Amy Bradley Radford (00:02.594)
Welcome to Massage Business Success. I'm Amy Bradley Radford, and this is the podcast for massage therapists who want to grow their business, strengthen their skills, and create a career they love. Let's get started.
Well welcome to the Massage Business Success Podcast. Today I want to do something just a little bit different. I feel like I say that a lot, but today is a little bit different. Normally we spend our time talking about referrals or pricing or repeat clientele or some aspect of building a massage business, but today I thought it might be interesting to tell you where all of these ideas actually came from. Over the years I've had people ask me, Amy, how did you become a business coach? How did you become a massage business coach?
And every time someone asks me that question, I kind of laugh because the truth is I never expected to become a coach. And it really wasn't a goal I had for my career. I never sat down and thought, you know what, I want a coach massage therapist. My plan was to teach. I love teaching. I love taking something that feels complicated and helping people understand it in a way that suddenly makes it feel simple and doable. And whether it's teaching massage or developing continuing education classes or standing in front of a classroom.
That's where I've always felt like it's home to me. So in 2015, something happened that added an entirely new direction to my career and put more on my resume without me ever really realizing it at the time. A massage therapist who owned a multi therapist employee practice had attended one of my classes, my hands on classes, and after the class, she asked me if I would help her with her business. Now, today we probably call that coaching, but back then I didn't think of myself as a
business coach. I didn't have a coaching program. I didn't have a coaching package. I hadn't been trained to be a coach. And honestly I wasn't even sure what a business coach really did because I had never worked with one. I just knew somebody needed help and I thought maybe I had enough experience that I could help them think through whatever they were struggling with. So I said, sure, let's give it a try.
Amy Bradley Radford (02:04.598)
And looking back, I thought it would just be one conversation. Instead, it became another coaching call and then another coaching call and then another coaching call. And before I knew it, coaching had started to become part of my life. And the more people that found out I coached asked me to be their coach. What's interesting is that I don't think people were coming to me because they wanted a coach. I think they were coming because they wanted perspective. They wanted someone who had already walked through a lot of the challenges they were facing, and they also wanted someone who could help them sort through up.
all of these ideas that were swirling around in their head and figure out what was really important right now. I think they wanted someone to bounce ideas off of or they wanted the answers before they had to struggle more to figure out what they were. And as those conversations continued over the years, I started noticing something that completely changed the way I thought about teaching business. Business and business problems, they have patterns just like bodywork does. And at first every therapist I worked with seemed a little different.
They lived in different towns. They had different personalities and goals and schedules and practices. And from the outside, every business kind of looked a little unique. But the longer I coached, I realized something really interesting. And that the businesses were different, but the questions were all the same. One therapist was worried about raising their prices. Another therapist was struggling with repeat clients. Someone else wanted to leave an employee position and open a practice. Another therapist felt completely overwhelmed because they had so many ideas they didn't know where to begin.
And the stories were always different. But underneath those stories, I kept seeing the same patterns. And if you've listened to me teach for very long, you already know I love patterns. I look for patterns in things. I think that's part of my ADHD really. But whether I'm talking about pain patterns, scar tissue, or business, my brain has always wanted to understand how things connect.
And I just don't want to know what works. I want to know why it works. I want to know how one decision affects the next decision and how all those little decisions eventually create either a business that's either feeling really exhausting to you or one that's really fun and actually supports the life you want to live. I didn't realize it at the time, but those coaching conversations, those coaching calls were beginning to organize the way I thought about business.
Amy Bradley Radford (04:17.154)
They were planting the seeds for everything that would eventually become this podcast and eventually become what I now call the massage business method. And that's really the story I want to tell you today. Because if you've ever wondered where these podcast ideas come from and why I teach the way I do, or why I decided to completely rebuild my newest business class, which we're going to talk about, it all started with one massage therapist asking a simple question and hey Amy, would you help me? I have a question.
