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In this week's episode Dr. Danielle talks with Sara Biermann, LMT from The Blu Room Wellness Center as they uncover...
* The benefits of Blu Room Therapy
* Why Your Mindset Matters
* Honoring Your Innate Intelligence As You Set Your Practice Fees
* Creating Value In Your Practice
* Why Many Health & Wellness Practitioners Lose Their Passion
You don't want to miss this episode!
Be sure to stay until the end... you don't want to miss the nugget of truth that Sara & Dr. Danielle explore as they wrap up the episode.
Welcome to The Health & Wellness Practitioners Podcast! Dr. Danielle and other guest experts talk about everything from getting your practice started, developing your clinical skills, growing your practice YOUR way, and dealing with the real stuff life burnout and work/life balance. Whether you’ve been practicing for decades or just started your journey, you’ll find something here for you!
Choosing Your Practice Fees with Sara Biermann
Meet Sara Biermann
SARA: So my name is Sara Biermann. I own the Blu Room Wellness Center in Washington, Missouri. I've been in health and healing for over 20 years. My background includes social work and massage therapy for 21 years in the industry of health and wellness. I'm passionate about helping people really connect with themselves because my opinion is that once somebody is connected to themselves, they feel more fulfilled in their life. I mean, it seems so simple to say you need to be connected with yourself to feel grounded and happy and fulfilled. But in the years that I've been working with people that's the number one complaint/issue/obstacle that people have.
DR. DANIELLE: So I knew that you've been a massage therapist for over 20 years butI had no idea you had any background in social work. And I don't know if you know that I have an undergraduate degree in social work.
SARA: I do remember you mentioning that.
The Burnout That Shifted Sarah From Social Work To Offering Holistic Wellness
DR. DANIELLE: Crazy. So wait, what did you do in social work?
SARA: It was right after college. I got two degrees in psychology and social work and then to go on to be an actual therapist, a psychologist, I needed to get my masters. At that point I was just like, I'm so done with college. I was ready to travel. I was already interested in alternative and national health so I had an opportunity to go to Peru and China to study some of that. I wasn’t going to complete my master's at the time so I finished the social work, I got the psychology, and then I went out to experience some life.
So in social work I worked with people of all different abilities. Some with mental and physical challenges and I took care of some families as their caseworker. I was their number one go-to for whatever their needs were. I worked in elder care for a while. It became very clear to me that the systems that were in place, I'm not saying all the systems, but the systems that I interacted with were messed up. They were really messed up. I couldn't go home after I had a situation where I knew this child was being sexually abused in her home and I was going to my supervisor speaking about it and they felt like their hands were tied. It wasn't a bad enough situation. That was my turning point. I just was like, I can't. I'm not saying that all social workers like that. I mean, thank God we have awesome, amazing social workers out there helping families and people who need it. But for me, I couldn't turn it off. I knew that I needed to pursue a career path where I'm helping people who want to be helped. Where I was, some of these people were getting paid more to not evolve and help their situation because they were getting more of a payout to not be taken on the job interview to not gain job skills. It was very frustrating to me.
DR. DANIELLE: So when I finished my undergraduate studies, I was working full time at, The Body Shop, which is so funny because most of the time when people say the body shop, especially where we I'm thinking of the Gallery right. I worked at the Crestwood location. I mean, people that are not in the St Louis area will have no idea what this means, but the Crestwood location in west county and I filled in sometimes at the Galleria, but I didn't live close to the Galleria and I didn't really like going there. So I applied for two positions that would've actually been government jobs as case workers and I got the second one. I looked at the job description and I was like, no, I can't, I can't do this. Like, I can't go to someone's home and take their child out of their home and possibly have to bring that child home with me if I couldn't find a placement for that child in the middle of the night. It just felt like a no. So I ended up going to chiropractic school shortly after I had enrolled in my master's program for my masters degree in counseling. The day that classes were starting, I went and withdrew and I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I just know I don't want to do this. So thankfully I listened to that.
SARA: Absolutely. It's hard work!
Sara On Becoming A Massage Therapist
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. Okay. So, at what point did you decide to become a massage therapist?
