Ep 428 - Lower Expenses and Increase Income in Your Massage Business: "Business or Pressure" with Allissa Haines

0:00:00.1 Allissa Haines: HobaCare Jojoba is 100% pure, high-quality Jojoba, and it is ideal for the work we do as massage and body work professionals. The closest product to the natural sebum that our skin produces, HobaCare provides a deeply nourishing massage medium that will not clog pores. HobaCare is non-allergenic, so you can use it on every client and not worry about allergic reactions. HobaCare is shelf-stable and will not stain your natural fiber sheets, making it an excellent choice for professional use and saving you money. With HobaCare Jojoba, you can offer your clients a superior experience that benefits both skin health and overall wellbeing. Our listeners can receive 20% off their order with code ABMP. Learn more at hobacare.com.

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0:01:03.7 AH: Welcome to Business or Pressure, taking the pain out of massage business with me, Allissa Haines. This is your no-nonsense guide to building a happy, sustainable massage therapy business. It is our mission to make sure that every massage therapist and body worker has the tools to make a living wage in a thriving business. So let's jump in. We are continuing our money series today, and we're talking very specifically about lowering expenses and increasing your income. So, the two things that are kind of awesome to do if you want more money in your pocket at the end of every workday. Now, before I jump into this list, I want to share that I am a person who gets really annoyed by listicle articles that are all about lowering expenses or increasing your income or how to eat healthier. I get super annoyed because I always go through those lists. I already do all of the things on the list.

0:02:02.1 AH: You know, the like how to decrease the amount of sugar in your diet. And it's like, "Don't add sugar to your coffee. Don't drink soda. Don't drink fruit juice". I don't do that anyway. So I get super annoyed when I read through a list and there's nothing in it for me. So if you only get one or two ideas from this episode that work for you, that's actually a win. We are typically very low overhead businesses, so it can be hard to find ways to cut costs. And our businesses and our offerings can be really simple. So it can be hard to find ways to increase income. And moreover, our businesses are so customized and individualized that general advice often doesn't apply. So if you can walk away with just one or two ideas, that's huge. So, let's keep our expectations real here and go through some ideas for lowering expenses and then increasing income. Okay, first up, make intentional spending decisions. Don't ever buy anything immediately. Give it seven days.

0:03:11.3 AH: I try to set my limit at around 50 bucks. So if I'm gonna spend more than $50 on something, I try to give it a week to make sure to make the decision that I need that thing. Now, obviously there's things that don't apply here. If I need more masks, I need more masks. If I need another filter for my air cleaner, I need another filter. But oftentimes there are things that I don't need need. And when I think about them and put it off a little bit, I realize that I don't wanna spend the money. If it's a very pricey thing, give it a month. If you're gonna spend over a couple of hundred dollars on something and you're waffling about it, it's not a real need, give it a month and then revisit it. Put it on your to-do list to revisit buying the XYZ. It can also be really helpful to make a list of the pricier things that you want to buy and try really hard to set aside a few bucks for them so that if you see that massage table that is just barely gently used and you've been wanting a table exactly like that, you can get it used and you have the cash on hand versus buying it new.

0:04:13.8 AH: A side note here, I did a low spend February challenge, and there's something we actually did within the Deep Breath Community that I run. I tried to not spend any money except what was absolutely needed and what had been planned for as needed in the month of February. And I applied this challenge to my business finances and to my personal finances. We all looked at our past couple of months of spending, created a plan based on that, gave ourselves a little room. So, even though getting a coffee out and a breakfast sandwich once a week is not a need need, for me, it's kind of an emotional need. So I gave myself the allowance for that. So it was low spend, not necessarily no spend. We weren't looking to create scarcity. At the end of each week, I looked at what I had spent on what and that guided my decisions for the next week as well. And it did save a bunch of money and I made better decisions about what I was gonna buy and what I wasn't gonna buy. And that has carried over into following months.

