Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• charity:water and other mega-charities, we need to talk about your harmful, archaic views on overhead
• Intro of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson 

Discussion Topic

• How Do I Know if My Advertising is Successful?

Quick Tips

• Don’t pay for an event unless you know the teachers are getting paid. (Yeah, there’s a story here.)

Sponsors

• ABMP 
• The Original Jojoba Company 
• Happyface

Transcript: 

Sponsor message:

ABMP is proud to sponsor the Massage Business Blueprint Podcast. That's us. One of the many, many benefits of ABMP membership is the ABMP Five Minute Muscle and ABP Pocket Pathology apps. That's two whole apps. You can learn more about them at abmp.com/apps. They are both quick reference apps designed to help you quickly find information that you might need to make a decision for session planning or to use outside of a session to refresh muscle and pathology knowledge. ABMP's Five Minute Muscles includes muscle-specific techniques and palpation videos for the 83 muscles most often addressed by professional massage therapists. They use progressive web app technology in order to take up less space on your phone or your device. I can tell you that I used the Pocket Pathology app just two weeks ago in my practice with a super complex new client. These apps are included with ABMP membership. You can find them at abmp.com/apps, and you can even see sample demos of each app for non-members to try. Check it all out at abmp.com/apps.

Allissa Haines:

Hey everyone, welcome to the Massage Business Blueprint podcast, where we help you attract more clients, make more money, improve your quality of life. This right here as Alissa Haines.

Michael Reynolds:

And this right here is Michael Reynolds,

Allissa Haines:

And we are your hosts. Thanks for joining us. You might be watching / listening to us live on Facebook Live. If you are, pop something in the little comment box. We'd love to know that you're listening. And if you're listening to this as a recording, I want you to know that we love you just as much. What's going on with you, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Doing great. Enjoying spraying. I love spring. It's my favorite season. Things are getting warm. Sun's coming out.

Allissa Haines:

Sorry. I got all excited the other day because we caught some deer on the trail cam that we have pointing out into the woodsy part of the backyard. They were feasting on the acorn squash that got a little old in my fridge. And also I hate acorn squash so I tossed it out back by the compost, and the deer were happily enjoying it. So what have you been reading?

Michael Reynolds:

I'm reading about charities and non-profits. I came across an article recently in one of the Facebook groups I'm in that was talking about singling out the mega charities like Charity: Water, et cetera. And the general thesis of the article, which I love because I've been thinking about this for a while. This is a stance I've taken for a while. And it was really focused on how it's harmful that these big mega charities focus so obsessively on overhead as a bad thing. Overhead in a nonprofit is things like the people, the payroll, the people that run the organization, the administrative stuff, all the expenses that go into running a nonprofit. And for a while we've had this obsessive focus on lowering overhead, and keeping overhead so low, and bragging about the fact that X percentage of donations go directly to the services provided. And the article really was a great piece on pointing out that, yeah, these large, huge nonprofits can get away with it because they have the scale behind them.

Michael Reynolds:

But so many smaller and startup nonprofits are founded and run by minorities in marginalized communities are dispar... Yeah. Are often... I'll say that word. More often affected negatively by this obsession on lowering overhead because they don't have the same scale as these large nonprofits. And it often hinders their efforts to do good in the world and their communities. And so I really loved... The title of the article is called Charity: Water and Other Mega Charities, We Need to Talk About Your Harmful, Archaic Views on Overhead. And it was really eyeopening because I think so much of the time we, even as consumers that make donations, we focus so much on, "Oh, how low is their overhead?" But really I love taking concepts from the business world and applying that to nonprofit, because in the business world you need overhead, you need expenses and things you invest in to run your operations. And the same thing is true in nonprofits.

Michael Reynolds:

So I really like looking at what the nonprofit is doing, what kind of good they're doing in the world, in their communities, how effective they are, what impact they have. And to me, that's a much better measure than how low their overhead is. Because again, overhead is often the people, the people that make the difference and run the nonprofit. So I really enjoyed this perspective and I wanted to just bring it up. And I've linked it in the show notes. So that's what I'm reading.

Allissa Haines:

And you and I actually had an experience with Charity: Water years and years back. Do you remember? At one of the-

Michael Reynolds:

I do.

