Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• Everything Happens 
• Be My Guest 

Discussion Topic

• Our Favorite Hacks and Tips for Massage Therapists

Quick Tips

• summarize.tech: AI-powered video summaries
• Tooth fairy

Sponsors

• ABMP 
• The Original Jojoba Company 
• Jane enter MBB1MO at signup for a 1-month grace period on your new Jane account.

Transcript: 

Sponsor message: 

This episode is sponsored by The Original Jojoba Company. You know how I feel about massage products, we should only be using the highest quality on our bodies and on our clients' bodies. Jojoba is non-allergenic, which means you can use it on any client and every client without worrying about an allergic reaction. It also doesn't go rancid. It doesn't contain triglycerides like a lot of products do, so it's not going to go bad. Jojoba does not stay in your 100% cotton sheets. It's going to save you a ton of money because it lasts forever and it's not going to gross out your linens, folks. You, if you want to try it or you want to get more, you can get 20% off the price of our product when you shop through our link, massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba.

Michael Reynolds:

Hey everyone, welcome to The Massage Business Blueprint podcast, where we help you attract more clients, make more money, and improve your quality of life. I'm Michael Reynolds.

Allissa Haines:

I'm Allissa Haines.

Michael Reynolds:

We're your hosts. Welcome to our show today, episode 461 is our show today, and we're glad you're here. Thanks.

Allissa Haines:

We are indeed. We're delighted.

Michael Reynolds:

We are delighted. What you reading?

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, I've been listening to two things that for whatever reason came in front of me around the same time this week, or last week. One, I listened to a podcast I've mentioned before with Ina Garten. It's a Food Network podcast and it's called Be My Guest, and she literally has famous people over to her home. Actually, it's a barn that's her studio kitchen now in the Hamptons, and it's very ... It's not froufrou because Ina Garten is so down to earth, but it's a little froufrou. I love it. Her guest recently was Stanley Tucci. I got to tell you, I didn't know a lot about Stanley Tucci. He's an actor. He seemed pretty cool. He always wears nice shoes, but I didn't know a lot about him until this episode of Ina Garten's podcast. He's a fascinating dude and I didn't realize he'd written cookbooks and stuff.

Anyhow, he is enchanting. He is utterly enchanting, and it was just a great episode and they made Negronis. Oh no, was that? That might have been on another thing I listened to. Sorry. Listening to a lot of Stanley Tucci this week. Anyhow, it was a great episode and then for whatever reason, like a two-year-old podcast episode from another podcast I listened to called Everything Happens with Kate Bowler, she's a really neat woman who was diagnosed with stage four cancer several years ago. She is Professor of Divinity at Duke University, I think.

I've talked about her before but two years ago, she had a podcast episode with Stanley Tucci. For whatever reason it came in front of me, I'm sure, some weird algorithm, and I listened to that as well, and it's just enchanting. It was really fun. I'm totally, I put Stanley Tucci's cookbook on my wishlist, so I'm hoping to get it for my birthday in May, and it was great. I put the links to both of these episodes in the show notes. The Ina Garten one's really easy to find 'cause it's like the last episode. The Kate bowler, you got to go back to 2021, but if you just want to enjoy some conversations about really good food and a really interesting dude with an interesting life, check it out.

Michael Reynolds:

Awesome. That sounds delightful. I have nothing remotely as delightful. Everything I'm reading is boring and finance-related. I just finished my course on funding planning opportunities and tax returns, so ...

Allissa Haines:

Ooh.

Michael Reynolds:

... Yeah, I'm sure everyone's ...

Allissa Haines:

That sounds exciting.

Michael Reynolds:

... Actually. Well, yeah, I know you find it exciting. I found it super interesting actually, so yes. Hey, also, we have Marcy stopping by on Facebook this morning saying, "Good morning from humid Houston." Thanks, Marcy. Glad you're here.

