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. I used to manifest appointments. I actually really did, and I manifested the heck out of them with a Sharpie. And I'm laughing saying that because, especially in our profession, there's a whole conversation around manifesting and setting intentions and
Putting something out into the universe. And I believe there's something to that. But the way I did it was a lot more practical because when I first started my business, I had this paper planner and I just needed to be able to physically see what my business needed from me. So I started doing this thing where I would go through my planner, and if I had like a 9 a.m. appointment I wanted filled, I would take my Sharpie and I would make that nine bigger.
And if I had an opening at 11, I made the 11 bigger and two o'clock and so on and so forth. And I would do that straight through the whole week so that when I opened my planner, I wasn't just looking at all this white space anymore. That actually was really alarming to me. I was looking at appointments that still needed somebody in them, but for whatever reason, they already felt like they were more real, almost like they were working for me before there was even a person attached to them.
At the time, I wasn't doing that because I thought I was manifesting anything. I was doing it because I have always needed to see things outside of my own head. If something is just floating around up there, especially when I have a lot going on, and I always have a lot going on, I can lose track of it or make it so much bigger than it actually is. But if I can see it in front of me, then I know what I'm dealing with, and that changes the way I respond to it. And in the beginning, honestly, that empty planner was just
Flat out intimidating. I would look at all of those open times and think, my gosh, I have to go find all of these people. And when you're brand new and you do not really know yet what building a clientele is supposed to look like, that can feel huge. But once I started making those numbers stand out, something about it changed for me. Those openings stopped feeling like this giant blank schedule.
Amy Bradley Radford (02:20.728)
That I didn't know how to fix and started feeling like real appointments that were just waiting for real people. And you know, I had already decided I was going to show up for that hour. So I'd already decided I wanted to work it and I had created the space for the appointment. So now I just needed the person to attach to that time. And for whatever reason, that made the whole thing feel less impossible. Instead of carrying around this big, undefined fear of not having a full schedule.
I had a bunch of much smaller goals sitting right there in front of me that I could actually work on. And I think that is probably what reading back through all of this has helped me understand about what I was doing. Manifesting for me was not really about staring at a blank calendar and hoping the universe filled it. It was taking something that felt huge and overwhelming and turning it into small enough pieces that my brain knew what to do with them.
I did not have to solve the whole problem of building a successful massage practice in one day. I just had to find somebody for Friday at two, somebody for Tuesday at eleven, and somebody for that nine o'clock that was sitting there waiting for me. Those were goals I could hold on to mentally, and that was a very different place to operate from all that fear.
And I remember those first couple of months sitting in my office and looking at that planner. And honestly, it was not even always about how many clients I had or did not have. It was just the utter blankness of it. There was so much white space. And when you're new and you don't really have enough experience to know what is normal or how long it's supposed to take to build a clientele, that empty space starts to feel like it means something about you. And that's when the mental dialogue starts.
What if I can't make it as a massage therapist? What am I doing wrong? How am I supposed to find all of these people? Maybe I just need a job. Maybe that client did not come back because I actually suck at this. And I could keep going because I know a lot of massage therapists have had the same version of that exact conversation in their head, especially when they are first starting out. And once that swirl starts, it can get big really fast.
Amy Bradley Radford (04:34.402)
And then soon you're no longer looking at an empty appointment on Thursday afternoon. You are questioning whether you chose the right career, whether you are good enough, whether you know what you're doing, or whether this business is ever going to work. And that's why making those appointments visible helped me so much because it interrupted that whole thought process. And once I took the Sharpie and made that nine o'clock bigger, I was not just staring at a blank paper anymore. I had something very specific in front of me.
And that gave my brain somewhere to go besides fear. I did not have to solve the question of whether I was going to become a successful massage therapist that day. I just had to work on what was actually in front of me. And maybe it was that Friday, and maybe it was Tuesday. Maybe it was a couple of spots the following week that I still didn't have someone for. And once I could see those as individual goals instead of one giant problem, I could start thinking much more realistically about what I could do.
That is the part I think was so valuable for me. The Sharpie didn't make the fear disappear because everything was suddenly full. It changed the shape of the fear. Instead of one huge, undefined problem that I didn't know how to solve yet, I had a handful of small goals that I could actually work on one at a time. And those little goals gave me something to hold on to mentally. They kept me from sitting in the office feeling like the whole thing was failing.
