Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• Financial Feminist- How does ADHD affect finances
• Agent Orange: “I Have a Client Who . . .” Pathology Conversations with Ruth Werner
• In Praise of Instructions

Discussion Topic

• Rebooting Your Massage Practice After a Hiatus

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Transcript: 

Sponsor message:

This episode is sponsored by the Original Jojoba Company. The Jojoba Company is the only company in the world that carries 100% pure first press quality jojoba. What that means is that they don't squeeze the seed quite so hard, so they get a little less oil, but the oil or not oil, I said it wrong, they get a little less liquid, but the liquid they get is a much higher quality.

It will not go rancid. It doesn't contain triglycerides, so it's not going to go bad, which is awesome. It is a fantastic carrier for essential oils. There's a lot of great things about jojoba, and you can learn all about them on your own. You can try it, 20% off the price of the product when you shop through our link massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba.

Michael Reynolds:

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. We're glad you're with us. Allissa, I have a quick question for you before I forget. How do you like the new plant behind me?

Allissa Haines:

Oh, is it a ficus?

Michael Reynolds:

I don't know. It's a small bamboo-like thing.

Allissa Haines:

That's right. I can see that the trunk is woven in itself. Is it braided in itself?

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

I can't really see. That's very nice. I like it a lot.

Michael Reynolds:

Here, I'll move it a little closer.

Allissa Haines:

Ooh. Oh, that's a bamboo.

Michael Reynolds:

For the vast majority of people who aren't watching on video, sorry about that. I moved my plant.

Allissa Haines:

Turn it.

Michael Reynolds:

Turn it. Oh, okay. I'll turn it this way.

Allissa Haines:

Turn it so we can see the, there you go.

Michael Reynolds:

Is that better?

Allissa Haines:

I want to see the trunk part woven together. That's good.

Michael Reynolds:

[inaudible 00:01:47] that.

Allissa Haines:

Very aesthetically pleasing. Carry on.

Michael Reynolds:

So well, Andrew's with us on Facebook. Good morning, Andrew. [inaudible 00:01:55] shows up right on time to say hello. We appreciate that. So again, for the vast majority of people who aren't watching in video and who are listening via the podcast, I move my plant from behind my monitor to behind me to add a little more color and vibrancy to my background. So I was hoping it was an improvement, so that's what I'm asking.

Allissa Haines:

I have nothing in my background. I got to work on that.

Michael Reynolds:

I'm noticing backgrounds more and more, because we're on Zoom all the time now a lot for stuff, and so at least I am. I'm noticing backgrounds, and I think putting some effort into your background when you're on video conferences is worth it. I think it livens up your communication. So anyway, enough of that. That's gone on way too long. What are you reading, Allissa?

Allissa Haines:

A few different things and it's more listening than reading. I'm pretty much only reading fiction trash at night nowadays because I need to shut my brain off. But what I've been listening to is the Financial Feminist Podcast, which is just, it's just great and it's a woman... The Financial Feminist book just came out, I haven't read it yet. I'm on the wait list at the library for that.

But she's had the podcast for quite a while and she was on the show we like, So Money with [inaudible 00:03:06], so I had heard her name before and for whatever reason I ended up on this podcast episode that was how does ADHD affect finances. It was really good. I really liked it. I'm going to put the link in the show notes.

I like the podcast as a whole. I like this particular episode. Not every episode is for me I found, but I really love this approach to financial information and knowledge and restructuring of what money means and is about in your brain.

Michael Reynolds:

Love it. I saved that one for later, so thank you for bringing that up. That's going to be very helpful to me, I think as well in the stuff I do.

Allissa Haines:

Actually, if I hadn't made this part of our podcast, I was going to send you the link anyway. There's a couple other episodes that I think would be really helpful for you, anyhow. Also, and I can't believe I forgot to mention this for three weeks in a row because it was a couple of weeks ago now, if you're not listening to ABMP's podcast, I Have a Client Who with Ruth Werner, holy shazao, you should be.

