November 20, 2009
Marketing
In professional development today, we talked about management and marketing. This is an important aspect of business no matter your profession. I came away from today's lecture with a couple of "aha's."
First is the 10 biggest mistakes in marketing:
1) Getting wedded to an idea and sticking to it too long. When I hear this, I think of Chik-fil-a. They have beaten the "Eat Mor Chikin" ad campaign to death. Some people still think it's cute, but it's the same idea it was 10 years ago.
2) No marketing plan. Enough said.
3) Not knowing your customers. This is huge. If you are in a service-oriented industry, there is no reason that you should not know your customers. This is especially true in massage therapy because of the personal nature of the service we provide. It is unconscionable to not know who is on your table underneath your hands, and what they are there for.
4) Ignoring your cash position. Our instructor explained this as borrowing from other areas of your operating budget to cover your marketing costs. This is simple mismanagement of resources, and could not only fail your marketing plan, but sink your business, as well. I also think of this concept in terms of tracking the growth of your business over time. Keep track of whether your business is continuing to grow, and if it's not, you may need to change your marketing strategy.
5) Ignoring employees. This one is a no-brainer to me. Your employees are part of your company assets. Managing them well is crucial to the success of your business. You want your employees to be on-board with your business mission so that they feel invested in the success of the business. As an owner/manager it is important to realize that each employee come to you with his/her own set of skills that hopefully will benefit your business. Listen to their ideas and concerns, and empower them to take ownership of ideas and solutions.
6) Confusing likelihood with reality. You've opened your doors. You've got great employees. You've done your research in order to fill a product/service niche. The customers should start rolling in any minute now. But they don't. You better examine why and figure out how to make that should a reality.
7) No sales plan. It's useful to understand the difference between marketing and sales: Marketing is everything that you do to reach and persuade prospects. The sales process is everything that you do to close the sale and get a signed agreement or contract. Both are necessities to the success of a business.
8) Being a lone ranger. Simply put, we do not operate in a vacuum. You have peers, competitors, vendors and suppliers, and a professional association. Believe it or not, these people are part of your assets. Interview the successful ones to help get information about what makes them a success. If you have a niche product or service, these people may help you get business through word of mouth or referrals. Luckily, massage is a helping profession, and the nature of most therapists is cooperative. You may surprised by how much help your "competition" is willing to give you.
9) No mastermind. Okay, if marketing isn't your strength, then find a professional who will help you come up with a plan. Stick to their plan; they're professionals, so they know what they're doing. If the plan doesn't seem to be working, your marketing mastermind will help assess why it's not working. That's what you're paying them for.
10) Giving up. You've got to give your marketing some time in order to work. Just like hanging a shingle out to say that you're open won't create a instant line of people waiting to get in, a marketing plan requires repeat "hits" before your brand sinks into the public's consciousness. I think I read somewhere that the public needs to see/hear something 7 times before they remember it.
When I was in business for myself, I watched my business grow every year. My revenues peaked in 2005 and then began to slump. This was not a huge issue for me because, by this time, I had already made the decision to pursue graduate school. However, if I had decided to stay with owning my own business for the long-haul, this would have been a turning point. I would have needed to examine some trends in my business, and figure out what was working and what needed to change so that my business would continue to grow.
The take home message: Marketing is Ceaseless.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 19, 2009
Aging Well
Aging is a natural part of living. But there are things you can do to help you age well so that you can make the most of all of the days in your life.
New York Times has a nifty interactive Guided Tour of Your Body. It gives you all kinds of preventive information about the various part of your body. There's also quizzes to test your knowledge, and interactive games you can play with your kids. Fun and educational for the whole family!
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 17, 2009
New Guidelines For Breast Cancer Screening
This is a huge boon for women -- the the United States Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts in prevention and primary care appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, has recommended that women who are not in the high-risk category for developing breast cancer get mammograms every other year starting at age 50. This is a reversal of the ruling from 7 years ago that recommended women have mammograms every one to two years starting at age 40.
Dr. Diana Petitti, vice chairwoman of the task force and a professor of biomedical informatics at Arizona State University, said the guidelines were based on new data and analyses and were aimed at reducing the potential harm from overscreening. Dr. Petitti said she knew the new guidelines would be a shock for many women, but, she said, “we have to say what we see based on the science and the data.”