When really what I had was a few open appointments that needed some attention. And you know, once I started looking at the schedule that way, it changed how I thought about the whole week. If I had 20 appointments and there were only 10 people booked, I did not sit there thinking, well, I only have 10 clients. Hopefully the universe will send me 10 more people. I looked at it more like I had 10 appointments that still needed someone attached to them. And because I had already assigned those openings with my Sharpie.
and put it in my schedule, they felt much more like something I could work on. In my head, those appointments were already partly there, 50% there, because I was already there. I had already set up the time. I had already created the space. I was ready to do the work. So now I just needed to find the person, the other 50%, who was going to be in that appointment with me.
Amy Bradley Radford (06:50.38)
And you know, that changed the questions I was asking myself because now I wasn't sitting around wondering how I was supposed to magically create 10 more clients. I actually could think through the people who were already around my business. Who had told me they wanted to get in sooner? Who had said if you ever have a cancellation, call me? Who had not rebooked yet? Who had I told I wanted to see again that I hadn't reached out to really follow through on that conversation?
Who did I already know that might benefit from what I did and I could invite onto my table? Or was there another professional I knew who might have somebody they could refer to me? It gave me something practical to do with the week instead of just feeling disappointed by it. And because I already had gone through the schedule and looked at those openings, they also stayed in my head while I was moving throughout my day.
And I remember running into people at like the grocery store or somewhere out in the community and somebody would say, my gosh, I've been meaning to call you. I really need to book a massage. And because I had just looked at my schedule, I might already know that I had Friday open. So instead of saying, Yeah, call me or we'll we'll get an appointment, I would say something like, you know, I actually have an opening Friday. And if they wanted it, then I would get back to the office, call them, confirm the appointment.
Do whatever rundown I needed to do at the time, and suddenly one of those little Sharpie appointments had a real person in it. And I think this is where the whole thing started to become more than just a visual trick for me. It changed the way I paid attention. Because once I knew what I needed, I recognized the opportunity when it showed up. I was already carrying around all those little goals with me. So when somebody mentioned needing massage, I had somewhere to put that conversation in my mind.
and in my book. And that process of building a clientele felt much less like waiting for people to somehow find me and much more like something I could actively participate in. I was not trying to solve the whole business problem at once. I was just feeling one appointment, then another appointment and then another appointment. And over time those little goals started adding up to a full schedule.
Amy Bradley Radford (08:55.564)
And as I got busier, I started working further and further ahead in my planner. And there were times I was looking three to six months out because I had clients who wanted to make sure they had their appointments before those spots were gone. And I learned pretty quickly of my own behavior that if I didn't stay ahead in the schedule with my Sharpie, I would tell somebody, hey, I'll get back to you. And then I would end up giving that appointment to someone else because I had not actually organized my calendar far enough out yet. So over time.
I wanted to know what the next several months looked like. I wanted to know which hours I had already decided I was willing to work, which of those were already filled, and where the openings still were, because once I started looking at the schedule that way, I realized that it was not just the place where appointments happened to land. The schedule was my business. Those hours were what produced my income. If I had decided that Tuesday at 11 was an hour I was willing to work, then Tuesday at 11 had value.
It was part of the amount of money I expected that week to produce. And if Tuesday at 11 came and went without somebody on my table, I could not move that hour to Wednesday and sell it later. Once it was gone, it was gone. And I think that's why I became so conscious of the appointments I had chosen to make available because I was not just opening random hours and hoping somebody took them. I had already decided those were the hours I was willing to work.
And I had already built them into what I wanted my week and my income to look like. Now that did not mean I was trying to work every available second. We've already had lots of these conversations on this podcast. I was not. There was absolutely days somebody canceled, and believe me, I was thrilled when they did, because I would lay down on my table and take a nap. There's nothing like a massage table and a nice warm heating pad in the middle of winter to make you have a nice little sleepy rest. But if you find yourself relieved every single time somebody cancels,
Then there's some other podcasts that we've had that conversation about. Maybe you're working too many hours or you have too many appointments stacked together and not enough recovery time. That's big. Maybe your pricing is too low and you're having to do more massages than your body really wants to in order to make the income you need. And those are all different problems. And they are things you can fix. But I think it's important to separate that from the question of whether the schedule itself should be managed. Because if you have intentionally chosen
Amy Bradley Radford (11:15.564)
those hours and you have built your income around those hours, then part of running the business is making sure those hours are full. And you know, that was a shift for me. I stopped seeing the schedule as just a place to put appointments and started seeing it as something I had to actively manage because every opening represented both time and earning capacity. And once I understood that, I paid attention to it very differently.