Because, one, it's just interesting and if you have ever accessed any of Ruth's materials, Ruth really has a gift for breaking down complex pathology stuff and helping us decipher what's relevant to us as far as making our massage safe. However, a lot of the episodes are awesome. All of the episodes are awesome, but in particular, there was an episode a couple weeks ago about Agent Orange and it is so good.

I've listened to it trice now because it's an important thing. There's a lot of layers to it, the use of this chemical in wartime and how it impacted the soldiers and the civilians and their offspring and now their offspring's offspring. I learned a lot of stuff I didn't know about the poison itself and how it could impact bodies and also some of the history behind its use and lack of acknowledgement of its use and the damage it could do.

Anyhow, probably, I think, it is probably the best podcast of these pathology conversations series so far. Probably also one of just the best things I've listened to ever. Ruth's approach is really good, and I can't find the right adjective for it, but it's appropriate and thoughtful and metered and you should go listen to it. It's in the show notes, but you can also look for the BMP podcast. It is episode 306, I Have a Client Who with Ruth Werner.

Michael Reynolds:

Awesome. I mean Ruth is brilliant, so anything she is involved in is also brilliant. All right, so I'm reading, I feel like I'm on a Chris Brogan bandwagon here lately, because I think last week I mentioned him as well. So he just had a couple great things in a row I really liked. I am reading his latest newsletter on LinkedIn called In Praise of Instructions.

This one I thought was really, really relevant to us in the massage therapy community. He was talking about how it is such a small, simple thing, but it's so appreciated and makes such an impact when you give clear instructions, especially for those of us that have anxiety around certain activities or maybe new things we're doing. His example was going to a doctor's appointment.

He had a medical procedure and he gave the narrative of how they sent instructions and there were so many conflicting instructions show up at this time, but really show up at this time, but oh, here's a vague way to say it over here. And he had no idea what to do and he's like, all they had to do was say, "Hey, show up at this time. Expect this. Here's the steps you'll go through."

All they had to do was clearly lay out instructions, but that was all missing and he had so much anxiety around this medical procedure and he likened it to our businesses in which, how often do we fall short to providing our clients clear instructions on what to do and what to expect.

It got me thinking this might make a good episode to dig into deeper on this podcast. But it got me thinking there are lots of little ways in massage practices how maybe a new client who's never had a massage before, maybe even longtime clients, what are some ways that we can provide very clear instructions that tell people exactly what to do to prep, what to expect, answer questions they might have along the way. There are probably lots of ways we can improve our instructional communication to our clients. So it got me thinking about that. So I thought it was a good one.

Allissa Haines:

I was just scanning it as you were talking about it and I also think it's a good one. He also had a really good email this past Sunday, but I'm not going to tell people about it, because I plan to steal the concept and use it for one of our blog posts or podcasts or something.

Michael Reynolds:

Beautiful.

Allissa Haines:

So anyhow, there you go.

Michael Reynolds:

There you go.

Allissa Haines:

What's next, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

All right, still excited that we are developing this new relationship with Jane, a practice management tool, and I know you're going to tell us all about it.

Allissa Haines:

Jane is an all-in-one practice management software with helpful features like online booking, admin scheduling, integrated payment processing and charting. But there's more to Jane than that. The team at Jane cares a lot about the problems you face as a practitioner.

One of the big problems we have, the prevalence of no-show and late cancellations in practices. So they've made it easy with a few simple tools that are built right into Jane, that includes the ability to implement an online booking payment policy, send out unlimited text and email reminders and enabling a wait list management feature to fill those last minute gaps that weren't preventable, because it's just going to happen.

You can go see the Jane app in action at Jane.App. If you know you're ready to sign up when you want to try it out, you can enter MBB1MO at signup for a one-month grace period on your new Jane account, and again, you go check that out at Jane.App.

Michael Reynolds:

Awesome. Excited to hear more about Jane. So I like this week's episode because it's a little bit of a continuation or tie in to last week's. Because last week we talked about side gigs while you're maybe building or rebuilding a massage practice and this week is about rebooting your massage practice after a hiatus. So I love the continuation.

Allissa Haines:

It's come pretty regularly over the past couple of years, because so many people paused and when they came back to work, they did so at a different location or in a different setting or with a different schedule. And I love this, so the idea of closing a practice and moving and making a fresh start somewhere.

