Podcast

Episode 412

May 5, 2022

We’ve gathered our favorite tips and hacks to make a massage space run super-smooth.

Listen to "E412: Massage Office Tips & Hacks" on Spreaker.
Image for E412: Massage Office Tips & Hacks

EPISODE 412

Weekly Roundup


Discussion Topic

Quick Tips

  • Stop being cute, clever, and vague with your business and messaging.
    • Would a new prospective client know what you do?
    • Who you serve?
    • Is your messaging clear?
    • Look at your website from the perspective of a non-MT seeing it for the first time

Sponsors


Transcript: 

Sponsor message:

This episode is sponsored by the Original Jojoba Company. I feel like we should be using the highest-quality products because our hands are in it for 20-some hours a week, and we're pouring it all over our clients. The Jojoba Company is the only company in the world that carries 100% pure first-press-quality jojoba. We are delighted to be partnering with them. Jojoba does not go rancid. It doesn't contain triglycerides like a lot of products do, so it won't go bad, and this makes it a fantastic carrier for your essential oils as well. Jojoba is nonallergenic, so you can use it safely on every client and any client without fear of an allergic reaction. 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. Welcome to our show today, and right off the bat, on Facebook Live, Marcie says, "Good morning." So, good morning, Marcie. Glad you're here.

Allissa Haines:

Good morning, Marcie.

Michael Reynolds:

Bright and early. All right.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

We have an action-packed show today. As I said before we were recording, I was like, "Wow, look at all this stuff we have."

Allissa Haines:

We do. We have a lot to go through. We have so much stuff, we're going to talk over each other.

Michael Reynolds:

Sorry. I'll shut up now.

Allissa Haines:

I'm going to jump into what I've been reading. Is that cool?

Michael Reynolds:

Go for it.

Allissa Haines:

Okay. So, I had put this in a couple weeks ago. Y'all know I love young adult literature, and I found this really sweet series by an author named Jenna Evans Welch, and it's called the Love & series, and there's Love & Gelato, Love & Olives, and Lucky in Love, and I say series loosely. I don't believe they have any characters that overlap, but each story is the story of a young woman, an older teenage girl who is traveling to a different country for a particular reason. In one of them she's going because her mom passed away, and she's going to stay with her mom's dear friend for several months, and then another one is a woman who travels to Santorini, an island in Greece, to stay with her dad for a couple of months.

Allissa Haines:

They're just really neat, and I looked into the author, and she was like, "Here's why I wrote these books, because there's not a lot of young adult fiction that centers a girl who is having an adventure on her own," that maybe there's a love interest situation in the background because it's fiction and we love that, but it's just... They're lovely stories of young women having interesting adventures and learning about family or whatever. So, anyhow, the Love & series, they're quick reads. They're really sweet. They're really smart, and I enjoy them very much. So, that's that. I have two, so why don't you do yours in the middle?

Michael Reynolds:

You should probably go next because mine is wildly unrelated to any of this.

Allissa Haines:

Okay. I'm excited about yours. So, the other book that I recommend, and I'm not completed with it, but then also, there's a related podcast I'm going to tell you about, is Dr. Jennifer Gunter's Menopause Manifesto, and I have been in the last several months super fascinated by how little information we are given by our medical providers, and just in general about menopause. The reality is if you are a person with a uterus and/or you have many clients who are people with a uterus or who once had a uterus, this is important information that actually can relate to our massage work, if only in that we... I think it's important that we are education and advocating for our clients, and also teaching them how to advocate for themselves in healthcare situations.

Allissa Haines:

So, I started reading this book, and I'm halfway through, and I'm learning a lot of stuff, and then my friend, I think it was [Rianne 00:04:23] this morning, sent me a link because Dr. Gunter is actually on Glennon Doyle's podcast, which is called We Can Do Hard Things, and she's on one of the recent episodes. So, I have not listened to the podcast episode yet, but I am very excited to do that. I'm going to get a little gross for just a second. I'm going to get a little bit into the anatomy portion. The biggest reason why I started learning about this stuff is because I learned that... We know that one of the major symptoms of menopause is dryness, and specifically vaginal dryness. However, what I learned is that it's not just about that. It can also manifest with changes in the hair and dry eyes and dry mouth and dry skin.

