Ep 72 – Become a Rebooking Ninja, Achieve 85% Retention, and Learn from Chiros/Spas with Elicia Crook

A woman sitting at a desk with an appointment book

Australian practitioner Elicia Crook tells us what it takes to rebook with success—and integrity and heart-centered-ness. She learned from working in a chiropractic office (where she met a retention ninja) and a spa (where she learned about retail sales) and then created a mashup in her business Massage Champions. Her business was the highest-price/session within 35 miles of her office and she had an 85% return rate. Her book Fully Booked Without Burnout informs our discussion.

Resources:

Selfie Training: How every Massage Therapist can take the perfect #SELFIE!

Author Images: 
Elicia Crook, author of Fully Booked Without Burnout
Author Bio: 

Elicia Crook is a business coach and mentor for massage therapists, sharing the tactics she used to create her business success over 16 years. Elicia is a diploma-qualified remedial massage therapist, using modalities such as Bowen and craniosacral therapy, and has a Cert IV in Workplace Training and Assessment, which she used while teaching massage for several years. Through her career and business experience, Elicia discovered who she needed to be and what is required to run a deeply satisfying massage business. Now she takes the Fully Booked Without Burnout blueprint to other therapists around the world to create more success and passion. For more information, visit massagechampions.com.

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Full Transcript: 

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[music]

0:01:02.5 Darren Buford: Welcome to The ABMP podcast. My name is Darren Buford. I'm the editor-in-chief of Massage and Bodywork magazine and Senior Director of Communications for ABMP.

0:01:11.2 KC: And I'm Kristin Coverly, licensed massage therapist and ABMP's Director of Professional Education.

0:01:16.6 DB: Our goal is to connect with luminaries and experts in and around the massage, bodywork and wellness profession in order to talk about the topics, trends and techniques that affect our listeners' practices. Our guest today is Elicia Crook. Elicia is a business coach and mentor for massage therapists, sharing the tactics she used to create her business success over 16 years. Elicia is a diploma-qualified Remedial Massage Therapist and uses modality such as bowen and craniosacral therapy and has a Cert IV in Workplace Training and Assessment, which she used while teaching massage for several years. Throughout her career and business experience, Elicia discovered who she needed to be and what is required to run a deeply satisfying massage business. Now, she takes the Fully Booked Without Burnout blueprint to other therapists around the world to create more success and passion. Hello, Elicia. And hello, Kristin.

0:02:09.8 Elicia Crook: Hey.

0:02:11.0 KC: Hello and welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. So listeners, if you were listening to Darren read that bio and you're thinking, what do some of those credentials mean? Elicia is from Australia, and we are gonna learn more about Australia and massage and all those credentials coming up, so hang in there. But we're gonna start with your massage story, how, when and why did you start practicing massage and bodywork?

0:02:33.5 EC: Thanks guys. I actually got into massage fairly early, I was diagnosed with scoliosis as a teenager, that's a curvature of the spine. And I was having remedial massage, here in Australia, and I was already too far ahead for needing just therapy, I needed back surgery, and I had to go on the waiting list for a couple of years. And so massage was something that I had regularly that helped me feel comfortable with who I was, but also helped to relieve the spasms that I was getting in the side of my spine. So for me, I left school early to study remedial massage and decided that I would work for myself in my infinite wisdom. I had no idea what I was doing. I thought, "Well, while that was building that I would kind of rent a chiropractic room, and while I was doing that, I would also work at a day spa" and kind of ended up being at a combined what I learned, the best of the best of both worlds, to be able to create the practice that I then ran.

0:03:31.9 DB: Excellent, let me ask you something specifically, 'cause I know our listeners are gonna be curious about massage training in Australia, how many hours of education it is? And you also mentioned your title, remedial massage therapist, can you tell me about the distinction there? Are there tiers in Australia?