And once I started treating the schedule like something I had to actively manage, I also realized I needed a better way to keep track of the people who could potentially fill those openings because otherwise every time somebody canceled, I was sitting there trying to remember who who had said what or who wanted to come in sooner or who I had told I would call. I couldn't remember. So I always kept some kind of running list of people who were already connected into my business.
And that might be somebody I recommended come back sooner but could not fit in at the time, or somebody who had told me they would take an earlier appointment if one came up. Somebody who was flexible, that I knew I could move around in that week, or somebody who had a gift certificate that they had not used yet. And even within that list there were priorities because someone I was actively working with toward a pain management goal might need that opening more than someone who simply wanted a more convenient time.
And that way, if an appointment did open up, I was not starting from zero or trying to remember what somebody had told me. I already had somewhere to look and somebody to think about for that time slot. But the other side of that, especially when you are still trying to grow, is that eventually you can reach a point where everybody you know is either already scheduled or does not need to come in right now. And that is when you need another list of people. And I wish someone would have told me about this earlier in my career, but later on in my career.
I actually teach people to create what I call an invitation list. And what that is, is just a list of people who are not clients yet, but could potentially become clients if you give them the reason to come through your door. And that might be an acquaintance, somebody you have met through another business or talked with who seemed really interested in massage or even a professional relationship where there might be an opportunity for referrals. And the invitation itself depended on the person and the relationship.
Amy Bradley Radford (13:32.652)
And I want to break this down just a little bit because I've had some questions about how I talk about inviting people to your table for free. So sometimes you might simply invite them to book an appointment at full price. You know that this person wants to come see you. They just need the invitation. They don't need anything else. Just the invitation. Hey, you know, I've got an opening and let them know what the price is and let them come. But sometimes there might be a coupon or some kind of introductory offer that
Is needed to give them just a little more incentive to get on your table. $10 off, $20 off, something like that. And sometimes if you know the person well enough and you think the best way for them to understand what you did and to experience it might be to invite them for a half hour free at no charge, then that's the thing you need to do. And the point is that not everybody needs a discount or that everybody should get something free. The point is you're not sitting there waiting for a stranger to somehow discover you. So
Having a list of people that you could reach out to and then decide what kind of invitation makes sense for you and that person and then offer it. So in my mind, there are really two different things happening here at the same time. For me, I was managing the people already connected to my schedule. And at the same time, you could create a list where you're paying attention to who might be the next person to come into your business. So it's two lists: your cancellation list and your potential client list.
And when you have something like that, I think it makes open appointments feel much more manageable because now you or I, we're not just looking at an empty slot and wondering who in the world is going to fill it. You have somewhere to start. And if referrals are one of those areas where you know you need more structure, I actually have a free resource that I'm going to put in the show notes for you. And it's designed to help you start thinking more intentionally about how you ask for referrals and how you invite people into your practice.
Because this is really where a lot of this starts. If you want to go deeper than that, I also have a one CE hour referral class which takes this much further and walks you through the actual system I teach for creating referrals as part of a way you run your business instead of just hoping somebody sends you a client. So if that's one of the places where you're stuck right now, start with the free resource and then decide if you need the full class from there. So one of the things I learned over time is that even when the schedule gets full.
Amy Bradley Radford (15:58.454)
You never really get to stop managing it. It absolutely gets easier. You are not working as hard to build the clientele from scratch once people are rebooking and referring and you have enough momentum behind you. But there is still this constant movement inside the schedule that you have to stay connected to. People cancel, they move things, they forget, they need to come in sooner, they need to push something out. Somebody wants an extra appointment, somebody else decides.
That they do not need their appointment. And if you stop paying attention to all of that because you think the schedule is full and does not need you to take care of it as much, eventually this will catch up to you. And you know, I have a funny story that really shows what my behavior looked like when I was doing exactly that because I have always seemed to have some kind of warning signal when I have too much going on and I'm not managing things very well. And for years, that warning sign was locking my keys in my car. I did that a lot.
