Amy Bradley Radford (01:15)
Well, hey there and welcome back to the podcast. I want to start today with a big question. It's one that many of us, especially massage therapists push to the back of our minds. And that question is, what would you do if you couldn't work at the table tomorrow? I mean, really, I want you to think about this. If your hands gave out or your shoulder locked up or your body said, I'm done, what would you do? Would you still have a business? Would you still have an income?
or would everything come to a screeching halt? I know those are hard questions to ask yourself, but there's a reason why I'm asking you. And it's because I had to ask myself these exact same questions and these questions are kind of what led me to be on this podcast and talking to you today. I'm going to walk you through some of the most pivotal and painful
and powerful moments in my career. And these were moments that forced me to figure some things out in a hurry. It made me stop and ask myself what my worth was, how much I valued my health, how to come up with fast money strategies, and it made me wonder what my future was going to be like inside the massage field. This episode is going to be a little bit personal, not because I want to whine or I want to tell you about all of my problems.
I actually am hoping it will be an invitation for you to start planning for what your career will become for you. I want you to not just take it a day at a time or a week at a time or only think as far ahead as you are booked. That's what many of us do. I want you to start thinking about the end of your career and where you will be when you get there. And most of all, I want you to start planning some things for yourself because if I had to do it and what I've done,
all over again, I would have done things a lot differently and I'm here to share how I would have done them differently in case you find yourself in the same place. So when I first started in this field, I was all heart and business I was all thumbs, no pun intended, or pun intended. I was 19 years old when I started into this and it was 1993 and I started out charging $25 a session.
And that was really low even for then, but it was kind of what everybody else was charging. I had no idea. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea how to run a business. I had no idea what boundaries were. I thought everybody was a good person and I was going to make it big someday with my little tiny ad in the yellow pages of the phone book. I remember the first time I got paid for a massage session. It was a check.
And it was from my 75 year old neighbor who had all this back pain. And I got done with this session and I looked at her and she's writing out this check and I like, I tried to give it back to her because I felt really bad for taking her money. And she's like, honey, but this is a service and you did a great job and you should get paid. And I just could not fathom how somebody wanted to pay me for being a massage therapist. And I got over it, but it took a little bit.
And I remember the first time someone rebooked with me and I said, ⁓ you want to reschedule? ⁓ okay. And she looked at me like I was just didn't have a clue. I had no clue. was like, wow, you want to come back to me because I gave you this massage. I just, had no idea what I was doing. And I knew I wanted to help people and I knew I had these hands that could feel things and tissues that even I couldn't explain yet.
But as far as the business plans and pricing strategies or what expenses meant or planning for the future, yeah, no, I didn't understand anything. I just jumped off that cliff and hoped that things would go well when I was opening up my What's even funny is my school handed us a business book, handed us a book. We didn't have a class, we didn't have a boundary class, we didn't have an ethics class, we didn't have any of that.
That book was still in plastic a year after I got out of school and I remember the title. It was Business Mastery by Sherry Sohen Moe because believe me, once I cracked into that, that book got read a lot. But you know, in the beginning, I was just out there with a table, a heart full of good intentions, and a whole lot of trial by fire. I didn't have anyone to bounce ideas off of other than my dad who ran a completely different type of business.
And some of the things he offered me helped and some of them didn't apply to what I was trying to do. But there weren't any business coaches for massage therapists. There wasn't Instagram or YouTube or membership forums or anything. It was just me feeling like this is really hard. This is really hard. I remember my first continuing education program. I ordered it because I got this advertisement in the mail for it and I mailed a check. I mean, listen, I'm starting to sound like I'm ancient here.
I'm able to check into a company and waited three weeks to receive my three VHS tapes. And each program segment was about $400 and I bought all four segments over that year. And that is actually how I expanded my education. And I am still the proud owner of 12 VHS tapes for Paul St. John Neuromuscular Therapy.