Allissa Haines:

I think it might've been like the first INBOUND conference that we went to, or one of the early on ones. And we had to carry two... Was it five gallons each? I think. Something like that. Jugs of water in each hand and just walk like 20 feet with them. And holy moly. You get to the end and you're like, "Oh, that's right. Water's like, I don't know, six, seven pounds a gallon." And the realization of how hard it is to be having to haul safe water, and a lot of times it's not even safe water, back and forth miles per day, and this is why kids don't go to school in some places, because it is literally their job to be hauling gallons of water. Like nine year olds carrying 10 gallons of water back and forth for miles and miles every day. It was enlightening to say the least.

Michael Reynolds:

We have a picture of that too. I need to dig that up. Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. I think it's on our Facebook. It's definitely somewhere. I remember because it was back when I used to dress up to go to marketing conferences and stuff.

Michael Reynolds:

Those were the days.

Allissa Haines:

Remember when we used to have outside clothes?

Michael Reynolds:

Oh yeah. Those were the days.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. What about you? What are you reading?

Allissa Haines:

I have not been watching all of it. I've just been seeing videos and bits of pieces of the confirmation hearings for the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court of this here, our United States. And I've been really interested in her. And I did a little bit of reading up on... I don't know if you know this. She's really the great American story. Her parents were both raised in the south at a time where they went to segregated public schools. And then both of her parents worked their way through one historic black college or university of another. They went to different schools.

Allissa Haines:

And then ultimately settled in Washington DC. And both of her parents had been public school teachers for their whole lives. And Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson herself has checked every box of being qualified for the Supreme Court position, and to the point where she even has the endorsement of law enforcement and the American Barr Association, and every organization outside of the legendarily right wing Federalist Society has said this judge is so deeply qualified. But anyhow, I've been really interested in her story.

Allissa Haines:

And I saw on Twitter the other day the video of Judge Brown Jackson being introduced at the beginning of these hearings. And she was introduced by Professor Lisa Fairfax, who was her, I think, first college roommate or friend that was made within the first few days of college for both of them. And it almost made me weep because I want a friend who thinks as highly of me as professor Lisa Fairfax feels about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. It was like a four or five minute intro. And the beauty of it is that you can see Professor Fairfax and you can see Judge Brown Jackson in the back. You can see the amazingness of their friendship, but also this professional respect as she talks about who this judge is as a person and as a colleague. And hearing the accomplishments of these women. I went to... I'm 46.

Allissa Haines:

It was not assumed that I would go to college. Wait, yeah. We're 46, right? Almost 47.

Michael Reynolds:

46.

Allissa Haines:

And it was not assumed that I would go to college. And I did, but it was crappy and I didn't do well. And I was never taught to... I don't want to say I wasn't taught to, but I was really not thoroughly encouraged to embrace higher education, nor was I a very good student. And I love, love, love seeing highly educated women support each other. And I just love every part of it. So anyhow, if you want a little bit of shine theory, the theory that if you don't shine, I don't shine for supporting women and you want to know a little bit more about this nominee for Supreme Court Justice... And it is indeed a historic nomination because we've never had a black woman on the Supreme Court. And it speaks a lot of what's gone on in the last 100 years of our country that her parents went to segregated public schools. And that was a really long thing. Anyhow, the link's in our show notes and it's a beautiful bit of power and friendship. There you go.

Michael Reynolds:

It's also pissing me off a little bit because I've been watching some of the videos. And just watching these conservative white men in Congress asking her ridiculous questions is just pissing me off, like about religion, and taking her quotes out of context. It's just making me angry, so I'm totally rooting for her. It's just ridiculous.

Allissa Haines:

I know. I love your rage. So yeah, and actually the Daily Show did a bit. If you look at the Daily Show's Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere, you'll see a little video they made. And they placed it over classical music. And they placed it of like, every time you could see Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson restraining her emotions. And there's a lot of eyebrow action, but it's so subtle. And it was so reminiscent of Kamala Harris during the debate with Mike Pence, when it was just someone... And I'm a white lady. I don't know if I'm qualified to say this. But somebody on Twitter, another black woman, said, "Behold to the end ancestral sigh." And I was like, "Yeah, I see that." Just when Ted Cruz was straight out asking, do you think babies are racist? Taking this children's book completely out of context.

