Massage Therapist, Mary Carolla, Shares How She Handled the Unexpected in Her Business
I'm Tiffny Nadolny, your host of the Spa Business Building Podcast. I'm a licensed esthetician, massage therapist and solopreneur in my day spa. With nearly two decades of experience in the beauty and wellness industry, I've learned a few things about building a career and maintaining longevity.
Outside of the treatment room, I'm a wife, mom to the human and fluffy kind, plant enthusiast and book lover. Join me while I share my experiences and insight on attracting clients, maintaining and building a thriving business while achieving work-life balance. Whether you are a new Solo Spa Boss or Season, this podcast is for you.
Welcome back Solo Spa Bosses to the Spa Business Building Podcast. Today's Solo Spa Boss is my good friend Mary. She is a massage therapist, a massage therapy instructor, and a solopreneur like you and I.
And she had an accident over the summer and was put out of commission. She was not able to work in her business. And I wanted to pick her brain on how she was able to sustain while she couldn't work.
So without further ado, let's dig right in. Hi Mary, I'm so glad that you could be here with us today.
I just wanted to pick your brain and hopefully you can give a brief history or experience with how it's affected your business, with your injury and all of that. So let's just dig in a little bit with getting to know you.
I'm Mary. I've been a massage therapist for, I think it'll be 22 years in December. And in that time, I've been fortunate that I've only been sidelined twice, which it's not too bad when you consider that number of years.
I'm just in solo practice and that allowed me a lot of flexibility, but a little anxiety the couple of times that I did have to step back. So I've learned a few things. Hopefully, that can be helpful to other people.
For sure.
So why don't you tell us a little bit about this most recent, like, your injury kind of how it affected your business, like what you're dealing with.
I wish I had the really heroic story of how I injured myself, but I just really badly sprained my ankle, referred to as a high ankle sprain. And my husband, who's a football enthusiast, he's like, oh, that's bad. I'm like, yeah, I don't think he had, like, season-ending bad, you're a sports person.
And really, yeah, this is how I spent my summer, was dealing with bad injuries. So I guess it was kind of season-ending in that sense. Well, I had to have surgery to repair the damage there.
I had to be completely non-weight-bearing for six weeks and a medical boot for 12 weeks post-surgeries.
That's a long time. And when I was non-weight-bearing, there was no doing massage. There was really no way to really do it.
Even once I was able to put some weight through the injured leg in the boot, it was pretty hard to work. So it was just the last couple of weeks in that boot that did come back to work on a very limited basis. So I'm out of that and just building back toward my full capacity.
But the way it affected my business, because it stopped it for those 12-ish weeks. My clients have been super understanding and awesome. It was like a full, a gradual, oh, I got to cut down or anything.
Think that was like, had to call my clients and tell them, hey, we're not going to be doing anything for a while.
It's a little scary, but some previous experiences, I had some things in place to make it a little less scary.
That's awesome. How did you prepare your business for this, for the unexpected? Like you said, you had some things in place.
Years ago, a previous employment situation, I had a short-term disability policy. When I left there, I was able to keep that. I just maintained my premiums myself.
And I was very grateful to have that, and use it. And that was able to recover some of the income that I was earning by not seeing clients during that time. The other thing I had was an emergency fund.
This is more of a personal finance thing. All finance is personal, including business. I had to save up about six-ish months.
Whatever our expenses as a family were, was our goal to save up about six-ish months. It's good to have that there to know that, okay, we need to dip into that. We could do that.
So between those two things, those were the main financial preparations I had. And the other thing business-wise was taking care of my clients. I think we all love our clients and we want them to receive care, even if it's not from us, if we have to step away for them to still be cared for.
And I think this is where having a strong referral network is really important because we can't be everyone-to-everyone all the time.
That quote.
I was so grateful. Had a few practitioners. I could say, hey, I'm gonna be out.
Here are three practitioners that will be able to take care of a few therapists that I trust. And did that work out really wonderfully? The time to build your network is, of course, before you have some sort of situation where you have to have a boeing because your network is important whether you're seeing clients or not.
It's super great because it would fit every way to take care of my clients while I was away.
That's really great that you had this network of people that you could turn to in that situation. And I feel like that's one of the hardest parts. And I feel like sometimes practitioners feel as like a sense of competition amongst other, and they're afraid to reach out.