Allissa Haines:

Oh my gosh, so let me just say this, I got a little message from Marcy yesterday, the day before. Marcy has this dog, Canelo that literally found in her parking lot and adopted and nursed him back to health when he was sick with parvo. Anyhow, Marcy had a little air freshener made of Canelo's head. It's adorable. Sent me a picture of it the other day.

Michael Reynolds:

Oh my goodness.

Allissa Haines:

Oh my gosh. It is. I think it's even beats like my pajamas with my dog's face on them, I just, it's Marcy's fault, like [inaudible 00:04:34].

Michael Reynolds:

All right. I have to see this Marcy, send it my way too.

Allissa Haines:

It's really funny. I'll share it on our Instagram.

Michael Reynolds:

Okay, perfect. Perfect.

Allissa Haines:

Not that I got permission from Marcy to do it, but it'll be fine. All right. What's next, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

All right, well, on that note, let's give a shout out to our friends at ABMP.

Allissa Haines:

We do indeed adore ABMP. Let's talk today about their magazine, because you just turned in our column for it. Massage and Body Work Magazine. It is an award-winning magazine included imprint for ABMP members and available to everyone at Massageandbodyworkdigital.com. The blueprint for success column that we write is in there. It's in the best practices section. It's a professional journal that includes techniques, in-depth features, video tie-ins to cover the issues that matter to professional body workers. It's just fantastic. I will say the last issue, I don't know if I mentioned this yet, has a phenomenal article about massage product and how it affects your body mechanics by my friend Diana Dapkins who owns Pure Pro Massage Products. It's a really good article and you should totally read it. Again, everybody can read that at massageandbodyworkdigital.com. Thanks, ABMP.

Michael Reynolds:

Thanks indeed, ABMP. All right, you've got a really cool episode today. Favorite hacks and tips for massage therapist from massage therapists, right?

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, from and a couple from me and some that we have just crowdsourced from our community over the last several years. We've had a couple of episodes about massage office tips and things related to our businesses, and I felt like we kind of needed something a little light and not giving people hours of tasks too after each podcast episode. I'm just going to blow through this list of tips. You might find one or two nuggets in here that's useful to you. You might have a light bulb moment or not, and that's okay, and that's all I have to say about that. Let me just run through the list. This'll be a really quick episode. Very low pressure for everybody.

For your office. Office-specific things. One, change your HVAC air filters, your intake filters on time, darn it. You might be having a moment where you go, I didn't even know that was a thing I had to do. If you have forced air heat, and even if you don't, other kinds of heat, you probably have an intake grid somewhere, a vent somewhere in your office that sucks the air in. Especially if air conditioning that moves the air through your HVAC system.

Yeah, it's got a filter in it and you want to change that filter, ideally, quarterly. Some filters will be like, change it monthly, but that's not even rational. Even the HVAC guys were like, quarterly is fine. You can change your HVAC filter. You can do a little research and find out what filters are best for managing the transmission of viruses in your office. Not every HVAC system can handle that density of filter, but it's worth looking into. There is a massive improvement in ventilation when I change mine. If I let it go for an extra month and then I change it, I notice very quickly 'cause I have a CO2 monitor in my massage room, I notice quickly that there is a massive improvement in the ventilation. Change your HVAC filters, put it in your to-do list or your calendar to just renew every quarter. Every three months, it's really, it's helpful.

Okay, number two, I had a problem in my office where I was forgetting to turn lights off or I would freak out in the middle of the night thinking that perhaps I forgot to turn my hot towel cabby off. I drove back to my office more than once in the middle of the night concerned about a space heater. After that happened a few times, I was like, huh, how can I fix this? Everything in my office is now plugged into a power strip, which is plugged into the wall, and every power strip has some kind of light attached. When I leave my office, it's super easy to make sure that I have turned everything off because if I didn't, there's a light on. I turn power on and off when I enter and exit my office via the power strip, and you could Velcro them to the side of a cabinet or the underside of a shelf, so you can keep them kind of unobtrusive and keep the switch really close at hand depending on the setup of your office.

