Podcast

Episode 404

Mar 4, 2022

Does your dream practice involve having more clients doing the weekdays and less on the weekend? Allissa and Michael discuss how to make that happen.

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EPISODE 404

Weekly Roundup

How Supportive Leaders Approach Emotional Conversations by Sarah Noll Wilson https://hbr.org/2022/03/how-supportive-leaders-approach-emotional-conversations

Ukrainian’s Choice: Fight or Flee?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/podcasts/the-daily/ukraine-russia-invasion-putin.html

Discussion Topic

Quick Tips

Sponsors


Transcript:

Sponsor message:

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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. We have blown past 400 episodes. It's exciting. It's blown right past it.

Allissa Haines:

Yes, indeed. It's just, yeah, we're just going to keep on trucking. We don't really, it was funny that we even really recognized the 400 numbers, so I'm like, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that already."

Michael Reynolds:

I mean it's exciting, it's really exciting. I mean, you look around at podcasts in general and so many of them don't get past the first 10 or 20 or 50 or whatever, and I'm proud of our longevity. Darn it, I'm proud of us.

Allissa Haines:

I am proud of us too, and our real pioneering spirit here, because when we started this almost seven years ago this wasn't being done. I've never really been on the front end of anything so it's pretty exciting. You're right. I'll be more excited. I apologize.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. So anyway, what are you reading?

Allissa Haines:

I was reading a really neat article by a woman named Sarah Noll Wilson, and she is in, I found her through another HR person that whose blog and stuff I used to follow way back in the day. And I love Sarah Noll Wilson because she has ADHD or some kind of neuro divergency stuff and writes and teaches interpersonal and work related relationships and in a really thoughtful way. And the article I read is how supportive leaders approach emotional conversations, and it was just a really interesting article about... it kind of focuses on workplace stuff, employers and employees, but it really translated to any part of your life. And I like it because it gave really solid examples of what emotionally dismissive language sounds like. Saying things like what do you have to be sad about or there's nothing to worry about, or it could be worse, or just get more sleep.

Allissa Haines:

And it also gave very solid experiences of like how to be more supportive, how to validate an experience, seek to understand, offer specific support, and it was just really good. I think it was just really how helpful information overall. A lot of it I feel like I knew, but it had not been put together in a cohesive way. So yeah, we have the link to that, how supportive leaders approach emotional conversations.

Michael Reynolds:

I like that. I've been working on that for a long time. Just because my nature is to be a fixer and I'm really focusing on keeping that in check and making sure I am emotionally supportive as opposed to like well let's just do the thing and get it done and you'll be okay. That's not appropriate, so I really appreciate this conversation.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah. I think both of us are pretty action oriented and it can be really hard to not take action on someone else's behalf or for someone else. There you go. What have you been reading?

Michael Reynolds:

So like many of us, I have been trying to just learn and observe what's going on in Ukraine. And so, I don't have any insights or advice or anything because I am not a geopolitical expert. I have no informed opinions really that are useful. But The Daily from the New York Times is one podcast that I really like to follow for things like this, like world events. And one of the episodes I listened to recently was titled Ukrainians' Choice: Fight or Flee. I just bring this up for a couple little angles. Again, no insights really, just some angles I've been thinking about. I realize, as you probably know, in my other life I am an independent financial advisor and I have a lot of conversations around money in this community. And luckily, I'm in a kind of a subgroup of advisors that are more modern, progressive, thoughtful and sensitive, and rightfully so. Our conversations have been more around the horrible tragedy of human life here and not around the stock market.

Michael Reynolds:

But, I'm also seeing out there in the outside world a lot of conversation around, oh well, this crisis, what's it mean for the stock market and money and your finances and the economy and all this stuff? And I think it's really important to focus on what really matters and it's not... yeah, all this stuff is important, but it's about the people that are suffering and I want to make sure I'm really focused on that and understanding what's happening to real actual people in this situation. And so, that's kind of one angle I've been just kind of focused on. So yeah, that's what I've been listening to, reading about, just trying to understand what's happening. So yeah, sorry for the kind of downer there, but that's what I'm following.

Allissa Haines:

No, it's not so much a downer as something really important to recognize and learn a little more about if one chooses. Who's our first sponsor today, Michael?

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah. I'm feeling kind of mellow today so I'm going to tone it down and say The Original Jojoba Company.