So as those coaching calls became a more regular part of my work, I settled into a rhythm that felt very familiar to me. Even though we weren't talking about muscles or pain patterns, I realized I was approaching those conversations the same way I had approached massage therapy for years. I listened first and then I asked some questions. And I tried to understand what each person was seeing before I decided what I thought they needed to do next. And the interesting part is that I never sat down and said, hey, this is my coaching process and this is what I want you to do.
I didn't have a process, at least I didn't think I had a process. I just had some classes and some ideas. And so I simply listened and waited for them to tell me where we could start making positive changes in their business. And after working with a few successful coaching clients, I started noticing a pattern. More often than not, the very first thing we ended up working on was changing their schedule. These were clients who had put in their time, as I called it.
They had given everything they could to make their little business successful. They had worked most evenings and weekends. Sometimes they had even worked a second job until their massage business could support them completely. But now that they had finally quote unquote arrived at a full schedule, they wanted their life back. They didn't want to work evenings and weekends for the rest of their career. In fact, it wasn't massage that was burning them out. It was spending so much energy wishing their schedule looked different that was burning them out.
And they had no idea how to get their time back. And you know what's amazing is that these people I talked to, every single one of them worried that if they made any changes to their schedule, they would lose their clients and lose their income and have to go back to where they were and have to start finding clients again. So the very first thing we did was stop all that brain chatter, everything that was going on inside. And I asked one simple question. If you could redesign your schedule, what would it look like?
Amy Bradley Radford (06:34.966)
And I gave them permission to dream, and I mean really dream. And not dream while worrying about which client wouldn't fit into that schedule. I just asked them to dream. I asked them to identify everything they wanted to change to better support their personal life first and their business second. And once we did that, then I would walk them through designing a schedule that actually matched the life they wanted to live.
And then we would start plugging clients into that new schedule where they knew they could fit. You know your clients, you know where they can fit into your schedule. And so we would just take them and start plunking them into these time slots. And you know, typically about 50 to 60% of those clients could be moved around very easily. And some never even had an appointment change at all. And then we would make a list of clients who really needed evening or weekend appointments.
And usually there were somewhere between eight to ten people that really had to have these time slots. And then I would ask my coaching client, if you kept just one evening a week, would that be enough to accommodate most of these clients? And you know what? Most of the time it was. And by the end of this process that we would walk through, and there was a lot of times that, you know, because most of my coaching calls are on Zoom. There are a few that I do live and in person in my town, but
I would actually pull up an Excel spreadsheet and I would sit there and design this while we were talking. And so at the end of our call, I would just take a screenshot or I'd send that file and then they had their schedule in front of them. So I actually walked through this process with them. And most of the time, by the end of the process, these therapists only had four to six clients that they actually needed to have a conversation with about the schedule change.
And both my client and I learned a really valuable lesson with this. This problem that we're talking about is so much bigger in our head than it is in real life. It just feels really big. And you don't necessarily need a different business. Sometimes you just need to have someone help walk you through the change to know how you're going to get there. Some of my clients decided to keep two late evenings each week for a while. That gave them time to slowly adapt and ease into the schedule they really wanted.
Amy Bradley Radford (08:44.428)
And they would make a few changes, settle in, and then make a few more. And that allowed them to transition clients or figure out what clients need or maybe even shift their schedule just a little more so that things worked out the way they needed to. Some people wanted small changes. And then other clients jumped in with both feet and they let their clients know they were no longer offering evening or weekend appointments.
And they just bit the bullet, lost a few clients, referred those clients to other therapists, and immediately started like referral programs into their current clientele and just picked up the slack and kept going. For them, the time freedom that they gained far outweighed the risk of finding a few new clients. And they were happy again and they loved their work again and they felt reinspired in their businesses. And that's when something else started happening. Once they got their schedule where they wanted it.
