Podcast

What caught our attention this week?

• HIDDEN BRAIN- In The Heat Of The Moment: How Intense Emotions Transform Us
• Wait a Minute. How Can They Afford That When I Can’t?

Discussion Topic

• Michael and Allissa discuss their annual “3 Words” for 2020.

Quick Tip

• Teach your clients about pre/post vacation massage & how to get a good massage on vacation.
• The new Firefox now with enhanced privacy features

Sponsors

• Acuity Scheduling
• The Jojoba Company
• Yomassage

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.

Michael Reynolds Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Massage Business Blueprint podcast, where we help you attract more clients, make more money, and improve your quality of life. I am Michael Reynolds.

Allissa Haines I’m Allissa Haines.

MR And we’re your hosts.

AH We’ve got a great show for you today.

MR We’ve got a great show for you today.

AH Yeah, welcome, everyone, to our new podcast format. We’re really really excited. Happy new year. And we’re kicking off a new thing.

MR A new thing. Why not, right? This is year five we’ve been doing this, I think.

AH Yeah, we’re almost hitting five years, so it’s time.

MR It’s time. Let’s jump in.

AH All right. We ready? We’re jumping in.

MR All right.

AH So the first segment of our new podcast format, like Michael said, is just a little bit of sharing something that we have either read or listened to this week that we think is relevant to you — a business owner, massage therapist, and human being — in some way.

So mine are probably all going to be podcasts because I only read fiction or fun now and I listen to podcasts for everything else.

MR [Laughing] Good for you.

AH And one of my favorites is an NPR podcast called Hidden Brain. And it always looks at some part of human behavior. And I love this podcast because it really dives deep into context. And this particular episode — and we’ll link to all of this in the show notes — is called In The Heat Of The Moment: How Intense Emotions Transform Us. And it was really interesting information; I encourage y’all to listen to this yourself as well. The whole episode has a lot of layers. It talks about the empathy gap. And what that means is how you feel — how you remember pain or a situation or discomfort, and how it actually happened versus how you remember it. So things — like even women in childbirth, it’s a lot of pain. But then your memory of the pain changes as we move through time.

And also part of this is being able to predict your behavior. And what really struck me is they had this great study talking about — talking to women about how they would respond if they were in an interview and the interviewer asked really appropriate — really inappropriate questions like do you have a boyfriend? do you have a good sex life? Thinks like that. And women would predict how they would respond to such situations. And then they actually put different women into these situations — into these mock interviews that they didn’t know were mock interviews — and actually predicted — and then actually recorded how these women actually responded in these situations.

And what we learn when we are in a hot state versus a cold state — so when I’m in a cold state and I’m thinking about how I might react in such a situation where I’m asked an inappropriate question by an interviewer, what I think I’m going to do is very different from what I’m actually going to do in response when I’m in a hot state, which is when I’m actually in that situation having a physiological response and discomfort, and when my heartbeat goes up and I start to feel flushed and I’m having a reaction, what I would actually do.

And this hot/cold empathy gap situation and decision-making comes about in a lot of — it becomes important to understand this for a lot of reasons. Like medical practitioners make decisions in both hot and cold states and how that affects medical care. And also be thinking — knowing how you’re going to react in a variety of situations. But I listened to this episode and then the next day I saw a post in a Facebook group for massage therapists about getting an inappropriate advance in — during a massage session and how we — how people would respond. And I noticed that a whole thread full of people — well, I would just say that’s not acceptable behavior in my massage room and kick them out. But anyone who’s actually had a situation like that happen, understands that when you are in that moment, you are having a physical and emotional response to this very uncomfortable situation, and you do not always get the words out that you think you’re going to get out.

And this whole Hidden Brain episode about the hot/cold empathy gap and decision-making and prediction of our behaviors, it was just so well-placed in time with this other Facebook question that was very pertinent to how we deal with uncomfortable massage situations. And I thought about it for days. And I don’t have any huge conclusions except to say that how you think you will respond to a situation in your practice is probably not how you will actually respond. And things that can help are forethought, ethics training, scripting — when you have an uncomfortable situation, going back, thinking about it, scripting how you wish you had responded, and practicing that.

