Radical Massage Therapist - Brittany Long F1 250408 (1)

2:24PM May 1, 2025

Speakers:

Krista Dicks

Keywords:

AI tools

massage therapy

ChatGPT

evergreen emails

automation

business systems

client communication

personalization

content creation

marketing strategies

time management

client rebooking

introvert challenges

personal assistant

regret-free life.

Hello radical massage therapist, and welcome to another episode of the radical massage therapist podcast. I'm your host, Krista, registered massage therapist and clinic owner in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Lucky for you, I am not the radical massage therapist, but you are. You want to learn more about the benefits of a massage career, such as freedom, flexibility, financial success and, yeah, even fun. I hope this episode will inspire you to create a really awesome life around a sustainable massage career. My guest today is Brittany long, and she is someone who knows the secret to doing lasts while still doing it really, really well. Brittany long is the co founder of win with systems, and around here, she's known as the Queen of evergreen and an AI whisperer for entrepreneurs, and she's going to be sharing some wonderful tips for massage therapists. After a major health scare in 2016 Brittany made a decision that many of us wish we had the courage to make. She committed to building a business that supports her life, not the other way around. Now she helps business owners like you and me use evergreen emails, automations and AI tools to stop running on fumes and actually enjoy our time off. Imagine that she's a mom, a systems genius and a master at helping introverts show up without burning out. So if writing emails gives you hives, if you're tired of ghosting your marketing or if you've ever said I'm too awkward to follow up with clients. Brittany's here to help us fix all of that. Let's get into it, and let's welcome Brittany. Brittany, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I

am really excited to speak with you. I must have drank some like confidence tea when I decided to reach out to you, I was watching a presentation hosted by Elise Dharma, and you had a lovely little slide show that, you know, encouraged people like, if you did want to get in touch with me to talk more about AI, you know, follow this QR code, and I just found myself clicking on it. And now here we are. So I'm really grateful for the opportunity I protect predicted last year for my massage therapy audience that AI we should be implementing AI more into our practices. And so I'm really this is like, perfect. You're the perfect person to discuss this. Can you give a little bit about your background, as to how you came to know, AI, the way that you do? Yeah,

absolutely. So I kind of started my journey into entrepreneurship. I was a middle school science teacher and I had a cancer scare. I was like, Okay, this isn't what I want to do the rest of my life. I'm not immortal, turns out, and like, I maybe don't have as much time as I think. So I need to figure out what I want to do. So I went into VA work, and then copywriting, and eventually helped run a multi million dollar company, which was really, a really incredible experience. And I settled with copywriting, and that's basically just when you write words on the sales page or emails, basically any kind of words that sell something to somebody. You probably have a bunch of them in your inbox right now. And so I was like, awesome. This is what I'm going to do the rest of my life. I love it. It's great. I can do it on my own time. And then chat GPT came out, and I thought, Oh, this is going to be like, all the other AI tools. It's not going to be that good. And then I started playing with it. And I was like, Oh, crap. This is going to completely, like, take over my job. What am I going to do? And so I realized I had a decision to make. I could either pivot now and really lean into it, or I could basically put my head in the sand and kind of be scared of it. And a few years ago, before that, I had an opportunity to get into business, and I didn't because I was scared and all these things. And I look back at that and I think, man, what a missed opportunity. And I decided at that point, I'm never going to see an opportunity and miss it again like that. I don't want to have that same regret. And so when I saw AI and I realized this is just going to change everything in the next few years, I decided I'm going to lean into it. And it was scary, because I was like, What if I can't do a good job of this? What if I can't figure it out? But I was like, I'm determined. I'm gonna figure this out. And so that's kind of where it all started for me. And I ended up kind of falling in love with it, because I realized how much time it could save me, how much easier it could make things like, I have hobbies now. I'm not working all the time. It's great. And that all started because I leaned into it. So that kind of brings us to today and where I am now. Yeah,