The next question naturally became, okay, Amy, now how do I earn more? And after that came tracking money and appointments. And in this segment of working with my coaching clients, you have to learn to be honest with yourself about how many appointment times you let go unfulfilled, or you just let go because you don't really want to worry about it. Or it's like, phew, I finally get a break. Or how many
Cash paying clients never really made it into the bookkeeping the way they should have, and at the end of the month, for some reason you don't have as much money. We had to really be honest about all of these things. And learning to make sure that your money was actually working for your life instead of simply disappearing is huge in our field. And I could go on and on, but what started out as changing business hours eventually became cleaning up almost every part of my clients' businesses. It might have been different.
phases for different people, but we eventually went through all the same things. And the more therapists I worked with, the more I realized I was just hearing the same questions, just at different stages. So that's when I realized that massage businesses don't actually grow because someone finds the perfect marketing strategy or the perfect pricing formula. They grow because the therapist learns to solve the right problem at the right time. That's such a different way of thinking than I have ever been taught, but that's actually how it works.
Amy Bradley Radford (10:54.348)
And you know, most business advice, and I would imagine working with a different, you know, business coach, but most business advice starts with the solution. Like this is what I'm going to tell you to do. You need to raise your prices and market more and find your niche or post on social media more or build an email list. And you know, all of those things can be really valuable, but none of them are universally the right step. The right step depends on where you are today.
If someone's trying to solve a problem that they haven't actually reached yet, they often become frustrated because the advice doesn't seem to work. And it's not because the advice is wrong, but because it belongs to a different stage of growth. And I think that's what happened for me starting right from the beginning. I wanted to help massage therapists build a better business. So I listened first. And then when we really uncovered the problem, we started to find the solution for it.
And you know, looking back, I think each of these people taught me how our specific type of business actually grows. Working with each coaching client this way taught me the systems that help solopreneur massage therapists become as successful as they can be all by themselves. And that is my niche market, solopreneur, one man band, as I call it, the individual that wants to work for themselves and no one else.
And wants to be as successful as they possibly can be. And you know, in order for that one person business to be successful, there has to be a lot of systems in place and there's got to be an understanding of where you're going and why. And I think what all of these coaching clients have taught me is that growth isn't random. It's not random at all. There is a rhythm to business this way. That it has sequences that has to go through. And when you build one skill,
That naturally allows you to build the next one. And when you solve one problem, suddenly a new one shows up that you have to turn around and solve. And as your business changes, the questions change. And the process of growth keeps moving forward. In fact, it never stops. And once you begin to see that rhythm, you don't unsee it. And neither did I. And that's also when that phrase began forming in my mind that many of you have heard me say a lot on this podcast, and that's every business is the same but different.
Amy Bradley Radford (13:12.204)
And what I mean by that isn't that every therapist should build the same practice. That's far from it. I mean that underneath all of our individual stories, there are principles that almost all successful massage businesses eventually learn. And we may encounter them in different orders or go through them at different speeds, or they kind of express themselves in a little bit of a different way, but the principles themselves remain remarkably consistent.
And once I could finally see those patterns clearly, another question followed for me. And if I was having these same conversations over and over again with one therapist at a time, was there a way to have that conversation with a lot more people at the same time? And that's what eventually led me to this podcast. Once I started recognizing that I was having many of the same conversations over and over, I naturally turned everything I knew into a class.
And that's when I first built the Maximize Your Massage Business class. It was a collection of all of these questions that I had worked through as a business coach along with some of the best solutions that we, my clients and I, had come up with together and tried and came back to and tried again until the system worked. And that class was three hours of topics that basically answered the most common business questions I was hearing. It gave people lots of solutions to a lot of different problems.
Some of those problems were connected and some were not. But I had put together everything I had actually seen work. And if you know me, and I I say this a lot more now, you know I believe in universal principles. I only teach what I have seen work. So my hope was simply that it would make a difference for people. But I'll tell you something interesting that happened. As I started coaching more and more therapists over a longer period of time, these were my coaching clients that I had worked years with. Our conversations began getting deeper.
