Amy Bradley Radford (00:06.722)
Welcome to the Massage Business Success Podcast. I'm Amy Bradley Radford, massage therapist, educator, and the creator of Pain Patterns and Solutions Bodywork. On this podcast, we talk about sustainable business, how to successfully work for yourself, and pain management. What works, what doesn't, and why. Let's get started.
Amy Bradley Radford (00:37.731)
Well, hello my friends and welcome back to the Massage Business Success Podcast. So today I want to talk about something that almost every single service provider struggles with at some point in their career. And that is the very real challenge of managing your schedule as a service provider. So when most of us go into professions like massage therapy or hairstyling, aesthetics, personal training, or any kind of hands-on service work, we tend to focus almost entirely on the service itself.
We think about learning our skills and helping people feel better and building the relationships with the people we work with. We do not always realize in the beginning that there is another part of our job that becomes just as important and sometimes even more challenging than the service we do, and that is learning how to manage the schedule that supports the work we do. And you know, the reason this topic has been on my mind recently is because I had a personal experience that made me stop.
And again, look at this issue from the client's perspective instead of the service provider's perspective because I was the client in this situation. And it seems like these things happen in my life when it's time to talk about something. So I'm assuming some of you out there need to hear this and so here we go. Recently, I needed to find a new hairstylist and this isn't something I've had to do for a long time because when I find someone I really like to work with, I'm no different than anybody else. I just stay with that person.
But the circumstances for my stylist changed. There were some health issues and she had to retire. So I did what most people do when they start looking for a new service provider. I asked a few people I trusted for recommendations. There's that word of mouth thing we talk about. And I wrote down a few names and I looked up a couple of these salons online and then I started reaching out. And I made a phone call to the first stylist whose name had been recommended to me a couple times. And I left a message explaining that I was looking for a new stylist and why.
and wondering if she might be taking new clients. I kind of thought maybe she wouldn't because she was busy and well known. But as I left this message and waited, there was no response. And I thought, okay, she's busy. Maybe she's in the middle of a long work day and hasn't had time to return phone calls. So it seemed reasonable. So I just waited a couple of days. Nothing. And then I sent another message and nothing. And at first,
Amy Bradley Radford (02:58.467)
you know, I thought maybe something was wrong with my phone, you know, I'm older and I don't know how to run these things sometimes and technical technology is not my friend sometimes. And so that's what I did. I questioned whether I had, you know, called the right number or texted the right number. And so I checked everything and made sure it gone through and I double checked my phone numbers. Maybe I texted the wrong person, but after a while it became really clear that the messages had gone through and they hadn't been answered. So I gave up.
So I tried a second person and by this point I really needed a haircut. And I called and left a message again explaining who I was, what my situation was, and I was asking if they might have space for a new client. Nothing. I heard nothing. And I didn't wait as long this time. So then I tried another stylist and left a text message and nothing. And so here I am, three people in, several attempts with different people, and this started to feel kind of strange to me. I felt like maybe people didn't like me.
And it's one thing when one person does this, but when three people do it, I had to stop and start to really think about this. And it blew my mind that not even one person responded to it. Like even thank you for reaching out, but I'm not taking clients right now, or my schedule's currently full, or I booked out a few months. Honestly, even a message like, hey, I don't have any openings, but I can recommend some to you. That just would have been a little respectful.
just some form of acknowledgement, anything, something that let me know my message had been received. And I found myself going through kind of a series of reactions that I think lots of clients, massage clients, experience when they're trying to reach out to a service provider. And at first I was just curious, like I wondered if maybe I had done something wrong or maybe I had the wrong phone number or maybe people were on vacation. But as more time passed and I had gone through three people,
and I had heard absolutely nothing back. Then my curiosity shifted to I don't understand and then frustration. I was so frustrated. I began to think that I was gonna have to go to, you know, one of those walk-in hairstylist locations, which I've tried before and that didn't turn out so well. Not saying that they aren't valid, but it didn't turn out for well for my hair, but I was so frustrated. I didn't understand why nobody would turn my phone.
Amy Bradley Radford (05:22.895)
or text message. And because from the client's perspective, it feels very strange to reach out to someone who runs a business and receive absolutely no response at all. So my client perspective was, know, this is really not a fun place to be in and I don't understand why this is happening. So eventually you just start to think, well, I guess I'll just find somebody else. And you know, that's the exact same feeling and experience I have heard people talk about all the time when they're trying to find a massage therapist.
Over the years, I have had countless people say things to me like, I tried to call three different massage therapists and nobody called me back, or I left messages for lots of different therapists and never heard from anyone, or I texted someone and they never replied. I have even had it happen when I have referred someone to another therapist, a therapist I trusted, and this has happened several times, and then that person called me back to tell me the therapist never returned their message.
And that is so frustrating to me too, because at some level, at some level you feel responsible for that interaction when you have taken the time to refer to somebody and they come back to you and say, well, they never called me. It makes you look bad. And it's frustrating that the respect of a text or a phone call explaining they are full doesn't even occur. And it makes me lose trust in that person. Someone I would like to help them build their business, but I can't rely on them to follow through and it's sad.
It's so sad to see the professionalism break down. And you know, when people share those stories, there's usually a real sense of disappointment in their voice because they genuinely wanted to book an appointment and they were ready to become a client. It's the thing we want. It's the thing we want when we're starting out in business and here it is on our front door and we just let it go. And you know, especially in our field, usually they're reaching out because they're looking for help, but somewhere along this line, the communication broke down.
