Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• A Man Called Ove

Discussion Topic

• 3 Words for 2023

Quick Tips

• Explore ChatGPT

Sponsors

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

Transcript:

Sponsor message:

This episode is sponsored by ABMP. Let's talk about the Massage and Bodywork magazine. This is an award-winning magazine included imprint for ABMP members, but available to everyone at no charge at massageandbodyworkdigital.com. We've got our column, the blueprint for success in every issue. There are lots of other columns. It is a professional journal that includes techniques, in-depth features and video tie-ins to cover the issues that matter to professional body workers. It's a phenomenal magazine. You should totally check it out. And again, ABMP has made this free to everyone at massageandbodyworkdigital.com. Check it out.

Michael Reynolds:

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Massage Business Blueprint podcast, or 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 are your host. Welcome to our last episode of the year, our ultimate episode. Not to be confused with our penultimate episode from last week.

Allissa Haines:

Thank you so much for that callback, Michael. This is what happens when we pre-record episodes a few at a time.

Michael Reynolds:

What? Our secret out.

Allissa Haines:

We will be back live, I believe that first full week in January, recording live on a Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM Eastern. You can watch on our YouTube channel or our Facebook page and I don't know, maybe somewhere else, I don't remember, but-

Michael Reynolds:

Twitter I think.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. But for now, this is old news, but new news to you.

Michael Reynolds:

There we go. What are you reading?

Allissa Haines:

I just finished a book called... And I'm going to say it wrong, I apologize. A Man Called Ove. And I know I'm saying Ove wrong, because it's Swedish and Walt told me how to pronounce it, because he speaks Swedish and I still don't remember.

Michael Reynolds:

Of course, he does.

Allissa Haines:

So anyhow, it's a book called... And there was a movie made about it, I guess a couple years ago. And they changed it to a man called Otto because that was easier for people to digest with Tom Hanks. I don't remember it coming out, so it must have just kind of been a sleeper. But the book itself is fantastic. It's by an author named Fredrik Backman. Backman, Backman, I don't know. And it takes place in Sweden. And it is this dude who is a curmudgeon, he's a recent widow and kind of all of the happenings in his neighborhood.

And it's a very sweet story. It's a little bit mysterious, not... There's not a big mystery, but there's a little bit like you're not sure what's coming next sometimes and it's just great. And it's funny and I think part of why I got it was I read a review that was like it's laugh out loud, funny, and it really was. There was a couple of times where I laughed out loud, because it was funny. And I am on the wait list for another at the library, for another book by Fredrik Backman that I'm really excited to read, so maybe you'll hear about that next year.

Michael Reynolds:

Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Allissa Haines:

Thanks for listening, Michael.

Michael Reynolds:

Always. All right, before we move on, we have another sponsor to give some love too. Jojoba, The Original Jojoba Company.

Allissa Haines:

I didn't know if you were going to say who it was. This episode is indeed sponsored by The Original Jojoba Company. You know how I feel about them. Let me tell you what I really appreciate. Jojoba does not go rancid. It doesn't contain triglycerides like lots of other products do, so it's not going to go bad. The texture's not going to get gross, the smell is not going to get weird. That also makes it a really good carrier for essential oils, because you can put your expensive essential oil in there and it's not going to go bad. You're not going to lose that expensive oil, because the carrier went gross. It's just not going to happen. It doesn't stain your 100% cotton sheets, so you're going to save a lot of money on linens. And also Jojoba, just like a little goes a long way.

I use three drops on an arm. You can use a little more if you like a slipperier slidier massage. You can use a little bit less if you like a tackier, more friction, potentially deeper massage. It does all the different kinds of work. And I think I don't emphasize that enough. Jojoba is good for all kinds of work. It's great on fragile skin, so you can use it an oncology massage. I actually just gave a bottle to a client whose husband is in the ICU and she wanted to be massaging his feet, but wasn't sure what to use. He's not mobile, so it's cool to use Jojoba on his feet right now. He's not going to slip and slide around when he tries to walk, but it's just really good on fragile skin. You can use it in hot stone massage. It's great stuff. You can try some if you haven't already, or get more if you already love it. Using our code, massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba, that gets you 20% off. Again, at massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba.