So I fell in love, and I mean mind, heart, and soul fell in love with trigger pointing anatomy and pain management. was my gig. It was exactly what I wanted to do. And I was so obsessed with the body and how it worked, and I was willing to take the time to figure out whatever I needed to do for the people that came through my door to help them feel better. And I made a name for myself pretty quickly. I was known as one of the deepest
body workers in my small city and within two years my schedule was packed. I was packed. I was booked out months in advance and I was seeing 25 to 30 clients a week, closer to 30 and sometimes even trying to squeeze someone in during my lunch hour for 10 or 15 minutes or Saturdays because I tell you what, when you work with pain you never run out of clients. There is a plethora of pain out there. I just felt bombarded and I felt
obligated to see everybody that was coming to me and I tried to make time for every single person that called me. it because I loved it, but I didn't understand how to do the business side of this Even when I was maxed out weeks in advance, was still only charging about $35 a session and it was taking a lot of sessions just to pay my bills.
I kept this pace for almost two years and I completely burned myself out. Completely. I mean I look back and I'm like I'm surprised I'm even still here inside this profession. I recognized that I couldn't just do everything. And so started letting everything else go besides my job or finding balance inside my business. I started letting
community involvement go down. I wasn't going out to concerts or hanging out with friends or having any sort of social life. In fact, somebody asked me if I was a recluse one time because they never saw me out in the community. I wasn't. I was working all the time. I let go of church involvement. I let go of different callings inside my church because I didn't have the time and I was exhausted. I let my friendships go. I let some really fantastic friendships go because work was more important.
By the time the weekend came around and just trying to catch up on the laundry and everything else that was going on, my weekends were spent recovering. I wasn't out having fun. I wasn't playing. I wasn't doing the things that I wanted to do. Everything in my life was focused on trying to make sure I could fit that one more person in. I couldn't seem to fit my business into my life and I gave up my life trying to fit it all in. And then one day,
It was the weirdest thing. It's like one day I went to work and I went, I don't want to do this anymore. And I just said no more. I canceled all of my appointments, told my clients I was closing my business and I was done being a massage therapist and I quit. I just quit. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't figure out how people could do this for the rest of their life because I couldn't even imagine touching not one more person. I loved what I was doing but I just couldn't bring myself to touch anybody.
I had enough in savings to stay home for about four weeks before I needed to go find a job. I remember looking through the paper and looking at jobs and seeing what was out there and seeing what they paid, which was nothing. I looked at going back to school. I looked at all kinds of things. And I went home and I rested. I was exhausted. I was so tired. And you know what happened? Four weeks after I closed my business, I reopened my business. I know.
my poor clients. I can't believe that they actually put up with me. But at the end of that four weeks when I actually had, I actually felt like myself, I missed my clients and my business and massage so badly that I couldn't even think of doing anything else. Nothing else. And that was my very first lesson about healthy boundaries, about my worth, about getting burned out and that's fried burned out and taking care of myself
by listening to my needs as well as my clients. That was my very first lesson. That was a hard lesson. It really was. After I came back, I sat down and I actually thought about a lot of things before I opened up my business again. I came back and charged $50 a session. I only worked five sessions a day. So it made it so that I was earning more money and I was working on less people and it was doable.
wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was doable and it was much easier. But I noticed even after I came back and I was doing those sessions, I was still not quite where I needed to be. At the end of the week, I was getting burned out and I didn't want to get back to that place. Six months later, I raised my prices to 55 and then another three or four months later, I went to 65 and then another three or four months later, I went to 75. When I hit 75,
I was able to cut back to four sessions a day, four days a week, and I found my sweet spot. My schedule balanced out, and I started feeling better, and there was balance in my life, and I felt like things worked at home, and I felt like I could actually go out and play with my friends, and I had enough money to do the things I need to do, and I could put some money away. Everything seemed to work out for me there. When I stayed there for a little while, and I started to get packed again, then I charged 80.
