Podcast

What caught our attention this week?

• Chelsea handler has a podcast (and book) and it’s probably not what you think.
• California has a new law for contract workers. But many businesses aren’t ready for change
• What to do if you’re a misclassified worker

Discussion Topic

• What do you do when your business gets cut in half?

Quick Tip

• Coursera has a great “learning how to learn” course
• Send secure files via firefox: https://send.firefox.com/

Sponsors

• Acuity Scheduling
• The Jojoba Company
• Yomassage

The bat:

Transcript:

Sponsor message This episode is sponsored by Yomassage. Yomassage combines restorative stretching, massage, and mindfulness in a small group session. Limited in-person trainings are happening in 2020, and virtual trainings begin the first Monday of each month. You can get a special $50 off on trainings January through March in 2020 using the code BLUEPRINT — that’s all caps, one word, BLUEPRINT. You can go to massagebusinessblueprint.com/yomassage to find out more about Yomassage trainings and use that special code BLUEPRINT for $50 off.

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 We’re your hosts.

Allissa, we’ve got a great show for you today and I’m already loving our new format. What do you think?

AH I love it. I am also excited. It’s enough variety to feel fun and not so much that, like, my ADHD kicks in and I’m all over the place.

MR And we get to, like, insert lots of ranty stuff all throughout the episode. So (indiscernible). [Laughing]

AH A little bit. A little bit of ranty stuff. I just want to make note — we’re not bantering much anymore, but I do want to make note that Michael kind of makes fun of me when I prepare for podcasts because I have, like, a lot of bullet points and stuff —

MR [Laughing]

AH — and I think he’s actually prepared more than I have for this episode because he’s a geek.

MR I have four bullet points.

AH Yeah, but they’re really, really long.

MR Well, well, yeah. Okay. Fair point. Fair point.

AH He’s quoting law and stuff. You know what? I want you to go first. So what has caught your attention this week, Michael?

MR All right. So weekly roundup. What are we reading this week? So this week I’m reading about California’s Assembly Bill Number 5. That sounds riveting, doesn’t it?

AH You are —

MR I know you’re saying, tell me more. Tell me more, Michael. Tell me more.

AH — living the life in 2020, Michael Reynolds.

MR All right. So here’s why I’m excited about it and I might get a little bit ranty — a little bit cranky. Is that okay?

AH Usually, yes.

MR Okay. Well, so I’m going to be a little bit cranky about this. Assembly Bill 5 in California has been signed into law. It will take effect in January, which is now. And it is a law specifically focused on the classification of workers — independent contractors versus W-2 employees. And you can probably understand why I’m getting ranty about this already because we’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast and in our community about independent contractors versus employees and how many massage therapists are misclassified.

And so this really caught my attention because I consider it kind of a warning shot that the states and lawmakers are going to get more and more focused on this misclassification issue.

So for background information, you know, we — I think we all know there are a lot of massage therapy practices out there that, you know, hire people — hire, you know, two or three other massage therapists to work in their facilities — in their studios, and they often default to classifying them as independent contractors because it saves them a little bit of money, it just seems easier, they don’t want to mess with payroll. And in reality, I would venture to say that a lot of the time, probably most of the time, they are misclassifying those team members. They should actually be W-2 employees.

And we’ve talked about this a lot, but California is coming out and saying, hey, we are going to get serious about this. We’re going to get very focused on trying to prevent businesses from misclassifying workers. And the reason people want to do this is people want to hire contract employees because as a W-2 employee, you’re going to spend about — this particular article says about 20% to 30% more on labor costs. Now, obviously, given the size of the company and type of the company, it’s going to be varied, but that’s kind of a general number, and it kind of relieves them of the obligation of things like, you know, all the taxes, the unemployment, disability, worker’s comp, minimum wage, overtime, all the protections against discrimination, sexual harassment. All the stuff that kind of goes with being a regular W-2 employee.

And I guess I — it sounds weird to say this, but I’m kind of — I like this. I like what California is doing because they are coming out and saying, hey, there’s a reason that we classify workers as W-2 employees and have all the protections to go with that. It is to protect workers. It’s to protect people. And so California is basically coming out and saying, hey, we’re too far — for too long, you know, companies are skirting the responsibility to provide basic protections to workers.

