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Accidental Massage Mogul with Amber Briggle · The Heart-Led Business Show

• 0:01
  Speaker: Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love.
• 0:09
  Speaker: Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second.
• 0:20
  Speaker: From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
• 0:29
  Speaker: So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.
• 0:36
  Tom Jackobs: Today we're diving into a delightful discussion with a dynamic Amber Briggle, as the brilliant brain behind a Heart-Led Business that's all about connection and compassion to share her journey from passion to prosperity.
• 0:51
  Tom Jackobs: So join us here on the Heart-Led Business Show as we unwrap her invaluable insights and experiences in the world of entrepreneurial empathy.
• 1:00
  Tom Jackobs: Let's get this heartwarming conversation started.
• 1:03
  Tom Jackobs: Amber welcome to the show.
• 1:06
  Amber Briggle: I'm really impressed by all those alliterations, Tom.
• 1:08
  Amber Briggle: That was fantastic.
• 1:09
  Amber Briggle: Good job.
• 1:09
  Amber Briggle: Thank you.
• 1:10
  Tom Jackobs: Well, thank you.
• 1:10
  Tom Jackobs: That's my favorite poetry type of whatever you call that is.
• 1:15
  Amber Briggle: Well done.
• 1:16
  Amber Briggle: I love it.
• 1:18
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 1:19
  Tom Jackobs: Of course AI helps out with that quite a bit.
• 1:21
  Tom Jackobs: It's a lot easier when you ask ChatGPT to do alliteration.
• 1:25
  Amber Briggle: ChatGPT and you did a great job.
• 1:27
  Amber Briggle: Thanks for having me today.
• 1:29
  Tom Jackobs: No worries.
• 1:29
  Tom Jackobs: I'm glad that you're here and it's always good to have a fellow Texan.
• 1:34
  Tom Jackobs: I used to live in Texas for 20 years.
• 1:36
  Tom Jackobs: But now that I'm in Taiwan, I always like to talk to other Texans and especially Texans that are moving abroad as well, so I can't wait to
• 1:42
  Amber Briggle: Yes.
• 1:44
  Tom Jackobs: dive into that as well.
• 1:46
  Amber Briggle: Yeah,
• 1:46
  Tom Jackobs: And how you set up your business to be able to do that?
• 1:48
  Amber Briggle: I'm excited to talk about it.
• 1:50
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 1:51
  Tom Jackobs: And of course the first question I always like to ask though is what's your definition of a Heart-Led Business?
• 1:57
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 1:58
  Amber Briggle: I appreciate that you sent me that question in advance, so I had a little time to think about it, but the answer came to me pretty quickly.
• 2:03
  Amber Briggle: I think any one of your listeners who owns a business or owned a business or is thinking about starting a business there, the money is just the, that's not the driving factor.
• 2:14
  Amber Briggle: The driving factor is your passion.
• 2:16
  Amber Briggle: Like what is it that you can bring to the world to make yourself or your community or your customers a better overall?
• 2:24
  Amber Briggle: And it's that sort of, it's that drive, it's that calling that really is, that is the thing that brought you into business.
• 2:32
  Amber Briggle: And then, your paycheck is just the icing on the cake, right?
• 2:36
  Amber Briggle: So for me, as the owner of Soma Massage Therapy.
• 2:39
  Amber Briggle: The drive behind this, the passion behind this is really how can I help people feel more comfortable in their body, mind, and spirit.
• 2:47
  Amber Briggle: And just get them grounded and, breathing properly and remove that pain and that stress as much as I possibly can from their lives and make them feel just better about themselves overall.
• 3:00
  Amber Briggle: That's gonna make them go out into the world.
• 3:02
  Amber Briggle: And just that have that positive ripple effect with everyone and everything that they come in contact with.
• 3:06
  Amber Briggle: Right.
• 3:06
  Amber Briggle: Like I, when I fell.
• 3:09
  Amber Briggle: Accidentally into the world of massage therapy and realized that this was really my calling.
• 3:14
  Amber Briggle: I just kept thinking, how can I continue to scale this up to heal and touch as many people as possible?
• 3:21
  Amber Briggle: So a Heart-Led Business is one that really, truly comes from your heart.
• 3:25
  Amber Briggle: It's about the people before the profits and following that and staying true to your mission.
• 3:30
  Amber Briggle: That is really, I think, the definition of a Heart-Led Business.
• 3:34
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:35
  Tom Jackobs: And I love that you brought in, the passion and that, that be the driving factor in the business and not, how can I make money in this business?
• 3:47
  Tom Jackobs: It should be, how can I serve people and by the way, how can I make money at it, right?
• 3:52
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 3:53
  Tom Jackobs: That
• 3:54
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 3:54
  Tom Jackobs: The money's gonna be the first thing.