and then up to 85. And then when I hit 95, I found a perfect match for my body, which was three clients, four to five days a week at a $95 session. And that's the space that I sat in for a while because it was really comfortable for me. Now as time has gone on, I've crossed over that 100 mark. It's hard sometimes to cross over that 100 mark when you start out at 25 to go to that 100, but I crossed that mark and then I kept going from there based upon
internal decisions, not external decisions. And what I knew my value was and what was supporting me as well as supporting my clients. Because, even in an airplane they tell you to put your oxygen on first before you put it on someone else. And that's literally what I had to learn in my business was to take care of me and then I could do a better job with my clients. I have stopped doing massage a few times in the process of my career again. But it was to run massage schools
and do different things, but that massage table, that massage table has always called me back. And for 32 years now, it has been my constant companion in business. My massage table is now a place where I go for peace and learning and healing. It is almost a sanctuary to me and it is no longer exhausting and demanding and hard as it once was. So, the greatest thing that I learned was that
I found a schedule that fit my body first and then I worked out the money part and I made boundaries that I didn't move for anyone or anything because they were there for me, not just my business. What did I realize before and when I quit was that I wasn't just undercharging, I was undervaluing myself. A bunch, a bunch and in so many ways. And it took a few years to find those invisible lines that would serve me for the rest of my career.
But they did. But my story for you is far from done because we're gonna still talk about what would you do if you work tomorrow, okay? So now we're gonna talk about career altering surgeries. Yes, plural, more than one. And I'm sure we're still not done because that just seems to be life in my world. In 2010, after I'd finally kind of figured out some of these things,
and I felt pretty stable. I was walking with my oldest son in the Home Depot parking lot and it was covered with ice. It was Christmas, we'd gone there to buy some, you know, a bunch of stuff on sale after Christmas. And he thought he was being funny and I love my son to pieces. He's about as ADHD as they come and so he's always the squirrel in a rat's cage is what I call it. But he thought he was being funny and decided to grab onto my legs like a football tackle except we slid and...
I literally went up in the air and came down on my left shoulder. And my shoulder didn't work right for a couple of weeks. And I babied it and I canceled massages and I got body work and I got some acupuncture and I went to the chiropractor and I kept trying to work with it but I was a couple of months in and it still wasn't working right. And then I was trying to do some yard work. It was spring because I was trying to rehab this thing and then it just quit working altogether.
At that time, I ended up having to have surgery for a torn labrum, bone spurs that were growing up through my shoulder, a tendon that had a calcium deposit on it that looked like a ping pong ball in an x-ray because that's where I fell on it. They had to poke all these little holes in my tendon to get the body to leach the calcium out, and a small rotator cuff tear. Think that's enough? I thought it was enough. It took me a year to recover and it was hard.
It was hard to work at the table. And I remember thinking I need to start thinking of a backup plan for myself. I couldn't work because you know, this recovery of my shoulder, impacted my home financially. I was thinking, gosh, if I couldn't work tomorrow at all, what in the world would I do? There's no way I could replace my income.
and I don't have a degree, while I'm an instructor and I love to teach, I actually don't like college, I think learning is amazing. I have such a busy brain, I want to learn what I want to learn and I don't want to have the structured learning. That's what it boils down to. But what would I do? What could I have in place for me to provide later on if I couldn't do massages anymore?
I was still asking myself these questions and raising a family and running my business and just being busy when I fell again. Yes, I am a klutz. If you ask anybody in my family, I'm just an accident waiting to happen. When I fell in 2013, this time it was at a gas station. This is a really fun story. When I tell this story, people usually laugh pretty hard. I was fueling up my car at a gas station and my aunt pulled up and she's one of my favorite people.
And so she was getting gas at the same station so I ran over to say hi and give her this huge hug. And when I came back over to my car, for whatever reason I came around the backside of my car. So I had to step over the fueling line to actually get to like the pump and turn things off. Well I was in a hurry, it was cold outside, it was windy, it's always windy in Idaho. I was going too fast and my brain was going faster than my body. And I went to step over the fueling line and caught my toe.
and fell. I I face planted it hard. I tell people I'm probably a viral video somewhere in some foreign country about watch this woman go down because she went down hard and it's one of those things where you laugh but you hope you never do that. I fell so hard and I fell right smack onto my hands and my face. Then I hit my knees and I remember hopping up from that and I was embarrassed.