0:05:16.9 AH: So make really intentional spending decisions. And that just overall is gonna help you not spend money on stuff you don't need. All right, utilities. If you're paying your own utilities, man, you have probably noticed prices going up and up and up. A few small tips. Power strips. I will preach about power strips till the day I retire and then after that. Almost everything in my office that needs to be plugged in is plugged into a power strip and almost every power strip has a light attached to it. And there's a few reasons for that. One, I like to have my hot towel cabbie plugged into a power strip with a light on that same power strip because then it's really hard for me to accidentally leave my hot towel cabbie on overnight 'cause if there's a light on, I need to turn a power strip off and then everything gets turned off. So one, it has saved me from having to drive to my office at 3:00 AM worrying that I left the hot stone pot on, which I absolutely have done in the middle of winter and it stinks. But also it prevents that vampire use of electricity. It stops the slow draining of energy from devices that have little lights on them or have some kind of background something running that uses electricity.

0:06:28.1 AH: So if you have everything on power strips and you shut off all the power strips before you leave the office, you are dramatically lowering that wasteful suckage of energy. If you're paying for internet service to your office, do you need it? Nowadays, most cell phone plans can be upgraded to include a hotspot. So if you're only doing light admin work online and if your office has a decent cell signal, you might be able to just ditch the internet altogether and use your phone. Now, obviously, if you're at an office and you're like editing videos online and you're doing a whole bunch of things like that that require a lot of internet use, this might not be appropriate for you. I found for me, I don't need to pay $125 for Internet to my office. I got a cell phone plan for an extra 20 bucks, I can hotspot all I want. That's a pretty good savings. If you are paying for heating or cooling and you do not have a programmable thermostat, that could be a useful upgrade, have a conversation with your landlord.

0:07:27.7 AH: If you do keep your internet, you can even get a thermostat that's controllable remotely via an app on your phone and that could be really helpful too. But make sure you are getting the most out of your thermostat so that the place isn't being overly heated or cooled when you're not there. The last of the space-specific ideas. If you are allowed to sublet, share your space. This is a big jump. This can be a little scary. Finding a colleague who just needs space one or two days a week or one or two mornings a week or afternoons or whatever can be a really good way to offset some of your office expenses. This is not a decision that we rush into. We don't necessarily want to decide to do this, find a stranger, have them in our office touching our stuff immediately, but it can be a good long-term approach to defraying your expenses for running an office.

0:08:22.7 AH: Keep your eyes open. Talk to colleagues. Keep your eye out for any kind of massage or body work practitioner or movement practitioner that could be interested in sharing your space just for the little bits of time that you know you are not there. If you look hard enough and long enough, you will probably find someone who you can get along with and who you trust around your stuff. When someone is starting up, this can be so helpful just to have a space for a certain amount of time or a certain day to get started seeing clients. Okay, here's some weird little thing. Use less product. Buy less product. Use less product. Literally cut in half the amount of massage oil, cream, lotion, whatever, that you are using during a massage. Most people are using more product than they need to, so slow that roll. Just try it for a week, see how it goes. If it goes well, try to cut it down a little bit more.

0:09:17.1 AH: Now, if you're buying really inexpensive product, this isn't going to matter to you much. For me, I buy really high-quality stuff, so when I use a little bit less of it, one, it slows my work down so my work is actually better, and also it can save me a considerable amount of money. Also, buy in bulk and split with a colleague. If there's a buy one, get one sale going on, or there's any kind of substantial discount, or if just buying it a gallon or two at a time gives you a much better price, but you know you're not gonna use it, split it with a colleague who uses the same product that you do. And again, this requires having a network of colleagues, so make some friends, do what you can there. You can also use lighter linens. Now, back in the day, the lightest ones I found were microfiber, and I don't use those kinds of sheets anymore. I prefer using natural fiber sheets nowadays. You can always find heavier linens and lighter linens.

0:10:14.8 AH: If you are paying for your laundry to be done by the pound, that slightly lighter blanket is going to cost a lot less to have laundered. And if you're doing your own laundry, things dry way faster, so that's just a little tiny energy savings, but also it's super convenient to have things dry faster in the dryer. All right, software. This is a big one because we can use lots of different kinds of software to manage all the things in our business, but often all of these software programs are changing and expanding over time and adding features, and sometimes we can end up with programs overlapping and realizing that we don't need. I really like every couple of months, maybe even just once a year, doing an audit of all the services I subscribe to and considering, do I need this? Do I have any other programs that already do this or that are now doing this same thing? And am I even using this anymore? 

