Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• LastPass breach: Hackers put malware on engineer's home computer to steal their password
• Home Safe, Elizabeth Berg

Discussion Topic

• Your Perspective on Time in Your Massage Practice

Quick Tips

• Maybe switch to 1Password

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 ABMP. Let's talk today about the Massage and Body Work magazine. This award-winning magazine is included in print for ABMP members and available for free to the profession at massageandbodyworkdigital.com. We have our Blueprint for Success column. There are many, many great regular columns. It is a professional journal that includes techniques, in-depth features, video tie-ins to cover the issues that matter to professional body workers. I'm totally going to do a rando plug. My friend Dianna Dapkins who owns Pure Pro Massage Products wrote a phenomenal feature article that is in the most current issue and I think this must be the March-April issue of 2023 and it is about how the products you use impacts your body mechanics and massage and mwah, chef's kiss, it's phenomenal. Again, anyone can read it at Massage and Body, I'm going to try that again, massageandbodyworkdigital.com. Thanks, ABMP.

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 am Michael Reynolds.

Allissa Haines:

I'm Allissa Haines.

Michael Reynolds:

We are your host. As always, welcome to our show today. We're glad you're here.

Allissa Haines:

We are glad you're here and I feel like I just need to start. In case there's someone who's watching the video, either live or after the fact, it's going to appear as though I'm drinking from a wine cup. I need you to know there's coffee in here. It's a Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM. It's coffee. It's the only insulated mug I had.

Michael Reynolds:

Hey, no judgment, Allissa. If you're drinking wine at 9:00 AM on a Wednesday morning, I'm not here to judge.

Allissa Haines:

I'm not saying I wouldn't and I'm not saying I couldn't handle it. I'm just saying that's not what's happening. I would never drink on air like that.

Michael Reynolds:

This is the safe tree. Well, with that out of the way, what are you reading today?

Allissa Haines:

I am reading some fiction which I feel really good about because I had forgotten my Kindle and I was doing way too much scrolling of various social media. So I read a few books this past week or two and the one I want to share with you... I'm having a hard time with words today. I do this for a living, folks. It's a book called Home Safe by an author I've definitely talked about before. Her name is Elizabeth Berg. It is a beautiful novel about a woman who's a writer and her husband dies unexpectedly and what goes on with her afterwards and specifically her career.

And then, there's this mystery of her husband withdrew 75% of their retirement savings, a couple of, I don't know, six months or a year before he died. There is a figuring out what that was about and I'm just going to preface this by saying it's a happy story. It doesn't turn out that he was spending it on hookers and blow and gambling. It is a beautiful, beautiful novel. It is a lovely piece of fiction. Home Safe, Elizabeth Berg. What are you reading, Michael? It's way less lovely.

Michael Reynolds:

Yes. Thanks for sharing that lovely story. I have been reading multiple articles about the LastPass breach. So for those who maybe don't know, LastPass is a password management management tool. It's an app or a software program for managing passwords. It's one of the most popular tools in the world for this. Allissa and I are both users of LastPass.

So there's been a series of breaches and this happens from time to time. Sometimes, these services get breached, they have issues, people hack them. This one is bad. We just keep hearing about more and more layers of badness for this particular breach. In this latest article, apparently one of the hackers put malware on one of the LastPass engineer's home computer to steal their password to get into the system and get access to data.

So I bring this up and in the end of the show for the quick tip, I'm going to give you an alternative to maybe think about. But I bring this up because generally, yeah, you hear about these breaches and hacks and things and Allissa and I were talking about this earlier like, "Yeah. It happens," but this one is one of the worst. And so, the question comes up, do you switch to another service? What do you do to address this? So you might consider switching into another service and that may be, if you feel that LastPass is not handling this well, maybe the company itself has problems. I don't know if that's true or not. Part of me also thinks that maybe this would spur them into action to improve their defenses and improve the quality of their product. I'm hoping that's the case.

So I just bring this up mainly to inform our listeners who might be using the software that there has been a breach. I put a link to the article in the show notes. It's one of the latest articles so that you can decide for yourself if it makes sense to take some action or write it out. So a couple things you can do in the short term is change all of your passwords or at least your most critical passwords, things like banking, etc., and make sure two-step verification is enabled on your LastPass account as well. Those are a few things you could do immediately. So I just want to bring it up just for awareness. I can't really tell you what to do personally because that depends but it's one of the worst breaches I've seen in a while. So that's what I'm reading about. You're welcome.

