Ep 214 – Run Your Practice, Love Your Life with Rachel Beider

Massage therapist using both palms to massage a client’s lower back.

When Rachel Beider was working for others, she felt like a bystander in her own career. But how do you make the jump from bystander to CEO? In this episode of The ABMP Podcast, Kristin and Darren sit down with author and CEO Rachel Beider to discuss the growth of her company, PRESS Modern Massage, how the concept of servant leadership guides her approach to management, and advice to other practitioners wishing to make the leap into private practice themselves.

Rachel Beider is a globally recognized small business expert, bestselling author, and entrepreneur. She is the proud owner of PRESS Modern Massage, a group of award-winning massage studios in NYC. She is a licensed massage therapist in New York and a board-certified NCBTMB continuing education provider. Her work has been published in Forbes and Huffington Post, and she’s been featured in Entrepreneur magazine and the Wall Street Journal. She released her first book, a beginner’s guide to massage called Press Here, in January 2019, and her second book, Massage MBA: Run Your Practice, Love Your Life, in 2021.

Sponsors: 

Anatomy Trains: www.anatomytrains.com 

Universal Companies: https://www.universalcompanies.com/

Handspring Publishing: https://www.handspringpublishing.com/

Anatomy Trains is a global leader in online anatomy education and also provides in-classroom certification programs for structural integration in the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, and China, as well as fresh-tissue cadaver dissection labs and weekend courses. The work of Anatomy Trains originated with founder Tom Myers, who mapped the human body into 13 myofascial meridians in his original book, currently in its fourth edition and translated into 12 languages. The principles of Anatomy Trains are used by osteopaths, physical therapists, bodyworkers, massage therapists, personal trainers, yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonics, and other body-minded manual therapists and movement professionals. Anatomy Trains inspires these practitioners to work with holistic anatomy in treating system-wide patterns to provide improved client outcomes in terms of structure and function.    

Website: anatomytrains.com    

Email: info@anatomytrains.com          

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Universal Companies has everything the spa professional needs for success, including massage tables and accessories, linens, tools, pain relief products like arnica, and a range of lotions, oils, and gels. The products we offer help the independent practitioner save on their everyday expenses, as well as provide the convenience of shopping across broad categories.

Recognized as the “Favorite Distributor” in the American Spa Professional’s Choice Awards for the past 17 years, we see this as a continuous challenge to provide the best products that pros trust the most.

Beyond our extensive selection of spa products, equipment, and tools, we have an education and marketing site for our customers to develop their skills and promote their business. The UCo Learning Network offers CEU courses, marketing kits, and business tools.

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About Handspring Publishing

Handspring Publishing specializes in professional-level books for massage therapists, osteopaths, yoga and Pilates teachers, physiotherapists, and other professionals who use touch or movement to help patients achieve wellness. Handspring Publishing’s books are written and produced to serve the professional and educational needs of health and medical professionals, musculoskeletal therapists, and movement teachers.

Its list includes bestsellers like Fascia: What It Is and Why It Matters by David Lesondak, and Pre- and Perinatal Massage Therapy: Third Edition by Carole Osborne, Michele Kolakowski, and David M. Lobenstine and the recently published Myofascial Induction™ – An Anatomical Approach to the Treatment of Fascial Dysfunction, Volume 1: The Upper Body by Andrzej Pilat.

Handspring’s books combine attractive and accessible presentations with an evidence-based approach to writing, including referencing the latest research findings. Authors are drawn from the ranks of highly respected teachers and experts in their area of specialization including Jim McCormick, Cathy Ryan, Til Luchau, Robert Schleip, Graham Scarr, Gayle MacDonald, and Carolyn Tague among others.

ABMP members save 20% off regular list prices. Visit handspringpublishing.com and use discount code abmp20 to order. Shipping is free to all addresses in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Website: https://www.handspringpublishing.com/

Email: info@handspringpublishing.com

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Facebook: handspringpublishing

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiD4TybAPVTbCL_xvCrwNOQ

Full Transcript: 

0:00:00.1 Speaker 1: ABMP members get 20% off the list price on all Handspring Publishing titles including Hands in Health Care: Massage therapy for the adult hospital patient second edition, and Breathing, Mudras and Meridians. Visit handspringpublishing.com to learn about these and other books. ABMP members visit abmp.com/discounts to access your discount code and save 20% on all list prices with free shipping to US and UK addresses. Find your next favorite book at handspringpublishing.com.