SARA: Wow. The first day I ever received my first massage when I was 15 years old.
DR. DANIELLE: Wow!
SARA: I knew I was going to be a therapist at some point, I didn't say, oh, that's what I'm gonna do, bring in money or that's not the career path I'm gonna have for the rest of my life. But, the first massage I ever got was when I was 15 and I walked out of that office and I had such a powerful experience and I loved how I felt. I said, I'm gonna learn how to do this! I wanna be able to offer this to people. So, I just kind of tabled it. You know, I didn't have an agenda. I knew I was gonna graduate from high school and I knew I was gonna go to college. After my social work experiences I took off and lived in Atlanta for about nine months. And we were like, oh, this is the time! I have no responsibilities! Let's go be free! I feel like I kind of convinced one of my best friends to go with me. So the two of us went, however, I went with a little bit of credit card debt. At that time it was probably only $2,000 to $3,000. But at that time, I mean interest rates, if you don't pay it off, you know, that builds up. So I had some fun doing well, working around the clock, doing every job imaginable, nannying, elder care, restaurant work just to just barely survive. I went to Whole Foods to eat! You know, they had samples out well, that's how I ate. I would show up when they had the samples. It was a lovely experience because to this day I pay off credit cards. They're paid off every month. It was great to learn how to live on nothing. But when I was there, I said, as soon as I pay off that credit card debt, I'm going back to St. Louis and I'm going to enroll in massage therapy school. So it took me nine months, lived in Atlanta, came back, enrolled in Kaleidoscope. I had an amazing experience there and just took off and started working for myself right away.
DR. DANIELLE: All right. So now you've been a massage therapist for over 20 years, but you also own the Blu Room Wellness Center here in Washington, Missouri. I just love Washington. I don't know. Do you like Washington?
SARAH: I do! I definitely had a stereotype in mind when I first lived in, you know, a half hour outside of Washington.
DR. DANIELLE: Where you live is kind of like a suburb of Washington, but it's a suburb. You live on a farm? It's very rural.
SARA: Yes. Yeah. So now Washington is cute. It has so much character. It's still that quaint, quiet feel, but there's plenty to do. If you wanna hear live music, you want to eat some good food, there's festivals, it's beautiful. I'm very happy to be here.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah, me too. Okay. So you opened the Blu Room here in 2018?
SARA: That sounds good. I'm not someone who like, I don't keep track. But I'm going on five years.
What Is The Blu Room?
DR. DANIELLE: Okay. So talk about what the Blu Room is.
SARA: Okay. This is gonna be a little bit of a struggle. I'm going to talk about it, but just to preface it, until you have the experience. You can't really get a feel for what the Blu Room is because it's non-tangible. It's an experience!
DR. DANIELLE: It is an experience!
SARA: Yeah. So here we go. The Blu Room is a technology that combines sound and UVB light with sacred geometry, (which just means it's the shape of a room) and then the user's intention. So all of those aspects go into a session. You walk into a room shaped like an octagon with a table, kind of like a massage table in the center and lay down comfortably. Your eyes are covered with a little pillow and there's music playing, UVB lights get turned on for a certain amount of time, depending on where you are in your sessions. And then you place your intention in your mind. So whatever it is that you are hoping to receive, what do you want? Some people come in and they have physical challenges happening. So that's on their mind. Some people have high stress, anxiety, and they're just trying to relax. It's always going to be working on the mental body, physical body, spiritual body, emotional body because we are all those things. It's an energetic tool to provide an environment for people to shut it down, shut it down from the external world of what you're used to doing and quite immediately, at least I find my perspective is you're able to connect with yourself. So you can say, I'm connecting to my spirit, I'm connecting to my soul, I'm connecting to the universe, I’m connecting to God. However you want to perceive that. But when you can connect like that, you, well, you sometimes hear things. Sometimes you just have a knowingness that comes over you. Anything becomes possible because it's like this magic zone. So that's the blue room. It's a 20 minute session. What you need, Danielle, what I need or what 30 other people need right now it's going to be different. So that's why we can't tell somebody what their experience is gonna be exactly for them. I know they're gonna have 20 minutes where the external environment is gonna be quieted for them and then they can just open up to receive. They can't do it wrong. We have infants there, we have people that are close to a hundred in there. It's just a way to help wake up people's natural ability to heal because the body is miraculous and it can do that when it's not responding to all these fires that when we're in a high stress state, that's really what our body thinks we're doing is putting out fires all over the place.