Michael Reynolds:

I have to admit, this is my favorite episode of the year, when we do our three words.

Allissa Haines:

It's mine too. I'm sorry, I'm trying really hard to get back to my screen. I'm having trouble with my screens today. I'm an amateur at this, apparently. Okay, why don't you tell us, Michael, what's the whole three words thing?

Michael Reynolds:

All right, three words thing is an exercise developed by Chris Brogan, who is an author, a speaker, a business consultant who Alyssa and I have followed for a while, have talked to off and on. He's been doing it about 16 years. I saw his recent newsletter come out about the three words exercise and has been 16 years since he's been doing this, so a long time. It doesn't seem like that long, but it's a pretty consistent thing he's done. And the premise behind the three words exercise is it's meant to be somewhat of an alternative in the same genre, but an alternative to New Year's resolutions. Often we make New Year's resolutions that are like, "Hey, I resolved to do this thing or meet this goal or do this whatever." And New Year's resolutions for some people tend to be a little bit too binary pass or fail, set us up for failure, because it's such a specific thing we have to achieve and if we don't achieve it, there's all sorts of negative head trash about it and all sorts of stuff around it.

So while New Year's resolutions or goal setting, can work for some people, for many people it does not. And Chris Brogan developed the three words exercise as an alternative to instead create a theme, or a direction, or an alignment of energy for the year. And according to his exercise, the idea is to pick three words that define that theme or that energy or that direction you want to go for the year. There's no pass fail about it, there's no kind of a binary this or that, or a goal you've achieved. It's basically simply a direction you're pointed, a direction your energy is aligned and a foundational set of three words you want to build upon for the year and keep on in front of you throughout the year. So I feel like I didn't say that very well. Is there anything you would add or clarify, Allissa?

Allissa Haines:

I think you said it perfectly, great.

Michael Reynolds:

Okay. Thank you.

Allissa Haines:

So nicely done.

Michael Reynolds:

Thanks. So we do this every year as well. We like it.

Allissa Haines:

We do. We do. So typically in this end of year slash [inaudible 00:07:17] episode, we very briefly note what our words were for the previous year and do a little follow-up on that and then announce our 2023 words. So you ready for me to go?

Michael Reynolds:

Go for it. You go first.

Allissa Haines:

Okay. So my 2022 words, it was kind of four words, but they were all under this umbrella. So my one big word was build, and my plan was to build my body. I needed to get in better shape, so I can do this work without being injured and build up my business. I wanted to see more clients, earn more money, do more writing, et cetera. And my brain, I had been working on some meditation and some neurofeedback techniques, to just pull myself out of a brain fog that I've had for two and a half years now.

And I had a really good start and then the universe just laughed at me. So my bicep tendonitis turned into a full on frozen shoulder, which did not actually stop me from massage work. It impeded that a little bit for a couple months. But I got into physical therapy and so I still feel pretty good about the build my body part, because once I get through some other stuff, I was able to get to physical therapy in the summer. And I've actually kept that up right up until last week. I'm taking a little pandemic surge pause on that. Also, I'm just feeling good so I'm fine.

And then building up my business, which was really funny, because in May... 1st my shoulder kind of kicked up a little bit, so I had to slow down for a little bit at first. And then my ex-husband was diagnosed with cancer and I was a primary caregiver for him along with my stepdaughter for, I don't know, six months. So if you've ever been around someone with cancer, that is a full-time job for a while and I had no idea. What an important learning experience for me to see... I do oncology and massage, but I've never been super close to somebody with that level of stage four cancer, and have that go so quickly and be so interesting and terrifying and sad. So I did not add a day to see clients. I did not add any marketing or writing jobs to my schedule. I in fact scaled back on all of that.

