Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• Budgeting equals awareness

Discussion Topic

• Worst. Advice. Ever.

Quick Tips

• Networking tip: Think of every person you meet when networking first as someone you can help, not someone who can help you.
• Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. And visa versa
• ZOOM settings can make you prettier!

Sponsors

• The Original Jojoba Company 
• Acuity 
• ABMP 

Transcript: 

Sponsor message: 

This episode is sponsored by The Original Jojoba Company. I firmly believe that massage therapists should only be using the highest quality products because our clients deserve it and our own bodies deserve it. I have been using jojoba for years, and here's why. Jojoba is non-allergenic. I can use it on any client and every client without fear of an allergic reaction. It is also non-comedogenic so it won't clog pores. So if you've got clients prone to acne breakouts, jojoba is a good choice for them. It does not go rancid. There's no triglycerides, so it can sit on your shelf for a year plus and not be a problem, and that's what also makes jojoba a wonderful carrier for your essential oils as well. It won't stain your 100% cotton sheets so your linens are going to last longer. The Original Jojoba Company is the only company in the world that carries 100% pure, first-press quality jojoba and we are delighted to be their partner. You, my friends, can get 20% off the price of the product when you shop through our link, massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba.

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'm Michael Reynolds.

Allissa Haines:

I'm Allissa Haines.

Michael Reynolds:

And we are your hosts. Thanks for joining us today. As always, we are happy you're here.

Allissa Haines:

Yes, we are. Michael... I just told you before we started recording, but I have a whole new computer setup with this external camera and an external monitor and this fancy hub that plugs into my MacBook and makes it all work together. I'm totally going to put a picture up on our Instagram because I'm so excited about it.

Michael Reynolds:

Nice. I know we got to test it right before we started recording and your camera looks really good, so.

Allissa Haines:

It's so good, you can see the blemishes on my face, yo.

Michael Reynolds:

You look lovely.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

Lovely.

Allissa Haines:

I'm okay with it. What are you reading this week, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

I am reading... I get a newsletter every week from Carl Richards, who, as I've mentioned before is a kind of a... Author, coach guy for financial advisors. I like his newsletter. It's short, it's simple. It's fun and one of the recent ones was called Budgeting Equals Awareness, and I really liked it because you and I both I think are really pro-budgeting. I see a lot of people, especially, other financial advisors in this space, they sometimes are very anti-budgeting like, "Oh, I hate budgeting. People shouldn't budget, it's blah blah," and I'm the opposite.

Michael Reynolds:

I think budgeting is awesome. I think budgeting is super useful and his newsletter, in this particular issue, kind of goes through a thought process saying, "Hey, we acknowledge budgeting is not fun. A lot of people struggle with it. A lot of people have kind of lies they tell themselves about budgeting, but when it comes down to it, budgeting... We don't have to think of budgeting as this restrictive formula that we have to kind of apply to ourselves and box us in. At its core, budgeting equals awareness and if you focus on budgeting and make budgeting a habit and put resources and energy into budgeting, it's not so much you're going to have to do a bunch of math. It's more about, you're going to be aware of where your money is going."

Michael Reynolds:

This is true for business and personal, but more in a kind of a personal context. So I'm a big fan of this approach of not getting too hung up on the math and the apps and all the stuff, but just be aware that by budgeting your money, you are immediately as a by-product, becoming more aware of where your money is going, and that has a ton of value. So even if you're not perfect at it, even if you're not necessarily doing it consistently, if you at least put energy into budgeting, you are creating awareness about your money, and that gives you a distinct advantage and more intentional behind using your money. So I think it's a really good kind of approach to take. So that's what I'm reading.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, I think budgeting gets such a bad rap because it's like one of those buzz words with negative connotations, but...

Michael Reynolds:

It really does-

Allissa Haines:

It is simply deciding what is most important to you to spend your money on. I think too, that old-style budgeting, like estimating how much you're going to bring in and then saying where you're going to put that money, I think the reason that we both like the YNAB software is because you don't spend your money until you get it. You don't plan where it's going until it's sitting there in your account. So there's never that, "Oh, I thought I was going to bring in $3000 this week, but I only brought in $2500 so now I got to go back and fix where that $500 is going to come from," because the way we do it, it's not forecasting. It's placing things into the buckets, as you get it, versus planning what bucket it's going to go in beforehand. So I feel like that-

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

But I feel like budgeting gets this bad rap because of the old-style interpretation of it.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, like Mint or EveryDollar where it forces you to decide how much money you're going to make at the beginning of the month, and we don't know how much money we're going to make.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

So, yeah so YNAB is great for that. By the way, YNAB stands for You Need A Budget for those maybe unfamiliar. If you go to youneedabudget.com, you'll find the software we love. YNAB for short, Y-N-A-B.