[music]

0:00:48.8 Darren Buford: Hi, I'm Darren Buford.

0:00:50.2 Kristin Coverly: And I'm Kristin Coverly.

0:00:51.5 DB: And welcome to The ABMP podcast. A podcast where we speak with a massage and bodywork profession. Our guest today is Rachel Beider. Rachel is a globally recognized small business expert, best-selling author and entrepreneur, she is the proud owner of PRESS Modern Massage, a group of award-winning massage studios in New York City. She is a New York Licensed Massage Therapist and a board certified NCBTMB continuing education provider. Her work has been published in Forbes, Huffington Post, and she's been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. She released her first book, a beginner's guide to massage, called Press Here in January 2019, and her second book, Massage MBA: Run Your Practice, Love Your Life in 2021. She began her consulting practice by working with clients in the wellness field who depended on her expertise and skills to help grow their businesses. For more information about Rachel, visit wellnessbusinessconsulting.com. Hello, Rachel and hello Kristin.

0:01:49.5 Rachel Beider: Hey, how's it going?

0:01:50.8 KC: Hello, we're so excited to have you here. Welcome to the ABMP podcast. We're gonna jump right into your story because I think it's going to be really inspiring for our listeners. Your massage journey started really similarly to a lot of our stories, you fell in love with massage, you studied it, you started working for different employers, chiropractors, yoga studios and a spa. When you were ready to jump out on your own and start your own practice, you found your space in a really unique way, can you tell us a little bit more about how that all started for you?

0:02:22.8 RB: Yeah, absolutely. So like many people, I got out of school and I didn't really know where I fit in, so I thought, You know, I'm gonna give myself sort of like a "loose five-year plan," and I make that in air quotes, because all the greatest plans... The best made plans you just, who knows. Right when I got out of school, I tried to initially actually work out of my apartment, which was like a multiple floor walk-up, I had roommates, I was trying to work out of the living room and you could smell last night's dinner, and it was just maybe not the most professional situation. And I had been working for a couple of days a week at a spa that was a very nice, but 50 minutes back-to-back, six sessions in a row, barely any time to change the table over. Not really my favorite place. And then I also was trying to work at a yoga studio, which was a beautiful space, but often disorganized and dirty, which are cardinal sins for me, and then I was working for a chiropractor, but again, back to back to back sessions, cold paper sheets, clinical, which I love hands-on clinical work, but I didn't love the pace of it, didn't feel very relaxing.

0:03:35.1 RB: And I desperately wanted my own practice, and I just didn't really know how to accomplish that, and then I started to think about if there were opportunities in the neighborhood because I couldn't afford to rent a space, I had debt from school, I didn't really have savings at the time, and I had gone from working as a nanny and a waitress and a dog walker, to now being licensed as a massage therapist. So I found a Physical Therapy Studio in the neighborhood that I was living in, and I walked in, this was in like May. I walked in and I asked the owner if she would let me use the space in exchange, I would give them two mornings a week of massage work for their patients. And I told her, "Look, your patients are more likely to come in for PT if they're getting free massage." And she kind of looked at me, I was 24 at the time, and she was kind of skeptical, she was like, "Let's try it for a month or two," and I was over the moon because now I had a professional space in a beautiful office. I didn't have to pay for it, and I was trading my time, and so eight hours of free work, if you're a massage therapist, you know you really have maybe 16, maybe 20 hours of hands-on time in a week, so I was already giving away a lot of work for free, and I was still working at the spa, and I realized like, "Okay, if I'm working for free, I had better get clients in the door," so I was very, very driven to do that.

0:04:50.9 DB: So did you then turn the physical therapy clients who were coming in into your clients, or were you bringing outside clients or a mixture of both.

0:05:00.1 RB: Yeah, it was a mixture of both. So at the time, I had read, it's called, it's Michael Port's Book Yourself Solid. And one of the things he recommends is giving samples of your work for free and then making sure you follow it up with some sort of discount, and he always recommends dollar amounts, never a percentage, because if someone in the street hands you 20% off something, you'd probably just throw it right away, but if someone hands you $20 off, you're like, "Oh, dollars feels tangible." So I gave all of the PT patients $20 off your first appointment for new clients only, and then I also started to target other individuals in the neighborhood who see a volume of their own private clients, so hair dressers, personal trainers, chiropractors, basically anyone who sees a lot of clients every week, and I love personal trainers because their clients can afford us, they're sore, they care about their physical health, it's like a natural fit, and so that summer I got a ton of trades of massage for haircuts and highlights, and massage for training and by August I had 110 clients, and I had started May with maybe just 10 clients who, let's be honest, were probably just friends.

