money

Why I won’t sell skinny massage

Kelli Wise · Jul 29, 2014 ·

There’s nothing like a good, meaty ethical topic to sink your teeth into, is there? I love ethics and I’m fortunate that a lot of you send me emails or Facebook messages about interesting ethical topics. Every now and then, I am very lucky that one of you gets so passionate about an ethical issue that you offer to write a guest post. Today is my lucky day. Today, I’m fortunate that Tracy Bradley has written a guest post on a very interesting subject – add ons.

Tracy Bradley has been practicing massage therapy in Paris, Arkansas since 2003. She works with headaches, shoulder/neck pain, and overall stress management at The Comfort Zone Massage. Tracy loves purple, peace signs, Coke Cherry, ethics discussions, sarcasm, internet cats, family life, naps, and all types of massage therapy discussions.

It’s not every day that I get to feature a writer from Paris!

Why I won’t sell skinny massage

Things you won’t find on my retail shelf or service menu:

Skinny massage
Anti-cellulite products
Skinny wraps
Weight loss supplements
Nutrition shakes/pills/juices

Disclaimer: This post isn’t about my personal opinion about these products. This isn’t about whether or not I think they work. My professional ethics and integrity regarding clients, body image, trust, and money is what this is about.

When someone brings up a “great new product” which makes them “tons” of money from clients I cringe. It’s either an “exclusive” essential oil brand or some kind of fat-hiding/burning product. Why? Why, as licensed/certified massage therapists would we want to sell products which highlight and shame perceived imperfections?

The fat-hiding products bother me on a professional level. Could offering fat-hiding products potentially cause a client to feel shame about his/her body? As professional massage therapists we bring people to a place of trust and understanding. Clients are asked to remove some or all of their clothing allegedly without fear of judgment or scrutiny. We touch people’s skin, massaging indiscriminately over cellulite, moles, scars, freckles, and other unique markings. Did you see those words? “We touch people.” Why would we want to line our walls with products which draw attention to bodily imperfections?

I work with clients of many different body shapes, sizes, and weights. Each person possesses a body image. Many people view different body parts as abnormal, imperfect, fat, or ugly. Often these beliefs are distorted. A person may see past his/her healthy muscle and only be able to see a layer of cellulite. Cellulite naturally occurs on every human body. It isn’t shameful to have it’s natural and probably necessary.

Body image is a fragile thing.

How we speak to clients stays with them. How we handle their little fat jokes about themselves is how they decide how much to trust us. I have a few clients who worked up courage for a year or more to book an appointment. They were afraid of what I might think of their body. If potential clients are that worried about what we think of what we see why would we want to display products that throw their insecurities in their faces? I believe displaying and selling these products can contribute to low self-esteem and poor body image. We could be losing massage clients by selling these products. Who wants to be semi-nude in front of someone who could be scrutinizing him/her? Even if we aren’t scrutinizing bodies the products do.

Scope of Practice

Promoting inch-reducing products also confuses the client/therapist relationship. If we sell skinny wraps the client could see us as weight loss experts. Even though the company provides information about use and lifestyle the client will want more from US. If a client has questions beyond the product literature where will I get the answers? I am not a medical doctor, dietician, or personal trainer. I am not qualified to give advice or develop a weight-loss plan. Clients view us as experts and authority figures. If we sell these products they will think we are weight-loss experts. Is potentially harming a client with possibly incorrect information worth a little money? We are licensed to administer massage therapy not to counsel weight-loss. Restating information from marketing materials is not the same as becoming certified to become a weight-loss counselor.

Is selling weight-loss products, vitamins, and wraps practicing within our scope? This probably varies state to state. In my state our Practice Act (Law) states: (4)(A) “Massage therapy” means the treatment of soft tissues, which may include skin, fascia, and muscles and their dysfunctions for therapeutic purposes of establishing and maintaining good physical condition, comfort, and relief of pain.” Selling wraps that clients take home to apply weekly doesn’t seem to fall into this category. Applying a skinny massage technique would be within this scope. Who knows about selling vitamins and supplements? My opinion? It crosses into the territory of prescribing things, which we are not supposed to do. It appears to be a gray area and I’m sure there will be a great discussion. Discussions are good. I can see things from other perspectives.

What do you think? I’m curious to hear what add on services or products you sell and which ones you won’t and why.

Let’s discuss add ons in the comments below.

Contingency Plans

Kelli Wise · Mar 7, 2012 ·

A story

Here’s something I’ve kept under my hat for the last 3 years: my father had cancer. While he fought the good fight, it’s been obvious for the last year that he was losing the battle.

In October, I managed a trip home to visit him. He’d just had another bad couple of weeks in the hospital following days and days of endless vomiting, weight loss, and severe dehydration. That’s when they found the mets in his brain. I saw him while he looked pretty peppy, all things considered. We had a great visit over the course of a week.

It was to be the last time I saw him alive.