And you know, I think it's really important for those of us who work in service professions to pause and reflect on this dynamic because most of the time when this happens, it's not because the therapist or the stylist or the practitioner does not care. In fact, most of the time it happens for the exact opposite reason. Those people whose name gets around, those people are busy, but they are also tired and overwhelmed.
Amy Bradley Radford (07:43.698)
and they are working long hours doing physically demanding work or keeping their schedule going. And when that work day ends for those people, the last thing they feel like doing is sitting down to respond to this long list of messages, calls, or just scheduling questions. But here's the important reality I want to talk about today. Managing your schedule is not separate from your profession. It is part of your profession. You provide a specific service with massage
but what we're talking about is customer service. And customer service is actually about respect. It's about follow through and it's about letting people know that they matter and learning how to manage your schedule honestly and thoughtfully and consistently is one of the key habits that allows a service practitioner to grow and remain stable over time. So in this episode, I want to talk about the real work of schedule management.
schedule management drives me crazy sometimes. But what it actually means to work your schedule and why communication habits matter so much for maintaining client relationships and also why online booking systems can only take you so far and how learning to manage both your schedule and yourself inside your schedule becomes one of the most important professional skills you can develop if you want your practice to remain healthy, sustainable, and financially stable.
You know, one of the things that surprises people when they first begin working in a service profession is that the job they thought they were signing up for ends up being only part of the job they actually have. Most people enter professions like massage therapy or hairstyling or aesthetics or personal training or any other hands-on service work because they're genuinely interested in doing the craft itself, the job, the skill. They want to develop their skills. They want to help people.
They want to see the results of their work in their lives that their clients they serve and they imagine themselves spending their days doing the thing they're trained for. Whether that is working with the body or creating a hairstyle or helping someone recover from pain or simply guiding them towards better health. And in the beginning, that really is the focus. You you go to school, you study the techniques, you practice, you learn how everything works, you learn how to listen to people.
Amy Bradley Radford (10:05.905)
and help them feel better in the massage therapy field. But what often does not get talked about enough in massage training programs is the reality that running a service practice actually involves two different jobs that exist side by side. The first job is the one everyone expects, delivering the service. This is the visible part of the work. This is the stuff you really want to do. It's the massage session, the haircut, the facial, the training session.
It's the time when the client is physically present with you and you are doing the work you were trained to do. This is the part of the profession that we all love. It is creative, it is hands-on, it is relational, it is deeply satisfying when you see the results of your work helping someone feel better. But there's a second job that quietly exists behind the scenes and this job often determines whether a practice becomes stable and successful over time.
That second job is managing the schedule that feeds the service. And your schedule is the structure that holds your business together, your entire business together. It determines when people can find you, how clients return, and how your income flows. And maintaining that schedule requires an entire set of habits that many service providers were never formally trained to develop.
Schedule management involves a long list of small but important tasks that happen before and after the actual service session takes place. It involves returning phone calls from people trying to reach you, responding to text messages and emails, scheduling new appointments, managing appointments efficiently when you have been sick, rescheduling clients when conflicts arise, confirming appointments, managing cancellations, filling open spots when change happens,
and helping new clients understand how your schedule works and how far in advance they need to book in order to keep appointments with you. And all of these small pieces of communication are a part of maintaining the rhythm of a service practice. And you know, the interesting thing about these tasks is that they rarely happen during the part of the day when you are actually providing the service. Most therapists are not answering the phones in the middle of a massage session, or they shouldn't be anyways.
Amy Bradley Radford (12:23.431)
and they're not texting clients while they're working with someone at the table, or they shouldn't be, but those communication tasks usually happen before the workday begins or after it ends, which means schedule management often happens during the hours when the therapist is already tired or when you're technically quote unquote off the clock. So imagine a typical day for a massage therapist who sees four or five clients. They spend several hours doing physically demanding work. They are concentrating deeply on the body in front of them.
They're maintaining their own posture and energy while helping someone else relax or even recover from pain. And what's going through our brain is muscles and pattern movements and pressure and client comfort and a hundred different little details to make this massage experience sell itself. And this person wants to book with us again. But by the end of the day, we're tired. We are mentally and physically tired and gosh, we're ready to rest.
But sitting there on your phone or computer may be a list of things that need attention. So like a voicemail from someone looking to book their first appointment or text messages from regular clients asking to change appointment times, or even an email from someone with questions about availability or a cancellation that just opened up in a space on tomorrow's schedule. And all of those things need a response right along with getting your laundry done and taking care of the little details that keep your practice functioning. This
is the part of the profession that many therapists slowly discover as their practice grows. And being a service provider also means managing the flow of people who are trying to access that service. If that flow is not managed intentionally, then things start to slip through the cracks. Messages go unanswered, calls get delayed, texts just get forgotten. And over time, clients just like myself begin to feel that communication gap.