• 3:56
  Amber Briggle: The, yeah, I, yeah, I like making money.
• 3:58
  Amber Briggle: I'm good at it.
• 3:59
  Amber Briggle: I like paying my bills and paying my mortgage and paying my team.
• 4:02
  Amber Briggle: But that's not why I got into this business.
• 4:05
  Amber Briggle: And I think anyone who owns a business can probably have a, probably a similar similar reaction, right?
• 4:11
  Amber Briggle: They got into this because of the love of it.
• 4:14
  Amber Briggle: And if you're, if you take care of the people.
• 4:16
  Amber Briggle: They'll take care of the business and then the business will take care of your bills.
• 4:19
  Amber Briggle: But if you reverse that and you're constantly chasing the profit, you're cheapening your product, you're cheapening your values, and everything's gonna fall apart because at that point, everything's just like a replaceable commodity, right?
• 4:31
  Amber Briggle: And your employees, your clients, your product, everything.
• 4:34
  Amber Briggle: But stay true to, stay true to that calling and take care of the people first and everything else will fall into place.
• 4:40
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, I love that.
• 4:41
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 4:42
  Amber Briggle: Yeah,
• 4:42
  Tom Jackobs: So tell me, you said something really interesting and I wanna dive into that a little bit more.
• 4:46
  Tom Jackobs: How you accidentally fell into massage therapy.
• 4:51
  Tom Jackobs: Sounds like a story.
• 4:52
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 4:53
  Amber Briggle: It was, I think I've only ever met one person in my entire career who knew when they were a kid that they wanted to grow up and be a massage therapist, like almost.
• 5:02
  Amber Briggle: Almost all of us fall into this work and it's, and when we hire a massage therapist at Soma Massage Therapy, we're really looking for someone who already has that sort of like innate calling.
• 5:15
  Amber Briggle: To be a healer and then they go to school to cultivate this.
• 5:19
  Amber Briggle: You can teach someone massage techniques.
• 5:22
  Amber Briggle: You can teach someone proper draping.
• 5:23
  Amber Briggle: You can teach them how to fill out the soap charts.
• 5:26
  Amber Briggle: You can teach them, open sea close sea and to poke mend and trigger points.
• 5:29
  Amber Briggle: But you can't really teach someone intuition and empathy, right?
• 5:33
  Amber Briggle: Like you're born with it or you're not.
• 5:35
  Amber Briggle: And so we're looking for therapists who are born with that innate calling.
• 5:39
  Amber Briggle: And go to school to cultivate it.
• 5:41
  Amber Briggle: And just like me, almost everyone on our team just accidentally fell into it.
• 5:46
  Amber Briggle: So in my case, I had already gone to a really fancy four year private liberal arts college in Minnesota.
• 5:53
  Amber Briggle: And it was a wonderful experience, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do in college.
• 5:58
  Amber Briggle: I just knew I wanted to get outta my parents' house.
• 6:00
  Amber Briggle: And so that's why I went to school.
• 6:02
  Amber Briggle: And then I graduated with a really fascinating degree, but still didn't really know how to apply it or what I wanted to do in my life.
• 6:09
  Amber Briggle: And I was living at that time.
• 6:10
  Amber Briggle: Eventually I was living in Boulder, Colorado where my college boyfriend, now husband was going to grad school and I was, every day he was getting up and he was doing something amazing and he was thinking about his future and like what he can contribute to the world.
• 6:22
  Amber Briggle: And I was working in a daycare and like mad props, like snaps all the way for these, early childhood educators like the foundation of a solid democracy is good education and education starts at birthright.
• 6:33
  Amber Briggle: So like hats off to them, but it was not for me.
• 6:36
  Amber Briggle: And I felt like I was floundering and I didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 6:40
  Amber Briggle: But turns out in Boulder, one of the very best massage schools was right there down the street.
• 6:45
  Amber Briggle: And I've always been interested in the healing arts.
• 6:48
  Amber Briggle: And I figured, look, it's a one year program.
• 6:51
  Amber Briggle: I don't have to go to school for a master's.
• 6:52
  Amber Briggle: I don't have to go to school for another four year degree.
• 6:54
  Amber Briggle: I can go to a trade school.
• 6:56
  Amber Briggle: And find a way to pay the bills.
• 6:58
  Amber Briggle: And it turns out I was born for this.
• 7:00
  Amber Briggle: I absolutely love doing the work.
• 7:03
  Amber Briggle: But it got to a point where I had so many clients that I had no more room to fill them on my schedule.
• 7:10
  Amber Briggle: And that's what brought us to being, that's what brought me to being a small business owner today and now a franchisor.
• 7:15
  Amber Briggle: We're looking to expand these, this healing and this these values and this calling coast to coast.
