Amy Bradley Radford (00:06.69)
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 (00:31.297)
Yeah.
Amy Bradley Radford (00:38.018)
Graduated from massage school, I really thought the hard part was over. I had made it through Anat and Fizz and Pathology and Ethics and Body Mechanics and techniques and all the exams that went with it and everything else that came with becoming a massage therapist. And I remember thinking, okay, I can finally start my career. And what I didn't realize was that graduating wasn't the finish line, it was actually the starting line. Massage school had given me an incredible foundation.
It taught me how to practice safely and how to care for another person and how to respect the responsibility that comes with placing your hands on another human being. And those things are incredibly important. And I don't want anything I'm about to say to sound like a criticism of massage education because it's truly not. Massage schools have an enormous job, and I know this well having run a couple. They have to prepare us to enter a profession that requires technical knowledge and.
Judgment, sound judgment, professionalism, ethics, communication, and compassion all within a relatively short period of time. But after graduation, something changes. All of a sudden, you're shoved into being a quote-unquote professional. People start paying you for a service, trusting you with their health, referring their friends and family, and expecting you to know what you're doing. And most of the time we're just winging it in the beginning. And at the same time, you're trying to figure out.
Who you are as a therapist and what kind of practice you want to build, or how to communicate with clients, or how to gain confidence in your hands. And for many of us, how to run a business when we absolutely have no clue how to run one. And when I look back now, I realize that that wasn't just overwhelming. It was actually really confusing. There were so many directions I could go, but there was no real direction. I should I work in a spa? Should I work for a chiropractor? Should I open my own office?
Should I specialize in sports massage or prenatal massage or pain management or relaxation or oncology or something else entirely? Or should I become an employee or an independent contractor or gosh, even a business owner? There were endless options available to me, but no one, no one ever explained how to make sense of all of those options. No one explained how a massage therapist will naturally grow throughout their career.
Amy Bradley Radford (02:57.132)
Looking back, I don't think what I was missing was the information I needed. There was plenty of information out there, and there's even more now. I think what I was missing was a framework. I needed someone to help me understand how all those pieces fit together because I wasn't just trying to become better at massage, I was trying to become a professional. And those are two very different journeys. You know, over the last three decades, I've had the privilege of practicing massage and teaching hundreds of massage therapists and coaching business owners.
I've even served as the director of education or clinic managers in my facilities. I've employed therapists, I've watched therapists build careers in almost every corner of our profession. Some of them were in spas, some of them specialized in injuries, some focused on relaxation, others worked in hospitals or chiropractors' office or wellness centers or even private practice. Some became educators, some have become business owners, some have built beautiful careers working for someone else.
The interesting thing is that while their careers all looked different, the therapists who continued to grow shared something in common. They weren't simply collecting new techniques along the way, they were changing the way they thought. And that is what I'd like to talk to you about today: how to change your thinking to change your career. So I have observed that these therapists naturally reached a point where they
Where they realized that what brought them this far wasn't necessarily what was going to take them to the next stage of their career. They didn't abandon anything. They learned how to build on top of that. They expanded things. They began seeing themselves inside their profession differently. As I've reflected on my own career, I've realized that's exactly what happened to me. I didn't wake up one day and suddenly become a better massage therapist. I grew in stages. And those stages looked a little bit like this.
The first stage, I had to learn my craft. I had to figure out what this massage was in my hands and how it actually worked. And then I had to learn people. I had to learn how to work with people. I had to learn how to structure who I was around working successfully with all different kinds of personalities and needs. Then I had to learn professionalism and what that really meant, what it meant differently from me as a person or personally to be a professional.
Amy Bradley Radford (05:20.418)
And then I had to learn leadership. And the reason leadership became important to me is because I love to teach. At the time, I didn't recognize those stages. I was just trying to survive another week or solve another problem or figure out why something wasn't working. It wasn't until years later that I could look back and see that every challenge was asking me to think differently than I had before. So I'd like to share some of what I call universal principles with you that I believe can shape.
A meaningful and successful career, regardless of what type of massage you practice. Whether your passion is helping someone finally relax after a stressful week, or working with athletes, or supporting people through cancer treatment, or helping clients manage chronic pain, or simply creating a place where people feel cared for, I think these principles remain the same. Because while our techniques may be different, professionalism has a language all of its own.
When I think about what I would like to bring to this audience of massage therapists in all different stages of their careers, I always reflect back on what I struggled with at each stage of growth in my business. The things I wish someone had told me during those first couple of years when I was trying to make sense of it all. And the struggles that I basically handled alone as I was trying to become confident in my hands while learning customer service without realizing that's what I was learning.