“It's(the blu room) just a way to help wake up people's natural ability to heal because the body is miraculous and it can do that when it's not responding to all these fires that when we're in a high stress state, that's really what our body thinks we're doing is putting out fires all over the place.”
Why Your Mindset Matters
DR. DANIELLE: So the reason that I had asked you to do this interview was because there was a coaching session a month, maybe a month and a half ago where someone was talking about getting a hydrotherapy table. She lives in a rural area of Pennsylvania. It's like where we are, but in Pennsylvania, not in Missouri and she was discussing pricing. She was gonna charge $20 a session and was going to give the person that referred someone else $5 from the session. And I was like, okay so that takes you down to $15. If they're paying with credit cards, you've got 3% that you're deducting and then the funds that you're paying on that income, at best making $10, per session. She was like, Hmm. I said, so why not charge at least $25, if, if not more. Right. But the price was irrelevant. It was her sense of fear that came up next that was like, oh, I can't charge $5 more for these, no one's gonna pay for that. And I was like, hold on, let me tell you about my friend, Sarah, because Sarah has this Blu Room Wellness Center in a rural place that's just like yours and it's busy. I don't always get the day and time that I want to come. Right. But I always make it work. Most weeks I go every week. I get off track sometimes and then I'm like, oh shoot it's been like four weeks since I've been there. But anyway, I just thought, instead of hearing this from just me all the time I wanna bring in more examples of someone who was looking for a passive income stream. I don't know if that's why you wanted to have The Blu Room, but that's what her intention was with the hydrotherapy table that she bought. Here I have this passive income stream and I'm like, okay, just because you don't have to stand there and do something or put your hands on the person doesn't mean that you can't charge more for the service.
So let's start with this. How did you decide that you wanted to have a Blu Room Wellness Center in Washington, Missouri in the first place?
SARA:Well, because no other place was gonna do it. If I'm going to invest in a license to buy a Blu Room, which was substantial, especially for me at the time, it was gonna be close to me and my family. It was gonna be accessible.
I grew up in a suburb of St. Louis, Webster groves. When I first moved out here, I was still driving back and forth and seeing many of my clients in Webster groves. Well then you have children and you're like, I'm pulling out my hair. I can't be everywhere at once. And I was like, okay, that's gotta change. So then I built a practice here in Washington. It's always about what is gonna work best for me and my family. That's really what it's always gonna be about. So it was always gonna be in Washington because Washington was already where my massage therapy business was. I was not going to have it out of my home in Washington as the closest community to where I live. So really, I mean, that was why I did have people, many, many, many people. They thought I was absolutely out of my mind to bring something like that. They're like, do you think people in Washington are actually gonna get that. You're not gonna have people coming. You can make a killing in St. Louis. You could, you could, you could. Well, my motivation wasn't to make a killing. My motivation wasn't to be busy seven days a week, open 24-hours a day. My motivation was, what's gonna work for me and my family, and I want it to be close and accessible and I wanna be happy. I knew running all over town and being on the road doesn't bring me happiness. I already had that experience. So really, I never thought of anything else. I said, you know what, maybe I'll open up another one in St. Louis, if that unfolds in the future, but right now it's going where it's gonna work for me.
It's always about what is gonna work best for me and my family.
DR. DANIELLE: So what's happened since you opened?
SARA: So it's been amazing. Um, it's been amazing.
DR. DANIELLE: Do people in Washington use the Blu Room?
SARA: Absolutely. Absolutely, and they're so grateful and thankful too. I have many people who live in Washington say, I just feel so lucky that we have this here in Washington. There are only four other locations in the US and another 35 worldwide and we have one in Washington! How did that happen? Because I wanted it close for me and my family and people need support, healing, and de-stress everywhere, not just in cities. You know, we have people in Washington that are looking for the same things that people are looking for in the city and the whole concept of “build it and they will come”.
