Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• Where Money Meets Feelings: Financial Therapy Finds Its Footing
• All the Things We Don’t Talk About, Amy Feltman
• Massage is Weird, Ian Harvey 
  

Discussion Topic

• Numbers to Know in Your Massage Business

Quick Tips

• OpenShot (free video editing software)

Sponsors

• ABMP 
• The Original Jojoba Company 
• How to Get New Clients

Transcript: 

Sponsor message:

This episode is sponsored by us here at Massage Business Blueprint. I want you to know about a free resource we have for everyone, How to Get New Massage Clients. It's an ebook that we wrote and it's helpful, and it will in fact, help you get new massage clients. It is a familiar question. We see it a few times a week in massage groups online, makes me a little bit crazy. Someone will be like, "I'm new. I need more massage clients." And the responses are always just all over the place. Someone's like, "Try Groupon." And someone else is like, "Don't try Groupon." And none of those answers are really very helpful in a vacuum. There is no single tactic that will get you tons of new and long term clients. There's no shiny answer, but there are very clear and effective steps that you can take to bring new clients into your massage office to fill your schedule and stack up that bank account, my friends. We have a 14 page guide. I don't know why we felt it necessary to emphasize the [inaudible 00:01:03].

Michael Reynolds:

Not too long, not too short.

Allissa Haines:

Not too long, not too short. Now I know. To help you refocus and determine what activities are most important and effective for you to help attract more new clients. You can download now for free again, free, free, free massagebusinessblueprint.com/clients.

Michael Reynolds:

Hello 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:

We're your hosts. Welcome to our show today. Yeah, I think it's fun to mention the page count because it is not too long. I think 14 pages is not so long that it feels overwhelming, but is also as long enough to let people know there's real stuff in there. So I like that.

Allissa Haines:

And there's a lot of pages that have pictures on half of the [inaudible 00:01:59].

Michael Reynolds:

That's true. Lots of pictures, so it's an easy read, but useful. All right. So with that, we're also a little punchy today because for some reason, one of us, I don't know who did it, but one of us changed the background on our live broadcast video today that we do on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Oh, she's changing it again. So Allissa is going through all the different background we have.

Allissa Haines:

I'm just going to change it throughout the episode.

Michael Reynolds:

I love it. Usually it's a nice soothing bland kind of white background. And then suddenly it was alien flying saucers. And now it's starbursts and little squiggly things. So I'm having a blast. I'm loving this. So I can't wait to see what backgrounds pop in next. So if you are listening via audio only, feel free to go check out the video if you want to see all the fancy backgrounds. So anyway, what are you reading Allissa?

Allissa Haines:

I am reading a delightful work of fiction. Well, delightful, beautiful, little painful, but real, called All the Things We Don't Talk About by Amy Feldman. And it is a story of a young person named Morgan, and they are growing up with an autistic dad. And it's a really neat story of Morgan and their first love, really. And what happens when their mom pops back into town and it is just a celebrate... I'm going to read right from the book description thingamabob. It is a celebration of, and a reckoning with the power and unintentional pain of a thoroughly modern family. And that's actually a really good description. It's just a really great book. All the Things We Don't Talk About, Amy Feldman. I am enjoying it. I should be finished with it tonight. Michael, what are you reading?

Michael Reynolds:

I'm reading an article from the New York Times called Where Money Meets Feelings, Financial Therapy Finds Its Footing. I like this because as many people know in my other life, I'm a independent financial advisor and I have a designation called the certified financial therapist level one designation because I'm getting deeper into financial therapy as a supplement to my financial planning practice.

So I like this because it kind of gives it a nice summary of what financial therapy is, how it's evolving. And it's really interesting. And I love this area because so much of money management is not just numbers and spreadsheets and math. It's about emotions and it's about behaviors and it's about relationships and it's about past trauma we have with money. And so the article's a really kind of nice summary of what it's all about. And I like seeing it because I think we're going to see more and more financial therapy principles being helpful to people as we find this intersection between mental health therapy and financial planning. And that intersection is there's a spectrum in there where financial therapy has a place. So some of the things we work on in financial therapy are helping people uncover past financial trauma and uncovering what their money scripts are and how to manage those money scripts and acknowledge and work within those scripts to be better with money and to achieve our goals. So, anyway, it's a interesting read about the area of financial therapy.