But everyone should go and listen to this episode of Hidden Brain because I think it’s also going to help us deal — it actually gave me a lot of thoughts about how young people make sexual decisions in sexual situations, and how you think you’re going to behave and then how you do. And it gave me a lot of interesting information to guide talks with the kids, and it was just — it blew my mind about this hot/cold empathy gap and decision-making and everyone should check it out. That was a lot.

MR I’ve saved it to Pocket. So I will read it — or listen to it later.

AH I hope that you do.

MR It’s been saved.

AH Michael, what have you been looking into or reading?

MR So this week I was reading an article called Wait a Minute. How Can They Afford That When I Can’t? As everybody knows, I gravitate toward money stuff. And this is from the New York Times. And it was interesting because it’s kind of reinforces what, I think, we all kind of know or suspect, but it’s hard to remember.

And it kind of goes through this scenario we all face a lot of times, which is everyone around us maybe seems to be better off than us, especially in peer groups or groups of friends. Often we get in a situation where our friends seem to go on more vacations than we go on or they have nicer cars or nicer homes or whatever, and we feel like we’re doing something wrong or we’re managing money poorly because others around us have the illusion of doing better. When, in reality, it’s much more likely or much more often is the case that there are hidden factors in two directions. There’s either hidden wealth, but much more likely there’s hidden debt and hidden foundational problems in people’s money management.

And so it’s just really a nice way to remind us, I think, that we — comparing ourselves to others financially can have kind of a negative impact on our well-being, and it’s not always validated by truth or data. One example here — I’m just going to read a little excerpt. This is — somebody named Ellen was in the article here. And it says, “For years, Ellen watched her friends, who had similar jobs, the same number of children” — they spent more lavishly on everything. They had expensive home additions, twice as many vacations, drove nicer cars. And she felt bad about it assuming she and her husband were simply worst financial managers. And she was quoted as saying, “we go to self-blame when we don’t know the whole story.” And then it turns out it all collapsed, that family was largely living on debt, they were under water on the house, had to sell it, and now they’re kind of rebuilding from there.

Not that we wish ill on other people that are, in theory, looking like they’re doing better, but it’s just — I think it’s good to reset, and this article was a good way to reset and kind of commiserate and say, hey, if people look like they’re doing better, maybe they legitimately are, but it doesn’t mean that we’re doing worse, you know? It doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with us. We don’t know the whole story; we don’t know what’s going on. And so I really liked it. It was a really nice refresher in that perspective, I think. So.

AH It’s important to not compare your inside life to someone else’s outside life.

MR Yeah, exactly. We see all the outside life on Instagram and Facebook, and it’s easy to do. So it’s nice to remind us not to do that. [Laughing]

AH Thanks. I checked out the link to that and I save it, and I’m going to read that article, thank you.

MR Yeah. So that’s what I was reading this week.

AH What’s next?

MR Well, let’s hit up our sponsor and then we’ll jump to our three words for this year.

So our sponsor — our first sponsor coming up here is jojoba. Jojoba!

AH Yay.

Sponsor message This episode is sponsored by The Jojoba Company. You know this already, but I firmly believe that massage therapists should only be using the highest quality products because our clients deserve it and our bodies deserve it. And I just had a prenatal client now who only comes to me a couple times a year when she’s coming to visit her family over holidays and such. And she said, I love the product that you use on me. I never leave here feeling greasy or that I have to shower. And I was like, that’s jojoba. It is nonallergenic, so I can safely use it on any client, including my prenatal client with a nut allergy, and I don’t have to fear any kind of reaction; she’s not going to break out. And the jojoba is not going to go rancid; it doesn’t contain triglycerides like many other products do, so it won’t go bad. That also makes jojoba a really good carrier for essential oils. You, my friends, can get a 10% discount off the price on orders of $35 or more when you shop through our link massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba, and that’s J-O-J-O-B-A.