The American Cancer Society and the American College of Radiology are staying with the old guidelines. The National Cancer Institute says it's re-evaluating its guidelines based upon the panel's new reports.
This is not to say that women who are known to carry a breast cancer gene, or those who have undergone extensive chest radiation, should not continue to be screened for breast cancer under the old guidelines. Some experts also say that women with close relative who have had breast cancer should continue to be screened by the old guidelines.
The bottom line message is for women to have 10 mammograms in a lifetime, starting at age 50. This way, women get the most benefit of screening with the least harm. And for women who are healthy, they may consider continuing to get mammograms only every other year until they reach age 74.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 16, 2009
My Adventure
We live in a highly diverse neighborhood, and, as a result, I enjoy where I live. Not only that, our apartment is close to campus. It's not uncommon to see people walking their dogs, elderly ladies in their Sunday crowns walking to church, and children riding bikes and playing on the streets and sidewalks.
Yesterday, some of the neighborhood kids were running around, screaming as children at play are inclined to do. But at one point, the hollering took on a different tone and my mother instinct kicked in. Something didn't sound right. After looking out all my windows, I decided to go down to the street and investigate. Three boys were half a block down the street, one on a bicycle, one on the ground crying, and one kneeling next to him. I walked up and asked if everything was okay. The boy that was kneeling said it was just a fall and that his little brother would be okay.
I asked to take a look and, sure enough, the boy's arm did not look right. The ulna and radius did not line up correctly to make for a normal looking arm. The hand was pronated beyond it's normal range of motion. I had no doubt it was broken. Probably a closed, displaced fracture of the ulna and the radius, typical of falling on out-stretched hands (FOOSH).
I asked where their mother was and the older boy said she wasn't home. I thought, "Aw crap." Despite a well-intentioned citizen, you risk liability if you take a child that is not your own to the emergency room. Doctors there cannot treat a child for an injury unless their parent is there. They can't even administer pain medication.
The four of us walked to my house and I got the boy ice and a dish towel. If you don't already know, a handy way to make a quick ice bag is with a plastic gallon zipper baggie half filled with ice and a little bit of water (about 2 cups). The water makes the cold from the ice more conductible to skin, but too much cold is painful and can damage the skin. Always put a cloth barrier, slightly dampened, between the baggie and the skin, hence the dish towel. The cold acts as a drug-free analgesic and helps keep swelling down. Swelling puts more pressure on the tissues and nerve endings, creating more pain, so the ice does double duty.
The boy clearly needed medical attention, there was no way around it. His older brother, who is probably only 8 years old, said they couldn't afford to go to the doctor. I'm going to get up on my soap box, now. What kind of place do we live in when an 8-year-old child must worry about whether his family can afford to get a cast put on his little brother's broken arm? We live in the wealthiest industrialized country in the world and no child, whether a citizen or not, should have to worry about whether they can get basic health care.
My little buddy started to cry again (yes, by this time, he's been upgraded to my buddy). He was worried about missing school (sweetie!). He was also worried that his mom was going to be mad at him. A word about mothers: mother's yell. When my husband broke his leg, his mom yelled at him. I busted my chin open 4 times -- my mom yelled every time. My best friend has a little boy -- she said she would yell if her boy got injured. So I told my little friend that his mother would be upset and that, yes, she would probably yell, but not because she was mad but because she was worried.
Lucky for me their mom really was home, they were just trying not to get in trouble (boys!). He wanted me to walk home with him. And, indeed, his mother did yell. I stayed with him, rubbing his back (which can sometimes distract nerve sensation signals to the brain thereby reducing the perception of pain). While his mother got ready, I distracted him with being able to entertain his friends with a good story. And he could get a cast in his favorite color. And that his friends could all sign his cast. . . .
So, what did I learn from all of this? 1) I didn't panic (though I can't guarantee my reaction if the fracture had been an open compound fracture). 2) Trust your instincts. 3) Ice was the right thing to do. 4) I might not have made such a bad mother after all. I haven't seen my little friend yet; maybe I'll bake some cookies and bring them over so I can sign his cast.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 12, 2009
Tofurkey!?!
After having read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, I have to say that I've lost my desire to sit down to a holiday meal that celebrates the consumption of an animal that likely lived a miserable existence and likely was slaughtered for market that way too. So I'm considering making a vegetarian Thanksgiving instead.