0:03:47.0 EC: Great question. So in Australia, we are an unregulated industry. We have a national qualification, which is either a Certificate IV, which is usually around a year full-time study, we have a diploma which is usually around two years full-time study, and we also have myotherapy, which is kind of a step between advanced massage and physio, kind of sits in the middle there. I'm sure somebody will get mad at me for saying that, but that's kind of giving you a bit of an understanding of what it's about, and that's usually two to three years study, you can also go to university and do a musculoskeletal degree, but by and large, most people are either remedial massage therapist, so that we can have private health insurance that we can be providers for, and also we're covering things like that, or a myotherapy are kind of the two major modalities that we have here in Australia.

0:04:42.6 KC: Elicia, you mentioned that after graduating, you worked in two different settings, so both a chiropractor and a day spa, how were both of those settings valuable learning experiences for you?

0:04:53.3 EC: Look, I loved... What I learned about day spa, if I'm gonna be really honest, I was quite young, so I was about 19-20 when I first started working there, and I just thought it was just all that beauty stuff that those rich people did, that was all I had in my mind, I just wanted a summer job. I needed some experience, I need to be able to treat one person after another after another, and that seemed like a good idea. What I learned was how passionate the beauty therapists were about the skin and about the body and how our skin is the largest organ in the body, so take care of it. And I actually learned a lot of other really great skills in terms of selling product and understanding what's in your product and how it could benefit people. I'm not just saying, "Oh, you need mud 'cause it's good for you. Give me $120." It was more like, "Well actually, you don't need mud, but if you've got psoriasis or some skin condition, actually this could help and let me share the benefits with you, and if that is helping you then by all means, [0:05:44.4] ____. That's okay, there's no guns to your head or anything like that. It's just literally take the mud if you like it.

0:05:49.3 EC: At the chiropractic clinic, they were very, very clinical. He'd been around for a long time, he'd been in the area for probably 25, 30 years, and they were ninjas at rebooking and systems and structure, they had a process for how they introduce their clients to the way that they did things at that clinic, they had a little booklet, they run workshops on how they did it, they rebooked people and literally as long and as hard as you possibly could be rebooked for, they did. So I took the best of those [chuckle] and got rid of what wasn't serving me 'cause that was too far as far as I was concerned, and then when I actually did go out on my own, because I used the employment and contracting as a stepping stone towards where I wanted to go. Took the big brave step, and I call it a UTM moment or an undie tightening moment where you go, "Oh, Okay, I'm doing this." [chuckle] It might be... It's an Australian thing, I hope that's okay, and like took the leap into my very first clinic and thought, "Oh my gosh, what do I do now?" And, that was taking the best of the best of that. So, our clinic looked beautiful, but it also had a sense of professionalism instruction to it. So, I could actually use the best of both worlds.

0:07:02.3 DB: That combo is so incredible to think about working retail, which massage therapists in United States can sometimes struggle with and also not totally align with, especially if they see themselves of more of the healing component side. They can see that struggling, that marketing, selling, struggling with the hands-on work that they're doing. But then also to see the clinic aspect, you must have learned... That must have been an amazing experience at the time, right?

0:07:28.4 EC: Absolutely. It really, really was because I could see... Okay, I'm not even out one or two years from college, but I could see this is how it can be done, this is a possibility of what it's like, and if I took the structure of someone who's been working in the business for 25 years, and again, took from it what worked for me and what wasn't gonna work for me. I wasn't rebooking people forever, and I wasn't gonna be handing people on the phone to come back, 'cause that's just not who I am. But to be able to say, "Hey, come back in next week, I'd love to be able to keep working with you," was much easy to roll off the tongue because it seemed like if they were doing 10 to 10 rebooking, I was really comfortable doing a five or a six out of 10 rebooking. I felt like I was able to live in alignment with my integrity while still having heart-centered care for my clients.

0:08:15.4 KC: Yes. And that's such a great phrase, that "Living in alignment with your integrity, but still providing heart-centered care." So the balance of running a business and providing the care.