And just to kind of clarify — the article does a pretty good job of clarifying the distinction. And as a reminder, to be an independent contractor, a worker has to be free to perform their work as they wish. And that could be interpreted many ways, but it generally means they set their own schedule, they can wear what they want, they can work as they want. They must be in a different line of work from the company contracting them, and they must operate their own business.

This actually tags on to some research I’ve been doing with Indiana where I live. Indiana has come out and had a lot of webinars recently about this topic as well, and they really kind of clarify this saying if you’re an independent contractor, you must be operating as your own business, and you must be visibly clear that it’s your own business.

So for example, they look for things like are you an LLC? Do you have your own website? Do you have a company name? Do you invoice properly?

AH Who accepts payment?

MR Yeah. Do you accept —

AH Who accepts payment is a big deal. So like, if you are contending that your staff is all independent contractors but payment for massage goes to the main business — goes to the owner, then they’re not operating their own business. You know? Who pays —

MR Yeah. And so you have to basically look like your own business. Yeah.

AH Yep. And also that different line of work thing — I’m sorry. I’m jumping in here because —

MR Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.

AH — the part that really fascinates me and that’s been my bone that I’ve been picking for a couple years since the first court case came through in Massachusetts and elsewhere is “must be in a different line of work from the company contracting with them”. So if I’m running a massage or spa, massage and spa stuff is my business. That is the line of work. So I cannot hire a massage therapist as a contractor because that’s the line of work that my business is in. I can hire an accountant as a contractor. Like, I can have a contractor, like, an accountant as a contractor because accounting is not my line of work. Accounting is clearly an adjunct service provider to help in other aspects of running my business and not in the main line of business — the main line of work.

MR Yeah. That’s a good point. Yeah.

AH And there was also, in a court case in Massachusetts, what was interesting is that they said that there can’t be more than one of these. So I have an — if I were to have an accounting staff — if my business is so big that I need a, like, a bookkeeper, an accountant, and whatever — if I have more than one of these people, then they need to be employees. So if you have more than one massage therapist, they need to be employees. That’s, like, actually from a Massachusetts court case from a while back, and I have been beating that drum for a while and had a lot of arguments with some people about it but anyhow —

MR [Laughing}

AH — that’s my bone to pick. Carry on about the California —

MR Yeah.

AH — Supreme Court decision.

MR That’s basically it. I just want to kind of — I like what I’m — I like this article because it really kind of reminds us that this issue is not going away, and I think more and more regulatory bodies are going to be paying closer attention to this, and so California is probably, like I said, a warning sign that we need to really focus on understanding the difference.

And just kind of a shout out to those who are, you know — if you’re a business and you’re employing massage therapists, you know, take care to understand if you’re misclassifying them or not. And if you’re a massage therapist who’s working as an independent contractor, you know, you might want to consider deciding if you want to speak up and make a change in your situation or find a way to make sure that you are not being misclassified and, therefore, get the benefits you deserve.

So I wanted to kind of just shout that out. I loved the article for pointing out what California’s doing as kind of a warning shot. So that’s kind of my — my big ranty soapbox about that issue.

AH And we actually already have a resource for people who are misclassified as a contractor, and I’m going to put that in our podcast notes to, like, what to do if you’re a misclassified worker in a massage business.

MR Cool.

AH So that’ll go in the notes. Ready for mine?

MR I am ready. I’m done.

AH Chelsea Handler has a podcast and a book, and it’s probably not what you think, and that’s what I want to tell people. Michael, have you — did you ever watch or read any Chelsea Handler?

MR No. I don’t so.

AH Nah. She’s probably not your style. I — she’s a comedian and a writer and a really interesting human, and I love her. She used to have that show — I think it was on E!, called Chelsea Lately. It was a late-night show. She’s blunt and harsh and funny — super funny. A lot of people don’t like her because her content is — often involves a lot of talk about drugs and sex and it’s part of why I love her.

She — you know, she turned a lot of people off because she’s assertive, aggressive, and funny, and strong. But she came out with a book last year, I think, yeah, in April, called Life Will Be the Death of Me. And it is — and I didn’t even hear about it. I was kind of off the radar with stuff for a while. I didn’t even hear about it until I heard that there was a podcast that accompanied it, and the podcast is actually just a series — it’s recordings of some live shows she did specifically about the book.