Allissa Haines:

I started looking more into the whole... Because a client mentioned it to me, and then I started looking into more stuff, and what I learned is that untreated vaginal dryness will turn into vaginal atrophy, and that it is the... That aging, without treatment, is one of the greatest causes of all kinds of genital urinary issues, including all kinds of incontinence, and that relationship to incontinence is not necessarily made larger or more likely if a woman has carried a child or given birth. That blew my mind, to find out that doctors are not treating what they interpret as sex complaints, dry vagina, sex complaints, pain having sex. They're interpreting that as this is just part of life, and we're not going to treat that, when in fact, that vaginal atrophy which first presents with those kinds of things can cause so many more issues down the line, especially, and this is the kicker, UTIs in senior citizen women, which is a huge issue because when you get very old and you have a UTI, it can cause dementia.

Allissa Haines:

Holy wow. So, we have this massive chain of events of women's health issues being ignored, and that is what got me going down this rabbit hole and then starting to read this book, and I'm very excited. I haven't listened to the podcast episode yet, but looking at these women's health cycles, these women's health issues, we need to look at it from a feminist lens because the base of this issue is that healthcare practitioners are blowing off women's healthcare issues and complaints because they're related to sex, and they think it's some mental health sexual issue. Women are being told to go see sex therapists because they're having painful sex because of a menopause symptom, instead of being treated and cared for, and it's leading to all these other health issues. So, that is how I ended up in this wacky rabbit hole.

Allissa Haines:

Also, I learned that in all of the devices and protocols we use to diagnose heart attacks in men, look at the large vessels around the heart, however, heart attacks in women tend to present in the smaller blood vessels off of those, and we don't look at those in emergency situations, so women who also have heart attacks present in different ways, we're not even getting the right tests to diagnose an active heart attack, and that's why women are sent home from ERs being told they have panic attacks when they're actually having a heart attack, and heart disease is the greatest killer of women in this country. Whoa. That blew my mind last night. So, that's my rant on that. If you have clients who could be experiencing these change of life, and middle-aged women are our largest blocks of clients for a lot of us, so I would encourage you to read The Menopause Manifesto and probably listen to the podcast episode, which I will also link in the notes, and it'll blow your mind.

Michael Reynolds:

I did learn about the heart attack thing from watching Grey's Anatomy.

Allissa Haines:

Did you?

Michael Reynolds:

I did.

Allissa Haines:

All right.

Michael Reynolds:

This is fascinating. Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

I mean, I knew that they presented differently and women got blown off, but I didn't even realize that the equipment that we've developed to look at those larger vessels around the heart was developed for men's bodies. We know this. Seat belts weren't... I'm not as safe in a car as you are because seat belts were tested on the average male body, and never tested on smaller women or any size women, women with different shapes. They don't even accommodate chests, and this is why... I put up a post the other day about how people complain when we get political, but the political is very directly related to how we care for bodies, and that's our job, so it's related. But yeah, fascinating stuff.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, I don't see it as political at all. I see it as important.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

Okay.

Allissa Haines:

But it is because who we vote for decides how we fund research, and it decides social justice issues that absolutely relate to caring for our bodies.

Michael Reynolds:

Well, wow. Your what are we reading was both interesting and incredibly informative and significant.

Allissa Haines:

I've had a couple cups of coffee today.

Michael Reynolds:

So, mine is just a little off the wall. I'm almost embarrassed to talk about it at this point. So, this is not so much a what am I reading, although I have been reading documentation, so I'm counting it. I am exploring crypto cold wallets. That may mean something to some who are listening. So, cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, et cetera, I think we all know what that is, or at least have some general familiarity with the terms. There are different ways of storing crypto, and I generally prefer storing crypto at a custodian, kind of like an investment institution like you would store normal stocks and bonds and funds, et cetera, but there are different ways to do it. One of the popular ways to store crypto among people that would like to not have their crypto online or visible to anyone, even a custodian or, let's say, the government, there's a rabbit hole of this line of thinking I'm not going to go down. But crypto cold wallets are a way to store your crypto on a device.