And there was a natural refinement that started taking place. I found myself organizing these business solutions that we were talking about into categories. And then when someone came to me with a particular area that they were struggling with, I already had a place to begin with them. And looking back now, even in the last year, I think I actually started overwhelming some of my coaching clients because I was giving them so much information. I could see where this was going. I could see the bigger picture.
Amy Bradley Radford (15:32.12)
But they weren't ready to see that picture with me. And they would come to me with one area of concern and I could immediately see ten other things that would eventually become important. So I was trying to give them all of this information and it was too much. And I had so many ideas and so many possible solutions that I wanted to help all of them with. And eventually I realized I had to back off just a little bit. And I learned that I had to stay with what they needed today.
Instead of trying to solve all their problems at once that they couldn't see yet but I knew was coming. We have to let those future challenges naturally appear and work on them as they appear. So I was exceeding expectations to the point of overwhelming people. And I know that sounds funny, but you can't ask someone to run when they're barely learning to walk. And I realized at that time that part of the reason I was giving so much is because I wanted to teach and talk.
I wanted to do more. I wanted to offer more. It's just my personality. And so it was about that same time that my friend Paige asked me when I was finally going to start talking publicly about all of these business topics. She was actually in my first episode and she's been in marketing for years and is also a massage therapist on the side. I met her in one of my hands-on classes and she has stuck to me like glue ever since, in a really good way. She has pushed me, she's pushed me out of my shell.
and challenged me to do new things in ways that I never thought I would, like the podcast. And I have appreciated every giant push she's given me and I know she's listening to this, so. Paige, we're in it for the long haul, girl. And I want to thank you for everything you've done for me. She told me that running a podcast would be a great way to meet more coaching clients, but even more importantly, it would allow me to help massage therapists who couldn't necessarily afford my services or a business coach in general, but still really needed some guidance. And
People I had no idea what I was doing, but of course that's never really stopped me before. So I knew somebody who had a podcast studio in their office that they used every once in a while. So I asked her if I could borrow it and record a few sessions. And you know, that's how the rest of the story went. Now I have a podcast area inside my home and here we are podcasting every week. So what I decided to do was simply start talking about the topics that were inside the Maximize Your Massage Business class.
Amy Bradley Radford (17:51.446)
Along with a few other conversations I found myself having with therapists all the time. These are things like how to raise your prices or how to define your value or how to redesign your schedule or how to track your money better or how to create systems in your office or how to track taxes better or clients better or how to find clients or how to get repeat clients or how to build a successful business as a solopreneur and how to love what you do again. And you know what I didn't expect was what happened next. As I prepared each episode.
I had the opportunity to dive deeply into one topic at a time. I could actually slow down and really let my brain think through everything that I had come to understand about that subject. So every time I went to record a podcast, as many of you know, I like to script these things out. I would spend hours breaking down one question and creating 14 to 18 pages of content around it.
And this is a lengthy process. It takes me hours, sometimes six to ten hours of writing. I'm not kidding you because I'm slow. I'm a very slow writer. Chat GPT is amazing. He's helping me a ton. But it takes me time because what comes out of my hands on the keyboard is exactly what I think. So this process gave me the opportunity to really explore how every piece of the Maximize Your Massage Business class fits together. And how each of those ideas connected to the principles.
I was teaching here on the podcast. And these episodes weren't created from theories that I had read somewhere in a book about running a service business. The class and the concepts I talk about every week grew out of those real coaching calls, those real conversations with real massage therapists. I'm just simply sharing what hundreds of massage therapists have collectively taught me about growing a business. What I had no idea about was that sitting down in front of a microphone every other week and now every week.
was about to change the way I thought about business and business systems. Because this podcast hasn't just helped organize ideas for other people, it's been organizing them for me. It helped me see that there was a system inside of this all along. I just hadn't seen the whole picture yet. And in many ways, this podcast has just been documenting my own journey as a solopreneur also.