It makes it real easy to know and to be feel confident that you've turned everything off because if you haven't, there's going to be a really obvious light on. That helps with that. It handles forgetfulness, and it also lowers the vampire energy drain on any particular device or things with little lights on it. You can also, if you're fancy, use smart outlets. I had that in my old office. I don't have that in my new office because the wifi is so inefficient and unpredictable, let's say. Smart outlets aren't an option for me, so I went back to old school power strips and it's great.

If you are more than one person in your office, have an opening and closing checklist. Hang it somewhere real obvious. This is nice, even if occasionally someone else uses your office or I had a few situations this year where I left my office in a hurry because of a phone call that's like, "I need help. So-and-so's at the emergency room," and I would just hustle out of my office thinking I turned everything off and then my office mate would come in and be like, "Hey, everything's on," and she didn't know in my massage room what things had to be turned on and off. I actually just made a list and she walked me through her room too to make sure that I knew how to shut her room down, should that be necessary, so there's that.

If you share space, make sure that there's someone else who is authorized to talk to the utility companies. I handle the utility bills in my office, and if I was out of town or unreachable and my office mate had a problem, she would not have been able to deal with those issues with the utility companies. I made sure, it was pain and neck, but I spent an hour on the phone doing these things and I called the utility companies and I had her name put on there as another contact.

Also, we have a shared Google file where the current bills are kept, so she always has access to our account numbers and all of that stuff. Ditto that for the landlord and property manager contact info if you sublet to anybody, make sure that that person has that info. Again, if you are unreachable for a day or two where you go on an intentional vacation, they can handle anything that comes up in the office if needed. Okay. That's like the super practical stuff.

Upgrade your massage stool wheels. I love this. I found this, I don't know on some Facebook group a couple years ago when I did it. If your massage stool wheels are not super quiet or they don't roll smoothly, or maybe you got the wheels for a carpet, but now you're on a laminate floor or vice versa, upgrade them to roller blade wheels. They make roller blade wheels with the little knobby thing in them to pop right into the stool. You can pull off the old wheels and put these roller blade wheels in and they're awesome. They're really smooth and they're actually easier to clean than the older wheels. They do pick up dust and gunk on your floor, of course. Yeah, clean them regularly. They stay nice and smooth and they just clean them with alcohol.

Okay, next one. Floating frames for your business licenses. If you get one of those totally see through floating frames that doesn't have an opaque back, it's just two pieces of glass. It's a pain in the neck to be opening and closing frames, especially if you have other people in your office and you're replacing six licenses a year. My old office, we had four massage therapists, which meant four massage therapists license and four establishment licenses. I had a big frame of eight licenses, and it was at least eight times a year because everybody's licenses renewed at different times where I had to pop the back off the frame and put the new license in. It was totally a pain in the neck. If you use a floating frame, then you can actually just tape it, tape the license to the back part of the glass frame instead of putting it inside the frame. This is brilliant. Meg came up with it. It's a smart idea.

Charging cords. I totally would have an issue where I would forget my MacBook charging cord at home or I would forget it at the office or my phone would be dying and I'd have to go out to my car to get the charging cord for that. If you get a new computer or if you can just spot the money for your current computer, get a second charging cord. When you get a phone, if you need to get a new kind of charging cord for it, one comes with the phone, get a second one for your office if you can. It is a worthy investment to have cords that just live in one place. It's such a quality of life issue.

Finally, this is more of during your treatment session, keep an unwrapped lozenge, cough drop, whatever nearby in your treatment room, but unobtrusive, hide it behind the clock or whatever's on your little cabinet or shelf, so that if you get the inevitable dry cough during allergy season, you can pop it into your mouth really quickly and easily. Little quick sanitizer, pop that in. Little quick sanitizer. You're all good. It's just so much nicer that having to be like, I'm sorry. Excuse me, I'm just going to go ahead and drink of water. I apologize. Especially nowadays when any kind of cough makes people nervous. Rightfully so.

