Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• Court freezes Biden's student loan plan. So what should you do now?

Discussion Topic

• What Do I Put in My Email Newsletter?

Quick Tips

• Get the LEGO Train Station set with poop (​​60335)

Sponsors

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

Transcript: 

Sponsor message:

I forgot what I was going to say. This is live, that's awesome. Okay, this episode is sponsored by Jojoba. I'm super excited to talk about this today, because I just got the email from the original Jojoba company that holiday gift packs are back. They are a convenient and easy way to share the love of joba care with friends and family and clients this holiday season.

Each holiday gift pack contains one ounce bottle of Joba Care Jojoba. This year available in both regular and organic. A little four by six muslin gift bag, which is adorable. I tell you what, a little gift tag and a little coupon for future purchases and a usage guide. You can get them in packs of six, six gift packs at a time. Super affordable. 20 bucks for the Joba Care and six pack for the organic Joba Care. And then you get more discounts the more you buy.

So yeah, you need to check that out. Massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba is going to get you to the website, poke around for the holiday gift packs. Just a reminder that you do get 20% off purchases at Jojoba, but that 20% off probably does not apply to this gift pack, but it applies to all the other stuff. 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:

We're your host today. Welcome to episode 440. Just fun to say 440, so I wanted to say it.

Allissa Haines:

Sure is.

Michael Reynolds:

Welcome. We're glad you're here. Good morning Andrew. Andrew's always bright and early on Facebook. As you may have heard, we do this live on the social medias and Andrew is always first in line saying Good morning. So good morning to you Andrew. Appreciate it.

Allissa Haines:

I'm glad because that means Andrew's the only person that heard my flub earlier that's absolutely going to get edited out.

Michael Reynolds:

Maybe. We'll see. [inaudible 00:02:03] make that call.

Allissa Haines:

What are you reading Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Oh boy. I'm reading about student loan forgiveness and the saga that is our government. So the specific article that I'm linking in the show notes for you if you want to read about it is, "Court freezes Biden's Student loan plan." Actually, the headline they got wrong. It says, "So should you do now," but actually should be, "So what should you do now?" This is on MSN via CBS News. So this is not like a fly by night news organization but somebody just flubbed the headline, which I think is hilarious because, hey we're all human.

But the gist of it is that as we have probably heard, there is a student loan forgiveness program by the Biden administration that forgives 10 to $20,000 in public student loan debt if you qualify. And as expected Republican led states are filing lawsuits, this particular lawsuit's with the eighth circuit court to block it to stop it from happening.

So that's what's happening right now. The gist of it is they have filed this lawsuit, it has put everything on hold for now. So what does that mean for you? Apply anyway. Continue to apply. The application is still open, but the actual execution of the forgiveness is what is suspended for the moment. Doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Also doesn't mean it is going to happen, but these things do happen. So if you are eligible, I would encourage you to go ahead and apply anyway, get your application in. And this month, which is October, it's going to be heard pretty quickly. The case is going to go through pretty quickly because this is a time sensitive thing. So we don't know what's going to happen. But it's on the table. So just be aware that this is not a sure thing, but you should apply anyway. That's what I'm reading about.

Allissa Haines:

Nice. I'm not reading anything except super crappy low-level fiction. While I was actually having a conversation last night about, I've read so many books lately that are poorly written. We're kind of wondering what's going on with the self-publishing world and with the actual legit publishing world, cause I've been reading a lot of fiction that's just so poorly written. And also, inaccurate, contradicts itself. Like at the beginning of the story, it'll talk about somebody's 30th birthday party and then the next chapter, it's all of a sudden their 50th birthday party. Weird little editorial things. So I'm not telling anybody what I'm reading because it's not even well written right now.

Michael Reynolds:

Fair enough.

Allissa Haines:

But I do feel like I need to finish the book anyway. I don't know, whatever. Who's not our next sponsor? Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Oh hey, it's us. Hi.

Allissa Haines:

Oh hey. Nice to see you. So let's talk about the fact that we have a handful of free resources on our website. So if you were to go to massagebusinessblueprint.com, and you click on the little resources page, there's a bunch of free things there for you. You should totally check it out. One of those free things is our little ebook, How to Get New Massage Clients. It's not crazy long, but it's long enough to be useful. And this is a familiar question that we see many, many times per week and month in massage discussion groups. How do I get new clients? And the responses are often sort of helpful but also all over the place.

