riverside_copy_of krista _ jul 4, 2024 001_radical_massage the (1)

6:43PM Jul 6, 2024

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Krista Dicks

Mark

Amanda

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Hello radical massage therapist and welcome to the official 100th episode of the radical massage therapists podcast. Thank you for listening. My name is Krista. I'm a registered massage therapist of 18 years and a clinic owner of two years. I am not the radical massage therapist but you are you want to learn how to build a sustainable massage practice that provides freedom, flexibility, fun and financial success. This episode features to radical massage therapist and a few microphones hint hint. I was inspired to start this podcast the radical massage therapist podcast has of our two guests today. Mark and Amanda are co hosts of the podcast to massage therapists and a microphone, which they have been recording since 2018 and is probably nearing 500 episodes by the time this episode is released. Mark is currently inactive as a registered massage therapist which we do get into and a registered Kinesiologist. Amanda has a degree in kinesiology and is a registered massage therapist, Amanda and Mark co own Connett Institute in Toronto, which is a continuing education company for manual therapists. Amanda and Mark are two of the founders of massage therapy media, which is combining education and entertainment are body workers and they co run the Canadian massage conference as well. They are two innovative and creative contributors to the massage therapy profession and they present themselves authentically in all aspects of their work. This episode is a great introduction and conversation to learn more about how their business has evolved, how the podcast has introduced them to some incredible guests as well as brought on some controversy. But ultimately, they continue to present themselves honestly to share their interest while connecting to all aspects of the massage therapy profession globally. It is my pleasure to host Mark and Amanda on the radical massage therapist podcast. I hope you enjoy this episode

mark and Amanda, welcome to the radical massage therapist podcast. This is episode 100. And I am so excited and grateful that you have agreed to be the guests of episode 100. Wild. You guys have so many more episodes than that. Do you have any idea how much is in your catalog?

Oh, man, I think I just I think I just uploaded 472?

That would make sense. So we started in June of 2018. And I went back in our calendar today as I told Chris to just to be kind of prepared for this. And in 2018 alone, we recorded 73 episodes from June to December. Yeah, we were we were trying to go crazy. Yeah, we were doing like two or three recordings a week. So it was we've also deleted a couple

a couple of we had to delete and yeah, yeah. Talk about that if you'd like yeah, how much we can talk about that. But yeah, definitely talk about that if you'd like

you might have to be cryptic. Yeah. That's alright. It was one of my questions like Yeah, have you had to delete them? But before we get into all of that, maybe? I mean, I'm sure most of the listeners do know who you are. Market Amanda in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Mark, registered massage therapist registered. Can you see all the just Amanda registered massage therapist, both of you complete badasses in the massage therapy world and just health and wellness and then the podcast in general. Anything else that you would add to that description?

I don't know. I feel like I'm just a regular old person that hangs out in this very dark office because Mark somewhat like a vampire and doesn't like lighting. And I just didn't behind a screen all day like Mark and we do things.

The college might define us a little differently, at least from a letter that we got from them.

Right off the bat, you're like, let's jump into controversy. I'm just I'm just meet Mark and Amanda. Well, we'd

like it to sterber No, no, no, I don't think we'd like to think of ourselves as just regular RMTS. But for some reason, the governing body thinks that we have additional responsibilities because we have a public broadcast. And we're educators and I completely disagree with that part of their letter on just a regular old registering like anybody else just happened to do this other stuff. I don't think it didn't need additional responsibilities come my way or your way for doing any of this stuff for yours for that matter. Because you can be thrown into that category as well. There's,

there's always that question it comes with celebrities to and we've discussed this, like, does the size of your following dictate how you should behave in the public's eyes like are you forced to be a role model of sorts if you have a large hall Doing you're not. And so yeah, what Mark is referring to is the fact that over the six years, seven years, I don't know when was 2018. Guys, we're in season seven, season seven. So over that time, we we have gained a following you know, Krista introduced us as badass as I don't know, if I feel like a badass, like I said, I'm just like, I'm like a soccer mom, you know, like, I'm just so far from being a badass. But we have been doing this podcast since 2018. And we touch on every topic, nothing is off limits. And we bring in topics that maybe some people would be afraid to talk about things that are maybe taboo, or they wouldn't talk or they wouldn't talk about it. And we do this intentionally because we're massage therapists, we work with people, every aspect of the human experience applies to us. And so we like to bring on people hear their stories, whether they're a massage therapist, whether they're a client, whether they work in some field, that's ancillary to what we do, we exactly, we just like to hear people's stories, because everything is relevant to us, everybody is something interesting. And because of that, we have sort of picked up a following. And then you know, some of the other projects we do, like Mark said, we're educators, we've now got massage therapy media, we're producing the Canadian massage conference, we people notice, I guess what we're doing. And so some of those people think that we need to behave a certain way and be more, I guess, quite professional,

I get where it comes from. And then you toy a little you toy around with that line of unbecoming under the massage therapy act, under misconduct because there is no definition of unbecoming, so you're left with, you know, whatever the governing body feels is unbecoming of a massage therapist. And then whatever precedent was set, prior to that, it's a really weird thing to navigate.

But we're just plain old RMTS thinking in our dark room, that's all.

I mean, every episode is no matter the guest, everything has always been out of curiosity. Everything's always been informative. Like you, you go into some guests and topics and really not knowing what they're gonna, what they're gonna bring to the conversation and you pull out some really great information and some really great insight. You do you do touch on the taboo stuff. I mean, even like, early days of like cannabis, you know, like, you were bringing that to the forefront? And, and any any other topic I do, I do understand, yeah, I understand like, where, where you're coming from on that. And you've developed your following because of who you who you are, like, if people are going to follow you there, they're gonna have to know what they're what they're getting into. And I don't think that I think the bigger your, your fan base, I think you run the risk of trying to conform, like, there's a lot of, you know, influencer examples of who they were before they developed a big audience. And now they they almost conform to what the audience wants, and they completely lose themselves. And I think that it's so wonderful that you've maintained that essence, and no matter what this the, you know, is being thrown at you, you continue to just be authentically yourselves.

