MY kind of happy ending

Maybe you've heard the buzz, maybe you haven't: Apple's iPhone4s has a nifty little feature called Siri. You ask Siri questions, Siri send you to places with the answers.

For example, if you ask Siri for a "happy ending", Siri sends you to listings of massage therapists!

Sigh. Yes, shit like this is still happening and now it's happening because of a corporate bohemoth called Apple. Disregarding decades of hard work by massage therapists to raise the profile of our profession and link our name to health and wellness, Apple has instead chosen to revert back to the "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" crap.

Wonder what specific "genius" at Apple decided that was a good idea?

But wait! Apple isn't the only one with some power in the online world. You too (yes, you!) can make your opinion / worldview known. In about 40 seconds you can send Apple a message about how stupid that decision was.

Click here to sign a petition strongly suggesting that Apple get its corporate head out of its corporate posterior pelvis and change this feature on Siri.

Do it for me.

Do it for any massage therapist you know and respect.

And do it for those poor sex workers being asked to relieve back pain by people who actually want them to do a massage! Can you imagine their embarassment?

An Extra-Happy Check

Tonight one of my regular clients who has been taking advantage of my Pay What You Can policy handed me a check for the full amount. Her company went out of business in the spring and she's been keeping things together with temp work and unemployment since then. She recently started a 4-month contract and is getting a regular paycheck.

Hence, a check for the full price of the massage.

That's one of the many reasons I've decided to continue my PWYC policy -- I trust that people really will pay me what they can. I trust that people who are currently paying me a portion of my posted fees will pay me full price when they can.

I know the client was very happy to be able to write a check for the full amount. I was happy too -- yes, it's nice to get the full amount but when I looked at the check what I felt was her fullness. I felt all the security and relief and happiness that full-amount check represented to her and for her and I was even more happy for her than I was for me.

When the contract ends, she may have to start writing smaller checks again. I'm glad I can continue to offer her that option. She's a good woman and a good client and it feels good to be in partnership with her as her massage therapist.

I Don't Have Enough Time....

I'm a huge proponent of doing your bookkeeping every day. It's much too easy (much too easy) to forget things after a few days, a week, and definitely a month. The biggest reason people give me for not doing their bookkeeping daily is that it takes too much time and they just don't have the time. So I kept a log for last week to see exactly how much time my bookkeeping took.

I've been doing my bookkeeping for 11 years so I don't have to look up or calculate things as often as I did when I got started (though I still need to compute the mileage every time). You'll find that once you do the same entry (or same kind of entry) a few times, it goes by much much quicker.

Here's the tally. The clock starts when I click the Quiken icon on my desktop and stops when I close it.

11/14:  3 entries -- mileage, bus fare, meal.  1 minute 12 seconds

11/16:  5 entries -- client payment, tip, room rental fee, laundry, and mileage. 2 minutes

11/17:  3 entries -- client payment, room rental fee, and mileage (plus automatic backup of Quiken files). 54 seconds

11/18:  3 entries -- webhosting bill, class fee, and mileage.  45 seconds

If I were entering more client payments (sigh) it would take a few seconds more. So double or even triple my times. You are still not talking about a huge time sink.

If you simply don't want to do your bookkeeping daily, that's fine. But I will probably call you on it if you tell me you "don't have time". 

Doing and Being

Here's a simple truth: there's a difference between doing massage and being a massage therapist. If you've been in practice any length of time, you know that.

Doing massage is all about the rubbing -- muscles, strokes, oil. Rub, rub, rub. There are certainly different ways of rubbing but you can learn the basics in just a few months. You may not excel at it but you will have the basics.

Learning to do massage is primarily an activity of the mind.

Being a massage therapist (or maybe it would be more accurate to say becoming a massage therapist) requires you to find a way to be a different kind of person. Some of it you can learn in school but a whole lot of it you learn by, well, doing massage! You have to learn compassion for complete strangers. You have to learn, in a way, to truly love and respect every person who comes into your room whether or not you even like them.

Being (becoming) a massage therapist is primarily an activity of the heart.

So, what's this got to do with business?

The business of massage therapy is also an activity of the mind and the heart. Yesterday I had a long conversation with a colleague and former student about the challenges of being a solo business owner. He spoke of continuing education and managing his finances and keeping his licenses and certifications current (all activities of the mind). He spoke even more passionately about representing his industry and professionalism and reputation. He spoke about the wisdom of healthy business practices and why, at the end of the day, this is just an extension of the care and respect he extends his clients in the treatment room. These are activities of the heart.

He's been in practice six years and every day he is getting better at the doing and better at the being. He represents our profession well and I'm proud of him and proud to have been one of his instructors.

An Advance Screening....

The Healing Core (I'm co-owner with Kitty Southworth) is putting together its schedule of continuing education for 2012. I'm giving the readers of my blog a sneak-peek at that schedule.

March:  Creating Your Own Continuing Education Courses.

2.5 days on the basics of good course development with plenty of chances to hone those skills on your own outline or even an existing course. Will include an overview of the NCBTMB Approved Provider application and process. Taught by Clare Reece-Glore, a training specialist with more than 25 years of experience designing and teaching workshops for working professionals.

May:  Taxes & Bookkeeping for the Healing Arts Professional

2 days. Taught by Margo Bowman LMT CPA, a recognized expert in the massage therapy community on taxes, bookkeeping, and the financial responsibilities of a healing arts professional. She will walk us through the Schedule C (the form most of us fill out with our annual tax return that details our practice) and, in the process, help us understand what kind of informaton we need to track throughout the year and how to best manage our books and our taxes.

July: Energy 101 (Oklahoma, Colorado)

Kitty and I are taking our workshop on the road! We will be teaching this 3-day course in/near Oklahoma City and Denver.

September: Energy 101: A Comprehensive Unified Introduction to the Energetic Body (Washington DC)

In this 3-day course we introduce you to the anatomy and physiology of the energetic body, it's pathologies and nutritional needs, and well as the contraindications and the etiquette and ethics of working with it. Along the way we will also be helping you understand your own energetic body and introduce you to ways you can (if you want) incorporate energetic work into a professional life. Lots of exercises and practical information.

October: Ben Risby-Jones

Australian naturopath and healer (and co-author with me of Travel Guide for the Spiritual Journey) will be here offering talks, a workshop, and healing sessions.

We are also hoping to add workshops on marketing and business plans, as well as 2-hour seminars on a variety of practical day-to-day topics for the healing arts professional.

And we promise to spread the word far and wide when we nail down dates so you can register early.

Who Do You Fantasize About?

So many of us became business owners for the very first time when we became massage therapists. So many of us were employees before now, not the boss, not the owner. When we have to take on a completely new and foreign role in our lives we sometimes look around for role models, for people who are already doing what we're now doing.

I did that when I "retired" from dating in 1992. I needed to completely re-imagine my future without a partner (something I had assumed I'd end up with, somehow, up to that point in my life). I looked around and realized that I actually knew several women who were 1-3 decades older than me and living a happily single life, women I liked and respected. When I found myself stuck I looked at how they had handled the single life and found possible solutions for myself.

It's the same as a small/micro business owner. What businesses do you want to emulate? Who would you like to be like?

* Another massage therapist who seems to have a healthy practice and a well-balanced life?

* Another health care provider (acupuncturist, physical therapist, doctor, etc.) who is respected and seems to have a solid practice?

* A local company that seems to exude energy and enthusiasm and imagination?

* A national or international company that is well-known and is seen as an innovator in their field?

When my business partner, Kitty Southworth, and I sat down to write the business plan for The Healing Core (our continuing education company that will start offering courses in 2012) we asked ourselves who we would want to emulate as a business:

Day-Break Geriatric Institute. This small company teaches several levels of geriatric massage in workshops around the country. They are the leader in geriatric massage education and are friendly, accessible, and generous with their time and wisdom.

Cheers. Remember this TV show? "Where everybody knows your name." We want to create a company where our students and anyone who works with us will feel welcome and recognized as the unique individual they are.

The Lightworkers Cottage. The healing arts center in Brisbane Australia is so incredibly open, warm, and friendly. They have a great consortium of staff and healers and are engaged with life in a vibrant way. They are also moving forward every single day.

Edgar Cayce's ARE (Association for Research and Enlightenment). Based in Virginia Beach VA, the ARE occupies a unique and well-respected spot in the "energy" community. Because of their decades of research and education they can do things most of us only fantasize about. Plus, their continuing education schedule is booked a year in advance!