So building my business, not so much. I will note I am so deeply grateful that I had at least a foundation of clients that I've had for years who were absolutely cool when I had to change an appointment last minute, so that I could take my ex-husband to chemo, or at the very end when we had an emergent situation and I just had to kind of wipe clean a couple of weeks to sit with him as he died, and then deal with end of life stuff. I am so grateful that I have clients who did not blink when I sent a text and said, "Got to cancel today. We'll follow up with you soon." Didn't have any problem with that, just so lucky I haven't lost a client. Everybody has rescheduled and just been so gracious and I'm so lucky. So I am going to be grateful that I had a solid business foundation, and also be annoyed that my plan to grow that business was just completely thwarted.

And then the brain stuff, I did pretty good. I finished a whole neurofeedback cycle and I feel like it helped me with my concentration and my patients, when I started to get some wackadoodle anxiety popping up over the summer. I handled that quickly with my practitioner and I feel mostly good about that. I have a little bit of tired and foggy stuff going on right now, but that's pretty typical for someone who is grieving. And so I'm just going to roll with that. So that's my 2022 reflection, more [inaudible 00:11:20] than I anticipated. I apologize. But I also think it's important. Sidebar. There's so much about grief that I did not know, because this is the first time someone who I was very close to died. And so I've lost grandparents, when I was in my 30s. I lost two grandparents. And then just two weeks ago I lost my grandparent and I still have one left.

I'm 47 years old and I still have a grandparent left. My grandfather is 99. That is amazing. But I have never experienced grief really close to me. And the hardest thing about this whole process was how unwilling people are to talk about it. And whenever I talked to somebody, I was like, I had no idea how exhausted I would be for a couple of weeks after he died. And everyone was like, oh yeah, grief is just fatiguing. I'm like, well, why did not anybody tell me about this?" When you're whatever mom died and I said, "How are you?" Why did you not say, "Freaking exhausting." Grief is exhausting. Why did you say fine? Just talk about how you feel people. So I've kind of made it my mission to make sure when I talk to people that if it's something they're interested in, they in fact ask. I tell them for real what this is like.

I've moved past the fatigue and into the brain fog and I'm sure these stages are different for anyone. Anyhow, 2023. So when I've been sitting and thinking about this, I really just said it out loud like, "What words can I choose that won't make the universe laugh at me? Because I just got laughed at last year." So three words, we got alliteration going on, I know how you love that and here they are. Enjoy. I need to have more fun. Especially seeing my ex-husband die at 56, getting an interesting little look into his life for the last 12 years when we haven't been married. That dude had fun, crazy fun, like did trips and bought snow [inaudible 00:13:20] and rode his motorcycle and did all... Played guitar and just had a blast. And I do not have enough fun, so I am going to make it a point to do that.

And also with my grandmother dying at 96, thinking back, she had 92 years of being very active and very healthy, which is a gift. And she did cool stuff. Her and my grandfather did neat stuff and I want to do more fun stuff while I still can, before heaven forbid, we're all on borrowed time here and I just don't do enough fun stuff. So enjoy, that is a big part of my 2023 words. The next one is ease. I want to keep my life as simple as possible and really easier to enjoy. I want to avoid complexity in my home, in my personal life, in my businesses.

To that end, I've been streamlining things and I'm going to streamline further. I feel very stretched all over the place career-wise, so I'm working on simplifying that and making things easier. I want to move with ease through my work days and also through my non-work days, so that I can enjoy. And my third one is earn. I have not earned a wage that I feel is satisfying since 2019, which was the last year I was massaging full time. So I have a very specific financial goal, not like this amount of money, but an ability to buy some property in early 2024. And so my goal is to pretty much make and save double what I have the last few years and get back to my 2019 numbers. So I've made some steps to make that happen. I've opened up some massage days in January. I've thought through... I'm going to start accepting new clients again, which is something I kind of was about to do in the spring and then paused. So that's it. Enjoy, ease and earn.

