What to do When Your Practice is a Fixer Upper|
Business and Marketing for Massage and Bodywork Therapists
Episode 39.
MINDY TOTTEN:
Hey, Hey there. Welcome back to the Do It With Intention podcast. I'm your host Mindy Totten,
Something that not many of you may know about me is that I love renovating and fixing up living spaces. My treatment room and office are attached to my home where I used to live in what was our carport at one time.
[00:00:20] And then when we bought our house, it was three bedroom, one and a half bath. Now it has four bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms, and I totally renovated this teeny tiny place where we live now in Curry beach. So chip and Joanna better just watch it. I love this kind of work, transforming old spaces and making them perfect for us and the way that we live.
[00:00:42] It's such a wonderful creative outlet for me. And it also lets me flex my problem solving muscles. So I know my way around a miter saw. I can caulk a mean caulk line, and I even have my own embarrassing to say hot pink toolbelt, which maybe I'll throw a picture of that into the show notes that you can say, keeping it real, right.
[00:01:04] The most important thing that I've learned through my renovating years is that I need to know when to ask for help. And it's the same in your bodywork business. You may be at the point now when you realize that you have taken your practice as far as you can on your own, but what should you do next?
[00:01:23] Well, it all depends on where you are and where you want your practice to be. You could read books, you could go online and search for answers, or maybe you could sign up for a one day seminar at something like your local chamber of commerce, or you can get someone to help you cut through all of that and guide you where you need to go.
[00:01:43] It depends on whether you need help with a task or a project. And here's what I mean. I'll give you an example from my house renovating days. In the early days when ever I used to work on a renovation project, I'd try to do everything myself. Absolutely. Every single time. I am pretty darn independent.
[00:02:05] Some people might say stubborn. I say independent, and I'm a triple Virgo, so I always think that I can do it on my own. Everything that you know, I'm, I'm the queen of, Oh, we can cut down that tree. We have a chain, so I'll let me just run out there and do it. Yeah, I remember when I was renovating our bathroom at our old house in Wilmington.
[00:02:27] I went down to Lowe's home improvement and I bought a new sink that I really, really liked. Then I went online and I watched some YouTube videos about how to install a sink, and I even joined a couple of DIY renovation forums. I figured it out. I thought I knew what I was going to do and I had a plan.
[00:02:46] When I began to implement my plan of replacing the sink, though, the first thing that went wrong is that the old water pipes were rusted. So I had to head back to Lowe's to get new ones, got back home, and I realized that they were the wrong size. You guessed it back to Lowe's. When I finally had the correct size, I couldn't get them installed because I didn't have the proper tools, so I just kind of faked it and fudged it with what I had and ended up spending about three hours on what should have been a 15 minute job.
[00:03:20] Then I had to stop the whole project because I realized I should have painted before I installed the new sink. So I had to go back to Lowe's to get paint brushes. In the end, the project got done, but it took me about three times as long and cost about twice as much as I thought it was going to. And here's the thing, it wasn't even fun to do.
[00:03:40] I didn't enjoy it because it turned out to be such a huge freaking ordeal. I had a much better experience. The next time I installed a sink, which was in my office because I called a contractor to come out and help me plan the renovation because he had a ton of experience and expertise. He was able to tell me, Mindy, first do this, then do this.
[00:04:04] Then I'll come by and do this, this, and this, and then you can finish the job by doing this. What a huge relief. Another time I wanted to change out our light switch covers, so I got a book on basic home improvement from the library, basic home repairs. I bought the light switch covers and easily switched them out based on what I had read.
[00:04:26] The key is to know what kind of support you need and when you need it. Are you working on a task or you're working on a project? It's the same with your bodywork business. If you're trying to figure out, for example, how to file the papers to get a business license in your state, you can just look it up online, take the appropriate steps, and boom, you're done.
[00:04:49] This is a task just like changing out light switch covers and you can easily get support that you need from a book or online. But if you're trying to map out a plan for your business to succeed, you probably don't even know where to begin. It won't do you a whole lot of good to try to string a bunch of little tests together to try to make it work because you may not yet have the experience or the expertise to see how the whole picture fits together.
[00:05:17] Just like me and my sink. You'll spend more time, energy, and money than you need to, and you likely won't get the results that you're looking for. You need someone to help you with the plan. Someone who's been where you want to go and who can teach you what you need to know. Someone who can see your business as the project that it is.
[00:05:40] Don't sell yourself short by trying to use tasks, support when what you really need is project support. Find a person or a program that can give you big picture answers that you need and who can help guide you on your way. The private mentoring program that I offer is a program just like that, and it's now open for applications.
[00:06:02] I'll put a link into the show notes for that. Your business may look like a fixer upper, but with the proper support and guidance, you can start creating the practice of your dreams much sooner than you think.