Amy Bradley Radford (20:10.336)
Over the past two years, I've heard from listeners who tell me an episode answered a question they'd been really struggling with or helped them look at their businesses just enough differently that it gave them that next step. And I love hearing those stories. It has always been one of the greatest rewards of doing this podcast because that's exactly what I hoped these conversations would become. A place where massage therapists could think through their business without feeling like they had to have everything figured out first. And you know, it's also brought me coaching clients.
from all over the world. And that really surprised me. And I have to admit, keeping all the time zones straight has been a little alarming at times. But I have absolutely loved every minute of it. And I can say that massage therapists struggle with the same thing all over the world. It's amazing how it's all related. But what I didn't expect was what the podcast was doing for me. When you're coaching someone you are completely focused on that one person sitting in front of you on the computer and you're listening carefully to what they're saying.
You're asking questions to draw the information out of them, kind of like doing a health history in your massage office, and then trying to understand where they are before deciding where they need to go next. And then that session ends. And then another therapist schedules a coaching call. And then your attention shifts to another story. And I make detailed notes and goals for every one of my coaching clients. And then over the years I started adding those ideas to an ever-growing document of business solutions and observations.
But I only spent so much time with each set of notes. And podcasting is very different. Podcasting gave me something, coaching never could. It gave me a lot of time to reflect, not just on that one person and their needs or their goals or the next session we're gonna work with and what we're gonna catch up on, but on all of them together at the same time. It brought all of those pieces together. And as I began preparing for each episode
I would find myself pulling ideas from classes I taught years before, remembering conversations with coaching clients, thinking about mistakes I'd made in my own practice, and connecting them in ways that I had never taken the time to do before. Because all of these experiences just kind of blended together, and they were simply part of 30 years of teaching, practicing, coaching, and learning. But once I started laying them down side by side, I realized that all of these pieces kind of fit together.
Amy Bradley Radford (22:29.708)
They were connected. And you know, this was really cool to see this come together. I've spent most of my career creating continuing education classes one topic at a time. And one class might focus on referrals and another's on repeat clientele and another on pricing or scheduling. I even have ethics classes I created to solve problems for business owners who employed massage therapists. Things like how to professionally communicate, how to talk right at the massage table.
Or time contracts, which is if somebody pays for 60 minutes, you don't do 70 or 50. There are time contracts with you, boundaries and time management. So my ethics classes solved one specific problem. Each class I created solved an important problem in the massage therapy world. But podcasting allowed me to take a step back and look at how all those problems and how all the solutions that I created with those classes fit together instead of looking at one piece at a time.
And I have started to see the relationships between all of these concepts that I just really haven't fully appreciated before. And you know, a conversation about pricing with a coaching client almost always depends on the value someone believed they were creating. And their value influenced retention. And retention affected referrals. And referrals influenced how consistently someone could fill their schedule.
And a full schedule created opportunities to make different decisions, again, about pricing and boundaries, and eventually the kind of life they wanted their business to support. And I'd been teaching these concepts for years. What was new was seeing how closely they all depended on one another. And then I started noticing that when one area changed, it naturally started changing in another area. And it almost always seemed to kind of follow this little path. So instead of thinking about individual business skills, I began thinking about the journey.
therapists move through as they grow. And I realized that what looked like all these separate topics were really just different parts of the same story. And you couldn't always skip ahead to the chapter you wanted. Like if you don't have enough clients, you can't raise your prices. You can't skip ahead to that chapter. Because each stage prepares you for the next one. And I don't think that this particular podcast changed what I believed. It simply made what I believed a lot clearer.
Amy Bradley Radford (24:50.356)
It organized ideas that had been developing over decades and gave them a structure that I could finally see. And every episode became another opportunity to test those ideas and refine them and ask myself if they were still true after years of coaching and teaching and listening. And you know, I often tell my PPS students that one of the greatest gifts of teaching is that your students continue to educate you. Every single body that you work on continues to educate you.