Michael Reynolds:

I love the alliteration. You've had that theme going on for a few years now. I like it.

Allissa Haines:

I know you like it. So Michael, tell me about 2022 and then your 2023.

Michael Reynolds:

All right, so 2022, my words were deep, level and fortify. And honestly I feel like I did pretty well. Don't always do well every year, but this year I think I did pretty well. So deep was to signify a desire to go deeper into certain elements of education. And in my professional work as a financial advisor, going deeper into some of the specific nuances and technical stuff, which I did. I did a lot of continuing education, like a ton. And I completed kind of the big pinnacle certification I was going for this year, so kind of check that off my list. Huge milestone for me.

Allissa Haines:

Okay, hang on. You're like tagging these victories but you're not telling us what they are. So Michael, what was that certification?

Michael Reynolds:

It's the CFP, certified financial planner. It's like the pinnacle of if you're a financial advisor, it's like the most advanced kind of thing you can get, so it was a pretty big deal. It was a lot of studying, very expensive. The education program was super expensive, but that's the one I got.

Allissa Haines:

Which is only beneficial to your other job, which is financial advisor over at elevationfinancial.com.

Michael Reynolds:

Yes.

Allissa Haines:

Correct?

Michael Reynolds:

That's correct.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. Okay. I [inaudible 00:16:57] want to make sure you plug that a little bit, because it's important and your worked really hard at it.

Michael Reynolds:

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Allissa Haines:

Okay, I'm going to be quiet now. Go back to your thing.

Michael Reynolds:

No., No, totally cool. And I did some other continuing education as well along the way. So I did go deeper into my other profession, which I really enjoyed, so that was kind of success, I think. Level was my effort to get even better at consistency and better management of things like emotions and handling work and handling complexities of life and just generally being more consistent and better management of things in general. So I think I did it pretty well at that as well. I'm getting much better at being more level-headed, more level in my consistency in how I respond to adversity and conflict and challenges in life and business. So pretty satisfied with my direction I'm going there.

And then Fortify was mainly business oriented. It was mainly to... The foundation there was a theme to strengthen the business initiatives I already had going. This one, including three other businesses I'm a part of, just continuing to optimize to strengthen, to take them a little further. So in general, I think 2022 went pretty well according to my three words. Not a perfect year, but according to three words specifically, I saw some success there.

Allissa Haines:

Did you do some... I'm going to [inaudible 00:18:20], because I can't remember. Did you do some course in financial advising for couples or emotional, or something like that?

Michael Reynolds:

Oh yes, I forgot about that one. Yes, I also earned the certified financial therapist level one designation.

Allissa Haines:

That's really, really important and I wanted to make sure you mentioned that, because from even just a little bit that I've seen, been really... I don't know, when you deal with massage therapists and money, there's just such a huge emotional component and the fact that you have been more deeply trained in how to handle that and work through that is super important. So there we go, now you can go to 2023.

Michael Reynolds:

Thanks. Yeah, it's good stuff. A lot of us have so much money trauma and money scripts that drive how we relate to money. So it's really important. So 2023, my three words for 2023 are boundaries, poise, and abundance. So I chose boundaries, because... Excuse me, there's my winter cough like Allissa said. So boundaries I set for mainly business. Some personal as well, because we can always get better at personal boundaries, but mainly business, because my personality is such that I say yes to pretty much everything. Someone needs help, I say yes. Someone needs help with something else, I say yes.

I want to help and that I'm not ashamed of that. I like to be able to help and I like serving, but I've kind of reached a point in my business... Boundaries and poise kind of go together and here's why. So boundaries is kind of my theme of saying, you know what, I've reached a point in my business and my profession and my credentials and my knowledge and my expertise that I've got to start setting some boundaries, and kind of acknowledging what my expertise is worth and being willing to charge accordingly.

