Podcast

Weekly Roundup

• Class: Community Resilience Model with Lisa Gillispie
• Learning How to Forgive

Discussion Topic

• How to write a resume when you’ve been self-employed for ages
• Resources: What to Include in a Combination Resume With Examples

Quick Tips

• Update on Allissa’s Baby Steps Back to Work
• Michael, are you using Plan to Eat?
• Should I have an offshoot podcast about what I’m cooking for dinner this week?

Sponsors

• The Jojoba Company
• Acuity
• ABMP

Transcript:

Sponsor message This episode is sponsored by The Jojoba Company. I believe that massage therapists should only be using the highest quality products because our clients deserve it and our own bodies deserve it. I've been using jojoba for years and here's why: Jojoba is nonallergenic; I can use it on any client and every client safely without a fear of allergic reaction. It won't clog pores, so I can use it on all my clients who are prone to acne breakouts. Jojoba does not go rancid; it makes jojoba a great carrier for essential oils. And it won't stain your 100% cotton sheets. The Jojoba Company is the only company in the world that carries 100% pure, first-pressed quality jojoba. And you, our listeners, can get 10% off orders of $35 or more when you shop through our link massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba, that's J-O-J-O-B-A, 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.

MR And we're your hosts. Welcome to our show today. We are glad you have joined us.

Allissa, how are you?

AH I am well. I am well. How are you? What're you reading this week?

MR What am I reading this week?

AH Sorry. I asked you how you were and then what you were reading, and I didn't even give you a chance.

MR I will just move on to the last question you asked me, which is what am I reading this week, which relates loosely to how I'm doing. So I am reading -- actually, I'm listening to -- I'm partially through a podcast episode called "Learning How to Forgive." I am listening to this because one of our Community members so kindly followed up and sent me a direct message through our community after we did our "Three Words" episode where I was talking about my struggle with forgiveness. And she was really nice and was able to send me this episode saying, hey, you may enjoy this based on your thoughts about forgiveness. And it's called "Learning How to Forgive" from the Criminal podcast.

And I'm about maybe a third of the way through the episode. But the premise is talking about forgiveness and the law and how there are tools of forgiveness built into legal system and kind of what leads people to commit certain acts and the concept of, instead of focusing on incarceration and punishment, focusing on how to support and help to prevent these sorts of things happening. And all sorts of interesting concepts are being discussed so far in the episode, including how much -- the contrast of the US in relation to the world's population contrasted with how much -- what our incarceration rate is overall. We just put so many people in jail compared to our percentage of population in the world, and it's just kind of fascinating to think about.

So I am not quite finished with it. But I just want to give a shout out to the Community member who sent me that direct message with a link to this episode because I am listening to it, and so far, I am enjoying it. And it's really -- it's a continuation of this -- and by the way, precursor, I apologize in advance for this public therapy session here. But I'm realizing I'm really on this journey of exploring my nature of someone who doesn't forgive easily. I have an issue with forgiveness. I tend to be a pretty judgmental person, in my opinion, in a lot of ways, and so that's a journey I'm really focusing on more because the more I unpack it, the more I realize I have a lot of work to do when it comes to being able to forgive and let go. So that's been good for me to explore that, and this episode is very helpful. So I want to thank the Community member that sent that to me.

AH Dude, that's so cool. I am looking forward to reading -- or listening to that because it's a podcast. Did that they talk about restorative justice stuff?

MR I haven't gotten that far, so I'm not sure. Yeah.

AH Okay. All right. It's an interesting -- I'm so interested in the approach in relation to our criminal system because I was listening to a TED Radio Hour episode about reinvention, and they actually interviewed this mayor who ended up being one of the youngest mayors in the country in Stockton, California, I think. And his first thing that he did is he, when he took over as mayor, was to adjust how -- it was a community where like 50% of young black men were incarcerated by the time they were like 17 or 18 or something. And the first thing he did was create this whole system, incorporating police chief and him and community resources and social workers to be like, hey, don't do the crime. Here are the resources we can give you instead. And it was really interesting, and it was all restorative justice and how to forgive young people for screwing up before they know they're screwing up. But anyhow -- tangent -- I am looking forward to that. And good on you. And good on our Community members, man. They send us the coolest resources.