The there were lots of overwhelming feelings surrounding trying to learn to communicate with my clients and understand scheduling and collecting payment and building a clientele and which continuing education class I should take or somehow run a business that I didn't know how to run. Those are things that I struggled with at a specific phase in my business. And so I always look back and think, where was I at that phase and what was I dealing with? And how can I create a solution for other people so that that stage of your growth.
Is a little less painful than mine. I really wish I could have had someone in my field to talk to, or even perhaps a mentor, someone, someone who could teach me what it meant to be a professional. Because I, when I started out, I was 18, I didn't really even understand what being a professional was. I didn't know what that looked like. And I would have loved to have had someone I could have asked questions to, or even mirrored myself after. Some something to strive for, a direction, what it
Amy Bradley Radford (07:39.552)
And and really what it took to run all those moving pieces and someone who taught me to think differently, how to overcome overwhelm and how to break through burnout when it happened, because it always happens. The longer I've been in this profession, the more I've realized that every stage of my career has asked me to think differently than the stage before it. And when I started paying attention to those shifts instead of resisting them or getting stressed out about it.
Everything about my career began to change. When I first started practicing, I really believed that becoming a successful massage therapist meant becoming better with my hands. That was my entire focus. I wanted to give this great massage. I wanted clients to leave feeling better than when they walked through the door. And every day I went to work wondering if I was good enough. I didn't think I I don't think I ever walked into a treatment room thinking, I got this. I've got this. Instead, I walked in hoping I would remember.
everything I learned or hoping the client would enjoy the massage and hoping that somehow I was offering something that was actually worth what the client was paying for. And I think that's something many new therapists experience, although we we don't always talk about it that way. We spend so much time trying to become competent that in the process we question our own value. And we know massage has value. We believe in massage. What we're not always sure about is whether our massage has value.
There's a big difference between those two thoughts. You know, one of my favorite memories from those early years happened after a massage with a client I had never met before. I worked on a lot of family and friends in the beginning. And so this wasn't a family or a friend. She was a referral from a friend that scheduled an appointment. And you know, when that session was over, we walked out to my little scheduling desk and she looked at me and I didn't say anything. And she's like, Well, can I make another appointment?
And I still laugh when I think about it because I honestly wasn't prepared for her to ask to come back. And my reaction was, you want to come back? And she's like, Well, yeah, can I come back? And you know, it it just makes me laugh because that that's what we're supposed to be doing in our business. We're supposed to be getting repeat clients. I was so focused on trying to create a massage that I wasn't really even prepared for that. You know, I spent so much time worrying about whether I was doing a good enough job.
Amy Bradley Radford (09:58.072)
That I hadn't stopped to think what it would feel like when someone I didn't know asked to reschedule with me. And looking back now, I don't think I was surprised that she wanted another massage. I think I was surprised she wanted another massage from me. Nobody prepared me for that part of becoming a massage therapist. We learn how to assess tissue and adapt our pressure and maintain professional boundaries and communicate, but there's another kind of confidence that develops only through experience. It's the confidence that grows.
one client at a time or one successful session at a time and one person saying, I'd like to come back. Those moments begin changing something inside of you. You start realizing that people aren't coming back because you're perfect, because none of us are. They're coming back because they felt cared for or they trusted you. They believed you could help them. At the time I I don't think I could have explained it that way. I just knew that each returning client gave me just a little more confidence than the one before.
And my thinking changed from always worrying if I was doing a good enough job to paying attention. But even as my confidence began to grow, another challenge quietly appeared. About a year into practice, I found myself getting busier, which is exactly what I hoped for. Clients were returning and my schedule was filling. And from the outside, it looked like everything was going exactly the way I had dreamed it would. Inside, though, something felt very different. I remember realizing
That I was giving essentially the same 60-minute massage over and over again. And it wasn't really intentional, it's just that's kind of what I fell into the rhythm of it. It had become familiar. It was, it was the routine that I had practiced until I became really comfortable with making sure I ended at 59 minutes. And my hands knew where to go next before I even had to think about it. And one day I caught myself wondering if this was what the rest of my career was going to look like.
And the best way I can describe it is that it felt like eating the same dinner every night again and again and again. And you know, I loved massage. I didn't love the repetition. And honestly, I was bored out of my mind. And for a little while, I even questioned whether I had chosen the right profession because if this was all I was gonna do, this wasn't gonna last. And I couldn't imagine doing the same routine for the next 30 years. In fact, I couldn't imagine doing this.