MR All right, let’s talk words.

AH Let’s talk 3 Words.

MR 3 Words, specifically.

AH All right. Am I going first?

MR What do you want to do? Do you want to recap last year’s first? You want to jump right in? What are you thinking?

AH Let’s each recap. Let me do mine — I’ll do my little recap first.

MR All right, cool.

AH So my 2019 words, they were: work, patience, and friends. And all around, I feel kind of meh about how I did. On the work aspect, I did really good. I brought in more money, I found a better rhythm and a better schedule for me, and I was definitely more effective and efficient with my time. And what I’m really, really happy about is that I spent a lot of time in the last few months setting up 2020 to be what I want it to be. So to set up the work — I eliminated work I don’t enjoy, and I set up 2020 to really be the work that I most want to be doing. So I feel really good about that. I feel really good that I tried a thing. I tried joining my chamber of commerce and going to the networking events. And when it didn’t work out for me, when it just wasn’t a good fit, I cut it loose without feeling resentful and letting it linger and go on for too long.

MR I remember that episode. [Laughing]

AH I know. There was a couple episodes in there.

Patience, meh. I’m getting there. And friends, my goal was to have coffee or lunch or something with a friend once a month. That did not happen. So I feel kind of meh. But I feel good about the work.

So what’s the recap on your 2019 words, Michael?

MR Sure. So I think I’m also going to just frame what we’re doing because I’m sure we have some listeners that maybe are catching us — maybe are new listeners this year. So just to kind of frame what we’re doing for those who aren’t aware —

AH I’m sorry. I forgot some people might not know what our three words are.

MR That’s okay. Yeah, I’ll frame it. [Laughing] So what Allissa and I do every year — and we’ve been doing it for I don’t know how many years — we do kind of the Chris Brogan 3 Words exercise. So Chris Brogan is a prominent business consultant and blogger and podcaster who we both admire, I believe. And we really enjoy his work, and he kind of started this whole trend of — instead of doing New Year’s resolutions or goals or whatever and stuff that often doesn’t work for people, he suggests picking three words as themes for your coming year. So whatever year is coming up, that’s kind of your theme for the year; things you’re going to focus on. And so it’s a nice way of not setting a goal and then failing and feeling bad about it or feeling bad about yourself because you break your New Year’s resolutions or whatever. It’s a way of aligning your energy toward some concepts for the year. And so Allissa and I really enjoy this, and we’ve been doing it every year for a long time now. And so that’s kind of what we’re doing this year. We’re setting up our three words for 2020.

And so for 2019, my three words were family, grow, and select. And I’m kind of with you, Allissa. I feel a little bit positive, but sort of like, meh-positive. My focus on family was to make sure I spend enough time focusing on what’s important, which is family, and I think I did that pretty well, fairly well. I wouldn’t say I knocked it out of the park, but fairly well. Grow was my effort to focus on growth in multiple new businesses or growing businesses I have. And select was to be very selective about what I do in terms of business and personal time and kind of where I spend my time and even down to choosing the right clients, et cetera. So I think for all three, it was probably more than a 50% success rate. I would say I feel like I’m in that, I don’t know, 60-80%, you know, success rate toward those things. So I’m kind of with you. I’m kind of like okay, did okay.

AH Well, that’s good. I’ll take it.

MR That’s how I feel, yeah.

AH And I like the three words because, like you said, you don’t have to feel guilty that you failed a resolution, you just choose a point on the horizon to focus on.

MR Yeah.

AH And maybe you get there; maybe you don’t. But at least you’ve had some level of purpose and focus.

MR I think it works pretty well for me, and it sounds like it works well for you too.

AH It does. So you ready for my 2020 words?

MR I’m ready. Bring it.