MR Yeah. Yeah. It's true.

AH I feel like -- yeah. We got some great feedback from last week's episode. But also people just send us great ideas and great have-you-read-this's, and I am so appreciative of that. So thank you, everybody.

MR Yeah. Me too.

AH I took a class this weekend. It was just like three, three-and-a-half hours on Saturday, and it was called "The Community Resilience Model." And it was with our friend, Lisa Gillispie, who is a bodywork practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, but also is about to graduate from her program to become a mental health counselor. And I don't know what version of mental health counselor. I apologize for not knowing the exact accreditation and stuff that she's going to reach soon.

But it was really cool. It was a course that's based out of the Trauma Resource Institute. And it was Lisa and I think two other types of mental health counselors, maybe a licensed social worker. And it was great because it wasn't remarkably new information regarding how to handle stress and the body's response to trauma. But it was laid out in a different way that I really enjoyed talking about, like, where's your resilience zone? How does your body feel when you go in or out of that resilience zone? And here are -- there are -- in this method, there are six techniques to get you back into feeling resilient and good. But they taught us four in particular. And it was all stuff that we kind of know, like grounding and tracking how you're feeling and a few other things. But it was laid out in a different way, in a way that was -- gave me some new ways to speak to people and the kids in my home about how they're -- what's going on with their sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and why these techniques that we have been trying to teach them and that their counselors have been trying to teach them could be effective if they would just calm the heck down, or if they would just stop being defiant and actually try to do the techniques that would make them feel better. But I have defiant children who don't want to do things to make themselves feel better right away.

So anyhow, it was really good. There's no link to this particular course on Lisa's website, but I'm going to give the link to her website anyway. She has a whole bunch of free and also paid courses for clients as well as movement practitioners, and I would encourage you to look at some of the movement courses she has and get on her email list. And then you'll know the next time she offers this "Community Resilience Model" course. Thank you, Lisa. It was really good.

MR Very cool. Awesome. All right. Let's show some love to our sponsor, ABMP, before we move on.

Sponsor message Yeah. Thanks, ABMP, for sponsoring this episode. All massage therapists and bodyworkers and anyone else can access free ABMP resources and information on the coronavirus and the massage profession at abmp.com/covid19. This includes sample release forms, PPE guides, a special issue of Massage & Bodywork magazine all about this health crisis. And for more, you can get the ABMP podcast and recent episodes featuring conversations with Ruth Werner; Amy Andrews McMaster, who's a Brené Brown certified instructor; me and Michael, the Massage Business Blueprint team. And you can get all of them at abmp.com/podcasts. And I think they just put out another article about health issues and clotting stuff or something. I haven't even read it yet. I just bookmarked it. But they just put out another resource like a couple of days ago. They are nonstop giving us the information to work through all of this stuff as it comes at us hard and fast. And thank you, ABMP. You can look at all their stuff at abmp.com, and it's easy to navigate around and find all of the coronavirus resources. So thank you, ABMP. You can expect more from ABMP -- I do. And they deliver.

MR They do deliver.

AH They really do.

MR All right. Cool topic today. What do you got?

AH Okay. So one of our members posted in our premium community that they've got to write a resume for the first time in, I don't know, 15 years, since they worked at a summer camp -- which I was laughing because I haven't had to create a resume for something non-massage related in probably 20 years. So I hear this. I hear this hard.

So we wanted to provide a few tips about how to write a resume, and specifically, our Community member was asking, how do you express what you've done, or how do you fill the gap of the time you've been self-employed? And it's not entirely unlike when you may have been out of work raising a child for several years, or out of work caring for a sick relative, or whatever. It's tough. Gaps, chronological gaps in a resume can be a little tricky, and we don't always know how to fill them in. So what I learned when I was researching this a little bit so I could be useful to our member -- and I did have to create a resume a couple years ago to apply for a CE job or teaching at a conference or something, but it was very massage-oriented, so that was super easy.