Now I want to stop here and say something important. Most therapists do not struggle with this because they're careless or because they don't care about their clients. In fact, it's usually quite the opposite. Most therapists care very deeply about the work they do. They care about the people they serve. They care about the outcomes of their clients' experience. But what many of us were never taught about was that schedule management is not a small
Amy Bradley Radford (14:43.941)
administrative task. It is sometimes a very big task and it never ends. And I'm also here to tell you that it must become one of your core professional habits. It is something that has to be built into the rhythm of the practice in the same way that hands-on work is built into the rhythm of your day. And the therapists who develop these habits early on find that their practices feel more stable and they're organized
and they're more predictable when it comes to clients, filling appointments, and the money that you receive from those appointments. Their clients know how to reach them, and they come to expect that communication will be returned in a very timely manner. And their schedule flows so much more smoothly. And their way of communication creates this sense of professionalism that just continues to build trust with their clients over time. So when we talk about learning to manage your schedule,
professionally, like the professional you really are. What we are talking about is recognizing that the invisible work behind the scenes is just as important as the visible work happening in the treatment room. Because if you don't have structure, if you do not have structure with your schedule, even the most talented therapists will find themselves struggling to maintain that consistency, that rebook rate that allows your practice to thrive.
Now that we have talked about that hidden job of managing a schedule, we need to talk honestly about why so many service providers slowly begin to struggle with this part of their work over time. Because the reality is that most therapists don't begin their careers by ignoring phone calls or forgetting to respond to messages. In the beginning, we are very attentive to these things. When your practice is new and you're trying to build your schedule, every phone call feels important.
Every inquiry feels exciting. When someone reaches out asking if they can book an appointment, you are usually very eager to respond because you are trying to grow your clientele base and build momentum. But as time passes and your schedule becomes fuller, something very subtle starts to shift. The workload increases, the physical demands of your job become more apparent to you and the mental space required to manage all the administrative pieces of your practice
Amy Bradley Radford (17:05.623)
begin to feel a lot heavier. know, massage therapy, like many service professions, is very physically demanding work and it requires a lot of concentration and body awareness and this sustained physical effort. Even when the work is deeply satisfying, it still requires short energy. And when you spend several hours a day focusing your hands and your attention and your posture on helping other people with their posture, it can leave you feeling both physically and mentally tired. So,
It's easy to imagine finishing a long day of sessions and then looking at your phone and seeing several voicemails and text messages and emails from people trying to reach you. at that moment go, so tired. I will just respond to everybody tomorrow. And sometimes tomorrow comes and you do respond and sometimes tomorrow becomes the next day or the next day. And slowly the communication side of your practice starts to fall behind.
And it's so easy, it's such a slippery slope for this little small delay to gradually turn into this pattern of just avoiding it all because you're tired. And you might notice that you start putting off checking voicemail because you know there may be several messages waiting or you might glance at a text message and think, I'll just answer that later and then you just forget. And you might see an email come through and fill that small sense of overwhelm or the large,
sense of overwhelm that comes from knowing that responding will just take time and energy that you just don't have at that moment. And this, this is also another area where burnout occurs. Schedule management and issues with it begin to quietly develop and burn out you. And it is burnout from the amount of work and effort it takes to just manage your schedule. Many therapists find themselves thinking something like,
this at some point in their career. I love doing massage, but I'm just so tired of dealing with the scheduling. And they may feel frustrated with the constant interruptions of messages. They may feel overwhelmed by the constant back to forth communication the scheduling will require. And they may wish there was some way to simply show up, do their work and not have to think about managing appointments outside of the session itself. And this feeling is very understandable.
Amy Bradley Radford (19:30.239)
It's interesting that I have seen some long-term therapists go to work for some companies because they can show up, do their job and leave and they don't have to worry about any of this, even though they make less money because the administrative part of it is gone and all they have to do is do the work and it feels so relieving that they're willing to take less for their work. But here's the important part we have to recognize. When communication slows down or stops, the experience on the client's side
changes dramatically because the client does not see the long day of sessions you just finished. They do not see the physical exhaustion you may be feeling and they do not see the mental fatigue that can come from managing a busy schedule. All they see is the moment when they reached out for help and didn't receive a response. And you know, if that silence continues, most people will simply assume that you're unavailable or you're uninterested and they will begin looking for someone else.
This is one of the quiet ways that therapists can lose potential clients without ever realizing it. The opportunity will simply disappear before you even know it existed. Over time, if communication habits continue to slip, even existing clients may start to feel uncertain about how to reach you or get your attention or change their appointments or how reliable you can be or if they can even fit into your schedule anymore.
they begin to distrust you and the process. But if you don't have systems and habits that support schedule management, the communication side of the practice can become overwhelming. And once that overwhelm sets in, avoidance becomes the absolute natural response. The messages pile up, the responses get delayed, the schedule begins to feel harder to control, and what began as a small challenge gradually becomes this huge source of stress.
So the good news is that recognizing this pattern is the first step towards changing it. And in today's podcast, we're gonna talk about how you change it. Because when a therapist begins to understand that schedule management is not just an extra chore, but it's a core part of running a professional practice, you can begin to build systems and routines that make this process so much easier and much more sustainable to you and personal to you. That is where we start shifting from reacting to our schedule to managing it.
Amy Bradley Radford (21:56.537)
And you know what, I want to tell you a story here and it's my personal story because I lived through this exact problem myself. You know, this happened to me, I was somewhere around 15 years into being a massage therapist. And at that time in my life, my children were young and so my days were very full in a completely different way than they had been earlier in my career. And my typical day kind of looked like this. I would get up in the morning, I would get everyone ready and I would spend about 45 minutes driving them to daycare and getting to work.
