Ep 237 – ABMP & PocketSuite: Free Scheduling App for Members with Chinwe Onyeagoro

0:00:00.2 Kristin Coverly: Fascia Research Society invites ABMP Podcast listeners to attend the Sixth International Fascia Research Congress, September 10th through 14th, 2022 in Montreal. The event includes eight keynote speakers, over 60 parallel session talks and posters, seven full and eight half-day workshops and a two-day fascia focused dissection workshop. The line up of keynote speakers and workshops is already available on the Fascia Research Society website and the full congress schedule will be out June 3rd. Register for the Sixth International Fascia Research Congress today at fasciaresearchsociety.org.

0:00:44.9 KC: Easily run your business with free online scheduling, payment processing, and more from the new ABMP PocketSuite, signature edition. ABMP has partnered with PocketSuite to bring members a free easy-to-use phone app that lets you focus on what matters most, your clients. Businesses on PocketSuite see an average 30% increase in earnings, and you could get set up in 15 minutes by choosing from curated pre-loaded settings or customizing the app for your practice. Features include online scheduling, HIPAA compliant intake forms and contracts and payment processing, all included in the ABMP signature edition and all free to ABMP members. Go to abmp.com/pocketsuite to get started and spend more time focusing on what you love.

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0:01:50.6 Darren Buford: I'm Darren Buford.

0:01:52.0 KC: And I'm Kristin Coverly.

0:01:53.3 DB: And welcome to The ABMP Podcast, a podcast where we speak with the massage and bodywork profession. Today we have a special episode of The ABMP Podcast where we're speaking with Chinwe Onyeagoro about her company PocketSuite, which is a new partner to ABMP. Where together, we're providing a benefit completely free to ABMP members. Chinwe is CEO and co-founder of PocketSuite, a client service smartphone app for service professionals, where she's responsible for growth, strategic partnerships and customer success. Hello Chinwe. Hello, Kristin.

0:02:25.0 Chinwe Onyeagoro: Great to be here.

0:02:26.6 KC: Chinwe, we're so excited to have you here, and I love, and I know our listeners are going to love too, that you are an advocate for small business owners in many different ways. Please tell us the story, what inspired you to co-found PocketSuite, which helps so many small businesses run and grow?

0:02:44.7 CO: Well, great to be here. Honestly, this has been a lifelong passion of mine, as a young girl age 7-9, I would team up with my friends and we'd create baby sitters clubs, lemonade stands, and I was always the one writing the business plan for how would we get the next lemonade stand on the next block.

0:03:06.6 KC: Oh, I love it. [laughter] Expansion. [laughter]

0:03:10.2 CO: I was always focused on growth and expansion and how do we do more, so that kind of followed me throughout my career. I started off as a management consultant, so I tend to apologize 'cause I am a recovering management consultant, I problem solved for a living, and in that work, I helped very large businesses grow, gain market share, but at some point really wanted to go back to my roots, which is really working with small businesses entrepreneurs who are doing the impossible with very little and creating a lot of impact.

0:03:44.2 CO: So my first foray outside of the management consulting world was as a tech entrepreneur. I created a business that was focused on helping small businesses raise money, so I was helping solopreneurs, small entrepreneurs basically apply for loans with banks, with other financial institutions. And at the time, three out of four businesses that applied for loans, were getting rejected, they were getting declined. And for me, it didn't make sense, why would that... Just a lot of waste of time and energy, and so I wanted to figure out what was going on there. So I built a technology that would basically aggregate about 300 different lenders, take all of their credit criteria and make it really easy for small businesses to apply within seconds for loans. And with our tool, we got 80% of small businesses approved. So we raised about 150 million for small businesses in the form of small loans, and in doing that work, what I learned is that many of these small businesses were actually raising this money, not for growth, but to manage cash flow. They weren't getting paid on time by their clients, and so they were actually raising loan money to just cover the receivables from these clients, so for me, that didn't make a lot of sense.