Allissa Haines:

That's a... Good times, good times. I'm just going to say that I saw this topic from Michael roughly 20 minutes after I renewed my LastPass subscription for a year. I happened to get the email this morning it was like, "Hey, that credit card you had on file with us has expired so your renewal didn't go through," and I'm like, "Oh, let me do that right now." But also, I'm not going to change password... I'm not going to change providers. I just taught everybody in my family how to use this one so I'm going to make everybody change their master password and stuff and everybody set up the multifactor authentication because we all have cell phones that we can do that with and I'm going to call it a day and assume that if LastPass is breached, half the world's going to be breached. And so, I'm not going to be that big of a deal. That's-

Michael Reynolds:

That's probably fair.

Allissa Haines:

That's my feeling... This is why I put everything on Google because if Google implodes, three quarters of the businesses in the world that use Google are going to implode and I don't have to feel bad. It's fine. I don't care. So that's how I feel about that but thank you Michael for keeping us up to date.

Michael Reynolds:

Sure thing. All right. Speaking of software that is awesome and is one of our newer sponsors, let's talk about Jane.

Allissa Haines:

Jane. Jane is a complete practice management software designed to help practitioners grow and manage their practices. They do this with all kinds of helpful features, online booking, scheduling, billing, charting whether you are working solo or in a large multidisciplinary practice. I have to say, I know people in both types of practices who are using and loving Jane but no matter the type of office you have, no shows and late cancellations are just a thing that we face.

Jane offers several tools to help you prevent and manage those no-shows, including the ability to save a credit card on file, send out unlimited text and email reminders, all kinds of features to keep you organized and keep your clients compliant. Learn more about Jane's helpful features at jane.app. Listeners can also mention the podcast at the time of signup for a one-month grace period applied to their new Jane account, jane.app.

Michael Reynolds:

Thanks, Jane. All right. I really like it when our discussion revolves around comments, questions, and discussions we have in our Blueprint Mastermind community and that's what's happening today, I believe.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. This is something that's been rolling around in my head for a long time and this is a little one of those slightly more theoretical episodes. Our perspective on time in our massage practice and specifically on the time that we allow between clients and this is different for everyone, right? I don't want emails telling me I'm wrong and everything I say because it's different for everyone and I'm going to try to share a variety of thoughts on this.

How much time you book between clients and feeling like if you booked too long, whatever too long is for you, that time is wasted and feeling like you need to pack as many clients as possible into a certain timeframe. So you give yourself less time between clients and then that leads to feeling a little bit stressed. Now, I want to emphasize that sometimes, in some situations, it's really necessary to pack appointments together very closely with the bare minimum of time between clients.

When you're sharing space with someone, when you only have certain days available and certain time blocks available, and if you don't have a lot, then you need to pack what you can into those times. If you have a childcare schedule and you only have childcare from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM then you, obviously, need to get as many clients as you can. This theory we're going to talk about still applies but I just want to preface, I understand everybody's life is not conducive to a meandering workday.

All right. But let's talk about time and reframing the thinking, so it's easy to get a little bit manic about this more clients, more appointments, more money situation. Yeah. Technically, if I only had 15 minutes in between clients, I could fit five clients on this particular day versus having half an hour between and only having four clients. It's easy, especially when you start seeing the money come in and also, when you really need the money, it's very easy to get stressed and a little hyper and weird about packing as many clients in as possible. I get it. I've been there.

I also want us to consider that a 60-minute massage is not a 60-minute job. With the setup and cleanup and the conversation that has to happen before and after a massage with payment, with scheduling, and your notes, those are all part of a session. So for you, maybe you can do all that in 75 minutes. Maybe you do that in 90 minutes. Maybe you book an hour between your appointments and a 60-minute massage is actually a two-hour job. You get to decide that.

But if you reframe your thinking so that, "Okay. A 60-minute massage is actually 90 minutes of work for me, start to finish. The setup, the cleanup, all of the things, getting the notes in there, rebooking their extra appointment, sending them an email with follow up stretches or showing them follow up stretches." If you put it in your head that it's a 90-minute job, it reframes the how much money I make in an hour thing, and of course, it's going to lower your hourly rate but not necessarily in a bad way. It gives you a more realistic idea of the time you're working and how much money you're making for that time.