And while it is important to have some variety in the ways that you are trying to attract new clients to your business, there also needs to be a little bit of linear structure, this nice strong foundation. And there is no one tactic that's going to get you all of your clients. So you do have to think through your options and we lay out the clear effective steps you can take to bring new clients into your massage office and fill your schedule and fill your bank account. You can go to massagebusinessblueprint.com/clients to learn more and get your free ebook.

Michael Reynolds:

It's really good. I think it's really good. So it's somewhere between all right and really good. So what have you got to lose? It's free.

Allissa Haines:

It doesn't stink.

Michael Reynolds:

It doesn't stink at all. No. All right. Speaking of not stinking, newsletters, email newsletters, what are we talking about today? What are you putting in your newsletter? Where do I start?

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, this came up in our premium discussion group last week and I thought it would make a great topic because we haven't talked about email marketing in a long time. Which not for nothing, if we remember way back, email marketing was my first big thing that I was teaching. And it is close to my heart and I love email marketing. What I also want to note is that if you're not doing email marketing, if you're doing text, bulk text blasts or stuff like that, many of these notions will translate to that as well. So keep listening. And we are not going to cover the basics of email marketing here. We have previous podcasts and resources for that, which maybe I'll try to find and put in the podcast notes. But what we're going to cover is if you've got an email list, big or small, what do you put in your email, and I'm air quoting around this, newsletter?

I actually don't like to think of them as newsletters. I think that puts a lot of pressure on it. I like to just think of it as a communication with your clients where you send one email, it goes to all of your clients. You do this through a sender like Constant Contact or MailChimp or Vertical Response or of any of the other email senders. And what do you put in them? Okay, well it depends. I know, I know. I'm sorry. I say that a lot. But it does depend. What is the goal of this email?

So in general, our goals are to sell gift certificates, to straight up book appointments. And sometimes it's just a relationship builder, and sending that email is reminding clients that you exist. And very specifically, reminding irregular clients that you exist. So if you're someone who has kind of a general practice, or even if it's not general, if it's specific to a niche, and you probably have a base of clients who keep scheduling, if the work you do requires maintenance or just regular care, then you probably have a base of regular clients. And you probably have a batch of clients who come in every 2, 3, 4, 5 months, but they don't book their next appointment before they leave because they're just not that structured.

In a perfect world, we all have just a full schedule of regular monthly or biweekly or whatever clients. Bimonthly, biweekly is twice a week. That's not what I meant. Anyhow, but we don't all have that. So these emails can often just be about relationship building with your current regular clients and reminders that you exist to these irregular clients. So let me pound through this list of what you could put in an email to remind people that you exist and maybe serve your current regular clients as well.

Okay. If you've done the work, and you have any blog posts or articles on your website, they make fantastic email content. So you just take a blurb from your blog post, you put it into an email, you do a read more here button and you call it a day. You can write two sentences as an opener and you can recycle these blog posts. If you keep in mind that hopefully you're constantly getting occasional new clients, that means you're adding people to your email list fairly regularly.

So if you write a blog post a year ago and you send that out in an email, by now a year later, there's probably a handful of clients who've never seen that. So you can recycle these blog posts and articles from your website, I'd say every 12 months. And if it's a real pertinent topic, maybe even a little more than that. Frequently ask questions, if you have a page of frequently asked questions on your website, or even if you don't, they are a great small short bit to put in an email to clients and they can make up a whole email. Emails can be real short. So if you've got a frequently asked question, then write it out. Write out the answer just as if you were speaking it out loud to a client who has asked that question and toss that in the email. That's your email content.

I do want to backtrack a little bit. One of the reasons I don't like referring to it as a newsletter is because it makes a lot of us older people think that it has to have multiple sections, and it doesn't. An email can be one thing, one blurb from a blog post with a link, one frequently asked question. It doesn't have to be multiple segments. You don't have to think about a newspaper with all these different pages and sections. It can be one thing, one topic.

Okay, next on the list, if you are a massage therapist who lives in kind of an active area and you've got local events that you might be going to and doing massage or representing your business, toss those local events into your newsletter. Say, "Hey, I'm going to be over here. Stop in and say hi."