And every question forces you to look at your own understanding just a little more carefully. And sometimes looking at it confirms what you've always believed, and other times it helps you see something you hadn't recognized before. And that's what the podcast did for me. Each episode has been an opportunity to slow down, which is really hard for me, but to slow down long enough to understand not just what I was teaching, but why I believed it was a true principle in the first place. And after enough
Episodes, because we're gonna be coming up on two years here, people. Something became impossible to ignore. I wasn't just recording all of these individual lessons anymore. I was teaching again. And I really want to teach more. And I love getting on this little microphone every week and talking. It is the highlight of my week. So as I was putting this podcast together, I also realized something that I hadn't put into words before.
I keep saying that coaching taught me how massage businesses grow and those conversations changed me. They helped me see patterns that I probably would have never recognized if I had only been looking at my own practice. But if I'm really honest, I'm usually pretty honest. I think this story started much, much earlier than coaching. Every class I've ever written started out because of a problem. And it wasn't somebody else's problem, it was my problem. Somewhere in my practice I hit a wall.
I couldn't figure something out. Maybe it was referrals. I remember in the very beginning, it was like my brain was blank. Like how do I get people on my table? And you know, maybe it's getting people to come back consistently for you. And then it was trying to understand why I could be so busy and not have enough money. And I think one of the greatest lessons I ever learned was how to charge my worth.
Amy Bradley Radford (27:09.922)
And to understand that worth and how following through with that gut answer of what I knew I was worth created the most joy I've ever felt in my career. Those two are so tied together. Understanding your value and charging what you're worth, man, they are deeply embedded into whether or not you stay at the table for the rest of your life. And whatever it happened to be, I remember the frustration of not knowing the answer and not knowing who to ask. And so
I went looking for answers on my own. And sometimes people could answer my questions. Sometimes I'd talk to my dad about business stuff, but you know, my business and his business were very different. And sometimes I found answers quickly, and sometimes it took months or years. But when I finally found something that genuinely changed my practice, that is usually what I taught. And so then when I became an instructor and I watched my students struggle with many of those exact same problems that I had had, I decided
I would make a class out of it. I would teach about it. In schools or as a continued education person, I would put a class together that helped explain what I understood about it and then what I did or what someone else did that helped them. And you know, looking back, I don't think I was just creating content. You know, I actually documented my journey through teaching classes. Everything I talk about that identifies with you in your business, I went through it in my business. And every class I offer, I hope.
becomes the solution to a problem. And it's the solution to the problem I live through or wrestled with or eventually understood well enough to help someone else through it. So years of coaching gave me perspective and now these years of podcasting have given me time to reflect on all of this. And you know what I've come to understand is that there is a method to success in the massage therapy field or really any service based business. You never arrive at this place where everything just magically works and you make money.
It just doesn't work that way. Sorry to burst your bubble, but there it is. There isn't some place you finally get to with your business and your income that you get to sit back and coast. It is a constantly growing process with several moving pieces that you as the owner orchestrate and practice at all at the same time. Your business is a living thing and it constantly needs fed and tended to. You know, I had a guy tell me one time.
Amy Bradley Radford (29:31.456)
that I was coaching and he goes, I feel like I just gave birth to a dragon. And that's what he called his business. And now I have to feed it. And it wants more and more and more. And it doesn't have to be that way, but it does constantly need Fed intended to. And there are responsibilities that will always be yours and only yours. And you must always manage them. And how you manage yourself within those processes is what allows you to evolve or not evolve over time.
There is something I call the massage business method that has been evolving from all of this because it is the culmination of all of these conversations and classes and coaching and processes that have all started coming together into one big picture. One big process that if you could see it from the beginning of your career, you would know where you were going and why. You would have a map that could guide you. You could have solutions to problems when they arrived because they will arrive.
And you can have systems to put into place to prevent you from having to clean up all these processes and problems later. Coaching. Coaching was me teaching people how to clean up their businesses in a way that their business kept running, but they could create change at the same time. They still had to nurture it and tend it and feed it and manage it. But helping them do that is why they kept coming back. What if you were able to choose what your business did instead of wondering how in the hell to run it?