0:08:25.4 EC: Beautiful, yeah.

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0:09:18.6 DB: Let's dive in again. Just at that moment, when you left the chiropractic clinic and the spa to start your solo practice, was there a moment...

[laughter]

0:09:29.9 EC: There were many moments. But it was exciting I think. My rent was really low. So that was something that really helped. I also kept a job working at a local gym just one day a week, and I did that because it gave me a bit of variety. I like a lot of variety in my life. And it also gave me certainty, because that would pay for my rent. So worst-case scenario, if I had zero people booked, if no one came in, I knew my rent was covered, and like I could live without that. That's okay. Even if it was just for a few weeks, that pressure of "Holy crap, what if no one comes, what if this doesn't work?" It was taken away a little bit, because I felt like I had just one day a week that I worked in a gym, which was totally in alignment with what I wanted to do. I got heaps of clients out of it, I'd help them through their stretches and, "What do you do? I'm a massage therapist? Have you thought of having regular treatment? Come on in." All that sort of stuff, and we did some deals with the local gym.

0:10:23.4 EC: But that ultimately, I think took that, and it made the undie tightening moment a little less tightening, because I actually had... I knew that I could cover the expenses that were probably gonna scare me the most. And that's certainly something that we try and teach our clients as well, that it's kind of you've gotta just be able to slowly progress out sometimes. You can totally burn the bridges, and I'm all for that, and sometimes it's good to just be able to take one step at a time, but go, "Well, what do I need to be able to cover rent?" It's only 80 or 100 bucks or something. If I worked for a day, I've got that, and then I don't have to worry about if no one comes. I'm still eating, I'm not eating baked beans. Or I don't know if you have baked beans over there, but they're really gross and super cheap. And so, if you're not eating baked beans, it's gonna be a good day.

0:11:05.8 KC: I think ramen is our US equivalent of the baked beans. [laughter] That's what we eat when money's tight. Okay. So then continuing your story, the next big step for you is that you actually started a clinic, which eventually over time you grew into an interdisciplinary clinic, which is something that many of our listeners are really curious about and aspire to. So tell us a little bit about the ups-downs and the "Lessons learned" during that experience.

[laughter]

0:11:34.8 EC: I don't think we have enough time on the podcast for the "Lessons learned" part, but let me share with you some of the big learnings that happened. So I continued to work from that original space after the chiropractic clinic, the one treatment room that I had. We ended up doing split shifts in there, which meant that I had five therapists working for me part-time. And we would do 8:00 in the morning till 2:00, and then we'd go 2:15 till 8:00 or 9:00 at night. And so, we could see between 30 and 50 clients a week from one treatment room. Not sustainable long-term, but possible, and again, a way of going "Well, if we can see 30 or 50 clients at one treatment room and feel like we are just like "Rats jumping off a sinking ship," 'cause there's just so much happening, then surely if we move to a bigger space, we'd be able to continue to do that. So we moved into a clinic literally across the road. It was a three-treatment-room clinic with reception area, and I quadrupled my rent. So I didn't... I probably needed a full-time job to pay for it, but by then thankfully we had a few more clients coming in.

0:12:38.8 EC: At the same time, my husband was also running a digital marketing agency and working with hundreds of small, medium and large businesses across Australia to help them with their online strategy. Now, while I did all my own marketing in the clinic, the conversations we had over dinner meant that I was learning about marketing and just inherited a bunch of really cool stuff. And I thought, "Well, I've got nothing to lose." And so we had consistency in our branding, we had to rip a website when online bookings became available, we just did it, and I just kept staying in my own lane and just plugging away, building this business that I really wanted. We struggled for the first six months, because going from one treatment room to three treatment rooms and quadrupling expenses. It's not just your rent, it's also the expenses of extra insurances and you've gotta pay... I don't know what you guys call them. We call them rates, water, rubbish, all that sort of stuff, which I just didn't know about. There's a bunch of stuff I didn't know. So the learnings were "Find out what all the expenses are before you sign the lease, good call."