Allissa Haines:

And it was a children's book about race in a library of a school where Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was on the board of directors or something like that. And he takes this all out of context and asks these really ridiculous and inappropriate questions. And she just so beautifully takes a moment and breathes and comes back with the most gracious and eloquent answer. And that's what you have to be and do to be a woman and to be a black woman who has to tolerate the absurd questions from these deeply underqualified, subhuman senators. Okay, we're 11 minutes in and haven't touched our topic but... Sorry.

Michael Reynolds:

We could talk about this all day, apparently.

Allissa Haines:

I'm not sorry because... And I'm going to get letters about how this whole thing was not relevant to the massage business, but it absolutely is when you're talking about a profession that is 83% women and has massive numbers of women business owners in its population and massive numbers of non-white business owners in its population. So anybody who wants to write to me and tell me that this conversation was not pertinent, don't. Write to Michael instead and tell him how much you hate me. So our next sponsor. Why don't you tell us who it is, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

It's been well since I did this. Our next sponsor is Jojoba.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, Jojoba. You know how firmly I believe that we should be using really high quality products on our clients. And also because we've got our hands in it 10, 15, 20, 30 hours a week. It is non-comedogenic, so it's not going to clog pores. So if you have clients who are prone to acne breakouts, Jojoba is a really good choice of them. The Jojoba company, which by the way is in Maine, Maine, USA is the only company in the world that carries 100% pure first-pressed quality jojoba. Other companies squeeze the heck out of that seed to get every little drop of... It's not an oil, it's a wax ester out of that seed. But that doesn't always result in the best quality jojoba. The Jojoba company does a light first press on the seed, and they get a little bit less as far as quantity but it is the higher quality of jojoba you can get on the market. You can get 20% off the price of the product when you shop through our link, massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba.

Michael Reynolds:

Thanks, Jojoba.

Allissa Haines:

Thank you, Jojoba. This is one of those episodes that I love because I don't really have to do more work. Michael is going... We got this question from, I think, a premium member who said, "How do I know if my advertising is successful?" Michael, how do I know? In the Whitney Houston and tone of voice.

Michael Reynolds:

Well, thank you for that lovely intro. Let's talk about that. All right, how do I know if my advertising is successful? I had a lot of fun putting some thoughts together on this, and I want to make sure you're not disappointed that it's not going to be super tactical and nitty gritty on specific things. Some specific, but I want to talk more conceptually on how to think about this. And before I go on, I noticed that Marcy just popped in and mentioned a comment on Jojoba. Marcy says, "Thanks for reminding me to order another gallon of Jojoba." All right. You're welcome, Marcy. All right. That was from Facebook Live. All right, so we're going to talk conceptually because I want to talk through and help us all think through how to evaluate different forms of advertising conceptually so that you can apply it to any situation.

Michael Reynolds:

And I usually have an overview and miss some things so I want Alissa to pop in and fill in some gaps here along the way. But I'm going to break it up into a few different steps here. When you're thinking about if your advertising is successful in your massage practice, the first thing I would suggest doing or I think is important is to define success. That's the first thing you want to do, is figure out, what does that mean? Often we like to jump to, "Oh, well how do I know if it's successful? What happened here? And what's the number?" And really, let's back up a little bit. How do we define success? And this can be very different for different people and different massage practices. So often we think about, okay, let's define success as how many clients are booked.

Michael Reynolds:

That's a pretty obvious thing that many of us will do. We're thinking, "Okay, I'm going to advertise something. The one to one relationship is more clients in my studio or on the table." That's going to have the one-to-one relationship, and that's valid, that you can measure clients booked as success. But there are other measures of success as well. Other things you can do that aren't necessarily just the one-to-one relationship of clients booked. For example, perhaps you want to measure email subscribers added to your email list. Alissa's a big fan of email marketing. It's very effective for many people, and that can be a measure of success. It doesn't always have to be, how many clients booked with me? It can be how many new subscribers have I added to my email list?

Michael Reynolds:

It can also be something like, how many social media you followers did I add? How much did that increase? It could also take the form of, how much did my website traffic increase? Do I get more visitors for my website as a result of this advertising? It could be something like referrals from other complimentary providers or centers of influence or referral partners. These can all be ways to define success with a particular campaign or an initiative or an effort you're putting in toward advertising. So the first thing I want to do is think beyond just, how many clients did I book? But think thoughtfully about what success means for this particular campaign or this thing you're doing in advertising. So define success. Figure that out first. Next I want to know how to measure are my current state of things. What's the status quo?