Allissa Haines:

I'm going to read that article. Thank you. I have nothing because I've still just been going along with some of the Oprah romance novels. I read like three of them in a week, and now I'm not going to read any for a while 'cause I get awful tired of hearing about other people's love and booty. So it's true. I burned out on them and that's fine. So... Who's our first sponsor, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Our friends ABMP.

Allissa Haines:

Yay and they say, and we believe, that they are proud to sponsor the Massage Business Blueprint Podcast. They have CE courses you'll love, available for purchase or included free with membership in the ABMP Education Center at abmp.com/CE. You can explore hands-on techniques, complete ethics requirements, pardon me, and discover a new course called A Website That Works with us. We did a live CE Social with them last week and now the recording of that webinar about better websites for massage therapists is now available in their CE Portal.

Allissa Haines:

All ABMP memberships include 200 plus video-based on-demand CE classes and they've got a great new series of CE Socials that I just told you about. I forget who the May, end of May CE Social presenter is, but I remember looking at it and being like, "Hey, that's going to be awesome." So you, my friends, can join these interactive experiences... Free for ABMP members, $15 for non-members, registration includes the live event access, your CE certificate, ongoing access to the course in the Education Center. You can visit ABMP.com/CE-Socials for that. You can just go to ABMP.com to learn more about all their other stuff. Education, podcasts, benefits, liability insurance, discounts on stuff, all of that. ABMP.com.

Michael Reynolds:

Love it. Thanks ABMP.

Allissa Haines:

I got a little carried away there.

Michael Reynolds:

I believe that they are proud to sponsor us.

Allissa Haines:

Today's episode, our topic is awesome.

Michael Reynolds:

I know, I love it.

Allissa Haines:

So... It's May, happy May everyone, which means it is our Massage Business Blueprint business-aversary, I'm struggling with the words this morning and to celebrate our anniversary, we thought we would bring you a bunch of fun, funny, and also useful, as we always try to be, episodes in May. So we have, starting off today, with the worst advice you have ever received. We pulled our premium member community and gathered a whole bunch of... Here's the worst advice someone ever gave me stories. I think that some of them are just so useful and also some of them are pretty hilarious and we're going to go through what our members told us.

Allissa Haines:

After we do this worst advice episode, the following week, we will have the best advice and then we will have the technique that has brought you the most clients. Then we're going to wrap up May with a full podcast episode to match the new blog post I have up on the site, which is how to start a massage business, like all the little steps that you need to take to start a massage business.

Michael Reynolds:

Wow, May is action packed.

Allissa Haines:

May is going to be big. Happy anniversary, Michael.

Michael Reynolds:

Oh yeah. Happy anniv-, every year, I was like, "Wait a minute. It's May. That's when we started our business."

Allissa Haines:

Uh-huh (affirmative), 'cause it's always like right after Eli's birthday so I always remember how old we are by remembering how old Eli is.

Michael Reynolds:

That's right.

Allissa Haines:

And vice versa, depending on the day.

Michael Reynolds:

We are six and so is Eli.

Allissa Haines:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Worst advice ever. I'm going to start with mine. So sometime around 2006, which was about a year after I started my business, a financial advisor told me not to bother paying quarterly taxes... Because I worked other part-time jobs.

Michael Reynolds:

I'm cringing listening to this.

Allissa Haines:

Uh-huh (affirmative), 'cause I know that in 2005, my total income from massage, like my gross was like $12,000 and so my net was $3,000 or something like that. He was like, "Oh, you're not going to do that well this year, anyway. You're not going to need to pay those." But he didn't really specify like, you don't need to pay them this year, and at the time, the first couple of years of my business, I worked other part-time jobs that paid like W-2 taxes and I had some extra taken out to account for those self-employment taxes and I was married and had a husband who paid W-2 taxes, so it wasn't a problem, not paying quarterlies wasn't a problem until 2009, at which point I had no other side jobs and then no husband, it was the first time I was filing single and I owed like $7,000, that I totally did not have.

Michael Reynolds:

Ouch.