And then after that, I would head into work and I would try and fit as many appointments as I could physically manage during the day because, you know, that's the stage of life where you need the income. Well, we always need the income, but that was the stage of life where I needed a very consistent income. And at the end of the day, I would rush back to pick up my kids from daycare as quickly as possible because I didn't want to have to pay more money for them being in daycare. And I just didn't want to have to have those extra costs for being late. And I missed my kids. I felt kind of guilty. So I was trying to drop them off as late as I could.
and pick them up as soon as I could. And then we would head home and drive another 45 minutes to get home and my evening would become family time. Dinner, bedtime routines, all those things. And the problem was that during the entire day, I had no planned time to return any of the messages that I needed to run my appointment-based business. And during this time in my practice, texting was still not the normal form of communication yet. People were just starting to text.
but most of my scheduling was still happening through phone calls. And so what I found myself doing was trying to return those calls later at night. We're talking like eight o'clock, nine o'clock, and then to complicate matters, what would happen when I called someone back is that they would want to talk to me. It's evening and they're free and they want to talk to me. And they would ask how I was doing and they would want to chat about things that we had talked about in their last appointment, which is a very natural part of a relationship-based business.
But those conversations easily turned into 10 or 15 minutes each, sometimes longer. So if I had five or six calls to return, suddenly I was spending up to two hours a night just returning phone calls. And I eventually started avoiding those phone calls. And it wasn't because I didn't care. It was simply because I didn't have the time or the energy for it in that moment in my life. And when I started avoiding those calls, I started losing clients.
Amy Bradley Radford (24:22.079)
I had clients who were angry with me. They wanted to be on my table, but the way I was managing communication with them made them angry. And this was a very real wake up call for me. And I realized the problem wasn't my clients. The problem was that I never created a system that fit into my life. So I had to sit down and really think about how I was gonna make this work so that my work wasn't spilling over into all of my personal time. So the very first thing I did was I updated my voicemail message
And what it said is that I would return their phone call either the same day or the following morning. So people knew when to expect the call. And that's when I started to adjust my schedule as well. I created a half hour block in my schedule specifically for returning those phone calls in the morning. The next thing I had to learn was how to guide those conversations on the phone so that they stayed focused. So when I called somebody back, I would start the conversation by saying something like, hey,
I just have a few minutes between appointments, but I wanted to return your call. What do we need to do for your appointment? And that simple sentence helped people understand that this was a scheduling call and not a social call. And I stayed friendly and positive, but I kept that conversation focused on changing or booking the appointment. And I didn't allow myself to get pulled into longer conversations we might normally have at the massage table. And that small shift made a huge difference.
And so when it came to texting and it became more common, I adapted this again. And I began returning texts either in that morning block, during my lunch hour if I needed to, or specifically right after work. I eventually started building in another half hour window at the end of my work day for communication or note charting or anything else that needed to be completed so that I could leave work and not have anything else on my mind.
All of this meant that I had to keep my kids in daycare about an hour longer than before, which increased my childcare costs. And it also meant I had to stop running errands during the week because where I'm driving an hour and a half every day and extending it an hour on my workday, I just didn't have the time to be able to do that, get home on time and get my kids to bed and all of those things. So.
Amy Bradley Radford (26:37.791)
It made me reorganize my weekends so that I was getting everything done that I needed to do so my week would run smoother. So if you look at all of that, managing my schedule required me to reorganize lots of parts of my life, but it also allowed my business to run better and be more successful. So now that texting is a primary way that many clients communicate, it's become easier in some ways, but there's also a different expectation now. People expect faster communication through text.
So I have learned that if I'm heading into a session or someone texts me, I might actually respond with a short text that says something like, hey, headed into a session right now, I'll text you back after six. That way they know they've been acknowledged. know, over time, working this way, my clients, your clients, you know, they learn the rhythm of how you communicate and they know they will usually hear from me now, either in the morning or in the evening because that's when I set aside time to handle those messages. And that's a rhythm that works best for both of us.
But the key lesson in all of this is that I had to create the time to manage my schedule. If I didn't intentionally build that time into my day, it didn't happen. And it was a really important lesson for me because it made me realize that managing your schedule is not something you do when you have extra time. There is no more extra time. It is something you deliberately create time for because it is part of running a professional business. And clients, whether we realize it or not,
develop expectations about communication based on their experiences with other businesses. I see this all the time now. Correct me if I'm wrong. How many texts do you get from a doctor's office for you to actually show up to your appointment? A minimum of three. Three reminder texts. And the problem is your clients are now being trained to expect that kind of reminder. So.
There are all kinds of things changing about communication that impact our clients as well if we don't actually pay attention and see what's going on. So, you know, in most areas of life, when someone reaches out to a professional service provider, they expect some form of acknowledgement within a reasonable period of time. I did, I was looking for a hairstylist. I was expecting something, not nothing. And if it does not happen to be immediate, most people understand that busy professionals
Amy Bradley Radford (29:01.203)
know, may not be available the moment a message arrives, but they do expect to hear something back. And I'm going to pause here because Amy's kind of blunt and I always throw things out there because they're real. And I think some of you listen to my podcast because I am real, but I actually want to speak to younger therapists or really anyone who is actually new to business and maybe has grown up in a much more casual communication culture. Sometimes your personal communication habits and your professional communication habits are not the same thing.