0:06:06.7 RB: And so by the end of that summer, I was so busy that I was like, instead of free, can I rent the room from you? And they said, "No," which kind of broke my heart 'cause I really liked that space, but I was able to find a space two blocks south, which is still my current space, in a building that was pretty close by.

0:06:25.0 DB: Did you maintain that relationship with the physical therapy studio?

0:06:28.8 RB: I did. A lot of the PTs were still coming to see me as my own clients, so that helps. Again, it's much easier to get to one person who can refer you dozens instead of just one of each at a time.

0:06:40.5 KC: And also the really important business tip of, if you're changing locations, make sure your new location is still easily accessible to your current client base.

0:06:50.2 RB: Exactly.

0:06:50.7 DB: So I don't wanna fast forward too much, Rachel, so tell me if I am. Where on the scale of time here, do you then hire your first employee? Do a lot of things happen before that, and what's the tipping point that takes you in that direction?

0:07:07.8 RB: Yeah, so this is a funny one, because I was really scared at the time, I was 24, when I started this about six months out of school, having worked for other people for all of five or six months, and I was very scared to leave my two-day a week spa job which was my "real job". And so when I rented the space, I found that I was spending what felt at the time like an exorbitant amount of money, it's 13 years ago. But for me, I was so broke that I was like, "Oh my God, this is so scary." Those two days a week that I'm at the spa, this sucks because the space is just empty, and I was like, "You know, if I could hire someone I know who I went to school with, who I love, to work out of that space those two days a week, then I would feel less bad about wasting the money where it's sitting empty." So I was doing this insane thing where I was showing up to the spa and going to work at my day job and then texting her like, "Okay, you have a 3 o'clock," and then she was coming...

0:08:00.3 RB: This is like before, so long ago, we didn't have the kind of robust online booking systems that we have now, so it was a little pen and paper and texting and like, "Okay, confirmed, I got it." And so I was able to bring on someone two days a week so that I didn't feel bad about the space being empty, and then I was essentially doubling my income at the time, not my whole income but my income for the day because I was being paid by the spa, and then I was getting paid from her work as well, and that was great because it allowed her to dip her toe in my business, start getting regulars, it took some pressure off of me to pay for the space, and then I think I hired even my second employee out of there. Basically, I realized if you split the day in half, you could have someone working in the morning and someone else working in the afternoon. Because nobody really wants to work from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM, seven days a week, that's not tenable, but you can have 14 shifts out of one treatment room.

0:08:53.4 RB: And so I brought on the second person and I was taking the morning and she was taking the evening, and we were just sort of dividing up the day, and eventually a space just down the hallway became available, that was like three times or four times the space, the one little room, and I knew I could build it into three rooms with a reception, and I had been reading Suze Orman at the time, she has this book called Young, Fabulous & Broke and she said, "Look, if you're starting a business, I give you permission to spend as much as you could pay back within a year with what you're currently doing, that's how much debt you're allowed to get into." 'Cause at the time, I was like, "Oh my gosh, build out is gonna cost more than I can afford. Should I finance it? I'm not taking loans, I don't have investors, this is just me." And I knew, okay, she says, "Only get yourself into the amount of debt you could pay off in a year," I knew waitressing, I could probably swing about $1000 a month between my other jobs, which would still be a stretch. But I did it, I spent about 12K, maxed out two credit cards, 0% interest for a year. I don't recommend doing that, but I did it and I had three treatment rooms. And then I rented one permanently to an acupuncturist, and then I used the other two with a morning and evening shift, and that's how my studio got started in earnest.

0:10:09.5 DB: Can I back up, just at the beginning, when you hired that first or second employee, were they taking on your additional clients or were they now responsible for bringing in their own or did they have clients help?

0:10:19.8 RB: No, it was mine. Yeah, it was my clients.

0:10:22.8 DB: Okay. And how was the conversation with your clientele when you're handing them off from you to them?