Yeah, you, Rick,

I was watching an interview with Rick Rubin. And there's a clip that Rick Rubin talked about artists, we talked about this on the podcast a little bit. And Rick Rubin is pretty much saying, like, an artist needs to do not the artist, but you get the idea. And artists needs to do stuff for themselves. Like you can't think about what's the how's the audience going to receive it, and I'm trying to give the you really just have to do what feels right to you. And you're going to repel a whole bunch of people, which is cool, which is what it should be doing. And then you'll attract people that really dig it. Yeah. And that's the idea. We just kind of try to just stay let's just do what we do. And and let's see what happens. And

you know, we get so much more love for it. In the beginning, we definitely received our fair share of hate mail or comments of, you know, you guys shouldn't do this. We would get we would get messages saying like your content is so good. Why do you have to use unprofessional language? Or, you know, why do you have to because this was types of jokes or whatever it was, and we don't get that anymore because we have repelled those people they know that we're not their their flavor, and that's okay. And now the people that follow us follow us like you said, Krista, because they actually like who we are, they like what we do, and they're willing to come along for this ride. And they know we're not catering to anybody other than ourselves. Like we want to put out material that we think needs to be published or

stuff that we just want to we just want to talk about, we have a guest that comes in and really you're interesting to us. So let's let's talk and you know, if someone tunes into that episode, and cool and if they don't cool too, okay.

And we have such a variety we usually can appeal to different people. You know, you might hear something that doesn't really appeal to you. But the next episode maybe does because we try to put out quite a bit of variety. But again, like Mark said, it's stuff that interests us. Yeah, yeah,

I agree. That's should be all that matters. If it interests you and you're having these great calm For stations and just learning, then it shouldn't, it shouldn't matter like what the what the outcome is, in some, some episodes will get more lessons than others of course. And so like the the motivation for my podcast was also along a similar vein where like, I wanted to do it for myself to talk to other massage therapists or people in the field, pretending like get to people alley access to certain people. And then also I just felt like I had some opinions myself about how what maybe made me feel successful in the field and then and then bring some of those ideas to the table and they're not probably all popular I, I'm, you know, it's just it just felt like it was something that I needed to do similar to your point about the artists like, I would feel stifled and like, if I didn't get this out, then I would be doing myself a disservice to just just do it for myself and get out there.

Can I tell you a fun fact, Krista goes along, saying, so you're saying fun. It is very fun. This fun fact is actually that Krista was the first other podcaster that we ever interviewed on on April 3 2019. She was the first one we went on to interview DOM who did the spirit of arm T Su Roo who had love yourselves and all of these other podcasters we had MTP on, but you were the very first in April of 2019 that we decided, oh, there's other massage therapists who do podcasting. Let's get them on here. And we loved the concept. The radical arm TEKS are like that's, it's kind of what we do. But different. You know, like we're trying to talk with other like, just really interesting people, not necessarily just about massage, but about all the other cool stuff that goes on in their life. Okay,

well, thank you, that was a huge boost for me when you invited me to just just share that my podcast was coming out. So that was, again, just a demonstration of the collaboration that shouldn't be happening in our industry. And that doesn't always happen. So we I think you are great examples of bringing those people together. Yeah,

I mean, that's what we love to do. Our our motto for the Canadian massage conference for the last couple years has been connecting therapists globally, like that's all we want to do is, is make this a less isolating profession, be able to share ideas, even with the massage therapy media, when we started doing that you got to get treated here, which we're going to bring back soon, allowing people to see inside other people's treatment spaces and what they're doing like these things are, are fun and educational for therapists. And I think it just makes everybody a little bit better. And why not? Yeah, and why not share ideas? We don't need to be in competition with each other. There's billions of people on the planet, you'll find patients, you'll find clients, you're fine. Yeah,

no, absolutely. What have you guys started the podcast in 2018. A little bit of a backstory. I mean, I've been following you guys, since you maybe like since Instagram with the content Institute. And when did you when did that get started for you guys with the content Institute.

That's a little of a shaky backstory. Because we started we stopped we started again.

100 officially started in 2013. Yeah, we started with one course it was our business course, Amanda was approached by a retired CPA and wanted to run a massage therapy business class. So we started with that, and we ran it twice that year. And that felt really good. And so then we just created something else. And then that went really good. And then we had those two courses just for a little while. And

then there was those rich kids for two

years that we just ran those two courses. And then the end of 2015, I quit my day job because I was I had it up to here with it. And I was teaching at a private career college. And I did that for eight years. And in my eighth year, I'm like, I'm done. And just kind of walked away from that and sat in my bed for three months, probably. And I just wrote course after course, after course, after course. And so then we really brought it to life. Khan it is to 2016 Yeah.

2016 is when it kind of exploded, and we were running multiple courses a month, we had a whole course calendar, like we rebranded. We started going to the massage conferences and expos to like, get our name out there. And then by 2017, like we just couldn't believe the demand. Like we were having to add more and more stuff to our calendar because people wanted it. And by the end of 2017, we realized, like, at this point, we need to have a physical office space, like we were just literally running out of our

home well and then we were also we were also renting classrooms in schools, we're using hotel conference space, and that really limited to us to really only doing stuff on weekends. But that was actually a really cool time for for me in in work because for a little while I was actually only working weekends.

Yeah, Monday to Friday. He was home. Yeah, that was honestly for me that was incredible because I was home with a baby Eat and a toddler. And I had him with me five days a week. Like we literally had a parenting team it was, I was so spoiled when

I was treating really, really hard time just enough to maintain my license type of thing. Yeah. And then other than that I was teaching on weekends. So Monday through Friday was really kind of free time for me. Yeah. And then then we got stupid, then we decided in 2018, to get a physical space, get an office and get a class.

I think it was the smartest thing we ever did, actually. Because then mark could do like one on one. And he, you know, he started doing us, he

freed us up to now do something during the week, right? Because I couldn't rent a school classroom during the weekdays, right? And then, with some of the schools that we were renting from, I guess, when they saw the course calendar, and how many dates that we were asking for, they decided to like double our rent, and like, okay, cool. Yeah, you can have all these dates. But this is the new price for and we're like, this is stupid. Why am I renting all this when I can just go get my own physical space and have it for a couple grand more for the year. So then we got our own physical space. So that was the beginning of 2017 2018 2018 2018. And then the cmto, sends out an email in July or June of 2018, saying that we're changing the quality assurance program. CEUs are no longer a thing, you don't need these 30 credits in three years, we don't know what we're going to replace with. But starting July 1, that's what it is.

