Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle, OVERWHELM: Is our exhaustion a sign that we’re CareTicking time bombs? (June 15, 2021 episode) 
• What is cheugy? Here are 10 ways to know if you fit the description

Discussion Topic

• 3 Words Check In
• Michael
• simple
• strong
• space
• Allissa
• patience
• pace
• purview

Quick Tips

• Photopea

Sponsors

• The Original Jojoba Company Retail Kit 
• ABMP 
• PocketSuite 

Transcript: 

Sponsor message:

This episode is sponsored by PocketSuite. PocketSuite is an all-in-one app that makes it easier to run your massage business. You can schedule and get booked online by clients and manage all your forms and notes and contracts and payments and reminders, all of the things, all within the PocketSuite app, and it is all HIPAA compliant, my friends. Whether you are just starting out or a seasoned business owner, PocketSuite helps you save time and make a good living. A massage therapist can be up and running on PocketSuite in 15 minutes. Our podcast listeners can get 25% off your annual premium subscription for your first year of PocketSuite and for more information, you can visit massagebusinessblueprint.com/pocketsuite.

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. We are thrilled to have you with us as always. Listen.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

Sorry. Oh, please continue.

Allissa Haines:

You know what we haven't done in a while?

Michael Reynolds:

What haven't we done a while?

Allissa Haines:

How's the weather?

Michael Reynolds:

Oh, good call. Well, actually it's been a cooler week this week. It's been nice. Ariana has been taking Eli to the park. It's not been too hot, so we're having a really good week this week weather-wise. We had some hail, some storms, but other than that, pretty nice. How about you?

Allissa Haines:

It's been nice. Also a little cool here. It was hot over the weekend, Walt got the pool open finally last week and yeah, we're like waiting for a super hot day to be more in the pool. It's annoying to buy a house with a pool because pools are a crap ton of work, but it's kind of nice. It's also terrifying because I'm worried the kids are going to drown, but my grandson is coming over today for his first swim in the pool of the season. It's only going to be like 75 and sunny, but I think he'll be in there anyway so that's what's going on here.

Michael Reynolds:

I just love it. We are getting a pool soon as well. We're excited.

Allissa Haines:

Nice.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. So what are you reading?

Allissa Haines:

I am listening to, okay, let me preface this. Glennon Doyle is an author of Untamed and I think another book. I'm not a huge Glennon Doyle fan. I've read some of her books. They don't really resonate with me. I've seen some of her speaking, like I think she's great. I love that a lot of people love her. I think her message about just radical unconditional love is great. I'd never listened to her podcast, but one of the step-parenting resources that I spend a lot of time with suggested a particular podcast episode, I guess she has a podcast. The podcast is called We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle and the particular episode, they don't really have episode numbers, but it was from June 15th of this year, 2021.

Allissa Haines:

The episode was about OVERWHELM: Is our exhaustion a sign that we’re CareTicking time bombs? I like the little play on careticking, caretaking, and it is Glennon Doyle and her sister, which I think every episode is her and her sister, having a really interesting conversation about people who head up the caretaking in their households and how, of course, that the balance of labor is not always equitable and roles have changed a lot, especially in the last year and what the emotional toll, and this is about kind of emotional labor, but also it went a little beyond that, but the emotional toll of being the person in charge of logistics and caretaking, and they used verbiage and examples that were kind of new to me and really helped me understand my own stress levels with certain things and not just in caretaking in my home, but also in my business and how having these tasks always kind of running in the background of my brain places a certain amount of stress and exhaustion on me.

Allissa Haines:

It was a really good discussion. I have a link to the Apple Podcast link. I had trouble finding an actual podcast page, but I know that the podcast is available in all the major places so search for We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle and it's the overwhelm episode in June. If anyone listens to this, I'd love to discuss it with you. So if you listen to this, you can email me a podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com and we'll talk about it. It would be great. What are you been doing, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

I love it. Well, I'm here to be the yin to your yang. So I have something completely useless and frivolous to share.

Allissa Haines:

Love it.

Michael Reynolds:

I came across this term, there was a couple of articles about it. The one I'm referencing is from Today.com, but the term is cheugy. First of all, I'm fascinated by trends and fashion and I don't really care about any of it, but it's just funny to see kind of the trends and what's going on with fashion. So this term is called cheugy and I'm going to read the definition here from this article, because it's so hilarious. This is the word which is pronounced cheugy is spelled C-H-E-U-G-Y is used to describe someone who is untrendy, out of date or trying too hard. It's basically another way to say basic, however, on some on social media are arguing that there is a self-awareness to cheugyness that is far more actualized than basic.