That was the very first thing that went through my mind, not what did I break or how do I feel or am I okay or to even take inventory if I still had parts of my clothing still on like a shoe or whatever. I just climbed into my car as fast as I could and my son who was in the car seat in the back, he was about four at the time and he says, mommy, mommy, you fell hard. And I remember saying, yes, mommy did fall hard.
I was in like a cute little skirt with some tights and boots and I went down to rub my knees because they were on fire and something didn't feel right. I brought my hands up to my face and I looked at my hands and my right middle finger was dislocated at the main knuckle and was laying over my other fingers. I freaked out.
I freaked out totally because all of a sudden, I mean it was right in front of me. Here's my career. I'm done. I can't massage. What am I going to do? And I remember thinking, I'm fine. I'm fine. This is fine. It'll all be fine. I have clients tomorrow. I've got to go to work tomorrow. So I just grabbed that finger and I pulled it sideways and it realigned fairly easily, which if you don't know, that's actually a bad sign. And it immediately started to swell. And by that evening when I got home, I was in a lot of pain.
I canceled all my clients. But you know what I did? I actually kept one client because he was in so much pain and we were working really well with what was going on with his body that I figured I could work on at least one person the next day. So I taped up my finger and I went to work and I said, you know, I hurt my finger and we started doing the massage and I physically got ill from the amount of pain in my hand and I had to stop that massage and tell him I couldn't continue. And then I had to cancel out my clients for the rest of that week.
and went in and got medically evaluated and it wasn't good. After seeing an urgent care doctor and then getting fit into a schedule for a hand surgeon, he told me that I had sustained what would most likely be a career altering injury. I would need surgery to fix the ligaments that were completely torn that were supposed to be holding my finger onto my hand. I looked at him and I said, I'm not having surgery. I'm a massage therapist and I'm gonna go home but I'm gonna heal my hand.
And he just told me, I'll see you later. But I went home and I stopped working because I didn't want that surgery and I was going to give it time to heal because I didn't want to quit massage. I was in my sweet spot. I loved what I was doing. I wanted to keep doing what I was doing. And I knew that if I just gave it time that I could get this to heal. in order to give myself some time, I still had to have an income. So I tried something that I had been thinking about for a while.
So within two weeks I opened up a new business. had hired a few therapists and I started a multi-therapist practice. and my hand didn't get better And within six months I realized that I was going to have to have surgery on my hand because my finger literally just hung off my hand and I was in pain most of the time. If I didn't keep it taped to its friends right next door to it, then I couldn't actually do anything.
and I learned how to do a lot of things left handed. But I also found out six months into this just how hard it was to be a fair employer and pay a higher wage for massage therapists because they deserve it while trying to earn a living at owning my own business and running it. And it was hard. I learned a lot of really hard lessons. in the middle of all this when we were busy and while my therapists were making money, I was still struggling
to earn an income, Obamacare came out and a lot of the people that were using our services got impacted the greatest and their disposable income went away. And so we went from having, I'd say 85 to 90 % booking to like 30 % booking. And it was almost like overnight. We went from full to empty and I turned those employees into independent contractors and charged them rent and within three months,
Most of them went on to find another job. after 10 months of injuring my hand and opening up this new my hand healing adventure had started to fail and I had no choice but to have surgery. And within three months of having surgery, I was back to the table an hour a day. And after a year, I was back full-time. And it took me three years to get out of debt from that career detour and that injury.
I learned some very powerful lessons that I'm gonna share with you today because this is the injury none of you want to have happen. You don't want to have your hands damaged. You don't want to not be able to go to work tomorrow. You don't want to have to think about what would I do. And so we're gonna make you think about what you're gonna do because this is what I learned when I had to think about it. Number one, as a massage therapist, it is completely illogical to not have some kind of disability insurance.