And that was my first near death experience. And so then, it

was it was it was rough, because, you know, we had our whole course calendar, we had a new office space. And then within two weeks, we had a whole bunch of people emailing and phone calls saying, Can I get my money back? Can I get my money back? I don't need I'm talking like

an easy 10 grand? It was it was like, it was unreal? I mean, in the first month? Oh, yeah. The first the first month, it was an easy like, we just literally handed like $10,000 people saying, well, I don't need CPUs anymore. So I'm not going to take this course. And we were like, What are we gonna do in

our cancellation policy has always been, you know, really reasonable for the participant. Basically, if you can't take the course you don't want to take the course you can't make the course it's like a full refund. Like we don't, we don't hold anything, we just want to deliver the course to someone that wants to take it. So you know, we see other education providers, where it's like, oh, here's a deposit non refundable. Like we just never did that that was and it's never going to be part of the game plan. But you can see how

they ask that aired. Yeah, that's okay.

We actually only got 2018 Being a very, we did better in 2018 than we did in two though,

so that, but that is how the podcast was born. Since you were mentioning we existed since then it was because we needed one some other way to fill our time. So we didn't just think about how terrible our life decisions had been up to this point. And it was another way of marketing and keeping our voices in the massage community. The

original thought on the podcast was to do a post course wrap up. Yes. And that was the original thought were okay, we've taken this course on Saturday, anyone that wants to stay back and talk about the course, talk about what you liked, what you didn't like, what you can use what you can't use, that was the original idea. And we're going to use it to market of course, hence, you probably see like the first couple are like, you know, reflexology someone talking about reflexology, like a 12 minute broadcast, because we got a reflexology class. So I wanted to have the instructor come in and talk

about the class. So we have a one on pelvic health, we have one on business, all of our classes. And so

that quickly kind of changed when we realized like, I don't, I don't want to do this, this is kind of weird. Having this post course wrap up. And then on top of that, it was really difficult to find someone after sitting in the class for eight hours saying, Yeah, I want to stay back and talk about this. It was more like I just want to get the hell out of here. Thanks for the info. I had a great day. But I'm done here. So so that idea dropped off really, really fast.

So then how did you start getting like your regular guests? Was it your your invite, invite? Or did people start kind of inviting themselves on? Well,

I have a little bit of a timeline, and then I'll let Mark speak to that cuz his memory is really good for this stuff. But like I said, I went back and looked in the calendar, the average length of an episode in 2018 Out of those 73 we recorded was 37 minutes because like he said, we were just kind of like marketing our stuff and whatever. And I one of our first episodes, I mean, like within the first 50 We had a couple of marks friends on who ran a gym and therapy center, just down the street from here where he used to work. And that was our first like, really long episode for like it was Yeah, and that was kind of like he felt really good doing that. That was one that I wasn't involved in in the beginning. Like I wasn't on every episode even though we trade off. Yeah, we trade off a little bit because again, we had really really small children like we didn't quite have this thing, formatted the way it is now. That was the first one and then just a few episodes after that. We had somebody in who recorded an episode of some probably Have something to do with sports or athletics or whatever. And we just after the episode, the three of us were just sitting around like shooting the shit talking. And Mark said, we should be recording this like this is gold. And in the moment I couldn't really see like, why would we record like we're literally just talking shit, right but like what? And he said, Let's just put this on. And that was the birth of the unprofessional hour. That was the first one. It was in August of 2018 deeming August of 2018. We just sat telling funny stories like funny things that have happened to us as therapists, things we never would have expected. And we're like, this is kind of interesting. So then we kind of went on with the unprofessional hour, maybe like, once every couple of weeks, we'd have one. And then in September of that year, is when we had the guest Belinda, I know Krista asked me if there was like episodes that stuck out to me. That episodes still stands out to me as even though it was one of the first like one of the earlier ones before we really had our format. And one that guest was a hilarious storyteller. But that's where I really started to see like, what this podcast could be like, if you listen back to that episode, it was September 30 2018. If anyone wants to reference it, I was laughing. So like it was so real. I was laughing so hard. I couldn't even get words out. And I was like, see, this is fun. Like, this is something I think people would be interested in hearing. We can all relate. It was just it was the funny shit that happens to RMTS. And it was so relatable, that that's kind of when I started to see like, Okay, I see where we're going with this podcast and the kinds of stories that we can allow people to tell in here, because that was probably one of the first like riskier ones that we did. Yeah.

But then to go back to your question about, do we find people to they find us at the beginning, it was a lot of a topic that we thought would have been interesting. Yeah. And then we would go hunt out a guest for that. So for example, when we had Lydia yermakova, and she is a she is a lawyer in Toronto, and her law firm deals with regulatory matters. And we're like, Hey, this is something great RMT should hear about, they should hear from a lawyer who deals with regulatory matters, because you're going to need this type of person. You know, if you end up in any hot water with the college, so we went and found someone that did that, right. We wanted to have on a sports psychologist. And so we went and found someone that's a sports like so we started off like that a lot.

A lot of them are specialty episodes like when we talked about things like mental micro dosing when we talked about things like the neurofeedback technology, when we talk about tinnitus, when we talked about auricular therapy, like all of these things that are sort of ancillary to what we do. They're not you know, they're not within our scope. But we should be aware of these as bodyworkers. And like Mark said, there were certain series we decided to do, like we did a whole series on mental health. And we had people on that talked about Generalized Anxiety Disorder, agoraphobia, synesthesia, addictions. And we went and found these people, because we wanted to record episodes, or

those are some of my favorite ones. They were Yeah, they were really, I love all the stuff that we do. But some of those pieces that you probably don't hear in a massage therapy podcast are the ones that hit the best with me, like, I'm never going to like the episode we did with with addiction with this, this guy, Steven. And we found Steven through a friend I was just put it out to anyone that I knew. I'm like, Do you guys know anyone that's willing to come on the mic and talk about their addictions, their alcohol problems, wherever the case is. And one of my friends is like, I know this person, and he seems pretty cool. Do you want him on and I did. And his name is Steven. He was a he's an alcoholic. He's a crack addict. And we sat down and had a really frickin open, interesting conversation about. And so that's when we started calling some of these things like under the sheets, when when someone just gets really deep down with us, and it's never planned. It's out of nowhere, under the sheets actually came out. When I went to go do a podcast with a living with Olivia, she's she's a she's a colleague, I went to massage therapy school with her. She used to do fitness competitions. And so I was going there to really talk to her about the fitness competitions that she did, because when she was in massage school, she wasn't that at all. She was like, you know, drinking, smoking her mouth all the time. And so she really did like a full one ad on her life. I thought that would be super interesting. And then in that podcast came out a whole frickin crazy story how her mother was ill and her sisters, one of her sisters took her mother away and won't let anyone visit her. And then shortly after, we recorded that podcast, probably about a week after she sent me a message and she's like, I just found out my mother's been dead for the last 11 months. Like I didn't know, because my sister kept everyone away. And bla bla bla and I was like, Whoa, so she got really, really deep on stuff and that kind of gave birth to the under Yeah, that's funny. Those things happen just through conversation. It's not like we plan like hey, come in and talk about something. It's we just sit down with a therapist completely You unscripted, unplanned and this is what comes out of the conversation that we just wrote the rotaries