But this is the perfect example of why it's so great to have that network. Because although, and I think some people would be afraid to be like referring their clients out. But like you said, taking care of them while they have a temporary home, and they can come back to you.
There's always that chance that they may not come back to you. But then I think we just have to approach it in a different light. Maybe that opens up new possibilities for you, for new clients or something like that.
Has been actually a really awesome experience. Some of my clients just opted to wait until I come back, because that's very sweet of you, but are you sure? I think I happily worked with these other practitioners, and in fact, one in particular mentioned to me how much she really enjoyed seeing this other therapist.
She's happy she has two therapists to see now, and I think that's awesome, because this particular client was really apprehensive initially about bodywork in general. This was intimidated by the whole bodywork world, and had always expressed how safe she felt with me. And then she tried out this other therapist and felt safe with her, and I'm like, what an amazing gift.
There's two therapists now that you feel safe with. So to me, I could see where people might feel competitive, but like the more bodywork or more service it is, people receive something pretty amazing out into the world, I think. I think it's an amazing gift to this client that she now has multiple practitioners that she feels safe with.
Yeah, that is really great.
Each of us.
Absolutely.
I love that therapist is awesome. I've got to say, her too. She's a real deal.
That's awesome. Yeah, that's so great. I love that.
I love that she can find peace and safety in both of you. That's really awesome. Getting back to, so you were sidelined for the entire summer, essentially.
Pretty much. girl summer. I found some joy in it, but...
Yeah...
I could not be able to do my thing.
I, gosh, I can't even imagine. That's so crazy. How, what were some steps like when you were getting back into it?
Like, how did you start, like, easing your way into...
One of the things, even while I wasn't seeing clients, I did try to stay engaged with them a bit. I generally send out, say, a weekly e-mail. I wasn't doing, like, weekly contact with my clients, but just periodic, here's what's going on in my world, and just little reminders of, hey, here's these other practitioners that you can be seeing.
Clients reached out to me a lot just to check in on me, which was super sweet.
It was really sweet.
Oh, I feel like the engagement was good. There's probably a little more I could have done with them, but I feel like that set the stage a little bit for when I did come back and make my, like, triumphant return. They hadn't forgotten about me, and it just kept me in their mind.
And then when I came back, I just started with an announcement to my client list, like, hey, I'm pretty going to come. And just letting them know it was going to be on a limited basis at first, and that we could start booking again. I started with the people I had to cancel first, and gave them first dibs on the appointments.
And things filled up pretty quickly. And still, like I said, I'm not still, I'm still not working at full capacity to what I was before injury. Pretty much every time slot that I have is full.
Our clients, they appreciate us and appreciate our work. They go wait for us, and then we come back. It's a process, for sure, coming back into things.
I also feel having to pause the practice part of my practice. And easing back in gives me an opportunity to tweak things in my practice that maybe I just need adjusting. I think because they were nagging at me before, and also because, hey, I might have to work a little differently now.
I felt like it was a really good time to assess what was going on in my business, and what was working, what was making adjustments, or like creating plans for adjustments I do want to make to my business.
Even it's terrible that you were injured and had to shut down for a little bit, but I guess the silver lighting is that it really gave you some time to think and plan for maybe some future endeavors and growth in your business.
Absolutely. About a year ago, I started teaching in a massage therapy program. Thankfully, I was able to continue teaching while I was injured.
It took some adjustments and calling in some favors with former students to come in and basically do demonstration for me. I couldn't physically do some of the work. And it just started as a fun side gig, but it's also given me some ideas of, hey, 40 songs.
Your body may not want to go all out in bodywork for the rest of eternity. So teaching is definitely something I'll probably continue to pursue and maybe increase that more as things go on. Having a nice little side gig kept me saying, and that was another stream of income for me.
I couldn't work in my practice. So it's just kind of goes back to preparing for the worst type of thing.
Right.
If there is a side gig that you have or have your eye on, it may not hurt to pursue that a little bit.
Yeah, and I agree. I think planning for the future, just the inevitable, not just the future, but the inevitable when things, the unexpected, just when things arrive. Just going back to COVID, even if we think if there's somebody who had businesses, that was four years ago or so, but it was the same thing.
Made a lot of people realize that, whoa, I didn't plan in case my business shuts down. So yeah, having that emergency fund, you could get sick, but yeah, what if, even if your space catches on fire, your family gets injured or ill or anything like that, like having a backup plan is so important when we're solo entrepreneurs and COVID taught us anything. When you work for yourself and you can't draw unemployment, and that was a fiasco for a long time, but yeah, it's good that you have that disability supplemental, like insurance to fall back on.
