Amy Bradley Radford (00:02.616)
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.
Hi there and welcome back to the podcast. So one of the books I've been listening to recently is The E Myth by Michael Gerber. In the book, he talks about three different roles that exist inside every small business owner: the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. You know, and as I listened, I found myself smiling because although I use different language, I've been teaching a very similar idea for years. I've always described it as wearing different hats.
Some days I'm the massage therapist, and then some days I'm the marketer, and then sometimes I'm the bookkeeper, and sometimes I'm the podcaster, and sometimes I'm creating content, some days I'm coaching, some days I'm building a website, you know, and every once in a while I have to intentionally put on this CEO hat and step back to look at the business itself. That idea stayed with me because I realized something.
The people I coach don't usually struggle because they aren't good massage therapists. In fact, most of them are excellent therapists. They're very caring and hardworking and very skilled and very committed to their clients. What they're struggling with has little to do with their ability to give a great massage. What they're struggling with is learning how to think like the owner of their business. And those are two completely different jobs. That's why I named this podcast Massage, Business, Success.
They're two separate pieces of what it is you have to create when you are a solopreneur and a massage therapist. And I think that's one of the biggest surprises people experience when they decide to work for themselves. We spend years learning how to be great employees. We learn how to show up on time and complete our work and be dependable, solve the problems in front of us, and earn a paycheck. That's the model of work most of us grow up with. Then one day we decide to open a business and without even realizing it,
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We recreate the exact same model. We simply become employees inside a business that we just happen to own. And now the difference is not only are we the employee, we are the owner at the same time. And we're not doing anything wrong. The problem is that we're trying to build a business using the only model of work we've ever known. But for me, that looked a little different as I was growing up. My dad was an entrepreneur and he owned a business.
And although I didn't understand it as a kid, I watched something every day that I now realize many people never had the opportunity to see. I watched someone carry the weight of ownership. And I tell people all the time our conversations at the dinner table were actually very different than probably your conversation at the dinner table because we talked about responsibilities and jobs and what it took for the whole family to help that be successful.
And what we had to do as a family to support him and his business to provide for us. And you know, I saw work begin long before the business opened and continue long after everyone else had gone home, and I thought that was normal. And our family vacations were planned around what the business needed, or wherever the business was doing a job that was included in the family vacation because it paid for some of the mileage and the fuel and all of those things that went along with it.
And I watched family decisions connected to business decisions because those two worlds, they were never really separate. The business wasn't something you simply left at the office. It was part of the life we all lived. And looking back now, I realized I wasn't just watching someone work hard, I was actually watching someone think differently. So as a kid I probably didn't appreciate it, but as a business owner now, I understand it completely differently. Because ownership carries both incredible freedom and
An incredible weight. And I love that word weight. Because I think every business owner knows exactly what that feels like. It's the weight of knowing no one else is coming to build this business for you. It's also the weight of making decisions when there isn't a manager to ask, and it's the weight of realizing that if something needs attention, it begins and ends with you. And here's what I want to say before we go any further. That weight isn't something to fear, but it is something to understand.
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Because once you understand it, you stop expecting your business to behave like a job and you begin accepting that your role is very different now. You're no longer just responsible for doing the work. You're responsible for building something that can continue serving people long after today's appointments are over. And that's what today's episode is really about. It isn't about becoming a CEO with a fancy corner office or title.
It's about learning to think like the person responsible for the future of your business. Because whether you've thought about it this way or not, you're already the CEO. The only question is whether you've been wearing that hat. So what does that actually look like? If we're already the CEO of our business, why is it so difficult to think that way? I honestly don't think it's because we're unwilling. I think it's because we naturally spend our time doing the part of the business we know best.
Every one of us has responsibilities that feel very comfortable and familiar. And then there are responsibilities we'd rather avoid because they don't come as naturally or as simply, or we just really don't enjoy them. I don't enjoy bookkeeping, but it is a necessary part of running a business. And over time we begin putting more and more and more of our energy into the areas where we feel confident while the other parts of the business wait for, you know, when I have time. I'll get to that.