that we did plan. Like the Nip Tuck series, we did a whole series on plastic surgery, the body rubs series that gained a lot of attention, both positive and negative. But we thought, you know, this is something that people don't know. And so if you're unfamiliar with that, that's where we actually did some research to find out what's legal and what's not when it comes to body rub parlors. And we actually sat down with somebody who owns a legal very legal body rub parlor and interviewed her and found out about that business because you know, a lot of RMTS gets solicited for services that had we're not offering and we just wanted the education, but that that gained both positive and negative attention. There was a lot of people that were like, Wow, thank you, that was like really interesting to learn about. And then there were other people again, who thought to me, you're putting them side by side intentionally. And we thought, No, we're trying to do the exact opposite to show like this, this industry does exist. And there are people who don't know the difference, because they just hear massage. That

was a three parter that was started off with I think I was just talking about the industry, the erotic massage industry. And then I was trying to describe what happens and like the difference between like, the legal side of it, licensed body rub parlors, and like the illegal side of it with these quote unquote, holistic successors. So that was the first part of that. And the second part of this series, I went out to a whole bunch of holistic centers and body rub parlors in, in my neighborhood, it was my second experience slightly around the moon. And I went in to see what it was about, and how many places I can get a massage therapist receipt for, for getting an erotic massage. And I was kind of shocked

30% of the places he went into offered an RMT received. Yeah.

And then the third of that series was when we had Emily muse on who owns Muse massage spa, licensed water repellent? Yeah. Because really interest but

that yeah, so that was an example Chris of like, when we just thought this would be an interesting topic. And so Mark went out and found somebody to come out. And she was really, she was hesitant, because she thought these RMTS are going to attack me like they're not going to be and we had to explain to her like, we're not looking to attack you, you know, this is your business, your legitimate business. We want to learn, we want to understand, like, what the legalities aren't how this operates and how this works. Because most people actually before that episode, whenever we had a lot of people saying, I had no idea there was even a legal side to this, I just assumed that, quote, rub and tug is completely illegal. No,

those were some of my favorite episodes, to be honest, because you really got into the like the weeds of it, and you sought out of prep, like somebody who is in business. And she was wonderful. She had so much business knowledge and her stories about how you know, the different places that she's worked at. It was really, really well done. I'm so I'm so glad that you you did put those episodes out there. And I imagine yes, there would have been positive and negative. I definitely appreciated the education myself. I didn't see them. I didn't see you putting them side by side, I definitely saw the difference. They were excellent. And like most of your long form, I mean, most of your episodes are long form. Now, I think and I think that those are really interesting because you that's when I don't know I learned obviously more about the person, but they do start to share what makes makes them successful. Like within the long form conversation. There's just so many little tidbits that we can apply to our own practices. I mean, Nikki is is one of probably your most I don't have, how many times have you had Nikki on the podcast?

I did not count. But she's definitely the most frequent. I want to say six. Yeah, and her first episode actually wasn't until I think 2019. And it was, you know, after she travelled, and so we started having her on like to talk about her travels and getting massage and all these different countries. And, you know, we quickly realized, like, this is a woman who's got a lot to say, and a lot of opinions. And we immediately saw like how valuable she could be to the massage world. And we wanted to give her the platform. So you know, that's where the Unpopular Opinions came from. The funniest thing is, we you know, we titled it unpopular opinions at her request. But it was amazing to see how many other therapists supported her and said no, like, we do think this way. It's just not everybody feels empowered enough to speak up and say something, they just kind of follow the crowd and you know, go with the status quo and do what they think they're supposed to do. And Nikki, I think was, you know, this tiny little human you know, she says it all the time, so I'm not being insulting. She's a very small little person, but she's loud and will absolutely say like, this is what I think and this is how and she actually gained a lot of support. So she we shot her back a lot and

she said It's in quite nicely with what we do.

Yes, she does. Yeah.

Now of any of your guests like with Nikki being, you know, sharing her unpopular opinions, has anything come back on them from the college for being a guest and speaking their, their minds? We did episode?

No, well, we've got a couple of deleted episodes because no, okay, so we've had people come on the podcast and talk about their experience, and it will tell them right away that you probably shouldn't be saying this kind of stuff. And if you want me to remove things from the recording, I will no problem. And then most of the time, they're like, No, I want this to go out there. And we've had people had some stuff happen to them in like decision.

Like, what are the calls with the call and investigation during

investigation, what they've said on the podcast has been used against them in a negative way, so that somebody

actually lost a job because of things that she spoke about that she shouldn't have been. And again, like Mark said, we try our very best and let people know like this, we do have a larger following. And this does get heard by people that you might not think it does. You know, we did an episode that went all the way up to the ministry level. And like you, we couldn't have imagined it would have, but we you know, we were talking about unethical things that happen in private schools. And that went up there. And there were private schools who were getting questioned, like, are you guys doing this shit. So we always tell people like anything, you're going to say, you never know who's going to hear it, the college will most likely hear it because as Mark said, they, you know, they have their thoughts on what we do in general. So they're going to listen, and, you know, just be careful, either don't say anything that would incriminate you, or like, you know, don't use your name, or you know, don't use the names of places or whatever. But, you know, we can only do so much people have free will. And then they'll say something and consequences are consequences. But

we've taken down a couple at the request of people. Yeah, we've had, you know, someone contact us say, Hey, can you remove this, I just this is, I'm not the same person. I don't really want to be found on social platforms Anyway, well, that will remove it. We've had someone else that came in and talked about cannabis way at the beginning. And she's like, Hey, like, I can't have this out in space anymore. Because I'm trying to get a job in the States. And it's a whole different vibe there. So can you get rid of it. And we did on we recently had a podcast about a a educational institution. And we received a letter from a lawyer saying this is all defamation, so please remove it. Which to be honest with you, I would have loved to have kept it but that's not a hill I'm gonna die on I don't care about this college all that much. And, and our guests was great. But at the end of the day, like I'm not dying on the Hill of your beliefs. I'll die on my own Hill. Yeah, exactly. So we just complied. And we removed it. So just a couple of times on this topic. Yeah, I just wanted money. I just want to go. The one paying for a lawyer and all the rest of it. But you know, anyway, you get the idea. Yeah.