0:13:43.1 EC: We got a personal loan that mostly covered for the renewals that we wanted to do, and then we had to keep working on along the next few years, the bits and pieces didn't quite get through, and so we kind of just transitioned. It probably took about six months to kind of get things back in the black. And things went up and down from there, but really, I think being able to just... Sometimes you just gotta have the guts and do it, just gotta bite the bullet and go, "I'm just gonna give this a damn good crack." Worst case scenario, I've signed a 5 x 5 x 5 lease, which meant that after five years if it wasn't working I could pull the pin or go, "This is amazing, I'm gonna keep going." So it was scary, it was a lot of hard work, there was a lot of unsealed bricks that I chose to paint, and I still hate painting bricks. I did used to look up sometimes, I'd be a couple of years in massaging away and you're in the zone, and the client's chilling and the music's good, and it starts to warm, and you look up at the ceiling and go, "I hated those bricks, they suck." But they do look beautiful now, so again, we just had this beautiful looking space that was really classy.

0:14:45.5 EC: One of my team members as she was becoming a therapist would have been an interior designer, so we sat down and said, "What would you like the rooms to look like?" And I mean, we certainly did have a tight budget, there was a lot of furniture from the reject shop, and it was like that was... It was not the classiest thing in the world, but we definitely did the best with the resources we had. And at the end of the day, if you think about it, your clients walk in and go. "Well... " And then all they see is squishy towel face 'cause their head's down, down the head hole. So as long as we had nice shoes [chuckle] or painted toes if you wanted to go barefoot, which I was okay with, some therapists prefer that. Yeah, so that's kind of, I guess, a bit of our story of how we then opened up that particular space.

0:15:26.0 DB: I think our listeners should know that you had an 85% rebooking rate. That is incredible. How did you get to there? Can you tell us? 85%. Was it something you learned in the chiro clinic?

0:15:40.6 EC: Definitely. It was definitely what I learned in the chiro clinic, 'cause the receptionist or the chiropractic assistant that worked there just... There was no question in her mind, if someone came out of that treatment room, "When are you coming back?" There's no... And it wasn't just the words that she said, it was the certainty that she had in her body. You can just feel when people... She's like, "Great. So when does Nick wanna see you again?" She just let it roll off her tongue. For me, I probably had a 95% rebooking rate and I just thought that was normal. So did the rest of my early team did as well, because we just look ethically and heart-centeredly, but also understand that if you don't make that call, then you're not gonna have any business and your clients aren't gonna get great care. They don't know what we know, and if they come in to see us for an hour and then they go back to the same crappy chair that they were sitting in that caused the injury or the issue or whatever in the first place, then that one hour session, regardless of... Unless you're Jesus, [chuckle] you're not gonna get the results that you want out of one session.

0:16:43.7 EC: Hopefully, you get them out of the discomfort and pain they came to you for, absolutely, or else we would refer on. Totally get that, but I think being able to just have it as a, "This is how we do it here," was really important. And my first mistress mentor said to me, "Well, how do you do that?" And I went, "I don't know. I just say, 'Come back in.'" She's like, "Unless you discover the recipe, you can't replicate that. So you need to sit down and elicit what is your strategy for how you do that." And I went, "Oh, okay. These are the words I say." And so we used to role play at the desk and no one likes role play. So it was like, "Either figure out that you use the words that we say off the script and this is how we do it here, or you sit down and we do some role play, your choice." And so the staff were like, "Okay. No, I'll do the words. We're good with that. Let's just make sure clients are rebooking." And so we would have a very big focus on that. Always with clients at the center of it, understanding that we understand their bodies often more than them at the start, and that we can teach them more intuitively, and how to listen to their bodies more as we go.