• 7:23
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 7:24
  Tom Jackobs: How did you figure out that you were born for it?
• 7:27
  Tom Jackobs: What was that like?
• 7:29
  Tom Jackobs: Or was it a, was it a trigger moment or was it something that gradually was like, wow, this just feels right.
• 7:36
  Amber Briggle: I dunno, it's just I think, I think sometimes you have to do a lot of things to figure out what it is you don't wanna do in order to narrow it down.
• 7:44
  Amber Briggle: So in my case, I went to a four year school and again, I, my, my husband now is a tenured philosophy professor.
• 7:49
  Amber Briggle: I love colleges.
• 7:51
  Amber Briggle: Like absolutely.
• 7:52
  Amber Briggle: There's, and I don't regret going, but it also wasn't entirely for me, right?
• 7:58
  Amber Briggle: So I graduate and I'm like now what?
• 8:00
  Amber Briggle: And then I'm floundering for a couple of years and I'm working these dead end jobs, and like nothing was fitting.
• 8:04
  Amber Briggle: And I, lemme see if I can condense this down further.
• 8:08
  Amber Briggle: Growing up we didn't have much.
• 8:11
  Amber Briggle: I, my mom was a single mom and relied a lot on government assistance.
• 8:15
  Amber Briggle: So we, we had food, we had a place to live.
• 8:17
  Amber Briggle: We'd go to see the doctor.
• 8:19
  Amber Briggle: We'd go to see the dentist, like we had government assistance for this.
• 8:22
  Amber Briggle: At the end of the day if I've got a cough and she's got$5 in her bank account, is she gonna buy food or cough syrup?
• 8:28
  Amber Briggle: Like, how do you make that decision?
• 8:30
  Amber Briggle: And so she was growing up always looking for these like little witchy concoctions with a slippery elm and apple cider vinegar and marshmallow roots and like all these, all these things that, just try what can I do that's in my kitchen that can help my kids?
• 8:43
  Amber Briggle: So I already grew up with this sort of alternative medicine, healing mindset, right?
• 8:49
  Amber Briggle: So it was for me, a natural progression then to be interested in a healing art like massage therapy.
• 8:56
  Amber Briggle: And so when I, I applied to the program, I keep in mind I'd never actually gotten a professional massage in my life before I went to massage school.
• 9:03
  Tom Jackobs: You never had a massage before you went to massage school.
• 9:06
  Amber Briggle: No, not a professional one.
• 9:07
  Amber Briggle: Yeah, not a professional one.
• 9:08
  Amber Briggle: I would check out books from the library and my friends and I would practice on each other.
• 9:11
  Amber Briggle: This is fun, not really thinking I could ever turn it into a job, let alone a franchise opportunity.
• 9:16
  Amber Briggle: But yeah.
• 9:16
  Amber Briggle: But I'd never gotten a professional massage.
• 9:18
  Amber Briggle: I, I applied, I graduated with honors a year later.
• 9:21
  Amber Briggle: It just, honestly, Tom, it just clicked.
• 9:24
  Amber Briggle: It just, I had tried so many things up to that point that didn't feel like a natural fit.
• 9:30
  Amber Briggle: And like the moment I got my hands on my first client, I was like, oh, this is it.
• 9:37
  Amber Briggle: This is what I wanna do.
• 9:38
  Amber Briggle: To help people.
• 9:40
  Amber Briggle: Be not in pain and to get out of their busy minds and feel their breath and feel their body and just be.
• 9:47
  Amber Briggle: It was just such a profound experience and I'm so grateful now that what I'm doing as a business owner and now a franchisor is still massage adjacent.
• 9:57
  Amber Briggle: I haven't massaged anyone in probably 10 years.
• 10:00
  Amber Briggle: I still keep my license active, but I'm so busy running the business that I don't get around the table anymore.
• 10:05
  Amber Briggle: I hire people for that.
• 10:06
  Amber Briggle: And I love that.
• 10:07
  Amber Briggle: I have now this opportunity through franchising to continue to take this calling really coast to coast.
• 10:14
  Amber Briggle: We see probably 1,012 hundred clients a month at our main location downtown.
• 10:21
  Amber Briggle: Now imagine if we had 500 locations, coast to coast, how many people we could be.
• 10:26
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 10:27
  Amber Briggle: healing.
• 10:27
  Amber Briggle: Making feel better.
• 10:27
  Amber Briggle: So yeah, it just, I dunno.
• 10:29
  Amber Briggle: I just fell into it and it just feels like the most natural thing ever.
• 10:32
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 10:32
  Amber Briggle: I'm really grateful to be in this place.
• 10:34
  Tom Jackobs: It's a great way to multiply your talent as well.