And, kind of, in each city she went to someone different interviewed her and a couple of friends. There’s an episode that actually has her shrink because this book is about her year of pulling her crap together personally, psychologically, dealing with trauma from her childhood, which is interesting, finding this new therapist, a new shrink — psychiatrist, pardon me — and coming to terms with some trauma that has really impacted how she behaves in her relationships.

It is funny. I listened to the podcast. I haven’t read the book yet. I’m on the waiting list for the library. It is beautiful. It really — and it’s accessible. And the things that she did when she realized how her trauma and her behavior was impacting her life now — there’s a little bit about meditation in there, and it’s such a blunt and fun conversation about meditation, and I loved this because it’s, like, entry-level wellness in a really funny way.

And my favorite episodes are the two or three where her friend, her best friend, Mary McCormack, who’s an actress I love, interviews her and talks to her about the book. She reads from the book a lot. If you listen to, like, all the podcast episodes — it started, I think, over the summer and went through the fall. If you list to all of them, you’ll find that there’s a lot of repetition but — because she reads the same passages of the book here and there. But read — listen to the first few episodes, get on the waiting list for the book.

I don’t want to be all, like, dramatic, like, this book changed me because it didn’t change me, but —

MR [Laughing]

AH — one of the things I love about Chelsea Handler is she’s, like, about the same age as me. I think she’s, like, maybe a year older, and she has remained single and doesn’t have children. She’s a really interesting woman. Whether you loved or hate her, I think you would — I think everyone could benefit from listening to a couple episodes of the podcast, especially the first one with Mary McCormack and then the one with her shrink.

So that’s what I have to say. If you haven’t listened to Chelsea Handler’s podcast, Life Will Be the Death of Me, that is also the name of the book, hop on that.

MR Well, now I’m intrigued. You’ve warned us a couple times of how blunt and harsh — like, is she flat-out mean, or is it more just like — because our community kind of likes like, like —

AH A little bit —

MR — you know, blunt funny stuff like that. Is it —

AH Yeah, I mean it’s funny. It’s — it’s raunchy. A lot of what she talks about is quite raunchy.

MR Yeah. I’ve heard that.

AH But what I love about this particular evolution of Chelsea Handler is she really deals with how she has treated people in the past —

MR Ah.

AH — and how — who she wants to be in the future and why. Like, why was she that way? Why was she mean? Why was she harsh? Why did she write people off at the drop of a hat? And I’m not going to give it all away, but it is her evolution of becoming a better, kinder, more thoughtful, considerate person and a better friend. And —

MR Well, that sounds interesting.

AH — it was nice. Without excusing —

MR Yeah.

AH — and it wasn’t, like, I had this trauma happen to me in my childhood and that’s why I’ve been a jerk for, you know, 40 years.

MR [Laughing]

AH It’s not like that. So it was really good. It was really good.

MR Okay. Okay.

AH And I liked it and there’s a couple episodes I’m going to listen to again and again. I’m really excited about reading the book.

MR Nice!

AH And that’s my what I’m reading.

MR Cool. Well, yours sounds a little more interesting but — so we have variety.

AH Well, you know. We’re different people, Michael. Who’s our sponsor?

MR All right. Let’s give a shout out to our sponsor. Today our first sponsor of the episode is Jojoba.

AH Yay.

Sponsor message Thanks, Jojoba Company for being the sponsor of this episode. You know that I believe massage therapists should only be using the highest quality products because our bodies deserve it as much as our clients do. Jojoba is nonallergenic. I had a new — another pregnant client come in with a nut allergy the other day, and I didn’t have to worry. Jojoba is non-comedogenic. It won’t clog pores. I won’t go rancid, which makes is a really good carrier for your pricey essential oils that you want to have on hand for a while, and it won’t stain your 100% cotton sheets. Jojoba is the only company in the world that carries 100% pure, first-pressed quality jojoba. And we are delighted to be a long-time partner with them. You, my friends, can get 10% off the price of the product on orders of $35 or more if you shop through our link which is massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba, J-O-J-O-B-A.