Okay, cleaning stuff. Block out a chunk of time to deep clean every couple of months, ideally quarterly. This could be the same day that you change your HVAC filters because stuff gets nasty and you don't always notice it if you're in your massage office when the lights are down. Definitely walk through your space monthly, at the minimum quarterly, with all of the lights, the overhead lights blazing on, clean up the scuffs on your wall, get on your massage table, look down, do sideline one way, do sideline the other way, look up. There is a dead bug in my light fixture in my massage room that people see when they're face up. I didn't notice it until a client was like, "You've had a dead bug up there for a couple of months," and I'm like, ah, crap, so I just hadn't noticed it, because I don't lay there looking up that way. Yeah, things like that.

If you have carpeting, make sure that you have carpet cleaning on your calendar a minimum of once a year. Again, that's something that should probably be done every six months or maybe quarterly. It's a lot of work. You could hire somebody to do all this stuff, like to clean, do a deep clean on your office, but the number of times I have been in a massage office, I've tried someplace new and it was a little bit dirty, is shocking to me how often it happens. Make sure your stuff is clean.

Hospitality, customer service stuff. This one's a little bit of a no-brainer, but have a little place, a shelf, a bowl or whatever for your clients to put their jewelry and smaller items so that it's easy to find when they're finishing their massage. They might be a little bit loopy, it might be a little bit dark if they put their ring on top of their pants and then they don't see it and they lift their pants up and they put their pants on and the ring goes flying, and then it's a whole thing and a phone call and having a look for rings later, and it's just have a spot, an obvious dedicated spot for people to put their stuff. It saves a lot of hassle.

My friend Leslie, she had a universal phone charger that was plugged in and near the shelf that people used to put their stuff so that people could charge their device and had all these different plugs on it. Pretty much any device you had would have a plug for it and they could charge their stuff and people really appreciate that. You could also keep a large sheet like a queen or king size sheet for the occasional client who comes in, who's larger bodied, you don't always know when someone's walking in the door, but if you have regular clients who are larger, then it's really nice to have a big sheet for the top so they can feel nice and cozy and secure and not if they make one wrong move, they will be exposed. I think that's something we kind of all learned even on smaller bodied people. There are some massage ... I don't use massage table sheets because I found they're just too small. That's just not enough coverage for people to roll comfortably. I just use twins size sheets and I have one bigger sheet at the office should I need it.

Keep a small bottle of water and a cough drop handy for clients because sometimes laying face down, they get a little or laying face up or just because the air might be drier for any particular reason, they might get a little, huh, and it's nice to be able to say, "Do you want a sip of water," and not have to leave the room to go get it. I have those. I don't buy a lot of plastic water bottle stuff, but I did get one case of tiny little water bottles and I keep a couple of them in the massage room, a couple of Ricola in there, and it makes it nice and easy if you client who gets a little stuff in their throat.

Finally, the last hospitality hands-on kind of tip is have something cool in your office. If you have a fridge and you're able to have a towel rolled up in a Ziploc, keep it in the fridge. Cold stones, a flaxseed pack in a Ziploc that you keep in the fridge of the freezer. This is really nice when you have clients who overheat for some reason or just need ice if you use ice in your practice. Someone who has hot flashes or a headache and they feel like they need a cold pack on their head, having something ready in the fridge or freezer is just worth its weight and gold.

The last section here is productivity. I have two tips, which you have probably heard before if you've ever listened to our podcast. First one, power hour. Set aside an hour for annoying miscellaneous tasks or errands that you super duper don't like to do. Group them together, consolidate that misery. Do it all at once. Get an accountability partner to do it with if you have to, and group like things together if possible. If you have to schedule a couple of appointments, annual testing, dentist appointments, whatever, and they all require having a calendar open in front of you, try to make all those calls at once as much as possible. I know a lot of times now you got to leave a message and wait to hear back, but as much as possible, make those calls while you're sitting in front of your calendar. If you have to make a few calls that you know don't know the information you're going to need to get through the call. Do it when you're sitting by your file cabinet. Schedule it for all one time. Sit next to your file cabinet with your computer in front of you and make those calls.