amazing. I really appreciate you sharing your your story, and I love how you embraced it and pivoted and it's just it's gonna be really wonderful for the listeners to learn about what what they can do with it. As you mentioned, with your own schedule. AI has really freed up your time. I know that you take, like a Friday to Sunday, you know, time off, away from the computer, no messaging, nothing. And I think that massage therapists, the point of the podcast is to try to create a more sustainable career and to give ourselves more freedom to take time off. Staff. So there's a couple places that I do want to go with how we can implement AI into our practice. And then I want your feedback, of course, on whether or not it is, it is doable. The greatest thing, I think, for our career is that I don't think AI will take over it what it is that we do hands on wise, I think that our career is safe that way, but I think there's a lot more ways that we can free up our time and then even be more hands on with our clients if we want to be, by using the AI technology, one of the ways that I feel that we can use it and again, like correct me if I'm wrong, but we're introverts. Generally, I don't speak, maybe for all massage therapists, but generally we don't. We don't like to ask for their rebooking. We don't like to make that follow up phone call. We don't even like to if a client is a no show or they're late for their appointment, we get nervous even picking up the phone to call them to to ask, ask for that. Is there a way that we can use something like chat, G, P, T, to kind of give us a structure, or is there a way that we can implement something that would kind of calm, take away some of that, that nervousness?

Oh my gosh, yeah, it makes it a lot easier. So one of the things that I would do is go into chat GPT and basically say, here's who I am, here's what I do, and here's how I'm feeling about, you know, asking people to rebook or calling if they're late, those kind of things, and by telling it any information about yourself. So like it when I go into mine, it knows that I'm an introvert, like just introvert, extrovert, kind of right in the middle there, it knows that I'm an Enneagram seven, wing eight. It has all that kind of like personality type data in there as well, so that when I ask it to do anything. It's doing it based on my personality, and not trying to fit me into somebody else's box. And so once it has that information, you can go in and basically say, here's what's happening. Maybe you have somebody that's like a chronic Late Show or upper or, you know, they maybe don't show up at all. And so you can say, I'm working with this client, or I'm working with client x, if you don't want to put their name, and they constantly show up late. It pushes everything back. And then I feel weird, you know, ending the session on time because I feel bad about it, or whatever. If you're sometimes a people pleaser like me, you might feel that way. And so you put that information in, and you're like, How can I talk to them? Talk to them about this? Or how can I set these boundaries so this doesn't keep happening, and so that they get what they're looking for in the massage as well. And so it'll give you some ideas on how you can talk to them about it, or even signage that you could have up in the room, so maybe on the door, it's something that says, like, Hey, make sure you're not late, and here's why, or something along those lines. But it can give you ideas for that kind of thing, that kind of stuff to put up that doesn't necessarily require you to have that awkward conversation with them, but if you're feeling extra bold and you're like, today's the day I'm having that conversation, you can even practice that conversation with chat GPT ahead of time, so that you feel more comfortable going into it. I've had to have difficult conversations at different points in my career, and I use chat GPT for all of them now, and so what I do is I'll pull up my phone, and if you use the the mobile version of chat, GPT there's like this little microphone in the corner, and if you click on that, it'll be like, hey, Brittany, how are you today? And so I'll say, Hey, this is a problem I'm having. This is a solution or the outcome that I want, but I'm feeling nervous about talking to this person. Can you kind of like role play with me, so we can talk it out before I have to actually talk with them. And then when we're done, can you give me some suggestions on what I can do differently to make this a win win situation? And so now every conversation I go into, I feel a lot more confident and a lot more calm going into those.

Yeah, I love that. And you're like you said, you're creating that win win situation. That's sort of like one of the key points that you're you're putting out there with, with chat, GPT, and it also, when you mentioning how you're implementing like your personality, it really sounds like you want to go like as in depth as you can about who you are as a person, which I really love, and I imagine that helps to keep it more personal and more real, instead of people feeling like they're talking or receiving communication from a robot.