In your personal life, you may text back later. You may leave messages sitting for a while. You may leave somebody on, I don't know, my kid calls it unopened. You may be used to casual, delayed or partial communication and you just don't think much of it. And a lot of people today live this way socially. But business is and always will be different. Professional trust is built on responsiveness and some follow through.
And this is where I think maybe some newer therapists generally just don't realize what is being measured when a client reaches out to them. The client is not just asking for an appointment. They are kind of unconsciously asking, can I count on you? Will you follow through? Are you organized? Will I be taken care of? Am I gonna be wasting my money? Is this worth my time? It's all of those things based on how you communicate and whether or not we like it, your response time answers those questions for them.
And I'm not saying this to be hard on younger people. I say that because many of them have not ever been taught this. What is now socially acceptable behavior wasn't in my time. Communication norms have changed. Social habits are very different and expectations, they can feel a little looser in your personal life. But when you step into business, especially a service profession, you have to learn how to align your behavior
with what builds trust in the client. And many times there is a large age difference between the therapist and the client they are serving. Who can afford your services and your age? There's a gap. And the client that comes from a different generation, where returning a phone call or following through on a message or acknowledging someone promptly are viewed as very basic signs of professionalism and respect. And if you're not following those, they make assumptions.
Amy Bradley Radford (31:22.143)
So even if a delayed communication feels normal to you personally, it may feel careless or unprofessional to your client and that matters. Because in business, the client's expectation matters more than anything. And you know, this is the part of growing up professionally. It doesn't mean you have to become stiff or formal or somebody that's not you. It means you learn to meet the standard that creates trust. And that is maturity and that is professionalism.
And that is one of the behaviors that separates someone who is casually talented from someone who builds a stable respected business. From the client's perspective, the act of reaching out is often the moment when they have decided they are ready to take action. know, maybe they're dealing with pain and they're finally ready for some help, or maybe they've been thinking about booking massage for weeks and they finally picked up the phone to make it happen. Or maybe they were referred to you by a friend and they're curious about what you offer.
And when that moment of motivation occurs, there is this small window of time where the client is actively looking for a solution and is expecting to be able to book an appointment. And so if they receive a response back from you quickly, it just reinforces their decision that reaching out was a good thing and it builds confidence that they are contacting someone who is organized and professional and who is going to take care of them and not waste their money. But if that message sits unanswered for several days,
that client's motivation will fade. They actually begin to wonder whether you're available or whether the message was received or if they should just look for somebody else, just like I was doing. So because of all of this, I am going to encourage you that if you don't have some simple communication guidelines that help create consistency and reliability that you develop some. But I have some that I usually recommend and those are,
you need to return phone calls within 12 to 24 hours and maybe even have something on your voicemail like I did. I will return your phone call the same day or the following morning. And then when it comes to text messages, it's a little different about what people expect. So even if all you're doing is acknowledging the message and letting them know you will get back to them the following day, you need to return text messages the same day, if not within four to six hours, because that's what we expect as clients.
Amy Bradley Radford (33:43.191)
So, you those frameworks are realistic for most professionals, even those who are very busy. They allow you to finish your workday and rest, and then take a few minutes to respond to messages that came in while you were working. And here is something very important to understand. Responding does not mean you have to say yes to every request. And I think that's what was happening for me is, you know, I was reaching out to busy, popular stylists and they didn't have room for another client.
but they didn't want to tell somebody no. They didn't have something preset to let them know that they were full or how to recommend somebody. They just didn't want to deal with it. They didn't want to deal with it at all because they didn't want to tell me no and they were tired and didn't have time. So sometimes the most professional response you can give is just honesty, but at least it's a response. You might say, hey, thanks for reaching out.
My schedule's currently full and I'm not taking any new clients at the time. And if it's appropriate, this is a great time to help others in your community that you know and trust and maybe offer another therapist name and number as a suggestion. This is goodwill towards helping others in your field. Or you could actually say I'm currently booking out three weeks, but I would be happy to put you on my schedule if that works for you. And then if not, I can refer you to somebody else. Or I do not have an opening right away, but I can let you know if a cancellation comes up.
or I can refer you to somebody else, any of those. You can just leave it as that. A lot of times that new client looking for somebody is going to ask you because now they trust you, you responded of maybe some people that they can go see. So it's really valuable for you to have connections inside your professional community to refer people as long as you know those people you're referring to are actually going to follow through as well. So these kinds of responses are just incredibly valuable to clients because they just provide clarity and clarity allows people to make decisions.
If someone knows you're booked for three weeks, they can decide whether they want to wait or whether they need to find someone with sooner availability. A lot of times they'll wait because if you're three weeks out, you're good. That means they need to get into you. That means you have some skill that they probably need and they'll wait. But either way, they appreciate the fact that you took the time to respond. Silence, on the other hand, will leave your client guessing and frustrated. And when people are forced to guess, then sometimes they often assume the worst.
Amy Bradley Radford (36:02.135)
They assume the message was ignored, the therapist is unreliable, or reaching out to you might be unwelcome, of all things. And believe me, people, those sorts of behaviors and what people think about you can quietly damage the reputation of your practice, even if you did not intend to create that impression. So professional communication does not require long conversations or these complicated explanations.