I do it for errands. I actually have a power hour scheduled today for annoying little errands. I need to go to the UPS store. I need to go to the post office and I need to actually go to a physical bank to get a thing. I'll tell you about that in a minute because it's actually a nice little tip. I have my hours scheduled for random little errands and it's going to be on the way to my office today, so I'm leaving for work an extra hour early to get these things done. The last tip here is a trusted system for holding thoughts, information, lists. This is Michael's jam. Have one place that you're always going to put your ideas, your to-dos. I do the bulk of my task and to-do recordkeeping in the Microsoft To-Do app, which what is, oh, it used to be called Wonder List, right?

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah.

Allissa Haines:

I use that. I have lists for all of my different businesses. I have lists for personal items, I have lists for household things. It's nice because you can make them recur, some tasks if you choose you to get a ping and alert because you're like, oh, I'm not going to, I'm forget, that's great. You don't have to have all of them alert you. It's really nice and customizable. I use Google Drive to store any kind of important document, and that makes it easy for me. Michael is like the king of trying new software. Over the years, when I was looking back at our notes about this particular topic, there's a lot of old notes that we have. We used to use Evernote and a combination of this and that and whatever. I'm not going to change from Microsoft to do on Google Drive as my main sources tools because I'm tired of learning curves and it really works for me, but there's always a ton of other stuff out there.

I do have a written paper and pen thing. I still use a bullet journal, but I use it for more thoughtful creative stuff and brainstorming. At the end of any time I write down a bunch of ideas about something, I look at it when I'm done and I say, is there any task resulting from this that needs to go into my to-do list? Then it goes into my Microsoft To-Do, and sometimes it's even make time for more brainstorming, and that goes on the to-do. The creative stuff that I feel is better served by me writing things down and being away from technology as I do that. That is when I use paper and pen. That's my trusted system. I have a thing to tell you about having to go to the bank, but I'm going to put it in my quick tips. Yeah. Michael, anything to say to that?

Michael Reynolds:

Oh my goodness. No, that was action-packed.

Allissa Haines:

Right?

Michael Reynolds:

I love this episode. I love action-packed tips like that with productivity hacks, so love it. Thank you for sharing. A lot of good stuff here.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. All right, well, I hope that everyone found at least one nugget that's useful to them and is not overwhelmed by the list because one nugget's enough.

Michael Reynolds:

Fair enough. All right, well, as we decompress from that, let's take a moment to give a shout out to our sponsor, Jane.

Allissa Haines:

Hey, if you feel overwhelmed by all the different bits and pieces and tips and ideas for running a massage business, let's talk about Jane. It is an all-in-one software that's super fun to use. They focus their attention on the challenges that come up for practitioners and day-to-day practice. One of those challenges is the prevalence of no-shows and late cancellations. With the help of all Jane's features, you're going to be able to significantly reduce no-show, late cancellations. Also, avoid a loss in revenue when they do happen. Some of these features include online booking, payment policy, cancellation policy, SMS, email reminders, and my favorite wait list management features. It is a complete management practice management software that makes it easy for you to do all the things you can learn more at Jane.app.

Michael Reynolds:

Also, I neglected to mention that Marcy had a comment for us. Two comments for us actually. Marcy says, "A full or queen sheet is a staple in my office. Also, a queen size pillow case for breast draping makes a huge difference for clients." Thanks, Marcy. Great tip.

Allissa Haines:

Absolutely. Trying to use a hand towel for that is no good. I've actually taken a regular size sheet and just folded it up a few times to do that when I wasn't prepared with something larger, so yes, thanks Marcy.

Michael Reynolds:

Awesome. Then Marcy also followed up to say that she says, "Just took a client off my Jane waiting list this morning." Marcy is a happy user of Jane. We appreciate that, Marcy, thanks for sharing that wait list feature comes in handy sounds like.

Allissa Haines:

It sure does, and there's so few systems that have that feature. It's huge. It's just huge. It takes so much stress off of the practitioner not having to send a bunch of texts to fill a last minute appointment. It's good to have that frustration alleviated.