Allissa Haines:

I had like $3000 of it. So oops, and that's when I learned that the IRS is actually pretty chill about their payment plans. You can pretty much tell them what you can pay them every month and I had it paid off fairly quickly and I learned my lesson. Well, I mostly learned my lesson. I think I actually underpaid the next year too and owed a couple of grand more than expected. So it took me a little while to learn that lesson. Many of us have learned that lesson the hard way. So heads up, if anyone ever tells you to not pay quarterly taxes, you should really have that conversation with your accountant, before believing them. Michael, what's our next piece of terrible advice?

Michael Reynolds:

Remind me, are we giving first names?

Allissa Haines:

Yes.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. So this is from our friend Sakinah and Sakinah said, "There was some massage marketing advice dude who said making a stack of free 30-minute massage gift certificates and giving them away, was a fast way to build a client base. When they redeem their certificate, you were then supposed to try to upsell them into an hour service so you could make something on the session." Wow.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

So bait and switch as a marketing tactic. I love it.

Allissa Haines:

Kind of. Some people have used this technique in a really structured, particular way, only giving gift certificates to really good and well-qualified potential referral partners and it's worked effectively and some people have not used it in a very strategic way and just lost a bunch of money and gotten a lot of no shows for 30-minute massages and such.

Michael Reynolds:

Nice.

Allissa Haines:

Marcy and I will say, our premium members told us it was okay to use their first names. That's why we're doing this. Marcy. Someone told her that doing free chair massage will get you so many clients. Yeah, no. All that got me was very bad body mechanics, a distinct disdain for chair massage and yeah... Just about all of our premium members feel the same way and our friend Michelle actually said she would rather re-tile a bathroom than do chair massage. I feel ya. Let's just reiterate, I think it's going to come up again. Free chair massage ain't going to get you a crap ton of in-office table massage clients. What's next, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Michelle says her advice given was, or that she was given was, 'That I have to do Groupon or some other type of deep discounts to get new clients in. Turns out, just being solid, note, not the best, and reliable massage therapist was all I needed to get that word of mouth marketing going. While it's not all bad advice, it wasn't good advice for me. The idea that you have to have a blog, regular newsletters, strong social media presence to get clients, I absolutely hate doing all that stuff and it was causing me to hate my business. Everything got better once I stopped worrying about it. I'm happy just being a massage therapist and not a content creator." So there's two things here. One is, the discount and Groupon thing, and then all of the peer pressure to be a content creator. I love that Michelle just said, "You know what? I'm going to be me and I'm not going to think that I have to do something just because someone tells me."

Allissa Haines:

This is such a good demonstration of like recognize your strengths and your weaknesses and what you like and you don't like. Because Michelle didn't want to do that other stuff, she made sure that she was re-booking clients. She makes sure that she is delivering the massage the client wants. She makes sure that she invites people to refer their friends so the word of mouth is better. She recognized what she did and didn't want to do to grow her business, she threw herself into it and made it happen.

Allissa Haines:

Okay, Kate is next. Kate was told, "That doing things for exposure, like free chair massage, donating services for auctions, deeply discounting services for students at particular yoga studios, blah, blah, blah, would translate into more clients and bookings." Thank goodness she hasn't actually done much of that. But every time she did something like that, she totally regretted it. So despite doing everything right, few people ever reached out to book an appointment. So Kate's experience has been that when someone receives something free of charge or gets something at a huge discount, that's what they expect to keep happening. This is an important lesson to learn. Deep discounting, not the best for everyone and free work, not the best option for everyone. That's what I got.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. Christine says, excuse me, "My former massage business mentor told me I shouldn't get a business license for massage at a certain location, the same suite as her business location, because it might send signals to the city that massage was happening there. Her business license was for therapeutic stretching and that didn't sit right." This makes me just kind of like turn my head a little bit. I'm like, what?

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. That person shouldn't be mentoring. All right. Gene said, "She was told, offering free services would generate income." She actually found that it devalues the paid services she offers. Yeah. She was also told that niching is a bad idea since it limits potential clientele, and she was told that you don't have to claim tips as income.

Michael Reynolds:

Oh, it gets better and better.

Allissa Haines:

Oh it really does. You next.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. Rianne says, my ultimate favorite, "You should call yourself a," okay. I can't even say this. "You should call yourself a professional rubber because people don't know what massage is." I can't. I just can't keep a straight face with this.