Links to referral partners, so if you have referral partners that are people who go to such events that you might not be at, definitely send an email when people you love are going to be in an event. There's this soap and body product maker in my area and she makes everything from scratch one town over. Sometimes I give away her stuff to clients and sometimes I retail it at the office. If she's going to be at a couple of local events, I am going to make sure that I send an email and tell people, "Hey, this person who makes the soap that you loved is going to be at this particular artisan fair."

Okay, referral partners since we're there, link to stuff on their websites. If that same soap maker has a blog post or video about... I love her because she's very much like, don't believe when people are like, "Oh, parabens are bad." Because it's not true. Some parabens are bad, some are good. And if you've got a product that says paraben free, it's probably got this other preservative in there that is worse for you than a paraben, but they're totally jumping on the catch phrases. So that is something I would send an email to my clients and be like, "Hey, I learned this really great thing about products." Here you go. So if you're looking for some content and you don't have any of your own, look at your referral partners websites or social media and find something you can share and link back to their page.

Okay, Tell a secret about your business. Not something inaprops, but something like, how you fold fitted sheets or how you don't fold your fitted sheets because you hate fitted sheets, or how you don't use fitted sheets at all because you cannot handle having to fold them or roll them or whatever you do. It doesn't have to be about fitted sheets. It can just be any little thing about your business that maybe at some point a client has asked about. You could do a little video or blurb about how you fill your oil bottles and how you clean your oil bottles. Anything. Tell a little secret about, I'm not going to say the dark side or the underbelly of your business, but stuff that clients may not see, the non-client facing stuff that could reflect something nice or fun about your business.

You can share a playlist. Share a relaxation playlist, something that you play at your office, or just something that you think your clients would enjoy. What can you tell people about your business, your less regular clients that will entice them to book? And I like to think about seasonal things here. If it's starting to get chilly in the climate where you're at, maybe you need to send an email talking about your warm massage table, like the warmer that you have and how it can be on low to just be gently warm. Or if you got people who are always cold, you can crank that bad boy up. Maybe you can say that you've got a heating pad for people's feet in the winter. Maybe if it's hot and yucky where you are in the hot, hot, pardon me, hottest and yuckiest parts of the year. You can mention that you have cooled foot cloths that you wipe clients' feet down with at the beginning of the massage to cool them down.

Something seasonal-ish or monthly special-ish. And I don't mean special-ish as money off. I mean essential oils are really good for this. And I know not everybody's into essential oils, but you can think up your own thing. But using, offering, the option of a different essential oil every month or every couple of months, something seasonal related can be really nice. And that gives you something to advertise and that gives you something to talk about in an email. Like, "Hey, if you come in January, you're going to get going to get this delightful warm glow, winter clove, blah blah, blah." If you want it, ask.

Okay, email content, self care tips, any tips that you find yourself regularly giving clients, any stretches, any self care that you regularly suggest to people or demonstrate from people, that's an email. It's also a blog post. So double duty, that's email content. And if you don't want to do a blog post, it's fine. Just make an email content, make it a social post, an email, whatever you got. If you are someone who frequents other local small businesses, mention it. If you don't have anything else to say, it is okay to say, "I went to this new restaurant, had this, it was awesome. I hope you all get to visit it soon." You can mention a book that you're reading or rereading, especially if it's work related content.

So the other day, it was Ruth Warner's pathology textbook, because I needed to look up something about clients with multiplesclerosis. And that would've been, had I thought ahead on that, a good time to take a picture of the book, maybe even take a picture of a segment of that page in the book about MS and use it as a social post studying up on my blah blah blah. And then you can absolutely spin that into an email and in a way that says, "Hey, did you know that I work on people with multiple sclerosis?" I can't even say it. Let me just say work on people with MS and that it can do great things for them or it could help with this, or this or whatever. That's great email content. See I'm coming up with this on the fly.

So podcasts, if there's any health or wellness or just whatever related podcast that you listen to that you think your clients would be interested in, do a, "Hey, I've been listening to this." You could do a podcast playlist.