Michael Reynolds:

You can't see this, obviously, if you're audio only, but for those who are on Facebook Live or want to go back and watch the YouTube video, this is a crypto wallet. It's from Ledger. There's a lot of different brands. So, I've been playing with it. I'm exploring it. It's pretty cool if you like the tech culture and security, and so it's really cool. It's like a little USB drive you hook up to your company, and it's got a little interface on it, and you can store your crypto on the device, and it's called cold storage, and it's because it is not connected to the internet. That's an advantage to some people. They would consider that an advantage because it is what's called air-gapped or, again, offline, so it can't be hacked because it's not connected to anything.

Michael Reynolds:

So, it's literally like carrying cash around in a wallet, except it's crypto in a wallet. So, you can carry this around with you. You can use it for payments or storing your digital assets on a device, and actually, in the Ukraine conflict, there are a lot of stories where people were fleeing the country with nothing but cold wallets holding Bitcoin, and they used that to make payments and to buy resources as they were fleeing the country, so it does have an interesting use case. So, that's what I've been exploring. I'm not going to necessarily make heavy use of a crypto wallet necessarily in my situation, but I think it's important in what I do to learn how to use it, understand it, get familiar with the technology. So, I've been playing with cold wallets with crypto.

Allissa Haines:

Well, this is one of those situations where I'm super excited because I was on top of something before you, and I just forwarded you an email from our friend Diana who's super into crypto because she sent me a whole thing on the hard wallets and the cold wallets. Is a hard wallet and a cold wallet the same thing? I think it is.

Michael Reynolds:

I haven't heard the term hard wallet too much. I've heard either hot wallet or cold wallet. Hot wallet is networked.

Allissa Haines:

Hot.

Michael Reynolds:

Cold wallet is offline.

Allissa Haines:

Okay. So, I think cold is the same as hard because it means physical thing you can hold in your hand.

Michael Reynolds:

I believe so.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. I just sent you some info about the ones that she suggested way back when, and-

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. She likes the Trezors, I think.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, and I haven't gotten one yet, but I totally knew all about this last year, knew I should do it, and then didn't do it. But yeah. Thank you.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. I've been intrigued about that concept for a while. I just never actually had one, so I thought I'd play around with one and see how it worked. It's interesting.

Allissa Haines:

It's excited. I am so worried anybody screwing it up or not being able to retrieve later that I've given. Also, I don't really have that much crypto. I only got some for fun.

Michael Reynolds:

It is a little... It does take some detailed work to make sure you do it right. I'll say that. It's not for the faint of heart.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. Probably not my best bet. What's next, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

All right. What's next is giving a shout out to the lovely folks at ABMP.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, ABMP. Thanks so much for being our sponsor. Let's talk today about the ABMP Education Center, since I actually referred someone to it this morning. You can learn more about the ABMP Education Center at abmp.com/learn, but I'll tell you about it right now. They have over 600 hours of continuing education courses included with your membership. They're not going to make you pay more to get these courses. They are included, and if you're not a member, they have super reasonable prices to buy one or a bunch of them all at once. Topics include hands-on techniques, ethics, self-care, cultural competency, and courses for massage educators. ABMP members get this free. I already said that. It is a good way to meet CE requirements, to try out new presenters so you know where to spend your big CE bucks on life classes, because you'll already have taken a class and you'll know if you like their approach or not. We really appreciate ABMP, and you should learn more at abmp.com/learn.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. You got a lot of stuff in our next section. I'm excited.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. This is like one of those rapid fire episodes where you might get a nugget or two, you might know some of it already, and you'll probably walk away with at least one thing, one idea. So, this all happened because I had a little thing happen at my office a couple weeks ago. Since I moved into this office, I have been pretty righteous about changing the HVAC filters quarterly. So, every 12 weeks or so, I put in a new MERV 13 air filter on the HVAC intake vents. So, there's two of them. It's not hard to do. I need a ladder, and my ladder at home is kind of heavy, so I usually make Walt come into the office and do that with me and change a light bulb or something at the same time. So, we make it a whole trip.

Allissa Haines:

However, I was about four weeks late in changing my air filters last month, this month, and I just couldn't get the scheduling happening to get the ladder and Walt and whatever into my office, but I also have a CO2 monitor in my room because I like to keep an eye on how the ventilation is, and I'm very fortunate. I have really good ventilation in my massage office, and even better when I'm alone in the office and I crack my treatment room door open. But what I had started to notice and didn't really put together was that I noticed the ventilation in my room getting worse and worse. Typically with an hour treatment, my CO2 will go to 600 parts per million to about 800 parts per million over the course of the hour if my door's cracked open, maybe up to 900 parts per million if it's closed, and that's pretty good ventilation levels, so I feel good about that.