AH I picked three this year, again. And the first one is save. I have set some very lofty retirement goals, and it’s going to require a new monthly savings plan. And I feel really, really motivated. This part year, 2019, I put more into retirement than I think any year since I was working corporate and before I started my business. And it feels really good. I felt really baller every time I made that contribution to my IRA and my individual 401(k), and so I feel really good about it. And I’ve set lofty goals that I can meet if I really buckle down and I am really diligent for the next five years. I feel like I’ve got five full-time hard-core years of work in me where I want to keep my head down and do some massive retirement savings, and then look up and reassess from there. And that’s why save is my first word.

MR I like it.

AH I know. I thought you’d like that one. And then the second word is foundation. Like I said, I did really good this past year with work and setting some good habits and a better rhythm. I’ve got some more work to do. I started to re-read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People last week, and I am feeling good about that. I have noticed — in the past month or two, I’ve noticed that I’ve got a lot of decision fatigue that’s stopping me from stuff, and I need to remove the confusion of too many decisions from each day.

So I need to get back to really structuring my week better as far as silly things as like making sure I have a good number of work t-shirts and work pants so I can do my laundry one day a week and be fine for the reminder for the week, which sounds so ridiculous but is a big deal when I have to do laundry in the middle of a week because I don’t have enough clean t-shirts. I just let — I purged a little too much and things started to get complicated. And ditto that with meal planning. I find that when I think through my week and I plan it well in advance on the prior Saturday or Sunday, I do a lot better. And part of this is I use a bullet journal to structure my day and my week and I fell out of the habit mid year. In the past month I’ve been back on board, and it’s been really really good. I’ve been much more functional. So I’ve got to really lay a stronger foundation and structure to get my life a little simpler to allow to work hard and do all that saving.

And then my last word is depth. And I chose this because if you’ve listened to the podcast at all, you know that I talk a lot about context. There is no one answer to any one question. There is always layer upon layer of contributing factors and context. And I think that the speed with which we can communicate via text and social media and even really quick one-off emails, I think that lends to a superficial level of thought and interaction that is not making us smarter, and it’s not making us better people. And I want to be smarter, I want to be more helpful. I don’t want to just have more knowledge — I don’t want to have more knowledge. I want to have a depth of knowledge in particular areas that are useful to me and my family and my friends and you to, our listeners, that we serve here at Massage Business Blueprint, and I want to narrow my focus and go deeper into certain topics. I want that in my relationships, I want that in the things I learn, I want that in the things I teach, I want that in my relationships with clients and the work that I’m doing, both hands-on and communicatively with my clients as far as being a good resource for them for alternate types of care. I want to go deeper in my knowledge and relationships. And that is my depth.

So I have save, foundation, and depth.

MR I feel like you’re going to be really successful at moving forward on all three of these. These are great.

AH I think so. And like, I’m so proud of myself because I actually — like, I started thinking about these three words the first week in December when I looked at our schedule and I was like, oh, that’s right, we’ve got to record that episode before January 3rd. And I sat down with my bullet journal, and I literally have two pages of notes, and I wrote down how I felt about my 2019 words, and how I feel about 2020, and I feel really good about sitting with a cup of coffee and thinking, and I didn’t look at my phone and I didn’t look at my computer. And that’s actually where the depth came from. I was going to go with two words, and then I sat down again about a week ago, and I was like, depth, I need more. And I was using the word “context” a lot, and I was like, I think that what I mean more than context is depth. And that’s where I went with that.

So I’m exited to hear your three words.

MR All right, so my three words are forgive, build, and health. Let’s start with forgive.

AH Ooh.

MR Yeah, I know. I might get a little emotional on this first one, actually. So I’m going to try not to do that too much on the air, so to speak. But it’s kind of pretty personal. So forgive has a few layers to me. So forgive kind of refers to being forgiving or having a forgiving nature. I’m pretty bad at having a forgiving nature; that’s just something I’m really bad at, and I want to get better at it. One example is, I — like a lot of, you know, motivated, driven people that are business owners — like you and I, Allissa — I have this view of how the world should be, you know? [Laughing] I have this view of how people should be and the world should be and the things we’re supposed to do, and I just have these expectations. And I — often, that leads me to, you know, if someone doesn’t do something that I think they’re supposed to do, I’ll have a bad attitude about it, or I’ll get very frustrated with the world or with people if they don’t act in a way that I feel they should be acting. And it’s just — I’m just very particular about the way I think things should be, and that’s not really helpful or sensitive or always the right way to do things.