Oprah. Yes, she's rich and famous. More importantly for us, though, is that everything she does is about helping people find the best in themselves. She's been a major force in lifting people up and helping them find their hearts and re-connect with their souls.

These are our role models. These are the kinds of businesses we fantasize about being. Who are your business role models? What makes them worth emulating? Who's doing cool stuff out there and earning your respect?

It Makes Me Wonder

I've made the point here before that how you handle the business side of your practice affects how your clients look at you as a massage therapist. I had an experience today that underlined that for me.

I had an appointment with a therapist (licensed clinical social worker-type therapist, not MT) at 3:30. At 3:25 I walked into her waiting area, right behind her and one other woman. Since she's been late for every other appointment I've had with her, I was both delighted she wasn't running late with the previous session but also wondering who the other woman was.

The therapist showed the other woman into her office and I took a seat at the (always unstaffed) desk because I find her chairs uncomfortable. The therapist came back out into the waiting area. She asked me to sit on one of the couches rather than at the desk in the office because her confidential files were stored in the desk. I didn't check to see if the drawers were locked.

And then she walked out.

10 minutes later she hadn't returned. I left her a note. It said:

I have arranged my day to ensure I could be here for our 3:30 appointment. I need you to do the same. We will need to re-schedule.

And I left. 1-1/2 hours later, I still have not received a call from her.

I find myself wondering just how effective her consultations, advice, and perspective will be. Just how professional is she? She appears to be distracted, even in the sessions (she spends a significant amount of time with her back to me while she rummages through drawers for files, throwing questions over her shoulder). Do I truly have her undivided attention and her imagination? Are my confidential files out there in the waiting room for anyone cooling their heels for another late appointment? Is she tired and over-booked? If so, what am I really getting from her?

Technically, all my complaints with her are about the "business" side of her practice so should I presume that she's a good therapist but a poor administrator? Does her inability to keep up with her schedule say anything relevant about the quality of her therapy?

When we operate in a slipshod manner in any part of our practice, it reflects on the whole. Our clients may not separate "treatment" from "business practices" any more than I am with this woman. Your business practices absolutely can affect how your clients see you, even in the treatment room.

No Coupon Love?

A few days ago I posted a link to an article about using coupons from companies like Groupon and Living Social, most importantly the article talks about how to get ready for the possible deluge and some warnings. I also posted this link on the listserve for the Washington DC chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association (I'm a member).

I didn't realize how many local MTs had already experimented with these coupons. Here's a sampling of their responses and experiences:

I worked for [a yoga studio] last fall. I was hired at end of summer to help with the Groupons. They sold them for 50.00, I got 20.00 per coupon plus tips. It almost ended this lady's business. She did not have enough therapists to cover all the calls, they overbooked, and everyone was stressed out. Then the customers started complaining about not getting sessions. She chose to honor the coupon holders for 3 months past the deadline if they called before it expired. Everyone calls the last week before the coupon expires...looking for an appointment.

On the other hand here is a good example: Other massage therapy places like [a local spa] were smart.She had a groupon for 45.00 which gave you 30 min massage, plus a free product (body scrub), and a 30 dollar discount towards the next massage! Very smart. Separate Groupon booking online and I could tell the  staff were not getting abused by the Groupon Coupon. That looks like one way to make the groupon work out.

I also got a response from a former chapter member who's now working in South Carolina. He makes an excellent point about "converting" coupon users to regular users:

 

I ran two Groupons here in Charleston, and know several Spa/Salon/Massage/Facial/Nails business owners who have done the same.  To a person, they all say it's a losing proposition.

1- You're required to discount the service by 50%, and then only get 50% of that (Groupon keeps the other half).  Once you account for overhead, product costs, etc. you are making close to nothing, if not nothing.

2- Though it does give you "exposure," the conversion rate to regular clients is very low.  In some cases it's as low as 5%.   The problem is that the proliferation of online deals (in Charleston there's Groupon, LivingSocial, DealMobs, and Savvy Shopper), means that there is a massage deal available every week (sometimes 2/wk).  Consumers have been trained to expect to NEVER pay full price for a service, and most hop from one deal to the next.  I know most therapists think that they are good enough to keep those clients, but it just doesn't happen.  I've had people sincerely say I gave them the best massage of their life & promise to come back, yet they don't.  In this economy, why should they when there's a $30 massage offered the following week?  Other business owners complain of exactly the same problem. 

3- The only way I would ever do it again is if I could come up with such an expensive service (a luxury massage with lots of add-on's) that I would still make a reasonable profit with my 25% cut. 

4- For all of the above reasons, I'm predicting that these companies won't be around in 3 years.  Businesses have caught on, and aren't participating as much, if at all. 

An example of a place that made some classic mistakes:

Back in the summer I responded to an email from a local health club looking to hire MTs. 

The club was small but had advertised with Groupon and sold 1700 massages at $40 per massage. They needed to increase their massage staff (they had 3) to handle all the groupons.  When I inquired about what they pay the answer was:

For any non-coupon you keep 100% (they charge $90 per massage). This is supposed to make up for any groupon/coupon they only pay  $16  per massage to the therapist - oh and you get to keep whatever "tip" the client gives. 

Now -  how many full price non-coupon sessions do you think you would get compared to the groupon sessions? I was not interested.

In many ways, these experiences validate the article's initial advice about getting ready for coupons. However, I think we have to think carefully about why we want to offer a coupon. In my years of experience, once someone puts massage in that part of their brain reserved for "free / crazy cheap" it's almost impossible to get them to move massage to the part of their brain reserved for "things I pay full price for".

In my experience, you can offer discounts as long as they are modest. For example, a $10 discount for the first appointment has worked quite well at places I've worked. The client gets a small "reward" for trying a place but doesn't find paying the extra $10 the next time a huge hurdle.

Keep the incentives small but attractive and you're less likely to get into trouble.

Is Pay What You Can a "Healthy Boundaries" Problem?

Two years ago I radically changed my pricing policy -- while I have “list prices” for my massages my policy is that all my massages are Pay What You Can (PWYC). Now that I’m back in the US I’m re-building my practice, working hard to attract new clients, I’m discovering that my PWYC policy is causing some consternation, oddly enough.

I spoke to a psychotherapist about this recently. She said she’s known a number of psychotherapists who have tried a PWYC approach as well and have abandoned it. She suggested I do the same.

For many people a PWYC policy is too much pressure. It moves the responsibility for deciding the monetary value of my work from me to them. Clients can end up feeling they are walking a tightrope between doing what’s good for them and doing what’s right by me. In that way, I’m making them take care of me instead of me taking care of them.

Of course, I didn’t think of it that way. I thought of it as giving my clients freedom and control over a situation. I thought of it as offering them a gift. But for some segment of the population, I was wrong.

Having well-defined and consistently-observed business practices and rules can be a way of taking care of our clients, of extending the massage room into the front office. When we are clear and up front about how we work – both in and out of the treatment room – our clients know what to expect, know what they have to do and what we will do. They know how things are going to work. There should be few surprises.

Given the intimate nature of the relationship with our clients, that’s a good thing. Solid business policies (including rates) provide clarity, consistency, dependability, and reliability. Those are the kind of words we use for companies we value and respect.

As a culture, Americans are generally uncomfortable with bartering. A lot of Americans are not comfortable in markets in other countries where they have to “haggle”. Having a wide-open pricing policy can feel like the client is going to have to bargain or haggle.

There’s one other wrinkle to having a PWYC policy. I’m looking into new ways to promote my practice. A lot of popular options are based on discounting my prices to entice new customers. I can’t hardly discount “pay what you can”, can I?

So, what do I do if I’m still committed to giving my clients a financial break if they need it? I’m considering a couple of options.

Oklahoma MT Sandi Kissane instituted a min/max policy last year. She’s in Norman OK where the going rate for an hour massage is hovering around $60. She lists a minimum of $30 and a maximum of $50 for an hour session. She says it’s been very very popular with her clients.

The psychotherapist who suggested I drop the PWYC plan suggested I might offer several levels of payment. For example, full price ($80), small discount ($65), and large discount ($50). Maybe I could call them bronze, silver, and gold like the Olympics?? Maybe still offer PWYC days to keep things really flexible?