DR. DANIELLE: When we were in the process of moving here, I was already practicing here and people would tell me all the time, oh, Washington is so snobby and it's such a click. If you're not in the click, then you're not going to have a successful business and my practice here grew so quickly. I was like what are these people talking about? Well, now, after having lived here for a few years, I can see where some of that was coming from. But at the time, because I had no exposure to all the things that people who have lived here for a long time had to experience. I didn't know anything else. I just set my mind on what I wanted it to be like here and then there it was. Within just three months my schedule was as full as I wanted it to be. Actually sometimes fuller. So I, I have always thought like, um, even though, yeah, this is a rural area, like a farming kind of community. That doesn't mean that people don't wanna be healthy.
Within just three months my schedule was as full as I wanted it to be. Actually sometimes fuller.
SARA: Absolutely!
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. Okay. So another thing that I wanted to talk about was in regards to the Blu Room, your fees are not cheap. I don't wanna say that they're exorbitantly expensive either. Right. But I remember when I first saw you for a massage and you had talked about the Blu Room, I was like, oh, I dunno. It seems pretty expensive for 20 minutes. But now I go every week and I just make it happen. When I first started going, I was having a lot of anxiety. I was just feeling a lot of stress. We had had a lot of disruption in our lives. We added a new kid, built a new house, moved to a whole new place and then, um, my husband was fired from his job, like without any sort of warning or anything like that. So we were pretty blindsided by that and all of a sudden, for the first time in my entire life, we now have four kids, a brand new gigantic house, and all of these expenses that go along with all of that. And here I am like, Hmm, okay, I'm gonna make this happen. I did. But at some points it was to my own detriment. So anyway, that's why I was so stressed and I started going to the Blu Room and bit by bit, my anxiety started coming down. I was doing a lot of other things too so I don't know that I can attribute it all to the Blu Room, but that's definitely a big part of it. I mean, just like you said, there's 20 minutes of the week that I can go and there's no one talking to me and there's no extra noise. It is just sensory deprivation.
How did you decide what, what to charge? How did you decide that it was okay to charge what you charge?
Setting Your Practice Fees
SARA: So, um, if we use the example, we can use an example of, you know, you can't open up a tech, you know, a tool of technology like that. That's so open minded in a place like Washington. So if somebody says that that's their perspective, that's their limitation. So then I didn't own that because I didn't feel that same way about people in general and people that live in Washington yeah. That, you know, they weren't ready for. It is what I kept hearing. Do you think they're really ready for something like that? Oh, like who's not ready to relax. Interesting. Who's not ready to feel more grounded.
DR. DANIELLE: How would we know if they were ready for something like that?
SARA: Yeah. So, um, just wanted to mention how people that have those limitations and perspectives also have those limitations and perspectives when thinking about price setting. We all have our beliefs around money, worthiness and value and we all value things differently. So, I think about all of those things, and I know that those all played a factor in how I felt about charging for the Blu Room. It took me a year of receiving blue room therapy before I decided to buy a license. It wasn't just like, oh, I'm gonna buy a license.
Honoring Your Innate Intelligence
DR. DANIELLE: How were you receiving blue room therapy living here when there wasn't blue room therapy in the area?
SARA: So, if we backtrack just a bit, I found out about the blue room. I knew through a knowingness that I had, that I wanted to offer more to my clients. The people I worked with and the information that was coming forward for me was going to be sound and light therapy. So I had that five years before ever hearing about The Blu Room. I am someone who loves to learn. I am someone who likes to try everything out there and there are so many amazing tools. I don't think there's one that does it all. So it was really easy for me to fall into a rabbit hole of a Google search and just start Googling light and sound therapy. Right. So I resisted, I knew that about myself. I said, no, just stay open. You’ll feel very strongly that you're supposed to do this, let it come. You'll know when it comes. So, fast forward five years, I'm listening to an educational program and on the program, they say, “a new technology for healing is coming out soon, it's called The Blu Room and it incorporates sound and light therapy.” I'm out there walking on a trail with my earbuds and listening and I kid you not, I had the whole body reaction. I just stopped in my tracks. I was like, what? And there was no recording, it was a live thing. I couldn't rewind it. I would've rewound it if I could so I wouldn't doubt myself that I just heard what I thought I heard. So I took down the number and ended up calling that same day and to find out when it was gonna be open, I made the appointment and I flew out. I was flying out to the state of Washington for a year. Just when I could, you know, I don't know. Maybe over the year I was out there 10 different times.