And so I want to focus very heavily on having a more forgiving attitude and letting things go and being aware that we all struggle with things, and myself most of all. You know, I’m guilty of the same things that I often have intolerances in other people in. So I need to make sure that I really focus on developing a more forgiving attitude toward circumstances around me and people around me.

I also want to turn that toward myself and be more forgiving of myself because I have really, really nigh expectations for myself, and I rarely meet those expectations, and it often leads to head trash of beating myself up over and over, over things, and I want to stop doing that, or at least stop doing it as much and having a more forgiving attitude toward myself.

And then finally, forgive also literally kind of applies to some forgiveness that I feel like I need to, maybe — maybe this year, maybe not. There’s a situation in kind of the business — mostly business world that I — you know, there’s an individual that I have not forgiven that is a pretty significant issue that happened in the past, and I need to work toward forgiveness toward that person and that situation. So pretty big layers in the word forgive, but I’m tackling it. So that’s what I’m tackling for my first word for 2020.

AH That is impressive.

MR We’ll see [Laughing] Like I said, I would try not to get emotional, but it’s pretty emotional for me.

So now that I’m past that one, the second one is a reaction to what I feel is a slight flaw in last year’s word. Last year’s word was grow, and I think what I really meant to say and what I should be saying in 2020 is build. The word “grow” doesn’t really do the justice — do it justice when it comes to building these businesses that I’m involved in. And I even used the word build just then because it really is building. It’s not growing, it’s building. It’s actually the literal work of creating systems and getting clients and building marketing campaigns and optimizing platforms and just the whole gritty work of building companies, and that’s really what’s happening. It’s not just about watching the graph of revenue go up. It’s literally building businesses. And that feels much more exciting to say it that way, and I think that more accurately reflects the mode I am in. And so build is my second word.

AH I like it. And I have to say I hate when people use grow, like, I’m going to grow my business. I don’t like using the word grow that way. To me, it’s like saying synergy or paradigm, so I’m really excited you’re making a switch.

MR [Laughing] Yeah, I think I’m on the same page, which is why the switch makes sense. So.

AH All right, I keep interrupting you, I’m sorry.

MR No, no.

AH What’s your third word? You’re going to have to forgive me for that.

MR [Laughing] My third word is health. And this — I feel like all these words are very layered this year. This sort of applies to both physical and mental health. I think I have neglected both in recent years. Not that I feel like I’m going insane or anything, but I feel like I could do better to work on both my mental and my physical health. My physical health is like a — definitely a must have because I’m not exercising anymore; I’m not running or lifting or doing any kind of — I’m even eating badly lately. I need to work on my physical health more. I need to get clear about what’s important, and one of those things is my health.

So I’m not going to necessarily become a triathlete or anything, but I think incremental focus on improving my eating habits and my exercise habits is going to be a theme for 2020. And then mental health as well. I’ve been experimenting with counseling; I’ve been just kind of focusing on reading about stoicism and even exploring meditation and just things that I think could be better toward optimizing my mental health so that I can react better to situations; as opposed to negatively, I can just react in a more useful way and manage emotions better as well. So mental and physical health are really important to me coming up this year.

So those are my three words.

AH I love it. And I think you’re going to kick butt on all of these. We’re really — I think learning to forgive yourself also is going to help with the health thing too. I mean, perspective, right? Look back. Your kid’s going to be five this year. The last five years could not and should not have been focused on your own health. [Laughing]

MR [Laughing]

AH You know, you kind of had a lot going on. [Laughing]

MR Yeah.

AH I think this is great. I’m really excited, again, in June — our first episode in June, we’ll do our six-month check-in. Or, I guess in July because that’ll give us a full six months to play with our three words. Just like last year, we’ll do a check-in in July and see how we’re doing. And maybe even sooner if stuff comes up. And I’m really excited.