0:05:04.5 CO: These were small businesses that oftentimes were recurring income businesses, so these clients were booking them multiple times a week, multiple times a month, and yet were taking a long time to pay them. So I thought, "Gosh, maybe there's a better way for these businesses to be able to get paid by their clients so they don't actually have to raise this loan money and essentially erode their profit," and that's really what sent me down the PocketSuite path. So as I was going down this road, thinking about how do we build healthier businesses that have cash flow, they're able to manage cash flow from existing clients, I started looking at what were the reasons why they weren't being paid on time. And what I found is invoices weren't being sent out on time, and when they were sent out, they weren't being collected frequently, so I thought, "How can we build a software that has small businesses being paid upfront or immediately after they deliver the services?" And that was the beginning of PocketSuite.

0:06:04.9 DB: Beautiful. Beautiful. Before we dive in to all the nuances that PocketSuite offers, can you tell me a little bit... I'm so curious because we make a magazine here, we make Massage & Bodywork magazine and some other magazines as well, but you write a column for Entrepreneur called The Six-Figure Solopreneur World, because so many ABMP members and massage therapists themselves identify as solopreneurs. I'm sure they're curious where your passion... Can you just tell me a little bit about that, how are you doing that? Crafting that, and that seems obviously like a natural extension of the passion you just told us about.

0:06:39.9 CO: Yes, so when people think about solopreneurs, they think about folks that are oftentimes struggling, are not able to make ends meet, they don't think about it as a glamorous profession or pursuit in a career. So when we approached Entrepreneur magazine, we really had an ambition to change that to say, "Actually, people who work for themselves are the bravest, the most courageous and frankly the most glamorous professions of them all, and so how can we showcase these stories and really illustrate that?" And so we went and looked at many of the PocketSuite pros, and looked at what they're doing, how much they're earning, and how they're able to live a great life, and we really... Our ambition was to tell their story, and by telling their story, really illuminate just how powerful it is an opportunity to be able to work for yourself. And that's really what The Six-Figure Solopreneur was all about.

0:07:39.6 KC: I love that. I don't know that we've ever talked about ourselves as glamorous, I really liked putting, shining that light on our solopreneur practitioners out there. Embrace everybody. We are glamorous. We're doing the hard work. It is really true. We're doing the hard work. It's a lot of effort, our passion is our actual bodywork, so we want and need tools to help us do those pieces that maybe we don't wanna spend a lot of our time on, which includes scheduling and taking payment, all that kind of stuff. So now let's dive into PocketSuite. What's included in the app? What are the features? Why would someone want to jump on the PocketSuite train?

0:08:18.6 CO: You know how I like to begin is to say that we are now living in an on-demand world where anyone anywhere with the press of a button can have pizza delivered at their house, can have groceries delivered, really anything. And so we've built this expectation as consumers that whatever it is that we need, it's a button tap away the information, the ability to get on someone's calendar, all of it. And yet, as we think about in the service professional world, the tools haven't quite caught up and the adoption of those tools hasn't quite caught up to the consumer demand. So you have big, big companies like Uber and big big companies like Amazon that are creating these marketplaces where consumers can get everything. And then you've got solopreneurs who are providing what I believe are the highest quality services, the most caring and thoughtful relationships that are finding it hard to compete really with these big marketplaces that are gobbling everything up. And so really what PocketSuite is here to do is to be able to provide effectively an Iron Man suit for the solopreneur to be able to compete toe to toe with the Amazons, with the large marketplaces to be able to provide that on-demand experience for consumers while still providing all of the quality, caring, relationship, personalization, that frankly, those big marketplaces can't provide.

0:09:49.7 CO: And so in the context of a solopreneur that is a service professional, what does that mean? That means that your information, where they can find you online on social media is super transparent, wherever they go, they can see exactly what your business does, what services you offer, what your availability is, they can get themselves on your calendar very quickly and easily, they can get information about how to prepare for the appointment with you, you can collect information about them in a very seamless fashion online, and the entire onboarding experience for that client is seamless, can be done in minutes, and ultimately there's perfect transparency for you and for them about what that experience is gonna be like from start to finish. And that's essentially the experience that PocketSuite provides.

0:10:38.0 KC: And I love that start to finish because the app also, you can program it or click the options for it to send reminders in advance of the appointment after the appointment follow-ups. It can do all of that for you as well, is that right?