I love the concept of a fresh start, clean that slate, and there are a lot of things that give us the opportunity to do that. There's an actual move from one physical location to another. There's an actual change when you decide to overhaul your practice and completely change your niche. There's a maternity leave. There's when you need to leave for a health reason or to care for somebody else or whatever.

There's so many reasons why you might take a break, even if it's a short one, that can provide a really great opportunity to make changes. It feels more natural both to you and to your client base when there is something coinciding with you overhauling your practice or making changes versus just choosing an arbitrary date to just completely overhaul.

Also, there's always the option to make these foundational changes slowly, but I found that can be a lot harder and involves a lot more work and educating clients and all kinds of things like that than just doing one big overhaul. So let's say you're going to take a break for one reason or another, even if it's just as small as taking a week or two off at some point for a vacation, but it's going to be like a stay home vacation, not a go away vacation so that you can actually work on some of these things and prior to that of course.

But any kind of break, it could be a long one, it could be a short one, whatever works for you or a relocation or whatever. So what we need to think about, one, I'm just going to quote something our friend Annie LaCroix said to us, she runs a massage school in Washington state. At some point, she said, "You're not starting from scratch, you're starting from experience." And that really stuck with me.

When you are going to make changes or move your practice or whatever, it can be really nerve-wracking to be like, oh, I have to start over totally from the beginning. But you're starting with year's worth of knowledge you didn't have the first time. So everything that you do, every decision that you make, is informed by that experience, and I think that is a very comforting thing to take with us.

I know it was comforting for me when I thought about it when I moved, and I know I have said it to other people who had to move or make changes or whatever, and I found it was comforting to just about everybody I shared that with. So keep that in mind. So what you want to consider when you're thinking about making dramatic changes or rebooting your massage practice, what has worked for you in the past and what hasn't.

This could be anything. For me, when I was rebooting, I considered that what didn't work for me is was my schedule of being in the office five days a week. What didn't work for me was having days that were really spread out. So I might have a nine o'clock, a noon, a two and a 7:00 PM. That did not work for me. I wanted a more consolidated schedule.

Things that have always worked for me because they match my comfort level and what I need in my business. I don't have a real cancellation policy. People can cancel right up to an hour or so before their appointment, and there is no penalty for that. I do have a very strict no-show policy.

If you don't call me or you call me 20 minutes before or an hour before with the least credible excuse in the entire world, I'm going to charge you a fee. It's not the full amount of the massage, but everybody's got a different kind of policy. I found the one that worked for me and I've stuck with it and it's been fine for me.

So I considered what worked, my cancellation policy or lack of that, and what didn't, my schedule, and a hundred other things. What didn't work for me was taking in clients with acute pain issues. I threw out my back. Nope, I'm not the massage therapist for that.

So a thing to consider broadly, more specifically, what kinds of hands on work or pathology work have you enjoyed most and what haven't you? So for me that was, I've enjoyed working with anxiety issues. I've enjoyed working with headache and migraine. I have not enjoyed working with acute pain or surgical rehab for knees and shoulders and things like that. So that's the example of what I thought through. Yours is going to look different.

I already mentioned scheduling preferences. I did not want long drawn out days, and I did not want to be in the office five days a week. So I had to figure out how to consolidate in a way that would match the number of clients that I wanted to see per week or per month.

Is your hiatus including moving to a different location? Great. That gives you a really great opportunity to just redecorate and rethink what your whole space is going to look like, what your vibe is going to be. If you're not moving to a different location, a hiatus gives you a chance to change the design and the functionality of your current space.

It can be really nice to spend two days in your office alone painting and moving things around and perhaps bringing in a new piece of furniture or two or just moving around what you have. Just a fresh coat of paint on the walls and a new throw rug can be just miraculous in changing the vibe of your office, changing the lighting. Anything like that can be really helpful. So what do you want in regards to a location change or just a design change in your space.