I got injured, I lost my ability to work and I had nothing to fall back on. Nothing. If your hands are your job, then you need a way to protect your finances if your hands can't be your job. At least six months to see you through to replacing that income if needed or healing from a surgery to go back to work if needed. The only good thing, well there's several good things that came out of running that business, but one of the best things that came out of running that business where I was employing was
I was able to get Aflac. There weren't as many disability options as there are now for massage therapists. And so I was able to get disability insurance through that that I was able to keep. I have short-term disability, but I also have long-term disability now because of that, it's very real for me. I've been through this. It could happen again. It probably will happen again.
And I need to make sure I can take care of myself and my finances and it doesn't tank my home financially if something like that happens. I also learned that you need to have a savings account equivalent to three to six months of living expenses. End of story. Whatever you have to do to be able to take care of yourself for that amount of time, if you have that sitting in the bank, then you can figure out what you need to do without stressing yourself out or possibly making a
fast business decision that comes back to bite you a little bit like it did with need a backup plan and this is our conversation today. None of us want to think about not being able to work tomorrow, but if you didn't, what is your backup plan? That backup plan needs to be in place or you need to be working towards it because here's the truth. I have yet to meet someone who has been a massage therapist until they retire at 65 years old.
and set aside the retirement they need from their massage business to do that. I have met many people still trying to do massage well past retirement age because they didn't plan for it and they didn't plan for something else later on. to take it one step further, are you planning for retirement? Because I wasn't, I was, you know, a young mom and just happy that my business was running and just running my business as best as I could. So as a small business owner,
Are you thinking about or do you even know how much you need to be setting aside for retirement and is that included in your monthly expenses? Most of the people I talk to don't. They don't feel like they can afford it. Maybe they'll look at it later on down the road, they're so busy I'll worry about it later. I hear that all the time. Well, Today is the day that you need to start thinking about it.
the last thing I learned was to be successful in the massage business arena, it takes more thought and planning than just having a full schedule. That's our end goal. When I talk to so many people in business, that's the goal. They want that schedule, they want that consistency, and they want it set. But it takes more than that to have a successful business. You need to do what I call reverse engineering. What you need to do is you need to look at
What does your future look like? What do you need to set aside to make yourself comfortable and take care of yourself? And how does that fit into my budget? And then what does that mean I charge? And if I can't charge that yet, then what is the plan to create the skill level inside of me and the value to be able to charge that so therefore I am taking care of myself in the long run? What does it take to pay for, disability insurance? How does that fit into
what it is I'm charging and how do I make sure that's stable? How much do I have to set aside every month to make sure I have those three to six months of living expenses and how does that fit into my budget and how does that fit into my price? That's what I'm talking about reverse engineering. This is being 100 percent accountable for you, your hands and your future. These are the things that I learned when I hurt my hand the first time. Yes, there's another one.
So, I wanna tell you what I did after my hand surgery, my first hand surgery, my second surgery. My shoulder was my first, my right hand surgery. You know, it was funny because for the longest time I had my middle finger taped up and people would come up to me and say, my gosh, what'd you do to your finger? And I would tell them I got in a bar fight and won. And they would always look at me so funny. But you know, that's my personality.
After that second surgery, I realized that I had to start working on my options much more diligently. The first surgery told me I needed to have them. The second surgery proved it to me. And so I started creating things. I started exploring options inside my mind. And I even asked myself, do I go back to school? Do I take some classes? Do I get a degree? What do I really want to do? And the reality of it was, is I love massage.
I started looking at the things that I could do outside of the massage table that were still massage oriented that could help build a side business or even a large business where I did massage on the side either way. I started creating business classes and packages because the way I approach business and the way I learned to approach business is very relatable to a sole proprietor.
I was teaching classes in schools and talking to people about how to run their business even before I became a business coach, helping them realize about the power of the referral. How do you invite people to your table? How do you get more people to talk about you? Referrals are how you build your business. So why are you marketing with an advertisement instead of putting all your time into referring?
figuring out how to get people to talk about you or getting into places where you can meet people and they can experience your touch and you refer them to yourself. It's that sort of thought process. So I created business classes and packages of classes which is part of like the launch program that you know I talk about on here. I made a much greater effort to create those classes on the side. I set aside time in my schedule to develop and design.
