Ep 416 - The 4 Numbers to Know 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's ideal for massage and body work professionals. The closest product to the natural sebum 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 it will not stain your natural fiber sheets, making it an excellent choice for professional use and saving you money. Hint, you won't have to replace your linen so often. 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. That's H-O-B-A-C-A-R-E.com.

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0:01:14.0 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. And 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. Let's jump in. Today, we are talking about four numbers to know in your massage business. Not a lot of math involved, some pretty basic counting here, and really, really important to be running a sustainable business that pays you enough money. Today, we're talking about four numbers to know in your massage business. I promise there's not a lot of math involved and it's not super complex. Many of us fell into business ownership and we don't have the background of bookkeeping or even budgeting, but just nailing down these four numbers can help you see what is going on in your business objectively, so you can make better decisions that consider your feelings but are not guided entirely by your feelings.

0:02:19.7 AH: Knowing these numbers gives us a starting point. So eventually, we can see trends and make decisions and be sure that our business is sustainable. And by sustainable, I mean earning the income you want, doing the work that you feel good about. So, here's what we're gonna do. Look at the last six months to 18 months of your business. If you wanna go deep and you have many years history in your massage business, then by all means, you can look at more, but if you're new, just use what you have. As a general rule, I like to look at least six months back and as far as 18 months back to gather these numbers. First, the number of appointments or the hours of massage that you do every month. You can choose either the hours of massage or the number of appointments, it doesn't matter, just choose one or the other and count how many you have each month for the last six months or go further back. Now, the next number is a little looser 'cause I want you to consider the time that you spend on administrative work, laundry, office tasks, anything that's related to the running of your business but is not actually hands-on, and this number might take a little longer to come up with.

0:03:34.8 AH: You might wanna think about your average week or go through a week or two and make some notes about how much time you're spending on things, but loosely, you wanna know how many hours you are spending on top of hands-on hours running your business. All right. Now, we're getting to the dollars. The third number you need to know is how much money you gross, how much money enters your bank account and all of it should go into your bank account for the services and products you sell. I like to look at these numbers monthly, just like I like to look at the number of appointments monthly, so go back and each month for the last six to however many months you're doing, make note of the total amount of money someone has handed you to provide massage or sell products if you do that and then, and this is the only one where actual math is involved. Figure out your net, which is the amount of money left after your expenses are paid. So after your rent and your laundry and your supplies and your subscription to your scheduling program, after those expenses are paid every month for the last six months or so, what is left? That's your net and that's typically how much you're taking home.

0:04:55.7 AH: It might include retirement savings or other kinds of savings, but the net is how much is left after all the expenses are paid. Yes, you will be taking taxes out of that, but right now we just want that big net number. So, you have these four numbers, right? The number of appointments or hours of massage, the number of hours you spend on admin, laundry, things that are not hands-on work, you know, how much money you gross, the total amount of money that comes to you from providing the services and the products you sell and your net, what is left after the expenses are paid, which is usually what you are taking home and what taxes come out of. We're gonna cover that in the next episode. So now, you get to look at this and you can kind of compare these numbers to how you feel. So, how many hours are you working on your business in total with hands-on work and admin work? Does this make sense? You might discover that you are so massively inefficient at some tasks that it would actually make sense to delegate them out or change how you do them. You could find out that you're super efficient at things.

0:06:05.6 AH: For me, it was really easy to fool myself into thinking that I spend two hours a week on bookkeeping, but really I spend an hour on bookkeeping tops and another hour getting snacks and finding the right background music and texting a friend. But looking at these numbers, you can ask yourself, am I working enough? Am I working too much? Do I feel burnt out? If you are seeing 12 clients a week over 18 hours and maybe spending another two hours on laundry and bookkeeping, that's really efficient. That is an efficient use of your time. But if you're burnt out or feeling like you just have to drag yourself into work every day, what's up? Is it that your clients aren't a good fit or maybe you need a longer break between clients or maybe instead of working four days in a row to see three clients a day, you need a break in the middle so you're working two days and then two days.