That was almost like this final straw for my brain. I could be running around, doing too much, managing too many things, too many irons in the fire, and somehow that was the thing that would happen when I was no longer managing my life very well. And then of course I would have to sit there and wait for somebody to bring me an extra set of keys, which my poor dad brought me extra sets of keys a lot, which gave me plenty of time to think about how I had gotten myself into that position in the first place.
But you know, eventually cars got smarter and started making it harder to lock your keys inside. So apparently my life needed to find a new way to tell me I was overloaded. And that is when it started showing up in my schedule. And things like triple booking somebody or forgetting to move somebody, or I would sit there waiting for a client and then look at my schedule and realize they had canceled three weeks ago and I had never taken them off. And once that started happening, I knew the same thing I used to know when I locked my keys in my car.
I had too much going on and I wasn't managing my life very well. So that is really what I mean when I say you have to keep your foot on the accelerator in your business. You do not have to floor it all the time and you should not be running yourself into the ground trying to micromanage everything inside your business, but you do have to keep enough pressure on the business and yourself through your schedule that you know what's happening.
Amy Bradley Radford (18:17.154)
Because the slowdown usually does not show up the same day you stop paying attention. It shows up a couple of weeks later. And some of you know this, when you suddenly notice holes in your schedule or missed follow-ups or appointments that never got moved or people who meant to come back and somehow never did, or double booking appointments. So for me, keeping my foot on the accelerator was really about staying engaged with the flow of my schedule. It was not about obsessing over every appointment or trying to control every little thing.
But it was about looking backward enough to make sure the people who had already come in were actually moving forward the way they needed to, and then looking forward enough to make sure they had somewhere to go next. But it was about always pushing and never stopping. I wanted to be able to look at the people who had been on my table, know who needed another appointment, know who had already rebooked, know who still needed to be moved into the schedule.
And then look ahead and make sure those people actually had their places. So, in a lot of ways, I was always looking backward at where the business had just been and forward to where it was going, making sure the people and the appointments were flowing through the schedule the way they should. And your schedule really is the hub of everything you do in your massage business. And for some people, I think it gets the least amount of attention, especially in today's world where we try and turn
Turn that over to a system, whether it's an app or a program, we're trying to offset it to something else, and we actually can't. There's times where we look at it long enough to see who's coming in today or tomorrow, but we don't always stop and really look at what it's telling us about our business. So if you have not actually looked forward on your schedule in a while, it's probably time to do that. You need to look far enough ahead that you can see what is open.
And start making some goals in the form of appointments so you know what you actually need to work on instead of carrying around this vague feeling that you just need more clients. And then you need to look backward through the people who have already been on your table and make sure the ones who need to come forward actually have somewhere to go. And if you need to reach out to those clients, then you need to do it. And that's what managing the schedule became for me. I was looking back to understand where clients had been, looking forward to see where they were going.
Amy Bradley Radford (20:36.95)
and making sure that schedule itself was flowing in the direction I want it to go and enough pressure on the accelerator that it kept moving forward. You know, even though I did all of this with a paper planner back then, I really have not changed the basic way I manage things. I just use different tools now. Today I use a Google Calendar. I use color in almost the same way I used my favorite Sharpie. I will have one color for an appointment that's still open.
And another color once that spot is filled. So when I look ahead at my week, I can immediately see what still needs my attention and what's already taken care of. For me, green means open, pink means full. And a lot of the rest of my responsibilities live in all these different shades of pink and red because it's just fun to see a calendar that's full of those colors. But the thing is I can see it and it helps me understand what's happening.
And there's something really satisfying about watching a week change from mostly open to mostly full because it gives you that same visual feedback I got from the paper planner all those years ago. You can see the work you have actually been doing showing up right in front of you. And if I look ahead and there's one open spot next Thursday and another one the following Monday, I'm not carrying around this big thought that I just need more clients. I can actually see what's left. I just need two people.
And for me, that is still a much easier thing to work with than some vague feeling that the business is not busy enough. The tool is different now, but what I needed from it never really changed. I needed the schedule to show me where I was, what was working, and what still needed something from me because once I could see that clearly, I can make better decisions about what to do next.
I think this is probably where the way I built my business was a little different than the way people are often taught to think about marketing now. Because once I had those openings in front of me, I did not really separate marketing from the rest of my business. I was trying to fill actual appointments. So everything I did was connected to that. If I had open time, I was thinking about where the people were. Sometimes that meant somebody already connected to the practice, and sometimes it meant working the invitation list we already talked about.