Yeah, it definitely the more you use it too, the more it understands you. And I'll even tell it like if it gives me a response that I'm like that doesn't help me at all, or I don't like how you said this thing, I tell it that too, because then it it can really personalize it even more for me. And so now on mine, I have, like a health coach and mindset coach that anytime I tell about my blood sugar, I tell it about everything, my lap results, literally everything. And then I have it kind of coach me through my next steps. And because I've worked with it for so long and given it feedback on what I like and don't like. It really does feel like it's a coach and not, not at all, like it's a robot,

right? So because it has this database of all everything that you've asked it in the past, and what you input, like information wise, then it's just building on that, that system you're never having to sort of repeat facts and. In and go from there exactly. Amazing. All right, so we've got the the idea for for scripts as well. They're like, as you said, of how we can communicate with our clients, things that we can put up in our practice. I'm thinking this is also really good for something like a cancelation policy, something that has to sound kind of polished and very clear. So I think those would be great examples. I mean, there's so much that that therapists can can take just from that section. Can you, can you also give us, like, if we're completely brand new to AI, we've maybe been a little bit nervous about using it. We're not really comfortable with technology. Like, where and how do we find chat GPT or or your preferred, you know, AI program? That's

a great question, and it's there are so many different AI tools out there right now that can be really overwhelming to be like, Where the heck do I even start? So chat GPT is where I recommend starting. You can go to chat gpt.com to sign up, and once you're there, it really walks you through how to use it. I wouldn't even worry about any of the other tools right now that are available, because you can do so much with chat GPT, I would spend more time focusing on that instead. And so when you go in, you'll log in, and then you'll basically tell it a little bit about yourself. And you can even say, you know, this is who I am. This is what I do. Here's my personality, here's how I like working with coaches, or how I like working, you know, with or some of the stuff that I need. But then you can even ask it to help you identify the ways that it can help you, and so you can get some really personalized information back from that. And it's not just with your business, too. It's also with your family, with your relationships, even I use it for my meal plans now, and this is just kind of a silly thing, I guess, but I've been using it to help me cook better meals. I used to think that I was just a bad cook, because my my recipes did not always turn out, or very rarely, I would even say, turned out good, like something was just always off. And I just thought I was a bad cook, but turns out I just have a low attention span, and so I forget things. I will, you know, be reading a recipe and I'll be on set two, but I forgot that I was on sub two, and so then I'm on set three, and I missed something completely. And then it turns out, you know, pretty bad, but with chat GPT, I basically say I want you to come up with a recipe for me for whatever homemade tomato soup, or I've done, you know, homemade chicken noodle soup, not just soups. I do go through so too, but that's just what's coming to mind. And from there, I ask it to come up with a recipe, and then I say anything my family doesn't like, so we don't put okra in anything. We don't like asparagus. We don't really eat seafood. So I give it that information, and then I ask it to come up with a recipe, and then I ask it to give me the instructions step by step. And I say, I tell I'll tell you when I'm done, so we can move on to the next step. And that alone like I'm so good at cooking now, and my food is so delicious, and it was just because I was missing stuff before. And so when I say that AI can help in so many areas, I mean, it really can help in pretty much every area of your life. Let's say that you finished a long day, and your joints, your hands, are feeling really sore, and you're like, man, you know, is there anything that I can do to kind of relieve some of the soreness and to make sure it's not continuing to happen? So then you go into chat, GBT, you tell it, what you do? You say, you know, here's where I'm feeling sore. Can you give me some ideas on maybe the lotions that I can use, or different exercises, different and of course, you all probably already know those exercises, because that's your job, but sometimes having an outside perspective to you can help as well.

Yeah, I completely agree. Sometimes just having another something tell us what to do just can really help. Because, yes, we know, but we don't always do it ourselves. But when you do have something giving it to you in like a, like a more tangible format, you know, a little checklist and a little great job at the end. Then, yeah, we, we will do that a little bit more. I love how you included the personal massage therapists again, are notorious for, like, not taking breaks or not eating between clients. And it would just be a really simple way to be, like, Listen, I've got, like, 15 minutes between each client, and I need to make up the table, and I need to have a snack. Like, I do want it to be nutritious. These are my allergies preferences. And then, like, can you give me some suggestions that'll give me energy for the day. I think that that would be a really helpful insight as well. I love to use it for organization. You know, I love a planner, but sometimes having AI is like having a personal assistant, and if I just put in what's happening in my day, like my clinic time, but then also other tasks that I need to get done that I don't feel like in my mind, like, I'm never gonna get them done. As soon as I plug it into AI, it gives me, like, it gives me, like, a breakdown, like, time. Like, no, you can. You only need, like, 10 minutes for this, and you can just work through it that way. So I really like it to help me organize, instead of thinking that I don't have enough time or wasting what. Stay half of my my day, one of the the other pieces, as you also mentioned, the exercises for massage therapists. But I think that we can also implement this as treatment plans for our clients. So we, we do typically start to see the same things, the same types of injuries, the same chronic pain. And we are we very often give Home Care exercises. I feel like this would be a really helpful tool to to put everything in one place and not having to constantly, like, retype and and go, go over everything, like every single time. I think this could save us some time. Can you see that working as well with a chat GPT tool.