0:10:29.3 RB: Yeah so, whenever you hire someone, it is 100% your responsibility to sell those clients on those people, and it was a really easy conversation 'cause they were taking over times that I wasn't available, and it was just like, "Look, I can never come in on Tuesday, I'm at my other job, however, if you'd like to see someone else on a Tuesday, she's amazing, she's wonderful. Clients are loving her. She gives me massages," and they're like, "Oh, okay." And also, do your due diligence, don't hire someone who isn't phenomenal, make sure that they're well representing you and that you feel comfortable promoting them, and then it's you're beholden to making sure that your clients understand how amazing they are. And this is something that I see a lot with therapists where they're really scared of like, it's two specific things, it's, "If I hire someone, what if my clients hate them and then I have bad reviews," but the bigger fear is, "What if my clients love them. Oh no." Like, "Oh no," what does that mean? Are they gonna steal everyone, are they not gonna come to me, and the best case scenario is that your clients love them, that's what you actually want. You wanna establish those relationships. We're seeing 300 appointments a week. Do you think I could do that with my own two hands? No, absolutely not, absolutely not. So it's worth it.

0:11:40.9 KC: Yeah, I'm wanna jump in with two things, first of all, congratulations because at so many points where we are in your journey so far, you have had critical moments where it would have been so easy to not do the next thing because it's very scary. So congratulations, you really had a lot of courage all throughout these first steps, and I know it gets bigger after this, and then secondly, absolutely, I love that you brought up the idea of letting go of holding on to the clients that you have, because by letting go, you really are able to jump into that growth mindset and allow for what's next, right?

0:12:18.6 RB: Yeah, absolutely. Though I'll say to be honest, everything is rosy in hindsight, and it's not to say that I wasn't absolutely terrified and didn't cry every step of the way and worry about every possible thing, and even... It's not that I started my practice from this great joy of starting a business, it's that I really hated working for other people. I'm pretty unemployable, I'm not very good at managing of... If I don't like the way something's done, I'm often really vocal about it, and at the spa I was not happy with the oils we were... I was like, "Could we get something more organic or at least filled with less chemicals," and, "Could we please change up the playlist. I will make one for you." There were just so many little things, and I'm like, I didn't like the way that any of the businesses I was working for were being run, none of them were owned by massage therapists, and none of them were really set up in a therapist-centric way, and so I knew if I'm gonna work for myself, here are the things that I wanna be different and see differently, and here are the things that I will never do to someone else if I hire other people, because I just had bad experiences feeling like I was being exploited or a bystander in my career, and I just never wanted anyone else to sort of go through that.

0:13:29.3 DB: Let's take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors.

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0:14:48.5 DB: Now, let's get back to the podcast.

0:14:50.8 KC: Okay, Rachel, let's jump back into your timeline, we have transitioned to the larger space, you've built it out, you've got it rented, and you've got your employees. When did the light bulb go off? Or the go light turn on when you said to yourself, "Okay, I think it's time for a second location." How did that happen?

0:15:11.9 RB: So before opening the second location, I'll set the scene, I'm working out of a downstairs suite in a building, so you buzz to get in. This is New York City, I can't afford a store front, I still can't afford a store front, you buzz to get in and then you walk down the stairs and we have three little rooms, and my landlord said, "Hey, there's a suite on the main floor opening up, it's a little bigger than your current one, what do you think?" And I looked at it and I was like, "Yes." So before even opening a second location, I opened a second suite, I didn't move, I took a second one, and then a few years later, I took one across the hall as well, and we still operate with three suites, so I went from having one room to building out three and really only using two to expanding into that third room, and when we were bursting at the seams, we had raised our rates, I had hired morning to night, there's literally nowhere else to go, that's when I opened the second suite, rinse and repeat, that's when I opened the third suite. So it's not like I grew and had to think about being able to fill it first, I grew because there's only two things you can do, you can hire and you can raise your rates, and I did both of those repeatedly, and we were still growing so dramatically fast.

0:16:17.7 RB: And so I found that a lot of our clients were coming from the neighborhood just a few blocks north of ours, so I was like, "You know, If I were going to open a second location, this is the neighborhood I would do it in." And I saw the very same kind of development happening, Brooklyn is very transitional, so I saw that they had re-zoned the waterfront from industrial to residential, and I saw those buildings being built, and that's exactly what happened in my current location, and I was like, "This is gonna be a client base who needs massage, so I might have been a little early to it, it was a little bit of a slower growth that I started looking for the second physical location because we were really outgrowing the first one.