MR Love it. Thanks, Jojoba.

AH Yay. All right. What are we talking about for realzies?

MR For realizes — so our topic for discussion is interesting. It’s kind of a unique perspective on what to do when your business gets cut in half. That sounds very dramatic.

AH It is kind of dramatic.

MR Yeah. What’s going on?

AH We had this situation happen with one of our premium members who has her own private practice and also works in a skilled-nursing facility. And she was told a couple weeks ago that the budget for her services is not there for 2020. And this was about half of her business — or half of her income. So she is all of a sudden out half of her income. And she has rebounded from other things in the past and is not panicking, but kind of put it out to the group and was, like, hey, so this is happening. What, what would you do?

And I talked to her — we emailed about it a little bit a few weeks ago as well, so I’ve been thinking about it. And I was kind of wondering, like, what would I do if my business just got chopped in half? If half my clients moved out of town tomorrow, what would I do? And what I realized is a lot of this is, like, what would you do if you were starting fresh in a new place, which is a thing I always love to think about. So I’m just going to kind of run through the light list of things that if you find yourself in a major business transition, like you’ve lost a whole bunch of business over a short period of time or you’ve got to make some major change, here are the things you could do.

So I would start with some reflechment —

MR Reflechment.

AH Reflechment.

MR I like it when we make up words.

AH Oh, my gosh. I like it when we record in the morning.

MR [Laughing]

AH So reflection and then adjustments. So really considering, now that you’ve got half of your business to rebuild, do you want more independent clients coming to your office, or do you want some source of employment? If you don’t want to have to hustle for more clients coming to your business, are you looking for some more part-time employment? Is that — would that be a good option for you if you don’t want to do the leg work to build your own client list?

What do you want your schedule to be? If you are — if you decide you want to bring more clients into your own business, do you need to make any changes to your schedule? Are you tired of working Friday nights, or would you prefer to work Sunday mornings? What — this is a good time to rethink your schedule before you start recruiting a bunch of new clients in.

How about your niche? Does anything need freshening up? Are you bored with what you’re doing? Do you want to recruit new clients within a specific niche? Have you had any recent training that you want to explore in the form of getting lots of new clients with that particular issue or welcoming to that particular modality? How — what is — if you decide you want to bring more clients into your practice, what kind of clients do you want? And it was great because as I was going through this list, I was kind of thinking about what I want. And I want to get into some more TMJ stuff, so I’m excited. I’m starting to look at a couple classes, and I’m really excited about exploring that new niche. I’m at the very beginning, but whatever.

Pricing, as always. Is this a good time to adjust your pricing — to increase it? Has it been a while since you’ve increased your prices? That’s another thing you might want to reflect and adjust. Anything, everything else. Like, really think through. Like, if you’re going to be — for a little while you’re going to be time rich and cash poor. You’re going to have extra time in your schedule, but not a lot of income to do a lot of things. So do you need to do, like, a full-on clean of your office? Do you need to rearrange your office? Do you — are there things — do you need a purge? Do you need to get rid of a bunch of stuff? Whatever.

How — are there any other things that are important to your business that you can do now while you are time rich and cash poor? And really, this is not a good time to be, like, I’m going to read and watch the whole Lord of the Rings series because you don’t want to fall into a situation where your work time is getting eaten up by procrastination with personal stuff. So be mindful of that, of how — and, again, that’s part of, like, reflecting and adjusting on your schedule. What do you want your work hours to be? And stick to them even if you don’t have massage to do, you should be working on your business in the bulk of those times.

Yeah. That’s what I feel about that. So the next step, once you’ve done all this reflecting and adjusting, is you’ve got to update your materials and your web presence accordingly. So if you need to do any new printed materials, like business cards, or rack cards, or brochures or whatever, update your website and your whole web presence. So if you change your tag line or you change your hours or anything — you spiff up your office and take pictures of what it looks like — update everything: your website, all your social media profiles, any listings you’re on. All of that stuff. Take a day, get it all updated, get it all consistent. So that’s my first thing. Reflect, adjust, update.