Michael Reynolds:

I just randomly read this thing because the headline caught me and the article is titled 10 Ways to Know if You Fit the Description of Cheugy and I won't read all 10, but some of them were you use Herbal Essences shampoo.

Allissa Haines:

We totally do.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, see? Oh, we're totally cheugy. Girl boss energy, #GirlBossEnergy. That's indicative of cheugyness, cheesy hashtags and captions.

Allissa Haines:

Yep.

Michael Reynolds:

Let's see, what else? You love Disney and you're an adult.

Allissa Haines:

Nope.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. That's not me really. I mean, I like Disney, but it's because I have kids. Let's see what else? Graphic tees, Dunder Mifflin merch, Axe body spray, which I didn't think that was a thing, but it still is apparently. So it's just, I thought it was really funny that there's yet another term to describe people, frankly like me, just don't really get it or care but are self-aware about it so that is your useless what am I reading for today.

Allissa Haines:

I just scrolled the article and it ends with a little bit about the whole middle part versus side part of your hair controversy that happened because apparently younger people are into the middle part, but people around my age and older are like, "No, you part your hair on a side," and I had read a thing about this a couple of months ago when it came up, like it's because our faces are not symmetrical. So I mean, and the more symmetrical your face, the more conventionally attractive you are, there's like a whole thing but my face is super not symmetrical, like I'm way off so if I put my hair in the middle, I look ridiculous because it just emphasizes how like distorted, for lack of a better word, my face is, so anyhow, if you part your hair on the side, it's fine.

Michael Reynolds:

So the trend now is to part your hair in the middle?

Allissa Haines:

I guess and they show a picture of a dude, but like-

Michael Reynolds:

I see that.

Allissa Haines:

And that's terrible but like on women with like long, straight hair, it can look really lovely, but I have long, straight hair and it does not look lovely on me. Also, side note, I changed the side of my part during this pandemic and no one noticed. So that's how much other people care about your hair.

Michael Reynolds:

Well, now I'm embarrassed.

Allissa Haines:

I mean, we don't even do video that much anymore.

Michael Reynolds:

That's true.

Allissa Haines:

So I'm not going to make anybody feel bad about that but like nobody in my household even noticed. Whatever. Anyhow.

Michael Reynolds:

There you go.

Allissa Haines:

It was a big change for me, okay? I've part of my hair on the left for like 40 years and then I switched it and nobody noticed, but I also cut bangs so whatevs. Who's our first sponsor, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Great segue. Jojoba retail pack.

Allissa Haines:

Yay. The Jojoba Retail Starter Kit will get your retail sales off the ground at an amazing discount, folks. Share the love of HobaCare Jojoba with your clients and your customers today. This is a really cool kit. It's got a couple of different size bottles. That's got a little display. It's got a tester-sized bottle, which your clients are going to know what jojoba is anyway, because you probably use it on them, and then it has two different size bottles to actually sell, some four-ounce bottles, some eight-ounce bottles. It's got brochures. It's really attractive. They've got beautiful new packaging and it's a crazy good value. So for the HobaCare Jojoba Original, the value of this package is $161 and you're going to get it for $65 and if you choose the HobaCare Organic, the value is $179, but you're going to get it for $75. So $65 or $75 kit.

Allissa Haines:

This is going to be a limited time offer. I don't have a specific date, but I do know that this isn't going to run forever. They are limiting the purchase of these kits to four per customer. They're going to give you all the information about wholesale pricing and retail pricing and what to do with this so if you want to sell retail and you haven't yet, this is a great way to start. Do please, everyone, check the information for your state or locality about how to deal with retail sales tax, which is not hard. I've done it, but yeah, it's really, really cool and I lost my link, but you should go to massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojobakit, J-O-J-O-B-A-K-I-T, to learn more and get your own kits. It's pretty awesome.

Michael Reynolds:

It looks beautiful. It looks [crosstalk 00:09:58].

Allissa Haines:

It's lovely.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. All right. Oh my goodness. I love this time of the year because we get to, excuse me, check in on our three words that we do at the beginning of each year. I love it because first of all, I love to recap how I'm doing personally, but I love to hear how you're doing.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

So exciting.

Allissa Haines:

Who wants to go first?

Michael Reynolds:

I can go first.

Allissa Haines:

Go first. [crosstalk 00:10:20].