On the other hand, I had a new client yesterday who is a student, just coming off an extended period of unemployment, and could only afford $40 for her massage. I was delighted that she'd heard of my PWYC policy and was able to take advantage of it.

Money can be such a tricky thing, can’t it? It’s more than numbers and pieces of papers, that’s for certain. It comes to reflect so many things for us – value, standing, worth, respect, etc. I should not be surprised by how complicated this pricing business is yet, after almost 12 years in practice, it can still confound me.

How about you? Have any of you tried any creative pricing policies? How successful were they?

Do You Want To Offer A "Groupon" (or other online discount?)

I just ran across an article about small businesses offering coupons / deals through online services like Groupon, Living Social, etc. It warns about how this can all go horribly wrong for the business and what you can do to make it go better for you. It's a short article with practical advice.

If you're thinking of going the online discount route, I strong advise your to read THIS first.

It's Never Too Late to Go Back To Basics

I had two experiences this week that reminded me that after almost 12 years in practice, it's good to get back to basics.

First, I had a new client who has experienced years of physical abuse. She came for massage as part of her efforts to maintain a healthy relationship with her body.

Yes, this scares me. I feel a little blind in these situations because I can't possibly know everything I want to know about how best to work with her. So I went back to basics:

* Work slowly and pay attention throughout the session to everything I'm doing.
* Maintain TWO hands on her at all times so she always knows where my hands are
* Drape with care and precision
* No talking during the session
* Get centered before the session and maintain that centering throughout the session

They are some of the first things I learned in school and they are what I went right back to. The client reported loving the session and asked for another appointment.

Second, my alma mater (Potomac Massage Training Institute) is offering a neat little continuing ed thing -- supervised practical exchanges. That is, once a month you can sign up to get and receive a massage. Instructors from the practical side will watch your work and help you with body mechanics, draping, or whatever else they see you needing help with (just like they did in school).

Now, I've been practicing for more than a decade so I should be just about perfect at this, right? Hah! I noticed during the session that I just wrote about that I was "catching" in my sacrum and really struggling with my alignment and body mechanics. I am looking forward to having someone check me on those again. I know I've picked up bad habits over the years and I'm grateful for someone to help me correct. those.

It's never too late to go back to the basics.

How Quickly It Can Go Bad

Two weeks ago, I went in to the American Red Cross donation center to donate platelets. I made a New Years resolution back in January to donate as often as I can this year. I was donating plasma every two weeks in Brisbane. I've got my act together (finally) here and was ready to jump on the donation bandwagon again.

The donation did not go well. The needle never felt right in my arm (I've been donating for almost 35 years so I know what "not right" feels like). The machine that was supposed to filter out the platelets and put everything else back in my arm kept beeping during the "put it back" part. After 30 minutes of trying, the tech decided to call it quits.

Two days later, my "donation" arm looked like this:

The bruising got worse and it got painful. A week later my doc diagnosed phlebitis (inflammation and infection of blood vessels), put me on antibiotics, and told me to cancel my clients for the rest of the week.

The good news is that the antibiotics kicked in pretty quickly and less than a week later my arm is much better and the bruising is 75% gone. The other good news is that "clearing my schedule" for the rest of the week only meant cancelling 3 clients and I was able to get back to work by the weekend.

But what if it had been a blood clot and my doc had told me to clear my calendar for several weeks (or months)? I don't consider a blood donation "risky behavior" and, like so many MTs, I don't carry disability insurance, short-term or long-term. How quickly could I have been in deep doo-doo financially?

The answer is: pretty damned quickly.

My husband and I have enough savings to get by without my income for a month or two but it gets tight after that. And what if I didn't have a partner and/or savings? What the heck would I do? Re-tooling for a new not-dependent-on-my-limbs profession takes time and planning!

As MTs, we can be put out of work very very quickly and relatively easily and most of us are not prepared for that, financially. I got lucky this time. But I gotta get much more serious about disability insurance!

Working Without A Net

You've probably all seen the ads:

Make $90 an hour as a massage therapist!
Join one of the fastest growing profession in America as a massage therapist!
Be your own boss in only 5 months!

If you've been practicing for any length of time, you know these come-ons do not even begin to describe the reality of being a massage therapist. These glossy come-ons (and too many schools) also don't clue you in to the fact that you will most likely be self-employed (even when working in someone else's setting) and that being self-employed is tough (and often not wealth-generating).

There's another....well, I won't call it a lie but I will call it a mis-direct...that our own profession is touting. That everyone can be financially secure strictly through working as a massage therapist. When I look at the "success" stories in the trade pubs I notice something -- while they don't say it outright, they imply that it is perfectly reasonable to make a comfortable living as a massage therapist. Many of us know it's actually much harder than that.

Our dirty little secret  is that many of us are "making it" financially because we have partners with better incomes and/or other means of support. I'm one of those that has a partner with a solid steady income that provides us with the all-important health insurance, retirement accounts, savings accounts, etc. There are a lot of co-workers, however, who are doing it "without a net"; that is, entirely on their own. It's a completely different world for them.

Sadly, since so many of us work on our own (and are loathe to tell our financial stories) too many MTs think they're the only one struggling. They think they're making some big mistake because "everyone else" seems to be doing fine. There are people leaving (or not even entering) massage therapy because they can't figure out how to make it on their own.

It's time we started telling each other the truth about how our profession really works. It's time to start telling our financial stories so we know we're not alone. I write a column for the quarterly newsletter of the DC chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association. My next column (January '12, which is closer than you think!) will be all about this. I'll post a link when it's published.

Honoring My Limitations

I spent four hours this morning working with Eye Street Massage, doing seated massage for parents weekend at George Washington University. I used to work at Eye Street and I know what a big deal this is every year. The university provides free 15-minute massages for the parents and it's enormously popular.

The owner, Pam, has 8 massage stations for 3 days and we are generally full. She's been doing this for a couple of years and every year her organization and management of the setting gets better and better. I was really impressed with how well it went today.

We are all lined up along the wall of a foyer where the parents come in and register for all the different activities of the weekend. There are people passing through the hallway the whole time we're there. There are people on our chairs the whole shift (with appropriate breaks; thank you Pam!). It is a people-rich environment.

I came home from the event, fixed myself a sandwich, and slept in the recliner for 3 hours. I wasn't physically exhausted but psychically / energetically you could stick a fork in me because I was done. See, I'm an introvert. Touching 14 people in 4 hours while surrounded by MTs and strangers will drain me, every single time. I know how to prep myself, I know how to ground, clear, shield, etc. etc. etc. But at the end of the day, I'm still an introvert who gets wiped out by that much people-contact.

It's why I no longer do corporate massage every week. While it's profitable (and a great steady stream of income) it takes too much out of me. Even when I have a lovely private room and have complete control over my schedule, I can only interact that intentionally with a limited number of people in a day. This happens when I teach too.

I learned through trial and error (the best teacher there is) what my limits are. I don't care how much money there is in corporate work, I don't care how much bigger my client base I would be if I saw more clients in a day or a week, how much more money I would make if I turned clients around faster. I am who I am and only a fool ignores that.

We've all got hard limits on what we can do (or at least do well). Maybe we can only see so many people in a day. Maybe we really stink at long-range planning or bookkeeping or writing session notes. Maybe we're a terrible public speaker or just not a good writer. You need to know what your limits are and honor them. Get help doing the things you can't do.

Lots of "success" advice out there in the world is based on some mythical "average" business owner (or, worse, on what the writer is really good at and enjoys). It may be couched in terms of "you have got to [fill in the blank]...". If you're self-employed, you don't have to do much of anything (OK, except pay taxes and you can get help with that!). Your business, your rules.

Yes, there are things that have been proven, over time, to be smart, effective, or useful. You still get to decide what you want to do, what you don't want to do, and where you need to get someone else to do it for you. For example:

• When I know I'm going to have intensive people-contact time, I make sure there is at least a 3-hour block of time after that for me to sleep or at least be alone.
• I am pretty good at bookkeeping but when something requires absolute precision, especially around numbers, I get help.
• Filing is the same. I know how to do it but I don't like doing it so I ask for help when it's time to clear that stuff off my desk.

No one can do everything. Learn how you really work -- your best and your worst -- and honor that. Pretending you can do everything (or pretending that you don't have limits) is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.

It Takes a Strong Woman....