If you start to think about the total amount of time in relation to your rates, the mania calms down a little bit because you start to realize that packing more in maybe isn't necessary. I also want to note that the time between clients, if you don't have enough or if you are doing the bare minimum to reset the room, wash your hands, and be ready for the next client to walk in the door, you are leaving a lot of work undone. So you're charting, any follow up that you need to do with them, any bookkeeping that has to happen, that work is undone. It's not like this work isn't going to get done, it's just going to have to get done at another time so there's not really a reduction in work hours and there's not really an increase in pay when you consider your hourly rate if you're doing that work but doing it at another time.

So let me give an example of this. So if I go into my office and see four clients, if I see them 15 minutes apart. At the end of those four clients, I'm going to have about 90 minutes of my own bookkeeping and charting and all of that follow up kind of stuff to do. So I'm still doing the same amount of work but now, I have to do that work after hours when I'm at home or I have to stay late at the office to do it or I have to go in early the next day to get that work done. I don't like having to do a lot of that kind of work at home. Again, it might be the best situation for you, especially if you are paying for childcare, you got family schedules, you need to be able to get home and you can do that bookkeeping and administrative, that's the word I'm looking for.

If you have to do that admin work, you might need to do it at home and prefer to do it at 9:00 at night after the kids go to bed or in the morning before everybody gets up. I get that. But once I started realizing that like less time between clients was forcing me to take my work home with me, I decided I didn't like that and it helped me to reframe. So there was a time in my career where I did 15 minutes between and then I did a half an hour between and now, when I moved offices and changed my schedule and COVID precautions and more cleaning and airing out the room and all that stuff, I have a lot more time between appointments now. It's either half an hour or sometimes an hour.

But I think to myself and I'm like, "Is it really an hour between appointments?" It's not. It's a 60-minute massage is a 90-minute appointment and then I'm giving myself a half hour break after that. It's not for everyone and I do just want to consider, there are plenty of ways to speed up the tasks that you need to do between appointments and caring for each client individually. You can automate payments so that people are either saving their credit cards with you, so you're just clicking a button when they have to pay or for me, I have the payment button in my reminder emails and more than half of my clients click that button and pay either the day before when they get that email or the morning of their appointment. You can put a scheduling button in there as well so that people can pay for that day's appointment and schedule their next one on their own if you want to do that.

You can create a template for client notes so that you can speed through them with check boxes or abbreviations that make sense to you. You can also price your services so that you feel good about that time in between so you feel... Again, you've reframed your thinking so you could make sure that your services are priced so that for a 60-minute massage, I'm earning what I need to for 90 minutes of work or 75 minutes of work or whatever it is for you. That can ease the pressure on when you do your money math, "If I see four people this day, I'm making this much. If I see five people, I'm making this much but I don't get to have lunch."

When you start reframing, you saw five clients but you have to do an hour and a half of admin work at home and what you're earning for that, do the math and price your services so that you feel good, that you feel you're getting paid for that in between time, you recognize it's also work, and that you don't feel pressured to schedule closer together in order to earn more.

Again, this is really hard to do, especially when you start seeing money come in, especially when your client load increases. That's an excellent problem to have when you don't have quite enough spaces for all the people who want to come see you but I do also want to remind you that there is a limit to... I'm not one of those people that's like, "Your body's going to blow out," because there are plenty of people who have been doing whatever, 8-10 massages a day, 4-5 days a week for years and years and are doing just fine.

For me, my brain will break down before my body does. I get pretty grumpy towards the end of my day if I haven't had enough time to think and read something and eat my lunch fully and whatever. So my brain... And then, probably my body would break down pretty rough if I was doing four massages with 15 minutes in between more than two days in a row, I would lose my mind. You have to think about what's good for your limits but any which way that we schedule our days and our weeks need to be respectful of our brain limits, of our body limits, and need to consider our longevity in our careers and I think that's really relevant.

So maybe, to sum up, maybe start thinking of a 60-minute massage as a 75-minute job and then give yourself a lunch break after that or maybe think of a 60-minute job as 90 minutes if you do a lot with people before and after sessions and you want to get all your admin work done and make sure that you have the time for that between clients.