Michael Reynolds:

[crosstalk 00:10:20] first in the notes so I'm happy to jump in.

Allissa Haines:

Do it.

Michael Reynolds:

So as those who may be new to the podcast, just to kind of a recap, so Allissa and I every year have been doing the Chris Brogan's 3 Words Exercise. Chris Brogan is a business consultant, author, speaker, someone who we both have followed for a while and I think still really enjoy learning from and he came up with this 3 Words Exercise as an alternative to New Year's resolutions in which you pick three words that are meant to be thematic for the year, things that you want to focus on, put your energy toward in the coming year. So you create those words and you use them as guideposts instead of like hard goals or New Year's resolutions or whatever, which are very problematic for some people.

Michael Reynolds:

So we've done this every year for a long, long time and then every six months in the mid part of the year, we like to check in and see how we're doing, which I love because it's really useful to have that checkpoint because it's very easy to say, "Okay, my three words are 1, 2, 3," and then, "Oh, I kind of forget about them by March or April and life gets in the way," and this is a really good checkpoint. So I'm going to jump in with mine. My three words for 2021 are simple, strong, and space, and I will share how I am doing with those words.

Michael Reynolds:

I am a solid two out of three right now. That's kind of the gist of how I'm doing. So I'm doing really well with the word simple. Simple was meant and chosen to really remind me that I enjoy my bias towards simplicity, in my life, in my business. I think that one of the biggest stumbling blocks to productivity in a lot of people is making things overly complex, too complicated, too complex, unnecessarily complicated so I have a strong bias towards simplicity and that shows up in the ways that I structure my businesses, structure my life, trying to keep things very simple from the tools I use to the processes I follow to the way I build businesses so all of that's going pretty well. I'm pretty happy with that. I like the direction I'm going in terms of simplicity, I'm really honoring that. That's working well for me.

Michael Reynolds:

The second word was strong and this was sort of multifaceted. It was to remind me to, for one, literally take care of my physical health. I've been lifting weights three days a week and I have been extremely consistent. I've really been enjoying it. I found that app that works well for me to track everything. I've got my home gym set up. I'm really enjoying the changes that I'm seeing in my body in terms of muscle definition and it's really been good for me so I'm really enjoying that. So I have been pretty solid on the strong part physically and then also reminding me too, that strength is not just physical, but it's mental and emotional. I have been more self-aware at ways I can improve my mental and emotional strength in lots of ways too. So that's been working well for me.

Michael Reynolds:

Space, I'm not doing great at. Space was designed to remind me that I need to create space in my life. I have a really hard time saying no to things when they hit my schedule. I have a really hard time saying no to business opportunities, a really hard time saying no to people that want my time. I'm really not great at that and I'm still struggling with that. So this shows up in the form of filling my calendar too much, I'm not spending as much time with my family as I would like, over-extending myself so that's something I'm still struggling with. So I'm really appreciative of this checkpoint, mid-year, to remind me that that's important to me, that the word space was chosen for a reason, and it is still important to me and something I need to revisit. So that is how I am doing with my three words.

Allissa Haines:

So can I play psychiatrist for a second?

Michael Reynolds:

Oh dear, sure.

Allissa Haines:

Is there, I'm going to give you a mission and I'm giving you this mission as like your friend and not your cohost or business partner. I think that you should look at your schedule for the next couple of months and find some obligation that you quit.

Michael Reynolds:

I like that.

Allissa Haines:

Or some obligation that you can lay the foundation for quitting, like something that you do that takes up some time and thinking about reassigning that time to your family or whatever, or yourself or whatever, and lay the foundation to say, "Hey, I'm going to wrap up my obligations with this by October 30th," or whatever. I think you should do that. I think you should think about one thing you can end your commitment to, and it needs to not be Massage Business Blueprint by the way and-

Michael Reynolds:

I wouldn't dream of it.

Allissa Haines:

Then I might nag you about it in a couple of months.

Michael Reynolds:

I like that.

Allissa Haines:

Anyhow-

Michael Reynolds:

I accept that mi-

Allissa Haines:

Just because I care and because I actually get stressed out anytime I click on your schedule to see when you have open times and you have so few open times, I actually get palpitations on behalf.

Michael Reynolds:

Oh dear.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. I see how full your schedule is and I know that you're like, you're super productive and you move very well and efficiently through meetings and things like that and I so love how you take Thursdays as a no meeting day so you can just accomplish a whole bunch of work in the day. But man, I want you to have some, I want to know that some of those time's blocked off, like more of those time's blocked off or like more for fun crap. Anyhow.