Allissa Haines:

However, I noticed that over the course of an hour massage, my CO2s were getting up to 1,200 parts per million, and that is higher than I want it to be. I couldn't figure out what was happening. I'm cracking the door open. I'm like, "What's going on?" and then my little alert went off that was my little reminder to change the filters, which I had bumped out a couple of weeks, and I was like, "Oh." So, folks, if you have forced air, heat, or air conditioning in your office, and you have never changed the intake filter, and I know this is a thing that we're supposed to do, and a lot of people don't. I think at my old office I probably only did it twice a year tops. It's really important. If you have access to these intake vents, it is a thing you really should be doing every quarter, partly because just general air quality and dust and whatever, and it's better ventilation, but also because in these days of COVID, you want to improve ventilation and filtration as much as you possibly can.

Allissa Haines:

So, I put a little to-do quarterly, and it pops up. I actually put one in my personal checklist, my to-do list for my home too, because after seeing how the air quality was so dramatically changed in my office, I feel really compelled to make sure it's doing the same in my home. I have subscribed with... I don't know if it's... There's a bunch of filter places online you can get from. I think I use FilterEasy, and I have a subscription, so every six months they send me six months worth of filters, and they automatically send them so I can't be lazy and not handle it. Yeah. Change your air filters. So, that's how this happened, but then this made me think about all the other little hacks and tricks I have going on in my office to make it an easier space to use.

Allissa Haines:

Then I asked my friends, and my little... I have a little, small group of massage therapists that's like the board of directors in my head, and I appreciate them so deeply, and I threw this question at them, "What are some other office tips and hacks and tricks?" and they came up with a big list. So, I promise all of them will not be as long-winded as this first one. I'm going to take a sip of water. Michael, when was the last time you changed the air filters in your house?

Michael Reynolds:

I change them monthly. I have a reminder on my phone to pop up every month to say, "Change the air filters," and I do it religiously because I agree with you. It's important.

Allissa Haines:

Good for you.

Michael Reynolds:

I know.

Allissa Haines:

You are a good homeowner.

Michael Reynolds:

I am.

Allissa Haines:

All right. Here we go, launching into the rapid fire here. Put everything in your office on a power strip and have every power strip have a light on it. This is especially relevant if you are someone who forgets to turn things off before you leave an office. If there is a light, a lamp, something attached to every power strip, you'll know that you haven't turned it off because there will be a light on, so it makes it really easy to walk around your office quickly, on the way out, shut off every power strip. I also use Velcro tabs to attach the power strips to the back of a cabinet or higher up on a wall, or hide it under a shelf or something so that they're at easy-to-reach level without being obvious and visible. So, Velcro strips, power strips, they totally work together, and it lowers the energy drain on things like chargers that might be plugged in that don't actually have anything attached to them.

Allissa Haines:

You can totally accomplish all this with smart outlet, but I know that not everybody's office is outfitted with that kind of stuff. I don't have really reliable WiFi, so I can't have smart outlets going on, but that is also an option. I would strongly suggest you have an opening and closing checklist hanging somewhere obvious in your office, and this is something I started doing when I was sharing an office with people because different people would open and close on different days, and I wanted all of the routines to be fairly consistent so I wouldn't come into the office the next morning and find all the lights on and the heat cranked up to 80. So, a checklist is really useful, and I'll tell you, it's really useful even if you're in the office yourself, especially if you include a cleaning, a daily, weekly cleaning checklist on there. Sometimes I just get a little off my game, and I need to consult the list really quickly to make sure that there's nothing I'm forgetting.

Allissa Haines:

If you share a space, and maybe even if you don't, it would be really good to have a second person authorized to contact your utility companies. I just had to call all our utility companies for something, so I made sure that my office mate slash office neighbor, that her name was also on those accounts just as a contact person so that if the power goes out or something goes wrong and I am out of town for the week, she can make sure that she has power to her office. Ditto that for the landlord and property manager info. Make sure that somebody else has that info too. If there's any other people that have anything to do with your office, make sure that they have that info as well. It just makes it a lot easier for you to walk away from your office and take a little break if you need to.