Amy Bradley Radford (22:42.922)
getting myself in front of new people. The point was that I was not just putting marketing out there and waiting to see what happened. I was actively trying to connect an opening in my schedule with a person. I think that is the part that can get lost now because we have so many marketing tools available to us. You can make a post, boost a post, run a Google ad, change your website, join Groupon, send an email and all of those things can absolutely help you find people.
I'm not against any of that. I use modern marketing now, and there are people who build very successful businesses using those tools. But I think there's a difference between using marketing to support the business and then sitting back waiting for marketing to build your business for you. You have to be honest with yourself and observe your own actions. Massage is personal. Somebody can see your website and like what they read or see an ad and think that sounds interesting, but they still
do not know what it feels like to have your hands on them. They do not know whether they're going to trust you, whether your style is right for them, whether they're going to feel comfortable with you, or whether what you do is going to help them in the way they hope it will. And that is why for me, getting in front of real people mattered so much. I wanted to shorten the distance between somebody becoming aware of me and somebody actually experiencing my work. Because once they had been on my table, the whole conversation changed.
Now they knew what I did. Now they knew whether they could trust me. They could decide whether they wanted to come back. And if they did, that is where the repeat clientele and referrals started to grow. I also think it's worth remembering that when I started, I didn't have social media. I didn't have Gmail. I did not have online booking. My options were things like a phone book and newspaper and radio and networking and word of mouth. And quite frankly, I didn't have the money to do a lot of paid advertising anyway. And on top of that, massage advertising.
Back then usually brought you the wrong kind of attention. So I had to figure out a different way to build my clientele. And what I figured out was that I had to go meet people, talk to people, do good work when they got there, and ask them to come back and give them a reason to tell somebody else about me. And honestly, I don't think that basic process has changed nearly as much as the tools have changed. The way people find you has changed, the way they book has changed.
Amy Bradley Radford (25:06.504)
Or how they communicate with you has changed, but getting a real person to trust you enough to get on your table is still the same process. And if I'm looking at a schedule with open appointments and I have a choice between spending another three hours trying to perfect a post or having three real conversations with people who might actually need what I do, I'm gonna take those conversations because that gets me closer to what I am really trying to create, and that is a full schedule.
You know, looking back on it now, I actually do think there was a little bit of manifestation in what I was doing, even though I wouldn't have called it that at the time. But I think the part that mattered was not that I was hoping for a full schedule. It was that I had taken this big, undefined thing I wanted and turned it into something small enough that I could figure out how to work on it. So instead of carrying around the fear that I was not busy enough or that I didn't know where my clients were going to come from.
I just had these little goals sitting in front of me. I knew what the openings were, I knew which ones needed immediate attention. I knew what I already committed to working, and because I could see those things, I felt prepared instead of feeling like I was behind. That is really the difference I noticed when I look back at it. When I was staring at a blank schedule, everything felt really vague and really heavy. And once I assigned those openings,
a place and made them really visible to me, the whole thing became much more practical to me. And I was not trying to solve the problem of building a successful massage business all at once anymore. I was just working on one appointment and then another appointment and then another appointment. And I think that's probably the the part of manifestation that makes the most sense to me in business. You decide what you want. You make it visible enough that your brain can actually hold on to it.
And then you start recognizing the opportunities that move you toward it. The Sharpie, it didn't fill the schedule for me. What it gave me was something concrete enough to act on. And once I had that, I stopped feeling like I was waiting for the business to happen to me. I had something to work towards. And over time, all of those little goals added up to the thing I was trying to create in the first place, which was a full functioning schedule that I understood how to manage.
Amy Bradley Radford (27:23.064)
Hasn't this been a fun conversation about Sharpies? But before I let you go, I just want to ask you all a favor. I am planning a QA episode and I want those to come from the things you are actually dealing with in your practice. Whether it's something in business you don't understand, your clients, referrals, pricing, growth, or even something I have talked about here that you want me to go a little deeper into. So if you get an email for this episode, just hit reply and send me your question. And if you're listening somewhere else,
Put a question in the comments section through social media. It doesn't have to be a polished question, just tell me what's going on and what you're trying to figure out, and we will try and use it in one of the upcoming QA episodes. And if nothing else, go buy yourself a Sharpie. I'll see you next 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.