Allissa Haines:

It is The Original Jojoba Company who is our sponsor today. And I actually got an email from them yesterday that was a little bit of a blurb and then a link to the full blog post on their website, from a practitioner, Jenny Finelli, I hope I said it right, who is a nurse and a massage therapist and has been doing lots of massage for a very long time. And it was a really great blog post about how she uses jojoba in her practice specifically because she used it all through school, but then tried lots of other products and just has never found anything she loves more than jojoba. There's a lot of reasons that jojoba is really nice. It's unscented. It is nut free so you can use it safely on anyone. Jenny uses it specifically in her oncology massage practice. And I just went totally off script talking about that, so let me get back to the script. You know, all the reasons that we love jojoba. And it's the only company in the world that carries 100% pure first press quality jojoba. So, they squeeze a little bit less juice out of there but it's a higher quality product that they get. You can get 20% off the price of the product when you shop through our link massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. So, this is a great question that came in and I believe you're going to be talking a little bit about filling your weekday schedule.

Allissa Haines:

Yeah, so we got a wonderful question from a new member, Susan, who I actually know Susan from some other stuff a couple years ago. I adore Susan. She's a practitioner in Boston. And the question or the thoughts were, the challenge presented was, "My biggest issue is busy weekends and super slow weekdays. I have lots of weekday availability but my weekend clients make my month. I wish the weekdays were busier so I could close up shop on Sundays, or dare I dream, Saturdays and Sundays." Okay. Schedule changes in general and especially a schedule changing away from weekends is a pretty common topic. It's a pretty common issue. And the impression I got from Susan is that this isn't something that they want to happen right now. If this was something they wanted to happen right now, then the best way to do it is simply to stop working weekends. Any weekend client who can possibly schedule for the week, put them in there, thank them very much.

Allissa Haines:

Refer out all of the rest who cannot meet your new schedule and then start building clients who can come into the new schedule. That would be like the hack right through it stop working weekends next month approach. But that's not what we're doing here. We're taking a longer term approach to work fewer weekends or no Sundays eventually. So here are my thoughts on how to do that. One, stop taking new clients for Saturdays and Sundays. The only people who get these prime appointments are people who have already been on your schedule and who schedule regularly and you like those clients and you do not want to refer them out. But nobody new gets a weekend appointment, that's just not a thing. Logistically it can be a little bit tricky because if you have an open online schedule, it can be harder to prevent new clients from scheduling on the weekends.

Allissa Haines:

So, this will require a little more work on your end. What you do is you take the weekend availability off your online scheduling and you tell all of those weekend regular appointments as you see them over the next couple of months, say, "Listen, if you go to reschedule this online you are not going to find a weekend appointment. I am not taking new patients for weekends. So you just need to text or email or call me and I can get you in on a weekend. I apologize for the scheduling effort that you have to make, but I want to keep you, I'm just not taking new weekend people." And people will understand that. Like, it's cool, it's fine. Especially if you're textable and you tell them like, "Listen, my phone gets shut off at night so you can text me even if you think of this at 1:00 AM, it's totally fine."

Allissa Haines:

So whatever works for you and your clients in that way, but take the weekends off your schedule. That's it. No more new clients get Saturdays and Sundays. So, now we've got to fill the weekday spots. And also part of that first step is also seeing if there's any weekend clients who could come during the weekday and moving them there. Great, you've minimized now. Now maybe you can take one Sunday or two Sundays a month off your calendar. You can ask, you can try. So the second step now is to get a little bit busier during the day during the weekdays. Doing some real specific marketing, two populations that are available during the day, and so the quick lazy list on this is people who work rotating shifts like first responders, EMTs, firefighters, law enforcement, medical professionals, doctors, nurses, aides and really think about all of the whole medical system so we're not just talking doctors and nurses, right? We're talking nurses aides, medical technicians, medical assistants, lab technicians, all kinds of people who work kind of rotating shifts or just people who work second and third shift in general.

Allissa Haines:

But that can be really helpful. Retirees, senior citizens and/or young retirees because they've got money. They're often available during the day and prefer to get things done during the day. Other small business owners, because I get my massage during the day because I work nights and weekends. People who control their own schedule, people like you, Michael, who can write in a massage as if it's a meeting and work it into a regular weekday. That is fine. I hesitated to put moms groups on the list because I feel like if you have a stay at home mom, then they're staying at home with their kid during the day and can't necessarily get childcare to get a daytime appointment. But stay at home parents in general could be tricky, but I know some people have had good luck with that especially if they can get a massage in the hours their kid's in preschool or something like that. So, that could be thoughtful. It could be a useful idea.

Allissa Haines:

So how do you market to these groups? Excellent question. Maybe some concrete Google ads. Maybe, and I'm not like a huge fan of donating free time to anybody, but first responders and medical professionals are often really good opportunities to offer complimentary massage in a specific instance, like if they have a nurse's appreciation day or like during... ABMP has an everybody deserves a massage week and I think a lot of times people talk about offering certain gifted charitable services during that week as a way to promote massage in general. AMTA has their, I don't know, it's national massage therapy awareness week or something like that. I think ABMP's is in the summer, AMTA's is in the fall. Any structured, specific excuse to be able to offer a complimentary thing to a certain population, I think is a good structured way to offer something complimentary and not just offering free massage left and right hoping it gets people in into your office. I don't think that's a good idea, but I do think that when it's specific and strategic that way, it could be helpful.