MR Yeah.

AH I’m excited about all of these, all six of these words, and how we’re going to do and how we’re going to evolve.

MR I’m feeling good. Yeah. So if anyone listening wants to follow along. I know a lot of you are veterans of the 3 Words exercise, but if you’re newer and want to give it a shot, we put descriptions — I think we have blog articles about it on our website. But also if you want to google “Chris Brogan 3 Words”, it’ll pop right up. And he’s kind of the source of it, so you can read all about how he does it. And if you want to give us your three words, give us a shout at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com or put it in the comments. We’d love to hear your three words too.

AH I love hearing people’s three words. And it’s also okay if you just pick one or two words; that’s totally legit.

Michael, who’s our next sponsor?

MR All right. Let’s go to our next sponsor before we wrap up. It is Yomassage today. We love Yomassage. They’re awesome.

AH Yay.

Sponsor message Yomassage combines restorative stretching, massage, and mindfulness in a small group session. They have limited in-person trainings in 2020 to learn Yomassage. They’re going to be in Austin on February 3rd, in Portland on March 2nd. Virtual trainings, which are also awesome, begin the first Monday of each month. Space is limited in both the personal and virtual trainings. You can get a special $50 off for Massage Business Blueprint listeners on trainings from January through March. You can go to yomassage.com and use the code BLUEPRINT — all caps, one word, BLUEPRINT — to get $50 off virtual and in-person trainings from January through March. And that’s Yomassage, which is super awesome. Think restorative yoga plus massage in a small group; it’s awesome. That’s what I have to say about Yomassage.

MR They’re just great people. We love the owners.

AH We do.

MR We’ve sat down with them on multiple occasions and just chatted, and they’re just great people.

AH People who just embrace hands-on care and the use of technology to teach. And I’m only hearing — I’m in a Yomassage discussion group, and I’m hearing the most wonderful things about the virtual training, and I myself will probably get to a training in one way or another next year. And I’m really really excited.

MR Nice. All right.

AH What’s our last segment in this new format, Michael?

MR Our last segment in our format’s going to be a quick tip. Just a really quick thing that either Allissa or me or sometimes both of us, we’ll just kind of leave with you just kind of a — like I said, a quick tip. That’s really what it is. It might be an app we found that we like or a quick little technique or just something very actionable to just kind of be aware of. So that’s going to be our last segment.

And Allissa, it looks like you’ve got something about vacation messages, right?

AH Yeah. Well, vacation massages.

MR Oh, massages. Sorry. [Laughing]

AH [Laughing]

MR Your font was a little smaller than — there we go.

AH It is. Sorry about my cutting and pasting.

So this was actually sent in by a reader and a listeners who said, hey, have you ever done anything about how it could be useful to write a blog post or make a video or just in general teach your clients about how great it can be to get a massage before and/or after they travel?

So — and really y’all could write a blog post about hey, here are some reason it’s really great to come get a massage before you’re going to spend four hours in a plane or 12 hours in a car driving to visit your family. And hey, you’re probably going to have that day of post-vacation chaos that you’re going to want a massage before you head back to work the next day. So get yourself a massage scheduled for right after your vacation.

And a secondary idea within this same concept is perhaps you need to talk to your clients or make a blog post or make a video teaching them how to find a good massage while they’re on vacation because so many of our clients come back with bad vacation massage stories and maybe it’s because they didn’t ask for the right kind of treatment or maybe because they didn’t speak up during the treatment if they were getting hurt or it wasn’t deep enough. And we could be educators in teaching our clients what to ask for and what to look for to get a good massage while on vacation. So if you’re looking for a blog or video idea, there it is.

Thank you to our reader who asked about this.

MR Nice.

AH It wasn’t worthy of an entire podcast episode, but it’s worthy of a quick tip.

MR It’s a great quick tip.

AH What do you got, Michael?