Amy Bradley Radford (12:25.336)
The same routine again for the next week. And it wasn't that I wanted to leave massage. I simply knew there had to be something more than repeating that same sequence over and over again. And as I look back now, I don't think I was actually bored with massage. I think I had simply outgrown the way I was thinking about massage. So in an effort to save my own mind, I decided that I would start thinking of each massage as a work of art.
like a blank canvas to paint a different picture on and be completed in an hour. And you know, I got the idea from when I took art lessons from my aunt when I was younger. And it was amazing how she could take a blank canvas, her watercolor paints, and this picture in her head and create something the same and completely different with each painting. They were all paintings, but everyone was different. So it was more like an expression than a painting. So I started thinking about how to turn my massage sessions
Into this unique expression or unique experience every time I worked on somebody. And every appointment was an opportunity to create something new instead of repeating something familiar. And that simple shift in thinking completely changed the way I practiced. Instead of automatically starting every massage the same way, I started asking myself different questions. What if I began, what if I began the massage here? Or what if I slowed my pace?
Or what if I used a different depth? Or what if I spent more time in one area and less in another? What if this client needed a completely different experience than the person I had just worked on? And those questions made massage really interesting again. And I found that this new curiosity was able to replace that boredom. But more importantly, this approach made my clients feel more cared for. I also began noticing that people responded differently.
The exact same treatment. Some clients loved firm pressure, others relaxed more with lighter work. Some wanted conversation because it helped them unwind. Others found peace in complete silence. Some appreciated understanding everything I was doing, while others simply wanted to close their eyes and just let me have at it. And it sounds so obvious now, but at the time it was this huge realization to me. And if you think about it just a little bit deeper, it was because I wasn't just working on bodies.
Amy Bradley Radford (14:51.82)
I was working with human beings. And those human beings bring personalities and fears and preferences and life experiences and expectations into the treatment room. And all of those things influence the experience they have on the table. And that's when I thought I started thinking about expanding how I kept my treatment notes. You know, of course I documented the sessions and I did all my soap notes, but I also started documenting.
Preferences or little things that made each client's massage unique to them so I could remember it. You know, things like did they want it quiet or did they like to talk? I even made notes about things to remember to talk to them about, like their kids' football game or a job promotion or how their husband's fishing trip went, or things like did they prefer a heated table, or did they want the fan on, or did they like cooler options, or did they need different bolstering? So I could remember to offer that experience. Or
Maybe they responded better to the massage if if I did some relaxation work and then did the deeper work. Or some people liked to get all of that deeper work done so then they could finally relax. And making notes of all of those things helped create more depth to all of those experiences. And those details became part of a tailored treatment experience that I tried to create into this work of art. And without realizing it.
I had stopped trying to perfect a massage flow and started learning how to create a massage experience. And I think that's one of the first major turning points in my career because it changed the questions I asked myself before every appointment. Instead of asking what massage am I going to give today, I found myself asking, who is the person I'm about to spend the next hour with? And those are very different questions. One begins with you, the therapist.
The other begins with the client. And I think that's where striving for professionalism really began for me. You know, professionalism isn't something we hang on the wall on a frame. It isn't measured by the number of certifications after our name or how many continuing education classes we've taken. Those things certainly have value, but they don't define professionalism by themselves. Professionalism is something another person experiences.
Amy Bradley Radford (17:09.994)
It's reflected in the way we greet people when they walk through the door. It's reflected in whether we remember something important they shared at their last appointment. It's in whether we listen carefully before deciding what to do. It's reflected in how safe or respected or understood our clients feel when they're in our care. It is reflected in our focus or how much focus we give to that one person for an hour. The longer I've practiced, the more I've come to believe that professionalism.
Is an experience we create. Our techniques contribute to that experience, but they are only part of it. The experience begins the moment a client decides to trust us. And every interaction either strengthens that trust or it weakens it. When I look back now, I don't think changing my massage sequence is what accelerated my career. What accelerated my career was learning to see the individual instead of the appointment. And that shift in thinking.
Changed the way I practiced forever. You know, another one of the questions I found myself thinking about as I was preparing this podcast was, what has actually driven my career? You know, if someone had asked me that 20 years ago, I probably would have said hard work or continuing education or I just love what I do. And all of those things are true, but that's actually not the whole story. When I look back over those years, I don't think my career has really been defined by jobs or titles.
I wasn't simply a massage therapist who later became an instructor and developed PPS and became a CE provider and then started coaching and now I'm hosting a podcast. Those are just different chapters. They aren't the reason my career continued to grow. I think there has been one thread connecting every one of those chapters, and that was curiosity. Not curiosity because I was chasing the newest technique or because I was never satisfied with where I was. It was a it was a quieter.