Allissa Haines:

One of my friends who definitely has some attention issues and struggles to remember and keep track of things and follow routines, which this is me, and I actually started doing a little bit of this when she suggested it, says that she uses her Google Assistant a lot. For example, set an alarm for 15 minutes after the last client that will ping and remind me to write my SOAP notes. You can use it to add reminders to a list called reminders. So, if you've got Siri or Google Assistant or whatever, you can totally integrate all of these things to compensate for your own weaknesses. She uses a to-do list app called Trello to set reminders to send clients articles or videos or followups, anything that's helpful to their issue, which is a fantastic way to build and maintain client relationships.

Allissa Haines:

Another friend said that she's obsessed with the Sleek Socket, and I looked it up, and we'll have the link, but you an also just Google it. It's this really cool little... I don't know. I want to say power strip slash adaptor, but it plugs into the wall outlet, but it looks like a flat outlet cover, so it's really attractive, and then it brings... You plug into the end of the cord, so it looks really clean and nice. So, if you've got wonky outlets and ugly and bad placement, and they're ugly and all that stuff, check out this Sleek Socket. It's awesome.

Allissa Haines:

If you have the ability to have a programmable thermostat, it's the best thing ever. Again, not appropriate for every office. I can't have one where I'm at because our WiFi's unreliable. Oh, you know what? I'm sorry. I'm exchanging programmable thermostat with smart thermostat, which both are awesome. But even just having a programmable one, I set the one at the office so that no matter how we adjust to the heat or air conditioning, at 9:00 at night when everyone's definitely out of the office, it will drop down to whatever the default evening temperature should be so that you don't have to worry about the heat or the A/C running like crazy overnight. When I actually moved into this office, it had one of those old-school dials, and I replaced it with a programmable one right away. Smart thermostats are awesome too because you can just open an app and handle stuff from wherever you are. Also good, but not an option for everyone.

Allissa Haines:

Block out a time to deep clean your office every few months because that... There's a bad word here. That crap gets nasty, and you may not notice if you're always in the room when it's dim. Word. I have a problem in my home because my shower is often dirty because all four people who use the shower in my house have very bad eyesight, and we don't wear our glasses in the shower. So, I tend to not notice when my shower gets dirty, so I literally had to put it on my weekly to-do list to clean the shower. Anyhow, you got to do the same thing with your office because the lights are down a lot of the time. Also, you need to be in your office in the same positions that a client is. You've got to walk through your office and go to the bathroom and go into the massage room and lay down on the massage table, and then flip over on the massage table to see things that you might not see from other angles.

Allissa Haines:

Otherwise, it gets nasty, and nobody likes a dirty massage office. I got to say I've been into a lot of massage offices that have dirty bathrooms, and it's horrifying to me. All right. Some super fast, quick tips and we'll wrap it up. Have a place for your clients to put their jewelry and smaller items so it's easy to find when they have massage brain after the massage, a little shelf, a little bowl, whatever works for you. If you have carpeting, you got to put carpet cleaning on your calendar at least once a year. Oh, my god. Just based on the amount of oil that I wipe up from my hard floor, my laminate floor, every day now, I cannot imagine how disgusting the carpet must have been at my last office. It was one of those thin industrial carpets. It must have been horrifying.

Allissa Haines:

Upgrade your massage stool wheels. If you have not done this, you got to do it, man. Rollerblade wheels, you can get them on Amazon. You can clean them with alcohol because they're a little bit rubbery, so sometimes they'll get a little bit gummy, but if your wheels do not roll smooth or they make noise on whatever kind of floor you have, rollerblade wheels. They are super fun. You can zip around much better and silently. Floating frames for your business licenses. So, you know the kind of frame that I'm talking about where it's got the wooden frame and then it's got glass on both sides so you put the picture in the middle so you can see part of the wall behind it. So, this is brilliant. If you have to be swapping licenses out yearly or there's a bunch of different people in their office that has to have licenses displayed, buy these floating frames, and then you don't even have to put the licenses in the frame.

Allissa Haines:

You can just tape them to the back, and they'll look like they're in the frame because it's a floating frame and it's clear on both ways through. I thought this was brilliant as someone who constantly had to open and close frames to change licenses. Fold your laundry into massage kits. So, when you're folding your laundry, put everything you need for one massage in a kit inside a pillowcase or a sealed sweater bag if you're... My friend who does this is super hyper-conscious of hygiene and cross-contamination, so every single massage kit is in a sealed, nonporous sweater bag thing. I do not go that far, but I do tend to put everything in a pillowcase or I just take the pillowcase and wrap it around that one set of massage linens. It stacks better on my shelf, too.