We all have them -- the weeks with the empty schedule, the weeks no one seems to want or need a massage, the weeks when everyone cancels. I think this kind of week throws everyone's confidence into a tailspin.

(Has everyone discovered I'm a fraud? Has everyone decided they don't need me? Has everyone found a better MT? Will I ever have another client? Will my schedule ever be full again?)

It really takes nerves of steel some days to be self employed.

I'm having that kind of week. One appointment for the whole week (and, boy, am I grateful for that one appointment!). When it's happened in the past (and it has, plenty of times) I could always look back at the healthy plump weeks for encouragement. Now, since I'm re-starting my practice, I've got nothing to look back at for encouragement.

So, I'm feeling very discouraged and blue and maybe just the tiniest bit panicky this week. I'm giving myself a "buck up" talking to, falling back on the advice I give other MTs when they have this kind of week:

* One bad week doesn't equal a dead practice. It's just one week. Heck, I've already got two clients schedule for next week!

* I'm working on some plans to market my practice. I realize I haven't done any serious marketing in years because I didn't have to. I'm a little rusty.

* If there's no work, then I might as well play. Museums, rivers, trails, and I've never been up in the Washington Monument. I also have a large address book of people I haven't seen in more than a year.

* As that crazy King Louie sings in the movie "Madagascar" -- I like to move it move it move it...as hard as it is to do, movement can have a powerful effect on the "veins full of sand" blues. Might as well walk over to Fragers Hardware and pick up a few things the house needs. At least it's a day full of sunshine!

I'm choosing not to give up and not to give in. I'm choosing to believe in me and my work. Nerves of steel...

Procrastination -- An Early Warning System?

I had a great conversation with my friend Jill Foster, owner of Live Your Talk, today. Like me, she is a micro business owner (translation: she works for herself and by herself). She asked me if I'd ever gotten stuck in a procrastination groove and what I did about it.

I told her my #1 response to the procrastination groove was to Step Away. That is, take a day or two off of work and go listen to my heart, go play, go nap, go relax but GO! Why?

When I look back at the times I've really been plagued by procrastination, it's been an (unconscious) act of self-protection. Procrastination often comes to me because I'm depleted. I'm worn out. I'm trying to work out of my reserves rather than my main energy source. I'm drawing from energy I need for other things. Some deep part of me -- Mind? Spirit? Heart? -- recognizes that and takes steps to protect me and care for me. Procrastination is one of the tools that deep part of me chooses.

For us micro-biz types we have only one real asset in our business -- us. As a massage therapist I also have two massage tables, a massage chair, a couple of thousand dollars in reference books, sheets, music and all that other happy stuff that helps me deliver massage therapy. But those things don't actually do the rubbing. That's done by yours truly.

And I can replace all of those things. I absolutely positively cannot replace me. Anything happens to me and BowersHours closes. Permanently.

So I have a strong motivation to take care of me. When something like procrastination strikes, I accept it as a warning that I am running low (sort of like that "time to buy gas" light in my car) and I Step Away From The Massage Table (and laptop and desk and big pile of massage laundry) and start exploring where I'm depleted and focus on re-filling myself.

If you look back at your life you can probably identify the warning signs from your mind/heart/soul that things aren't right, that you're depleted, that you're drawing down your reserves. What are your signs?

Talking Shop Outside The Shop

I spent the weekend in Durham NC talking about the massage therapy industry with two people who have absolutely nothing to do with the massage therapy industry. It was one of the most professionally productive two days I've had in an age!

Background: Kitty Southworth and I are launching a new company in 2012 called The Healing Core. Our original vision was to offer continuing education, specifically in energy and business, to people in the healing arts. We went to Durham to talk to Clare Reece-Glore about adult education and Adriana DiFranco about marketing.

Clare helped us review the outline for our Energy 101 class. She helped us see what we did well (lots, blessedly!) and what we can do to make it even better (lots, just as blessedly). We also made plans to bring her to DC to teach a class on how to develop a good continuing ed class.

Adriana asked us to describe our business and our industry and then helped us imagine a business so much bigger than we had imagined. She helped us see that we could be even more than we imagined. She led us to see things we never would have been able to see for ourselves.

When you talk to people who are already embedded in the same industry you are, they have the same (frequently unknown) limits to their worldview that you do. When you talk shop with someone outside your industry they ask questions like "couldn't you do....?" and "why don't you....?" Sometimes their suggestions won't work because there are things they don't understand but just as often they will invite you to see things in a whole new light.

I enjoy talking shop with other MTs and I learn much from them. But sometimes I find it's good to get out of the "shop" and see how the world looks on the other side of the office door.

Happy Endings?

One of my long-term clients was on my table last week. It was the end of the session and I was doing some scalp work (that she loves) to finish up. She mentioned that each MT she's seen has one "special" body part that they are particularly adept with. Another favorite MT of hers does especially good work on the shoulders. I am known for being great with the feet.

"Of course," she said "you also give great head."

I began giggling (quietly!) and pushed back away from the table because I was starting to shake with internal laughter. There was a pause and she said "Wait, that didn't come out right...".

Sometimes we can give our clients happy endings and still stay within our professional ethical boundaries and personal comfort zones. :)

Made The Nut

When your income is highly variable from week to week, it's common to have a "minimum" you want to reach each week/month to meet your living expenses. I call mine "The Nut" (though I can't remember why I call it The Nut).

Week Two back in business and I made The Nut this week! And got approached by two more clients to schedule appointments. Apparently I'm going to be OK. :)

Getting Too Close

I'm at the end of my 2nd week back to massage (one more client!). Most things have come back to me with practice but I have one problem that's going to take more practice.

I've often joked that "bodies talk to me". What I mean is that I have the ability to open my senses up to a clients body while they are on my table and "read" their tissue, to a certain extent. I can get a sensation of "tight" or "open" or "weak" or "congested" or even "happy" or "angry". This doesn't usually tell me anything personal about the client but it does help guide me in my work.

But I am remembering how much it takes out of me too. I feel all these things -- tight, open, weak, etc. -- in my own body. That's just how it works for me (it's a form of empathy). Unfortunately, it tends to drain my own energies and after two sessions I can be more run-down than I should be. That kind of fatigue can lead to compromised judgement (as is always true with fatigue) and it can lead to over-eating (in an attempt to re-charge myself).

I think this has always been a challenge for me but I've gotten better at recognizing when things are happening to me, energetically, in the last few years and especially in the last year. So now I recognize it faster but I have to re-learn the practices of energetic self-care! I know what to do but I've gotten far too casual in actually doing the things I need to do.

It's like trying to go for a jog when you haven't run in a year. You certainly remember how to do it but it may take a while to get good at it again!

I suspect this will be my biggest challenge in the months to come.

Fitting In

I know a good massage therapist who has been trying to connect with local medical offices, particularly those who serve the community of people living with fibromyalgia, with mixed success. She recently re-did her brochure for those offices and is now getting regular calls from people seeking appointments.

What changed? I think she made two important decisions for this brochure:

First, she included information on a new study that shows how effective massage can be for those living with fibromyalgia. Most importantly (because she has a scientific mindset), she asked a friend who doesn't think like a scientist to help her explain the study in non-medical, non-scientific terms. She trusted this friend's advice. She made the information accessible.

Second, she invested in a laser color printer so she could print her brochures in full color and on heavier card stock. It gave them a much professional look and feel. Her brochures now look like they belong in a doctors office, right alongside all the other professionally produced medical literature.

MTs (and other healing professionals) often focus on doing things economically (sometimes, even cheaply). We aren't high-dollar professions so we are cautious about spending money. We often think the content will overshadow the economy of the presentation.

However, our marketing material has to look like it actually belongs in the places we have it. It also has to respect the audience it's trying to attract and use language and images that matter to the people reading the information.

This may mean investing in good printing and good paper (for printed material). It may mean asking other professionals (printers, web developers, graphic designers) to work with us. It may also mean asking someone to review our material and make sure it makes sense, not to us but to the potential reader.

This MT did and it's paying off.

Good Reads: The One-Page Business Plan

2012 is going to hold some great new things for me as my friend Kitty Southworth and I launch a continuing ed company, The Healing Core. Right now we're working on a business plan for it (of course!).

Quite a few years ago a couple of also-self-employed friends recommended I use "The One Page Business Plan" by Jim Horan to write my first business plan. I did and found it so incredibly user-friendly that I have recommended it to even more people.