0:10:50.6 CO: It absolutely can. So if you just take it right from the beginning, so if people book from your website or from your social media, they can tap on a link, which is your booking site, and they can see your services, they can pick which services they want, they can put their information in, all the intake information you'd like them to fill out, they can put that in right as they're booking you, they can sign any waivers you'd like them to sign, and once they confirm, they get a calendar confirmation, you get a calendar confirmation. They can sync that to their personal calendars, and then they get reminders right up until the appointment, once the appointment is complete, there's actually some follow-up messaging that you can program in that helps them understand how to maintain the services that they've received, and then they will also get re-booking reminders, so that if there's time in the following weeks and months, they'll rebook you as well.

0:11:41.0 DB: Now, a client, would a client ever need to download the app themselves, is it client-facing as well, or is the client just gonna see on a website or through something else and not see the full platform?

0:11:56.2 CO: It's a great question. Right now, there are about a half a million consumers that are booking and paying pros on PocketSuite. Of those half million, only 15,000 of them have actually downloaded the client app and are using the client app, and we'll talk about why they might have done that. But the vast majority are using the links that come to them through text message or through email that you as a massage or bodywork professional is sending them, and they're able to do everything from any device, from their phone, from a tablet and from a desktop, they don't have to download any app.

0:12:28.4 CO: Now, there are some clients that do download the app and those clients are... And you might have some clients in your roster that this might sound familiar, they are super aggressive about managing their schedule with you, they're super aggressive about managing their packages and how many sessions do I have left and what's coming up next, and I'd like to see all of my receipts and my payment history. Those clients really wanna download the app because then they can manage everything in one place, just like you're managing, but for them, they're full history with you, any contract they've signed, any form they've completed will be in their app for them. So there are some pros that actually do recommend that their clients, if they're constantly asking, "How many sessions do I have left? What have you," "Hey, download the app, you can manage all of that on your own and take control of your experience with me."

0:13:17.0 DB: Kristin, have you had super users like that before?

[laughter]

0:13:20.8 KC: Well, I always...

0:13:21.7 DB: Super clients.

0:13:23.2 KC: Yeah, but they're not aggressive, I feel like they're just so invested, right?

[laughter]

0:13:30.8 KC: I have to caveat, because I work full-time for ABMP, I have a small part-time practice now. But in the past when I had a full-time practice, absolutely, the packages and I would track it, but also I did have clients who were like, "I'm tracking it too," and like, "Absolutely, I think I have three left." I'm like, "You sure do." Absolutely, yeah. And others were who were just like, "Hey, how many do I have left?" So absolutely every kind of human out there is every kind of client that we have in our practice, and I love that we call them super users, I think that's great. And it's nice that they do have access to that if they choose to download the app. So it isn't just they're asking and having to check in with the practitioner, they can at any time, see their own history. See their receipts. I love that, that's great.

0:14:14.6 CO: Yeah, it's really powerful to be able to give your clients the ability to manage their experience with you, that's what we all want is to... We've had this frankly lifelong relationship with you, and we want to be able to manage and engage with you when we want, how we want. It just makes for a better experience all around.

0:14:33.6 DB: Let's take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors.

0:14:36.7 KC: Anatomy Trains is delighted to invite you to our in-person fascial dissection workshop, May 30th through June 3rd, 2022. We're excited to be back in the lab with Anatomy Trains author Tom Myers, and master dissector Todd Garcia in Todd's Laboratory of Anatomical Enlightenment in Boulder, Colorado. Join students from around the world and from all types of manual movement and fitness professions to explore the real human form, not the images you get from books. Visit anatomytrains.com for details.

0:15:14.6 DB: Now, let's get back to the podcast.

0:15:17.2 DB: Chinwe, for practitioners who aren't already using a scheduling and payment app or software, how can using PocketSuite potentially improve their practices?

0:15:28.3 CO: Yeah, I think there's three things that you wanna think about if you're not currently using any kind of scheduling tool. The first is just the latent demand, there's so much demand for your service that you can't even quantify because you don't actually have a way to keep track and measure it. So you might be doing Instagram posts or videos about what you do or writing blog articles, people are reading those articles and they actually are connecting with you, and then they want to take action with you. They might go to your website, but if there isn't a way to book you directly from there, you can't even tell who it is that wants to do business with you that is unable to. 'Cause then they move on to the next provider, 'cause they're looking for an immediate action to be able to take, so that's one is you just can't quantify the demand and that's... You owe it to yourself, if you're putting great stuff out there to build that community, to build that demand to be able to then make it easier for people to then access you and show that they'd like to work with you.