Michael Reynolds:

Do I even know what that is? Do I have a good way to establish that and understand that? For example, if my measure of success is I want to get more clients booked, how many clients are booking per week on average right now? Do I have a way to measure that? Can I look at my booking system or my calendar or my software system and see how many clients per week or per month on average I'm booking right now? May seem like an obvious thing, but often we kind of bypass some of those simple steps of establishing where our current baseline is. What's the size of your email list? For example, if you're using that as a metric. And what's the average number of new subscribers you're getting per month? If you're measuring email, any good email marketing system is going to tell you how many subscribers you're adding over time in a certain time period.

Michael Reynolds:

So you can look at that data and say, "Okay, how many do I have now? What's my average? Am I getting three new subscribers per month, or five or 10 per month? Is it growing at all? What's my current state? Same with social following. What's the growth rate in your social following? Your analytics and your social profiles will tell you this. Website traffic. I think it's really important to have Google Analytics installed so that you can see, okay, how much website traffic am I getting? Let's look at the last 90 days, last six months, last 12 months. Do I see an increase? Are people looking at my website more from Google now than they used to? Are they getting more referrals from Facebook now than they used to? Is it going up? Is it going down? So look at those trends and establish what's happening now.

Michael Reynolds:

Is it flat-lining? Is your website traffic basically the same 12 months ago that it is today? Is there no change? So look at the baseline, see where you are now. How many referrals are you getting per month from other providers? If you're interested in defining success through referral partner connections and referrals, how many you're getting now? Make a list of all the referral partners you're working with. Chiropractors, acupuncturists, physicians, people that you network with. Track how many referrals you're getting from them every month and see what that baseline number is before you go forward with a campaign to increase that or change that. So again, after you define success, take a look at what your current state is now. That gives you some information to spring from going forward.

Michael Reynolds:

Next, set a realistic timeframe. This is really important. I think a lot of us put unreasonable burdens on our advertising efforts because of timeframe. One example is a week can be plenty of time to measure increase in, let's say, email subscribers or social followers. If you're running an advertising campaign like a Facebook ad or something, that's a pretty reasonable timeframe. Within a week you can see if something's happening there with those very clear efforts. But you may need longer to measure things like clients booked, or referrals from referral partners. These can be a slow burn or a slow drip type of thing. So maybe you advertise somewhere or you put an ad in a local community source or a Facebook ad or a Google ad. All these things you can run. And you may run it for a week or two and feel like nothing has happened, but a month later or even three or four months later or longer you might see something as a result happen because of that campaign came to run today. And you can see a longer timeframe play out. So it's really... Yeah. Go ahead, Alissa.

Allissa Haines:

12 weeks, man. When I was working through different efforts like marketing plans, and I found that 12 weeks was a really nice pause point for any particular advertising or marketing campaign and efforts because usually at 12 weeks you can see something. You can see some kind of result. By 12 weeks in you can say, "Okay, nobody's clicked on this Google ad." Or, "This Google ad has had 100 clicks but only one person has actually followed through to book an appointment, so what do I need to tweak?" So I don't think that 12 weeks is an end point for any particular thing, but I think that 12 weeks is a really fair pause point to evaluate how things are going so far. Even with referrals. If you've been going to a regular networking group or you have been asking clients for referrals for 12 weeks, usually at that point you will see some result of your effort. Anyhow, that's my totally loose, general guidance on that. But wanted to add it.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, it's reasonable. Yeah. Next we want to establish a way to track results. Depending on what you're doing... There's lots of different ways to do this. One way to track results is through things like tracking codes. So if you have a special offer you're running, it's pretty reasonable to say, "Hey, use this code when you're booking online for a particular offer," or, "Mention this code when you're doing X, Y, Z." So that's one method a lot of people use to track, "Hey, this source is using this tracking code," so when someone shows up with this tracking code in hand or entered it in the website or something, then I know where it came from. Unique landing pages are extremely useful. They're pretty universally full, no matter whether it's digital or offline or whatever. So for example, let's say you're running an ad in a publication somewhere. You can do a short link like mywebsite.com/keyword or something, or /whatever.