His basic theory is that most of us don't need that muscular weighty paper-intensive traditional business plan. In fact, he posits that for most of us, the traditional business plan is a roadblock. So he's crafted a biz plan that is, literally, one page long. His book (now re-issued as The One Page Business Plan for the Creative Entrepreneur) has worksheets and exercises to walk you through creating the one-pager. I used it in 2002 to write my first business plan. Took me 2 days. I've continued to use it every year to update my business plan.

And my business plan really is one page, taped to the wall above my laptop so I can look at it every day if I want to.

That's a useful and practical book! Here are some of my favorite quotes from it:

There is no right, wrong, or perfect business plan. Your business will always be evolving. So will your plan. It will also get better with time. Business plans don't have to be long to be good.

The most important reason to have a business plan is to clarify your thinking, regardless of the size of your company. Is it possible to have too much clarity or focus?

You have everything you need to draft the [business] plan in your head.

Business planning concepts are not difficult. You already understand all of them.

A business plan brings out the best and worst in most business professionals. It facilitates creative and analytical thinking, problem solving, communications, interfunctional sharing, and teamwork. It generates hope and enthusiasm about the future. It also brings out procrastination, frustration, differences of opinions, and possibly anger. It is not a benign process. But when done well, the process is very valuable and has its own sense of satisfaction. Your business will be stronger.

The business plan is, in effect, our modeling tool. It provides the sketch, the vision, the road map for our ideas. In many ways, it's just like the composer's first few chords; the musician gets to hear it and so do others. The business plan works the same way. You get to see your ideas in writing and so do others.

Have you considered that Queen Isabella of Spain was one of the most powerful and important venture capitalists of all time?

Mission statements are also about commitments and promises. Ask yourself, "What is your company committed to providing your customers or constituencies?" Under what circumstances would you refund your customer's money and apologize for not providing what was promised? What would you be willing to do to make amends with a dissatisfied customer? The answers to these questions may help you understand why your business exists.

I've Still Got It (I think)!

I saw my first client in a year on Monday night. She has been a client for years so I know her body and her background, which helps!

It was lovely to step back into the clinic at PMTI and fall right back into the rhythm of setting up -- sheets on the table, table lowered to my level, adjusting the headrest, plugging in the music, washing my hands....it seems so simple but it was reassuring to have it fall back into place so easily.

The intake....as long as usual. I must do about the longest intakes of anyone I know! It is not unusual for them to last 10 - 15 minutes. I give my clients a chance to really tell me what's going on with them. It's funny the things that come out after 6 or 8 minutes of talking -- their real concerns, the little aches and pains, the insights into what they truly need. It often changes how I structure the session, even if it's just a little bit.

Palpation? Yes, I still can! (phew) Touching, feeling the tissue's response, confirming where things are tight or non-responsive.

Is the pressure good? OK, I need to start lighter. I need to remember "superficial to deep". Got an urge to dive in. Need to soften up just a bit.

Time management? OK, gotta work on that. The clock is moving much too fast! It'll come back.

But I am back.

Words of Wisdom: Sally Healy

There are a lot of books about business out there in the world. I haven't found many that I can actually use (or, admittedly, understand) for a massage therapy practice.

However, I recently met a book I'm enjoying reading! I've gotten involved in a women's publishing network here (which I am really going to miss!). The leader, Bev Ryan, was the project manager for "Women on Top: Against the Odds" by Terri Cooper and Sally Healy. The book profiles 11 women who have built successful independent businesses and talks about the lessons they have to offer. Most of these businesses started out as small, often home-based, businesses so there are lessons I'm taking away from each of them.

I'd like to share great quotes from the book along the way. Today we start with Sally Healy. She built Jigsaw Consulting Group, "a market leader in delivering professional and personalised recruitment, training, and coaching strategies."

I had a clear picture of what the business looked like although I struggled to put it into words. Rather than get hung up about the lack of a plan I decided to let the business unfold naturally, which may have been naive, however it allowed me to be very client-driven. Friends and professional alike advised me to make a business plan and stick to it. I disagreed with that philosophy and still believe that if you follow the exact path your business plan mapped out you may miss critical opportunities you might otherwise have embraced.

Now, if you've read this blog for long you know that I am a big proponent of the business plan. Yet I found great wisdom in what she has to say.

A business plan helps us get clear with what we're trying to do -- what are we doing, why are we doing it, what it's going to cost, our organization, and what steps to take to move forward -- but a business plan is not Truth In All Its Majesty. The most valuable part of the business plan, the part you should never ignore, is not the financials or the organizational strategy or the competitive analysis. The most important parts of a good business plan are the mission and vision statements.

If you stay true to your mission and your vision, then the specifics (including the financials, competitive analysis, etc.) can be very flexible. You have to be able to adapt as you discover what really works and doesn't work but you do need to stay focused on why you're doing what you're doing and what you hope to accomplish. Both of those truths (Truths?) are contained in well-constructed mission and vision statements.

A few more good quotes from Sally:

On working from home: Client calls sometimes happened in my walk-in-wardrobe [closet for you non-Aussies] to escape the household noise.

On developing a brand: A brand is not just a logo, nor is it an arm of your marketing strategy. It represents your business ethics, personality, values and tone of voice. It creates customer loyalty and market positioning.

On when to get started: Don't wait for things to be right in order to begin. Change is chaotic. Things will never be just right. As Teddy Roosevelt once said, 'Do what you can, with what you have, where you are right now.'

On the role of passion in business: I believe that passion is the competitive advantage that an organisation can't buy. Passion fills us with energy and enables us to perform at our peak and that is infectious. Embrace it, revel in it and use it to stand apart. Follow your heart and not the crowd.

On competition: 'It's a cut-throat world, where serious business means competing for market share to survive. We watch our competitors closely to ensure we have the upper hand.' This competitive outlook is the conventional view of the world of marketing. It's based on the mentality of lack, on the belief that there are a limited number of clients for your services. Of course competition is healthy, but if we are willing to get past the essence of rivalry there is much to be gained from collaboration. The key to success is keeping an open mind and willingness to learn and share knowledge. You are more likely to succeed if you go into a collaboration with that frame of mind.

On growing your practice: 'Grow or die' has been an unquestioned presumption of executives, business schools and journals that I have avidly devoured. I made the mistake of recruiting a bigger team and taking bigger premises without doing what I call a risk audit...Growing too quickly can stress people, processes and quality controls...Growth occurs well when the risks of growth are properly managed. If not, it can be harmful.

On contracts: A signed contract is simply a piece of paper with words on it. What's behind a signed contract is a relationship. If the relationship breaks down, the contract won't save you...Once you are at the stage of resorting to what's written on the contract, the arrangement is already in trouble.

On intuition vs. logic: If you base all your business deals on logic and disregard your intuition, you will most likely regret it.

Biz Plans Demystified

We all know business plans are "good things", in general. But I'm willing to bet that most of us don't have one. They seem so daunting and that's before we actually look at them! Once we look at what a standard business plan includes, most of us just want to lie down and take a nap. A long nap.

Executive summaries. Sales plans. Supply chains. Competitive analysis. Communication plans. Exit strategies. Inventory management. Accounts receivable. Accounts payable. Break even analyses. Sales projections.

And that's just a sampling!

It's worth it to get a general idea of each section of a standard business plan, even if you're not going to write a standard business plan. If you understand the purpose of each section and get a general idea of what all those terms mean, you can start to customize a standard business plan to suit your own purposes.

This book does a pretty good job of explaining the different parts of a standard business plans: Business Plan In A Day. I know there are others, though there are a lot a lot of references that assume you understand all these terms and references.

Using a reference like that, you can scale down a standard business plan to something you will actually understand.

If you want to go a step further, you can abandon the standard business plan completely! (This only works if you're writing a biz plan for your own purposes and not because you're trying to get financing. If you want financing, you've got to work with some form of a standard business plan.) If you are using a business plan mostly to clear up your own thinking and set some goals for yourself, I recommend you look at alternative business plans.

The one that I use (and I've even customized that) is the One Page Business Plan, explained by Jim Horan in his book of the same name. The first time I wrote a business plan, I used this book. It took me three solid days of work the first time. Since then, I update it every January. It takes me one day now to review the last year, plan for the coming year, and update the biz plan.