It was just part of my job. It's just part of what I did because I was supporting my future and the possibility of not being at the table just as much as I was being at the table. I started coaching. It just came very naturally to start coaching and then I started creating different income stream and I created a different clientele.
and I would set aside so many appointments for coaching and I still set aside appointments for massage therapy. Then I went on to creating educational products for other companies just because I asked, hey, have you ever wanted this class or that class or when you go online and you go to a large company that has a variety of online CE hours, where do they find their instructors? Well, they ask. They ask them to be instructors or the instructors ask for the opportunity. So I asked for opportunities and I started to create educational products for other companies.
Now, if you listen very carefully, none of these paid me. None of these paid me as I was making them. I put the effort into building them so they would pay me. But it wasn't an exchange for an hour for a certain price. It was an investment. It was an investment into my future and it was an investment into myself to be safe if something were to happen again. So I started being consistent with my blog.
that had been sitting around for years and it's called Massage Business Methods. And I still have it, it's on my site, but I do podcasting now because it's so much more fun. Because I wrote and I got consistent with that blog,
one of my blog posts got in front of the editor at Massage Magazine and that gave me an opportunity to write for that magazine for seven years. can barely speak proper English. I'm a little redneck sometimes and so I have to be really careful when I'm doing this podcast because there's words that want to come out that I don't think anybody wants to hear. But I can barely speak English, let alone write it. So I had to sit down and learn how to write English again. I did it in high school, I didn't.
go to college. So it made me learn things that I needed to learn anyways. And I was willing to do that because it gave me more opportunity. So I went back and took some English classes online and talked with an English instructor that was a client of mine and he re-taught me things I had forgotten about writing and it was fun. It was good. It was exploring lots of other sides of myself.
And then I also started to learn how to run computers and programs. And I know some of you, when I say the word computer, it's like, ⁓ I don't want to talk about computers. Massage therapists don't have to have computers to run their business. We really don't. And so we get behind really easily on how things work in the online world. And it took me a long time, but I figured out how to work in this online world. And I'm still not the best at it, but I asked for help.
and I keep trying and I go watch YouTube videos and I figure out how to emailing systems together and educational programs together online and how to create a video and edit it and load it up into an air. I have learned how to do all of those things and they were hard. I'm not gonna lie to you, they were hard but I have learned how to do them and it has allowed me to have more opportunity to get in front of people like this podcasting has.
You are all capable of those sorts of opportunities if that's what you want to pursue. So my number one goal now isn't to have a full schedule. My number one goal is to have a sustainable business in massage therapy, education, coaching and diversity because I love diversity. So my goal involves massage but that's not all. It's a sustainable business in this field. That's what I want.
let's go back to surgery number three. So after a left shoulder surgery and a right hand surgery, my job, massage therapy, finally created the next surgery I had to have. Within four years of going back to work full time My massage application was a little off, my right hand never worked quite the same and it couldn't handle
certain motions and so I used my left hand more, specifically my left thumb which is a no-no. And I knew I was doing it but it just didn't work any other way. And so I wore my left thumb completely off. The joint was gone. My thumb was literally falling off of my wrist. so in 2018 I had to have my thumb reconstructed and my hand surgeon told me my career was over because if I went back to the table and massaged
The likelihood of me completely destroying that joint was high and then he would have to pin it to my wrist. I didn't want to lose that ability. So I kind of went full time into teaching. In 2021 I went back to the table. I remember sitting at a stoplight and crying because I was still grieving so hard at not being able to do massage because
it is a huge part of me. I remember sitting there going, I don't have to stop. I have to be careful and I have to be consistent with keeping my boundaries. But I feel like I could go back to the table as long as I stuck to my guns and made sure that I took care of myself. I can do massage again. I had to make sure I maintained my hours and I took care of my hands, got my own body work.
and I have been back to the table since 2021. I love it. I love every minute of it there. My time at the table has changed. It's not just about packing it with clients and making sure that I'm earning a certain amount of income and consistency. My table work for me, has a deeper purpose and it's now an exploration of how to help people in high levels of pain, find true relief and heal.
