Starting the Year Off Right

Business and Marketing for Massage and Bodywork Therapists

Episode 11.

MINDY TOTTEN:   With this easy tip, I save a ton of money doing it myself instead of delivering a stack of proceeds to the accountant's office and it only takes me about 10 minutes to do the whole year.

Welcome to Do It With Intention, the podcast for massage and bodywork therapists. I'm your host, Mindy Totten, a mentor and coach for bodyworkers who want to turn their passion for the work they do into successful businesses that they love -- all without burning out or selling. 

For the last 15 plus years, I've created a successful six-figure Craniosacral Therapy practice in a small city in coastal North Carolina. Over those years, I've met so many skilled, big-hearted therapists who are struggling to make their bodywork businesses work for them. Not because they weren't terrific therapists, but because they didn't know how to make the business side of their practices work. 

It became my mission to help other massage and bodywork therapists build practices that support not only their soul, but also their bottom line.

On the Do It With Intention podcast, we'll dive deep into what it takes to build and to sustain a profitable massage or bodywork business. We'll have honest conversations about what really works and what doesn't as you create the ideal practice for you. 

After all, you do great work in the world and you deserve to make a great living doing it. But you've got to be intentional about it not only in your modality but in your business too. That's how body workers Do It With Intention.

Before we jump into today's episode, here's a quick shout out to our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by my upcoming free online event: the Step Up and Fill Your Practice Challenge.

If you've been wondering how to be a true pro and CEO of your business so that you can serve more people and make a great living doing it, you'll want to join us for this 100% free five-day challenge.

Instead of wasting a ton of time and money trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and figure this all out on your own, you get free guidance and support as you take your massage or bodywork business to the next level.

You'll learn the very next steps that you need no matter where you are in your business.

Head over to the show notes for this episode at MindyTotten.com/podcast, where you can sign up for the challenge and share it with your friends and colleagues.

We begin on Monday, January 13th and we'd love to have you join us. It's time to change your passion for the work that you do into a successful business that you love. So sign up now for the Step Up and Fill Your Practice Challenge.

Today we're going to talk about what you can do to finish 2019 strong and to really hit the ground running in 2020. I'm not talking about big vision boards, and I'm not talking about giant goals.

I'm talking today about practical things that you can do to finish up 2019 in a clean, strong way and get ready for 2020.

I really love this time of year because I've planned the whole year in advance. Knowing that November into December tend to be slow for me as a bodyworker, I always take the last two weeks of December off to recharge, and to plan ahead.

I like things to be as organized as possible so that then when life inevitably goes off the rails -- like it did in August when my brother died unexpectedly -- you can take some time off without your business crashing.

I am literally ready to file my taxes on January 1st. Crazy, huh?

I'm going to take you behind the scenes for an inside peek at my end of the routine. That gets me fired up about the New Year and ready to hit the ground running.

Number One: I have a banker's box for each year, those big cardboard boxes with lids and handles. They're recyclable, which is important to me.

One of my heroes -- Twyla Tharp, the choreographer – says before you can think outside the box, there has to be a box.

Bodyworkers tend to be really creative and really artistic people and not always the most organized, with strong structures and boundaries. And so having a box, in this case, a banker's box.

I use a banker's box because I like the way that I can take the lid off easily and it's sturdy enough to last in my attic for the seven years that I need it to. I label the box with a year and it stores all of the things that I need to keep sorted.

Number Two: A simple accordion file. Open it and label the different sections. I labeled each section for a business expense and then throughout the year I put all my receipts into the corresponding section.

If I get a receipt from the post office, it goes straight into that section. If I'm not sure where an expense goes, it goes into the miscellaneous section and my accountant will sort it out down the road.

The accordion file serves two purposes for me. First, I don't have business receipts cluttering things up, and it's always a mess when you're trying to go through stuff at the end of the year.

Second, at the end of the year, I gather the receipts in each section and put the receipts in chronological order.

I save a ton of money doing this part myself cause some people I know deliver a stack of receipts to the accountant's office and that takes hours for the accountant to go through. And time is money.

It takes me about 10 minutes to do the entire year. All the receipts go into a large envelope and then into the banker's box.

Number Three: I go through all of my client charts. I keep client records in manila folders where I have their intake forms, copies of my summary of observations and recommendations for care (I'll put a link in the show notes so that you can see an example of that).

You might keep completely different types of records depending on your state, where you are, your licensure. But we all have some type of client charts that we keep track of.

All of these files are kept in a locked file box in a closet in my treatment room, so at the end of the year, beginning of the next year, I go through all the charts.

I pull out the files of folks who I haven't seen for a year or the people who came in for an initial session and then didn't return.

The next thing I do is really important before I put these into that banker's box as well. I picture each person whose file I'm taking out of the active file. I picture that person in my mind. I send them really genuine, warm wishes for their health and their wellbeing as they go along their journey. Only then do their charts go into the banker's box.

Cleaning out these charts gives me the space for new people to come into my practice and it also reminds me of all the people throughout the year that I've worked with.

Number Four: The next thing I add to the banker's box is my passion planner (I'll put a link to that in the show notes if you've been following me for awhile). A passion planner is basically a planner that also has room for goals, reflection and gratitude.

I use my passion planner as an appointment book. I put that along with my journal and with my calendar for the year, so everything is in one place if I need to go back to it for taxes or for any other reason.

Number Five: I use Quicken to keep track of my revenue and my expenses. At the end of the year, I have a tally for both of those. If you use some kind of electronic accounting, you hit the button and – boom! -- you know how much you've earned and how much has gone out for expenses.

But because I'm old school, I also write them down and I put that paper on the top of everything else in the box. After I've given all my numbers to my accountant, I put the boxes in the attic and I take down the box from seven years earlier.

I go through that box and I shred almost everything except for my journals and my passion planners. Once I've cleared out everything from the past year, I take a couple of hours to plan for the upcoming year.

I'll share more about how I do that in the upcoming Step Up and Fill Your Practice challenge, which begins in just a couple of weeks. You'll have all the information in the show notes that you need to join us for that challenge. We would love to have you aboard -- even if you've done it before -- new year, new dreams, new possibilities.

That’s it for today. Those are my Ninja productivity tips to get you started hitting the ground running in 2020.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me today. I know what it takes to make time for something like this in your busy day and I so appreciate that you tuned in and listened all the way to the end. 

We've got all the links from today's episode in the show notes that you can find over at MindyTotten.com/podcast.

If you really enjoyed today's conversation, I'd love to send you a special sticker to remind you that Bodywork Therapists Do It With Intention. All you have to do is take a moment to leave a review on Apple podcasts. 

Once you do, just send a quick email with a screenshot of your review to hello@mindytotten.com.

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Okay, that's it for today. It's my pleasure and my privilege to be with you on this journey. I'll see you next week, same place, same time. Until then, get out there and Do It With Intention.