Allissa Haines:

Nope. Okay. So next is Chris who told us that, "When I moved from Seattle, Washington to Vermont, I took a senior therapist out to lunch to talk about what massage therapy and owning a massage therapist business was like here. There was no regulation for a massage therapist in Vermont, at that time, 18 years ago. That didn't change until 2020, when a registration process was created. Anyhow, amongst this advice she passed on to me, that turned out to be unhelpful, my favorite was be prepared to barter because people will not want to pay for massage from you at first, since you're new to the area. I would not be surprised to see you will get a chicken in trade for a massage therapy session."

Allissa Haines:

Chris says, "What stuck in my brain was that I was going to be doing massage and trade for chickens. While bartering has had a very small place in my business, it has always been for something that I wanted and needed and never a chicken. It turned out that being new and thus very different from all the other massage therapists in the area was a huge benefit. I built my business on repeat clients who wanted something different than what all the other therapists were doing, and apparently those clients wanted to pay with currency instead of chickens."

Michael Reynolds:

Now, to be fair, I don't want to discount that there are some places in the world where chickens are currency and that may be appropriate to do massage for chickens, but I would venture to say for most of our audience, this is not great advice.

Allissa Haines:

No, no. It's not at all. All right. Leslie's got something pretty intense here. You want to do it? Go for it.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. Sure, and just a disclaimer, many of these, including Leslie's, I have not read. I'm reading for the first time here. So Leslie says, "I had a very well-regarded and experienced local therapist work on me early in my career. He did DEEP, DEEP, PAINFUL," this is all caps, "DEEP, DEEP, PAINFUL pressure on the top of my foot, sorry. First I yelped. Then I actually vocalized that the pressure was too much and very painful. I had several large colorful bruises left that went from purple to green to yellow over the next month. I think gua sha with thumbs." Sorry, I'm not familiar-

Allissa Haines:

Gua sha is a really deep technique. So this guy was doing like crazy gua sha-like treatments, only with his thumb.

Michael Reynolds:

Not familiar with that. "And that I didn't want that. I had not, after all, had any complaints in that area and I didn't understand why it was an area of focus. 'Hush. I wouldn't do it if you didn't need it,' he said. 'Remember that you are the therapist and that people are coming to you for your expertise. They want effective, deep massage and will come to love to hate you and keep coming if you do what you know will work, no matter what they say at the time.' Even though I was a licensed massage therapist, myself, I was blinking back tears. I didn't have the confidence to end the session. Never will I refer to him, even to people who ask for more pressure than I'm capable of, or who say they want work that is painful. I'll never reward that behavior with people under their care. I'll certainly never take the advice to ignore my client's feedback and comfort based on my own ego and ideas of what is best for them." Wow.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

This is painful to listen to, like painful just to read.

Allissa Haines:

A lot of people popped in with responses to that and yeah. So what the therapist did was assault. He kept hurting a client. He kept touching a client in a way that they had asked him to not do that and that's assault. The very idea that someone that you wouldn't do what they say, that you should keep doing what you think you should do, no matter what the client says at the time, that's assault. Yeah, don't follow that advice. Thanks, Leslie, for that story. Sometimes, I think a lot of us have similar stories, but this was a tough one to read... And really important for all of us to hear.

Allissa Haines:

So Mary popped in and said, she's had so much advice, bad advice over the years. Some that she's taken and found out the hard way that it was bad advice. Some that was simply obvious. "Multiple therapists have told me I price too high and I should offer deep discounts for new clients, even free sessions for their proverbial exposure. That doesn't seem to translate into consistent clientele for me. So I'm very picky about discounts." Rock on Mary. We hear you.

Michael Reynolds:

I see a theme here. A lot of, "Hey, do it for exposure," kind of theme here, going on. There's a phrase I like, you can die from exposure so don't do it for the exposure. All right. Linda says, her advice that she was given was, "Massage is just a foofy pampering luxury so you have to give a deep discount because people don't have extra money for that." Wow. I'm seeing so many like themes about, you're not worth the money you're charging and discount and give it away. This is painful.

Allissa Haines:

It's really like marketing from a place of fear, huh?

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

So... Kate. Oh God, Kate's awesome. She has given such wonderful feedback. So another one she got, don't offer sliding scale pricing and there's two takes on that. One, that people will take advantage since you're just asking a few questions and not requiring documentation, or that you'll get swamped with people wanting sliding scale rates or two, sliding scale rates, however you offer them aren't fair. So first, Kate says she's never been taken advantage of, and she's actually never even reached her cap, in terms of the max number of sliding scale sessions she's available for per week. And two, she's got really firm limits and guidelines on when she's available for sliding scale appointments and people have suggested that this might not be fair because a potential client isn't available during those hours for the rates.