Michael Reynolds:

Right on.

Allissa Haines:

How about you go with your quick tip?

Michael Reynolds:

Sure. I found, speaking of trying new software, this is actually an easy one. It's not something with a learning curve. I found a tool called summarize.tech, and that's the website summarize.tech, and it's AI powered video summary. What you do is you can give it a YouTube URL and it will basically summarize the video for you. If it's like a 20-minute video and you don't feel like watching the whole thing, you plug in the URL, it gives you just nice summary of what the video is supposed to teach you or what it's about and give you the written form of that. Pretty useful tool I think for those of us who are impatient and just want to get the gist of it, so they're summarize.tech.

Allissa Haines:

I love how the world's just coming around to nobody having an attention span. Okay, so I have a question for you before I share my quick tip. At what age do children start losing baby teeth? Do you remember? I've never had babies, so I don't know.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, it's actually been a while with Eli, I think five-ish. Four to five-ish.

Allissa Haines:

Okay, so I thought so. This is a brilliant idea that I had for a baby shower gift, but then I stopped going to baby showers. What I realized is that my grandson is four and a half and he's going to start losing teeth soon. I remember when Walt's kids were losing teeth, and actually I think one of my older stepdaughters, she lost one tooth. She only didn't come live with us till she was like nine, but I think she lost her last tooth with us. I don't know. It was always a running around the house to try to find a dollar bill for tooth fairies and you end up giving your kid like 20 bucks because it's all you have, or you have to run out to the Quickie Mart at 11 o'clock at night to get whatever. This is the brilliant gift that I think we should be giving all parents when they have a kid or when their kid is getting to that age.

I'm doing this for my grandson. I have a nice little box for Jesse to keep his teeth in and I'm going to get a roll of Sacagawea dollars. I don't know, are they even Sacagawea dollars anymore? I know a silver dollar thing, like a $1 coin, and I'm going to put them in the box. Now, $1 coins are kind of a pain in the neck to spend, so it's hard to raid that for pizza money. I figure if you give the parent enough, so oh, if you don't want to do a $1 coin, if those don't work, you can go to the bank bank and you can get $2 bills, which is super fun because when do kids ever see a $2 bill? It's like a real thing, but so get that either/or and put enough, I don't know how many kids teeth, kids lose.

I actually have to look that up, but I want to get enough so that there's like something to tooth fairy the kid with for every tooth. I got to get that to my older daughter for my grandson like that. That's why I have to go to the bank, anyhow, I just think it's the best gift you can give a parent because it alleviates stress that's going to happen, what, 10 or 20 times? I don't know how many teeth kids have. Because they'll always have what they need for the tooth fairy, and it's a fun thing.

Michael Reynolds:

It is fun.

Allissa Haines:

I'm very proud of myself. I haven't told Jesse I'm doing this yet, but I know he is going to start losing teeth, so I got to get on top of it.

Michael Reynolds:

I'm also very proud of you. Great job.

Allissa Haines:

Thank you. I also acknowledge that some people do not do the tooth fairy thing, or some people introduce it to their kids as this is a fun thing that we don't necessarily believe in which, but it's a fun thing to think about or whatever. I understand some people don't want to lie to their children about the tooth fair or the thing that happens on December 24th. I don't want to say it out loud in case. Oh crap. If your kid's listening, I'm so sorry. I have to put a warning at the beginning of this episode. Anyhow, I know some people don't want to do that, but this is still a fun thing you can do to celebrate when they lose a tooth.

Michael Reynolds:

Love it. Thank you.

Allissa Haines:

I'm done.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. Anything else you wanted to add?

Allissa Haines:

Nope.

Michael Reynolds:

Okay. Alrighty. Well, with that, we'll go ahead and wrap up there and remind you that if you want to email us, we're easy to find. You can email us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. That goes to both Allissa and me, and we're always happy to hear from you. Always happy to answer questions anytime you have them, so feel free to reach out. All right. With that, thanks for joining us today. Have a great day. We will see you next time.

Allissa Haines:

Bye.