DR. DANIELLE: Wow. That's a big commitment to go 10 times a year.
SARA: Yes. Yeah. It's also the place where it originated, which came out of a school that I've been going to for close to 20 years called Roha School of Enlightenment. It's a school to learn about how to create in your life using consciousness and energy. So JayZ Knight is the inventor of The Blu Room so I also have a school there, which I could do some of my retreats, I could do blue room. I just kept telling myself, I'm going when I know, like, I will know. I don't wanna just jump on this because it sounds exciting and interesting. I wanna absolutely know. And it took a year. Wow. So I found value going back to the money question. I had never experienced a tool that combined everything for my whole being and affected my whole being the way The Blu Room did. I've received a lot of different treatments out there and I've tried a lot of different things. like all of them for different things. The Blu Room was just as comprehensive. And I was like, wow. So the value was there. I knew how it was affecting people. I knew I was very assured within myself, the capability of it.
Creating Value
SARA: So, I wasn't trying to give it away for free. I mean, nobody can stay in business if you are giving everything away for free. My goal for The Blu Room was not to make a certain amount of money or to open up five blue rooms within the first year. My goal was to help people and I was led to open up The Blu Room. People say, well, why do you open it? I don't feel like I had a choice not to open it. I felt like it was that strong for me and I was gonna let it be whatever it was gonna be and just be guided by it. So wherever it wanted to go, I just went with it, pricing schedule. You don't have to follow all the other blue rooms, but I pretty much followed what the current blue rooms were charging that were already opened. It was important for me to give certain demographics and people more of a discount so I chose to do that. I learned with my massage business, when you give things away for free or you give them cheap, people just don't value it. I mean, you can be doing a nice and a good thing, but if you have, let's just say, you're going sofa shopping and there is a Value City, but it was a Value City type of sofa where you can look kind of cute and if you're a college or just starting up a job and you're like, dang, that's a good looking sofa, but you might sit on it for three months and your butt fall it. So that's a Value City couch. Then you got the middle zone, which is okay. Basically you've got three different versions. People are always going to appreciate and respect the option that's priced higher. I learned that with massage. I gave everybody that I knew one free massage, family and friends. Never again! No more discounts. Because if they didn't value my love, my passion and all that was going into the service. That was okay. They can go find a cheaper massage. But I know that the type of work that I do is much more than just muscle manipulation.
DR. DANIELLE: I don't know how your massage fees compare to other massage therapists in town. My gut feeling is that your fees are probably higher than most of the massage therapists around, which there are plenty of. But I don't come to you because you're cheap.
SARA: Are you trying to get a good deal?
DR. DANIELLE: Right. I don't come to you because it's inexpensive. I come to you because of the experience that you provide, which is completely unique and different than every other massage therapist I've seen. I mean, there have been, I don't know, maybe one or two massage therapists that I've seen in this area, who also have a unique experience, but it's just not important to me to find something that's a good deal. I don't think I'm the typical person period, but I'm not the typical person in regard to how I take care of my health. I do more than the average person but I don't think that we should set the bar low for people either.
SARA: No. You know, because people are worth it and that's also like an underlying thread of the work that we both do. We want people to value themselves. Like, you deserve it and if you don't think you deserve it, and if you don't think you're good enough or special enough to deserve whatever it is you want with whatever price it is. I mean, you gotta be your biggest cheerleader. I want people to believe that about themselves. It's value and not being afraid. I think we've all done it starting up with our own businesses that you kind of are like, oh, oh, well I have to make a certain amount of money to cover the overhead so I have to make it cheap enough where I'm gonna get the masses. Okay. Well that's a mindset that you have and that's fine. But at least for a massage therapist or for one blue room, I wasn't worried about getting the masses. I was worried about getting the people that were resonating with the frequency, the vibe that I was putting out there, because those were my people. Those were the ones that I was most gonna be able to affect and help and they were the same. It was a two-way street. We're just mirroring one another. So it's a gift.