The interesting thing is businesses don't really grow because we're excellent at one job. They grow because little by little we're willing to step into all of the jobs the business needs from us. Some days that's taking great care of our clients. Other days it's returning phone calls and answering text messages in a timely manner, or reviewing finances, or improving our systems, or planning marketing, writing newsletters, looking at our schedule, or maybe just sitting down for an hour with a notebook together.
Get that stuff out of your head so you know where your business is headed. Those jobs all look different, but every one of them adds to the strength of the business. And for most massage therapists, we would prefer to wear just the therapist hat. And that makes sense because it's the part we love. It's why we chose this profession in the first place. It's the technician that they talk about in the e-myth. We love helping people. We love solving problems. We love seeing someone walk into a treatment room in pain.
Amy Bradley Radford (06:50.356)
And leave feeling better than when they arrived. If I gave you the choice of spending an afternoon with clients or spending an afternoon reconciling your bookkeeping, well, I'm with you. I already know which one you're going to choose. The problem isn't that we love doing massage. The problem is that the therapist hat can become the only hat we wear. Without even realizing it, we begin believing that because we're busy treating clients, we're building a business. But those aren't actually the same thing.
Giving a great massage is one responsibility inside your business. Building the business is another responsibility entirely. If no one intentionally steps back to think about where the business is headed, it simply stays where it is. You're either going forward or going backward. There really isn't any middle ground. And it doesn't suddenly become more organized. Better systems don't magically appear. The client experience has
doesn't improve on its own. Referrals don't come naturally just because we worked really, really hard this week. And I have seen this over and over again. Businesses grow because someone is willing to take a step back, look at the whole picture, and ask a different set of questions. Things like what's working well? What's creating unnecessary stress for me? What keeps showing up over and over again that probably needs a system instead of another reminder. Where am I spending my energy? Where am I wasting?
My energy. And what's the next thing this business needs from me? Those are CEO questions. They're very different from therapist questions because they aren't focused on the client that's on the table today. They are focused on the business that's going to support all of tomorrow's clients. And here's the part that makes ownership different from having a job. No one else is going to ask those questions for you.
No manager is going to stop by your treatment room and remind you that it's time to review your pricing and improve your referral process or clean up your systems or think about where you want your business to be a year from now. If those conversations are going to happen and they're happening with you, you are having a conversation with yourself, they have to happen because you decide they're important enough to have. And I think that's the moment the business owners begin to change. When you understand this piece right here, that's when business changes for you.
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And we don't suddenly become better massage therapists, but we begin seeing ourselves differently. You stop seeing yourself as someone who just performs the massage, and you begin seeing yourself as someone who is building a massage practice. Those two people perform exactly the same massage, but at different times they carry different levels of ownership. And I think that's why the employee habits we're talking about are so common. They're not they're not signs you're failing. They're signs that you're still learning how to think.
Like the person responsible for building the business and not just working inside of it. As I was thinking about this episode, I started asking myself a simple question. If so many self-employed massage therapists are thinking like employees instead of business owners, what does that actually look like? What are the habits that keep us stuck? And these ideas I'm going to talk about, I didn't learn from a book. I've learned from years of experience. They were things I recognized in myself. They were mistakes I made.
as I was building my own business. As I I've put together this list of habits that actually keep us stuck, I'm writing my own down and I'm remembering the things that I did. And I'm talking about how I changed my mind and made different decisions. I'm talking about how I put projects off, believing I was too busy to work on the business, and honestly believing that if I just worked harder at the table, everything would somehow fall into place. And
I I realized looking back, I realized I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I was thinking like an employee inside a business that needed an owner. So I'm gonna walk through some of these habits and I don't want you to hear them as criticism because that's not what they are. And I don't want you to think, no, no, I'm doing something wrong. Instead I just want you to notice. I want you to notice if you recognize yourself or if you've ever caught yourself thinking the same way, because awareness is where change begins.
When I became aware of how I was approaching my job at the table and my business, I was finally able to see, I was finally able to think my way through those problems until I could see how there was momentum that grew out of that thinking. And then I understood the direction I needed to go. So awareness is where change begins. You can't change the habits you don't recognize. And sometimes simply seeing them for what they are.