Because it is literally one page, I'm not overwhelmed by the process. It's so much more manageable. I can also tack it to the wall above my laptop so I've got a visual reminder of my goals and objectives for the year every day.

One-page may not be the answer for you but don't be afraid to create what you need. The most important aspect of a business plan, like the most important aspect of a business card, is that it exists. The brilliant plan that you're going to write....one of these days.....is worth far less than a goofy irregular plan that you've actually written.

I've got a business plan that I've customized for massage therapists. I intend to start offering a workshop next year walking people through this business plan. If you're interested, keep an eye on my website to see when it's next going to be offered.

How's Business?

For many of us, the financial health of our practice comes down to “can I pay my bills?” That is an excellent baseline measurement of business health, I admit. Sometimes, though, it’s helpful to have a deeper picture of the financial health of our practices.

Big corporations use a raft of financial reports to do just that. Most of those reports, however, either don't make sense for the kind of businesses we’re running or they’re answering questions we don’t generally ask. There are three common financial reports that I do think are useful to massage therapists and they answer three fundamental questions:

• How much is my practice worth?
• Is my practice actually profitable (how much money am I really making)?
• Do I have enough cash to pay my bills?

How Much Is My Practice Worth?

Are you wondering if you could sell your practice? Do you need to take out a loan for your business? Are you curious if you’re practice is worth more than it was when you started? Then you need a balance sheet.

A balance sheet shows you how your business is doing on any given day. To create a balance sheet, you list all your assets, list all your liabilities, and see what the difference is. The difference is your “net worth”.

Your assets include things you can convert to cash: cash (obviously), the money in your business bank accounts, any money that is owed to your practice, any inventory that you have waiting to be sold, and expenses you’ve pre-paid (rent, for example), reference books, and (probably our biggest category) office and massage equipment (massage table, CDs, linens, laptops, printers, etc.). If you ever added all this up, you may be surprised how many thousands of dollars you have in assets.

Your liabilities are things like the balance on business loans, taxes you will need to pay for this quarter, outstanding bills, and (one that we don’t always think about) outstanding gift certificates and packages. In short, liabilities represent money or services you still owe.

Balance sheets are particularly valuable for comparison. That is, if you generated a balance sheet for the last day of 2010 and another one for the last day of 2011, you could see if your net worth went up over the course of 2011.

Is my practice actually profitable (how much money am I really making)?

We become massage therapists to help people but we also want to make money at it. It’s good to have some cash in our pocket but is our practice actually supporting itself? Are we making more than we’re spending? How much more?

To learn that, you want to create an income statement (it’s also known as a Profit and Loss statement). The income statement lists all the money you made in a period of time (usually a month, quarter, or year) and then lists all your expenses for that same time period. Hopefully, the income is more than the expenses! That’s called your profit.

If you do your bookkeeping through a program like Quicken or Quikbooks, the software can easily create this report for you. If you do your bookkeeping in something like Excel or on paper, it’s just a matter of adding up the columns.

This may sound suspiciously like the Schedule C you fill out for your annual income tax return. It is very close to your schedule C. In fact, I usually create an income statement to help me fill out my schedule C.

Like the balance sheet, it’s especially helpful when you want to compare one time period to another. Did you make more money in the 1st quarter or the 2nd quarter of 2011? Was 2010 or 2009 more profitable for you?

Will I Have Enough Cash to Pay My Bills?

We usually know how much cash we have right now because our clients pay as they go. Cash flow can be a challenge for us, though, if we sell a lot of gift certificates or packages. What happens if most of our clients in one week pay with gift certificates? We don’t end up making much money that week!

A cash flow report helps us anticipate periods of low income or high expenses. There may be software that helps with this but I find it to be mostly a pencil-n-paper exercise (though I keep mine in Excel). List the months of the year and write down the big expenses you know you’ve got coming up. As much as you can, put them in the month you think they’ll occur. Common examples would be:

• License renewals
• Professional society membership renewal
• Conventions and continuing education (and associated travel expenses)
• Vacations
• Quarterly taxes
• New office equipment (laptop, iPod, cell phone)
• New massage equipment (tables or chairs in particular)
• Gift-giving crunches (like Christmas or, in my family, October!)

This list gives you an idea of your cash outflow.

How do you figure out what your normal monthly inflow is; that is, how much money do you usually make in a month? Take a look at your monthly income for the last year if you haven’t been in practice very long. Notice the highs and lows in your income. That will give you a general idea. If you’ve been in practice a couple of years, it’s worth it to run an income statement for several years, broken down by month. Then you can see what your average monthly income is over several years or you can start to notice whether some months are consistently low or high income months.

Sounds like a lot of work? It’s absolutely worth it if you’re the kind of person who is regularly uncertain / uncomfortable about having enough money to pay your upcoming bills. Putting it down in writing at least gives you a more concrete idea of what you’ll need.

When you need to know how you’re really doing as a business, these three reports can provide you a wealth of valuable information.

Let Me Teach You A Thing Or Two...

I just submitted an application to teach a workshop at the 2012 AMTA convention. "The Business Plan Demystified". I've spent the last month reading a lot about standard business plans and thinking about how to adapt that to the reality of massage therapists.

The application wasn't long but I often find "official" educational applications in the massage industry to be a real headache. Part of the headache is the detail they ask for (did they really expect me to include a copy of my college degree?) and some of it is that I know massage and I understand business (from a massage therapist's point of view) but I'm less knowledgeable about the requirements of education -- learning outcomes, how the classroom set-up relates to learning outcomes, etc.

The AMTA and NCBTMB (the biggies in this field) are upholding high standards, this is true. But they're upholding them against a population that isn't trained to meet those standards. We know massage and we have a wealth of information to share with each other. But if we aren't trained in educational standards and lingo, we're at a loss. It's a huge roadblock to many of us.

The AMTA and NCBTMB aren't offering us that education either. Where are we going to get it? It's in the profession's best interest to teach us how to teach. But it's not being done. I'd love to sponsor that kind of training but first I'd have to find someone who knows how to teach it and is willing to teach it to MTs. Haven't found that person yet.

I belong to a profession that is in a massive period of growth and change. Some days, that feels like a great birthing. Some days it feels like a mighty menstrual cramp (sorry menfolk but that's just the image I'm stuck with!).

The Sweetness of Time

As Jeff and I approach the end of our time here in Brisbane (41 days left) we've been reflecting on what you can and can't do in the course of a year. We haven't established the friendships we expected to. We didn't get engaged in the community to the level we expected to. We didn't "master" Australian culture and we sure as hell didn't pick up the accent!

Some things just take time, often more time than we expect. Adaptation -- especially at a deep level -- operates less on "mind time" and more on "heart time". When we want to change who we are in some ways, we have to operate on heart time.

I learned this in massage school. Learning to do massage can be pretty quick. A couple of months, maybe even a couple of weeks. To learn to be a massage therapist, though, takes at least a year (and that just starts the process). To learn to approach humanity, vulnerability, responsibility, and healing differently than you probably ever have before simply takes as long as it takes. It takes heart time.

In the last year I have managed to loosen the way I think about myself and my professional life. I have managed to find the room to truly imagine where I need to go next. When I left DC a year ago, I thought I could be an author and an educator. Now I know that I already am both of those things. A year ago I casually wondered whether Kitty Southworth and I might want to work more closely with each other. Now we have concrete plans to form a partnership and pull our professional lives in even closer parallel.

The trick is to respect the flow of time, to respect that some things take as long as they take. Time is a gift available to each of us. We work best with it when we ride with it instead of fighting it, trying to bottle it, control it, or "manage" it. Time is a better partner than a master or a servant.

They Don't Have To Be Scary

"An MT-Friendly Business Plan"

If you saw that as the title of a workshop, what would you expect from the workshop? What information would it convey? What questions would it answer?

The vast majority of us do not have a business plan for our businesses. From my experience, there's a couple of reasons for that:

* We don't understand the terms and sections of the standard biz plan.
* We're scared silly of them.
* They seem much too complicated for a modest business, like ours often are.
* We don't know what we'd do with it once we had one.
* They look like they take way too much work.

I think these are all valid reasons not to do a business plan and I think they are all correctable.

I've had a business plan for 7 or 8 years now in my practice. I use it to get clear on what my mission and vision are for my practice. Once I had done that, I could figure out how to get where I want to go. It's been very useful.

And mine is a whopping one-page long and only uses language that I understand.

