Hey, it’s your phone so whatever you like.

All right, there we are. Anything you want to add?

AH No, man, that’s it. Yeah, that was thorough.

MR You good? All right, excellent. Well, hey, just before we wrap up, if anybody does listen to any of these for the first time and maybe got introduced to some of these through our episode today, send us a note, podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com, and give us your opinion on some of the one’s you’ve listened to. We’d love to hear what you think.

So with that —

AH Yeah.

MR — thank you. We’re glad you’re here today and listening this this podcast. [Laughing] So please keep us on your list. We appreciate that. You can visit us online at massagebusinessblueprint.com. We would love to have you consider our premium membership as well, which has a ton of benefits like free stock photos; a monthly blog post you can use and repurpose on your own website; a great, a fantastic, a marvelous, a earth-shattering community that is just the best massage on Facebook — it’s a Facebook group that is private only to premium members and it is absolutely amazing — premium office hours, which are video conferences a few times a month to hop online and do peer mentoring and share challenges and help each other, and we have a ton of fun there; and a bunch of other benefits I haven’t even mentioned. So check it out.

Again, if you have comments or feedback or topics for us, email those to us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. So thanks for joining us today. We appreciate you being a listener. Have a great day —

AH Bye.

MR — and we’ll see you next time.