But you can have a couple different types of resumes, and there's a lot of types of resumes. There's like 20, and I'm going to link to an article that is a bunch of resources and shows all different kinds. But the real typical and common ones are either chronological, which is very clear -- your most recent job or self-employment and then moving backwards in time. And then there's one called functional, where you are listing the skills and skill sets and -- I don't know other words for skill sets -- that you know and do. But most resumes are kind of a combination of chronological and functional, so you'll probably going to want a combination. And you're probably going to want to emphasize skills that you may have acquired in self-employment or prior that match up with the job you're applying to.

So in this situation, our friend is going to apply to be a remote teacher, a remote school teacher or teaching assistant. So I think they would want to really focus on things that relate to teaching, so -- and specifically remote teaching -- so emphasizing tech skills, technological skills, any programs or software that you're familiar with that are also applicable to a remote teaching situation. So maybe that's Google Classroom. Maybe that's -- what's the online learning -- there's Coursera. Maybe if you've ever created a course for Coursera, you have an idea of creating curriculums and online learning stuff. There's the other one that begins that begins with an R that I can never remember, Ruzuku or -- I don't know.

MR Ruzuku?

AH Yeah. There you go. And so any technological skills that are going to translate to this position -- which curriculum creation -- if you've taught CE classes, if you've taught community classes related to massage and wellness, that could be relevant if you can spin that right. Any other teaching and community-based skills and experience, public speaking -- this is in particular working with kids. A lot of us might have volunteer experience working with children. So if I was going to apply for a virtual teaching assistant gig right now, I would probably play up that I went into preschools and elementary schools and taught kids how to apply massage to each other and to themselves and to their parents. I would play up any interaction I have had with school-age children for the last 20 years.

That summer camp experience is relevant because when you were working at a summer camp, were you running programs? Were you running -- I don't know, my -- the camp that I worked at was like non-competitive games and adventure stuff, but also more like personal growth kinds of stuff. It wasn't just arts and crafts, although arts and crafts is a lot of personal growth. So anything that could possibly be related to the age group you're looking to work with or the technological skills that would be required to work with them virtually, play that up. And the link we're going to give you actually gives templates for these kinds of resumes, which were, when I was looking through them, really, really helpful. So that's what I have. And again, don't forget volunteer experience. I think we tend to do that.

And Michael, what do you have?

MR Yeah, a couple things. Everything you said is awesome -- I agree with completely. Couple things -- one is also don't forget LinkedIn. A lot of times, we put the resume together, but we kind of forget to log in to LinkedIn and make that update. So if you feel like you maybe haven't touched LinkedIn for ten years, which -- I'm not going to call anybody by name, but many massage therapists probably have done that. [Laughing] It's easy to forget about LinkedIn when you're not in a job-hunting mode. So it's good to log into LinkedIn, update your profile, put a current, professional photo there, a background image, a title, a headline for your objective, your skills, your experience, volunteer -- all that stuff. People do look at LinkedIn. In a professional context, they do want to see kind of what you look like online as well in terms of not what you literally look like, but what your skills look like and what your resume looks like. So LinkedIn is an important factor there.

And then two, as someone who has been hiring people for a couple of decades now, I want to kind of talk a little bit about the perspective of this specific situation and what employers may be looking for and how you can address that. So I think it depends on what your intention is. So if you are a massage therapist who has decided not to go back to work indefinitely, and you truly want to change to a different career, then I think it's important to say that clearly. Because a lot of times, if an employer is looking at someone who has been self-employed or a business owner for many years and suddenly they're applying for a different type of job, one of the first things that the employer is going to think is, oh, well, they really don't want a job. They're just doing something in the interim until they can go back to running their business. And that can be a red flag to some people.