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Is enough to completely change the way we approach our businesses. So let's start with the first one because I think it's probably the easiest to recognize. So this is employee habit number one. When my last client leaves, my work is finished. That's how exactly most jobs work. You show up, you do your work, you solve the problems in front of you, you do the task, you're done. And when your shift is over, your responsibility ends. Someone else locks up the building, someone else orders supplies, someone else balances the book.
Someone else thinks about next month's marketing or next year's goals or figures out where the money's gonna come in. It's not your responsibility. You just get paid for working there. But when you own a business, your last client leaving doesn't mean the work is finished. It simply means the work changes. That's what I saw with my dad. Because now you need to finish those soap notes. Or there's towels and sheets to wash. And let's be honest, I think massage laundry has a magical ability to reproduce itself overnight.
You think you're finally caught up and somehow there's another pile waiting for you the next morning, and there are supplies to order before you run out, and finances to go over, and phone calls and text messages that need to be returned promptly, and clients who need to schedule appointments or change appointments, or new clients who need a little more of your time before they ever walk through your door. Or maybe you have emails to answer, or marketing to think about, and all of those little decisions that determine whether your business becomes stronger next month than it is today.
You know, those things are easy to think of as interruptions because they aren't why we became massage therapists. We became massage therapists because we wanted to help people, because we wanted to do massage. We enjoy working with clients. We enjoy solving problems with our hands or making people feel better. And sitting down to review numbers or answer emails does not feel as rewarding as helping someone feel better. But something I have come to realize is those things are not interruptions and you can't think of them as interruptions, and you can't put them off.
Because they are your business. One of the most simple changes you can make is to schedule time to wear your CEO hat. I tell people all the time to create a CEO hour every single week, and you are going to protect that hour the same way you protect an appointment with client. You're not going to squeeze it in if you happen to have the time. You're going to put it in your calendar first. Because if you don't create the space for leading your business,
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Your business will always lose to whatever else needs to be done. And here's the way I think about it. During that CEO hour, your client is your future business. That hour deserves the exact same attention, preparation, and respect that you would give to the person walking through your treatment door because the work you do during that hour determines what your business looks like six months from now. And one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself as a business owner is realizing that your work.
doesn't end when your clients leave. Sometimes the most valuable work you do all week happens after the treatment room is quiet and you put that CEO hat on and spend an hour building the business that will support all of your future clients. So employee habit number two, if I need more money, I'll just work overtime. This employee habit is probably the one that took me the longest to recognize in myself because it made so much sense. It's how most of us have been taught to think
our entire lives. If money's tight, you work more. You ask for another shift. You stay late, you pick up some overtime. The equation has always been pretty simple, people. More hours equals more income. And when I first started my business, I don't know that I ever questioned how that worked. I was just it was just what I understood about work. If I wanted my business to make more money, then I needed to work harder. I needed to see more clients. I needed to fill
Every available appointment and if I had a month where expenses were higher than expected, my first thought was I guess I need to squeeze in a few more massages into my schedule. But the problem is massage therapy is not built like most jobs. Our inventory isn't unlimited. We aren't selling products that can be manufactured faster. We aren't running machines another shift, and we aren't asking someone else to stay an extra two hours. Our inventory is ourselves.
It's our hands, it's our body, it's our ability to be completely present with another human being for another hour or ninety minutes at a time, and every single one of us has a ceiling. And that's something I think every massage therapist will eventually figure out. It might happen because your hands start hurting or your shoulders start hurting or your back won't tolerate being at the table as much, or you start breaking down in your muscles and your joints. And it might happen because you realize you're emotionally exhausted.
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And don't have the same energy for your clients that you used to. However, it happens, you come face to face with the reality that your body is not an unlimited resource. And that's when questions have to change. Instead of asking, how can I work more, you have to start asking, how can I make the hours I choose to work more valuable? That was a huge shift for me because I realized something I had never thought about before. As an employee, you are paid for the hours you work.
As a business owner, you're paid for something much bigger than that. You're paid for the business you've built. Now I don't want you to misunderstand me. We absolutely earn our income at the massage table. That's where the money comes in. But the massage table isn't the whole business. The treatment room is where you collect the results of everything else you've invested your time in. The client who is excited to rebook before they leave.