Allissa Haines:

Walk through your space with all of the lights on on occasion and clean up scuffs on the walls and such. It's a nice way to class up your environment. Perhaps have a universal phone charger for clients in your treatment room. If you have people who brings their phones in but turn them off, if you have a universal charger, they can plug right in, and that is just a nice little hospitality offer. A lot of us use heat in our treatment rooms like heated pillows, heated stones. Again, like we talked about this a little while ago, a lot of us have a very large contingent of middle-aged women clients. If you have middle-aged women as clients, or anyone in general, add some cooling. Make sure you have some cooled stuff available, even if it's not in your massage room.

Allissa Haines:

If you've got a fridge in your office, you can wrap up a towel in a Ziploc bag, throw some stones or a flaxseed pack in a fridge so that if clients get headaches or hot flashes, you can say, "I'm just going to go grab a cold towel," and you go do that, and you put it on their back, and they are so happy, or a cold stone under the neck during a hot flash. It's awesome. Keeping an unwrapped lozenge or cough drop in your treatment room for you in case you have the inevitable dry cough. So, I do this. I always have a Ricola where the wrapper is open and the Ricola is placed on the wrapper, but the wrapper is open on it, right inside a little cabinet with a little shelf. I can pop open the door and grab it and pop it into my mouth without cross-contaminating anything, although nowadays you got to move your mask down, so it's a little trickier now. But it's really helpful so that you're not having to clear your throat and say, "Excuse me," in the middle of a massage treatment.

Allissa Haines:

If you work on larger clients, or even if you don't work on larger clients, but some might come into your office one day, keep an extra queen-size flat sheet at the office so if a larger-bodied client comes in and would probably appreciate a little extra coverage, if you've only got those small, narrow flannel massage sheets made for massage tables, those are really small, and any kind of larger-sized body is going to feel like they're falling out of their sheets. So, I use twin-size extra long, and they tend to be a little extra wide too, but keeping a full or a queen-size sheet available just in case you get a very large new client who walks in, you can't go wrong. It's just a good idea.

Allissa Haines:

The final one is to, and I do this, and I'm so glad I do this now, have a set of charging cords for your devices specifically at the office. Again, there's expense involved in some of these, but not all of these. Some of them, they're just commonsensical things you need to do, but this will save you so much time, if you have an extra charging cord at your office so that you don't have to pack up the one from your home. It extends the life of your cord because you're not constantly wrapping it in a ball and throwing it in your backpack, and it's just easier. An extra phone charger and computer charger at my office has made my life much easier. That is my final tip. Thank you to my board of directors in my head for helping me with this.

Michael Reynolds:

Wow. That's really good stuff.

Allissa Haines:

Some of this we've totally covered before, and we've done other tip and hack episodes, but sometimes I just like to give people a little bit of a break and just some ideas so they don't have to go out and join a networking group at the end of the podcast.

Michael Reynolds:

But you could go through and just completely upgrade your office in a big way by doing all these things. I think that's amazing.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. I mean, if I do two of these things, that's it.

Michael Reynolds:

Love it. Well, thank you. Great stuff. All right. Well, with that, before we move on to our quick tips, you can't help but smile when you hear about our next sponsor. Let's talk about Happyface.

Allissa Haines:

Oh, that was a good segue. Happyface is the most comfy face cradle so you can give the most relaxing massage of your client's life. They have an innovative heart-shaped design. It's adorable, and it'll eliminate sinus pressure and eye pressure. It's not going to mash up anybody's fake lashes, and far less adjusting during the massage. It is made in the USA. It is seamless with a very easy-to-clean surface, and it's about the same dimensions as other face cradles, so your cradle covers are going to fit. They have a full Velcro back on them, so they are going to fit and adhere to any massage table frame, any face cradle frame, is the word I'm trying to find there, and it's going to stay put. It's not going to shift around.