Being willing to not bend of our backwards to try to care more about someone's success than they do. And just really set good boundaries on my professional life and the work I do. And again, I've tried really hard to make sure this doesn't sound arrogant or condescending or anything, because it's not my intention, but my intention is to acknowledge, like many of us listening that we have expertise and that expertise is worth something. And we've worked really hard to get that expertise and it's okay to charge money for that expertise.

It's okay to say no to people that maybe you're not a good fit for, or that won't appreciate your expertise, or that you just know that you'll care more about their success than they will. And therefore they're not going to make as much progress, and it's going to frustrate you in being able to set those boundaries, so that the word boundaries is meant to set that foundation for me to get better at those professional boundaries.

Poise kind of goes with it. I was looking for words that mean self worth or value, but none of those really stuck out to me. So boundaries and poise kind of fit together. Poise is sort of my way of saying, "Hey, I'm going to embrace some of the confidence that I'm in a place to embrace with that expertise, with the work I've done, with the work I do to help others and the value I do provide to others. So that poise is sort of a proxy for confidence, for self-worth, for acknowledging the value that my expertise can provide and to remain just generally poised and to be confident and self assured.

And then the last word abundance is not as super specific as the others. It's more about just to embrace the abundance that I feel like I can bring for myself and my family and my businesses, but also to others. I naturally have an abundance mindset. I'm just optimistic by nature. Allissa knows this. I can't help but have an optimistic nature. I'm trying to temper that with more realism and be more pragmatic. But in general, I want to embrace my abundance mindset. I want to help people achieve, I want to help people find success and I want to embrace and encourage and celebrate an abundance mindset, when it comes to money, to life, to love, to happiness, to all of it. So those are my three words, boundaries, poise, and abundance.

Allissa Haines:

I love it. I think those are good words for you. I don't think you'll have any trouble nailing that.

Michael Reynolds:

Well, I'm looking forward to what the year brings, so cautiously optimistic as always. So thanks for sharing yours. I love yours. I especially love, enjoy, for yours. I love seeing you choose that word, honestly.

Allissa Haines:

I was kind of tossed up between enjoy and enough. I wanted to make sure that I am... I have a very full and privileged life to the point where we're like, what do you want for Christmas? I have everything I need and most of what I want. So I was going to put in there enough to fully appreciate all of the things I have in front of me, but I decided enjoy was going to cover that too. But I'm glad you like it.

Michael Reynolds:

I love it very much. Thank you for sharing.

Allissa Haines:

I can talk about this crap all day. And also I want to note that in our Sunday email that we send every other week to our email list, which you can get on if you go to massagebusinessblueprint.com and just look for the email sign up. I asked our list, how did 2022 go for you? What are you thinking about for next year? And I am so appreciative, because we got some great responses from people who were really... The three words really cause them to reflect and I just love that. I like hearing what people are doing, so if you want to share 2022 or give us a little peek at 2023, please email us. We love this, podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. We love hearing what's going on in your brain.

Michael Reynolds:

Agreed. All right, the last sponsor is us. Yay.

Allissa Haines:

Yay, us. If you have ever thought to yourself, how can I get new massage clients? My friends, do we have a book for you? It's called How to Get New Massage Clients? There are a lot of ways, but there is no one way that's going to get you a bunch of clients that will stay with you for the length of your career. There's no shiny answer, but there are very clear and effective steps you can take to attract the right kind of client to you and keep your schedule and your bank account full. You can read our free 14-page guide, and you can get it at massagebusinessblueprint.com/clients.

Michael Reynolds:

All right, I have a quick tip.

Allissa Haines:

Bring it.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. So we're recording this about two weeks before you're hearing it. So I'm hoping this is still available. It's kind of gone on and offline, because of heavy demand and it's kind of a trial period. They have it open. But anyway, so hopefully this is still active when you hear this. There is an artificial intelligence app called ChatGPT, and it is kind of amazing. It's really incredible. And so my quick dip is mainly just check it out and explore it, if you're interested. I find it super intriguing. It is a chat interface that lets you type things and then this artificial intelligence program will give you results. It will give you feedback, it will answer questions, it will create content for you. We'll do all these things for you. So I'm fascinated by this. Some of the use cases I've been exploring are writing blog posts.