0:07:00.6 AH: As an example, my perfect day, my perfect workday is three 90-minute massages, but they have to be organized properly. I need the first two to be back-to-back with maybe a half an hour or so in between, and then I need at least an hour break and then I can do another 90-minute massage. So, my perfect day is very specific. Every day is not going to be perfect, but knowing that in my head, knowing how many hours that involves for my whole day, gives me a really good guidepost. Knowing how much money I'm gonna make from those three 90-minute massages, the number of hours it takes me to get through that day and how much money I'm actually taking home from that, is really helpful information. It makes me feel that my effort, my physical, mental, whatever effort going into that workday is earning me the amount of money I think it's entitled to. Knowing these four numbers and how they work together will help you establish where you're at and what you wanna change. It'll help you figure out where you're at now and help you consider where you want to be in six months or in a year. Do you wanna work more or less? Do you wanna make more money, but you don't wanna work more, so you have to consider raising your rates or exploring other income ideas? Do you wanna work less for the same amount of money? Maybe you need to raise your rates and adjust your hours.

0:08:28.7 AH: Or if you're not happy with how your schedule is, maybe you can stop doing 30-minute massages, only do 60, 75, and 90, or only do 75-minutes and 90-minutes and adjust your schedule differently so that the massages are longer, they're earning you more money with less time in between. There are so many tweaks you can make to your business to make it suit you and your life beautifully. And what suits you beautifully is going to change from year to year. But when we know these four numbers, we can look at them, we can apply a little bit of feeling, 'cause feeling is good, we're running a business that involves lots of feelings, but you can see those numbers objectively in front of you and you can make the decisions based on what your heart wants and what your bank account needs. Now, if a lot of this information was new to you, you can stop here, find those four numbers, think about the adjustments you can make so your business is working well for you. If you wanna get super nerdy, you can dive down even deeper to nail more specific goals.

0:09:33.8 AH: So you can list how many clients you have that come in weekly or every other week or every three weeks or monthly or six weeks, et cetera. Make a list, clients who come in once a week, clients who come in every other week. And then, consider how you want to grow and exactly what kinds of clients you need, weekly, monthly, special occasion, that you want to complete your schedule and fill your business the way you want it to be filled. And knowing these goals can guide your marketing. If you want more clients that come in every week, you could focus your marketing on a specific pathology or modality that calls for initial weekly treatments and then maybe tapers them into maintenance. Or you can focus your marketing on a pathology or modality that involves someone coming to you once a week for eight weeks and then you never see them again. If you just need a few more clients who come in randomly, you can promote the sales of special occasion gift certificates.

0:10:29.5 AH: I have a client who only comes when she gets a gift certificate for her birthday, for Christmas and her wedding anniversary. She will see me three times a year when she receives a gift certificate for her birthday, for Christmas or her wedding anniversary. If I want more clients like her just to fill in the gaps around my regular clients, I can promote sales of gift certificates and specifically sales of gift certificates around certain occasions. So that's it. Knowing these four numbers, reflecting on them briefly, can blow your mind and help you guide your practice to where you want it to be. If you have thoughts on this, if you have other numbers you think we need to know, if you wanna share with me how you've worked through this for your own business, I would love to hear about it.

0:11:17.3 AH: You can email me at businessorpressure@abmp.com. We're gonna jump into today's high five, which is me giving thanks to coffee pots and space heaters that have timers. Just a thing, I am a low-tech person in my home. I don't like having a lot of things that are Bluetooth capable. I do not want my home to be smart around me, but being able to set a timer on a coffee pot and a timer on the heater in my little office is a game changer. It gets me out of bed because I know the coffee's waiting for me and I know my office is warm because it is 10 degrees right now. And I am so radically efficient when I have coffee and a warm office to work in. That's it, that's my high five. It's ridiculous, but there it is. If you have questions about anything regarding running your massage business or an idea for an episode, again, reach out via email, businessorpressure@abmp.com.

0:12:10.9 AH: You can also find me building websites and hanging out with my community of massage therapists over at deepbreathdigital.com. And make sure you are 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, and all of it to help you be successful. I'll meet you back here for the next episode. I can't wait.

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