I've always said there are systems to have in place, but when all those systems are in place, there is a method that has been created. And that method allows you to be as successful as you choose to be. I wish I could go back to the therapist I was over 30 years ago and have someone hand me this map. I think it would have profoundly changed some years of really hard struggle for me. And you know what's funny? This is what's really funny. Over 25 years ago,
I bought the domain name Massage Business Methods dot com and for years it was the home of my blog. I used to have a blog. I used to write about articles about PPS and business and ethics, and those articles I wrote were my classes. And so this podcast kind of had its infancy on that blog. And I didn't spell things right, and I struggled with all kinds of things because I didn't have chat GPT to fix all my writing all those years ago. But you know, it didn't detour Massage Magazine reaching out
Amy Bradley Radford (31:58.668)
Me to ask me who to write for them because that's where they found me. So somewhere in the back of my mind, apparently, I already believed there was a massage business method. I just didn't understand exactly what that meant yet. I just thought it was a cool name. And back then, massage business methods was simply a collection of articles and classes. But today, today it means something completely different. I see it as a way of understanding this entire journey of building a massage business from your first client to a full schedule.
From wondering if you're good enough to knowing the value you bring, and from working harder to working smarter. The name never changed. My understanding of this name has changed. And that's what this entire podcast episode has really been about. I thought I was creating classes. I thought I was recording a podcast. I thought I was helping massage therapists solve one problem at a time. And looking back, I was uncovering something a lot bigger. I was learning how massage businesses actually grow and the system behind them.
So if you've been listening today and found yourself thinking, uh-huh, Amy, this is exactly where I am, then I hope this episode brings some encouragement to you because I know what it's like to be standing in the middle of this journey wondering how you're going to get where you need to be or what's coming next or how to even stay in this business for the long haul. You know, I've had the privilege of standing beside hundreds of other massage therapists as they've walked through those same questions. So if I can shorten the journey for you.
If I can help you avoid even a few of the mistakes that took me years to figure out, if I can help you in this field, then every class I've written, every article I've published, every coaching conversation I've had, and every episode of this podcast has been worth it. So now I want to tell you that I recently rebuilt the Maximize Your Massage Business class, like last week. And I've known that this class needed not just an update, but a complete rebuild for a while now, like three years I have known that it needed this.
But I also knew that it was probably more work than I wanted to put in right at the moment. It was gonna take a lot of work. And so I kind of put it off until I could no longer put it off anymore. I wouldn't even advertise this class for sale on my website because I knew it was such a hodgepodge of answers from what I knew it needed to become. So a couple of weeks ago I bit the bullet and started rebuilding that three-hour class. And you wanna guess how many hours went into that three-hour class? Ten? Twenty?
Amy Bradley Radford (34:22.466)
Forty? Fifty? Nope. Right now we're at 68 hours in counting. I have put 68 hours into developing this class. Why? I have asked myself this question. Why has it taken so long to put this class together? It's a three-hour class. Why has it taken me almost 70 hours so far? And the reason why is because I wanted it to be clear and concise and to feel like I was sitting down coaching you.
And walking you through how to design your business and implement that design. And I wanted you to really think through things and come up with a full plan, the method written out for you to follow. So this class has a workbook, and I fully expect someone taking the class to use it as their guide. I want you to walk away from this class with this workbook.
And here it is, it's all listed out before you. Everything that you need to do, each of those sections and systems that need to be implemented to create the method we're talking about, all are laid out for you. And you can answer your own questions inside your own business, and then the answers are in front of you. And it took a lot of thinking. My brain hurt for a few days, but it took a lot to bring all of that together to put into something that my hope is.
That when you take the class and you have this workbook, you have your answers in front of you. And I also hope that it's not overwhelming. Ha ha, because it might be, but it's not meant to be. It's meant to show you how all of these pieces, as you create the change, create the system and the method that makes your business run. And someday I want all of this to become a book. That might have been where some of the 68 hour plus hours went. Also, book chapters. And who knows? Who knows what else I'll come up with.