Most of the time, it requires only just a few thoughtful sentences that just acknowledge the client and provide clear information about your availability. And sometimes, even with the first contact, the most helpful thing you can do is offer a quick phone conversation if it's appropriate. And I know people don't like to do this anymore, but it's actually important. And you need to ask the client whether they would prefer a call or a text so that maybe they can get you to know a little bit or ask a few questions and feel more at ease.
before booking an appointment. And with massage, sometimes we need to make sure that the person coming to us is safe. And that phone call is what creates that clarity. So it can be a very powerful step, especially if you're noticing a high number of cancellations from new clients.
Sometimes people don't need a long consultation. They just need to feel enough connection to feel comfortable with following through. And this really fits with massage because of the nature of our business where people might feel vulnerable to being touched by someone they don't know. So if you're getting a high number of cancellations, you need to be talking to that person on the phone so they can get to know you. And then sometimes just something as simple as thank you for reaching out, I'll check my schedule and get back to you this evening can make a tremendous difference.
in how a client perceives an interaction with you. Quick pause here. If what you're hearing is helping you think differently about your work, you're welcome to join my email list at amybradleyradford.com. That's where I share deeper teaching, clinical insight, and updates on classes and resources without any hyperpressure. All right, let's get back to the episode.
Amy Bradley Radford (38:06.231)
And you know, I want to circle back to the hairstylist story for a minute because the hairstylist I ended up booking with did something very simple and very professional. This woman is my age and she's been in business as long as I have. And she knew how to return a text message. She answered me, it was her day off and simply said, it's my day off. But when I'm back in the office in two days, she would send me some available times. And then in two days, I received those times that were available. And it took me about four weeks to get into her.
but I felt relieved that somebody actually responded to me and took care of me as a potential client. I know that sounds basic, but this experience left an even stronger impression on me because I felt disrespected and then I felt respected. And having the ability to go between those two experiences, boy, I was reminded heavily of what it was like to be served by someone who was professional.
And I thanked her profusely for returning my text message and accepting me as a client. So when therapists develop the habit of responding consistently, it creates this subtle but powerful sense of professionalism around their entire practice. Believe me, these small habits of communication become part of the culture of your own practice. Clients know how to reach you. They know what to expect when they do and they feel confident that their effort to connect with you will always be acknowledged.
And that trust is the quiet foundation that supports a stable and successful service practice. Gosh, who knew so much went into managing your schedule and what it meant kind of under the surface to everyone you communicate with. So now I wanna talk a little bit about online booking software. And I run into this as a business coach when people acknowledge that a change needs to happen inside their business.
where they don't have control over their schedule or they need to figure out how to control their schedule or things need to change but they don't know exactly what to do with it. And so it really ties into what you use to book your services. So I want to spend a little bit of time talking about how to manage online booking software when we're discussing scheduling conflicts. So most massage therapists use some form of online scheduling system. And you know, there's many different platforms available that
Amy Bradley Radford (40:27.073)
They can allow your clients to go online, look at your available appointments and book directly into your schedule without ever needing to call or text you. And this is a great solution for a lot of therapists because these systems can help some of the communication challenges that we are talking about. But there becomes kind of a small hiccup somewhere down the line with some of these online software tools and how they manage your schedule.
So when you're building a practice and you're trying to attract new clients, online scheduling can make this process of booking so convenient. And a potential client can find you online, see what times are available, read about who you are, get to know you without ever having a conversation, and then they can schedule their own appointment in a matter of minutes, and then it's all done and taken care of. And for someone who's starting out trying to fill your schedule, this kind of accessibility, it's a real advantage, and it reduces a lot of barriers for new clients.
It allows people to book appointments at any time of day or night, and it can create the feeling that your schedule is open and very welcome to people who want to come to see you. There is that shift as well in our world where people expect to just get on and click and buy and click and schedule and not have to wait for a response to come back. So there is that sort of communication expectation out there as well. But something interesting often happens as a practice grows and becomes busier.
So as your schedule begins to fill with returning clients and regular appointments, the role of scheduling begins to change. So our goal in the beginning is to just get people on the schedule. The goal later on becomes to manage your schedule intelligently. And those are very different things. And when you reach that stage, your calendar is no longer just a list of open spots waiting to be filled by anyone who happens to click on them online.
Instead, your schedule becomes this living system that needs your attention. And you will find that at some point, the software cannot do what you need to do anymore. It happens naturally with so many people. Your clients start to book in patterns and people need specific appointments at specific times. And some clients are returning regularly and they need priority to accept certain time slots. So you're booking them out in advance. And some people may be dealing with
Amy Bradley Radford (42:41.324)
pain and need to come in sooner if a cancellation appears. And other clients may prefer to book like several appointments in advance so they know their appointments are secure. And when you start working with this steady base of clients, your schedule becomes more about relationships and less mechanical. And this is where trying to continue to use an online booking system sometimes begins to lose its value because you have to manage it to such a degree that you can't let people make their own appointments anymore.
You know, an example of this is, let's say you have a cancellation tomorrow afternoon and that time slot is posted online and it may or may not get filled by someone who happens to check your scheduling system. You may or may not have time for a newer client to take that time because they can't get back in. It just happens to be an opening. But if you're actively managing your schedule, you might be able to fill it with, well, one of several clients who recently said something like,
Let me know if you have an earlier opening or if you get a cancellation, I'd love to come in sooner. Because those clients are already invested to work with you. So when you personally reach out to somebody and say, hey, I just had a cancellation tomorrow afternoon, would you like that appointment? You are doing something that no scheduling software can fully replace. You are actively working your schedule. And this is one of the habits that separates a passive schedule from a well managed schedule.