Of curiosity than that. It usually showed up when something no longer made sense to me. Sometimes I became frustrated because I couldn't figure out why something wasn't working, or sometimes I became fascinated by a question that nobody around me seemed to be asking. And sometimes I simply reached a point where I knew there had to be more to understand than what I already knew. And sometimes I was simply looking for something new to give me a different focus. I didn't always find the answers.
Amy Bradley Radford (19:36.034)
But I have never stopped asking why. Why do things work the way they do? Why is it this way? Why does business work that way? Why do you think it has to do that? Why? I've always asked why. And I have truly grown to enjoy the seeking of those answers. And and I and looking back again, I think questions have probably shaped my career more than the answers ever have. When I became bored giving the same massage over and over again, I didn't leave massage.
I became curious about how to design a massage experience that was tailored to each client. It kind of became a challenge for me and it propelled me to increase my value in a way that suited each person. And that question completely changed the way I practiced. And then later I became curious about why some clients improved quickly, why others seemed to plateau, or why one technique would work beautifully for one person and actually work it completely opposite.
For another. And that curiosity led me down a path that became the foundation for PPS bodywork. And then I found myself teaching massage therapists and asking an entirely different set of questions. Why did some students immediately understand a concept while others struggled with exactly the same material? Why did some therapists build practices that seemed to flourish while others worked just as hard but never quite found their footing? Those questions.
changed the way I taught people and I looked for ways to teach that suited each person's learning style. The interesting thing is that none of those changes were any part of my goals or my business plan. If you had asked me where my career would be in five years, I don't think I could have answered you. Most of the significant changes in my career weren't planned. They unfolded because I kept following the next question in my head instead of trying to force the next answer.
I think that's one of the reasons I've stayed in this profession for so long. There's just so many new things to learn. And people have often asked me how I managed to stay excited about massage after all these years. And honestly, I don't think it's because I've avoided difficult times or seasons in my career. And because believe me, I have had plenty of those. We're going to talk about some of them. I've questioned myself many times, and I've struggled financially at different times. And I've experienced
Amy Bradley Radford (21:59.414)
A lot of disappointment. I've struggled with injuries that impacted my ability to work, and I have wondered what I was supposed to do next more than once. The difference isn't that those times of my life didn't happen. The difference is that I eventually shifted my thinking and became curious enough to ask what those experiences were trying to teach me. What could I learn from whatever was going on in my life that could shift things in a positive way?
Those are very different questions than asking how do I avoid my business and all this confusion and stress. And it's the one constant that has changed the direction of my career many times over. You know, we hear a lot about burnout and massage therapy, and burnout is real. I've been there. There are therapists who are physically exhausted because of the demands of the work we do, and there are therapists who are emotionally exhausted because life has simply just been heavy.
There are therapists who are financially exhausted because building a business can be hard and stressful and they are struggling to figure it out. But I'm not talking about those situations. I'm talking about something that I think can look very similar on the surface. I wonder how many therapists believe they're burned out with massage when what they're really experiencing is that they've quietly outgrown the version of massage they're currently practicing.
And I've thought a lot about this this week because I hit this wall several times in my career. You know, sometimes after we've spent years building a clientele around one type of work, somewhere along the way, our interest can start changing. And it could be taking a continuing education class that totally lights us up in a completely different way. Or we discover a population we'd we'd really love to serve. Or we begin seeing possibilities that just simply never occurred to us before.
Or we really do want to go in a completely different direction than what we are doing. Still massage, but something fresh and something different. And you know, but then we turn around and our schedule and our marketing and our business, they're all still built and functioning around the therapist we used to be. The reality of it is, is every one of you is becoming a new person all the time while the business you have built is asking you to keep being another.
Amy Bradley Radford (24:14.156)
And that's an exhausting mental fight. And that's the burnout I'm talking about. And it's not because massage has stopped being meaningful, it's because we all grow. We all grow in our careers. And growth has a way of making old versions of ourselves feel really uncomfortable. And I actually think that's one of the hardest stages in any professional career because it actually feels confusing. You finally arrive, you get there, and now you want to change.
And and there's a handful of coaching clients that I've worked with where when we have finally got their business to do exactly what they wanted it to do and it was creating the income and their schedule was full, they actually left it to move on to something else because they've always wanted something else. And that looks really confusing on the surface, but it's not. It's because they accomplished what it was they wanted and now they wanted the next thing. So it doesn't necessarily mean you want to leave.
But you don't always know necessarily what to change. All you know is that something no longer fits the way it once did. If that's where you find yourself today, I want you to ask yourself whether what you're feeling is really burnout or whether your career is inviting you into its next chapter. Because when I look back over my own career, I can honestly say that every major turning point began exactly there. And it was not with certainty or confidence and absolutely not.