You never know with me, but I have to tell you, and I'm allowed to say this, I am really proud of myself. How often do we get to say that about ourselves? And I'm saying it on a podcast that a lot of people get to hear. I know what I put into this. I know how hard I worked. Is it perfect? No, nothing is ever perfect. I forgot to eat for days. And years from now, I really believe that this will be a staple in business training for massage therapists. Because it's the map I wish someone had placed in my hands when I was just beginning.
Amy Bradley Radford (36:38.944)
So if you're interested in that class, go check it out. It's on my website, amybradleradford.com. Before we wrap up today, I want to let you know where we're headed next. One of the things I've realized over the past couple years is that this podcast has become my place to express myself and teach again. And in many ways, for me, just because of who I am, it started to become a curriculum. And when it became a curriculum, that's when it became a weekly podcast.
This isn't the kind of curriculum you experience in massage school where you're learning anatomy and physiology and pathology and technique. It's a place where I'm putting together a lesson each week and bringing it to the people I want to help and teach. However, you are no longer in the middle of massage school. You're in the middle of life school as a massage therapist. You're seeing clients, you're trying to build and maintain a practice and try and keep everything rolling all at the same time. And you know what? No one handed you a textbook.
When you got out of school on how to earn trust or build a loyal clientele or make good business decisions or increase your income without burning yourself out or navigate the challenges that come with spending years and years and years in this profession. Most of us learn those lessons one experience at a time. And that's exactly how I learned them. But I decided six months or so ago that I wanted to bridge that gap for those of you listening. I mean, why not? Why can't I? Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't there be some answers?
So I decided to turn my podcast into monthly themes and really talk deeply and from a couple different directions around that, about the things we all need to understand in the massage field and in our businesses. So every month is going to have a theme. And next month's theme will be leadership and growth. So we'll be talking about what it really means to be the CEO of your own practice, ownership, ownership of your own practice.
And what leadership skills mean in your massage practice and why they're important. And then I'd also like to dive into when it makes sense to begin thinking about hiring another therapist or becoming a mentor. And this is a favorite topic of mine. We could just talk a lot about it because I have a lot of opinions about that one. And then I want to talk about what growth systems create more freedom for you. So
Amy Bradley Radford (38:54.328)
There's a lot of growth, there's a lot of leadership, there's a lot of leadership with yourself in your own business. But we're gonna we're gonna really take a deep dive into these. And then I think there's five Mondays in August, and so you get an Amy's Corner, and an Amy's Corner is just a fun little podcast about stories from Amy's world and with some valuable lessons inside all of that. All of these conversations, believe me, they'll naturally build on everything else we've been talking about.
this month and the month before, but I would really like to have some specific direction moving forward. So if you're finding value in these episodes, I'm inviting you to stay on this journey with me. Think of me as your teacher, think of me as your mentor. Because while I hope I'm making a difference for everybody, it's been so much fun for me so far. Stressful at times to get everything done on time, but hey, you know, I'm pretty human. I am learning how to get those systems in place to have these done on time. So
This isn't a podcast where you have to listen in order, but if you do, you'll start seeing the same thing I eventually saw in my coaching practice, and that each conversation builds on the next one before it. And each lesson prepares you for the next one. And each monthly theme helps you address and solidify one aspect of your business into something more successful. And over time, I think it just becomes a way of thinking about massage, not just as a business or a way to make income, but as a career. A career that you can stay in.
Lifelong. I wished I'd had someone to mentor me when I graduated massage school. My hope is that this podcast can be a mentor for you. I'll see you next Monday. Have an amazing week. Thanks for spending part of your day with me. If today's episode helped you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with another massage therapist. To learn more about today's topic, explore continuing education, coaching, and free resources, visit Amy Bradleyradford.com.
And until next time, keep building the business and the career you love.