0:16:53.7 DB: Let me ask you a question specifically, because I know massage therapists always want to know the answer to this. When did you know to raise those prices?

0:17:01.6 RB: I spoke to my friend who's a statistician for New York State, and I distinctly remember it because I was in the park on a bench having a coffee and sobbing and being like, "My hires want me to pay them more, 'cause they've all worked for more than a year and I feel like I owe them a raise, and maybe this is the second time that this is happening now, and I'm owing them a bigger raise and I'm not making a lot of money here, and I don't know what to do." He was like, "Raise your rates $5." And I was like, "No one's gonna come back if I raise my rates $5, it's gonna scare off the new people and no one... " And I was so upset and anxious and oh my gosh, what happens and literally no one batted an eyelash, not a single person cared, we did not lose a single client, we went from $80 an hour to $85.

0:17:48.0 RB: Just to give you perspective we're at $135, so we've done a few raises since then, we've done a few raises, and I did a lot of research as to how to do it in a way that is appropriate and ethical, and that feels good, and so I announced to my clients the month before it was happening, "Alright y'all, in 30 days, these rates are going up $5, if you wanna lock in your current rate, pre-purchase as many sessions at the current rate as you like before the end of the month, but then at the end of the month, that rate is gonna be what it was, and I'll honor those sessions forever until they run out and then you're gonna be paying what everyone else is paying," and so that was nice 'cause it gave me a little boost 'cause a lot of people bought packages and bought multiple services, but then I didn't have to grandfather anyone in, it was just like, people who had pre-purchased stuff had it until it ran out and then everyone was at the same rate at the end of the day, because consistency is so important, that's one thing I've learned from looking at the way that real corporate businesses work is that it's super super consistent. And that consistency is actually more important than most other things.

0:18:51.7 DB: Were you able to translate that then to the practitioners who were working for you? You had mentioned you had not given them a raise during that year period, were able to move that and shift that at that time too?

0:19:03.1 RB: Yeah, so a couple of things happened. Your rates should never, the rates that you pay your practitioners are independent of the rates that you charge. I think some people assume, if you raise your rates, therefore you are now raising everyone else's pay, and that's not true. So number one, everyone should have a rate review at least once a year where you have an independent discussion regardless of if you've raised your prices or not. And number two, you are in effect paying them more because if you accept gratuity, they're going to get a higher gratuity based on whatever you're charging anyways, so it does nicely affect them. But in our industry, typically, if you're looking at margins for a business like ours to survive, it should be whatever you're charging, a third to the practitioner, a third to overhead, a third to profit.

0:19:50.3 RB: If you look at most as statistics, you see at 10%-15% profit margin, just terrifying number one. And number two, for a business to sustain, it's not a charity. It has to be profitable. And I think the problem is they're like, "Oh well, if I'm only charging $90 and no therapist would work for 30," it's like, "Well, then you need to raise your rates until you can get to a point where you're paying your therapists enough." Whatever you're paying your therapist, times that by three to start, and then keep up pace with that by raising your rates. So they are therapist with me, who've been with me for a really long time and they're earning profoundly more than that starting rate. And that's part of the reason we do have to keep adjusting our prices because there's inflation, our costs go up, and I wanna be able to pay my therapist fairly.

0:20:36.5 DB: So let's stay on that same path with regards to managing, because I know that you really love the idea of servant leadership, can you tell our listeners what that is and how specifically you integrated that into your business?

0:20:53.3 RB: Yeah, so I think when you think about leadership, especially in the US, there's this sort of patriarchal authoritarian vibe that we get of the big boss who sits up high and is telling everyone what to do and I hate that stuff. I hate it. I'm not a big authority person, I just hate it. I didn't like working for people who behave that way, I didn't feel respected by people who are behaving that way, and didn't really suit me, I'm kind of a nurturing person, I'm kind of... And I work with sweet heart, I work with nurturing people, massage therapists are sweet, lovely people, and I find that over the years, there's this model of servant leadership that's really exciting to me because basically my job as the leader of the company and anyone who's in a position where they're overseeing other people, our only job is to make sure that every single person in the company has exactly what they need to succeed and thrive in their position.