It is an approach that I have found works better for me because I don't... Rarely, rarely do I take any massage work home with me. I have enough time between clients to clean up and snack and do my bookkeeping and one day a week I'll do my bookkeeping in those times between the clients. In another time, I'm going to work on my marketing stuff but it's enough time to do all the work of my business without having to take anything home. That is my shtick. Just thinking about how you think about the time in your business so that you can be more at ease through your workday and less stressy stressy.

Michael Reynolds:

Thank you. It's going to help a lot of us, I think, reframe how we think about time. So really appreciate it and thanks to the member who posted this question as well.

Allissa Haines:

Thank you, Sir. Yeah. It was a slightly different conversation in our mastermind community. It's a little more intricate and stuff but it made me think about this reframing your time and how long your 60-minute massages actually take so I'm glad I had a chance to discuss it.

Michael Reynolds:

Right on. Speaking of time, you know what it's time for.

Allissa Haines:

What is it time for?

Michael Reynolds:

Jojoba!

Allissa Haines:

That was really loud.

Michael Reynolds:

It was, wasn't it? I'm sorry. Hopefully, when Rhian edits it, it'll equalize all the volume. She's got some magical tool, it equalizes it. So sorry about that.

Allissa Haines:

This episode is indeed sponsored by the Original Jojoba Company. You know how I feel about this. We should only be using the highest quality products because our clients deserve it and we're soaking our bodies in it 20 hours a week or more. The Jojoba Company, it's the only company in the world that carries 100% pure first press quality Jojoba. That means they don't squeeze the Jojoba quite so hard, so they get a little less juice out of it but it's a much higher quality and I was being silly by saying juice. It's not juice, it's not an oil, it's in wax ester and it is the closest thing you can get to the sebum that our skin naturally produces. It does not go rancid. It doesn't contain triglycerides. So it's not going to go nasty on your shelf. It can get hot, it can get cold, it can get hot and it can get cold again and it ain't going to get gross. You can learn more and also get 20% off the price of the product when you shop through our link massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. Quick tips.

Allissa Haines:

You go first.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. So my quick tip is a continuation from my initial discussion on LastPass. If you're looking for an alternative, the one that I have seen as the, in my opinion and the opinion of many others I respect, as the best alternative is 1Password. So if you're looking for an alternative, if you do decide to switch, I think 1Password is definitely worth a look. It seems to be well-received, well-loved by many that use it. Great user interface. So there's my quick tip is take a look at that one if you do want to switch.

Allissa Haines:

I think the hackers are just going to move on to that one so I feel like I'm safer staying with LastPass. That's my theory.

Michael Reynolds:

That's fair. That's possible. It's very possible. Yeah. Again, you do what's best for you. I'm just sharing information

Allissa Haines:

I know. Thank you so much. I don't so much have a quick tip as I do a victory in organizing myself to prevent haphazard things. So let me just say this, I have to travel in April and I have not traveled in three plus years now. My grandfather's turning 100, if there's anything that's going to get me to get on a plane, that's it. So I have to travel and I have to figure out how I'm getting to the airport because my flight leaves at 6:30 in the morning which means I got to get there at 4:45 like blabbity, blah, blah, blah so this has been rolling around in the back of my head.

Yesterday in the local town Facebook group, somebody was like, and is this comes up twice a week, "Hey, who's a good ride to the airport? Who does the shuttle service to the airport?" and I saw that and I opened the whole thread and I took down the name and number of everybody in that thread that was suggested and I put it in my to-do list as a to do to check out two weeks before I was going to leave on this trip so that I already have all the names and numbers of all the people that are referred to for rides to the airport in my area.

Michael Reynolds:

Nice.

Allissa Haines:

I saved myself having to go back into that group and search for it. I am just so unspeakably proud of myself for thinking of doing that. I'm getting better at that kind of thing and putting the info I need in an event in the calendar, putting this kind of stuff in to-dos. So I'm spending a lot less time searching for things now to get to a task and I feel good about that and that's what I have to say.

Michael Reynolds:

Look at you life hacking.

Allissa Haines:

Life hacking.

Michael Reynolds:

You're a life hacker.

Allissa Haines:

That's all I got. Take us home, Michael.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. Awesome. Let's go home. Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We appreciate it. As always, you can find us on the web at massagebusinessblueprint.com. That's where we have all of our stuff, stuff you can find out about us when it comes to resources and contacting us which the email is podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com and we would love to hear from you as well if you have comments or questions. Thanks for joining us today. Have a great day. We will see you next time.

Allissa Haines:

Bye.