“I was worried about getting the people that were resonating with the frequency, the vibe that I was putting out there, because those were my people. Those were the ones that I was most gonna be able to affect and help and they were the same. It was a two-way street. We're just mirroring one another.”
DR. DANIELLE: That's a whole different way to look at it. Right. Feeling that you have to do something, to coerce people or manipulate them. But, we don't typically think of it like that to convince them that they need this or why they need this or how it's good for them. Instead you can just be neutral about it, which I think is also a reason why people get so burned out when they're trying to find clients.
SARA: They may not necessarily feel like they're forcing people, but that's the energy of it. It's like, they're trying to get people to do things that they may or may not be committed to and then you as a practitioner or the business owner are so invested in their outcomes that it's exhausting. And don't you think the people can feel that too. It's like the car salesmen feel. I mean, nobody likes to feel sold to. They like to understand how things work. They like to know what the benefits could be, how it's gonna improve their lives. We're all doing things that we think are going to make us happy. I mean, that's why we make the choices that we do, but nobody likes to feel manipulated/cohered/forced. The best option is to give them an experience and let them decide for themselves if they see the value in it and want to come back. We'll love to have them if it's a good match, but if not, they're for somebody else, there's something else for them.
DR. DANIELLE: I think that was kind of how I started using The Blu Room because I'd see you for a massage and you would offer it, like you wanna schedule The Blu Room? I was probably pretty hesitant at first, like, oh, I dunno now. But then once I started doing it just kind of became part of my self care commitment, part of my routine. Then I started to have some pretty amazing visualizations that happened. I just kind of feel activated when I leave there. It's been roughly two years, I guess now, since I started, I don't feel like that every session, it seemed like it was probably more frequent that I would have like really profound things happen in The Blu Room. Now I’m just maintaining the improvements.
SARA: Your vibration. Like your frequency you're able to hold the frequency now. So it doesn't seem as powerful of a shift because it's a more subtle shift. Now you're just used to the magic. You could easily think that it's not as magical as it used to be but you’ve just gotten used to living a magical life.
DR. DANIELLE: I hadn't actually put it in that perspective before. Two or three years ago I was holding on for dear life and now life is pretty easy. I had just told you this before we were recording, life is pretty vacationy here every day. When we were on vacation in Florida last month, I was like, can I go home, please? Life at home is so much easier than it is here with the kids and no support with the kids all the time, 24 7. I was just like, I love the beach, but I think I'm ready to go home.
SARA: That's nice. Isn't it?
DR. DANIELLE: But my point is that it's just become a new normal for me now to not feel stressed out, overwhelmed, or burned out all the time.
SARA: It's a nice exhale. I am definitely the pushiest when it comes to informing people about The Blu Room and trying to introduce people when they're brand new. I feel like I'm giving my biggest push at the beginning. It's not to make the sale, I just want them to have enough exposure. A one time experience is great, but three to six sessions is much better. It’s all about holding that vibration. A one time experience isn’t giving them the best chance to have a shift. If they just go in one time and think eh, it was okay, it was relaxing and then that's it. If I could just do it at least three times,, if you can do it within a week or two weeks, you'll know if it's worth your time and money. You'll just know and then you trust yourself. You don't need me to tell you to come back.
DR. DANIELLE: No, you never tell me to come back. I'm just like, I’ll see you on Thursday next week. Oh, that's a really interesting point too, because I think a lot of people in our types of professions, like we have this sense of coming back to like convincing people that they need it and trying to explain all the analogies. It’s like going to the gym one time and expecting these amazing results. You can lose 50 pounds or be able to deadlift 300 pounds, but you have to keep going.
SARA: Instant gratification.
DR. DANIELLE: I like holding the vibration. That feels much more in alignment with me now to think of it that way. Put it in that perspective than to think of it in regard to chiropractic maintenance terms. So we can wrap up on these two things. If there's a person that's hearing our conversation and thinking, oh, well, good for you, Sarah, I'm so happy that that worked out for you, but that won't work for me. What would you wanna say to them?