Your services, which are going to be directly tied to what you thought about in regards to the hands-on worker pathology that you want to do and address. What are your service offerings going to be? I stopped doing 30 minutes except for pediatric stuff, and I found that 45 minutes was the shortest amount of time I wanted to offer to adults, and changed my menu and nobody gave me any crap. Actually, most of the people I used to do half hours on just upgraded to the full hour, and I might have lost a few people. If so, I haven't noticed yet. So I'm not worried about it.

But what do you like to offer for a service, and what do you not like to offer? And what about pricing and what about add-ons? If you've had add-ons you didn't like to do, stop doing them. For the love of Pete, stop doing stuff you hate.

Also rethinking and rebooting your methods for acquiring new clients and how you're going to retain the current clients you want to retain, we'll get to that in a second, but if in the past you have only done local community wellness events or the local chamber of commerce and maybe a few Facebook ads, maybe it's time to rethink how you get new clients and what you want to try.

Maybe it means Google Ads, maybe it means reaching out to support groups for the kind of clientele and the issues that you want to serve. Maybe it just means running a really great massive incentive referral program for your current clients. I'm going to clear my throat, so I'm going to just mute for a second. Michael, now's a good time for you to jump in if you have anything.

Michael Reynolds:

Nope, I love it. I was distracted by looking at our reviews, so you caught me. Let's see if we have anything new to share.

Allissa Haines:

However, that's okay. I just needed a moment to mute and have it not be dead air. So how you acquired new clients previously and how you might want to do that in the future, that's different. That could be effective or not effective or what's been useful for you. How can you keep doing that even more so? How can you supercharge that technique?

So when you're building a new practice or you're revamping or rebooting, you keep all of these things in mind, and then when you're ready to execute, it's a massive overhaul, unless you're only making two tiny little changes. But you got to update everything, your website, your socials, any online listings, and that means if you've changed the name of your business or if you've just changed the logo or you changed the color scheme, or you've just added a new tagline, a new short description for your business, change that in all the places.

Ditto that for updating your scheduling software. If you've got new services and new service descriptions, all of that gets updated. Then you get to try and decide which of your previous clients you want to retain, who's going to fit your new rebooted practice, and that might just be like all your clients. Maybe all you're changing is the service times that you have and your pricing and redecorating your office a little.

Maybe it's a small little overhaul, but you might need to, if you decide you're not going to do certain work anymore, you want to call that email list or however you reach out to your clients so that you're not reaching out to people you know do not want back. Ideally, you're going to find a referral for the people you don't want back. So when they do contact you, you can say, "I have a massage therapist who is better suited to what you need because I am not doing that work anymore."

This approach may depend on your cash reserves. If you are going to dramatically change the type of client that you see, that might be something you do slowly. If you cannot afford to lose a bunch of clients at once while you are trying to recruit new clients with the new issues, that could be a slower dissolve out and in. But it is helpful to know who you can refer someone to and makes you feel a little bit less like you're just leaving them in the cold.

Like we said, we're going to decide how you want to get new clients and how you want to retain the old ones. So maybe you're going to do more networking and you need to do better email or text follow up to retain your old clients and keep them coming back as often as you think they should be and as often as they are able to. Maybe it's going to mean social ads and text message marketing.

Maybe it's going to mean whatever, something you haven't tried before or something that you've tried and it's gone well, so you want to supercharge it. That's what I got. If you are not super, I don't want to say super, if you're not pretty happy walking into your office every day, if you're not pretty delighted with most clients that walk in your door, if you're not enjoying your work, it is worth the effort and it takes effort, but it's worth the effort to think about changes that you can make to reboot so you are more delighted about your job, your career, how you serve your clients and the money you earn for it.

It can be really fun to reboot, and again, come from this place of experience, of informed decisions. It's really fun, and I've done it twice, and both of mine have coincided with moving locations. But again, even just deciding that you are going to make a bunch of changes, outlining what they are taking two weeks, if you're able, if you're able to save up those funds to cover taking two weeks off so that you can spend a couple of days in your office making physical changes and a couple of days making all of the virtual changes you need to make, it's awesome.

So that is my shtick on rebooting your practice after a hiatus. And it could be a hiatus that you artificially create.

Michael Reynolds:

I agree. It can be fun to reboot.