When he lived to Thanksgiving I was surprised. When he lived to Christmas, I was shocked. But by the end of January, I was trying to decide when I would fly home to help out with sitting with him and taking some of the burden off my family back home.

On January 31st, I got a text message at 5:30 am saying I should get home NOW. Within a couple of hours, I had a plane ticket and was on my way home. I made sure there was money in the bank for plane tickets, bills, and spending money. I was calling clients from airports to cancel for the next week. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be gone.

This meant I would have no income for at least a week. I had to pay for a last minute plane ticket – even bereavement fares are very expensive. I had other expenses – like flowers, clothes for a funeral, and on and on.

Be Prepared

Would you be able to survive an emergency that would not only cost you a couple of thousand dollars plus a loss of income for a week? I’ve talked before about having an emergency fund. This is the kind of emergency that fund will cover. My thanks to Wes K for the great advice given to me so many years ago. That one sentence (always keep 6 months of take home pay in the bank) has saved me on more than one occasion.

This was also the topic in one of our past #massagechats (the one before my quick trip home). The rule of thumb is to keep enough money in the bank to pay all of your bills, personal and business, for the amount of time it would take you to recover from major surgery. At least 6 weeks and up to 6 months.

We also talked about having your client list handy in case you have to contact them to cancel appointments.

Speaking from experience, emergencies happen. Be prepared.

How to buy an internet product

Kelli Wise · Jul 25, 2011 ·

Last week, Allissa Haines wrote an article on how to review someone before you hire Experts, mentors & coaches.

I want to talk a little bit about buying internet products.

Product launch season must be just ’round the bend. Why do I think this? Well, it’s been months since the big internet players have released products, people including Chris Brogan, Johnny B Truant, Dave Navarro, or Naomi Dunford. Many of them are starting to drop hints that stuff is coming ‘soon’. I’ve determined that when the big dogs unleash their products, all of the smaller players are usually close behind. Plus, it’s summer and no one does a product launch in the summer.

Be prepared, be very prepared!

The people who are successful at product launches and teaching people to do so are successful for a reason: they know what the hell they are doing! They’ve studied the psychology of buying, how to design a squeeze page, how to maximize conversion, the value of social proof, and a lot of other words and phrases that may not make sense to you but are proven ways of getting the customer to part with their money.

Some of these products are worth every penny you can scrape together.

Some of these products are utter crap.

Trust me on this, I’ve bought both. I’ve gotten stuff that rocked my world and made my business week a little easier or profitable. I’ve gotten stuff that was nothing more than a few vague platitudes dressed up with fancy type and cool layout.

How do you determine whether an internet product or course is a good buy?

We’re going to dip a bit into Allissa’s list here, since some of the items came from me.

1. What kind of business does/did the Advisor run?

Does it have anything to do with the product they are selling? Maybe it’s because I’m old and have a lot of experience, but I’d like to think that you know more about a topic than I do before I buy your product. Direct experience is often the best teacher.

The other part of this is: if they’re teaching something that doesn’t relate to their current business, does the knowledge come from past experience? Many of us in the massage world are on our second or third careers. Me included. At this point, I could effectively teach you how to: develop a killer Power Point slide set, speak in front of 600 people, manage 20 technical people and 40 projects, design a switching power supply, write html code, and design a website using divs. Why? Because this is what I did for over 20 years and many of those skills still apply (granted the power supply design stuff is rapidly falling behind the state of the art).

2. Does it have a great website? Can you see the past email campaigns to clients/customers?

If you can’t be bothered to put together a decent website, then you probably can’t be bothered putting together a coherent product.

3. Is the advisor actively communicating with clients/customers (not just colleagues) in the current forms of media (Facebook, linked in, etc) Is he/she practicing the techniques they preach?

If nothing else, it gives me an idea of what your techniques actually look like when implemented. That’s one of the ways I learn best.

4. How long has the Advisor run a successful business? If he/she is no longer running a business, why not? How long as it been?

I see a lot of “How to be an epic (insert business title here)” written by guys that are 19 years old. Unless that job title is “video gamer”, it’s unlikely that you have a lot of real world experience in the field. Don’t get me wrong, there are some areas where young people have the advantage: how to engage in social media, how to sell to Gen Y, how to write software are examples. How to manage a team? Probably not.

There are also a lot of people that cashed out a few years ago (at Intel, it was called “Calling in Rich”). That’s great, but was your success so long ago that the world has evolved past you? Or are you like Tom Peters or Guy Kawasaki always staying in the game and keeping up?

5. Have you tried any of the advisor’s free products and found them helpful?

I bought a product from Dave Navarro based entirely on what I got out of a product he provided for free. Why? because if he could offer me that much new knowledge in something free, then the paid products would be outstanding. I haven’t been disappointed.

Free stuff lets you see whether the expert teaches in a style that’s compatible with how you learn. There are many learning styles, so you need someone who can make that connection with you.

6. Are the people hawking their products doing so because they have an affiliate relationship with them? Are the affiliate links clearly noted?