Oh, yeah, absolutely too, yeah. Especially you're seeing the same thing again and again and again. You can even have a code that you use with chat GBT, wherever, whenever you use certain letters that it just automatically will fill in for you and write up the write up so that you don't have to do everything from scratch every single time. And let's say you're working with maybe like 10 clients, and they're the same 10 clients that you're working with every week. You can even have a project folder for them where you're like, alright, this is this client. This is client x, or client a, or whatever. And here's what they complained about this week, or, like, the things that were hurting this week. Here's the exercises that I gave them. You know, I need to put in a checklist so that I make sure they were doing the exercises when they come back in, I ask if there's any additional pain, just kind of creating that checklist as well. But yeah, absolutely, you can create those things for you so that you're not having to type up everything from scratch every single time.

Yeah, and I can imagine it's going to give, give almost like a, like a home care checklist, as you, as you mentioned, as well, that then you can send to the client so that they have, they have it on reference and again, it's not you redoing it every single time. You always just have that on reference for, generally, for, like, low back pain. These are the exercises that seem seem to work amazing.

Think about too how much that helps you stand out as a massage therapist as well. Like, if you have somebody, if you're going to two different people, and you have somebody that, when you're done, they send you this message that's like, Hey, here's some things to work on, versus somebody that they're like, Alright, see you later. Like, who are you going to go with? The person that that is taking care of you, or, you know, that's helping you take care of yourself. In between sessions too. It's a lot easier to make that decision of, like, Okay, I want to go with that person. So I think, I think that's one of the greatest ways, too, that AI can help, is helping you stand out. And so things like that, or even just saying, like, I want to stand out. There's X amount of massage therapists in my area. I really want to stand out. Here's the majority of the people that I work with. Like, here's some of the patterns I'm seeing. What are some things that I can do for them or or send to them that's going to help me stand out from others in the industry that are nearby? Yeah,

that's wonderful. As you're mentioning, other massage therapists in the area. I'm sure this can also help you get connected to affiliated professionals in the area as well. Is there any way that that you would communicate with chatgpt on that

absolutely. So if you go into chatgpt, there's this tool called deep research, and you'll see it when you go to ask in the chat and chatgpt, it says, Ask Anything. And so you go in there, and you can say, tell me all the people that I could potentially collaborate with or network with that have similar clients to me, but they aren't massage therapists, or even massage therapists that may need a backup, that they want to send someone to, you know, when they can't, when they're on maternity leave, when whatever's happening. And so then you click this little button that says deep research, and it takes it a little bit longer. So it takes anywhere from like 10 to 15 minutes, but it actually goes through and it does that research for you. So instead of you going on to Google, searching for everything manually, which takes forever, and like saying, okay, is this a good fit? I don't know. Is this a good fit, it will look through all of this for you, and it can even meet certain qualifications. So let's say you do a lot of prenatal that kind of thing, you can look for you can tell it. You know, this is specifically the clients I work with, these are the issues they're having, and it's going to sort through and look for the people that are going to be the best fit, that have those similar clients or same clients, that you can check out. And it's even going to give you links. It's going to give you how to reach out to them. So it's it's going to save you so much time. Yeah,

that is really helpful, because I do think we all want to connect with our affiliated, like, healthcare professionals, especially, like in our neighborhoods and but just you just saying, like, how can you, like, narrow it down to maybe, specifically the type of client that you want to see? And is this a good, good fit? I think that that's really, really helpful as well. Massage Therapists are not wonderful at, like, marketing, you know, content creation again, like we kind of, we don't know what to do, necessarily, in the online space. I think we could all use some advice. Is this something that AI could help us with as well? So