What was the tipping point for for the podcast? Then? You know, starting in 2018? Was did you find that there was one episode that just completely took off? Or particular topic? Like when did you start to realize you were to RMTS, and a microphone, and people were drawn to the podcasts or your podcast is being shared?

You know what I don't, I don't look at stats. I maybe have looked at stats. So like when we first started the podcast, like the first month or so. And ever since then I've decided I'm not going to bother looking at the stocks. I don't care how many people listen, I'm thankful that people listen, but I'm like these numbers. I don't want to know them. Because I don't want it to influence what we do. Because again, what we do we feel is just from from our insights. So I think the biggest tipping point was when people started to say, Hey, I listened to your podcast, so it will send us messages on social platforms. Like that was a really good episode, or I'm listening to this while I'm walking my dog or like

when we went to the rmta Oh, awards dinner in 2019. And people knew who we were like, we thought we could just slip in and hang out in the back. No people knew who we were. Yeah. So we're like, Oh, okay. People are listening to us. All right. Yeah. So we've more figured about it. Speaking of the rmta Oh, actually, I just realized again, in doing my my homework today, that the first time that they were on was actually in 2018, when Andrew Warren, and we've had the rmta on multiple times since then, I think. I think that actually also like, said to me, like, okay, like, people do care because the association themselves, like wanted to be on because they realize like, oh, okay, these guys are hitting the community, right? Like they're there. Talking to RMTS. So we've had the rmta on a number of times. I think that was a big thing, but it's a turning point for me was actually what we already talked about the Nip Tuck episodes and And the body rub episodes because they started so much conversation. And I couldn't believe the amount of conversation that was happening around those. I was like, oh, people are actually really listening to us. And then of course, Nikki telling us that she listened to us all through her travels and wanted to come on. I was like, okay, like, we've got a following. But like Mark said, We never looked at stats. So for all we knew we were talking to no one. Yeah. And

then it's once once we started getting people reach out, like, Hey, I've got this, or I do this, or I just like to come hang out on the couch, or whatever the case is. Yeah, it's really going as people listen to it. So yeah, like

the super fan episodes. We had those videos on, we had John on like, and these were people who have heard just about everything. Yeah.

Yeah, amazing. And then with your with your podcast, you mentioned that, like the podcast was really a way for you to, you know, keep keep in with like your business to promote content Institute, ultimately. I mean, I, I know you talk about it, but it's not like at the beginning of the episode, you say, you know, this podcast is brought to you by the content Institute. But people indirectly find out about it through the podcast, and how's how's that worked out for you? Have you seen a return that way? Plus, please share what else has developed since the content is the two pieces of it. You

know, what I con Ed's growth really isn't related to the podcast. I don't have many people that come in and say they took they took a course because they heard us on the podcast, or they know us through the podcast, that that has really happened.

Khan, it's been a just a steady entity. Like in the social media world for years like Khan, it used to be the main platform that mark would post to, obviously, that has slowed down over the years, because it just kind of does what it does. And people when they need continuing education, like they're familiar with us, they're familiar with the logo, they know what we do we have good. We've had good reviews of

the legwork on that one already. Yeah. And the podcast to me is kind of like the alter ego of Khan. It is it is,

you know, to Chris's question, the the amount of things that have come out of the podcast have been incredible. So like I literally wrote notes. So just as an example, something that I might not have even thought about. But when we first met Heather, Heather reversed, it was June of 2019. And we had her on telling her comeback story. We've done so much work with her since then, it was one simple meeting. And she has an I'm not, you know, I'm not taking credit for any of her success. She's a hard working person. But I think having her on the couch and telling the story. She then went on to do a podcast. And she's got like a whole side hustle with the social RMT. And we have her come in and do videos for massage therapy. Like that was a relationship that kind of grew out of the podcast. And I love working with Heather, I think she has so much knowledge and like can do so much for RMTS. So that was a big one. Scott and Monica, our current business partners and massage therapy media. We had them on in August of 2019. Just to help them promote the Canadian massage conference. And then through hanging out with them. Like we realized how similar we were the minute Monica said, it's like at Friday, I was like, Oh, you're my friend. Okay, cool. Well, she said the fucked up Fridays. I don't know what it was. There was like, okay, me and you, girl. Okay. We, you know, we got to know them really well. And then ended up forming a company together working on the conferences with them. So I mean, that was, that was really huge speaking gigs we get from people invite us to things we got invited to the Manitoba Association Conference for their 50th anniversary to moderate their panel because they like sort of our style of interviewing. So that was really cool. That

was kind of frustrating, though, because they invited us to do it based on what we do on the podcast. And then when we got that we had to stone down. Yeah, okay, well, we want it like the I said, don't say this and talk to me like, oh, well, that kind of really is different than we thought it was going to be. But

we also because of the podcast we in. When was it in 2022. We asked Grace Chan and Christine Sutherland to be guests. You know, Sutherland Chan. And they agreed. And that was just a really great episode to record. But again, it started a long lasting relationship with us and them. And they've both gone on to speak and teach at the Canadian massage conference. We had Christina as the keynote speaker. This past year, Grace did a MTM tuck the year before they both taught a class together.

Yeah, I feel like we were almost like a catalyst in them like teaching together. Yeah. And it was again, which they haven't done in decades. That

was really cool. I was just like, really happy to be a part of that whole thing. So yeah, I mean, there's so many things that the podcast has brought out for us and so many opportunities it's given to us so even if it didn't directly grow Con Ed, which was what it initially was set out to do. We didn't need that

it became its own its own thing, which is cool, ya know, we're

doing things like You know, going to the massage championships and the black massage therapist conference. And you know, like Mark said, getting invited to all of these different conventions and things because of all this legwork that we did. Yeah,

it's awesome. And do you feel more inspired in the profession? Now? Like, because you get to see so much more and see what's what's going on? Or do you? Do you see where we still need development?

Oh, you're looking at me? You want me to answer that question? First,

and then no.

I mean, I, I'm a naive optimist always. And I think that the people that I meet in this profession are incredible. I meet therapists that I'm like, man, and what if I was a new therapist, I would want you to mentor me, I see things that people are doing that I'm like, the creativity and innovation here is just wild. And so when people tell me that, you know, they look up to what we do, and they like what we do, and like, look at you, like look at all of these people. So for me, I feel really inspired by the profession. I think most therapists are doing really great work and are really awesome. There's always improvement that can be made. And I think we're always headed there. Now, with all of these different podcasts, like with yours with ours, with, you know, conferences, becoming a thing again, I think it's only gonna get better. I think people want to improve more. I'm currently working on the latest issue of the massage therapy media magazine. And it's about being conscious as a massage therapist. And you know, we're going into topics that are a little deeper than just what we do every day. Because we can now like we can, we can go a little bit deeper into things. Massage Therapists appreciate it. They want it they're like hungry for education and informations. Yeah, I think it's more inspirational than frustrating, in my opinion.