0:11:10.8 AH: So an example is that we used to need to use third-party social scheduling tools so that we could schedule a post to Facebook and Instagram and Google Plus and all these things at the same time. Are you using it? If you're paying for a tool like this, are you actually using it? And if you're only using it for platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you can do that right within Facebook and schedule in both places at once. So maybe you don't need to pay for a third-party tool anymore. If you're paying monthly for a service, is there an annual option? I know that I am gonna use my scheduling system forever, so the annual subscription saves me, I don't know, 10 or 15%, so I just buy a year at a time instead of doing it monthly. Now, if you don't know you're gonna be using that scheduling system forever, if you're still on the fence about it, or you don't know if you have a year left at your office, that might not be worth it for you. But anything that you're paying for, if there's an annual option that's gonna save you money and you're not taking advantage of that, do it.

0:12:08.2 AH: If you're paying for a program to help you make pretty social graphics or edit videos, can you pay monthly but not keep it going? So, can you take a month and get a couple of months worth of social graphics and videos and all of these things done within a month and then cancel it and then, you know, four or five, six months from now when you need to do another batch, then you pay for a month. So, instead of paying for a whole year, you're just paying for like three months over the course of a year when you actually need the service. And looking at all these subscriptions, you might find that you can get rid of some, like streaming music. Do you need to be paying every month to stream fresh music or can you get free stuff from playlists online? Can you load things onto a device? I gotta tell you, for like the last 15 years, I've been playing the same 20-ish albums of massage-ish music and I also encourage clients to bring in their own playlist. I have a few clients who do that.

0:13:05.8 AH: I went online last year and Googled free massage music downloads, and I found a bunch of playlists and I literally just played them in the background while I was doing other work in my office and when there was something that I didn't hate, I downloaded it, I created a massive playlist and now I have a new-ish, it's been new for about a year now, playlist of massage music. It's about eight to 10 hours long and it was all free. I stopped paying for music streaming and I just play things off of my device that are downloaded. All right. Do you have any luxury elements to your massage practice that you probably don't need anymore? Are you giving away a lot of swag? Are you giving away bottles of water to every client? Are you doing extra fancy things that don't really match the vibe of your business anymore because you thought you had to be extra fancy when you started up but you really don't anymore? There are luxury service providers where these things are absolutely appropriate and needed to keep up the consistency and to match the branding of their business but maybe you don't need to do these same things anymore. So if you're doing anything luxury-ish that you could probably let go of, let go of it.

0:14:14.6 AH: And finally, are you donating your time, energy, money to events or causes that you have outgrown? Can you stop? And this sounds terrible in the face of it but if you have been donating massage gift certificates or flat up money or some kind of donation to local causes that aren't super related to your business anymore, if you used to donate to a 5K but you're not even doing sports massage anymore, maybe can you let that go? So look at where you are giving away free time and/or money and think about if that's the right approach for your business moving forward. Now, if you cannot cut your expenses any further, then you have to make more money. And this is a tricky list to make 'cause there's just only so many things you can do to make more money in your massage business, right? You can see more clients. All right. If your schedule is full and you're still not making all the money you wanna make, you can raise your prices. There's not much more to say about that. If your schedule's as full as you want it to be and you're still not making enough money, you're not charging enough. So raise your prices.

0:15:26.7 AH: You can also make sure that you are ending any discounts that are no longer relevant for your business or that just don't make sense because they're causing you to not make enough money. I did a thing a couple of weeks ago where I ended my senior citizen discount for new clients. So, people who have been seeing me forever and who have aged into the senior discount or came to me when they were older and got the senior discount, it will continue for them because I'm not comfortable giving them a dramatic price increase at this point. I'm gonna raise my prices overall so their price will go up. But new clients are not getting the senior discount. I've taken it off the website. It's just not available for new clients. Something I am doing, I'm gonna start offering a few sliding scale appointments a month. So if there is someone of any age who needs massage services but can't pay full price, there will be a few options per month to get a sliding scale appointment. Those appointments are gonna be at times that I typically have trouble filling and I'm really excited about implementing that. So raise your prices, stop your discounts.