Allissa Haines:

Well, thank you. I'm fascinated by this and I cannot wait to read that article.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

Who's our first sponsor, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Jojoba.

Allissa Haines:

Jojoba. We are delighted to be supported by the original Jojoba company. You know how I feel about them. I love it. They're the only company in the world that carries 100% pure first press quality jojoba. It does not go rancid. There's no triglycerides. So it won't go bad like lots of other oils and products do. Gross. And it will not stain your hundred percent cotton sheets. So ultimately it's going to save you a lot of money on having to buy new linens every year.

Also, I find I use much, much less than I do with other products. So an eight ounce bottle lasts me three weeks and it's just a super good product. And we actually aired a podcast episode last week with the president, Brian Morris. And it was great. We talked business. It was awesome. We did giveaway on Instagram. We chose the winners yesterday. But if you have not already listened, go check out that episode from last week. You can get 20% off the price of the product when you shop through our link massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba. And definitely go to their website and sign up for their emails, because they have lots of great offers here and there, free shipping, all kinds of stuff and it's worth your effort. Thanks Jojoba.

Michael Reynolds:

Thanks Jojoba. All right. Let's go to comments from the social medias. We have Andrew stopping by on Facebook. Says, morning NBB. Currently reading The Mahabharata, the illustrated version. Love mythology. Thanks Andrew. Glad you're here.

Allissa Haines:

Oh, and Jose says currently rereading The Massage Sloth's Book Massage Is Weird. Dude, I picked that up again yesterday. I have the Kindle version. I also bought the hard copy and loaned it out to my office mate. And she gave it back the other day and I just busted it open while I was in my massage office. And it is such a good book. I'll make sure we put the link in our weekly roundup of what we're reading. It's Ian Harvey. He's a fantastic massage therapist, a wonderful educator, a thoughtful mind, a thoughtful person. And I love, Jose, that you're reading this. So thank you for the reminder that book exists and we adore it.

Michael Reynolds:

Andrew also mentions it was a great interview. I think he's referring to the [inaudible 00:07:32] interview with Brian. Love how he grew to love the product from working with the company. Awesome. Thanks Andrew. We're glad you're here.

Allissa Haines:

All right. Let's get to work.

Michael Reynolds:

Let's do it. Numbers.

Allissa Haines:

Numbers. So we're in this mid to late August. People are trying to get their kids back to school. We're all just a little bit summered out. So I don't like to give people too many to dos. So here's a few to dos that are a little gentler because you are to doing things with information you likely already have at hand. And it's doing this little task is going to help you guide the rest of your year and plan for next year, because we're deep in the third quarter at this point and we have to start planning for holiday stuff and what we want. Help us 2023 to look like as if we could actually plan and have that work out. So feeling a little [inaudible 00:08:33] this morning. So numbers. Numbers to know in your massage business. And I want to talk a little bit about this and why I think this is important.

Like a lot of massage therapists, I fell into the whole business ownership thing myself. I knew very little. But I started massaging and I started taking people's money and thankfully it's worked. But it took me a long time to step into that role and what it meant as someone who was in charge. And once that shift happened and how that shift happened was really important. And for me, it was knowing the numbers. And maybe two years after starting my business, I separated from my then husband and got divorced and all of a sudden was 95% self-employed. I still worked one day a week at a retail pharmacy and had this new fledgling business and had to support myself on one income. And that was tricky. So I had to learn more about the numbers. So for me, I needed to know the number of appointments that I had weekly and monthly.

I needed to know the amount, the number of dollars coming into my business weekly and monthly, obviously directly related to the number of appointments. And I needed to know how much I was working because I was weary of overworking myself. And I was also weary of a lack of structure and underworking myself and I definitely under earned for several years. But when you know the numbers, you have a starting point and then you can decide what you want to go up or down. You can build bigger, you can scale back, you can change the ratios and you can start to see trends and seasonal shifts after a couple of years. And I say that it used to be, I always knew that July was for whatever reason, always my busiest month and Mondays were always my busiest day. I do want to caveat this by saying the last couple of years have really annihilated a lot of trends because even if it was going to be my busiest month, if a COVID wave hit at that time, it would just annihilate it.