Michael Reynolds:

And that could go to a specific landing page on your website for someone to book online using that landing page, or to put their email address in that landing page or something. So unique landing pages are specific pages on your website that are usually hidden from the main navigation, but you can get to them directly. And that's a really good way to make sure that you see, hey, if someone came through based on this landing page or reached out on this landing page, I know where that came from. So that's a really good way to track the source of where things are coming from. I also think a lot of times we forget the most basic way to find this stuff out, which is to ask. I find some of the best data comes from just asking people, because these systems are all imperfect.

Michael Reynolds:

You're not always going to have the perfect system of saying, "Everyone that came from this source is going to have this code or this landing page." Sometimes people find a way around stuff, but if you just ask you'll get a lot of good information. And I think asking goes beyond just verbally asking. Yes, you can ask in person, but you can ask online as well. On your website or your booking system, if you have a way for someone to say, "Hey..." The question could be, how did you hear about us or, how did you find me? Give them options. I like not letting people just type things in directly because you don't get data that's quite as clean. People will just put like, "Oh, social media." And it's not as specific. But if you give them a dropdown menu of options, things like Facebook, email message, referral.

Michael Reynolds:

And if they put in referral, have a little way for them to tell you who referred them. Web search, et cetera. Give them options based on the things that you know you're doing or where you're showing up or where you're present. And maybe a fill in the blank for catch-all stuff later. But give them clear constraints on what they can choose, and that gives you better data on where they came from. So just ask. When you get more people to tell you where they came from, you can start running reports on those things and say, "Hey, let me filter by everyone who said web search, or everyone who clicked on a Google listing," or something. And you can see the numbers based on those particular sources. And that'll help you.

Michael Reynolds:

Next, you want to take the time to evaluate the results and see what happened. This is a really important step that I think we don't often take time to do. It's really easy to run some campaigns or run a Google ad or a Facebook ad or a publication in your local community source, or a chamber thing, or have your networking group send an email, or whatever you're doing. It's really easy to do that and say, "Okay, great. It ran. Looks like I got some clients from it. I'm going to move on to the next thing." I think it's super important that we just pause, take a minute, and just observe carefully what happened. Observe intentionally what happened. And that involves reviewing what's called the ROI, or return on investment. Now, I have feelings about ROI, which I'll share here now in a few minutes as well.

Michael Reynolds:

So I'll kind of come back to that. But you want to measure against a fair timeframe appropriate for the campaign. Again, we went back to like, hey, what's a fair timeframe for measuring this campaign? And the ROI is really, did you gain more than you spent? Did you make more in bookings, in revenue based on what you spent? That's one clear way to do it. Now, there's not always that kind of clarity. And it only works for direct dollar goals. For example, if you're measuring, am I getting more clients booked based on this campaign? You're going to see very clearly revenue versus expense. But if your success is email subscribers grown or social following or website traffic or something else, that's not as clear. So you have to understand that ROI can be disconnected in the short term from what you're actually doing.

Michael Reynolds:

It's really difficult to measure the ROI of growing your email list, at least right away. It's really difficult to measure the ROI of growing your social following. So I think it's really useful to not obsess so much over, how many clients did I get? But be willing to invest in these alternative goals that can still move your business forward. And if you work backwards from this, something you can do is say, "Okay, I want more clients, so if I had a list of 1000 people I could probably get more clients to book because I would send emails and do my open appointment emails and campaigns and things. I'd probably get more people to book."

Michael Reynolds:

And if you work backwards from that, you could say, "Well, how do I get to 1000 subscribers? Okay, great. I'll set up a downloadable offer like a guide or something. And when people download that, they enter their email and join my email list. Okay, that's a way of working backwards, saying, "I want to get more clients. If I had more people to email, I'd get more clients. How do I get more people on my email list? I'll do this." So work backwards from that goal. And you can often find stair step or milestone goals along the way that can attach to that bigger goal of more clients, but are more manageable and different measures of success along the way. Does that make sense, Alissa? Did I explain that well enough?

Allissa Haines:

I think so. I think you did.