Michael Reynolds:

All right mission accepted. Thank you.

Allissa Haines:

As my side note. So for me, my three words, having also chosen an alliteration situation were patience, pace and purview. I think I'm doing okay. The patience one was really self-explanatory. I wanted to be more patient with my loved ones and with current events that I cannot control and things I cannot change and also being patient with other people who might be evolving a little slower of acknowledging the seriousness of current events. It's been a long six months in that way. But I think, and much of this has to do with the final one purview, which I'll get to in a minute, I think that my patience has increased. I think I've actually done a good job of caring about less things and therefore being annoyed by less things, fewer things. I don't know, less or fewer. There you go. But I feel good about patience.

Allissa Haines:

The second one is pace and it was really about finding a work schedule, a balance between my massage work and my marketing and Blueprint-related work that felt good and I feel really good about the pace. My massage days are super structured and that I don't do much of any other kind of work, like my massage days are almost days where I can turn my brain off in some ways, because I feel pretty competent and capable in my massage business. There's a little challenge here and there, but not so much that it becomes a stressor. So I love my massage days. Yeah, pace. Then my work from home, my writing, my marketing side gigs, my Blueprint days, I have found a good rhythm for coming out to my tiny office and getting a couple hours of work done and then when I need a break from the computer, I go in and I do some household stuff or I play, and then I come back out and do a couple more hours of work so I've found a good balance there.

Allissa Haines:

We have a sitter for certain times in the summer, so that even though I'm working from home, we have a sitter so I can be out here and not worry, again, about somebody drowning in a pool. It's good. I feel really good about the pace. Then the purview, I actually think I'm doing really well on this and that was about limiting what I think I should be involved in and mostly in my household, staying in my lane as in regards to what kind of parenting I do and staying in my lane, as far as what I do as my physical contribution to household care tasks and letting go when someone handles their responsibility different than I would like and letting go and it's little things like not rearranging how someone loads the dishwasher, just like, let it go. It's fine. It's going to be less efficient. It doesn't matter. It's fine. I don't need to be involved in dishwasher loading. That is someone else's task.

Allissa Haines:

Also like when I see something that I don't necessarily love in the way a situation with the kids is handled or something like that, like recognizing that unless it involves me very directly, just keep my mouth shut. I don't need to be involved in it. It can be very easy to manipulate any situation to act as if it does relate to me directly but I am not doing that. I am very much backing off about a lot of things. I'm not offering help unless it's asked to me. I am not involving myself in things that would stress me out when I can walk away from them and let someone else handle them. That's really good so patience, pace and purview.

Allissa Haines:

I have not done as good a job as I wanted to about journaling a little bit, taking note of them daily, but they have been in the back of my mind and I feel good about having sought out resources to help me get to this place, especially with purview. Yeah, the only thing I haven't been really good about that was in my kind of wrapped in all of this as like physically taking better care of myself. I did start a yoga class that's every Tuesday morning, which is a great time for me and it's outdoors and it overlooks the little lake in our town. It's by the community center. I have not been good about taking my vitamins so anybody who talks to me, nag me to take my vitamins. I need to do that. That's it. I'm done.

Michael Reynolds:

I like that. Thanks for sharing. I want to say that as a friend and observer, I have noticed that these things have been going well for you. I've noticed changes in the direction you've described so it definitely has not gone unnoticed. I think you're doing great.

Allissa Haines:

I wanted to mention, I forgot, part of the pace and figuring out my work balance, I realized I was kind of bored with some of the writing and the marketing stuff, and I kind of got handed this huge marketing project that for a little side gig that became a bigger side gig and it was very intellectually challenging and I loved it. I freaking loved it. I loved learning this whole website platform and I loved learning different things and I loved that there was a really urgent deadline and I loved getting paid for it and that really helped me pick up by pace and structure it a little better and because I was so busy with that, it helped me let go of a lot of household things because I needed to, because just like stress wise, I needed to not be doing as much and not be hovering over as much. So it worked out really well. We'll see. I mean, I could hit the wall and burn out, but we'll see.