And so if that is your intention, is to stay -- you know, to not run your massage practice anymore and to indefinitely move into a different career, your cover letter may be a great place to say that. Cover letters are kind of not as fashionable, I would say, as they used to be, but a lot of employers still like that. And they're a good opportunity to say that, to say, hey, I realize that this is a career shift. My intention is to truly embrace this new career. I don't plan to go back to massage practice. I'm entering a new chapter in my life -- whatever. Whatever you can do to kind of reassure the employer that you really are committed to this new direction.

Or maybe you're not. Maybe you truly are just kind of doing something for a year or so, and then you do want to reopen your massage practice at some point, and this is temporary, it might be okay to say that. Maybe not that blatantly, but to say, I am currently pushing pause on my massage practice. I would like to develop some skills in this area, and I would like to -- I'm looking for a one-year contract somewhere. And that might lead you to positions that are really one-year contracts. Maybe a teaching could be one-year contract, or something else.

Or maybe you want to continue to do both. Maybe you want to do massage part-time when you go back and have a second source of income part-time as well. And I think it's okay to be honest about that, to be really clear and say, you know what? I do plan to potentially go back to my business, but I think this looks like an interesting path, and I would like to continue this work indefinitely, as well, concurrently. It's really a touchy situation depending on the context. So this is not a one-size-fits-all advice. But I think these are important to think about because employers do look at things like, oh, you're a business owner. What are you doing next? If they want someone for the long haul, they're going to be thinking about, oh, is this person going to stick with me, or are they going to be gone in six months once they can open their massage practice again?

So these are important things to think about, and you have to decide how much you want to articulate those specific aspects of your career plans. So again, there's no one-size-fits-all. You have to decide for yourself. But just be aware that those are things that employers are looking for and thinking about.

So in addition to what you said, that's kind of what I've got.

AH Solid. And thank you for all of that. That was in-depth, and I loved it. And yeah. We don't cover these kinds of topics very often. We try really hard to stick to topics that are relevant to self-employed people that have a one-person business. But there's enough people out there looking for alternate work options right now, permanently or temporarily, that we wanted to cover it. So thank you so much, Community member, for giving us this idea. And I hope it's really helpful to a bunch of you. And that's all I got.

MR Yeah. Right on. Good stuff. All right. So we also love Acuity, who's our sponsor today.

Sponsor message We do. If you don't need to make a resume, and you are still working for yourself, Acuity is the scheduling assistant that makes it easy for you to run your business and for you to become a virtual business if you need to. Acuity is the business suite that takes hours of work off of your plate, giving you the freedom to focus on the work that you love and do. From the moment clients book with you, Acuity is there to automatically send booking confirmations with your branding and your message and to deliver text reminders if you want and to let clients reschedule if they need to and to complete their pre-appointment COVID checklist virtually if you prefer to do that. And that's what we have to say. You can get a special 45-day free offer when you sign up today. And you can look at that at massagebusinessblueprint.com/acuity.

MR Yay. Thanks, Acuity. All right. Quick tips.

AH Yeah. So I wanted to give a little update on my baby steps back to work because a couple episodes ago, we talked about things you might need to be doing if you are getting back to work and if you had a practice that ran smoothy, but you need to incorporate some COVID stuff or if you want to make some dramatic changes to your practice as you return.

And I am making dramatic changes, but first being that I don't have an office anymore. And also, I am adjusting my pricing. I've gotten rid of the 30-minute treatment times because I'm doing home visits, and a 30-minute treatment would just be a waste of time and money for me. So I just wanted to update that I did in fact get all of my treatment listings, my appointment options, rebooted with new pricing. I am increasing my prices, obviously, because it will be all home visits, but also, I'm adjusting what my senior citizen discount is. I'm making it -- in Acuity, actually -- so that I only have two appointment types, a 60- and a 90-minute. And then I have a coupon code that senior citizens can use when they pay online.

And I feel really good about getting that set up. Then I tested it, and it's going pretty well. And I have a good pre-appointment COVID checklist, and I have a better system for charting all of the PPE and stuff for every single appointment. And I have not yet sent this information and the booking links to a few clients. I'm going to -- and I also created a list of criteria of kind of above and beyond my state requirements what I am asking of people. If they want to get a massage from me, I'm asking that they haven't socialized indoors without a mask and that they haven't dined indoors and all of these things in the 14 days before my appointments.