Allissa Haines:

Sorry, I'm totally butchering this, but Kate disagrees and I agree with her. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If she didn't reserve her evenings for clients paying the regular rate, she wouldn't be able to offer the sliding scale rates in a sustainable way. So being able to help some people who are experiencing financial challenge, feels better than being able to help none. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good is a huge and important lesson. So thank you for sharing that, Kate.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. All right, Lacey shares, "Things I've been told and luckily never followed. One, you have to work weekends if you want to make it as a massage therapist. Two, you have to work into later evenings to accommodate people who work during the day. Three, don't worry about paying taxes your first few years, since you'll make so little, it won't matter and it will take years for the IRS to figure it out anyway." Wow. That's awesome advice. "Four, you need to offer a deep discount," again, here's the theme, "for the first-time clients to get people in the door and number five, chair massage is a great way to gain clients. I've literally never gotten a client from a chair massage gig."

Allissa Haines:

Yeah and shout out to Lacey, who's having twins this fall. She just publicly announced it, like a week or two ago.

Michael Reynolds:

Ooh, congrats Lacey.

Allissa Haines:

Yay Lacey. Okay. So Meg, Meg talks about a SCORE mentorship and-

Michael Reynolds:

Oh boy.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. So SCORE is like an offshoot of the Small Business Association that kind of gives mentors to other newer business owners. A whole bunch of us have had some terrible experiences with SCORE mentors. So anyhow, "When SCORE wanted me to do a complete 34-page in-depth business plan, I refused and I'm glad I refused because when I presented my scaled-down version, they said I would fail and I wasn't thinking big enough. I started to explain that I switched careers because I wanted to work with my hands and work without employees and that I don't have goals of growing beyond that. He challenged me to think bigger. So I sat in that room for another five minutes, walked out, and never went back. It was a huge learning experience that other people would bring their values to present me to tell me what they think I should be doing and that I can listen but also disagree. If it's wasting my time, I can walk away." Preach.

Michael Reynolds:

Love this.

Allissa Haines:

Preach.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. All right. Wrapping up with Michelle who shares advice she was given, "One, you must do-," here's the theme again, "You must do chair massage at companies and events. It will get you scads of new clients in your office. Ugh. It has never once garnered me a new client for table massage in my office, which makes sense. It's a different price point, different location, and different modality. When I finally realized that, I was like, that's three strikes, you're out, which was quite frankly a relief because I hate chair massage, which should have been my first clue not to do in the first place, but I used to be much slower about not doing things I was supposed to do. Two, the best way to get new clients is to offer a discount. Bleh. Yeah. The best way to get new one-time clients is offer a discount.

Michael Reynolds:

And number three, Michelle shares, "You need to make all your clients feel pampered, no luxury and pampered are not my vibe. You can absolutely make people feel seen, heard, and much less stressed without the trappings of loaded words like pampering." So this encapsulates a lot of similar advice we've heard in this episode so I'm glad Michelle shared that.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. So that's it and... I also want to share another little story that when Michael remembers, he's going to start laughing, 'cause we were at a massage convention type event and we were asking attendees this like, what's the best advice or what advice would you give a new massage therapist? This woman, who had been in massage for like 40 years, came over and answered... And her answer was, it was this long monologue on when you decide to become a massage therapist, you are giving your heart and your soul and your time to your clients. No matter what time a client needs you, it's your job to help take them out of pain and if you're doing this for the money, don't do it. You have this offering and this gift to give the world and people don't need to pay you for that, and it's fine if you can't make a living, you can just do massage and do something else for money and do massage because you love it, and it's your job to heal the world.

Allissa Haines:

It was the funni- and like we recorded it and then she walked away and both of us went, "We're going to delete that, right?" 'Cause we could not include that in our podcast.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, I remember that vividly.

Allissa Haines:

I think the lesson from that and like, first of all, good for this woman for having that be a driving factor in her career and for her having whatever resources or foundation to be able to deliver on that. I am deeply happy for her that she found reward and happiness and... Whatever in being able to turn her massage career into a gift of service, as opposed to a financially sustaining career, or maybe she managed to do both, but that didn't come through. But I think the really great lesson here is what works for one person isn't going to work for everybody. Even very good advice, sometimes, is bad advice for you, and being able to acknowledge that and not being a sucker when someone who intimidates you or someone who you think is smarter than you, gives you advice, is really, really helpful. That is what I have to say about bad advice.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. Love it. That was a fun episode.