I even go so far as to find people with certain problems and invite them to my table. And yeah, I charge the same price for the invitation, but my goal is to understand certain pain patterns. pain pattern is on your table, then you don't get to understand it. And so I have spent the last, well, three and a half, four years refining some skills
for pain management that I want to share with everybody. And so sometime this fall, I'm announcing it. Sometime this fall I will be bringing some of these concepts to the podcast because, the one thing I've learned about pain management for massage therapists is it's almost as much mental as it is hands-on. There's a lot of theory and thought and concepts that go behind efficient pain management than application.
There's a lot of great conversations that you and I could have about pain management that wouldn't even change the techniques you're using, it just changes why you would use them. I'm excited to bring that to you this fall. And my body work is called Pain Patterns and Solutions. And right now I'm doing a local mentorship in my town. I have people that I'm training to see how
these sorts of techniques are working in at their table and success or failures or tweaks or different things and we're refining. We're refining a lot of things and it's way fun. If you're not having fun at work, you're not doing it right. I love to explore and I love to try new things. I think that's got to be a huge part of
when you look at expanding yourself, you have to look for the things you really love to do and expand in those areas too. So let's circle back to the big question, which is what this whole podcast is about. I brought you on kind of a roundabout journey. Maybe I'm a squirrel in a rat cage like my son with ADHD, but again, if you couldn't work tomorrow, what would you do? So here's some questions for you.
Would your business collapse or adapt? Would you feel peace or panic? Most therapists don't want to think about it, but we have to. Not because fear should drive you, because thinking forward can free you. Your hands are not your only asset, your mind, your knowledge, ⁓ my gosh, your experience. These things are gold. They are
absolute gold. There's actually another program that I've been putting together and it's just percolating in the back of my brain. I just haven't placed it into my schedule to work on it and it's something called mentorship, but it's a way of infusing your hands into a newer therapist so that you can transition your clients to someone you trust when you're ready to retire.
kind of thinking out loud here. It might even be a retirement opportunity where if you know you can't stay at the table and you want to train but you don't necessarily want to be like a teacher or run a program or have continuing education credits, how do you create a financially viable option to bring on people that are independent contractors but you can train with them so that they can be like you and you can
earn money from the training but then let them move on in a couple years. So I'm working on that a little bit more. I'll let you know about more of that in the future. But there's got to be a way for those of us with so much experience to infuse what we know into those that are eager to learn and have it create the next phase of our it supports us. stay tuned. We'll have podcast about that one.
all of these things, your mind, your knowledge, your experience, these are gold. These are golden to you and you need to start building with them now. You need to take these tools and you need to start thinking. You know, you could write a course, you could write a workbook, you could offer coaching just like I do. You have something to offer. If you've been in this field for a long time and you've been working with people and you have a successful business, you have something to offer. And so let your voice and vision work for you.
even when your body needs to rest. And that's what I did. And that's what actually saved me. I'm so glad I didn't go get that bank teller job like I thought I should do. Just for the retirement and the insurance. I'm glad I continued on this path because I love what I do every day.
If I could go back in time and be better prepared for the inevitable, here's some of the things that I would do differently. So I'm just giving you
what I think I should have done. And number one is, boy, I would have changed my rates a lot sooner. I would have set my rates based on value and outcome and not fear and scarcity, fear of losing my clients, fear of losing my business, fear of going back to the beginning and struggling so much. I wished I'd have let that fear go because what it would have done is it would have let me see less clients sooner and it would have preserved my body and my hands more. It really would have. And I wouldn't have had to have quit because I was burned out.
and then come back work and restart all of that. I wouldn't wear myself down out of fear of moving forward. I know a lot of you do that. You wear yourself down because you're afraid to move forward and yourself out no different than I burned myself out. I would look at building skills in different areas that would become multiple income streams. I would realize that
that to be a successful business owner in massage therapy includes my backup plan. It includes making sure that should something happen, I can continue forward. That's what makes any small business person successful, is diversification, having different income streams so that you can continue to take care of yourself. If that included taking one class a semester, even though I didn't want to go back to college, then I would do that because
you need a degree to fall back on if you go into mainstream workforce. It's the truth. One of the reasons I never could drop massage or even when I hurt my hands, I couldn't go get a job because there is no way I could replace my income without a degree. So maybe a degree is just your backup plan, I'd learned business skills with the same passion I learned anatomy. You know those VHS tapes?