You know, another challenge with relying entirely on an online booking system is that they can sometimes create scheduling situations. And if the therapist is not actively reviewing and managing those openings, and I'm going to speak from experience here where
I got so busy running my schedule that I would forget to put somebody in iBook and I would double book appointments or I would forget to cancel people and I'd be stuck with an open appointment because I wasn't looking forward and backward in my schedule enough. I just was my nose to the grindstone that my schedule and my lack of ability to manage my schedule impacted my bottom line, but it also exhausted me and frustrated some of my clients. So reviewing and managing.
Amy Bradley Radford (44:49.664)
those openings. If you're not doing that on a regular basis, your schedule can become a mess, but it also becomes less aligned with your ability for energy priorities and the capacity you have to do your work. So I think one of the realities therapists need to understand is this, as your business evolves and becomes bigger, there is an inevitable point where you are going to have to manage more of it yourself personally.
whether you want to or not, or whether you have the time or not. This is not failure, this is natural growth, and this is what maturity in a massage business looks like. So a software system can absolutely support you, but at some point, you are gonna have to turn off the ability for people to book their own appointments, which means that now it sits on your shoulders. And you are the one that's going to have to manage your schedule for your practice as it becomes more complex.
And that brings us to one of the most important habits that service providers can develop, and that is learning how to work your schedule. Now I wanna talk about that phrase, because I use it a lot when I'm teaching therapists about business habits. And when I say that, people initially think I'm simply referring to keeping a calendar organized or making sure appointments are written down correctly. But what I actually mean by working your schedule is much deeper than that.
Working your schedule means understanding that your calendar is not passive and that it simply fills itself and runs on autopilot. It does not. Your schedule is something that requires your attention and your awareness and your effort every day. And it's going to remain that way. And your schedule is not just a list of your appointments. It is a structure that when you pay attention to it, supports everything inside of your business and your practice.
Your schedule is the system that allows clients to access your work, allows income to flow into your business, it organizes your time, your energy, and your physical capacity throughout the week. When therapists first begin working, they often imagine that this full schedule will simply appear if they do good work, and they believe that if they become skilled enough, word of mouth will naturally bring people in, and somehow that schedule will just simply take care of itself. Wrong.
Amy Bradley Radford (47:03.626)
Most of us who've been at this for a while know that that is not how that works. It's beautiful to look at a full schedule, but there's a responsibility behind it. So experienced practitioners will tell you that a very successful practice requires ongoing attention to the schedule that holds everything together. And there's times that, boy, you really get tired of your schedule, but it is the piece that makes your business run. So working your schedule means paying attention.
to the small opportunities that exist inside your calendar and then responding to them thoughtfully and immediately. And for example, imagine that you have a client scheduled for tomorrow afternoon and they send a message saying they need to cancel. So now you have this opening. There's therapists who will simply accept the open space and move on with their day and they'll think, wow, I'll get stuff done. Maybe I can get into that marketing or maybe I can get my taxes done.
Maybe I'll take a nap, know, all of those sorts of things, or I have a break, woohoo, and they'll leave their schedule alone. But someone who has learned to actively work their schedule sees that moment a little differently. If you're working your schedule and you realize the power of the hour, the things that I have talked about on this podcast, you know that every hour is important for you to fill. So instead of going, hey, I have a break,
you change your mind and you immediately begin thinking about the people in your clientele community who might appreciate the opportunity to come in. You might actually remember a client who recently said, if you have an earlier opening, please let me know. Or maybe there was someone who wanted to come in last week, but you were already booked and they don't have an appointment for a couple of weeks, you could call them and get them in sooner. Which means that as you move that appointment, the appointment they canceled will now have to be filled with somebody else.
Maybe a regular client mentioned that their neck or back had been bothering them and they wish they could get in sooner. Being able to take care of them a little faster goes a long ways to client commitment. When you begin to think about your schedule this way, cancellations are no longer just empty spaces. They become opportunities for you to reach out to your clients and invite them to come in earlier or at a different time than they were planning.
Amy Bradley Radford (49:08.832)
This small habit of reaching out and offering an opening to someone who already expressed interest is one of the most powerful ways to maintain as close to a consistent schedule as possible and also to stabilize your income inside that schedule. Every little piece of this is just an enhanced form of customer service. And just having it open on your software doesn't necessarily provide that level of service to your current clients.
And this habit also creates an extremely important mindset shift. Instead of feeling like your schedule controls you, you begin to control your schedule. And I've heard that so many times. My schedule just controls my life. Well, it does, unless you control your schedule. When you are controlling your schedule, you become so much more aware of how your time is organized.
you begin to anticipate potential gaps. You develop a rhythm for responding when change occurs and over time, the sense of control, gosh, that reduces that stress, that burnout, and it increases this stability in your practice that is consistent from month to month and week to week, and the income that comes in from that stability, you know you can count on.
So I'm gonna tell you not to obsess about every detail on your calendar. I'm gonna tell you to make sure that you are understanding and recognizing that your schedule is one of the most important tools you have as a service provider and you can't ignore it. It is the primary tool you have to keep your business paced correctly and your success moving in a stable direction. So it always deserves your attention.
So there's another layer to this conversation about schedules that often does not become clear until someone like yourself has been working in a service profession for several years. And managing your schedule is not only about managing the clients who fill the calendar, it's also learning about how to manage yourself inside that calendar. Your schedule should set the pace that allows you to keep doing your service for years.