With a perfectly written business plan, it began with enough curiosity to ask a better question than the one I had been asking, and then to actually follow the answer when it came to me. So if you can identify with what I'm talking about and you're in that place today, I'm gonna offer you the option of not getting stuck there. But what I'm gonna ask you to do is sit with those feelings for just a little bit. Don't ignore them. Actually pay attention to them. And then I want you to become curious about.
I want you to ask yourself what no longer fits, but also ask yourself what continues to energize you. I want you to ask yourself what kind of therapist you're becoming instead of only asking what kind of therapist you've been. And then, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you a story about myself in the last six years. Quick pause here. If what you're hearing is helping you think differently about your work.
Amy Bradley Radford (26:33.474)
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 hyper pressure. All right, let's get back to the episode. And it's the last six years because of the things that have changed me since COVID. Before COVID, I had finally reached a place where I thought I knew exactly what the rest of my career was going to look like.
I had spent years building an online continuing education company and I absolutely loved it. I had I had accomplished the thing I had wanted to do. And believe me, that took a lot of moving pieces. It took learning how to run a computer and programs and all of these things that that were built into that. We had about 200 therapists learning on that platform every month, and we were doing coaching calls that met for live calls where we answered questions and we continued to learn together.
And I honestly believed that that was going to be the next chapter of my professional life for the rest of my life. And then COVID hit. And like every one of you who practiced through that time, I watched our profession change literally overnight. Massage therapists couldn't work. Business is closed, left and right. People were just trying to survive. And continuing education naturally became one of the first expenses many people had to let go.
And I watched memberships disappear until the community I had spent years building had dwindled down to fewer than 20 people in less than 90 days. And I completely understood why they were leaving. I was doing the same thing. I was reducing expenses anywhere I possibly could. And that almost made it harder. I wasn't angry or disappointed in anyone, but I was heartbroken because I could see an entire profession struggling while something I had spent years building was disappearing at the exact same time.
And I wish I could tell you that I immediately knew what to do next, but that is not what happened. What I did next was struggle and cry and question myself because I didn't know what I was going to do next. I had no idea. I sat down and created my first ever resume and applied for a J O B, a job, which I didn't get. I applied for several jobs, which I didn't get. I kept trying to promote classes to anybody out there, but nothing happened.
Amy Bradley Radford (28:57.834)
And I kept trying to rebuild the business I had before COVID because I thought that's what success looked like, because it was successful. So that's what I had to do. And I I just believed that if I worked just a little harder or created another class or improved my marketing or somehow find the right strategy, I could get back to where I had been. And three months after that, I went back to the massage table.
I hadn't been at the massage table for almost two years because I had had to have hand surgery. And it was from a separate injury, but it impacted my career. And I was cautioned by my doctor to not go back to the table to work. But to be honest, I didn't know what else to do. The table had always provided for me. And, you know, looking back, I realized I still wasn't asking the right question. I w kept asking how to get that business back. And what I should have been asking.
was what my career was trying to teach me. Once I finally stopped trying to rebuild what had been and became curious enough to ask what was next, I realized something that was that seemed so obvious to me now, but it wasn't, it didn't seem obvious to me then. And I didn't lose my purpose because that's what I felt like when I lost my business. I didn't lose my purpose. I simply lost one way of expressing it.
And when I finally stopped to think about my career, I realized that whether I was standing beside a massage table or teaching in a classroom or developing PPS or writing business classes or coaching therapists or sitting behind this microphone recording a podcast, I'd always been doing the exact same thing. I've always been helping and teaching people make sense of something that felt confusing and needed a solution for. You know, and sometimes it was business.
Sometimes it was how to communicate with your client. Sometimes it was physical pain. Sometimes it was helping another massage therapist understand where they were in their career. The delivery system changed. My purpose never did. And once I understood that, I stopped trying so hard to rebuild what I had lost and then slowly began building what I was meant to build next. And that's the point of today's conversation. When we graduate from massage school,
Amy Bradley Radford (31:10.232)
We spend so much time trying to figure out what we're supposed to do that we rarely stop to ask who we're becoming. And those are very different questions. One is about a career, the other is about a profession and becoming a professional. Every stage of my career has taught me something much bigger than massage techniques or customer service or business or even education. It was teaching me how to become the kind of professional I wanted to be. And eventually the kind of professional that clients don't forget.
So if you're feeling confused right now, don't immediately assume you're failing because that's that's what it means to me. When I got confused, my mind automatically shifted to you're failing. But you know what? Confusion doesn't mean you're failing. Sometimes confusion simply means you're standing between one stage of your career and the next. And no one has ever shown you how those pieces fit together.