Michael Reynolds:

Well, thank you and I want to stress to our listeners, this is not necessarily meant to be so much about like, "Hey, like listen to our life stories." It's more about like, "Hey, here is a reminder to check-in for yourself as well." If any of you are doing these 3 Words Exercise, which I know many of you do, this is a really good time to pull them out, review how you're doing, see if there's any course corrections or refocusing you want to do and it's really useful to do that. So if nothing else, this is your reminder to pull those three words out and have a checkpoint with yourself too as well.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah and a lot of people at the beginning of the year shared with us their three words so if you want to send us an update, we, Michael and I would love to hear, even if you don't want to share it with the world, so email us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com and tell us, or if you're a premium member, maybe toss it in the community. Tell us how you're doing with your three words.

Michael Reynolds:

I love it. All right. Thank you. That was fun. All right. Before we move on to quick tips, let's show some love to the lovely team at ABMP.

Allissa Haines:

ABMP says they're proud to sponsor the Massage Business Blueprint podcast and we believe them.

Michael Reynolds:

I believe them.

Allissa Haines:

We believe them. One of the many, many benefits of ABMP membership, I'm going to talk about a specific one today is ABMP's Five-Minute Muscles and ABMP's Pocket Pathology apps. They are fantastic. I have used them. The Pocket Pathology is fantastic. It is a quick reference app that's designed to help you quickly find information that you might need to make like a decision about the massage you're about to do in five minutes. It is so helpful, like did a client tell you that they had shingles last month? Okay, look it up on the app, see what you need to worry about. It's really, really helpful. At the same time, ABMP has this Five-Minute Muscles app that includes muscle-specific techniques and palpation videos for the 83 muscles most often addressed by professional MTs.

Allissa Haines:

I used this not long ago because I had a client coming in with some carpal tunnel stuff and I hadn't done much carpal tunnel, been over a year since I'd done a lot of work, a lot of massage work, so I was able to look for the muscles of the forearms and watch a few quick little videos, like super fast, super helpful and within a half an hour or less, I felt very prepared for this client to walk in. It is a progressive web app technology used to take less space on your phone or device. It's more like landing pages than apps. They are included with your ABMP membership. You can go to ABMP.com/apps for some sample demos of each that non-members can try and members, just log into your membership and you'll be able to access it all. That is what I have to say. Thanks, ABMP.

Michael Reynolds:

Awesome. All right. Quick tips. Should I share my quick tip?

Allissa Haines:

Yes, please.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. So I don't think I've shared this before, but I'm going to share a tool today. It is an image tool, a graphic design tool. It's called Photopea, spelled P-H-O-T-O-P-E-A, like pea the vegetable. It's really powerful, it's free and I knew about this a while back, but I kind of lost track of it and someone mentioned it recently. I'm like, "Oh yeah, Photopea." So if you do any kind of photo manipulation or graphics work, like whether you're in social media images or any kind of design work for marketing materials, and you're looking for a really powerful, free photo and image graphic design tool, check out Photopea. It's really cool. It's all online. It's all a web-based tool. So again, Photopea.com is where you would go to check that out and again, it's like some people call it a free version of Photoshop. It's not quite Photoshop. It's not like that intense.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, man.

Michael Reynolds:

But it's really powerful.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. I'm looking it up right now and it's like one of the only programs I've ever seen that works with the .ai files and the .PSD files that sometimes a designer will give you those certain file types for your logo and stuff. This looks pretty cool and intense.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. It's been around for a while. People really like it.

Allissa Haines:

Well, thank you, Michael.

Michael Reynolds:

There you go. All right. So with that, don't forget just a reminder. If you would like to leave us a review, we will likely read it and you can sign up for a complimentary consulting session with us. So, and by the way, don't feel pressured to leave us five stars. Be honest, if you want to leave us four stars, because you have feedback for us or three stars because we're not doing X, Y, and Z the way you like, let us know, give us feedback and be honest.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, tell us what you want. We'll do it.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

Probably.

Michael Reynolds:

And we will still, probably, probably. Now if you give us one star and just yell at us, we may not reach out. We may just kind of let it sit, but-

Allissa Haines:

If you send Michael an anonymous typewritten letter about how much you hate us, we may or may not respond.

Michael Reynolds:

Oh my goodness. I remember that.

Allissa Haines:

Remember that?

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, I do. Anyhow, so yeah. So feel free to leave us a review and then email us, let us know who you are and we would love to hear from you so you can find us on the web as always at massagebusinessblueprint.com. Our private member community is growing every day with amazing, smart people that would love to welcome you and help you so you can find that on our website. Click on community and you can learn more and sign up free for 30 days. So thanks for joining us today. As always, have a day. We'll see you next time.

Allissa Haines:

Bye.