I want to present a workshop on MT-friendly business plans at the 2012 AMTA convention in NC. I'm working on the proposal today and I'm coming up against some writer's block about how to organize this workshop. What would you want to see in a workshop with this title?

An Encouraging Word

I'm 8 weeks away from returning to the US and 10 weeks away from re-opening my massage practice (back at PMTI, exact schedule still TBD). My clients are starting to contact me to see when I'll be back! How excellent is that?

Apparently I will still have a practice when I get back. (phew)

Another Diagnostic Tool

A former student, Ginger Ingalls, is undergoing treatment for cancer. She posted a "thumbs up" on Facebook today to the doc that helped find the cancer. In addition to the usual tests -- bloodwork, x-rays, etc. -- he also trusted his intuition that said there was "something" else there.

If he hadn't trusted his intuition, it would have taken much longer for Ginger to learn about the cancer. We all know what happens when a cancer diagnosis is delayed.

The allopathic medical community is deeply indebted to the many sources of data about our bodies that are now available to them -- blood tests, x-rays, CAT scans, MRIs, etc. etc. etc. -- with good reason. These diagnostic tools allow the medical practitioner to "see" into the body in a way the naked eye usually can't.

However, there's another diagnostic tool that has been drummed out of the diagnostic corps -- the intuition of an experienced practitioner. Intuition is not some kind of wispy surreal fakery. It's not make-believe. "Intuition" is the name we use when we're taking in information outside of the normal blunt cognitive processes. It's frequently the result of some very sophisticated integration of experience, observation, and standard data.

Sadly, for medical professionals it also often involves actually touching a patient, which doctors do less and less.

The other truth is that intuition can be taught and learned. It's not limited to the spiritually advanced or restricted to those born with a "gift". We are all born with the capacity. That capacity is often trained out of us during our formative years but it can be trained back in. The primary lesson you need to access your own intuition? Learning to listen to yourself.

But that's not a standard cognitive process. It doesn't come from a book. You can't get an advanced degree in it. It can't be measured with our current stable of measuring devices. (Though it can be tested for efficacy.) Therefore, it can't be "real" or useful.

Pity, that.

Starting At The Beginning

Back in September I started attending a weekly meditation group on Wednesday mornings. After our main meditation, we usually draw "angel" cards to see what they have to say for us today.

Today, mine mentioned my "divine purpose". The leader asked me what I thought mine was. I said "to educate and mentor". I love to teach and I tend to draw to me people who want to learn from what I've learned.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what kind of teaching I like to do. I've noticed that I most often get excited by helping people get started in something. I like to teach the 101-level classes, the getting started classes, the introduction-to classes. I get jazzed by helping people explore, step into, or accept the challenge of something new. I like giving people the confidence to go somewhere they haven't gone before.

I've wondered, at times, if I'm deficient because I don't help people develop mastery. I do not tend to lead people deep into a subject. I help them start on a path but then I have to hand them off to someone else for the advanced work. Am I a dilettante, ever dabbling in new fields and new experiences but never staying long enough to gain depth?

Maybe. More likely, I think this is my role in life. Others are not good at the "getting started" but they are darned good at the "going deep". I'm the experimenter. I am the explorer. I get buzzed from learning new things and sharing that.

In recognizing and claiming your strengths, you also have to have at least a nodding acquaintance with your weaknesses. That's valuable. It improves the odds that you will not commit to something that depends on your weak side.

The is my learning for today.

How Do You Spell Success?

I've been engaged in some interesting conversations lately about the concept of success for a writer.

Is it peer respect? That other people in my field think highly of what I write?

Is it selling a lot of books?

Is it making a lot of money from the sales of my books?

Is it gaining name recognition so that people want to come to my workshops and buy my next book?

Is it having a lot of people actually read my book?

These things are not mutually exclusive (I can only have one) but they also aren't mutually inclusive either (they naturally go together).

For example, I could sell a lot of books because I've figured out how to get "buzz" (Oprah? Have you gotten my memo yet??). That doesn't mean it's a good book that will get the respect of my peers or even of the people that have bought the book.

Example? I've been reading (more accurately, slogging through) "The Celestine Prophecy". This book was big in the new age/spirituality market back in the early 90s. The author originally self-published and sold 10,000 copies out of his car trunk before a major publisher picked it up. By 2006, he'd sold more than 20 million copies. It has been translated into 32 languages.

The ideas in it are fascinating but they're wrapped in a fictional story and the fictional writing is, to be kind, weak. In fact, in an informal survey of friends, more than half admitted that they only finished it by focusing on the ideas and ignoring or forcing themselves to finish the fictional story. I also know a lot of people who never finished it and they all cite the bad writing as the reason.

Yet, it sold millions. The author was interviewed endlessly and has gone on to a pretty conventional definition of success.

Another example: there's a writer here in Australia who has produced one of the stupidest cookbooks I've ever seen. But she sold millions of copies because she knew how to market the hell out of that book (actually "books", she's done a 2nd cookbook in the series). She also figured out that (1) people buy plenty of books (especially cookbooks) that they never read and (2) she doesn't necessarily need people to love her books, she just needs them to buy them.

She's got great name recognition and is a sought-after speaker, guest on morning TV, etc. Talk about "brand".

I can't say that's wrong because I would love to have that kind of name recognition and I'd like to sell millions of copies. But do I want to do it by writing crappy books but marketing them brilliantly? If my goal is to support myself with writing (and speaking, etc.), then the answer could legitimately be "yes".

Am I too "professional" for that? Or am I not good enough at marketing? I don't know. Ask me again in a year or two when I'm earnestly trying to sell my books.

More importantly, I need to get clear with myself about what "success" as a writer is going to look like to me. Working on that.....

Uh...where do my hands go?

Back in December Jeff fell and tore up his knee -- torn ACL, PCL, and lateral co-lateral plus hairline fractures of the tibia. He'll need surgery when we get back to the States but in the meantime he's getting around pretty well with a cane.


However, sometimes his knee still gives out on him. A few weeks ago that happened and he caught himself -- sharply -- with the cane. Phew! Except for the jammed shoulder.


He asked me to do some massage on his shoulder. For a brief moment, I couldn't remember how to massage a shoulder! It's been 9 months since I've done a massage.


It came back but there was a moment when I was wondering if PMTI offered remedial massage education....

Another fantasy...

Wish I had the wherewithall to do something like this: Bleeding Hearts.

Underwear check...

Years ago, my massage partner-in-crime Kitty Southworth was sharing her frustration at meeting someone who didn't carry their business cards. She said, completely extemporaneously "I leave home with my underwear before I leave home wthout my business cards!"

It's a great quote and I've shared this story with many other small business owners. I once caught her without her business cards and I made her prove to me she was wearing her underwear.

Well........2 weeks ago I got caught out without business cards (even though I was wearing my underwear). I ran out a month ago and was having trouble getting them printed since we don't have a printer at home and I don't really need 500, which is the minimum at the local print shop.

And God bless my lovely husband, Jeff made sure Kitty knew I'd been caught out without biz cards! Nice job, fuzzbutt.

I now have biz cards in my purse so I've got them with me all the time. All the time! So I can wear my underwear guilt-free again.

Get It In Writing

My favorite business coach -- my cleaning lady Kelli of Kelli's Cleaning Angels -- is here today and today's nugget of wisdom is about contracts.

Her business is both home cleaning and corporate cleaning. She was telling the tale of a corporate client who didn't actually bother to read her contract (which is one page long) and tried to back out of a $10,000 bill (and ongoing agreement). Kelli had laid out the cost clearly in the contract but they were still shocked by the cost and wanted to terminate the contract.

Sadly, the contract they'd signed was for four years. Ooops!

Now she could have gone all wimpy at this point -- fearful of the power of a "corporation" over a small business like hers -- but she didn't. She stood her ground and pointed to the contract and they paid up.

Why? Because she knows she IS a business owner! (Shout out to all my former students..)

Her contracts are simple. They spell out what she will deliver, how often, and for how much money. They also stipulate what she will do to correct a sub-standard cleaning job. Finally, it spells out how either party can terminate the contract. Kelli says her contract is less than a page long and I'm willing to bet it's written in plain English.

She says she has insisted on contracts with all her corporate clients for a long time now. In a conflict, handshake agreements usually come down to "I said..." and "no you didn't, you said...", which can never be resolved. Though she did say that one corporate client she had a verbal agreement with tried to reneg on payment but backed down when she mentioned she'd talked to her lawyer (she hadn't but they didn't know that!).