0:16:31.1 AH: I am a fan of easy upsells and take home options, if it's for things that you usually use anyway. So, an upsell would be upgrade to add aromatherapy to your massage and you can take home a little two ounce bottle that's infused with that scent. You can make this ongoing by having a new scent every month. So price out what two ounces of a carrier oil comes to, price out what the essential oil itself is gonna cost, how many bottles you can make with that, set a price that makes you some money and then you can use that aromatherapy within the visit and they can take home two ounces. If you use anything like Biofreeze or Arnica or CBD or any of that in a treatment, you can do the same thing, offer an upsell. You can use it in the treatment and then they can take home some product. You can also just sell the product, retail, full size, fresh bottles, whatever. If it's a thing that you already use in treatments and it's going to improve the ability of the client to take care of themselves at home in between appointments, sell the product.

0:17:36.8 AH: You don't have to feel gross selling product that you actually use and recommend for your clients. So just sell it. It's convenience for them, for you to have it right there at the office and them to be able to just buy it when they buy their massage and go home and start using it right away. All right, this item is a repeat 'cause it can help you make more money and defray expenses to rent your space. Now I'm talking bigger scale now. If you have space that has a second treatment room or you only work a few very set couple of days, you could sublet your room or rooms enough to actually totally cover the cost of the expenses in the office and then maybe even make you a little bit of money. This is a job. Renting space in multiple treatment rooms to multiple practitioners is a job. It adds a little part-time job onto your business, but it's a job that doesn't require massage. So keep that in mind. But if you have the ability to expand and you have the ability to take on that risk and expense and you have a decent network of colleagues, renting space can be great and it can be lucrative.

0:18:39.0 AH: I had an office with four treatment rooms and there were six or seven different therapists, including myself, using those rooms at different days at different times. And when that place was full, I was covering expenses. My own massage business didn't have to contribute to those expenses, so I kind of had a free space from my massage business. So, subletting full and part-time four different treatment rooms to multiple practitioners totally covered the expenses and gave me a little extra income. Again, it was a part-time job to manage all of that and to make sure there was always paper towels and show up when the HVAC busted, but it made me some money and it was great for several years. And the last option here, events and classes. If there is any aspect of your business that can be applied to multiple people at once, having small events, teaching self-care classes can be a really good way to put a couple of hundred bucks in your pocket every month. If you got some yoga mats and you got a little bit of space, you can do some guided meditation classes for five or six people at once or three or four people at once.

0:19:46.7 AH: All right, that was a lot of information. I'm hoping that at least one cutting expenses and one increase in your income idea can stick with you and be helpful. If you have ideas that I haven't mentioned, I wanna hear about it, you can email me at businessorpressure@abmp.com. And that leads us to today's high five related to that email, the team at ABMP and my podcast connection, Colin. And a high five to my unnamed listener who sent me an email and then found me at another email address to tell me that my ABMP email was busted. There was a glitch in a Microsoft update that busted my email for a little while, but it's fixed now. And not for nothing, it was fixed within 30 minutes of discovery. So thank you, ABMP and thank you, Colin and thank you, IT department. When I tell you that I love ABMP, it's not me sucking up because I work for them. I work for them because ABMP was great to me even before I worked for them. So thanks, Colin, I appreciate you doing all the things you do for this podcast.

0:20:47.7 AH: If you have questions about running your massage business or you have an idea for an episode, email me, it works now, businessorpressure@abmp.com. You can also find me over at deepbreathdigital.com where we've got a community of massage therapists and I have a new sliding scale fee structure for my one-to-one consulting. So if you need help, but cannot handle a huge coaching problem or lots and lots of consulting, we could just do an hour and I've got a great sliding scale. You can learn more about that at deepbreathdigital.com and make sure you're subscribed to ABMP's podcast so you don't miss a beat. There is so much to learn about building and maintaining a massage business. We're gonna cover the business and marketing side, the communication skills, all of it to help you be successful. I will meet you right back here for the next episode. I can't wait.

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