Creating Your New Normal

In many areas, things are going to be opening back up soon. Whether your region is going about it slowly or opening the floodgates, so to speak, it’s time to consider what that looks like for you. And while there’s a lot of things to consider for most of us, I think one of the biggest takeaways for the masses, is that your business and your life shouldn’t just go back to the way they were before.

Before we dive into today’s topic though, I want to announce our upcoming class exclusively for our members on returning to work after COVID-19. We’ll be talking about the new sanitation and protection guidelines and supplies needed, ensuring you’re still able to make a profit after paying for all that, the different types of clients you’ll see once you reopen, and how to wrap your head around how the current and potential shifts in the economy are going to influence your business decisions going forward, plus lots more. We’ll be doing a live class just for our members on May 6^th at 12pm Eastern Time, plus the replay will be made available permanently in the business class section of the members’ area on our website. If you’re not a member yet, be sure to check it out and sign up.

And real quick, if you haven’t yet seen, I launched our newest addition, our 2020 Business Planner for Massage Therapists yesterday – that is available now both on Amazon and directly from our publisher. You’ll also find that under the resources tab.

Ok, on to today’s topic…

Some areas have already opened things back up, some will be over the next few days, others are months away from letting massage therapists get back to work. Regardless, when the time comes for you, are you going to jump right back to how things were before? Hopefully not. And for the purpose of this video, I’m not just talking about new sanitation protocols or health intakes or anything like that, although that’s obviously important, we’ll save that for another video. Right now, I’m referring to how you approach your work / life balance moving forward.

Some of you may have had some big wake up calls through this. If you were an employee who got laid off during the shutdown, you may have realized that you don’t want to work for anyone anymore…you want to be your own boss and open up your own massage practice. Great!

Some of you may have realized you don’t want the stress of a business and decide to shut down yourself and go back to being an employee for some stability, or even leave the profession altogether. It’s ok. There is no shame in that.

Some of you may have picked up new hobbies, realized how much happier your family was with more quality time together, noticed a lower stress level without working all the time, grown to appreciate the closeness of neighbors or long-distance friendships, or found a side gig that you absolutely love.

And some of you probably realized you weren’t quite as financially stable as you may have thought.

Whatever it may be, I hope you’ve come to some kind of realization through all this, that as things reopen and life gets back to “normal”, you can create a NEW normal. You can change up your schedule to give you more of that quality time with family. You can fit in time every week to chat up that friend who lives far away that helped get you through this tough situation. You can put more money back to save and feel more secure. You can build that side gig into something fruitful. You can start managing your workload and stress levels better.

I’ve said it before and I will repeat it ‘til the day I die, build your business around your life, not the other way around. You have to build a business that you love that also supports a life that you love. Stop sacrificing your happiness and that of those around you while you chase some arbitrary version of success.