MR So I want to make our listeners aware of the new Firefox web browser. I think some of our listeners will really like it. So Firefox this year has come out with a new version of the web browser and it is very focused on privacy. And specifically, by default, it is going to — it’s blocking a ton of websites that are known for tracking user behavior. They don’t come right out and say it, I don’t think, in this article that I’m reading but they’re basically — obviously Facebook is one of the big ones they’re targeting and saying they are going to block all these different sites that are known for tracking people, and they’re going to put a premium — a higher premium on your privacy. And so there are lots of different features that you can read about in the article we’ll link to here, but one of those features is the default blocking.

So for example, when you’re on a website, a lot of these websites have Facebook tracking pixels, which we actually use. I’ll be honest, we use them for marketing. But a lot of people don’t like that, and so that kind of stuff will be blocked. Your privacy will be more protected. And they also have different kind of settings where you can say, hey, put a — it’s called a Facebook container where you can put all Facebook tracking stuff in a container and then enable or disable it as needed.

And they also are building in a VPN within Firefox. It’s going to be free for a while, then I think it’ll be $2 a month after that. So it’s pretty inexpensive. But a VPN is short for virtual private network. And it basically encrypts and anonymizes your activity on the web. So if your head is spinning with all the jargon, the nutshell kind of explanation is that the Firefox web browser is going to start protecting your privacy a lot more than other browsers.

And they’re kind of taking aim at Google because Google produces Chrome, which is my preferred web browser, I’ll be honest, but I’m thinking of switching to Firefox. Google’s Chrome browser is — I mean, it’s built by a company that makes their living off of tracking you, right? And so Firefox is kind of poking fun at Google saying, hey, we’re going to build a web browser that is the antithesis of all that privacy stuff that concerns some people. And so I just want to kind of make our listeners aware that Firefox has made great strides in creating a browser and product that protects people’s privacy. And if that appeals to you, you might want to check it out; it’s got some really nice features.

AH That is —

MR That’s what I got.

AH I was totally — sorry, it took me a second to unmute myself because I was looking at the Firefox browser page thinking of downloading it.

MR [Laughing] Pretty compelling, isn’t it?

AH It really is. I think that’s — and you know I’m kind of — I’ve kind of accepted that there’s no privacy anymore anywhere.

MR True.

AH But if there’s a browser I can download that can calm down the tracking a bit, I can get on board with that.

MR Yeah. I personally —

AH I might —

MR — I might — I’m still using Chrome — yeah, go ahead, sorry.

AH It just it could — the desire for a hint more privacy could get me through the learning curve of a new browser.

MR Yeah, yeah. And you can import your bookmarks from Chrome or wherever else. So it’s a pretty seamless switch too.

AH Nice.

MR So yeah.

AH Let me know how it goes if you actually do the switch and then we can tell people — we can do a little quick tip follow up on that.

MR Yeah, yeah, we’ll see. I’m warming up to the idea.

AH Excellent.

MR All right.

AH Hey, people, if you liked this new format, leave us a review on iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher or wherever you’re listening to this podcast. And if you didn’t like the new format, you can email michael@massagebusinessblueprint.com and tell him that.

AH Hey, I can hear you. I’m right here.

AH Ha ha ha. If you have questions that you’d like us to answer on the podcast or just comments or feedback, actually you can email us — I mean, Michael’s email works, but you can also email us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. Send us your three words. Tell us what you hate and like. Let me know if you like the new bumper music. I picked out new music I’m really excited about.

MR Yeah, I like it.

AH Yeah, all right. Sorry, I just jumped in there doing that stuff. But Michael, go ahead. Wrap it up.

MR That’s okay. I think you said it all.

AH Take us home.

MR I think you said it all, so maybe we’ll just have you start doing the outro from now on for 2020.

AH Woo hoo. So I hope that you people, everyone, listeners, readers, have a wonderful beginning of 2020. Happy new year. Toss us some feedback if you want to, and if you don’t, we will — you’ll hear us next week.

MR Thanks, everyone.

AH Bye.