But there's still a lot that we can see and track and to help us make decisions about what's going to happen next. There are a lot of other numbers you could know and should know to be successful, but especially if you feel like you're working a lot, but you're not getting anywhere or you're working a lot, but the check you take home is too small. This can be a really nice place to start. So find some numbers. You don't need to go back 20 years to the week you graduated from massage school. Just going back the last six months or couple of years, whatever you've got, that's what you're working with. And that's fine. And I would say, you want to know how many appointments or hours of massage. And I actually measure by hours of massage nowadays because it used to be that the bulk of what I did was 60 minute massage.

And now there's a big mix of 60 and nineties. So I measure by hours of massage I am averaging every month. I don't even bother with weeks anymore because my weekly schedule tends to be a hot mess and it changes a lot. So now I just look at the month. How much money is that bringing in? And now I nail that down a little bit tighter. So I want to know the gross. I want to know exactly how much money I have taken in from providing massage. And then I want to know the net. So I want to know what's left after all the expenses, because the net is what I'm paying taxes on and taking home. And then I want to know how many hours I am working for all of that money and for all of those hours of massage, because we all know if you're doing 10 hours of massage a week, that's probably 15 to 18 hours of work all together between linens and admin work.

And if you're doing 10 massages a week and it's averaging out to 25 hours, it's worth reevaluating what's going on. Maybe your schedule's too spread out. Maybe you're not super efficient with certain tasks that you need to get help with. But it really matters because if you're working 40 hours a week and you're only doing 15 massages and you feel exhausted and you're only taking home whatever, and it doesn't feel like enough. That's a problem. That means we have to reevaluate. So you're going to look at this. How many hours of massage? How much money gross and net? How many hours are you working? Are you working on and in your business? And take note of how you feel about those numbers and think on where you want that to be in six months or a year. Do you want to be working more?

Do you want to be doing more massage, but keeping the same amount of hours in and on your business? So what does that look like? How do you compress your schedule? Do you want to work less? Does that mean that you need to raise your rates and share your massage room or raise your rates and sell more retail to make an extra 200 bucks a month? Do you want to be working the same amount of hours, but bringing in more money? How does that work? What can you do?

But looking at all of these numbers is going to allow you to see where you're at so you can see where you want to go. You're a boss. You're in control, because this is all about control. There's a lot of things in our world we absolutely cannot control, but there's a lot within our business that we can control once we are aware of our status and aware of our numbers. And that's my entire shtick this morning, it was a really short one. I want you to look at how many appointments or hours a month you are averaging, how much money that's bringing in gross and net, and how many hours that comprises every week or month. Done.

Michael Reynolds:

Love it. I would add that you can write this down on a piece of paper. You can make it super low tech. A lot of people get intimidated and thinking about numbers. Oh, I've got to make fancy spreadsheets. I've got to use some fancy software. Get a piece of paper out and just write the numbers down. That's perfectly fine.

Allissa Haines:

I actually did this the other day. I did it with these factors except I added one in, because I'm not taking new patients right now because my schedule's a little wankadoodle. But I wanted to see how many active clients I have that... And I really wanted to list the people that I want to keep giving appointments to. Because I don't have a lot of room in my schedule for the randos who come in every four to eight months. So I wrote down how many clients I have that come in every three weeks or less and then every four weeks or so. And then a handful of clients who come in every six to eight weeks.

And it was great because I found that I had 25 clients that come in at least once a month. I had five or so that came in twice a month and I had a handful, I don't know, there might have been eight of them that come in every six to eight weeks, which is good. Because it averaged out to be about 40 to 42 massages a month for me, which is just where I'm at right now for a variety of reasons.

But it was really good because it gave me a solid look at okay, when I'm ready to bump up to more like 15 a week or 60 a month, what is that going to look like? How many more monthly clients do I need and how many more every two months, every eight week clients do I need? So it was nice because it gave me some really tangible goals. And there's always a lot of flex in there. But it was really nice to add that and feel okay, now I know what my goal's going to be when I'm ready to bump up.

Michael Reynolds:

Right on. Love it. Thank you.

Allissa Haines:

That's it. [inaudible 00:16:25].