0:16:28.8 CO: That's one. Two is in the context of going from, I'm interested in your services, to, I'm in your practice or in your studio, getting the benefit of your services, there are about 15-20 touches. From what do you offer, to when are you available, to what information do you need? There's about 15-20 touches, and that's on a good day. And if you're doing those touches manually, the opportunity for someone to drop out at any given time because, oh, I forgot that was a message you sent, and I'm getting back to two weeks from now, and then you're getting back to me, there's so much opportunity for leakage, so much friction that you then lose the opportunity to actually get that person into your studio to really get the benefit of what you have to offer. More friction leads to more leakage where new leads people, who have interest may never get to experience what you have to offer, that's the second thing I would think about. And then the third thing is just being able to keep track of your whole business. Folks will often tell me that they have so many people on their calendar, but they can't actually tell which ones have actually paid for their services and which ones haven't, they can't keep track of where everyone is, and they're in the overall kind of journey, customer journey with their business.

0:17:48.9 CO: And so if you're not keeping track of everything in one place and you have no pen and paper, or you have Google Calendar and iCalendar, and then you're using PayPal or Venmo or a variety of other tools, it's really hard then to see for any given client, where do they stand? What's their status within your journey, so that as you engage with them, you are engaging with them with the right, next message about what they need to do next, so that they feel like they're getting that consistent touch through your journey and the experience. So that's the third thing is users might feel confused, customers may feel confused or unclear about what to do next and why if you're not clear about where they stand in your journey. So those are the three things I would say could really improve the experience for your customers, and also for you as a business owner of keeping track of everything.

0:18:40.8 KC: Yeah, I love that. Not just that it's making certain aspects of the business and our practice easier, but also that it could potentially help us grow and take next steps in our practice. That's awesome.

0:18:51.3 CO: Absolutely.

0:18:52.8 KC: Okay, Chinwe, we've gotta talk about the fact that some listeners might be getting curious, getting interested, and then they are putting those breaks on this journey really quickly, because all of a sudden it feels like a lot of technology, like it might be really hard. So let's talk about where does PocketSuite in jumping into and using PocketSuite fall on the easy to hard on the technology scale. Tell us all about that.

0:19:16.9 CO: Yeah, that's a great question. The first thing I think I would say is, if you know how to text, and if you know how to use your calendar on your phone, you are ahead of the class. You should be able to use PocketSuite. We designed PocketSuite specifically on the phone, using technology in a design that's familiar to you whether you're using Android or whether you're using an iPhone, the design should be very similar and the tapping behavior to be able to take action should be very familiar. So we would say PocketSuite is on the easy side of the spectrum, you should be able to within 15 minutes, get into PocketSuite, log in with your phone number, sync your calendar so all of your appointments are already on your calendar, and then be able to with one tap, start scheduling clients. The beauty of the ABMP edition, is all of those standard services contracts and forms and different defaults that you would typically have to figure out how to add to the system, they're pre-added for you, pre-curated, so you can really get in, make some selections and get started right away.

0:20:30.2 DB: Chinwe, I know that working together, PocketSuite and ABMP, that you also have a customer service dedication to our members. Can you tell us about that just for members who may have maybe challenge setting it up or may need that extra step?

0:20:46.6 CO: Yes, our principal at PocketSuite is about building a world-class platform, world-class product and a world-class customer experience. Our heroes are Zappos, Airbnb, they have just world-class experiences, and they fundamentally believe that the customer comes first, user comes first. With that, we say that at PocketSuite, we are both your technical support, we are providing business coaching with the partnership with ABMP, we are a cheerleader for you as you're hitting these milestones as a business owner, and then we're also there to really talk you through different choices from a How-To perspective to be able to... As you grow your business. So we're here for all of those purposes. And that's really what customer success is here to do. We provide customer success on three levels, one is text-based support, so in the app, you can text us and you should get responses within less than an hour, we'll turn around a response to you, and these are pretty involved responses. So the team is available from 7:00 AM To 7:00 PM, seven days a week. We're online, when you're online, secondly, we do calls, and so we do calls when you're just getting started and you'd like to know, "Walk me through this app, tell me all the things I have to offer."