That didn't happen because of the last five minutes of today's appointment. It happened because you intentionally created an experience that made returning feel it was something they wanted to do. And the referral that shows up next week isn't just the result of today's massage. It's the result of the trust you've built, the relationship you've cultivated, and the systems you've put in place to make people excited to tell others about you. A massage practice that steadily grows year after year isn't built only one massage at a time.
It's built one decision at a time. It's built during the hour you spent reviewing your finances instead of avoiding them. I'm talking to myself here. It's built while you're writing the newsletter that keeps you connected to your clients. And it's built while improving your intake forms, refining policies, learning a new skill, planning your marketing, recording a podcast, creating a class, sitting quietly with a notebook, asking yourself, what does this business need from me next?
Those hours don't produce a paycheck immediately, but they are some of the highest value hours you'll ever work. They're the hours that create the business that continues producing paychecks for years to come. And I think that's part of the weight of ownership that surprises people. No one is paying you to build better systems today. No one is paying you to spend an afternoon planning, and no one is paying you to sit down and think strategically about where your business is headed. And yet those are the most valuable.
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Valuable investments you make all week because they determine whether your business survives or whether it grows. And this really fits into what I call the power of the hour. The goal isn't to see as many people as possible. The goal is to create as much value as possible inside every hour you've chosen to work. Because there comes a point, and some of you are here in every massage therapist's career where success is no longer determined by how many hours you can physically work.
It's determined by how well you've built the business that supports those hours. So employee habit number three. I'll get to it tomorrow. I think this employee habit is probably the one I recognize most in myself because it doesn't usually come from laziness. It comes from good intentions mixed with being very overwhelmed. Most business owners don't need someone to tell them what they should be doing because they already know. They know they should probably spend more time looking at their numbers.
or cleaning up their systems or improving their marketing or filing their paperwork, maybe updating some policies that would help clean up some boundary issues, or making sure that monthly newsletter goes out on time. Sometimes it's creating a referral process or maybe tackling that project that's been sitting in the back of your mind for months. The problem usually isn't a lack of ideas, it's figuring out where to begin when all of it feels immediate and important.
And then your day starts and clients begin arriving and someone needs to reschedule and a new client calls with questions before booking and you're running a little behind because someone needed more of your time than you expected. And then again, there's all those notes to finish or laundry waiting to be folded or text messages to answer. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, you're supposed to figure out how to grow your business. And when the day is over, you're exhausted. Not because you weren't productive, because you spent the entire day doing what you needed to do.
You just tell yourself you'll work on the business tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes next week, next week becomes next month. Then one day you realize you've been saying, I really need to get to that for over a year. That's not a motivation problem. It's a leadership problem. And not because you're a poor leader, but because no one ever taught you how to lead yourself through the overwhelming parts of owning a business. You know, one of the biggest things I've learned over the years is that when everything feels important, nothing feels manageable. Am I right? I am
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classically involved in this particular statement every day of my life. Everything feels important and I have to really work at managing it. And when we look at the whole business all at once instead of looking at the next step, the weight of ownership suddenly feels so heavy that the easiest thing to do is put the therapist hat back on because that's the part we already know how to do. And I see this happen in coaching all the time. And in myself too, but and you know, I get asked
what actually happens during a coaching session with people. And I'm I'm a different coach. I think people imagine that I'm handing somebody a long list of things they need to accomplish before we meet up again. And the truth is completely opposite. I spend a lot of time figuring out what actually matters right now to the person I'm working with. And we talk about where they are, where they want to go and what's standing in the way. And then we identify the next few things that will genuinely move their business forward.
And that's usually three goals. Sometimes it's two, sometimes it's four, but most of the time it's three. And three is not a magical number, although sometimes I think it's a magical number, but it's three because it creates enough momentum without being overwhelmed to create the changes in your business that you know you need to do. And when those goals are done, we get to celebrate the progress and then work through whatever new challenges appear, and then we identify the next three goals. And as I was putting this episode together, I thought, you know.