This is a big one. You’ll see a lot of product reviews that come out the week of a product launch. This means that the reviewer was given a preview copy and asked to write a (favorable) review in exchange for getting an affiliate link. This affiliate fee can be as high as 40% of the selling price, so for a $200 product, that’s $80 for everyone who buys by clicking on your affiliate link. That’s one hell of a motivation to write a glowing review.

This is where I was burned in the past. I didn’t understand the whole “affiliate marketing launch” strategy and bought a product based on multiple rave reviews. I found that the product was mostly a lot of platitudes that didn’t really help my business. I also left a comment on a blog with a “I wish they had done B instead of A” and received a personal email from the product creator requesting that I address future issues with him in a private email first and could I please go and edit my comment to something a little more glowing. Needless to say, that email cost him my respect and any future business.

The problem isn’t just the money spent on these dogs, but the time you’ve lost

Some reviews are honestly positive, even with affiliate links

Some reviewers are all about the money, but then their blogs never catch on because everyone figures out that you’re just a shill. Some reviewers are about trying to spread the word about a great product. The trick is in knowing which is which. One way to do that is to look at their archives. Do they actually write about stuff other than product reviews? Do you trust them?

As a blogger, this is the potential quicksand. I’ve spent over a year developing your trust, dear readers, and I’m not willing to sacrifice that trust to make $80. If I recommend a product to you, it’s because I’ve found it to be useful to me. The products I advertise (my webhosting company for example) are things I use and stand by. The fact that I make some money IF you choose to buy them is a bonus, it’s not my primary means of income.

So, before you buy that bright-shiny-new-whatever, or hire that business or life coach, do a little research. It might save you some money and some time.

Passwords – your first step to online security

Kelli Wise · Jun 29, 2011 ·

Your Facebook profile gets hacked and your friends are getting spammed.
You bank account gets hacked and you start bouncing checks.
You use the same password for multiple accounts but it’s been stolen – how much do you risk losing?

Passwords should be hard to guess but easy to remember

I have a quick tutorial up on Pint Sized Sites* on how to come up with a password that is easy for you to remember but very hard to break. Please get yourself a few strong passwords – I don’t want your Facebook spam!

* I’ve started separating the geeky posts from here since many of you aren’t interested. I’ll still post links to articles I think you’ll find useful or entertaining and let you decide if you want to read them or not.

The Best Advice I will ever give you

Kelli Wise · Jun 21, 2011 ·

But first a story.

Years ago, I was just a young pup, 2 years out of college and working in my second engineering job. I still had 3 years left to pay on my student loans, I drove a car with no air conditioning (in Florida!), and my entire household possessions consisted of a set of used dishes my stepmother gave me, a bed, 2 lawn chairs, and a kitchen table that I bought used for $25.

I wasn’t poor – I had a job – but I was definitely, what you might call, financially limited. This didn’t really bother me at all. I had a job, a roof over my head, and health insurance.

And it was at this job where I met a very smart man named Wes who gave me the best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten. That piece of advice that I’m about to give you.

See, Wes was a few years older than I, had a master’s degree and was the kind of smart that made even smart people like me sit slack jawed in amazement. Plus, he was an incredibly nice guy. While he wasn’t my official mentor, he did teach me a lot.

One day, we were talking about career stuff, jobs, 401k plans and the like and he laid this on me:

Always keep 6 months take home pay in the bank.

“It’s not a question of IF you get laid off, but WHEN.”

And he was right. 5 years later, with a big reduction in military contracts, I ended up as 15% of engineering and out of a job. That 6 months of pay kept me living indoors. It gave me time to find the best job (and not the one in Erie Pennsylvania where the General Manager spent an hour asking me every illegal question he could think of).

I gave this advice to my sister. She had an issue that kept her out of work for several months and that 6 months of emergency fund was the difference between allowing herself to take care of personal busines or going broke.

You never know what the future will hold for you.

We have very physical jobs. If you get injured, you can’t work. I have a friend who fell and broke her elbow and couldn’t massage for several months. Another friend hurt her back.

So the question I have for you, and you don’t have to answer it here, but I do want you to seriously think about it this week: What would happen to you if you were injured or sick and couldn’t work for 6 months?

If your answer is that you couldn’t survive, I want you to start putting together an emergency fund. 6 months of take home pay. If you have a significant other, that emergency fund should be 6 months of the highest of your 2 salaries, if not more.

If you’re not sure how to do this, or you, like so many other people out there, don’t feel like you have a lot of knowledge on financial planning and management I would recommend you head over to my all time favorite blog: The Simple Dollar. This was the first blog I ever read and Trent has, without a doubt, the best financial advice you will ever get. It’s not a get rich quick scheme. It’s how to get rid of debt, how to save money, and what to do with that money. I get nothing from recommending this blog. Trent & I have never met or traded emails. I’ve commented once or twice. I just love this blog.

Please, please please make sure you have an adequate emergency fund!