And I had had a couple clients reach out to me to ask if I was back to work yet, and I said, probably soon in August, but here's a list of my criteria. If you feel good about that, we can get you booked for August. And it was kind of cool because they looked at my criteria and went, nope. We don't meet that criteria. We don't want to meet that criteria. We're not going to schedule. But you know, when things get back to normal, awesome. And I referred them to a friend who was not requesting all of these extra criteria. And it worked out really well, and I felt so good because I was so nervous about sending this information out and having different boundaries than other therapists around me. And I felt really good because those boundaries were well received and respected. And they didn't give me any crap about it. And that was really good. So they self-selected out. And I am -- it's actually on my to-do list today to choose -- I already have the list, but to reach out to about five regular, long-time clients who I know pretty well and know have been mostly secluded and ask them if they want to -- send them this criteria and say, if you meet this and you want to book for August, click here to schedule.

So I feel really good. I've got a new schedule ready. I think it could go well. I feel good about starting back on my own terms and on a very limited basis, so that is my update on baby steps back to work.

Michael, you told me --

MR You feel like --

AH I'm sorry. Go ahead.

MR Oh, I was going to ask you a couple questions.

AH Sure.

MR One is do you feel like this has been good for your massage practice in the sense that you are kind of working on specific details that maybe you wanted to get around to anyway, but now you're kind of in the mode of being able to focus on those things?

AH Yes. Yes. In that regard, this, I think, long-term and overall, will be very good for my massage career. As far as creating a slightly more lucrative and sustainable practice and also one that better fits what my life looks like now -- my massage practice was originally based on what my life looked like in 2005, and that was having a -- being married and having a teenage step-daughter who lived with us. And then my massage practice evolved into being, I don't want to say "good for," but adequate and sufficient and okay for someone who was single and self-supporting for a very long time. And it needs -- my practice needs to evolve to be lucrative and more sustainable and also fit the life I have now where I am parenting two middle schoolers now in a time of a pandemic where I might need to do some more hands-on homeschooling or remote learning support again. So yeah. I feel really good about it evolving and having me run my business and not my business running me. So overall, yes, it is good.

MR Good. Yeah, I also --

AH Any other questions?

MR Not really a question. More of just an observation. I feel like with all the -- there's plenty of negative obviously. We all agree on this. But it's also interesting you mention the boundaries. It's really -- it's teaching me a lot about boundaries, and I think -- I'm hoping it's teaching many of us about boundaries in the sense that it's really easy to yell at people about, oh, I disagree with you, and you're doing things wrong, and just really go to the dark place of yelling and just being very, I don't know, just belligerent about it. Instead, that energy can be channeled into strengthening your own boundaries and saying, you know what? I feel this. My business operates this way, and this is how I'm going to accept clients. And if that works for you, great. If it doesn't, great. And you kind of sidestep the judgment and just let people kind of, like you said, filter themselves out. And that's just such a better way to conserve your energy. It's just -- yeah. So I'm really enjoying the fact that I think people are exploring boundaries in a different way, in a possibly more constructive way.

AH Yeah. We really are. I think so. I hope so. And I'm going to say again, I was really nervous sending out that stringent criteria to this couple because I kind of had a feeling they were probably doing a little more socializing and stuff. They're not high risk. They don't have family that's high risk. They don't have children. So it's a very different -- they're able to be a little more out there than I have felt comfortable being. And I kind of felt like I knew they weren't going to meet the criteria. And I was nervous that they would just kind of nod their heads and say, sure, and schedule. And it just all went the way it should, and I feel so good about that. And I was so nervous. So if you're scared, know that it could've worked out badly, but then it would be okay because they would self-select right out if they were jerks.

So anyhow, Michael, I know you said you didn't have a quick tip, so I wanted to ask you, have you started using the Plan to Eat app that I talked about?

MR I have not.

AH Okay.