I need to tell you how I coach myself because you can do this for yourself. I do it for myself every week. Every Friday I sit down and I rewrite my list. I always have this list of ongoing tasks. It never ends. Sometimes it's five or six yellow tablets of lists. But at the end of the week, I go through and I make sure I have crossed off everything I have completed. And I sit down and I rewrite that list. And I categorize it into things that need to be done now.
And when things need to be done next week so the next things can be done and it builds on each other. And I do this because I need that structured reminder of the next three goals that I'm working on. And that is me stepping back into my CEO hat, my CEO role. I need to get everything out of my head and onto paper so I can stop carrying it around mentally. And then I ask myself, what are the next few things that really matter? What's actually going to move this business forward?
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And then I leave it and I go through my weekend. And then by Monday morning, I don't have to wonder where to start because I already made all those decisions on Friday. So instead of reacting to whatever feels most urgent, I am making the decision to move forward where I want my business to go. And this simple habit has probably done more for my business than almost anything else because it continually brings my attention back to what I'm doing now that's going to impact my business down the road.
And this is one of those habits that I think is one of the biggest differences between thinking like an employee and thinking like an owner. An employee wakes up thinking, okay, what do I need to do today? And an owner wakes up and says, okay, what do I need to do to keep this business moving forward? Today, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and how do I keep myself on task? Those are very different questions. And here's what I've learned. Momentum isn't created by trying to fix everything.
Momentum is creating by deciding what matters next, completing it, and then doing it again and again and again. And that's how businesses are really built. Nobody has one giant breakthrough. They have little steps that get them where they want to go. And they build on one another until one day you look back and realize just how far you've come. Employee habit number four. Eventually my business will get organized.
I think this last employee habit is probably the easiest one to live with because for a while it doesn't seem like it's hurting anything. We tell ourselves that things are a little messy in our business right now, but once life slows down, we'll get organized. Or once this busy season is over, or once the kids go back to school, or once the holidays are behind us, or once I get through this month, then I'll sit down and clean everything up. And I think every business owner has said some version of that to themselves. I know I have. And the problem is that
Businesses have a way of growing around our habits. If we don't organize them as they grow, they don't stay the same. They become harder. They become more complicated. Because things happen w when your business gets messy, you start to see things happen that you don't want to have happen. All of a sudden you're trying to remember who's coming in or whose appointment it is, or you're trying to remember what you did in that appointment because you forgot to write it down, or you haven't stayed up to date on your
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on your charting so you you don't remember, but you don't want your client to know that. So you try and recreate an experience that isn't the best version of what you can give them. Or you're trying to remember text messages you forgot to answer because you put it off or didn't want to deal with them at that moment, then you forgot to answer them and then it's gone past a point where your client starts to lose trust for you. And clients still need to be called back, but you put it off.
Or someone wanted to change their appointment and you didn't get to them in time and then you have an open space because you forgot that they canceled. Or you forgot to send a referral, a thank you card to keep those referrals coming because it wasn't set up in your system well enough. Or you forget to pay bills. Or you end up paying more for things because you have to rush shipping. Or the time you need to set aside for marketing didn't happen and now you need to sell gift certificates for Christmas, but it's too late. None of those things are difficult.
But when you throw them all together, all of a sudden your business gets heavy. And if you've noticed, I've come back to that word throughout the episode because I think that word describes entrepreneurship so well. Ownership is heavy. It has weight. And some of that weight you can't avoid. But some of that weight we create ourselves by continuing to carry things that should have been systems a long time ago. And you know, one of the things I've learned through PPS is that the body only has so much energy.
If that energy is constantly being used to fight pain and inflammation and compensation, it isn't available for healing. Healing begins when the body can redirect its energy from fighting to repairing. That is a huge principle of understanding how people heal. And the more I've taught that principle, the more I've realized business works identically the same way. As business owners, we only have so much mental and emotional energy.
When we are constantly fighting our schedule or ourselves or our finances or the disorganization of our office and business or the same problems week after week, the energy isn't available for creativity. It's not available to lead ourselves and grow our businesses. And it's not available for enjoying the business we've worked so hard to build. In fact, you start to resent your business for the amount of energy it takes from you.