And I want you to know you're not alone in that because I've come to believe that one of my greatest passions isn't simply teaching massage therapists new information. It's helping massage therapists make sense of this profession. Because when we can't make sense of what's happening in our careers, too many good therapists quietly leave a profession they once loved. And I don't want that for you. I want you to stay curious. I want you to trust your growth. I want you to understand.
That you don't have to know exactly where you're going to be five years from now. You only have to understand the next question that's inviting you to think a little differently than you did before. Because when I look back over my career, that's really all I've been doing. It was one question or one lesson or one stage of growth at the time. So there's another piece of the COVID story that I've never really shared before.
And as I was putting this podcast together, I realized it belonged here because it's another example of how curiosity changed the direction of my career. And before COVID, not only did I have a training center, but I had my PPS program that I was teaching. And I honestly believed that that program, my hands-on training, was finished. I had spent years developing it, like 25, 28 years developing it and teaching it and testing it and refining it. And I had my
Amy Bradley Radford (33:24.728)
Basics and intermediate classes developed. I had my manuals written and edited. I had my techniques all filmed and edited, and I had everything loaded up online and I was teaching it live. And I believed at the time that it was a completed program. In fact, right before COVID happened, I had taught two complete PPS series almost simultaneously. One class was here locally in my town, and another was about two and a half hours away.
And every other weekend for four months, I was either packing my car, driving, teaching 16 hour classes, driving home, unpacking, and then doing it all over again the next weekend. And you know what? By the time I finished those classes, I didn't want to teach again. I didn't want to teach a 16 hour weekend class again. I was beyond exhausted. And it it's not because I didn't love teaching. I absolutely love teaching. I was exhausted because I realized that me, Amy,
couldn't physically continue teaching PPS that way in that traditional weekend CE seminar model. I knew in my heart that if the only way to teach this work was to spend every weekend on the road teaching 16 hour seminars, I simply wasn't going to be able to do it. I didn't have the stamina. And if I'm honest, I didn't think that the weekend seminar model truly fit what I was trying to teach. And the problem was I had no idea what model it needed.
And then it didn't matter because COVID happened. And like so many other things, everything came to a stop. And you know, I'll be honest with you, I was incredibly discouraged. I felt like I had not only lost my online business, I had lost the ability to teach PPS the way I had been teaching it. And I gen I actually wondered if all of those years of work were a waste and I had reached a dead end. I actually wanted to quit and walk away from it all, and I kind of did for a while.
Because everything felt like it had just bottomed out on me. And looking back now, I couldn't have been more wrong. When I made the decision to return to the massage table, I didn't go back because I wanted to rebuild a practice. I simply needed the income. And again, that massage table has always provided for me. But I also made another decision for myself. If I was going to rebuild my table practice, then I was going to use it as my laboratory, my testing ground.
Amy Bradley Radford (35:46.55)
And not just simply fill up my schedule again with whoever wanted to get on it. I didn't reach out to all of my old clientele and let everybody know I was back to work and taking appointments. Instead, I invited the clients back who had challenged me the most, the ones who we hadn't quite figured things out for. I decided I wanted the difficult cases. I wanted the clients who hadn't responded the way I thought they should have or could have. I wanted the people who forced me to ask questions.
I didn't know how to answer yet because I wanted to find the weaknesses in my own program and in my own thinking. I wanted to know where it stopped working because I knew that's where the next lesson would be. And I still had questions not answered. So there had to be more than what I thought I knew. So I funneled, I took all of my disappointment and frustration and turned it into curiosity. And my friends, that is when everything changed.
Every challenging client taught me something I hadn't seen before. And you know, it was in front of me. I just didn't have the eyes open to see it. And every time I thought I had reached the edge of what my program could explain, another person would pop up in my world that needed to get on my table and their body would show me there was still something I didn't understand yet. And what surprised me the most wasn't that PPS continued growing, it's how much it continued growing.
The program that I thought was complete turned out to be only about halfway finished. And over the last six years, I have probably doubled the work I built. Not because I was trying to invent something new, but because real bodies, really hard cases, kept asking better questions than I had been asking myself. You know, specifically, I think the turning point for me came when I had a client get on my table.
With lumbar spondalala thesis. I love saying that word. La la la la la. Spondalala thesis. And it opened a door that completely changed the way I understood spinal mechanics. And before I knew it, I found myself rewriting the entire PPS program from the ground up. And I'll be honest with you, I did not want to. I did not want to start over. I wanted to keep going, but I couldn't. It had to be started over. And when you've already written thousands of pages of curriculum and developed an entire teaching program.