Allissa Haines:

It was really fun.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

I love hearing people's stories because we have such an interesting and diverse community and such an interesting and diverse profession. I don't know. Who's our next sponsor?

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, let's talk about Acuity for a minute.

Allissa Haines:

Acuity is the scheduling assistant that makes it easy for traditional businesses to become virtual and just easy to maintain your traditional business. Acuity is the business suite that takes hours of work off your plate so you can just focus on all the other important stuff of your business or your side hustle, like, you know, becoming a professional rubber, whatever works for you.

Michael Reynolds:

You got to stop that.

Allissa Haines:

I'm never going to not love that. You never have to ask what time works for you again. Clients can quickly view your real-time availability and book their own appointments, reschedule with a click, you can handle intake forms. You can handle your COVID intake. You can handle all kinds of things with Acuity and you could get a special 45-day free offer when you sign up today. You can check it out at MassageBusinessBlueprint.com/Acuity.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. Quick tip time.

Allissa Haines:

All right. Do you want to do yours? Do yours.

Michael Reynolds:

Sure, sure. Mine's a networking tip. We've talked about networking, I think, one or two episodes ago, so I think this kind of goes well with it. Actually this goes well with previous episodes because this tip is from my friend Robby Slaughter, who I had talked about recently when I shared this podcast. So in my what am I reading or listening section, I talked about his podcast called Simply Inspiration, which is three minutes of just kind of daily inspiration and interesting stories. So he also has a company called AccelaWork and he's kind of a productivity expert, so he does consulting around productivity and business process.

Michael Reynolds:

His Twitter account for his company is called AccelaWork and he posted a tweet recently, which I really like, and the networking tip is this. Think of every person you meet, when networking first, as someone you can help, not someone who can help you. I love this because it kind of encapsulates the entire essence of what I feel networking should be, and that is not to try and see what you can get out of your network, but what can you give to your network? So I love that tweet. It really encapsulates the true philosophy of what networking should be, I think, so I wanted to share that. That's my quick tips.

Allissa Haines:

That's really great. I have two. The first one is, if you didn't know in your Zoom settings, in your video settings, there is an option to click that says Touch Up My Appearance and it has a little sliding lever thingamabob. It will smooth out your appearance on your camera. What I like to say, is that it takes about five years off your face, so there you go. Now you know, Zoom settings can make you look a little bit younger and prettier, if that's important to you.

Michael Reynolds:

I'm conflicted about that. One, because-

Allissa Haines:

I am too.

Michael Reynolds:

Go ahead.

Allissa Haines:

But it's not major. I was just looking at it. It's pretty minor. It pretty much just brightens up your complexion a little bit. I'm a woman of a certain age and I have both pimples and wrinkles so... I feel like when something's being recorded forever and ever, I'm okay, like I don't wear makeup so I feel like this is my makeup. That's how I feel about it.

Michael Reynolds:

Okay. That's fair. I guess, one, I don't think it makes me look better. I think it makes me look worse so that's one reason I'm conflicted. The other is, of course, I'm all about being yourself and, but you're right, I guess, that it makes sense if you're thinking of it as makeup and we don't question that, so, yeah, okay.

Allissa Haines:

I typically only crank it up when something's being recorded for forever.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

Okay. My real piece of advice here, don't take criticism for someone you wouldn't take advice from and vice versa. Don't take advice from someone you wouldn't take criticism from. What, for me, I don't remember where I heard that or when, but for me, it really means... Think about who's talking to you and giving you advice because it could just be a terrible source or a source that is not... Fitted to your situation. That's what I got.

Michael Reynolds:

You tied that in with our episode today.

Allissa Haines:

I really did.

Michael Reynolds:

Nice. Well done. All right. Excellent. Well with that, that's a great place to wrap things up. Hey, thanks everyone. We appreciate you listening as always. You can find us on the web at MassageBusinessBlueprint.com. If you are not a member of our premium community, yet, feel free to check it out. Click on that button that says Community, and you can read more about it and you can join free for 30 days. If you want to email us, you can email us topic requests, questions, anything you want to give us, thoughts, love notes, hate mail, whatever it is. Podcast@MassageBusinessBlueprint.com is the email address and we would love to hear from you. Thanks for joining us today. Have a great day. We will see you next time.

Allissa Haines:

Bye.