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And what you need to realize is the energy you're using to fight your business today is the exact same energy you could be using to grow it tomorrow. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons burnout happens. People often assume burnout comes from working hard. I don't think that's completely true. Some of the hardest working people I know have tremendous energy because they feel like they're moving forward. Burnout happens when we keep fighting the same problems over and over and over again.
When every week feels like we're putting out the same fires or when we're making the same decisions again and again because we never stopped long enough to build a system. People that's exhausting. Momentum feels completely different. Momentum is actually peaceful and uplifting and it cr has its own sense of energy behind it. Because now you're building systems that remember for you. So instead of reacting all day long.
You're making decisions that continue moving the business forward. And this is one of the things that we don't get taught. We don't understand the methodology behind how businesses run and how they run us. So when we understand these principles, that weight begins to change. And it doesn't mean that owning our business became easier. It became easier because you're no longer carrying a heavy amount of weight.
Every system you build removes a little friction inside your business. And every recurring problem you solve frees up a little more energy that you can use towards doing something else inside your business. And every process you improve gives you a little more space to think inside your head about what's next instead of constantly reacting to what's already happened. Your business can grow when you can redirect your energy from reacting to.
to building. And that's one of the most hopeful things about owning a business. You don't have to fix everything this week. You don't have to carry the whole weight today. You simply have to decide what unnecessary weight you're ready to put down first. Because every time you do, you create just a little more energy to build the business and the life you've been trying to create. So before we finish today, there's one more thought I'd like to leave with you.
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Because for me, this may be one of the most practical ways I think about being the CEO of my business. Over the years I've realized that I have a personal side of me and a professional side of me. And it's not that I'm two different people or have a split personality, because I don't, I'm the same person, but I do step into a different role depending on what I'm doing and what the moment requires for me. So when I'm home, I'm just Amy. I'm with my family or I'm with my friends and I'm living my life.
But when I sit down to work on my business or when I walk into my massage room, I step into my professional role. And that's the version of me that's responsible for leading, making decisions, asking questions, holding those important boundaries, solving problems, and thinking about tomorrow instead of just what's happening today. And I think that distinction is very important because when we don't step into our professional role, business problems have a way of becoming high.
Personal problems. The schedule slows down and instead of looking at what may need to change in our business, we begin wondering if we're not good enough. And someone doesn't return and we start questioning whether we did something wrong. Or a client is unhappy and instead of stepping back and objectively looking at what happened, we kind of take the entire experience into ourselves and allow it to affect our confidence. Those are very human reactions, and I've had them too, but they're not helpful.
One of the things I've learned is that my professional self can look at those same situations very differently. Instead of asking what's wrong with me, my professional self asks, what is this situation trying to teach me? Is there a system that needs my attention? Or is there a conversation I need to have with this client? Is there something I need to improve? Or is this just simply part of owning a business and I need to move through it? And those questions create very different feelings.
One pulls the problem inside of you and turns it into shame, while the other places the problem in front of you where you can actually see it, work with it, and begin creating a solution. And I think this is especially important in massage therapy because we spend so much uninterrupted time with another human being. We aren't walking into a room for five minutes and walking out. We may spend 60 or 90 minutes with someone while they share parts of their life.
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They may not share with anyone else. And we are touching them the entire time that they are, paying attention to what their body is telling us and listening to what they're saying, and holding this space for whatever they may be experiencing that day. And this takes a so much focus. This takes a tremendous amount of focus and a very clear understanding of our professional responsibility. And it's so easy for our personal side.
To step into that space. If a client tells us about a difficult relationship, we can begin talking about one of ours. Or they complain about something happening at work and we start to share our own frustrations. They tell us about something painful or upsetting in their life, and before we even know it, we've joined them emotionally instead of supporting them professionally. And it doesn't mean we can't be human, my friends. It doesn't mean we can't share something appropriate, find common ground, or let a client know that we understand what they're saying.
But there is a difference between relating to someone in a way that supports them and stepping so far into their experience that we begin adding our own weight to what they're already carrying. Our clients need us to remain steady. They need someone who can listen without making the conversation about themselves, someone who can be compassionate without becoming really involved, and someone who can create a space where the client feels supported without feeling responsible for the therapist sitting beside them.