0:21:44.7 RB: And so what that looks like in real time in practice is quarterly Zoom meetings with my massage therapist, to hear them. To listen to them, to ask, "Okay, what do you need to feel amazing at the studio? What would you like to see done differently? How would you like to see us grow? What would you like... You want a different flavor of gum at the front desk, I'll make it happen. You want more granola that is nut free. I will make that happen for you." Whatever makes your day feel really good, that's my responsibility, and this is a great way of making sure that I don't have a lot of turnover in the company because when people are happy, they stay. It makes sure that my clients are happy because if the therapists aren't happy, it doesn't vote well for the type of service they're doing, and so servant leadership from every position, it's our job to make sure that everyone who's working is having their best day ever, basically.

0:22:36.8 DB: Rachel, were you doing those check-ins one-on-ones or with your full team or a combination of both?

0:22:41.5 RB: So over the years, it has changed when I had a really small team, absolutely, and I was a fan of doing it over pedicures, 'cause I get to run my company how I want, and it doesn't have to be a big scary corporate thing. Let's do a check-in over mani, pedi. But as we've gotten bigger, I think there's 58 of us now, it has become more... We can do them location-based and sometimes they do them on-site, sometimes with pandemic, we've done it over Zoom and we'll have a few different dates that people can choose to join. It's completely voluntary. They don't have to join us. That I find that it's really helpful to get those feedback sessions where all I'm doing is asking very targeted questions and then listening and shutting up because they'll tell you what they need, and then also having an open door policy where if someone doesn't feel comfortable sharing in front of everyone else, they can always come to me privately or text me, or DM me, or Instagram, like send me an email. I'm very open, so I'm here for them and they know that.

0:23:38.9 KC: I'm curious, Rachel, you say 50-plus employees, which is incredible, how many locations do you have now, I know we've talked about how you first started your expansion, but where are you today?

0:23:47.2 RB: Yeah, so we had grown to four right before COVID, right before I opened the fourth in September or October, and then in March, everything, New York city closed, and then I sadly lost the most recent two of those, so I was back down to two. But since re-opening about eight months ago, I opened our third and three weeks ago opened our forth. So we're back up to four, and I swapped out, I used to have a South Brooklyn, it was in a neighborhood called Dumbo down under Manhattan Bridge over pass. So it was in that neighborhood, and there was one in Queens in Long Island City. So I lost those two, but now I have Union Square and Columbus Circle, which are both Manhattan, so that's really exciting 'cause I never could have afforded Manhattan before, so that's really cool.

0:24:32.8 KC: Yeah, so another great business lesson that you've lived through personally is loss can sometimes down the road lead to gain.

0:24:42.7 RB: It's like any time something like that happens, I think it's helpful to put yourself in the head space of, "Okay, well, what's great about this, or where's the good in this?" And when you're saying goodbye to studios that you just freaking built, it's painful and it's horrible, but I just kept thinking, "If I lost my spaces, probably other kinds of businesses did too, and if I can just hang in there, there's gonna be some really cool real estate at the other side." So I was very fortunate and that I kept my eyes peeled immediately for, there was an acupuncture clinic that had closed, there was a psychiatric clinic that had closed and they were already built out, I didn't have to do a very expensive build-outs, all I had to do is paint and update some flooring and then move in, and that was really exciting to me because it didn't take me months to get it going, it was just get up and get right in there, and we even have all of the furniture from the old spaces, so even furnishing it was pretty straight forward.

0:25:32.0 KC: Rachel, you're also a wellness business coach, and so I'm so curious to know, you have so much information to share with people, how do you help other practitioners in the wellness space achieve their goals, and what do you find are the most common stumbling blocks that people have when they start their conversations with you?

0:25:53.6 RB: Absolutely. I see the same kinds of issues repeatedly, no one is charging what they should be charging, everyone is scared to raise their rates, everyone is working with a few clients that they probably should part ways with, so that they have room for clients that are more appropriate for them, people are terrified of hiring employees, people are terrified of expanding, no one knows about the legal ramifications of IC versus W-2, and the laws are different in every state, and they're scared to find out that information. And it's always bookkeeping also. For whatever reason, I don't know why we learned about parallelograms in school but not taxes, I don't know why we didn't understand basic bookkeeping. I was really scared of it. It was something I felt a lot of shame over.