Allissa Haines:

You can get 20% off the price of your product. Oh, my gosh. I said that all wrong. I'm going to start again. You can get 20% off your entire purchase at massagebusinessblueprint.com/happyface. You can use massage... Oh, man. I'm messing up so bad. Sorry. Sorry, Matthew. Using code MASSAGEBB at checkout, but if you go to massagebusinessblueprint.com/happyface, all that information and that code is right there. Enjoy.

Michael Reynolds:

Right on. Thanks, Happyface. Still smiling. All right. Quick tips. You just gave us like 50, so you're done. Right?

Allissa Haines:

Well, I literally wrote that in the notes people. Yes.

Michael Reynolds:

All right.

Allissa Haines:

So, Michael, what are your quick tips?

Michael Reynolds:

All right. I'll give a quick tip. So, here's my quick tip. Stop being cute, clever, and vague with your business and messaging. This sounds mean. It's not meant to be mean. I know it sounds kind of mean and kind of ranty, but it's not. It's just that sometimes I see massage therapy businesses that are like... They have these play on words that are just over the top. They're kind of vague and cute in their messaging, and it just reminds me, you don't have to go over the top with cuteness and clever wordplays and things. Just be clear. It's okay to say, "Hey, we do massage therapy for X," or, "I'm a massage therapy for X, Y, Z," or whatever, who you serve, and just be very clear about it.

Michael Reynolds:

Be very plainspoken on your homepage. Be very plainspoken in your messaging. Be clear. So, just a reminder, every now and then it's useful to go to your website and view it as if you are a prospective client that is seeing your site for the first time, or any of your marketing material, and are they able to determine, do they know what you do? Do they know who you serve? Is your messaging clear? Make sure you just stick to the basics sometimes and don't be afraid to be very clear and plainspoken in what you do and who you serve. That's my quick tip.

Allissa Haines:

That is fantastic.

Michael Reynolds:

It's adequate.

Allissa Haines:

It's good. No, you know what? It's so hard to get people to understand... I was talking to some massage therapists yesterday or the day before. When I land on your homepage, I just want to know what you do. Please tell me that you are a massage for people with migraines or a massage for people with general aches and pains or a massage for people who just had surgery. Just tell me what you do so I know if you're a good fit for me. Yeah.

Michael Reynolds:

I like your business, Allissa. Your business name is Haines Massage. It's not like some cute play on words. It's Haines Massage. Okay, great, simple. You website says, "Massage therapy for people who need calm," and your messaging is all about people with anxiety, and it's very clear. I know exactly what you do. My anxiety level is lower because I'm understanding what you're telling me. It's just very clear. So, I like your site. It's a good example.

Allissa Haines:

Okay, but I do like some kitschy names. I'm not going to lie.

Michael Reynolds:

That's fair.

Allissa Haines:

I do enjoy some.

Michael Reynolds:

My quick tips are not for everybody.

Allissa Haines:

I don't like all of them. I specifically don't like when hairstylists have... If I see one more hairdresser shop named Sheer Designs I'm going to puke in my mouth again.

Michael Reynolds:

Yes, yes.

Allissa Haines:

But I do like some of the hand puns and stuff.

Michael Reynolds:

People pull them off well sometimes. Yeah. It's not all bad.

Allissa Haines:

Anyhow, especially if you have a name that works well, so I knew a woman whose last name was Peak, P-E-A-K like peak of a mountain, and she called it Peak Performance Massage. That's just brilliant.

Michael Reynolds:

Oh, that works. Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

Or our friend Michael Moore, Moore Massage.

Michael Reynolds:

That works.

Allissa Haines:

Yes, absolutely.

Michael Reynolds:

That very much works.

Allissa Haines:

There's a dentist around here named Dr. Payne. Isn't that terrible?

Michael Reynolds:

Oh, no.

Allissa Haines:

I know, right? [inaudible 00:35:02] Payne Dental. I'm glad he didn't name his dental practice that, but there's that. Anyhow, a whole other episode about people whose names match their careers.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. There we go.

Allissa Haines:

Take us home, because I am clearly out of control and off the rails.

Michael Reynolds:

Clearly. All right. Well, with that, thanks everyone for joining us today. You can find us on the web as always at massagebusinessblueprint.com. You can email us at massagebusinessblueprint, I'm sorry, podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com, and hey, we appreciate you listening. Thanks for joining us. Have a great day. We'll see you next time.

Allissa Haines:

Bye.