0:17:42.9 EC: And it doesn't mean they come back every week for the rest of their lives, it more means that they come back consistently for care and self-care, which is something that I practice myself and have done so since I was 15 and finished with back surgery.

0:17:56.0 KC: And Elicia, I really love and wanna pick back up and reiterate what you said, that it's not just the words that you say, it's the confidence that you're delivering them with and not hesitating. I think oftentimes, that's where therapists fall short is they know what words to say, they have learned them or practiced them, but they aren't delivering them in that powerful way. Any advice there for people?

0:18:20.2 EC: Practice. You know, one of the funny things that I get my clients to do when I'm working with them on this and what I would say to my staff is, "Now, these are the words you can use, and now go rebook your fish, rebook your cat, rebook your dog, talk to your kids, 'Hey, would you like to come back next week? I'd really like to see you again in a week's time. Have you ever thought about having regular care? Do you take care of your car? Great, so why don't you take care of you?'" Just go and rebook and just... It's a little bit of fake it 'til you make it, because if it's like, again, questioning tonality, "Would you like to come back next week?" No one's confident, no one's interested in that. It's like, "But I'd love to see you again in a week's time and hold the space." And that "Come on" tonality is what I heard the chiropractic assistant do literally thousands of times in the three years I was there. So when I said, "I'd love to see you again in a week's time," it's not the words, it's just like they can say no, and that's definitely okay. "I've gotta check my schedule, I need to see what my kids are doing." "I never wanna see you again. That was the worst treatment I've ever had." Fine.

0:19:25.2 EC: But at least I feel like I have congruently done my job as a practitioner, telling them what I believe they need, and if they choose to say, "No thanks, I'm not interested." Totally okay. And then I might follow up later on, but at the end of the day, if I have the confidence to say it, then I believe that we're giving really great care to our clients and that it will enhance their treatment outcomes.

0:19:45.3 DB: You said something really interesting there too. You said, "And hold your space." That is a psychological nice little touch there, which is like, "It may not be there." So it would provoke me to be like, "Oh, I wanna make sure I hold my space, I don't want somebody else getting my space."

0:20:00.9 EC: [chuckle] Yeah, absolutely.

0:20:02.2 DB: Elicia. So your book's title is Fully Booked Without Burnout. We've now covered the fully booked part. Can you tell me about the without burnout part? That is in the title of your book. So I'm curious.

0:20:16.8 EC: It's really interesting in the work that I've done in the last six or seven years, I actually find that people fear burnout more than they experience it, and when I do speak to people who are in burnout, it's more that they're out of flow. But fully booked and out of flow doesn't quite work as a book title. So, fully booked without burnout it is. There's kind of two schools of thought, is that sometimes people are in burnout because they've just done too much. They've literally just gone, [0:20:48.1] ____ and they're really, really busy all the time. And they've turned into what we call human doing rather than human being, and they've forgotten the reason and the passion of why they got into this in the first place. And so sometimes it's just about bringing them back into, "Well, why do you actually love doing what you're doing?" And my favorite question I ask people is, why did you get into this? Why in the first place? I just really love helping people, and I love it when a client comes in and they feel really good at the end of it. And all of a sudden they're like, "Oh yeah. Actually, I don't hate this. I just feel like I'm out of alignment with the purpose that I'm put here for."

0:21:21.1 EC: And so sometimes that actually requires, first of all, the awareness, 'cause awareness creates the possibility of a different choice, and normally when they become aware, they can then go, "Well, actually now either I'm done and I wanna go work somewhere else and I don't wanna do this anymore." Or, "How do I get back to that?" And so then it's often about creating some structure. And I find that that usually will bring people back into alignment. Sometimes it could be because they don't have enough clients, and it's like, "I'm just doing all this work and it's not getting anywhere," and it's like, "I'm done." And that kind of... That's a bit of a different challenge, and we go back to the fully booked stuff. But I often find that a therapist that is either heading towards burnout or is in burnout has been running the strategy of human doing for a while. And that when it comes to, "When was the last time you had a treatment?" "I can't remember." That's a good option. Go back and get some treatment because you learn so much when you have treatment. Firstly you go, "Oh that's why everyone comes in 'cause it feels so good." And secondly, you go, "Oh my gosh, I love it. What are you doing? That's amazing. Show me that." Or I am never gonna treat that thing like that ever, I hate it." You remember those little things that sometimes you totally forget about when you haven't had treatment for a while.