Michael Reynolds:

Okay. So remember that advertising is an experiment. So as you're thinking through this, I want to encourage you to try new things. Don't be afraid to try new things, and learn from failures and successes. And also remember that marketing and advertising can have a compounding effect. So let's say you run a campaign over here on Facebook and you didn't feel like it really produced what you expected. And you run a campaign over here doing some email marketing and didn't feel like it did what you expected. But if you do both at the same time, often the compounding effect can cause people to act and take action because of the dual exposure and the efforts combined. So don't just think of advertising campaigns in a vacuum, think of them as how can they compound together as well. And a lot of this is just accepting that you can't pursue perfection in measurement, and you have to trust your gut.

Michael Reynolds:

So there's this... I come from a background in marketing as well. I owned a digital marketing agency for a while and I own a couple now as well. And we always had this issue when working with organizations, that they would be really, really focused on ROI to the point where they would eliminate all of the gut feelings and the insights from just experience. And they would just want to measure, measure, measure, measure everything with numbers and spreadsheets and data. All that stuff is good, but you have to also know when to trust your gut and when to say, "You know what? I can't measure this exactly, but I'm pretty sure that, because I did this campaign, my chiropractor is sending me more people." I can kind of connect the dots in my head, even if you can't stick it into a spreadsheet. So don't be afraid to trust your gut and combine that experience with the data you're measuring as well. So yeah. Go ahead, Alissa. That's kind of it, so jump in whenever.

Allissa Haines:

You can't always measure the ROI on love and relationship building. And I remember literally thinking, what's the ROI of love? When I was sitting in a class at a conference that was trying to teach advertising and marketing skills to massage therapists, but in such a data-driven way that it forgot that the beauty of being a massage therapist is that we're a caregiver and that we build great therapeutic relationships and professional relationships with our clients. And that cannot always be measured in a way that's going to show up on spreadsheet. So you really have to be able to separate very tangible results from what you feel is good in the nature of relationship-building with either networking partners or clients. Because that's what makes a client refer to you.

Allissa Haines:

I get high risk prenatal clients because someone has been seeing me for years and knows and trusts me, and knows that I am going to handle a complex health condition with thoughtfulness and care, and therefore sends their 30 week pregnant with triplets daughter to me because they know I am a very prudent and thoughtful practitioner who can handle critical thinking in high risk situations. So you can't measure that. That takes years to come. But it is super important and it is just important as a warm handshake and looking someone in the eyes and asking them about themselves at a networking event. You can't always measure these intangible things that come along with being a caregiver.

Michael Reynolds:

Agreed. 100%. 100%. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Well, anything else you would add?

Allissa Haines:

No, I think that nails it. I think a lot of us are... And I kind of include myself in this, are kind of afraid to try advertising and so afraid to waste money. But there's also a lot of ways to... Maybe this is a good topic for another time, is affordable advertising options. If you've never run a Google ad, you don't know that you can run one that's just $1 a day. I did that when I was trying to fill some yoga classes and it worked really well. $30 a month and it was really, really effective. And it did not cost me an arm and a leg to refine it and make sure that it worked. So there are small budget advertising options available, and now you know how to measure them. So there you go.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, and you can learn so much by wasting money.

Allissa Haines:

You totally can.

Michael Reynolds:

It's very educational to waste money.

Allissa Haines:

I'm not going to suggest that's the best option for everyone's business. Anything else to add, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Nope. I think we're good.

Allissa Haines:

All right. Let's move along to our next sponsor, then. Shall we? We're currently sponsored by Happy Face. And we know that face girdles can be super uncomfortable for a client and that pressure and stuffiness can ruin a whole massage experience. Happy Face is a comfy face cradle that lets you give the most relaxing massage of your client's life. It's got a really cute little innovative heart-shaped design that is highly functional. It takes the pressure of the sinuses. It takes the pressure off the eyes. You don't need to adjust it mid-massage. We're noticing that clients are fidgeting less and relaxing a little bit deeper. It is made in the USA. It is seamless, so it's super easy to clean. It doesn't have any seams you have to scrub into.

Allissa Haines:

It is about the same dimensions as any other massage face cradle, so it fits just fine in on whatever frame you have. And I lost my place and got really excited. You can get 20% off your entire purchase at massagebusinessblueprint.com/happyface using code MassageBB at checkout. But that code is also listed on that page so you don't have to remember it right now if you're driving. But you do have to go to massagebusinessblueprint.com/happyface.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. Quick tips.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. Do you have anything, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

I don't. I just want to hear about yours. I'm intrigued.

Allissa Haines:

I know you didn't have anyone. I just wanted to make you admitted on air.