Allissa Haines:

It's so fun.

Michael Reynolds:

So thank you. It's a wonderful list.

Allissa Haines:

I'm so glad you liked it.

Michael Reynolds:

I did indeed.

Allissa Haines:

What's going next, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Well, a shout-out to our friends at ABMP is next.

Allissa Haines:

Rock on. Let's talk about the apps. I want you to know that ABMP has two amazing quick reference apps that are designed to help us quickly find information we need to make a decision for session planning or to refresh muscle and pathology knowledge. They are called ABMP Five-Minute Muscles and ABMP Pocket Pathology.

I was using the five minute muscles the other day to refresh my memory of occipital stuff, and it was very helpful and relevant to the treatment for the person who walked in a little while later and for a little bit of self-care. Thank you very much. You can learn more at abmp.com/apps.

It is progressive web app technology that's going to take up less space on your phone or device. If you're cheap like me and you don't buy the phones with a ton of storage, these apps are included with ABMP membership. If you're not a member, you can do some sample demos of each at abmp.com/apps.

Michael Reynolds:

All right, speaking of apps, I have an app for my quick tip.

Allissa Haines:

Bring it.

Michael Reynolds:

It's more of a plugin, it's a Chrome extension. So if you use Chrome, this will apply. This is very nerdy and specific. So this is for all who would like to have an easier way to get a snapshot of some SEO specific issues in your website. SEO stands for search engine optimization. We've talked about this before. It's a way to tune your website to be better found in searches.

So this extension is called SEO Meta in 1 Click. That's the full name of the thing, and I put a link to it in the show notes. What it does is it lets you put a little extension in your browser, you go to your website, you click the extension button and it pops up a little window that shows you all sorts of insightful information about how your website is structured.

It'll show you things like the title tag of your homepage, the descriptions that you're using on the pages, all sorts of stuff like that. One of the biggest takeaways I like from this is literally a 100% of the time when we do website work with massage therapists who are building websites with us or who ask us for feedback on their website, the number one thing I see the first time always is their title tag is not optimized for their location.

It might say, "XYZ Massage," and that's it. Or it might say, "XYZ massage, therapeutic massage," or whatever. But there's nothing about the city they practice in. There's nothing about their location, and that title tag is one of the most important pieces of information that tell Google where you are located, which is what people are searching on if they're looking for massage therapists in New York City or Omaha, Nebraska, or Indianapolis, Indiana, or whatever.

So that little tool tells you what your title tag looks like as well as other pages on your site, and you can see if they make sense based on the work you do and where you practice. So it's called SEO Meta in 1 Click, it is free. It's a Chrome extension. There's a link in the show notes if you want to try it out.

Allissa Haines:

Neat, dude.

Michael Reynolds:

That's what I got.

Allissa Haines:

I might check it out. I'll put it on my to-do list and then forget about it for a couple months.

Michael Reynolds:

There you go.

Allissa Haines:

Take us home, buddy.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. So the reason I was looking at our reviews earlier while I was distracted, and Allissa was going through her list is, it occurred to me, we hadn't talked about reviews for a while. So we have a lot of wonderful reviews on, I was looking specifically at Apple Podcasts, but they're other places as well. Apple Podcast is the primary place we get reviews, and we haven't had a new one for a few months.

So it occurred to me we haven't because we haven't been asking. So a reminder, we'd love reviews. Just a humble ask here if you're interested, and if you like what we do, even if you don't like it. We have a few reviews that are like, "Eh, they're okay. They're not so great." Most of them thankfully do seem to enjoy what we do. So feel free to pop onto your podcast app. Leave us a rating and a review.

We'd love to hear from you. We do sometimes read those on the air and they help other smart people like you find us. We love our community of smart massage therapists who enjoy listening to us. So thank you for that. So aside from that, you know where to find us, or if you don't, I'm going to tell you, you can find us at Massagebusinessblueprint.com. That is our website. That is the first place to start.

If you'd like to learn more about us, we have a wonderful online community that you can join there as well. Podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com is our email. Send us a note if you want to. Thanks everyone. Have a great day.

Allissa Haines:

Bye.