Michael Reynolds:

Definitely not too much homework. Definitely just good, simple exercise. So thank you for that. All right.

Allissa Haines:

And when I did this, I want to know... I'm sorry [inaudible 00:16:32]. I absolutely did it on the legal pad. I don't do any of these things in some fancy spreadsheet. I can always go back and look at my scheduling software and run a report. I can look at my money software and run a report. But when I do this, it is loosely names on a piece of paper or numbers on a piece of paper and then I'll often take a picture of it so I have it on record if I need to refer to it later. But for me, these numbers are to live in my head. They're not necessarily official numbers that I'm going to give an accountant or anything.

Michael Reynolds:

All right.

Allissa Haines:

I really am done.

Michael Reynolds:

Before we move on, let's give a shout out to our friends at ABMP.

Allissa Haines:

Hey ABMP. We are so delighted that they work with us. I'm so delighted in fact that I could not bring up my talking points for them. Sorry, a little behind [inaudible 00:17:17].

Michael Reynolds:

You could probably do it in your sleep though at this point.

Allissa Haines:

So it's just taking me a moment, but I found it. Let's talk today about the apps because I use them frequently in my practice. ABMP has two apps for their members, the five minute muscle app and the ABMP pocket pathology app. You can learn more about both of them at ABMP.com/apps. They are quick reference guides designed to help you quickly find information that you might need to make a decision in your session planning. Five minute muscles is awesome because it has videos of muscle specific techniques and also palpation videos and diagrams and pictures and stuff of the 83 muscles most often addressed by us. And they have that pocket pathology app, which means when someone walks into the office and they have some health issue I've never heard of, I can bust that open, look it up and immediately be more aware of how my session should be adjusted. Progressive web app technology means that it takes up less space on your phone or device. They're included with ABMP membership, but you can also look at a sample demo of each at ABMP.com/apps.

Michael Reynolds:

Thanks ABMP. Thanks for those apps. They are phenomenal. All right. Quick tips. I got a thing.

Allissa Haines:

You got a thing. I don't think I have a thing.

Michael Reynolds:

Okay. I got a thing. So I have another tool for you to share today. It is a free-

Allissa Haines:

Oh, for the love of God.

Michael Reynolds:

Whoa, this is useful. I think people will like this. This is a free video editing tool, free video editing. So I didn't know this existed, but I discovered it because sorry, I feel like all I do these days is talk about my son, Eli and his Minecraft shenanigans. But earlier this summer he took a YouTube camp. He also did Minecraft camp, but then later he took a YouTube camp where they taught the kids how to become YouTubers and edit videos. He has a whole YouTube channel. It's a whole thing. So in the camp they had them use open shot and I'd never heard of this before. I was like, "Well I know all these different video editing apps and they cost money."

And open shot is open source and free. It works on Mac, Windows and Linux for any Linux users out there. And it's openshot.org. And it's pretty darn useful. It's pretty powerful. It looks kind of like an Imovie or an Adobe, whatever it is. It's a pretty full feature video editor and it's pretty easy to use. So if you are looking for a free video editor to edit your marketing videos, your massage videos, whatever you're making for marketing, social media, et cetera, openshot.org. It is free and pretty darn good. So I wanted to share that with our listeners.

Allissa Haines:

Well thank you.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

Sorry. I'm a little over apped right now. There's so many tools that I can never remember the name of any particular tool that I'm supposed to be using. And I just have to ask 10 people. What's that app that does this or what's the tool that does this?

Michael Reynolds:

Well, there you go.

Allissa Haines:

I'm brain fatigued. I'm deeply brain fatigued.

Michael Reynolds:

That's okay.

Allissa Haines:

All right. This is a 20 minute episode. Let's just be done. Also before we wrap up, hi Marcy. And that's all I have to say because Marcy's listening and I love Marcy.

Michael Reynolds:

Marcy said, "Hi." All right. Well with that, let's be done. Hey everyone, a reminder you can visit us on the web. Our website is massagebusinessblueprint.com. And if you'd like to email us, the email address is podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. We try to make it easy. See how easy that is? So as always, we are glad you are here. Thanks for joining us today. Have a great day and we will see you next time.

Allissa Haines:

Bye.