0:22:07.4 CO: We're on the phone with you, we're talking to you through the app, we're learning about your workflow and then how to customize the app for your workflow. And then if you're transferring from other software, we make it easy, we say go get a glass of red wine and you send us all of your documents, you send us your client information, we'll import that all into the app for you, and then we will send you a video of your account all set up, walk you through it, so that you feel really comfortable to then begin to get booked and get paid by PocketSuite. And then finally, if you have any emails that you'd like to send us, any follow-up, we can also support you there. We provide through every channel that support and we fundamentally... We're not really happy unless we know that you feel really confident to be able to run your business on PocketSuite.

0:22:56.5 KC: I feel like I just heard a collective sigh of relief about the hey, send us your client information and we'll upload for you option, that was great. Because that is a hurdle. People think about that like... Oh my goodness. Just getting started. That feels exhausting.

0:23:11.8 CO: Yeah. It is. There's friction and just changing what you're doing, there's inertia, and so it's, hey, we were happy to take that off your hands so that the switching cost and the starting cost is lower for you to be able to transition into a new software that fundamentally will be easier for you.

0:23:31.2 KC: And I guess I have a quick follow-up question about that, thinking about our client information, and we're so careful to protect that and HIPAA laws and regulations, how do you handle the privacy of that information as we might send that to you to add that to the app?

0:23:44.5 CO: Yeah, so we are double encrypted within PocketSuite, so end-to-end encryption within PocketSuite when you transfer anything to us, all of our team members are HIPAA certified, so the messaging, the scheduling and the payments is all included under that HIPAA certification. We do have a business associate's agreement as well. For those that would like to have that signed.

0:24:08.3 KC: That's great. Thank you.

0:24:09.2 DB: And Chinwe, what about our ABMP members who I know who are listening, who are already using PocketSuite but need to move themselves over to the ABMP signature addition.

0:24:21.7 CO: We've seen a lot of that Darren since you announced on social media, and you sent that email out, we've had a number of ABMP users who have been long-time users, "How do I get on to the ABMP edition?" And so that's something we can do with the flick of a button, so if they just reach out to us via an app and say, "Hey, I'd like to convert over to the ABMP edition." And they just give us their ABMP membership number, we're able to convert them over. Those that actually have the link and haven't started using, as long as they go through that ABMP custom referral link, they're automatically onboarded onto the ABMP edition.

0:24:57.0 KC: Okay, one more what if for you. [chuckle] We could what if you all day. But here's one, because I know that a lot of the listeners are getting excited about it, they're gonna go explore all these options in this edition of PocketSuite, the ABMP edition of PocketSuite and what that might offer that might be a little bit more interesting than what they're already using. Capital B, big but though, they are already using a different software, how would that transition work? What does that look like?

0:25:24.0 CO: Yeah, so we actually have had a number of ABMP members who have come over and said, "I'm actually using MassageBook currently, I'm actually using Acuity, what have you, how do I transfer over my data?" And so we've written out frequently asked questions, one sheeters that lay out how do we transfer the key data from MassageBook, from Acuity, from Mindbody? We've about five different systems that we're transferring from, they just export that information as a CSV file and they email it to us at support@pocketsuite.io, and we take over and do the rest, so all they have to do is export that information from the systems and we will take over and get that information into the system. So that has been one of the most exciting things that has come out of it, is people saying, "I'm so glad ABMP has finally provided us with an alternative and now we can move over and make that transition."

0:26:16.4 DB: I wanna thank our guest today, Chinwe Onyeagoro, listeners to learn more about ABMP and the new PocketSuite benefit, visit abmp.com/pocketsuite to get started. And if you're not already an ABMP member, and would like to incorporate PocketSuite into your practice, visit abmp.com to join and become a member. Thanks, Chinwe and thanks, Kristin.

0:26:38.7 CO: Thanks so much, Darren and Kristin, this has been a pleasure.

0:26:41.8 KC: It really has been fun. And thank you, not only for PocketSuite and our partnership with ABMP, but on a bigger scale, thank you for supporting and creating tools to help us as small business owners and solopreneurs and what I'm gonna say in our glamorous profession. [laughter] Thank you so much. Truly, thank you for dedicating your work to helping us do our work. That's great.

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