0:22:33.7 KC: Absolutely, yes. Yes, to all of those experiences while receiving. And I think it is really important. And I love that you say, you don't always just give up if you feel as if you're starting to feel burnout. Stop and examine what the cause might be, because it can be coming from so many different directions. One of the things that you talk about and teach and refer to are the three amazing Ms. What are the Ms and why are they so amazing?

0:23:01.0 EC: The three amazing Ms are: Mindset, marketing, and mechanics, and it feeds into what we were just talking about in terms of fully booked and without getting burnt out. Because if you've got a really great mindset, but you don't know how to market your business, you're not gonna have much of your business happening. New clients won't be coming in. It's gonna be hard. If you've got really good mechanics in your business, so the structure of the business is set up really well, and you've got a really good marketing coming in. So you've got lots of clients, lots of structure, but you've lost connection with who you are as a therapist and why you do it, that is usually what will lead to burnout. That's where we're gonna start to see the burnout happening, 'cause we're not connected to the purpose behind why we're doing all these things.

0:23:43.5 EC: If we've just got marketing and mindset and no structure, then the challenge with that is that it's like you will tend to keep your business small and continue to sabotage because there's too much chaos. You can't see 25, 30, or 40 clients a week, if you don't have a booking system. If you're spending 50 or a 100 or 500 bucks a week on marketing, and your rebooking rate is at 2%, you have a lot of holes in your bucket, and that's literally empty money. You're gonna be really stuck on "Yeah. I've got all these new clients, yay." But if you've discounted or if you've spent a lot of money to get them it's a good idea to keep them. And so that's what we call the three amazing Ms is, mindset, marketing and mechanics.

0:24:26.5 DB: Can I ask you in that same vein, I know I read a little bit about you before we did the podcast, and one of the things I was particularly drawn to is when you said, bringing that passion, especially on the hard days.

0:24:41.9 EC: There was one time in the business, one of the hardest days that I had in business was when I built up this amazing clinic, I had all this staff working for me, everything's humming along. And the laws had changed, employment laws changed in Australia a few years before, which meant that we could no longer have subcontracting. You actually had to employ. And if you didn't and you didn't pay superannuation, which I think is 408... What's your super retirement fund? What's that called in America?

0:25:12.5 KC: 401 [k].

0:25:13.1 EC: 401 [k], yeah. So the laws changed which meant that our superannuation or 401 [k] had to be paid on subcontractors. And if you didn't comply, you could get fined, and it's actually up to $35,000 per contract per year since 2010 if you don't get this right. But there was no one who said, "Hey, Elicia, just need to let you know some things have changed. It's really important." Of course, our ATO, or Australian Tax Office and Work Safe and all sorts of stuff, were absolutely out there saying that stuff. But there was no one that I'm aware of at our association level or at that level that said, "If you're employing this staff, super important." So we got some really bad news. We had to back pay superannuation, which they were absolutely entitled to, even though we had written it in their contracts that they had to pay their own super, and that they were paid well above award wage to cover that. We had to pay super on the above award wage, not on the award. So we had to pay an enormous amount of superannuation.