And then the next step is, as it always is when you’re trying to build a business and increase the number of clients or the number of client visits, so how was your retention? For me, retention is a big thing in 2020. My retention hasn’t been as good as it should be. I, and anyone in this situation, you want to reach out to long-lost clients. You want to reach out to long-lost referral partners, people maybe you haven’t had time to hang out with or connect with in the past couple years since you’ve been working in that facility. Any new networking events? Any new networking groups that have formed that maybe you want to visit? So reaching out to people you haven’t seen in a while. That might be clients, referral partners or groups and events.

Now is a good time to update your treatment plans and recommendations. Depending on your niche, depending on your base clientele, maybe you can start — maybe you can get busier by having your current clients come in more. How — when was the last time you looked at your treatment plans for people with migraine, as example. Is it stale? Do you need to try some new techniques? And do some of those techniques — could they legitimately involve some people coming in a little bit more, maybe for shorter visits or just the same amount — the same length of visits? I’m not saying that my business gets slow, I want to make new treatment plans that will bring my clients in more often. Like, you don’t want to do this in an unethical way, but if you haven’t looked at your treatment plans and recommendations and stuff for clients with particular pathologies in a while or you’ve just never done that, now might be a really good time. Again, time rich, cash poor. Come up with some treatment plans.

And the second part of that is self-care. How — teaching people how to take care of themselves, it doesn’t result in them making less massage appointments. It results in them having greater loyalty for you and referring to you and coming to you more. So if you haven’t created some self-care materials for your clients in a while, now might be a good time to do that or start doing that. Maybe some videos. If you do a lot of migraine work, maybe you want to make some self-care, like, trigger-point videos using, I don’t know, some trigger-point tool or something like that. Or just some self-care tips and videos in general. Maybe a good email campaign so that when a client with migraine comes to you, you can say, hey, do you want to get my once-a-week email for the next four weeks on self-care tips for migraine? And you can create that and send that off. It’s only going to improve your relationship with current clients to be — to refresh your involvement in their care.

All right. So now you’ve got all those foundations laid out, update and post more on your online presence. On your website; videos; or blog posts; on your Google My Business, especially, and all social, especially, if search engine optimization is your thing. If you get new clients through your website, pump a little steroid into there. Post more on your website, on your Google My Business, and on all your social media platforms if that’s appropriate for you.

And then, finally, and this is silly, make it known that you’re seeking new clients. Do some posts on your social media. Have a welcoming blog post or some kind of banner on your homepage that’s, like, now accepting new clients. You may always have been accepting new clients, but you can still say, now accepting new clients. Yeah. Just say it. Have a banner on your site. Post some images on your social media. Make sure that the world knows that you are accepting new clients. And ask your current clients for referrals. If you love your current clients, you want more people like them. And we’re all the average of, like, the five people we hang out with. So their friends and family are probably much like them. Ask.

You could create a structured referral program, or you could just say to your clients who you like and who you trust, hey, I’m looking for a few more clients, so if you know anybody with anxiety, send them on in. I’ve started doing that verbally with my clients in the last month, and I’ve already gotten two new referrals. So tell the world. And those are my tips on what to do if, all of a sudden, your business gets cut in half.

Michael, what do you think?

MR Yeah. I’m going to go back to the first thing you said which is, do you get a part-time job temporarily or kind of a side hustle? So I like that because I think often a lot of people, you know, myself included, have been there, you know, where you think, okay, I’ve got this business and if business is down and I have to get a part-time job, like, that makes me feel like a failure or whatever because I’m giving up my business. And I think that’s absolutely not the case because if you are — if you’re focusing everything on your business and it’s not growing as fast as you want it to or as fast as it needs to in the short term, you know, that’s very stressful. But guess what, if you get a part-time job and you make money, making money is going to help you feel better about it.

Like, making money helps you relieve stress. You will feel better if you are making money. And that will make you better at your business. So there’s no shame in —

AH No.

MR — you know, taking a part-time job for a year to make some money while you build your business back up. That is a very (indiscernible).

AH And it doesn’t even have to be short-term. Like, I wasn’t even thinking short-term.

MR Yeah, maybe in the long-term. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that.

AH Yeah. And it could be something not massage related, you know? We’ve got a friend who does massage full time but also works at a local bookstore, and it gives her so much joy. Like, it’s good income and it gives her a joy. Like, you don’t — I mean, and her massage is full time but she still just works part time at a bookstore.