As MTs, we are often very uncomfortable with contracts. We don't fully understand them and a lot of MTs I know are overwhelmed and baffled by legal language. We're pretty sure someone is going to use it against us sooner or later.

Contracts are simply the details of an agreement between two parties, usually for the purpose of business dealings. They exist to (1) make sure you both understand what you're agreeing to and (2) give you a point of reference if you're ever in disagreement.

You can also write contracts in plain language (think of them as letters of agreement if that makes you more comfortable). If both parties are comfortable with that, it can work. Even in court. If your agreement shows a clear intent to establish a normal business relationship, a court will take that into consideration.

Are you better off with a lawyer drafting your contracts? I think I would if I was (1) dealing with very large amounts of money or (2) not entirely confident about my working relationship with the other side of the contract but that's simply my opinion. You should never take my word as the final authority on legal matters!

If you are doing business with another business on an on-going basis, I strongly recommend getting the details down in writing. Make sure you both understand what you're agreeing to, in detail, and make sure you both have a neutral point of reference if you're ever in disagreement (and the odds are, if you work together long enough, you will be in disagreement at some point. We're all only human.).

Call it a contract. Call it a letter of understanding. Call it a document of agreement. Call it anything you want but just make sure you get it in writing.

I Am Approved

Effective April 11, I am an NCBTMB approved continuing education provider (through The Healing Core, with my buddy / Board of Directors / massage therapist / road trip companion / professional conscience / partner in crime / advanced tapotement provider Kitty Southworth).

I feel like I graduated to the Big Girl Panties!

For those of you who have no idea what the *bleep* I'm talking about....

....most MTs are licensed and have to renew those licenses every 2 years or so. As part of the renewal process, they have to prove they took xx hours of continuing education since the last time they renewed their license.

Therefore, when we are considering our continuing ed options, we always check to see if they offer CEUs. There are a lot of MTs who simply won't spend the time or money on a course that doesn't also offer CEUs (since we all are usually short on both time and money).

To grant CEUs, the workshop provider has to be approved by an agency recognized by your state's massage regulatory. NCBTMB is the leading agency for massage therapist. Hence, our application process.

In practical terms, being an "approved provider" means our workshops will attract more attention and, to be honest, we can charge more for our workshops. We are also free to offer them wherever we can find the space (and the students). We aren't restricted by the need to find a co-host who can grant CEUs. This expands our horizons dramatically.

I've been pondering whether my next 10 years should include more workshops -- both those developed by me and those I sponsor/organize for someone else. This makes that so much more reasonable and likely. I think I've found the new direction/aspect of my practice to take me to 2020.

In some ways, it only took me about 2 weeks to complete the application. In other ways, it took 5 years....

2006 - 2008

I kept meeting students and new MTs getting sidelined by the energetic effects of our work. I was becoming more and more frustrated that MTs weren't being taught the energetic body in a simple straightforward way like they were taught the physical body. More importantly, I was frustrated that most MTs weren't taught simple energetic self-care techniques (that's the equivalent of teaching someone how to do massage without teaching them how to avoid injuring themselves).

I began to picture a class that would teach the basics of the energetic body in an organized way, much like the anatomy classes I had in massage school.

As that picture solidified I realized such a class would be best taught by two people, one for the academic portion and one for the practical portion. The most obvious person to teach such a class with me? Kitty Southworth, since she was the one who had dragged me (kicking and screaming) to my first energetic self-care class. I pitched the idea to her in 2008 and she agreed.

While at the 2008 American Massage Therapy Association convention in Phoenix, I picked up the NCBTMB approved provider application package.

2009

April: Kitty and I went away for a weekend to fully develop the course outline.

It helped that I had been a technical writer for 20 years. Documentation and training are cousin disciplines -- we approach a subject the same way but tech writers deliver their information in writing and trainers do it in a workshop setting.

I'd used that same experience in developing my course material for the business practices classes at Potomac Massage Training Institute (PMTI). I taught those classes for several years.

As part of preparing the PMTI business practices material, I had a friend with a background in adult education teach me how to develop learning objectives and give me the basics on developing good courses.

Important aside: just knowing a lot about a subject does not necessarily make you a good instructor. There's a whole different set of skills (and, frankly, personality traits) that make a good instructor. The skills can be learned (the personality traits may have to be genetic, I'm not sure). If you want to develop a workshop, take the time to learn how to develop course content and how to teach adults.

May: Our initial plan was to convince our alma mater, PMTI, to include our material in their professional training program. We pitched the course proposal to PMTI.

They turned us down.

July: We decided we could re-work it as a weekend continuing ed workshop. It took us a few months to make that work.

2010

February: We had a course we could teach: Energy 101. We worked out the where and and when and how much.

April: We started promoting Energy 101.

August: We taught Energy 101 for the first time (a necessary prerequisite to the NCBTMB application process) in August to 11 students. We offered it at about half the cost we will in the future to (1) attract students and (2) in recognition of the lack of CEUs.

We also kept detailed track of how long each segment of the workshop took. We knew that would be required later for the NCBTMB application.

Four days later I moved to Australia.

November: I began reading the NCBTMB application that I'd had for 2 years. The application itself was about 35 pages; 20 of those pages were data entry pages.

I presumed the actual application could be done online. Well, yes and no.

NCBTMB offers the application in PDF form online. But you can't save the form and you can't save anything you enter online and you can't submit the PDF as the application (that has to be done on paper).

Remember that we had 20 pages of data entry? The odds were that I was not going to enter all that data all in one go.

I was so baffled by this, so convined that I was missing something that I called the NCBTMB (from Australia) for clarification. They confirmed that I was right -- I had to enter it all at once or (they suggested) I should print out each page as I completed it since I had to actually make the submission as hardcopy.

Need to make a correction? Re-enter all the data on that page and print it out, again.

I worked on the application pretty steadily for a week in November. I was using the Energy 101 course Kitty and I teach plus 3 other courses taught by Ben Risby-Jones, an Australian naturopath that Kitty works with (and is now my co-author for "Travel Guide for the Spiritual Journey") in the application. I needed some detailed info from both Ben and Kitty but we ran into the holidays....

2011

January: We moved into a new townhouse and Brisbane experienced massive flooding. Didn't get much done.

February: I got back to the application. It took about another week to get all the pages completed to my satisfaction.

I had to do most of this at the library because we don't have a printer at home. That meant making a reservation to get into the Learning Lab at the library for a 2-hour slot (all that's available) and pay to print each page. I'm delighted that the library had the services I needed but it was tedious to make the reservation and troop over to the library every time I needed to complete some more pages. $10 in printing costs.

Once complete, I had to make two copies, get them 3-hole punched, inserted into binders with dividers. I marked where Kitty had to sign (since we were submitting under her company The Healing Core). Another $15.

Interesting side note: 3-hole is not necessarily the default here in Australia. I found 3-ring binders, 2-ring binders, 4-ring binders, and 5-ring binders. The 3-ring binders were the hardest to find!

THEN I had to go to the post office and find something I could fit the binder in. Like Goldilocks, it was either way too big or way too small for most of the packing options available. I got it squeezed in sideways into a box and got it in the mail to Kitty, with delivery confirmation. $60 to mail it to Kitty.

It arrived in Kitty's hands about one week later. She made a copy for her files, signed in all the right places, filled in the payment info ($400 as an organization; $175 if I'd been submitting as an individual), and forwarded it on to NCBTMB at the end of February.

April: I expected to hear back from NCBTMB in about mid-April with a request for correction or clarification. I didn't expect it to go through the first time. When I got up this morning, there was an e-mail from Kitty asking me to call her as soon as I got up and she gave me the good news (she'd wanted to call when she opened the letter on Friday at noon in DC but that was 2 am here in Australia, so she held off -- barely -- until I woke up).

The best part? We couldn't offer CEUs to the students who took our classes last year. But as part of our approval, we can grant retroactive CEUs back 2 years! We'll be sending those out in the next month.

When I get back to the US in August Kitty and I will have to sit down and do some Big Picture and long-range planning for The Healing Core. What classes would we like to offer, develop, and sponsor? It feels today like the future is wide open.

And I'm walking around the house with a silly little smile saying, every so often, "I'm an approved provider!" (much to my husband's amusement).