Amy Bradley Radford (51:15.134)
and you should have control of that pace in a way that makes your body comfortable to perform this service for years. When therapists first begin their careers, they were so eager for any appointment that comes our way that we will schedule them wherever people want them to. You know, we're excited to build our practice and we just want to help people. And so we're motivated to fill our schedules. And in those early stages, it's very common to simply say, yes.
whenever somebody asks for your, if you have an availability at the time they choose. But after a few years of doing this work, you begin to realize something very important. And that is not all hours of the day feel same to you. And not all hours are hours you want to work. There are certain times when your body feels very strong and you're capable of doing your best work inside that schedule. And that becomes extremely important because if you're working when you're tired,
it impacts how often people come back to you or if you get a repeat client. So there's times where your body naturally dips in energy when you feel slower or when your body is begging for some rest and you need to learn how to recognize these natural energy patterns because your schedule needs to be booked around those patterns so that you can support longevity in your profession. This is another way of using your schedule. You're now looking at your schedule
as a way to produce longevity for yourself and to make your life easier. There is a lot of disharmony that occurs in businesses when you force yourself to work hours, you don't want to work anymore. So, you know, some therapists find that their strongest energy happens in the morning. I was one of these people. I was worth nothing after five o'clock at night. I did not want to work evening appointments and I did not want to work.
Saturdays if I could avoid it, Saturdays were a fill-in day if I needed to to do that, but I was a morning person. I even tried to do four massages four days a week, but I was happier with three massages and being done by one or two in the afternoon later on in my career and working five days a week than I ever was trying to get myself to perform five to six sessions three days a week. So understanding your natural energy patterns and then designing your schedule around it is a trick.
Amy Bradley Radford (53:33.43)
for longevity in the massage field. These patterns for all of us are highly individual, but it's incredibly important that you understand them because if your schedule consistently pushes you beyond the natural limits of your body, the work will eventually begin to feel exhausting rather than fulfilling. And when exhaustion sets in, many of the habits like what we've been discussing, like returning phone calls and managing communications and actively working your schedule, they become harder to do.
This is why managing yourself inside your schedule is just as important as managing your clients who fill your schedule. This is probably one of the first coaching calls I do with people when they reach out to me because they know they need to shift something and that is to take their schedule and turn it into something that truly inspires them and suits their life. So we put in their personal life first and build their business around it so that they're finally feeling like they have a life. I know what some of you are thinking.
If you've developed this practice of like later afternoon, evening and weekend clients and you want to shift everything over to mornings and no longer have your evenings gone, how are you going to take clients who can't leave work to come in? How are you going to shift your clientele over?
there is a way to do this and that is one of the things that we talk about through coaching of how to naturally create more opportunity earlier in the day to shift clients into and create less opportunity at night and bring in some new clients and move some clients through. And instead of working till six o'clock every night, make one late night and be done at four.
rest of the week so that you can start maneuvering people around and redesigning your schedule. It takes time, you can't just stop and start, but it is completely doable to shift your schedule into something that fits your life and what it is that you truly want to do instead of being stuck in something that worked in the beginning but isn't working anymore. So when you talk about longevity in the massage career,
Amy Bradley Radford (55:33.568)
There's different aspects as to why people get burned out. And this is one of them. I've talked about lots of them, understanding your value, not paying yourself enough, all of these different things. But this particular one right here, managing your schedule is huge to longevity. When you know that you have the time set aside to manage messages and scheduling, you are much more likely to maintain that habit of responding within a reasonable timeframe.
It perpetuates your business and fulfills the expectation of your client. And you know, the beautiful part of this is your clients learn that communication with you is always reliable and it's respectful of them. And when you learn to manage both your clients and yourself within that schedule, you create a structure that allows your practice to remain very strong for many years. So I look at that and I think, holy cow, you know, that's a lot to think about. And can you believe all this started from as simple as trying to find a new hairstylist.
You know, perhaps this entire podcast is just a reminder for some of you, but maybe it's a key to stopping burnout for some of you that are listening as well. But if there's one thing that you get as a takeaway from this episode, I hope it's this. Managing your schedule is not a side task. It is not optional and it is not something that can be ignored once you get busy. It is part of being a professional. It is part of customer service. It is part of respecting the people who are trying to work with you.
And it is one of the most important ways to protect your income, your energy and your reputation and the long-term health of your business. You know, as your practice grows, your systems will need to grow with it. Some tools will help you for a season, some tools you will eventually need more of your personal involvement as your business becomes more full and you have all these relationships you need to manage and that is normal. And that is what happens when your business matures.
So the goal here people is not perfection. It really isn't. None of us are gonna be perfect with this. It's ongoing. You're gonna learn lots of things about your business. Your schedule will teach you lots of things about yourself. Your schedule will change and adapt as you do inside your career. But it is not about perfection. It is about awareness. And it's about building the habits that let you stay connected and in control of a schedule that supports you. Thanks for being here with me today and I will see you next time.
Amy Bradley Radford (58:01.388)
Thanks for spending this time with me. If this episode was helpful, subscribing or leaving a review helps other therapists find the show. For classes, resources, and ongoing education, you can visit amybradleyradford.com or join my email list if you'd like to stay connected. Take care of your body, your clients, and your business. I'll see you next time.
Amy Bradley Radford (58:30.06)
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