MR Yeah.

AH Like, it doesn’t have to be — it doesn’t have to be part time and it doesn’t have to be forever. It could, like, it doesn’t have to be short-term or long-term. It can be whatever you need it to be. Sorry. But thank you for that affirmation.

MR Yeah. Yeah.

AH [Laughing]

MR Good stuff.

AH All right.

MR Thank you.

AH I think we nailed it. I don’t know if we nailed it. We’ll find out if it’s good advice or not —

MR [Laughing]

AH — but I think I covered every part of it.

MR Speaking of nailed it, can I — can I tangent for one minute here?

AH Yes.

MR So Eli, my four-year-old, became obsessed with the Netflix show, Nailed It. I’m not sure if it’s a Netflix show, but it’s on Netflix, where they bake things. Like, they try and match the — like, they came out with this beautiful cake that’s shaped like a castle or whatever and then, like, the contestants try to match it and, like, bake the thing. And, you know, they’ll come out like these horrible, like, awful renditions of whatever it’s supposed to be.

AH It’s like Pinterest fail —

MR Exactly.

AH — on TV.

MR And Eli is obsessed with it. Whenever he, like, you know, falls down or slips or something he goes, “nailed it”.

AH [Laughing]

MR And it’s adorable because every time he, like, does something goofy or messes up or something he’s, like, “nailed it”, with a big smile. And I just love the fact that he’s embracing his failure by just saying nailed it all the time. I had to share that. So that’s it.

AH All right. I have that saved in my Netflix queue but I haven’t started watching it, so I think I’ll probably watch it with the kids.

MR He loves that show.

AH Nice to know.

MR I think your kids will love it. All right. Let’s hit up our next sponsor. Let’s show come love to Acuity.

AH Yay.

Sponsor message Thanks, Acuity. You’re our software of choice. Acuity is your online assistant working 24/7 to fill your schedule. You don’t have to play phone tag. Clients can just view your availability and book their own appointments. They can pay online if you choose to enable that feature. They can reschedule with a click. You can handle your forms before the appointment so you can get right to doing the massage that you do. It’s so comforting, too, to know what’s walking in the door as far as complex medical and health information. Yay. Customer support is a delight, and Acuity’s style will help you chill out and run your business. You can get 45 days free when you sign up today at massagebusinessblueprint.com/acuity.

MR Thanks, Acuity.

AH All right. What’s next? Quick tips?

MR Quick tips. Why don’t you go first?

AH Okay. So my quick tip is super quick. There is on Coursera, which is a website that offers mostly free courses — classes on just about anything you’ve ever wanted to learn, there is a great course called Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools to Help You Master Tough Subjects. And it’s a series of videos, and there’s little quizzes you can do or not do, and if you need, like, certification or credits for something you can pay and get them, but I just took the free class. Like, that’s all I needed.

It’s kind of fun, nerdy, cheesy — instructors, professors, doctors of all of these — this, like, learning field. I cannot think of the word I need right now — teaching you how the brain works and how to improve your memory, how to avoid procrastination, how to better learn large chunks of information. It really helped me look at how I read and how I learn new subjects, and also, it really helped me deal with my kid with ADHD and a real impatience about learning and when she doesn’t pick things up right away. And it’s helped me and how I communicate large chunks of information to other people.

And you can just watch the videos, bit by bit, at your own pace and, you know, you can set up timelines for, like, finishing stuff. Okay. And I finally — I’m sorry, I found the instructor information. It’s Dr. Barbara Oakley, who is a professor of engineering, and she paired up with neurobiologist, Dr. Terrence Sejnowski. And it’s really great. You learn how your brain works and how to be more effective in things you’re trying to learn and in things you’re trying to teach. So if you’re interested in teaching at all, you need watch this course. We’ll link to it. Learning How to Learn from Coursera.

MR I think I signed up for that and never watched it, so I need to get back to that.

AH I got about three quarters of the way through and then life hit and I stopped it, and I finally went back and watched the rest, and I’m so grateful that I did. Our friend, Kelly Wise, told us about it.

MR Yeah. That’s right.