My answers I agree with you, oh, Eddie Murphy, everything she said.

Yeah. I, when they when they announced that they were changing the CTU style I, I was okay with it. Because I think, you know, when when Amanda mentioned there that we can now go deeper, we're not so much on that superficial level of like, what techniques we're learning and how we're applying them. And we're not just throwing our money at the next course that's coming through town, we can be more specific about where are we, we want to focus our practice. And then now it does include things like self, you know, self development, and even business, you know, courses that I think it's been a great thing. And I think that your path as well to bring all of these elements together has probably been an advantage to to your business as well, which says you can go with a flight you've you pivoted just a little bit. But

yeah, I feel like we can do just about anything now between the park class and massage therapy, media and Con Ed, we've got all these different avenues. And I like I said to him teasing the mic is like Konitz Alter Ego. I think that's exactly what it is, you know, when we're, when we're teaching courses, you know, we're professional, whatever that means. And we, you know, we get the material that needs to be put forward. And then we have the podcast where we can talk about anything and everything in between. Yeah,

well, what I love about I mean, your your early marketing, especially, I think it's still quite present though with Con Ed Institute was I mean, your your slogan is Be bold with your pursuit of education, which is just like just got a little bit of an edge to it, like choose, like, choose what you want to do and choose like, this is like the best, like opportunity for you to learn it your way. But then part of like, some sometimes there'd be a quote that was like punched today in the face, you know, like, something like that. It would be great because I could see parts of your personality within, you know, like that professional bubble as well.

Yeah, for me, it was really important to get out the personality of, of any one of these things that we do. Because the last thing I want is a disconnect. I don't want someone coming in to take a course and they're expecting, you know, slacks and dress your dress shoes and ties. And then you get me in a tank and a rock t shirt and tattoos, you know, I mean, so for me, it was really important to say like, Hey, this is what we're all about. This is what we are like, this is what we do. And if you're on board, then cool, we'll probably have a really good time with it. You'll learn some stuff. And right away this will just put up the fence for someone that's like no, I don't want to be around this person. I don't want to learn from them. Or I don't even think I'm capable of learning from them because they probably have no idea what they're talking. But that's important for me to for me to put that out there that way you know what you're getting. Yeah, and yeah, so you know, punch punch punch today in the face.

Yeah, no, it's it's awesome. With 472 episodes. You said like what? 787 seasons. Unbelievable. When do you and with everything else that's going on? I mean, when do you guys sleep?

Well Being that we're in our seventh season, my youngest child is now seven. Like we started this and she was just a little baby. Actually, her birthday is June. So when we started this, it was just before she turned one. And now she's seven. So, I mean, over the years, our time has freed up a little more at home. And I know there's gonna be a lot of parents saying, No, it has no, I guess I still have to, like drive them around to activities and sports and this and that, yes. Okay. But they don't need me constantly to be at home, you know, they are allowed you to build blocks with them, or they don't want me to build blocks of them on the floor anymore. So you know, we've, our, our lives have changed so much over the seven years, when do we sleep Mark doesn't, you know, if the mood strikes him to be creative at three in the morning, he's doing it.

I didn't really sleep for it, though. So I mean, it's just, this all just fit in with just my my MO anyway. Yeah.

And I mean, he's explained it before, how like the way we work. And this is unique to probably couples who work together, everything we do, you know, Connett Institute to armed he's in the mic massage therapy, media, raising her children, being a couple and actually having our own relationship, everything we do, is we're always coordinating with just the two of us. So we find a way to coordinate, like, who's doing, what tasks and when, and how, like, it's just the two of us figuring this all out. So I don't know if that's easier or harder, but we found a way to balance it out. So that, you know, we get the things that we need to get done for work and home. And, you know, everything just happens. And that means that, you know, sometimes he's laying in our bed at three in the morning with his laptop open while I sleep. And sometimes we're sitting here at work, and I make him take a pause to you know, pay for the kids piano lessons. Like it's, you know, we just do what we have to do throughout the day. I keep track of certain things. He keeps track of certain things, and we make it happen. Yeah,

when I'm when I'm in work mode, though, I'm in workload, but when I'm in non work modes, I do nothing. So for me, it's just means that with a punch. Oh, yeah. So for me, it's all about, it's all about tasks, right? And I don't want to rest until the task is done. And once it's done, it's all buttoned up, then now it's time for me to sit around and can do my favorite thing to do, which is to do nothing. Right.

Right. Yeah. What did you say to me the other day? Both of my parents recently retired. I say recently within like the last three years that they do all this what is your watch TV all day? They sit around watch TV? And I said, Yeah, I think Sony's in the dream school.

Just play it myself and favorite television all day long. Oh,

I know what my retirements gonna be like because, because

that used to be like, and I remember doing that on Saturdays as a kid. Sometimes I'm like, I'm not going outside to play nothing. I'm gonna sit here and watch cartoons, and then wrestling's on at 12 and another wrestling is on it one and then, you know, I mean, and then I play video games, and I just play it myself. We're

set. We are such a mismatch. By the way, Krista in that, in that respect, because I was a kid,

I didn't go outside and play thing, but there's definitely known unknowns around when

I was a kid. My parents had to, like, literally schedule time for me to do nothing. Because I always wanted to be doing something. I was the same way. As a teenager. I always wanted to be doing something. So yeah, let's see what happens. Maybe he is a senior citizen, I want to do nothing.

I don't, I'm not the guy that's gonna be like hiking and let's let's go travel. I'm like, can we just sit down and like watch Family Feud? Alright.

Has Has the business side of everything, though. Has that changed? Like the trajectory trajectory of your massage career for both of you

though? Yeah, absolutely. So since starting con and stuff like big time, when we started in Nano, really started the beginning of 2016. Starting hard, I just didn't have time to treat the way

I treated part time for the first two years. And then like really hardly ever, really

part of time. And then now for the last two years, I'm inactive. I just I don't, I can't I can't do that all the stuff that we do and treat but most I mean, I probably could. But mostly it's because I don't think it's really fair to any of the patients that clients would see right that I'm only available very few times. And in my head is not fully in it. Like whenever we have someone on the couch or or on our screen, and we're talking about massage and they're loving massage therapy, I get jealous because I'm like, I don't have that same vibe for patient care anymore. Like I wish I had that. But for me that I think that's flown away until, until all this other stuff stops. It's just it's not there anymore. And that's really not fair for me to take on patients and clients and be in the driver's seat, not really caring about what I'm doing. Yeah, so I kind of put that on hold.