what I do for this is, I. Start with deep research again. And I'll say something like, what are the top questions that people are asking who would need a massage therapist? What are the top questions that they're asking this week or this month? And I ask it to do the deep research. It goes through all of that. It comes up with a bunch of questions. And then I'll say, Okay, I want you to create content around all these and so it'll create carousel text for me. It'll create real scripts. So it creates all of that for me. And then I ask it to act like a project manager and tell me which ones to do on which days. Maybe I want to do one a day or two a day, but I'll say however many I want to do a day. And then I ask it to say which ones I should do on which days. And so it comes up with the content for me. It writes out the content for me, and then it even puts it it like tells me when to do it. And so all I have to do is either create the graphic, which I can actually have it do for me as well, or record a video of me talking and using the script. And so whereas content used to take, I mean, hours and hours and hours to even come up with what you're going to talk about, and then hours and hours and hours to record and create the information, all that you can do it in probably about 10 minutes now, for the entire week, sometimes even

longer. Yeah, that's amazing. Yes, I love I love that. Can you explain a little bit more? You just mentioned that you can create an image with AI as well. How would how would that happen?

Yeah, so let me first start by saying, if you've ever tried this before and it was garbage, it they just went through an update, it's much better now. So if you tried it before and you're like, What are you talking about? Brittany, that was trash. I agree. It used to be trash, but it is much better now. So what you'll do is go into chat, G, P, T, and where it says, Ask anything. You're gonna click there and you're gonna tell it to create an image and then describe what you want the image to look like. So maybe it's a checklist. We talked about checklists earlier, of like, you know, I have somebody coming in in 15 minutes, what's the checklist I need to go through to make sure I'm drinking water, going to the bathroom, getting everything ready, eating a nutritious snack. So you can tell it what you want to do in the checklist, and it'll create that checklist for you. But you can also have it create the carousel or the real cover just by telling it what you want it to look like. So maybe you want it to look like a realistic photo of somebody giving a massage with the words come in for a massage. That's not great, like just, you know, pretend that's what it is. It will not only create the image for you. It's also going to put the words on it too. So instead of having to spend a bunch of time in Canva or some other tool, you can just have it all done in chat GBT. And it may not be perfect every time, it may not be perfect at all, but it's going to be a lot faster, a lot easier, and you're actually going to get it out there versus if you're trying to make it perfect on you know, some other tool is taking you a really long time. Yeah,

I think it just takes. Can also take practice something that is just important to get started and just try it out and play around with it, and then it'll only get more comfortable, and you'll get better at how to direct the tool to get what what you ultimately want. I think that the idea of creating, like, a carousel or a reel that way is really helpful as well. Because, again, maybe massage therapists don't feel comfortable being on camera. Maybe we just don't have the the time to do that filming either. So yeah, I think that that's, that's really awesome. Yeah, like that's, those were, like, my major areas that I feel like we could get started, you provided so much more value than than I could have even come up with, you know, on my own. Here I'm using AI like in my like on the side of like for Instagram, which has been really, really helpful. And I highly recommend that massage therapists, you know, start to dip their toe in in how they can use it more. Is there anything else that you feel would be important for somebody just like, get started with an AI tool?