• 10:37
  Tom Jackobs: And I see this a lot for a lot of practitioners that are, they're doing the work and then at some point they're like, I'm fully booked.
• 10:47
  Tom Jackobs: I need to be able to multiply myself.
• 10:49
  Tom Jackobs: How do I do that?
• 10:50
  Tom Jackobs: And then they became a business
• 10:51
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 10:52
  Tom Jackobs: Owner and try to do both at the same time.
• 10:55
  Tom Jackobs: And that's usually a recipe for disaster.
• 10:58
  Amber Briggle: Oh my God.
• 10:59
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 11:00
  Amber Briggle: Yes.
• 11:00
  Tom Jackobs: for a while.
• 11:00
  Amber Briggle: Yep.
• 11:01
  Tom Jackobs: So how did you then the transfer from, or the transition from being a practitioner into being the business owner?
• 11:12
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 11:13
  Amber Briggle: Yeah, it was, it was out of necessity because I was doing the massage and then in between massages, I was answering those phone calls that we missed and answering the emails and running payroll and hiring massage therapists and doing the marketing like it was.
• 11:26
  Amber Briggle: It was a lot, and my children were tiny.
• 11:28
  Amber Briggle: Then like I think when we moved into our first brick and mortar, my son was in kindergarten, which means my daughter would've been.
• 11:36
  Amber Briggle: Like one or two, tiny children, and I would work and I'd get up and I'd get'em to school and I'd go massage my clients and I'd run my business and then I'd go home and I'd run my business some more and I'd go to sleep at midnight and I'd wake up the next day and it was exhausting.
• 11:51
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 11:51
  Amber Briggle: It was just truly out of necessity.
• 11:54
  Amber Briggle: It was scary because that meant as a massage therapist, I take home a hundred percent of it.
• 11:58
  Amber Briggle: If I hire someone, I don't, and so I was a little bit worried about the financials of that, but it just, it, I just.
• 12:05
  Amber Briggle: I just simply couldn't do it anymore.
• 12:06
  Amber Briggle: I was killing myself and the business was failing to thrive as well, because I couldn't dedicate my time on the business if I was working in the business, right?
• 12:17
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 12:18
  Amber Briggle: So that was really quite honestly what made me step back as a massage therapist.
• 12:22
  Amber Briggle: And eventually then, then hiring a front desk team and giving them the phone.
• 12:27
  Amber Briggle: And having them answer the calls like that was, it was my baby.
• 12:31
  Amber Briggle: I had built it and I was, there was a trust factor there, right?
• 12:34
  Amber Briggle: And then they did a great job and I'm like, shoot, how can I continue to make this as big and as impactful as I possibly can without burning myself out?
• 12:43
  Amber Briggle: Which brought us to franchising and what I'm really excited about is that truly Tom, anyone can do this.
• 12:49
  Amber Briggle: You don't have to be a massage therapist.
• 12:51
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 12:52
  Amber Briggle: No offense.
• 12:52
  Amber Briggle: No offense, sir, but you could own a great clips.
• 12:55
  Amber Briggle: Like you don't know,
• 12:56
  Tom Jackobs: I could.
• 12:56
  Amber Briggle: Anything, you dunno, you don't have to have hair to run a hair salon, right?
• 13:01
  Amber Briggle: So you don't have to be a massage therapist to run a massage therapy studio.
• 13:05
  Amber Briggle: And so I'm really excited with these franchise opportunities that I have Now the blueprint and the playbook for you to be able to really, truly make your small business a success without needing to, burn the candle at both ends to do it.
• 13:18
  Amber Briggle: Like we, we have the tools to help you.
• 13:20
  Amber Briggle: And I really wish I would've had more resources earlier on in my career because I just think about how much further Soma could be at this point.
• 13:28
  Amber Briggle: But we're here now in this moment and I'm really grateful for it.
• 13:32
  Amber Briggle: And there's a, the timing is always gonna work out just perfect.
• 13:36
  Amber Briggle: So I'm glad to be here.
• 13:37
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 13:38
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 13:38
  Tom Jackobs: And it's a journey as well.
• 13:40
  Tom Jackobs: And it's everybody's journey,
• 13:41
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 13:42
  Tom Jackobs: even if you got the business education early on it probably wouldn't have been at the right time when you needed it.
• 13:48
  Amber Briggle: Yep.
• 13:48
  Amber Briggle: Yeah, that's right.
• 13:50
  Amber Briggle: There's, you just have to just trust the process.
• 13:52
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 13:52
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 13:53
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 13:54
  Tom Jackobs: I'm curious, when you were transitioning then out of being in the business and being on and working on the business.
• 14:00
  Tom Jackobs: Who was your first hire?
• 14:01
  Tom Jackobs: Was it a massage therapist or did you hire somebody else?