MR And I'll give you my "here's why," and I'll give you another thing I'm doing instead -- I guess not really instead, but like, I'm just doing in general. So I'm not. It's really -- it looks like a great app, but I have not because I feel like my meal planning is stable for the moment because we use a combination of HelloFresh and a new service called Yesplease. It used to be HelloFresh plus Freshly, but after a while, Freshly just got bland. They don't have a lot of taste, and so there's only a few things that we really liked, and the rest were kind of tasteless.

AH And Freshly was totally prepared, gluten-free stuff, right?

MR Correct. Yeah.

AH Okay. And HelloFresh is like meal kits that you -- they have lots of stuff all set for you, and you just make it in your home.

MR Yes. Correct. Yeah.

AH Okay. Thank you.

MR So I replaced Freshly with a new service called Yesplease, which is also gluten free. It's a little cheaper, and they taste a lot better. And so my -- our combination of HelloFresh and Yesplease seems to be working really well, and so I don't really see a need, yet, to go to the Plan to Eat app yet. We're going to try this for a while. And it turns out that a combination of HelloFresh and Yesplease is actually cheaper than before by not using it because we would go to the grocery store and just buy too much stuff because we didn't plan, and then we also would eat out too much. So now we are more contained about what we're buying at the store because we don't need hardly anything. And we're eating out a lot less. So it's really working well. So I've got my eye on Plan to Eat; it looks like a really great app or service. I'm not using it yet.

But something else, which is somewhat related, is I am now -- I'm working on my fitness overall. I'm working with a virtual personal trainer. I have an app called -- well, actually, the app is from the training business that I'm working with -- FitLife. And it links us with MyFitnessPal, so I'm tracking what I eat. I've got a customized workout routine with a weekly Zoom coaching session with my personal trainer. And I'm really excited about that because I'm kind of taking control of my physical fitness overall, not just eating. So I'm really excited about that. It's been really fun so far.

AH That's awesome. Good for you!

MR Yeah.

AH Yeah. If you don't cook a lot, then Plan to Eat is probably not suitable. And there's a lot of work on the front end to load recipes and stuff. But I'm so glad you've found solutions that work really well for you guys. That's awesome.

MR Yeah.

AH So I feel like -- I just want people -- feedback. If people want me to do an offshoot podcast about what I'm cooking for dinner this week and why, just let me know because I'm dangerously close to starting a six-minute-a-week podcast. So I just -- if anyone wants me to do that, you should tell me. Anyhow.

MR I'm thinking a YouTube show or some kind of Facebook Live show where you have a cooking show on video. I would watch that.

AH You know, that's not a terrible idea. And I bet Liam would really get into do that with me.

MR It's not a terrible idea. Yes.

AH It would be hilarious.

MR He'd be so good at it.

AH He has a little chef hat and apron that's the cutest thing I've ever seen, and he puts it on when he does any kind of -- even if he's just putting crackers and stuff on a plate. It's so freaking adorable.

MR Oh, my goodness. I'm dying.

AH Yeah. So anyhow. That's what we got. Thank you, everybody, for sticking with us through this.

MR [Laughing] You make it sound like it was a chore. [Laughing]

AH I don't know. It could've been.

MR I thought it was quite fun. [Laughing]

AH We've really have eased into having more banter after starting, what, January 1st trying to have less banter and more structure, but whatever. This is us. Deal with it.

MR [Laughing] On that note, we will end there. You're welcome. Thanks for joining us today. We appreciate you being a listener as always. By the way, I haven't said this for a while, but share this with a friend. Share this with a massage therapist who's going through challenges right now, which is pretty much everyone. So if you know somebody in your list of friends who's also a massage therapist who would love community like we have built here, give them a shout. Send them a link to this podcast, a link to our website. We'd love to bring them onboard. And if you would also like to give us a review on Apple Podcast, we also would not be mad about that.

Our website, as always, massagebusinessblueprint.com, you can contact us there if you like. We'd love to hear from you. Until then, thanks for joining us today. Have a great day. We'll see you next time.

AH Bye.