AH It’s good stuff.

MR And free.

AH What’ve you got? What’s your quick tip?

MR So my quick tip is actually an extension of last week’s, which was I talked about Firefox and the new security stuff they have. So I recently discovered that Firefox also has a secure file-sending service.

AH Ooh.

MR Now, this may not sound exciting to everybody, but here’s the problem it solves. So think of all those times when you’re doing your taxes, and your accountant says, hey, can you send me all your tax documents? Or can you send me this secure, sensitive document that you shouldn’t be emailing because it’s, you know, got your social security number on it or something — or send a bank statement or, you know, whoever you’re working with is asking for secure documents that they need to process your taxes or do your investments or whatever. And you shouldn’t be emailing things like that because email is inherently insecure. People can sniff that. It’s not encrypted. And so you don’t want to send stuff like that over email.

And so we always struggle with, okay, how do we send secure documents over email to people without, like, cumbersome apps and whatever. So Firefox has a service called Firefox Send. It’s called Send — I’m sorry. The website is send.firefox.com. And it is super, super easy. It is, like, dead simple. Like, this is the file-sharing service we’ve all been looking for because it’s so simple. You, basically, drag a file into the interface, and it creates a little link for you, and the link expires in 24 hours or it only gives you one download.

So basically, when you’re — you send the link via email, and then the person at the other end simply clicks on the link, and they can do it one time. And they download the file and the file expires and disappears from the internet. It’s not stored anywhere. And so it’s a really great way to send files securely. It also encrypts it on the server when it’s temporarily there.

And so what happens is when you send files via email, most of the time what happens is if people are sniffing traffic via email, they’re collecting a lot of data, and then later they’ll go back and sift through it and hackers will kind of like pull out files from the data. And so by restricting it to a 24-hour timeframe and a one-time download, you are extremely minimizing the chance that anyone is going to intercept and grab that file.

So Firefox Send. It’s send.firefox.com. You can use it to send files to your accountant or people that want sensitive docs safely and securely. So I love this service.

AH In the time it took for Michael to tell us about this, I went to the website and sent Michael — and uploaded and then got the link and sent to Michael the link of a picture of a bat we found in a closet in my office. It was a bat.

MR [Laughing] Oh, my goodness.

AH It was the only picture —

MR I must go look at this right now.

AH Yes. I Slacked it to you.

MR Oh, Slack. Okay. I was thinking email.

AH I put the link in — I linked. I put the link — so, yeah, I didn’t do the thing where you could, like email it. I just — I copied the link —

MR There it is.

AH — a secure link. Yeah. So there was a bat in my office. So I just want you guys to —

MR So the link has expired. You must have clicked on it already.

AH Oh, I did. Okay. So it’s only good once.

MR Yeah. See? The link expired. It works.

AH I was testing it.

MR It works. There you go.

AH And you’ll never get to see the bat. Sorry.

MR Unless you resend it.

AH It was the only picture I had on my desktop because I’ve done a good idea — I’ve done a good job of cleaning up my desktop.

MR Well, now I want to see the bat.

AH I’m going to get you a picture of the bat. Calm down.

MR All right. All right.

AH Oh, my God.

MR [Laughing]

AH I’ll get everybody a picture of the bat.

MR [Laughing]

AH It’s really cute. I named it Count — Count Von Batten.

MR [Laughing]

AH No, sorry, Count Mountbatten — Mountbatten. Yes, because I just finished watching The Crown so now I’m all about the Mountbattens.

MR Oh, that’s amazing.

AH Anyhow —

MR That’s amazing.

AH So yeah, are we done?

MR Yeah, we should be done. Definitely.

AH We should definitely be done.

MR [Laughing] All right.

Well, thanks everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. Just a reminder, our website is massagebusinessblueprint.com. Check out our premium community there. We have big things planned here for 2020. So hope you like our new format.

And don’t forget, you can leave us reviews on iTunes — I’m sorry, it’s Apple Podcast now — so on Apple Podcast, you can leave us reviews. We appreciate those. We read many of them on the air as they come in. So please feel free to take a few minutes and give us rating and a review and we’d love to hear from you.

So thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Have an awesome day and we’ll see you next time.

AH Bye.