• 14:05
  Amber Briggle: Yeah, so I just kept hiring massage therapist'cause that was the need.
• 14:09
  Amber Briggle: We just kept having clients requesting appointments and there was just no room on the schedule.
• 14:14
  Amber Briggle: So I just, for a long time just was only hiring massage therapists.
• 14:17
  Amber Briggle: Eventually I hired a very part-time office assistant who could just basically kinda help me with some of the bookkeeping.
• 14:24
  Amber Briggle: Entering the client intake forms, running reports on gift certificates and whatnot.
• 14:29
  Amber Briggle: I was still functioning as the receptionist.
• 14:32
  Amber Briggle: It was really only after we moved to, it was after COVID.
• 14:37
  Amber Briggle: When we moved into our now current location, which is twice as big as what we had pre COVID.
• 14:42
  Amber Briggle: And we, it was much more visible.
• 14:44
  Amber Briggle: I realized, I'm like, I really am gonna have to have a front desk staff because people are gonna be walking in off the street asking about us.
• 14:51
  Amber Briggle: And I really, and I, Tom, I wish I would have invested the money in that front desk staff years ago, because if you're in pain and you call, and I don't answer because I don't know, I'm with a, I'm with a massage client, or I'm picking my kids up from school, or I'm having a sandwich I don't know, if I don't answer the phone and you're in pain.
• 15:11
  Amber Briggle: You're just gonna call the next place and I'm gonna miss out on the opportunity to meet you.
• 15:15
  Amber Briggle: And having, investing that money in a front desk team was probably the best investment I could have made in my business.
• 15:24
  Amber Briggle: And we've really just taken off ever since then.
• 15:27
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah so my first hire was a admin assistant and like what you experienced.
• 15:35
  Tom Jackobs: He did a much better job than I did
• 15:38
  Amber Briggle: Yeah,
• 15:38
  Tom Jackobs: in terms of the admin work and just organization and things like that.
• 15:42
  Tom Jackobs: And I was like, why did I not do this earlier?
• 15:44
  Tom Jackobs: And, it was back in,
• 15:47
  Amber Briggle: Why didn't you do it?
• 15:49
  Tom Jackobs: Because it was gonna be money out.
• 15:52
  Tom Jackobs: And didn't have a lot of money.
• 15:53
  Tom Jackobs: It was money out and I was like, how can I afford, and my business coach at the time, who's still my business coach now, which is always fun.
• 16:02
  Tom Jackobs: She was like, don't be stupid, Tom.
• 16:04
  Tom Jackobs: Like you're doing$10 an hour work and you should be, and you're getting like$60 an hour, or you're doing a hundred, you should be getting a hundred dollars an hour.
• 16:13
  Tom Jackobs: So why are you doing$10 an hour work?
• 16:16
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 16:16
  Tom Jackobs: That's a good point.
• 16:17
  Tom Jackobs: So when I hired him, it was only 20 hours a week.
• 16:20
  Tom Jackobs: 'cause that was all I
• 16:20
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 16:21
  Tom Jackobs: at the time.
• 16:21
  Amber Briggle: Yep.
• 16:22
  Tom Jackobs: And the next week I had more consultations and more sales on the book than I
• 16:28
  Amber Briggle: Yep,
• 16:28
  Tom Jackobs: in the previous 3
• 16:29
  Amber Briggle: months yep.
• 16:29
  Tom Jackobs: I was like,
• 16:30
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 16:30
  Tom Jackobs: yeah, my energy was, scrubbing the toilet and filing paper and not working with people and
• 16:36
  Amber Briggle: Because you were working in Yeah.
• 16:37
  Amber Briggle: Because you were working in the business instead of on the business.
• 16:39
  Amber Briggle: Absolutely.
• 16:40
  Amber Briggle: And now, yeah I can totally relate.
• 16:42
  Amber Briggle: And now I have this fantastic management team.
• 16:45
  Amber Briggle: I'm essentially an absentee business owner.
• 16:47
  Amber Briggle: I, the only time I go into work is maybe once a week to actually get a massage and then when I'm there Yeah.
• 16:54
  Amber Briggle: Quality control.
• 16:55
  Amber Briggle: And and and maybe I'll sweep a hallway or fold some massage sheets.
• 16:58
  Amber Briggle: Like I do.
• 16:59
  Amber Briggle: 99% of my work here at home, and if I'm not at home I pop into the office and there's really no room for me there.
• 17:07
  Amber Briggle: Now you're in living in Taiwan.
• 17:09
  Amber Briggle: My family's moving to Europe this summer.
• 17:12
  Amber Briggle: My husband got a fantastic job at a university there.
• 17:14
  Amber Briggle: And I just told my team last week fully expecting them to panic and they're like.