Now, before you get skeptical or off the bat, I've been skeptical too. I'm not saying you should say, "Hey, write a blog post about [inaudible 00:26:02]," like that's going to spit out something generic and not great. I have used it to write a blog post recently using it kind of a different way. I put my outline together. I think it's important to have your kind of theme and how you want to present the premise, how you want to outline it, really get a good rough idea in place of the article you want to write. And then I used it to create specific chunks of content according to the roadmap that I was giving it. So for example, I say write an introduction about X, Y, Z and why it's important. Okay, the introduction got spit out in a few paragraphs. It was actually really good.

I made a few edits, but I was done. And then next I said, define what this means and then explain why this is important. Basically give it little prompts. And I put together a 3,600-word article in about 25 minutes using this tool and it was really darn good. And I added my own content here and there. I did spot checking, I did editing. But I think there's a lot of potential here to create written content, even short form social media posts using this tool as a way to actually generate it, once you give it the right prompts and the right guidance and the right creative direction. So that's one thing. I've also used it to write recipes. You can basically say, "Hey, here's the ingredients I have on hand. What should I make for dinner?" And it'll spit out a recipe based on what you have on hand.

That's kind of a practical personal thing you can use it for. You can use it for, I've seen developers use it to actually write apps. You can have it write code for you, all sorts of different use cases. So for me, the use case is really content creation. I find that really intriguing, but a lot of people are finding all sorts of different use cases for it. So I'm just going to bring it to your attention to check out. I think it's going to make our workload a lot easier in a lot of ways when it comes to content creation.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, I think it's going to drive down the wage for writers, so thanks Michael.

Michael Reynolds:

I would push back on that a little bit. That may be true, but at least as of now, the way the tool is now, it doesn't replace writers in my opinion. It makes them more effective and efficient if they understand how to use it. So if you're a freelance writer for example, and you're used to writing things from scratch and taking two hours to write an article, that's one thing. But you can still provide the same creative direction and use the tool to write the same article in maybe 20 or 30 minutes. And you can potentially create more content in less time that is still high quality and still driven by your creative direction. I don't see someone replacing a freelance writer with this tool, because you still have to understand the creative part of how to generate it. So I think there's a world where it actually, it coexists well with professionals and not replaces them.

Allissa Haines:

All right, we'll see. We'll report back on this in a year

Michael Reynolds:

Or next year, maybe the [inaudible 00:28:51] will take over and will be extinct.

Allissa Haines:

That's fine.

Michael Reynolds:

That could happen.

Allissa Haines:

I'm cool with that.

Michael Reynolds:

It's probably good for the earth. Anyway, so check it out.

Allissa Haines:

On that note, let's wrap up the year.

Michael Reynolds:

Happy New Year everyone. If we see you next year, that's a good sign. All right, I think it's my turn to wrap us up. Hey everyone, thanks so much for being with us this past year of 2022. We appreciate it. We love the fact that you're a listener part of our community. Check us out online at massagebusinessblueprint.com, if you're maybe newer. And again, a shout-out if you're not a member of our community, which is called Blueprint Mastermind, maybe this year check it out. Maybe join for 30 days. Take January to check us out, see what you think. It's free to join and experience the community for 30 days, then you can stay a member if you want to after that.

So we have a great community, a super smart massage therapists here to support you and provide peer mentorship and be there for you through all of your business challenges as a massage therapist. So with that, email us if you want to at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com and that goes to Allissa and I. We'd love to hear from you. So as always, thanks for joining us today. Have a great day and a great rest of the year, and we will see you next time next year.

Allissa Haines:

Happy New Year.