Allissa Haines:

Talk to people you know. If you know anyone in these communities, they might be able to give you a really good idea on how to get in with them. And also targeted Facebook ads and Google ads to those professions. Retirees, look around, see what's going on at your senior centers. See what's going on locally in education programs for senior citizens. I know around me there's a whole bunch of like enrichment classes. You could teach a massage class for senior citizens. It's a way to get involved with the community in a way that could, if done well, attract more clients back to your office. Other small business owners, a really good way to do that is to get involved in networking, which is something we've probably talked about once or twice here at Massage Business Blueprint, local networking with other small business owners.

Allissa Haines:

Also, niching your website a little bit, making sure you have lots of content specific to these communities so that these communities are more attracted to your website when they're looking for massage. Also, and this is my last thought here, just niching hardcore or marketing specifically to a particular pathology could do the trick because people dealing with a health issue will make the time in their schedule even if a weekday isn't initially the most efficient time for them. If you are the only person in the area doing very specific TMJ work for people with diagnosed TMJ issues, they will find the time Tuesday at 10:00 AM if that's what's available, because they're dealing with a health issue and things can be adjusted.

Allissa Haines:

So if you were to pick like migraine TMJ, I don't know, like a million other things, you can work through your own niche here, that can also be really helpful because you are the specialist in the area. You can really make your own hours because people will adjust to you when you get to that point. So, those are my tips for filling a weekday schedule and avoiding more weekend clients if you don't actually want to be doing weekend hours. Michael, your thoughts, sir.

Michael Reynolds:

I love this. As you were talking, I was thinking through all the different niches that could be or different populations you could target that would be available during the day. And financial advisors is a great target, actually, even if they're not business owners they typically work on their own schedule and kind of set their own hours. So, that'd be a great target market in my opinion. Those are my only thoughts. Nothing really useful to add other than that.

Allissa Haines:

Well, hey, that works.

Michael Reynolds:

Yeah, good stuff.

Allissa Haines:

Yay, well good job us for covering this efficiently. I did put some resources, it will be in the podcast notes. We have couple of bits about niching. I jokingly said we have one or two, we have like 50. I put a blog post and I think two podcast episodes specifically about niching if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you should definitely check them out.

Michael Reynolds:

Love it. Thank you.

Allissa Haines:

You're welcome. Who's our next sponsor?

Michael Reynolds:

Our next sponsor is ABMP. We love ABMP.

Allissa Haines:

We do love ABMP.

Michael Reynolds:

They're amazing.

Allissa Haines:

They are just the best. I was on the website... Oh, you know what, their members get discounts on a whole bunch of things and all kinds of equipment and massage supplies and office supplies, and all shoes and certain, whatever, various lifestyle wellness products and such. Their member portal is really fantastic with the huge array of discounted and prioritized services with varying companies. They did a big spread in the most recent magazine that's going to hit your mailbox soon, I was looking at the digital issue, like a two page spread that lists all the companies they have these kinds of deals with. And it was just awesome, just super awesome. So yeah, that's what you should know about. That was totally not in my notes. So I will also mention, since I already mentioned their magazine, it is an award winning magazine included in print for ABMP members, available digital online for the entire world for free.

Allissa Haines:

As a matter of fact, we have a column in that magazine. Our column is called Blueprint for Success. And frankly, it's a pretty good column. Massage and Bodywork Magazine is 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, man, I actually, it's the only paper magazine I read. It comes in and it usually takes me a week or two to get to it and then I get myself a fancy cup of coffee and I sit down and just lounge with it. It's delightful. You can read the whole magazine at massageandbodyworkdigital.com. You can also look at every back issue since they started doing digital several years ago, everything's covered.

Allissa Haines:

And if you're vision impaired, there is a vision impaired version if you just Google massage and body work vision impaired, it's a print only addition. So if you have vision issues and the digital option doesn't work for you, they do have all of the archive in easy to read print only version, which I just love the accessibility involved in that. Yay. You can find more at massageandbodyworkdigital.com. Sorry, long-winded

Michael Reynolds:

Nice. There was a lot to say. I don't blame you. All right, quick tips.

Allissa Haines:

I'll go first.

Michael Reynolds:

That pregnant pause was, I guess, assuming you would go first.