0:26:18.8 EC: That was a tough day in the office, and I still had to treat that day. One of the sayings that I used to have with my staff is you have to leave your crap at the door and come to work and serve your clients. And I had said that time and time and time again. And at that stage, I was thinking when your kids are really annoying in the morning and haven't eaten breakfast and when they did it breakfast, they spilled it over their uniform, you had to drop them before you come to work. That's what I had been thinking, leave your crap at the door, come to work, serve your clients. I'm like I remember walking up and literally seeing the door and going, "Come to work and serve your clients." And having to kind of take all that I have to make these decisions, I've done the wrong thing, I didn't mean to, I've tried to always live in integrity and I'm super honest, I declare everything 'cause it's just how I roll and I can't believe this has happened. And having to just take all of that off and leave it at the door and come to work.

0:27:12.6 EC: And we have our mission, vision and values statement, it was always on the clinic wall and it was like, "Why am I here?" We're here to provide exceptional health to the Ocean Grove community and I can't do that if I am head down in the problem tube of what is going on in my life right now, I can't serve them. So I have to be able to leave that stuff at the door and come to work and provide exceptional healthcare for my clients in that day. Because as a leader in my business, my staff are only ever gonna be 80% of me on a good day. So if I can't live to those standards, if I can't step in and say, "It's a tough day at the office and it's all your fault by the way." That's not helpful. That is not living if you're lying everything integrity, leave that there. Come to work, do what it is that I aptly love, go connect back to my purpose and then serve with my whole heart and then go home and figure out what the hell I'm gonna do because it was an enormous amount of money that we had to then pay for about a three-year period. And it was like, "Holy crap." That's a tough day at the office and it's not just my kids spilled the cereal, that I just talked. [chuckle] But that's how I did it for me and that is certainly how I encouraged my staff and clients to actually, a similar kind of concept.

0:28:32.6 KC: And I love the analogy you made between how do you put yourself out there as a therapist to clients. Same applies for clinic owners, putting themselves out there to attract the right employees. That makes perfect sense. Absolutely. Okay so Elicia, a majority of our listeners are massage therapists and body workers. What piece of advice do you have for them today?

0:28:55.3 EC: My advice would be that it is utterly possible to have a deeply rewarding business doing what it is that we do. You don't have to compromise on anything in order to have the goals that you want, and that you're allowed to have every success that you choose.

0:29:14.3 KC: Beautiful.

0:29:15.3 DB: I wanna thank our guest, Elicia Crook for joining us today. Elicia, where can listeners find out more information about you and your practice?

0:29:23.4 EC: Through massagechampions.com, is the best place.

0:29:30.0 DB: Thank you so much for joining us.

0:29:31.9 KC: That was wonderful, thank you. And I hope our listeners are able to take all those little nuggets and apply it to their practice, I think it will only bring success and positive change. Thank you.

0:29:42.6 EC: Thank you for having me.

News

Gainful Employment Rules Compliance Updates

Over the past two weeks, the US Department of Education issued updates to the new “Gainful Employment” (GE) regulations for vocational programs published last fall. This web post addresses the updates to prepare school owners and educators ahead of the July 1, 2024, new GE rule effective date.

New Study Reconfirms the Benefits of Touch

A recent study found that touch interventions were effective in helping regulate cortisol levels, reducing feelings of depression in adults, and having other significant benefits.

Louisiana Bill Proposes Massage Program Hour Increase

Effective October 1, 2024, Louisiana massage students will no longer be eligible for federal financial aid because massage programs are limited by Louisiana law. But there is a solution: Senate Bill 353 will increase the required education hours for massage licensure from 500 to 625. ABMP fully supports this bill, and we explain why you should too.

Blog

ABMP CE Summit: Headaches

 Headaches.

Join us online Tuesday, April 30, 2024, for the ABMP CE Summit: Headaches, which take learners on a journey from understanding headaches to working with clients with headache pain using multiple modalities and techniques.

Benefits

Podcast: Cancer, Clots, and COVID—A Complicated Client

A client was recently treated for colon cancer—and it didn’t go well. She had surgical complications, a bout of sepsis, and more. Is massage therapy safe? We discuss on this episode of “I Have a Client Who . . .” Pathology Conversations with Ruth Werner.

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