Yeah. So when you first get started, you might be like, Okay, this is just a lot of stuff, and it is at first, but it's gonna get easier and easier the more you use it, just like any new skill. So any new skill you're it's gonna take some time to, kind of, like, flex those muscles and really understand how to use it. And it's the same thing with chat GBT. But one of the best pieces of advice I can give you is, when you go in and you're stuck on something, you're not sure what to do, just say, I'm stuck on this, I don't know what to do, and it'll help you walk through it. And if it's saying it sometimes, if I'm doing something brand new that I've never done before, and I go in to ask it to help me figure it out, it'll say it at a much higher level. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no. I'm like, I've never done this, so I have no idea what I'm doing. You know, talk to me like I'm in seventh grade, or talk to me at a seventh grade reading level, and really break it down into micro steps so that it's impossible for me to fail at this, and that helps a ton with just getting started. And I think the other thing I would say to massage therapists too is a lot of the massage therapists that I know and love are amazing at taking care of other people, but they often put themselves on the back burner or not even on the burner at all, like. Or they're like, in the other room, you know? And I think one of the best ways that you can use chat GPT is to start to take better care of yourself, if that's you know, if that's you, if you're like, I take care of everybody. I'm always the last person to be taken care of. And so what I would do there is going to chat GBT and say, basically, I'm great at taking care of other people. I love it, but I find that I'm usually the last one to be nourished, to be taken care of, to get rest. I always feel like I have to put everybody and everything ahead of me, and sometimes that's really hard. I'd like you to help me kind of work through that so that I can still care for people like I like to do, without burning myself out or without feeling like I'm not getting what I need, and have chat, G, P, T, kind of walk you through that. That's something that I've done because I'm one of those people also, like, I love taking care of people, but sometimes, you know, I don't do a great job of taking care of myself, and it has really helped me work through some like, deep, deep issues that have been there for years that I didn't even know were there and impacting me. And so that's just kind of a personal note, that it's been truly transformational using it in that way. And I think for a lot of massage therapists, it could be really helpful

for that too. Yeah, I definitely agree. Brittany, where can people learn more about working with you, or learning more information about how you you know, how you teach on using AI tools. You can find

me on Instagram. It's women thrive with AI also on YouTube as well. I'm in both places. We have a lot of really, really great resources there. We also have the podcast bombs thrive with AI and doable with AI as well. And the AI visibility code, so basically everywhere, and chatgpt ai helps me with a lot of it, so we can get that content out and be as helpful as possible to people

so Brittany like, just to close things out, you talk about building a regret free life for massage therapists who feel like they're constantly running behind what's one shift that they can make to bring a little more intention and ease into their work week? I

think one of the things that we can do, or one things that you can do as a massage therapist, is look at what your schedule looks like and think, okay, is this something that like, Am I satisfied with this schedule? Is this a schedule that aligns with the life that I want to live? And is it something that, you know, when I get to I always say death bed, Brittany, when I get to the end of my life, am I going to be okay with how I lived? And for me, there's been times here and there where I look at how I'm living and the schedule that I have and stuff like that, and I'm like, this is absolutely not what I want. I don't want to be sitting in front of a computer all day, or I don't want to be, you know, in a room, maybe for you, in a room, massaging all day. You love what you do, and that's amazing. But maybe you're like, it's a beautiful day. I want to press I'm in Florida, so you know, I want to go to the beach today, or I want to do this. I want to have that flexibility. And so if you find yourself ever in that position where you kind of looking at your days or your weeks and you're like, you know what, this just isn't it. For me, I think there has to be more to life. And how I'm doing this right now, what are ways that I can add in more living to my life? And then asking chat GPT about that and saying, Here's what I love about my life right now. Here's what's going really well. Here's what aligns with my values and with what I want long term. But here are the things that don't and what can I do about that? And maybe for you, it's like, I'm seeing way too many clients, and I'm super burned out and I'm super stressed and everything's sore. What can I do about that? Because I still need the money. So like, Man, I still love it, but how can I make money I need without really burning myself out? And so at that point, chat GPT might recommend a few things. It might recommend booking more clients that you've already had, so that you're not spending as much time like trying to cram everybody in. Maybe it's raising the price, and how does that look like? Maybe it's offering other services, and it gives you some ideas for that, but it can really help you identify, first of all, what is a regret free life to you? What does that look like to you based on your values, your needs? And then how can you go from where you are to creating that regret free life? And maybe you tell it within the next three months, I want to go from where I am to having a regret free life. Here's what I want it to look like. How do I get there? And it can help you go step by step and being like, All right, today, here's the one thing to do to get to that, or next week, here's the one thing to do to get to that and give you that

step by step plan. Amazing. I definitely think that that would be excellent advice for the particular audience that does listen to this podcast. We are looking for more freedom, flexibility. We want long term careers without the burnout. So yes, absolutely, that is definitely great advice. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah, thanks for having me. You.