Allissa Haines:

I told you guys we're like super mellow today. I just wanted to note, it's not really a tip. I'm having a no spend month in that I feel like I've just been hemorrhaging cash lately, just things I had to stuck up on and buy. And having a slow month in January and just, ugh, it was just starting to stress me out. So, I'm doing a very intentional no spend month in March. If you want to know more about what that is, I did put a link to the nerd wallet article about it, but pretty much it's just that you don't spend money on anything except your absolute necessities. So food, gas, rent, and that's it. But in this nerd wallet article my favorite tip was that customize your no spend plan so it makes sense for you. So with me, I don't do well with straight up denial.

Allissa Haines:

So, if I was to say I am not going to eat out at all, I am going to prep from scratch every meal that I make this month, I would lose it. By the end of the first week I would be like, "Nope, this isn't going to work for me." And then I would feel like I had... Like I'd do one drive through meal and I would feel like I've blown the whole month and then I would just do 20 more drive through meals and then I'm not actually having a no spend month. So, I have customized the plan for me so that I am allowed one meal out each week. And I found that last time I did this I actually didn't even use the meal out each week. For me it's just psychological with the denial. It's like a whole binge thing. So yeah, I have customized my plan. I am also making an exception for gifts because I already had in my head a handful of small gifts I wanted to send people because I feel like I have a number of friends who are all going through really hard times.

Allissa Haines:

And I had already thought through and budgeted things I wanted to send them to cheer them up in the doldrums of winter. So because I had planned for it ahead of time, I decided that's not going to wait. That is going to get spent. So those are like how I customized, but it's still a pretty good no spend month for me where I'm just more thoughtfully thinking before I pull out anything from my wallet or shop online. I'll probably fill up a lot of carts online and then, I don't shop that much anyway, but lately I feel like I've just needed stuff, but I'll probably fill up a lot of carts online and then go back to them in April and realize I didn't need half the stuff and clear that out. And that's how I'm doing my no spend month. That's what I have to say.

Michael Reynolds:

That's cool. I like that. Thanks for sharing.

Allissa Haines:

Thank you. What's your tip?

Michael Reynolds:

When I saw that yours was money related I was inspired to do a money related quick tip as well. And mine is review your social security statement. So, I live in a world of analyzing money all the time. So to me it's like, "Yeah, of course, every year review your statement, check it out." But I'm struck by the fact that probably a lot of us don't ever do that. We probably don't ever look at our statement or log in or when we get it in the mail we don't even really open it. So, I think it's a really good idea to keep track of how much social security you are predicted to receive when you're eligible to receive it. So, I think it's a good way to integrate that into your financial planning and your expectations for the future and knowing here's a certain amount of income that is going to be planned and it may be more or less than you expected, but it's important to know what it is I think.

Michael Reynolds:

So, you would go to ssa.gov, and if you don't already, sign up for a social security account. And when you log in you can see kind of a prediction of your statements, how many credits you've earned, see if you have your full eligibility. You can say hey, what if I take benefits at age 65 or 67 or 70, what amount will it be? And you can kind of track that. So, I think it's a good idea to log in and see that and track that number year over year so you know what to expect and take that into account as you're planning for the future. That is my quick tip.

Allissa Haines:

That's great. And we get things in the mail from them too, right? Because I feel like I just got something in the mail in the last month or two, that was like hey, you can go here and get your estimate. So I feel like that comes annually.

Michael Reynolds:

It does. I've opted out of that. I've gone green, so to speak, and done it electronically. But by default I think they do mail it to people. And if you're like me, I just ignore half my mail because it's all just junk and so it sits around for a while until I finally open something. So, I don't get to it for a while usually. So, a lot of us are probably just ignoring it. Yeah, if you get it in the mail pay attention, open it up, set up an online account. You'll have more real time access.

Allissa Haines:

Sweet. Well, thank you, sir. I will do that.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. Anything else?

Allissa Haines:

Anything else? I think we're done, man. Our mellow episode 404 is winding up, sir.

Michael Reynolds:

All right. We're done, ma'am. All right. Well, thanks everyone for joining us today. We appreciate you being a listener as always. You can find us on the web at massagebusinessblueprint.com. And if you have a question or topic for us, email that to us at podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com. And I want to say thank you also for all of the new members of our Blueprint Mastermind community. Allissa and I had this light bulb realization of hey, if we talk about our community on the podcast more, people will know about it more.

Allissa Haines:

Who knew?

Michael Reynolds:

People have been telling us like, "Hey, I joined because I didn't realize you had a community." Thanks for being a listener for years. So yes, we have a private community. It's amazing. It's called Blueprint Mastermind. It's for smart massage therapists just like you. Find that on the website and you can join for 30 days free. We would love to see you there. All right. Thanks for joining us today. Have a great day. We'll see you next time.

Allissa Haines:

Bye.