Yeah, and that can be a little tricky because I looked into it too as well, and having that group policy, so it can be tricky when you're a solo service provider to get on a policy, but there are ways that you can do it. I figured out a way how to do it for the people in the building that I own.
And I've seen that depending on what profession you're in and what professional associations exist for it, I don't know much about beauty and skin care and their professional associations. I think the two major bodywork and massage professional associations do have a group plan you can buy into for that. I know a lot about it because it's not the realm I took, but I think there is something.
I get both the cost of it, but it may be worth looking into or even trying to create a group with colleagues from people that you may share space with. Sometimes you have to be creative. I took my ways to do stuff like that.
But as far as preparing yourself with an emergency fund, that's something we all can do. And lots of personal finance advice out there. But one of the things I've taken from a personal finance co-personality who's out there is that having an emergency fund is like a main priority.
And I'm glad I did that. It was just the way I did it. It's just every week, a transfer from my business account directly to a high-yield savings account.
Just every week, every Monday, X number of dollars went in there. And before I knew it, I gritted in funds. So at first, it might seem really small.
Interest compounds quickly. See, and even if it's a little bit, even if you can't do the three to six months right away, some emergencies are small, and just having a few extra bucks can make a huge difference. And that's the extent of my financial expertise.
Like, save up some money, and you'll feel a lot better.
That's good advice, though. It's absolutely solid. For sure.
It's been really great talking with you. I guess if you have any other advice or insight that you'd like to give for somebody maybe in this situation that we haven't already covered.
I think we covered the logistics aspect of things. If you do have to take some time off, hustle culture yourself through it. I think sometimes we force ourselves to be productive at all times.
And I definitely felt some of that pressure. What are we doing? I need to be doing something.
If it helps you feel better and make you feel more stressed by all means, do that. Definitely take time for your mental and physical health as needed. But it also can be a really freakful time to reassess your business in terms of the logistics of it.
But also, hey, what do my boundaries look like? What do I want my practice to look like when I come back? What do I want my practice to look like in two years, five years, 10 years?
It can be a good time to just take a look at that and have some fun with your imagination and see what possibilities you can come up with.
Absolutely. One thing I wanted to ask you too, because you had talked about continuing with teaching, instructing, but did you find yourself thinking of other ways in case you weren't going to continue massaging or anything like that? Any other ways that you modalities or anything?
Yeah. One of the things I've been doing for several years now is phasing out deep tissue work as it's sometimes imagined by the public, is just dig into my tissues for 60 minutes and just beat me up. It's the type of work I've ever done.
But over the last few years, I've been more and more clear, that what I do is less of that. And I've just been looking into, yes, more teaching, but also what are some modalities that are easier on my body. It could be, you know, lymphatic drainage or possibly doing more with breathwear, which is a little bit more on the side of instructing clients, as opposed to hands-on wear.
It can be a lot easier on our body, adding in more movement therapies, which is, again, more about coaching a client, teaching them how to do things, teaching them how to write, expending my physical energy into physical touch. Well, lots of things I'm looking at. I imagine my practice over the next couple of years will start to evolve a little differently.
I'm excited to see where it takes me. The other thing I'm harkening back to is my background before massage, what writing and journalism. You did pay off that student well.
For the business school, maybe use it a little more. That may be something I personally, a little more intentionally. So, not abusing my body for work, and more finding ways to use it a little more gently.
I love that. I can't wait to see where your journey takes you and see. What about the meeting?
I can't wait.
It's awesome. Thank you so much, Mary.
Always a pleasure to talk to you.
We'll have to do it again another episode, because you are so insightful, and I know that you have a lot of information. You definitely are.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
That is it for today's episode of the Spa Business Building Podcast. Thank you again, Mary, for sharing your knowledge, and it was so great to connect. If you would like to connect with Mary, I will link all of her info in the show notes.
If you would like to stay connected with me, you can check me out on my website at spabusinessbuilding.com. I also have Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, and a YouTube channel, so so many ways to connect and stay informed. And did you know that I am opening the Solo Spa Bosses Society very, very soon.
If you would like more information on this, you can check that out on my website. I will be offering a founding member's price, so make sure that you join that wait list. Until next time, friends, stay fabulous, stay inspired and happy business building.
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