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Believe me, the last thing you want to discover is that it you have to rewrite the whole thing. And I did. But I also knew I couldn't ignore what my clients were teaching me simply because rewriting that work was something I didn't want to do. And I don't know, inconvenient or something like that. But as my mom always said, if you're gonna do something, do it right. And so this work deserved to be finished correctly. And maybe, maybe that's another lesson curiosity has taught me.
Is sometimes curiosity does not make our work easier. In fact, sometimes it asks us to do far more work than we ever imagined. But if that work moves us closer to the truth, in my opinion, it's worth doing. Today when I look at PPS, I don't see the program I lost during COVID. I see the program that never would have existed if COVID hadn't forced me to stop long enough to discover what was still missing.
That doesn't mean I'd ever choose to go through that again. If I had a choice, I wouldn't. But because there was there was a lot of grief and struggle. And I was lost for a little while. And there was real disappointment. And there were days I honestly believed I had failed and didn't have the will to start up again. But once, you know, once I worked my way through that grief, curiosity slowly helped me ask a different question. Instead of asking why did this happen?
It started to be what's possible because it happened. And looking back now, I think that's one of the hardest questions we'll ever ask ourselves because we usually can't answer it while we're still living through all of that loss. Sometimes it takes a while to be able to see that answer, sometimes years. One of the things I've also learned is that success isn't really a place we arrive at. I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions people have about self-employment. We all
Imagine that one day we'll finally have enough clients and enough money and enough systems and enough experience and somehow we'll be able to sit back and relax because we've made it. And you know, the longer I've been self-employed, the more I realize that really isn't how it works. To me, I think self-employment is a lot more like a personal relationship, like marriage. You don't build a great marriage and then stop investing in it simply because you got married. You don't build trust and communication and connection.
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And then assume they'll all take care of themselves for the next 50 years. Relationships are living things, and they are either growing or they're slowly drifting apart, depending on how much attention we continue giving them. There really isn't much of a place in the middle. And I think our careers and businesses are identical to that. There really isn't any such thing as coasting. When we think we're coasting,
we're actually just losing momentum. And losing momentum eventually means moving backward because that's how growth works. I tell my coaching clients that when you're self-employed, you are always pressing the accelerator. Sometimes you're pressing it a lot, sometimes only a little, but you never completely take your foot off the gas because when you do, things will begin falling apart. Now, does that mean self-employment has to consume your life? No, no, it does not. Not at all.
In fact, I think the opposite is true. The goal isn't to work forever, work harder forever. The goal is to build something thoughtfully enough that it becomes sustainable. And that's where systems come in. Not because systems replace us, but because they allow us to spend more of our time doing the work that only we can do. Every time we improve a process or create a better client experience or simplify the way we communicate or build something that continues working after we've
Finished creating it, we are buying back a little more of our time. Isn't that why people want to be self-employed so they can have more time freedom? This is how you get time freedom. And that's very different than checking out. The systems don't replace you, they extend you. You still have to pay attention. You still have to lead. You still have to refine. But instead of rebuilding the same foundation over and over again,
We learn how to strengthen the one that already exists. And I have to tell you that that's the lesson I'm living myself right now. For most of my career, I seem to have built things over and over again from the ground up. I built a practice and then I came back and built it again. And I've built educational programs and schools, and I built a seminar company. And then I turned around and I built it again. And I've built an online business. And I've turned around and I built one again. And I've built a podcast. And I have started over more times than I have ever wanted to, truly.
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But each one of those things have developed me in a different area of my professional development. And I don't think that I'm in that building chapter anymore. I'm in a chapter now that asks me different questions than it ever has before. I'm now asking how to take everything I've spent all these years learning and build it in a way that continues serving you, the massage therapist.
And it continues to grow and it supports my life long after the initial work has been done. Because what do I really want? I had to really think about this, people. What is what is the legacy I want to leave behind for other massage therapists? And how do I create more opportunities to do the one thing I have always loved the most? And that is teach. Those questions have become much more interesting to me than simply asking how to make how do I make more money? How do I make more money?
At this stage of my career, I'm not trying to build another project. I want to build something that lasts. And as I think about everything we've talked about today, these aren't just lessons I've learned after all these years of being in this profession. These are the lessons I wish someone had shared with me during those first few years when I was trying to make sense of it all because at the time every challenge felt like a new problem that I somehow had to figure out how to solve. You know, when I thought I was trying to become a better massage therapist.