I'm not talking about making a Tofurkey the way they did on the classic season 3 of Everybody Loves Raymond Thanksgiving episode. Maire comes out of the kitchen on Thanksgiving day with a quivering, gelatinous blob of tofu that has been turned out of a turkey-shaped mold. Brother Robert observes that it a has an "after taste" before you've swallowed. For me, Thanksgiving is all about the dressing, brussel sprouts, and sweet potatoes with pecans.
New York Times Eat Well Blog will be offering ideas for vegetarian dishes for Thanksgiving between now and turkey day.
We will hear ideas from top chefs like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Dan Barber of Blue Hill, both of whom have raised the standard for fresh and delicious vegetable dishes.
Where do sign up?
Now I'm not saying that I'm completely willing to give up meat entirely (I love bacon way too much), but I believe it would be healthier for me and my conscience to find healthier ways to eat that don't require meat as the center piece of the meal. New York Times has a handy dandy link for that idea, as well, titled An Almost Meatless Diet. Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond have a cookbook, Almost Meatless: Recipes That Are Better for Your Health and the Planet, for reluctant meat-eaters who aren't willing to go totally vegetarian (everybody has to start somewhere).
So if you can no longer stomach a holiday that celebrates mass consumption of turkey rather than the plenty we were intended to be thankful for, you may want to change up your holiday traditions a bit. Celebrate the bounty with fresh vegetables, whole grains, and nuts. You'll leave the table satisfied, no doubt.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 11, 2009
Exercise To Music
If you're like me, you prefer to run to music. Somehow, having upbeat tunes makes exercising easier for me. New research shows that listening to music while you exercise actually increases your endurance, make you run more efficiently, and reduce perceived effort.
A study published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology found that running in time with a song that had 125 beats per minute (bpm) helped increase endurance by 15 percent.
Costas Karageorghis, a sports psychologist at Britain's Brunel University, has found that people gravitate toward music that matches their heart rate (beats per minute). There are nifty tools to help you create your favorite workout playlists:
Try sorting out your list of favorite workout songs and then downloading Tangerine, a program that helps you create exercise playlists by analyzing the bpm and beat intensity of your own music. If you're wary of downloads, visit JogTunes.com, a Web site that allows you to search music by bpm, genre and artist.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 10, 2009
Bioavailability
Bioavailability is the rate at which or degree to which a nutrient is absorbed and made available for physiological processes. Wise Bread (living large on a small budget) suggests ways for increasing the nutrient availability in the foods we eat every day.
Here are five suggestions:
1) Add lemon to your green tea: increases the availability of catechins, one of the health promoting substances in green tea.
2) Drink orange juice with your meal: changes non-haem iron which is not readily absorbed into haem iron (the kind found in red meats--so this is a good strategy for vegetarians).
3) Cook carrots and tomatoes: turns the lycopene in tomatoes to trans-lycopene, a form more readily absorbed by the body. Cooking carrots makes their beta-carotenes more available.
4) Put healthy fats in your salad: add avocado and/or olive oil to your salads to increase the absorption of fat soluble vitamins such as lycopene, beta carotene, and lutein.
5) Eat black pepper: The piperine in it increases the bioavailability of many substances through a bunch of cool processes, which results in more nutrients reaching your cells.
With food costs increasing and reports about micronutrients in our food waning, it's makes sense to get the most out of healthy eating as possible.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 9, 2009
Preventing Falls Using Technology
For gerontologists, physical therapists, techno geeks, and elderly everywhere, technology has lined up with medicine to help prevent falls. Some grim statistics about falling:
Falls are so harmful to the elderly and so costly to society that if falling were a disease, it would be deemed an epidemic. More than one-third of people ages 65 or older fall each year. About one fall in 10 results in a serious injury, like a hip fracture. Roughly 20 percent of older people who suffer a hip fracture die within a year.
All parties involved are interested in preventing falls before they happen. With the use of unobtrusive sensors in carpeting, clothing and rooms, medical personal can track movements that will give clues to an elder's fall risk.
In clinical settings, wearable sensors and wireless sensors embedded in carpets are used to measure precisely a person’s walking speed, stride length, step width and body sway — all variables in assessing the risk of falling.
The information gathered can then be used to determine whether a person's balance is deteriorating, and help clinicians decide what the best intervention would be. Would it be a specialized exercise program targeted at strengthening specific muscles, or would it be an adjustment in a person's medication to reduce dizziness or prevent them from getting up in the middle of the night to use the restroom?