To me, that is professionalism. It's not cold or detached or uncaring. In fact, it's the opposite. We care enough to remember why we're there. Our job isn't to become another person carrying the problem. Our job is to create an environment where the client can feel safe, supported, and cared for while we continue guiding the treatment and protecting that therapeutic relationship. And that professional version of us understands those boundaries and holds them in
Even when the personal version of us wants to relate, fix, rescue, share, or make the moment about something we've experienced ourselves. And that takes effort, especially when you're spending long periods of time with people and developing meaningful relationships with them. But that effort is part of the professional responsibility we accept when we step into a treatment room. And the exact same thing is true when we're leading the business. The professional version of us doesn't ignore problems, but it also doesn't become the problem.
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We take a step back and observe what's happening and we get curious and we write things down and we separate emotion from information. And then we begin making decisions that are best for ourselves. To me, that's what putting on the CEO hat really looks like. It isn't pretending to be someone you're not, it's becoming the leader your business and your clients need you to be in that moment. And when the workday is over, my friends, you need to take that hat.
You need to go home and be present with the people you love and you need to laugh and rest and enjoy the life you're working so hard to build. Because if you're always wearing the CEO hat or the therapist hat or any other hat, if you're always carrying the weight of ownership, then you've missed the whole reason you wanted to own a business in the first place. I believe that one of the greatest gifts entrepreneurship can give us isn't just simply more income. It's the opportunity to build a life that
That reflects what matters most to us. And for many of us, that means building a business that creates more financial security, more freedom, and more opportunity for the people we love. Sometimes the business asks a great deal from us while we're building it. Boy, it asks a lot. And there may be times when that weight feels heavy because we know the work we're doing now is it's just necessary to get us to that next step. And that work matters.
Which means planning matters. And the late nights and the difficult decisions and the systems you're creating and the things you're learning how to do for the first time, they all matter because you're trying to build something that will eventually support your life instead of continually take from it. That weight of ownership is real, but it doesn't have to become the weight of your identity. Your business is something you've chosen to build and it's not all of you. It's part of you. And I think that may be one of the healthiest boundaries.
A business owner like yourself and like me can never learn. You know, as I was putting this episode together, I realized that all of this really isn't about becoming the CEO of your business. It is actually about becoming the kind of person who can carry the weight of ownership well. It's the weight of making decisions no one else is going to make for you. And it's the weight of building systems that no one sees. And it is most definitely the weight of doing work today.
Amy Bradley Radford (37:54.84)
That may not pay you until months from now. And it's the weight of believing in something before anyone else can see it. But inside of that weight is freedom. And it's a freedom to build a business that reflects who you are and your values. And it's a freedom of how you choose to care for your clients or decide what kind of life you're trying to create. And I don't think any of us become great business owners overnight. I didn't. I I was 15, 16 years.
into owning a business before I kind of figured out some of these things that I talk about. I became a business owner one day at a time and one decision at a time and so are you. My hope for you is that it doesn't take you as long. And we become business owners one decision at a time or one boundary at a time or one really difficult conversation with a client at a time or building one system or scheduling that CEO hour for yourself or just choosing to continually improve.
That's how businesses are really built. So this week I'd like to leave you with one question. If you put your CEO hat on for just one hour this week, what would you work on? Not what feels most urgent, not the fire that's burning the hottest, but the one thing if you improved it that would make your business stronger six months from now. Maybe that's finally sitting down with your numbers. Maybe it's building that referral system or cleaning up your schedule or creating better boundaries.
Or maybe it's just getting everything that's been living in your head onto a piece of paper so that you can see it. Whatever it is, I want you to start there. Because momentum doesn't begin when everything is finished. It begins with one decision and then another and then another. And before you know it, you are no longer reacting to the business you created. You are building the business you've always wanted. And I think that's what being the CEO.
of your massage business really means. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today and I hope this conversation gave you something to think about. Not because I want you to go home and work harder, but because I hope you'll begin thinking differently about the business you're building and the life you're building alongside it. Take care of yourself this week. I'll see you next Tuesday. 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.
Amy Bradley Radford (40:20.364)
To learn more about today's topic, explore continuing education, coaching, and free resources, visit amybradleyradford.com. And until next time, keep building the business and the career you love.