And finally, sometimes we forget that not everybody has scoured and read every word of our website. So you could use your email to just highlight one service in each email. You could do a very short two paragraph blurb of what is a 60 minute massage good for? Me, I would say it's great for a full on massage with, a head to toe massage, is what I call it. Cause I don't like to say full body, but I say a head to toe massage, with a little extra work in one problem area. You could also do an email blurb, and a separate email. This doesn't have to be all one email, spread this bad boy out. What is a 75 minute massage good for? What is a 90 minute massage? Here's the things we could do in a 90 minute massage. You get the idea. And if you have other kinds of services, like what's the hot stone massage all about? What is a foot scrub entail? What is whatever technique you're doing? That is email content And you can make these into the smallest bite size content. So you are maybe writing one or two of them at a time, but then spreading them out over a couple of months.

That is my non extensive list of email content ideas. If you just looking to remind clients that you exist and do some relationship building. If you have a very specific goal to book appointments, then any of these kinds of topics to send an email is great. And then you'd want to tack on a call to action that says, I have some open appointments. Click here to book. Now maybe your goal is to book appointments and that's all you want the email to be because you do not have the time nor the energy to do any of these other types of topics. It is great and in fact good and wonderful to send an email that just says, "Hey, it's been a while since you've been in and I'm excited to tell you that I have some open spots in my schedule. So if you've been wanting to come in, now is your chance. Click here to schedule."

And make it sound special and unusual that you have open spots in your schedule. You're not going to lie, but make it sound like, "Hey, I've got space in my schedule." Or, "Hey, I'm accepting new clients." Maybe you're always accepting new clients, but it's nice to tell people that on occasion. And finally, if your goal is very specifically to sell gift certificates, this is super easy because all you got to do is note that there's a holiday coming up. Emphasize that it's super easy to buy your gift certificates online and then link to where people can buy them. So if that's a goal, that's super easy.

And finally, I will leave you with this and then I know we've got a bunch of comments to go through from listeners. The final bit is it's better to be short and frequent than long and random. And frequent can mean different things for different people. I am not suggesting that you need to send an email every week. If you're fairly busy and your schedule's mostly full, I'm not even suggesting that you need to send an email every month. You might want to fill in those empty spots, but don't make it such a huge task for yourself that you never do it. Keep it as small and short and bite-sized as you possibly can, and then it'll just be a lot easier to get into the habit of sending them. It'll be easier to do it. It's going to take you an hour instead of five hours and you'll actually do it. And when you see the fruits of that, you will be more inspired to spend another hour, a few weeks or a month later and send another one. That's everything.

Michael Reynolds:

All right, good time to go to comments. Let's go to comments. Andrew has a comment, I believe he's referring to Ruth's book. He says, "I love all the real world people examples in her text."

Allissa Haines:

Yes, that is true.

Michael Reynolds:

She's good at that. And then Leslie on Facebook has stopped by to say, I'm so nervous about emailing. It's never been a part of my practice, but I have an upcoming move and we'll have to get in touch with everyone. So yeah, it's a good timing to think about that.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, and something nice for Leslie is that Leslie is a member of the mastermind community. And so Leslie could just come to one of the three or four office hours that I have scheduled in November and we can walk through together the first couple of steps of getting an email thing set up. Also, we've got some massive email marketing resources in our private community. So that's good news for Leslie. It might not be good news for the rest of you, so maybe you should consider checking out the mastermind community. But yeah, I mean it's a thing. It's a to learn, there's a learning curve. It's an annoying, it can be frustrating. It can be scary because you're worried about saying the wrong thing. But once you do it, it's not so hard anymore. So if it's something that could be useful to you, try it.

Michael Reynolds:

Awesome. What else? I think that's all we got. We'll make somebody say hello as well. I'll throw a Meg on screen there. Meg said she joined late, but we'll be rewatching later. Thank you for that. And since we're doing comments, I always like to bring up, Hey, if you're listening via the podcast, which most of you do, we do this live, 9:00 AM every Wednesday eastern time on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. So if you feel inclined and you're available and want to pop up on your phone or computer and jump to our live broadcast, you're welcome to any time. You can post comments and questions throughout. And you can see Allissa's camera go in and out of focus and watch her internet drop and everything that happens live. So you're welcome to heckle us anytime you want to at that time.