The sensors track only motion, not what people are doing. The greatest benefit of this technology would be allowing older people to live independently in their homes longer.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 6, 2009
On The Nightstand
Jonathan Safran Foer has written a thought-provoking book titled Eating Animals. With the impending birth of his child, he decided to be more conscious about choices he made about food.
Like most people, I'd given some thought to what meat actually is, but until I became a father and faced the prospect of having to make food choices on someone else's behalf, there was no urgency to get to the bottom of things.
Filled with sweet anecdotes about culinary family traditions and the family dog, the book also examines deeper issues, sometimes uncomfortable examinations about why we eat the way we do. An essay by the author is available on CNN Opinion.
If you are interested in this genre of reading, I can also recommend The Ethical Gourmet by Jay Weinstein, In Defense of Food and Omnivore's Dilemma both by Michael Pollan, and the very first book I read on the politics of food back in the 1990s: Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 5, 2009
Knee Hyper-extension Injuries
Nicole Cutler, L.Ac., of the Institute for Integrative Healthcare Studies, writes a thoughtful article about knee hyper-extension. I like that the focus of this article is on anatomy and what massage therapists can do to help this hyper-extension injuries.
This same condition is seen by physical therapists quite often, especially when working with people who have gait problems. Physical therapists take a different approach to correcting the problem by using exercise, stretches (when appropriate), and orthotic devices to correct improper biomechanics at the ankle.
Of course, some people naturally hyper-extend their knees. Children with cerebral palsy have spastic muscles which forces them to hyper-extend their knees when they walk. A great site to go to for discussion of gait deformities in children and orthotic correction is DAFO Cascade. Studying these videos taught me a lot about walking anomalies and how to select proper orthotics.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 4, 2009
The Link Between Alcohol And Cancer
Researchers have found a link between alcohol consumption and cancer. Researchers at Rush University Medical Center have identified a cellular pathway that may explain the link.
Alcohol stimulates what is called the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, in which run-of-the-mill cancer cells morph into a more aggressive form and begin to spread throughout the body.
This finding proves important because scientists may have found the cellular pathway to metastasis, the situation whereby cancer cells break away from their primary tumor and spread throughout the body. If scientists can interrupt this process, cancers may be able to be delayed at stage II where they are much more easy to cure.
Past studies show that some alcohol consumption has heart protective properties, but over-consumption is still a bad idea. Moderate alcohol consumption is one drink (12 ounces of beer, or 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits) for women per day and two drinks for men per day.
Don't drink if you are pregnant or trying to conceive, planning to drive or operate dangerous machinery, take medication (including OTCs), are a recovering alcoholic, or are under age 21.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
November 3, 2009
Managing Stress
Ah, today is the first day of my semester break. I have six whole days to stop twitching before the push is on again. And this was a particularly challenging final exam period because we had so many finals in such a short period of time. I must say that I'm proud of how I handled some of the more stressful aspects of this final exam season, remaining calm and collected during practicals. One thing I learned -- I don't like to be rushed.
Stress is present in all our lives, but certain situations really bring it out of us. When I started graduate school, student health came to speak to us and handed out information about how to handle stress. Apparently, academic stress is common. But at what point do we discern between stress responses that are normal to a given situation and stress that becomes pathological? Persistence of exaggerated emotion over a period of time (usually a couple of weeks up to six months or a year) that interrupts daily living and coping is considered a problem that requires outside intervention.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), anxiety falls into 5 basic categories:
Obsessive-compulsive disorder: consists of intrusive thoughts (obsessions) combined with repetitive behaviors (compulsions).
Panic disorder: recurring episodes of intense physical fear, without an obvious or immediate source of fear. Anxiety attacks: may manifest with heart palpitations, chest pains, difficulty breathing, or choking.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): follows a severe traumatic event that threatens actual harm.
Social anxiety disorder: overwhelming anxiety when faced with everyday social interactions.
Generalized anxiety disorder: a catchall category that describes any chronic anxiety or exaggerated worry that lacks an obvious cause.
According to Experience Life magazine, if you have stress, there are ways to manage it without having to take prescription medication. Food also plays an important role in managing stress and they have a great article titled "Comfort Food." Of course, if your stress doesn't seem like the run-of-the-mill type and you find it disrupting your life, don't hesitate to contact your doctor -- there is help out there.
tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health
Posted by linda | Permalink | Comments (View)