And that's why I don't really accept new patients anymore. So in 2018 I especially once the CPUs change. I started I had a small private, part time practice here, like at Con Ed, there's a treatment room behind the classroom. And I just kind of went around the neighborhood introduced myself to like local businesses, I put out some flyers, like in people's mailboxes. And I had, you know, some people that I had been treating at different places over the years that, you know, would follow me anywhere. And I started this small practice where I was seeing 10 or less people a week, like really, really part time, just to make a little extra money, keep my license, stay active, like, you know, so I knew what I was doing. And then over the years, it's kind of gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. Like, if I take a new client, I'm taking them with the caveat that they know that my availability is limited. And if you've got some sort of like, major concern that's going to need frequent treatment, I'm going to refer you out. Because like Mark said, it's not fair, I won't be able to see you, I might say to you, okay, you need to come in like two times a week or once a week, but it's not realistic for me. So majority of the people I see are people that I've been seeing for a long time, that just like to either just like to come from massage, you know, every, every couple of weeks, and they just want to get like a massage because they like getting a massage, or I've got a handful of chronic pain, people who, you know, we're now at the point of managing pain, and they don't want to do anything else, you know, they've got their other practitioners that they see, but they just want to see me for, you know, their maintenance and their pain management. And that's all I do. I don't take new people because I don't have time for it. Do

you look forward to the day when you're just like, all of this massage stuff? I'm done. Don't even think that that.

I don't think that way. Because the small practice I have created, I truly I truly like and I like these people. And I like what I'm doing. And there's never a day where I have to come in here and treat that I'm like, I kind of want to do this

crystal, what about you? Are you looking forward to the day that you're, you're done with all this? And how what is your exit strategy look like?

Great question. Um, so I became a clinic owner and September 2022. And it was kind of on my radar, but the right opportunity just came up. And I'm with both of you really resonate, like Mark when I'm in business mode, and I've got great ideas, and then I have to get up and go to the clinic and treat clients. I really, I like what I do, and I know that I'm good at it, and I do my best to be present. But the thoughts of like, I can't wait to get back home in front of the laptop just to finish off what I've started and make, like keep that flow going. So there's just that teeny tiny bit of like, oh, like I have to go to the clinic interrupted this and go go to the clinic. So long term, I think the clinic is going to be a great opportunity for me to step back a little bit and in pieces I have been able to because some of the therapists that have wanted to come on board, they've taken my hours because there's we have a small space, and I couldn't I want them to have the hours they know they want to work full time I can step back a day you can take my day, that's great. I can step in if I need to. But I think that will probably be a long term solution for me because I do like the behind the scenes in the business. But I'm not there either 24/7 that I have, we like as a line we run it as like everybody is very independent. So I don't have to be there to open or close or sit at the desk or micromanage people everybody is very capable. So I think that will be something that that will become just something I'll know that the clinic is doing well if I need to treat I can treat but I'm I'm interested more in like the behind the scenes these days. And yeah, it's it's really it's really interesting because when of course I've got wonderful clients who have been seeing for so long and it's going to be hard to let that go or to you know to tell that I'm like like to back off. But yeah, so so far like I can feel myself I don't know whether it just got to a point but like I'm not treating nearly as much as I used to anymore I used to run all over the place and you know do home clients and be at the clinic and I used to I used to teach Pilates and uh you know still do once in a while but like I'm not I'm not that person anymore. I'm looking

forward today to just and I've said this before to just disappear write it because when I when when I'm ready for that I'm literally just going to disappear it's like you'll never hear from Mark arm TR K never again online. I'm just going to hit delete on all of the podcast episodes. I'm going to delete the YouTube page the website just one day we'll just gone and it'll be like there was a dude one time that that put out some content and we just can't find it anymore just like kind of sneak out of the park. And no one notices you left type of thing until someone's like, hey, where was that guy? What was his name? Yeah, that's that's kind of how I want the

mean how every party we actually go to I get a text the next morning Where did you and Marco

just just disappeared? That's all in everything and everything goes with it to all gone. So it'll be a fun day. I guess I have to disappear to them. But you could say all you want, but I'm hitting the bricks. Yeah, it's

interesting that you want to like, you know, just delete, delete everything as well, because I think a lot of people would want to keep their kind of that legacy, you know, have all that information that you've collected and all the education because it is so it's so obvious that you're so passionate about what you both do for the community. And you know, your lack of sleep does not go unnoticed and your I know you guys were light or you know, somebody from massage media was in like Quebec this weekend. It's Tuesday. So have you like, you want

to be there we actually, because I had surgery a couple of weeks ago, I had to bail out. So Monica had to go on our own. We always do trees and so we do do crazy stuff

like that. Like the week that a man had surgery like Monday, I drove to New Hampshire for the AMGA New Hampshire drove back Friday, so I could have surgery and I did some recording for massage therapy media and I jumped into the card nine hour drive. Then Amanda had her surgery and then the next morning I had to I had to jump on a plane to go teach and Saskatoon so we still do the craziness. Yeah, well, not

to mention our Canadian massage conference this year is running October 3 to sixth, the black massage therapist conference is October 8, and ninth. And Mark is teaching at that. So he will literally leave you in for people literally leave the conference. We just ran and drive to North Carolina and teach so yeah, we do a lot of crazy stuff. Like last year when we when we went to Montreal for the championships, we were actually in Winnipeg from like a I don't know, it was like a Friday to Monday. And then we were in Quebec the very next weekend. Yeah, we just when we see the opportunity to do something cool, or you know, something where we can show the massage community what's going on? Like, we'll figure out a way to be there.

For sure. I don't want to say no to things. It's the feel like a cool thing to do. Yeah.

Yeah. Like you said, if it feels feels cool, then yeah, that's like you're, you're in the right. The right spot. I love it. And one of the questions that used to ask earlier on in your episodes, and I know it's been turned on on you guys a few times, but I want you to answer it. What What would you do if you won the lottery now? Because you kind of have already backed backed away from training?