• 17:19
  Amber Briggle: Okay, we never see you anyway.
• 17:22
  Amber Briggle: How does it matter if you're working, from right here in Denton, Texas, or working from Austin or working from Colorado Springs or working from Stockholm?
• 17:30
  Amber Briggle: It really doesn't matter.
• 17:33
  Amber Briggle: And so it, so that was that for me then, investing into that in the management team, which essentially, when I invested in my management team, it wasn't with the eventual plan that I was gonna be moving to Sweden.
• 17:44
  Amber Briggle: The plan was I'm gonna be working as the franchisor, and so I can't be working on the daily operations of my flagship studio.
• 17:52
  Amber Briggle: I need to be working on the brand.
• 17:53
  Amber Briggle: But through this franchising process, I've been able to really extract myself from the daily goings on at my studio.
• 18:01
  Amber Briggle: I have a fantastic team, which allows me to be an absentee business owner, and now I'm gonna be, keeping my finger on the pulse of Soma Massage Therapy and continuing to franchise.
• 18:10
  Amber Briggle: But from Sweden.
• 18:12
  Amber Briggle: So it's, you, I like you.
• 18:14
  Amber Briggle: I feared that investment of a team.
• 18:18
  Amber Briggle: But once you get the right team in place and you're taking, and you're taking care of them, going back to my first answer, you take care of your team.
• 18:25
  Amber Briggle: They're gonna take care of your business, and you can take care of the things that really matter.
• 18:28
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 18:30
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 18:30
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 18:30
  Tom Jackobs: There, there were probably when you announced that to them they were probably saying too, oh, good, because now we have another hour on our schedule.
• 18:37
  Tom Jackobs: We can actually get a client in here that pays us.
• 18:39
  Amber Briggle: Right.
• 18:40
  Amber Briggle: Amber's not gonna be in here all the time getting a massage.
• 18:42
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 18:43
  Tom Jackobs: So let's shift gears a little bit.
• 18:45
  Tom Jackobs: We've been talking a little bit about the money side, but how do you balance the profit, making sure that you have profit in the business and still being heart-led?
• 18:55
  Amber Briggle: How do I balance profit and being heart-led?
• 18:58
  Amber Briggle: I feel, I don't know.
• 18:59
  Amber Briggle: I feel like it's just a simple answer.
• 19:01
  Amber Briggle: I just do it.
• 19:02
  Amber Briggle: I reverse engineer my price point.
• 19:06
  Amber Briggle: So what are my costs?
• 19:08
  Amber Briggle: What do I need to pay my team to give them a fair living wage?
• 19:11
  Amber Briggle: We have a no tipping model here at Soma Massage Therapy, which is
• 19:15
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 19:15
  Amber Briggle: unheard of in this industry.
• 19:17
  Amber Briggle: But if you've never tipped your physical therapist or your chiropractor.
• 19:20
  Amber Briggle: Why are you tipping your massage therapist?
• 19:22
  Amber Briggle: And then when the economy gets tight as it is now, people still might be coming in for their massages, but then they're not gonna be tipping you as much or at all.
• 19:31
  Amber Briggle: So now you're back to earning just this piddly based salary at whatever corporate studio you're at, right?
• 19:36
  Amber Briggle: But if I can pay you a fair living wage that's going to, employee retention is gonna be higher.
• 19:43
  Amber Briggle: The stress for both the therapist and the client is gonna be lower and everyone's gonna be happy, right?
• 19:48
  Amber Briggle: So what's that price point?
• 19:49
  Amber Briggle: What I need to be paying people?
• 19:51
  Amber Briggle: Then you build in, cost of your fixed expenses.
• 19:53
  Amber Briggle: Rent, utilities, insurance.
• 19:55
  Amber Briggle: We don't sell any retail products.
• 19:57
  Amber Briggle: So I don't have, outstanding bills and vendors and whatnot.
• 20:01
  Amber Briggle: We have, what supplies do we need?
• 20:03
  Amber Briggle: What equipment do we need to replace, right?
• 20:05
  Amber Briggle: And then what do I need to pay my bills and keep my business out of debt?
• 20:09
  Amber Briggle: And then that's your price point and, and that you just, you take, again, you take care of the people.
• 20:15
  Amber Briggle: The people will take care of the business and everything's just gonna fall into place.
• 20:19
  Amber Briggle: Now, we did have to raise our rates this past year and I was so sad about it.
• 20:23
  Amber Briggle: So because I don't, when money is tight for everyone, the last thing I wanna do is make it tighter.
• 20:28
  Amber Briggle: But the reality is everyone needs to raise the rates because every, the cost of everything is rising.
• 20:34
  Amber Briggle: And so if I wanna be able to continue to get my team.