Michael Reynolds:

Oh, thanks. Appreciate that.

Allissa Haines:

Okay. Really I needed a second to sip my coffee. Okay, I already gave a big rant at the beginning of the episode so I'll keep this one short, but here's my quick tip: Don't pay for an event, and I'm talking about massage events, CE events, et cetera, unless you know that the teachers are getting paid. And I will tell you the little story here. A couple months ago I got asked to participate in an online education event. They wanted like, I don't know, a 20 or 30 minute course. Something related to what I teach. I'm not giving a ton of information out here because I don't want you to be like Googling it and ragging on these people, because it's a common thing that happens in the massage industry and I'm not venting this at any particular colleague. So I got asked to teach and I sent back my stock questions on the event.

Allissa Haines:

And the first one is, what are you doing to make sure that your presenter slate is appropriately representative of women and non-white people? Two, how much does it pay? And there was a third question that I cannot remember right now. So anyhow, they came back with a response that was like, "We're trying really hard to make sure women and non-white people are represented on the presenter slate." And I will say that I actually just checked this out the other day, and they really did do that. But the problem and the reason why I am not on that presenter slate is because they don't pay. I asked very specifically. I said, "What is the honorarium for presenting?" And they came back and said, "The honorarium is having your name and your links put out to all of our attendees and da, da, da, da, da."

Allissa Haines:

So they wanted me to teach for exposure. We don't recommend that massage therapists massage for exposure versus actual cold, hard cash, nor do I recommend that anyone teaches for exposure. And I try not to be personally affronted and cocky and get all big egoed and be like, "Do you know who I am?" Because I'm like no one. However, I was like, "If this is a huge event and I'm going to be introduced to tons and tons of people that have never heard of me and Massage Business Blueprint before, it's worth a thought." So I looked into this and I looked into the people running it.

Allissa Haines:

And I looked into all of their platforms. And I'm going to suggest that if you have 200 people following your Facebook page and you don't have a presence on any other social media and you have a podcast but you did not regularly publish episodes and you have exactly two reviews on that podcast on Apple Podcasts, that you don't come to me, who has several thousand followers in many, many places, the longest running massage podcast in all of the main forums, the most number of reviews in all of the forums, and tell me that I should teach free for you for exposure. Because if you're really doing that, you're showing me that, one, you don't know who I am. And two, you think I should work for free when I have a bigger audience than you.

Allissa Haines:

And it's not even about that. If it was a charitable event, I would 100% do it. So anyhow, I made a note to follow up and look when this event was around the time it was going to happen, to see. Because I also did ask if they were charging attendees, and they didn't answer that question.

Allissa Haines:

They are charging attendees. They're charging attendees $100 for this event, which is not low but not crazy high. It's a fair price for the day event. But they're charging attendees and they're not even paying their instructors, which is just crap. So we're going to do an episode soon about some flaws happening in massage education. And I'm going to give you a whole list of things to maybe consider when you're choosing your massage education. But I'm giving you the quick tip now, which was not quick at all. I'm sorry. Do not pay for an education event unless you know the teachers are getting paid, because it's crap and we should not support people running events on the free labor of educators, especially women educators, especially non-white educators. I have had it. So please don't do it. And now I know you're excited about the episode where I cover massage education, because I'm ripped.

Michael Reynolds:

I've been waiting for this for so long. I was so excited about it. As someone who... We both are and have been professional speakers for various events, and I agree it completely. I hate it when people are like, "Oh yeah, can you speak for free?" No. No.

Allissa Haines:

And the thing is like we will for a charitable, worthy cause.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. There are cases where it makes sense.

Allissa Haines:

I'm not working for free so someone else can make money. That is absurd and frankly it's insulting, but whatever. I'm insulted by everything, so it's fine. So that is everything. If you have found us useful, you should check out what we do online when we're not ranting at massagebusinessblueprint.com. And we have blog posts, we have our whole podcast archive, we have a link to our premium community, the Massage Business Blueprint mastermind community, where we have a couple hundred like-minded colleagues sharing resources in a wonderful, friendly, safe place to ask any question you might have about running your business, and just a whole busload of resources to help you do all of that. Again, that's massagebusinessblueprint.com. I think that is everything we have to talk about. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a great day.

Michael Reynolds:

Thanks, everyone.