Allissa Haines:

Oh, except we did decide that we're taking December off from live episodes, so don't feel like you have to get up early on Wednesdays in December, but we are going to carry on through November and then we'll be back in January.

Michael Reynolds:

That's true. Good call.

Allissa Haines:

You got time.

Michael Reynolds:

You got some time. All right, well, let's give a shout out to our last sponsor before we move on. And that would be our friends at ABMP.

Allissa Haines:

Yay. Let's talk about the ABMP education center that you can find at abp.com/learn. Over 600 hours of continuing education courses are included with ABP membership or available for non-members to purchase at a ridiculously affordable price. Topics include hands-on techniques, ethics, self care, cultural competency, and courses for massage educators themselves, which is huge. ABMP members get free CE for all courses included with our level of membership. It is a great way to meet CE requirements to try out new presenters and to save your CE budget for other courses, maybe in person stuff. Again, you can learn more at abp.com/learn.

Michael Reynolds:

All right, time for quick tips as we wrap up.

Allissa Haines:

I got nothing

Michael Reynolds:

I have a thing.

Allissa Haines:

Tell me your thing and I'm so looking forward to it.

Michael Reynolds:

So as many of you know, I have a seven year old son, Eli, and being a seven year old, he is obsessed with poop jokes and fart jokes and all things bodily functions. So I'm sure many of you can relate to this. So I have discovered that there is a Lego set that has a piece that is literal poop. It's hilarious. So this is the train station Lego set. It's number 60335. And it's like a train station plus a construction zone, and it's got a porta-potty. And in the porta-potty is a toilet. In the toilet, is a poop. So I cannot wait to get this for Eli, because I think he will find it hilarious. So if you have someone in your life who loves poop jokes and things like that, then this could be a fun gift for them.

Allissa Haines:

Oh my god, Michael, it's a hundred bucks.

Michael Reynolds:

Oh, I didn't need to look at the price. Okay, so sorry. It's expensive, but there it is.

Allissa Haines:

But you know what? It looks like we've got it at Target and Kohl's and Best Buy and all of the places. So I bet if you hit it with a coupon or a Kohl's special, you can knock that out of the park.

Michael Reynolds:

There you go. So Lego has made poop legos, so you are welcome.

Allissa Haines:

I feel like you're going to be able to buy just the poop on eBay in a few months. That's going to be awesom.

Michael Reynolds:

Oh, that's probably a better deal. Good call. I'll be on the look out for it.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, I might actually, this is a good gift idea. I might actually get that for the kid here.

Michael Reynolds:

I think I want to look for just the porta-potty, and the toilet and poop. That would be a good self-contained item, I think.

Allissa Haines:

Oh my gosh. This is awesome. Thank you for this.

Michael Reynolds:

You're welcome.

Allissa Haines:

This was really an important quick tip.

Michael Reynolds:

Only the best resources for our community here at the Blueprint. So, All right. Anything else?

Allissa Haines:

Well, you ever see those things you can put in the kid stocking, they're like the reindeer candy dispensers and it dispenses them out? The reindeer's [inaudible 00:25:48]

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. Reindeer poop. Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

Yep. Yeah. Okay. We're really up in the classy content on today's episode.

Michael Reynolds:

Keeping it classy.

Allissa Haines:

So wrap it up, smart boy.

Michael Reynolds:

Right. Well thanks everyone for joining us today. Allissa alluded to this earlier, but I want to revisit it. If you're not a member of our Blueprint Mastermind community, consider joining. WActually in this week alone, we've had three or four new members join the last couple days. We've had an influx of people kind of checking us out, which we appreciate, and we have a ton of great resources in the community. We have office hours, which I think are our best benefit. As well as a couple of CE courses, access to unlimited Q&A and questions in our community and downloadable templates, as well as a monthly blog post for your website.

Basically just a ton of stuff to support your marketing and business efforts. So it is pretty phenomenal. People give us feedback that it's really life changing for their business. So check it out, massagebusinessblueprint.com, go to the community area and you can join free for 30 days to see if you like us. So with that, you know where to find us. I just told you. Massagebusinessblueprint.com, and you can email us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. If you would like to send us hate mail, love notes, feedback requests for topics, anything you want, we would love to hear from you. With that, have a great day. We'll see you next time.