• 20:36
  Amber Briggle: Raises and bonuses and have high quality equipment and provide high quality care, then we needed to adjust our rates accordingly.
• 20:44
  Amber Briggle: Fortunately we haven't really lost any business from it.
• 20:47
  Amber Briggle: People we're our, we're ahead and shoulders above the rest.
• 20:50
  Amber Briggle: And so I think, people recognize the quality in our, in the services we provide and keep coming back'cause
• 20:57
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 20:57
  Amber Briggle: We're the best.
• 20:58
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 20:58
  Tom Jackobs: Hundred percent.
• 20:59
  Tom Jackobs: And I witnessed that too in, in my personal training studio that I started in 2008, which was just a really great time to start a small business and even though there was a recession going on and everybody else was saying, oh, pricing and, but.
• 21:16
  Tom Jackobs: I was always of the mindset that it's, there's the same amount of money in the world, in fact, there's probably more money in the world now, and it's just not, people are just choosier on where to spend it, spend it on things that are low quality.
• 21:32
  Tom Jackobs: So if you're a higher quality, higher price point, people are gonna find you because the money's still there.
• 21:39
  Tom Jackobs: It's just
• 21:39
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 21:40
  Tom Jackobs: circulating as much as it was before.
• 21:43
  Amber Briggle: I think massage therapy is fairly immune ish to downturns in the economy.
• 21:50
  Amber Briggle: People might eat out less and have more dinner parties, right?
• 21:53
  Amber Briggle: They might not buy clothes at the department store.
• 21:56
  Amber Briggle: They might go thrifting, right?
• 21:57
  Amber Briggle: But if your back hurts, and you can only put an ice pack and you know biofreeze on it for so long before you need to see a professional.
• 22:04
  Amber Briggle: And, so people are gonna continue coming back for that care.
• 22:07
  Amber Briggle: And then when you, when we've leveraged ourselves with the way that we have as being more medical focused.
• 22:12
  Amber Briggle: We have a no tipping policy.
• 22:13
  Amber Briggle: We do take HSA, you get a full 60 minutes on that table.
• 22:16
  Amber Briggle: We're not gonna shortchange you with or 55 minutes, like all these things that, you know, that that we're able to provide.
• 22:22
  Amber Briggle: That kind of puts us above the rest.
• 22:23
  Amber Briggle: Then you start getting into that mindset that this is self-care and not a thing that I do.
• 22:27
  Amber Briggle: A fluff and buff twice a year on my birthday and anniversary.
• 22:30
  Amber Briggle: So we've really like leveraged ourselves firmly in that medical massage model.
• 22:35
  Amber Briggle: We're also, fortunately, mostly immune to tariffs.
• 22:38
  Amber Briggle: I don't run a burger joint, so beef tariffs don't affect me.
• 22:41
  Amber Briggle: Don't run a coffee shopper bakery.
• 22:42
  Amber Briggle: Coffee and chocolate tariffs don't affect me.
• 22:45
  Amber Briggle: Tariffs affect all of us, but less directly in the massage world.
• 22:49
  Amber Briggle: So we're really quite fortunate to be in this space that we're in that though the economy is tight, our books are still pretty booked.
• 22:57
  Amber Briggle: And we're really grateful for it.
• 22:59
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 22:59
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, that's, that's I'm glad you brought that point up because there, there are certain industries like, hair, I wouldn't know about, but.
• 23:07
  Amber Briggle: For example, yeah.
• 23:09
  Tom Jackobs: But I still buy razors.
• 23:10
  Tom Jackobs: Hair still grows a little bit, but, so I still need to buy razors and people still need to go get haircuts.
• 23:16
  Tom Jackobs: They need to, they need to see the doctor, it's all that and I love the fact that you have that no tipping policy.
• 23:22
  Tom Jackobs: 'cause that's one
• 23:22
  Amber Briggle: yeah.
• 23:23
  Tom Jackobs: thing.
• 23:24
  Tom Jackobs: I went to that, that one very large chain.
• 23:27
  Tom Jackobs: Be named, where it's on the, like on the front desk, your massage is valued at$80 or whatever, and so you should be giving a 30% tip, which is$24 to your like, why don't you just charge me the 125
• 23:42
  Amber Briggle: It's
• 23:42
  Tom Jackobs: bucks?
• 23:43
  Tom Jackobs: I don't care.
• 23:44
  Amber Briggle: It's so stressful Tom?
• 23:45
  Amber Briggle: Like when someone's like elbow deep in your glutes and they're finally relieving that sciatic pain, the last thing you should be doing is thinking about your checking account and how much you can afford to tip without pissing off your massage therapist, right?
• 23:58
  Amber Briggle: Just go for the freaking massage.
• 23:59
  Amber Briggle: You've never tipped your physical therapist or chiropractor.