What I actually was learning was confidence. And when I was trying to understand customer service, what I was actually learning was how to build trust with clients. And when I thought I was trying to build a business, I was actually trying to learn how to become a professional. And when life interrupted my plans and I thought everything I had built had fallen apart, I didn't realize that I was simply being invited into the next chapter of my career. None of those lessons made sense while I was living them.
They only make sense now because enough time has passed for me to look back and connect the dots. And you know, maybe that's true for you too. Maybe you're in one of those seasons where you're trying to make sense of something that simply doesn't make sense yet. Or maybe you're wondering whether you're good enough. Or maybe you're wondering whether you should take another class or change directions or raise your prices or change jobs or maybe even stay in massage therapy. And those are all questions I've asked myself throughout my career. What I've learned is that we don't always need the answer immediately.
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And sometimes we really need to just ask a better question. Because I found that better questions lead us toward better thinking, and better thinking has a, and I want you to listen to this, better thinking has a way of steering the direction of our careers. If there's one thing I hope you remember from today's conversation, it's this. Don't mistake confusion for failure. Sometimes confusion simply means you're standing between the therapist you've been.
And the therapist you're becoming, and no one has shown you yet how those two versions of yourself fit together. I want you to give yourself permission to be curious before you're critical and harsh with yourself. I want you to give yourself permission to grow before you expect yourself to have everything figured out. And I want you to give yourself permission to believe that this profession has more to teach you than just techniques alone. When I look back over my career, I know.
That the most valuable things I learned were not found in a textbook. They were found in the relationships with my clients. They were found in really hard, difficult cases. They were found in ideas that didn't work, businesses that didn't turn out the way I thought they would. All these seasons of disappointment, all these times of rebuilding, and the questions that didn't always have answers. Every one of those experiences shaped the therapist I became and
Every one of those experiences are shaping the teacher I'm becoming. And every one of those experiences was teaching me how to become the kind of professional that maybe I didn't know I wanted to be, but I do want to be. As I wrap up today's conversation, I guess there's one more thing I'd like you to know. People sometimes ask me why I spend so much time creating podcasts, writing classes, coaching therapists, and continuing to teach after all of these years. And the answer is actually pretty simple.
I actually care deeply about this profession and the people in it. We are needed in this world. I believe massage is a missing piece, not in just healthcare, but in just living well. And I believe what we offer those we serve is sometimes the only thing that can help them heal. And I believe in each one of you listening today. Massage therapy has given me an incredible life. It has most definitely challenged me and humbled me.
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And frustrated me and inspired me and introduced me to some of the most remarkable people I've ever known. And I honestly can't imagine my life without it. The skill that I have developed in my hands is something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. But I've also watched far too many good therapists leave this profession, not because they weren't talented, but because somewhere along the way, it just stopped making sense of what was happening in their careers.
Most of them lost confidence and direction and they all lost hope. Sometimes they just simply lost sight of why they started into this profession in the first place. And I think that's one of the gaps I can fill. Massage School gives us a wonderful beginning, but life teaches us the rest. Somewhere between those two is where many therapists struggle, and I want to help build that bridge. Not by telling you exactly what your career should look like.
Because I don't think there's one right path. I want to help you think clearly enough to discover the path that's right for you. Success doesn't look the same for everyone. For some people, it's owning a busy practice, and for others, it's working three days a week so they have more time with their family. For some, it's specializing. For some, it's teaching. And for some, it's simply waking up every morning excited to go to work. Those are all successful careers. What matters is that your career reflects who you're becoming.
And if these conversations, Amy's little podcast, can help even one therapist stay in the profession they love and build a career they're proud of and one that takes care of them back, or even find the confidence to take the next step they've been afraid to take, then every podcast and every lesson and every hour I spend putting into it has been worth it. And I hope that's what we're building together. So thank you for spending part of your day with me.
Next week, I'd like to share one of the biggest things curiosity ever gave me. For the last two years, you've heard me mention PPS from time to time, but I've never really put a podcast together and taught you what it is or why it's become such an important part of my life's work. I just simply wasn't ready to offer it. I was rebuilding it for one, but I'm not sure I was ready to share it. And something kind of held me back. But I feel like it's finally time to start teaching what I know.
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A little bit at a time. And the first thing I'm going to teach you is pain patterns and solutions, PPS, isn't really about muscles. It's about understanding inflammation through the tissue it leaves behind and that scar tissue. And then learning how changing that tissue is actually what changes pain. I hope you'll join me as we begin all of these fun conversations together. Believe me, you're going to ask a lot of questions, but it'll be good because that's how we grow. Until then.
Keep learning, keep asking questions, and keep becoming the therapist you're meant to be.
Amy Bradley Radford (50:40.472)
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 amibradleyradford.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.