SARA: I would wanna know what part they are referring to?
DR. DANIELLE: Um, setting your fees at a higher rate or not listening to the advice that people are giving you that's not really helpful advice at all. All of it really.
SARA: Well I have this conversation at least weekly with people in different scenarios. “You're lucky.” Or, “well you were able to do that because of this.” So it's gonna go back to their belief system and what they believe. I don't think that we change people's belief systems. I think that people change through experience. They can change through will and they can change through experience. So I just find out what do you wanna do? What feels the most comfortable to you? So if we're talking about price and they're trying to decide between $30 and $45 for whatever it is that they're offering. Okay. Don't ask me what to do, don't ask your husband, don't ask the other massage therapist in the town, what they're charging. You're trying to compare yourself to all these other people's lives, which you know very little about. You can't even put yourself in their shoes. Right. So, ask yourself, what is it that you feel most comfortable with? If they say I think I'll get more people at $30 or I won't feel greedy. Then Okay. So I'm hearing $30. So obviously you wanna charge $30. We shouldn't even be having the conversation about $45. So start there, charge $30. Now have that experience. How does that work out for you?
It won’t take long before I hear, “Well, the other five massage therapists around the corner can get $45 for their half hour. These people are getting a deal! “ Are you gonna get resentful? Are you struggling at home to pay your bills? Because you're trying to give everybody the deal because you really don't think you're worth more. Have the experience to find out. People can't reach for something they can't accept. So if they can't accept the $45 in their world right now, it doesn't mean they're never gonna accept it. Maybe they have to have a few more experiences at $30 where they feel like they're really comfortable to have that reflected back. Then they can say, you know what $30 ain't so good for me. $30’s making my home life stressful. $30 is me paying my bills late. $30 makes me feel that I'm being taken advantage of. Now we got something to work with. Okay. Come back now. What are we talking about? Well, I'm thinking about increasing my fees to $45 or $55. So how does $45 feel? Well, $45 feels really good because so and so and so, you know, see, they have a whole new acceptance level because they've had those other experiences. So then they're ready to make the change. So I don't even know if I answered your question here, but that's just a story that popped in my head of trying to walk people kind of through the thing. They have to always go to the source, and ask, what do you really want? What do you feel good at? Because if you try to do anything else, it's gonna get thrown in your face anyway. So start where you're at. Have your experiences, give yourself permission to mold and keep changing for always working, going for what works for you.
People can't reach for something they can't accept.
Dr. Danielle: It's come with a lot of experience, but I've now every time I see a post that's in regard to increasing fees in like a chiropractic Facebook group or implementing a cancellation fee or a missed appointment fee and they're like, what do you think I should do? I'm like, you already know the answer, just do it. You don't need anyone else's advice. When I see those posts I get it because I used to feel the same way, but I can see now having gone through that experience and supported lots of people through it, that they're seeking validation externally sure to justify making the decision. That feels hard. So I like what you said though, start where you are and then work your way into new normals. Although I’m using that phrase kind of reluctantly.
So if people wanna learn more about you, about The Blu Room, where is the best place for them to go?
SARA: They can definitely head over to our website, bluroomwellnesscenter.com. The website has a lot of information about the different locations in the whole world. The Blu Room talks about our center in Washington, the services we provide, massage body work, blu room question and answers. We are also on Instagram and Facebook @bluroomwellnesscenter
DR. DANIELLE: We'll put links to all those on the, in the show notes.
Why Do Holistic Health & Wellness Practitioners Lose Their Passion?
SARA: Perfect. Yeah I love talking about health and wellness, so feel free to send any questions or give us a call.
DR. DANIELLE: That's a good thing, by the way, because you know, after having been in a profession like this, for as long as you have been, not everybody feels that way. Not everybody feels like they still love talking about what they do.
SARA: Do you know why that is? Or not that I have the only one answer, but what I have seen and maybe you've seen the same because people aren't listening to themselves yeah. They're doing their practices and they're doing their lives based on other people's wishes or external cues. So yeah. They're tired. They're tired!