• 24:01
  Amber Briggle: Why are you tipping us?
• 24:03
  Amber Briggle: And one more point too, and I feel so validated.
• 24:07
  Amber Briggle: COVID pissed me off so much, but I feel so validated by this stance of no tipping, because during COVID, what were the very first businesses to shut down?
• 24:17
  Amber Briggle: It was hair, nails, bars, restaurants, retail, massage, service industry, right?
• 24:25
  Amber Briggle: Who got to stay open?
• 24:26
  Amber Briggle: Physical therapists, chiropractors, doctors, dentists, I'm opening my mouth at the dentist, right?
• 24:32
  Amber Briggle: And they don't have to close.
• 24:33
  Amber Briggle: So when you put us in the service industry, you cheapen the work.
• 24:37
  Amber Briggle: You don't see the value of it for either the profession or even for you yourself with the, this wellness based model, right?
• 24:44
  Amber Briggle: Because you're thinking of it as a treat.
• 24:45
  Amber Briggle: Someone's bringing you a margarita.
• 24:47
  Amber Briggle: And so I just feel so validated with this and I'm so excited.
• 24:50
  Amber Briggle: To be franchising.
• 24:52
  Amber Briggle: I really want to just completely transform the industry and retrain the entire country to think about massage as, as medical as something necessary.
• 25:02
  Amber Briggle: Yeah.
• 25:03
  Tom Jackobs: Of course it's for sure.
• 25:05
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 25:05
  Tom Jackobs: Well, how can people learn more about you, Amber, and all the great stuff that you're doing, and potentially open up their own massage?
• 25:12
  Amber Briggle: I love it.
• 25:13
  Amber Briggle: Thank you.
• 25:14
  Amber Briggle: Yeah, so you can find us at mysomamassage.com.
• 25:17
  Amber Briggle: Soma is short for somatic, so mysomamassage.com.
• 25:21
  Amber Briggle: You can read about our styles, our rates, our ethos, our, there's resources on there, on, self care and self massage and webinars and whatnot.
• 25:32
  Amber Briggle: If you're interested in franchising, at the top of the page, there's a button just called it's Nationwide Franchising or Franchising Nationwide.
• 25:38
  Amber Briggle: Click on that.
• 25:39
  Amber Briggle: Read about our franchise opportunities.
• 25:40
  Amber Briggle: At the bottom of the that page, there's a a form that you can fill out to receive a, your free discovery kit.
• 25:46
  Amber Briggle: I'd love to talk with you more and if franchising is not right for you, but you know someone that this would be a great opportunity.
• 25:53
  Amber Briggle: Again, you don't have to be a massage therapist.
• 25:55
  Amber Briggle: You just gotta be a hard worker and interested in wellness, right?
• 25:59
  Amber Briggle: I can teach you the rest.
• 26:00
  Amber Briggle: If this is good for someone, if you introduce me to them and they become a Soma Massage Therapy franchisee at some point in the future, then you for introducing me to them will get either a thousand dollars cash or a year of free massages.
• 26:12
  Amber Briggle: So think about, maybe your niece got laid off.
• 26:15
  Amber Briggle: Maybe your son-in-law came into some inheritance money and is looking to make a break.
• 26:20
  Amber Briggle: I don't know what it looks like, but if you know someone that would be a good fit for them, please send them my wagon, mysomamassage.com.
• 26:26
  Amber Briggle: You can also find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook, but not X, because they're gross.
• 26:32
  Tom Jackobs: I really do appreciate you and everything that you're doing and definitely that your help.
• 26:37
  Tom Jackobs: Other people out.
• 26:38
  Tom Jackobs: So thank you for that.
• 26:39
  Amber Briggle: Thanks so much, Tom, for the opportunity.
• 26:40
  Amber Briggle: It was great today.
• 26:42
  Tom Jackobs: You're welcome.
• 26:43
  Tom Jackobs: And thank you listeners for tuning in to today's show.
• 26:46
  Tom Jackobs: We really do appreciate it.
• 26:47
  Tom Jackobs: So make sure you're checking out everything that Amber's doing.
• 26:50
  Tom Jackobs: We're gonna link all of that down in the show notes, so make sure you're clicking down there and checking out that franchise opportunity as well.
• 26:57
  Tom Jackobs: Or if you're in the Dallas Fort Worth area, go into My Soma and get a great medical massage'cause everybody doesn't, does need that for sure.
• 27:05
  Tom Jackobs: And while you're down there clicking around in the show notes, there might be a review button.
• 27:10
  Tom Jackobs: If you could give the show a rating and a review, we would really appreciate it that just helps spread the word about the Heart-Led Business Show.
• 27:16
  Tom Jackobs: And until next time, lead with your heart.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.