0:26:39.0 RB: In fact, when I started my business, felt like, I didn't necessarily know my numbers, I was very scared of the names of these reports like, "What is a profit loss and what is a cash flow statement and what is a balance sheet, and how do they all work together?" So I actually hired a bookkeeper who I couldn't afford an ongoing bookkeeper, but I hired her for a two hour, let's sit and have a latte and walk me through QuickBooks online, like I'm five. Just tell me from the beginning, show me what this is, show me how it works, 'cause I know I need it for some reason, but I don't really know what it does or how it works." And after those two hours, I was like, "Are you kidding me? This is so easy. What was I scared of?"

0:27:13.9 RB: It's just there's so much fear around this stuff. Especially for women, I didn't know any women business owners growing up, I didn't see women doing this kind of thing, and number stuff in my mind was always a guy's thing and I'm 38, so hopefully it's different for younger generations, but I didn't see it, and so I was really ashamed of it, I had terrible grades in Math, I was really scared of... I didn't go to business school, I went to art school and then massage school. So the numbers are a real thing. And with my consulting clients, I'm helping them basically understand and troubleshoot and strategize, and some of it is mindset stuff, like limiting beliefs around charging more or hiring, and some of it is just straight up strategy of like, "Why isn't my website converting and where are their missed opportunities," and things like that.

0:28:01.3 DB: So Rachel, let's bring it on home here, what advice do you have for practitioners wishing to make the leap into private practice themselves?

0:28:09.3 RB: I think I would say, you don't have to go all at once, so you don't have to just quit your job and then rent a random space and have all the money up front. I think it's good to transition, try one or two days a week, see if you can rent a space that's even by the hour or by the day, just because there aren't ads for spaces doesn't mean they're not available, call yoga studios, call Kairos, call places, you never know when someone has a room that's not even being used, where they're like, "Yeah, I'd run that out for 100 bucks," or whatever. Call around, make a website first and foremost. It has never been easier to make a WordPress or a Squarespace, it has never been like, learn to do it yourself. Don't ask someone... Really, if you're really struggling, ask someone else. But be able to update it yourself. It is not that hard. If you can use Facebook, you can use Squarespace, it is super easy.

0:28:55.9 RB: Put yourself out there and you don't have to jump in all at once and also ask for help, look for people who have done it before, talk to your teachers, talk to other classmates, talk to other kinds of business owners, even if they're in a different industry, because they'll have a lot to tell you. There's a guy who runs a computer store, and I was like, "What credit card processor do you use?" Just like basic thing, "What do you do when someone is late to work 10 times? How do you handle that?" Talk to other people in other industries, see how they're problem-solving for things.

0:29:26.6 DB: I wanna thank our guest today, Rachel Beider for joining us. For more information about Rachel, visit her website, wellnessbusinessconsulting.com. Thanks Rachel and thanks Kristin.

0:29:37.3 RB: Thanks so much.

0:29:38.1 KC: Rachel, first of all, congratulations on your success, and secondly, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and sharing your tips and information with our listeners, I absolutely know it's going to impact so many people today. Thank you.

0:29:58.6 S1: Join us at the free ABMP CE Summit on Monday, March 21st. This one-day online conference focuses on fascia and takes learners on a journey from understanding fascia, what it looks like, it's role in the body in different types, to working with it using multiple modalities and techniques. Instructors include keynote presenter, Dr. Robert Schleip, and CE course instructors, Rachelle Clauson, Allison Denney, Joi Edwards, Gil Hedley, David Lesondak, Whitney Lowe, Til Luchau and Cathy Ryan. This event and four hours of CE is free for everyone in the profession, visit abmp.com/summit to learn more and register today.

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Ohio Adopts Interstate Massage Compact

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Perform Your Best with MassageBook

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MassageBook wants to help you focus on delivering exceptional care to your clients and building the practice of your dreams.

Julie Plachta: Serving the Underserved

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As we get closer to celebrating Massage Is for EveryBody, July 14–20, 2024, we wanted to share more of Julie Plachta’s story, which exemplifies the inclusive values of this campaign.

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Featured ABMP Discount Partner: Hyperice

ABMP members save 10% on all Hyperice percussive and heat/ice technology massage devices, including the Hypervolt, Vyper Vibrating Fitness Roller, and Ice Compression.

Featured ABMP Discount Partner: Yomassage

ABMP members receive 20% off Signature Yomassage, Mindful Touch by Yomassage, Barefoot Yomassage, Table Yomassage, and Yomassage Facials certifications.

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