Loved them but I should have cracked open that business book sooner and I should have gone out and find a mentor. I should have found somebody who could help me. I should have paid somebody. I should have gone to a really successful older massage therapist and said, can I pay you to teach me what you know? Because I spent so much time trying to make my own wheel when I didn't have to. I could have just asked for help instead of figured it out on my own. I could have hired a coach.
to get me to where I am faster with less headache and a lot less heartache. Coaching is not another expense. It is actually an investment in yourself. And a lot of the people I coach will tell you that, that we have leaps and bounds jumped forward in their business, that what they pay for coaching is far outweighed by the results that they get from it.
one of the things I would have done is I would have made a priority of myself and my body first instead of last in my business. When I worked all those hours and got to the point where I physically couldn't move anymore, I was not putting myself and my body My priorities were mixed up in business and if I could go back and reset my priorities, I think the first 10 years of my business would have been something much more different than they were when I finally was at my 20th year of business. I could have had
what I had at my 20th year in my fifth year if I had had some of these questions answered and really understood what I was doing. but most of all, I'd stop hiding from possibilities
I would have made sure that my future was secure. I would plan to take care of myself in the what if moments that we all want to shove aside and not think about. I think we don't pursue this line of thinking because we feel somewhere inside that if we think about doing something else and we're cheating on our massage business or we have some fear that if we think about it, then we're actually gonna have to do it.
and we ignore it because we don't ever want to think about it. It's like making a will. If you make a will, that means you're going to die, right? No, that means you're planning for the future. And so many people put off putting a will together, not because it costs some money, but because they don't want to think about it. And it's the same thing inside your business
time to start thinking about your future and start planning for the what ifs and start setting up your business to treat it more like a career where you are supported in the long run than just a business you're running.
In closing this podcast today, here's the truth. I didn't plan for any of these things that happened to me. I didn't plan on the injuries or the surgeries or the burnouts or having to pivot my business so many times. None of it came with a warning label. None of it did. But every single one of those hard turns gave me a gift that I couldn't see in the moment and that was clarity.
Clarity is what I needed and clarity that I wasn't just building a business, I was building a life. A life that needed room for healing, for creativity, for family, for rest, for growth. It gave me clarity about what was important and what I really wanted. And I didn't need to be the busiest therapist in town. I didn't need to be the highest paid therapist in town. I needed to be the wisest version of myself so that I could keep doing this work that I love without losing myself in the process.
You deserve that too. You deserve to work in a way that supports your body and not breaks it down. You deserve to stop feeling like you're one emergency away from everything falling apart. And you deserve to know that your business can evolve with you. Not just depend on you being at the table day after day, it can evolve into something else. Or it can be parts of lots of things and the table can be included.
I want to give you permission to look ahead, and I'm talking way ahead. What would it look like if you started designing your business around your longevity? What kind of freedom could you feel if you let yourself plan for more than just what's booked next week? And what kind of power could you step into if you stopped waiting for a crisis to make a change. Because honestly, this is not
just about saving your hands, it's about honoring exactly who you are. It's about choosing to create something that supports that version of you that's still to come. Five years, 10 years, 20 years. I think I'll be coaching and teaching well into my 80s as long as I quit falling down. I want you to just take a breath and I want you to just take an honest look around your world.
and take one small step today to support your future self. And maybe it's just sitting down with your numbers, maybe it's writing down the things you've always wanted to teach, maybe it's finally believing that what you know has value beyond your table or what you're offering at the table has more value than what you're asking for. Whatever it is, I want you to just start.
If today's episode gave you a nudge or stirred something or helped you see your business in a new light, I want you to hold on to that momentum and don't let it fade. I want you to build with it, I want you to dream with it, I want you to stretch with it. But most of all, I want you to remember to take care of your hands. We'll see you next time.