I mean, I think we know that marks just gonna disappear. Yeah.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna buy the couple cool old cars that I that I would always have wanted to have same idea with a couple of cool old motorcycles, custom motorcycles. And I would just live a very simple life, probably exactly where I live now and just not have to think about anything financially until, until I'm in the dirt. I'm simple that way.

You are simple. I mean, what happened to your dream of having the exact same apartment in multiple cities? Yeah, no.

I'd rather I'd rather just have the convertible 1970s Stingray Corvette and cool motorcycles in the middle. And

that'll be it. Well, I had said before, and I mean, I guess it depends on how much money we actually really want, like are wondering, are we funny money rich, because in that case, I might just back away from everything as well and take care of myself and my kids, you know, this, this last few weeks of my life with, you know, having to have emergency surgery, because of signs and symptoms I ignored just from being busy all the time, I might now just back off and take care of myself and do what I need to do. And do some fun share with the kids.

You see what I mean? Don't you? Weren't you jealous? When the therapists like yeah, I would still treat or I would open

up? Well, I wasn't I wasn't finished. If I wanted to work and get my I mean, I said this tomorrow, I said, you know, it'd be kind of fun though. Like the stuff we're doing with like massage therapy media or the podcast. Like for me, I think it'd be cool to like get this big ass space this beautiful space and have like, a beautiful recording studio a beautiful like videos and still be able to do the stuff we do and we like but do it for fun. You know, like, this isn't like this hustle of you know, this is part of our job and we could just relax and really just do it.

Yeah, fine. I see that. Like if I didn't have to actually shoot the content for massage, they'd be immediate and then go edit the content. Not really,

we if we could have like a big staff and the big play. I mean, not that I don't love our little our little dark cave in here. But imagine having a big beautiful recording studio court record the

podcast and never have to touch it after that. I just come in and sit down and talk and not have to edit and everything else that would be cool deal. But it's I still wanted to know this is

why I'm happier than you. I just come in sit down and talk.

Have you guys never wanted to hire out for this kind of stuff.

Marx too much of a perfectionist. I'm not saying that in a negative way. But he, I mean, he is an artist at his core. So when he when he listens in what listens to certain things or watches certain things, he'll notice, you know, a point, three millisecond delay on audio on a video, you know, or he will hear like background noise that wasn't quite edited out properly. And these are things that, you know, most common people probably wouldn't notice. But he will pick up on it. So people always say to us, like, why don't you guys have someone who edits? Because we're not going to edit to mark standards? To

be honest, I enjoy the editing process. Yeah, I just, you know, it just is it's really time consuming. But I enjoy it. Yeah, right. I forget sometimes what happened in a podcast interview, and then I get to hear it again and again and again. And then that inspires me to like, Hey, let's go get another guest about this, or let's look at this, or let me make clips on this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I like the editing process. It just, it just takes

it's funny to me, though, that I'm the one that writes the show notes. So he spends all this time editing and he's listened to it over and over again. And then sometimes, you know, we don't put something out until maybe two weeks after it's recorded. And he'll say, I should just write the show notes immediately after we finished recording, but I don't. And you think after seven years, I would have learned that. And he'll send me a message. And I'd be like, Hey, can you send me a write up for whichever guests and I'm like, and then I have to go back into like the deepest corners of my mind. And remember what I talked about with this person, our

show notes are so different than so we do the podcast really different than a lot of other people do. Like we don't have an intro we don't have you, which I'm kicking myself for, because I should have just wrote some music for it. And then every time it gets put in register with so can and every time it gets played or downloaded at least two pennies in my pocket. But we don't do any of that stuff. We don't have an intro for whatever music we don't do. We don't do really detailed liner notes or show notes. We don't we don't do chapters that we can just tune into certain things. Just was like, hey, here it is. Melissa, go go for it. Yeah,

I don't like that format for you guys, though. Because it's just you're you're just sharing it like raw, like, you know, you edit but like it is just here. Here it is. We want to get it out as quickly as possible. And this is this is how it's going to be. You know, if you want something more curated, then I'm we're still not the least for you.

And that's that's one of the reasons why we've also not monetized it at all like we've we've made zero attempt, we've had people say, Hey, I'd like to do advertising. Can I put ads on or can you to voice over ads? And really just No, we don't we don't want that. And everyone that that hears that we turn it down to the cute you're turning down? Easy money, blah, blah. I'm like, but I don't want the answer to anybody at the end of the day. I don't want a sponsor to say like, well, I don't like the way this sounds. You can't have this type of content. You can't have this test. I'd rather just not have that. And whatever dollar that is, do you want to do want to do? It's just so much easier?

Yeah, when nearly are like little kids? Tell me what you

do you guys see the podcast going for a while now with all the other side things that you've got going on.

I mean, we've we've slowed it down significantly, where we're putting out about an episode a week, which I guess isn't really that slow. That's normal. When we first started, we were when we first started, we were doing a lot more.

We were putting out one every three or four days. Yeah. But the idea behind that was because we know the content was also all over the map. It's like if you really hate what you're hearing now, don't worry in three or four days, there's gonna be a different one. Yeah, that might be something you like. And if you didn't like that, don't worry, there's three, four days later. So that's kind of and that's how we build the audience, right? Just by having this constant turnover and calling. So

we although we've slowed it down, I don't see us stopping anytime soon, we still get a lot of people emailing us with interesting stories, we still come up with topics and we're like, Hey, we should find somebody like this to be on the podcast. Like, we're constantly inspired by ideas and stories. So I don't see it stopping

and our guests are not our guests, but our listeners give us fabulous ideas. Sometimes they do like someone shot me a message and it was like, Hey, have you considered doing a an episode on AI and how people might be thinking about using AI in their clinic and clinic notes and the legalities behind that? Because like it's a fucking fabulous idea. And so I I'm kind of on the hunt to find somebody and I found a lawyer that was willing to come on and talk about the legalities and some of the stuff. So yeah, we get some really cool ideas from our listeners. Amazing.

Well, Amanda, any other notes there that you want to share?

Oh my god, you see my my notes? No, I just you know, Krista had asked episodes that stood out. So I literally just wrote a whole bunch because there's so many it was so ridiculous. Like just so you can hear I'm not gonna list everyone. But I made a whole list of impactful episodes. Some of them we've already talked about, but like the episode we did about Kawasaki disease because that was a personal episode. Our daughter did get diagnosed with Kawasaki disease when she was three. The under the sheets ones we've already talked about. And then oh the living the dream with RMT movement to me that was an impactful episode because it was just a really cool like startup story of these therapists that all decided they all went to school together decide to start up a clinic and like from then to where they are now is their

business plan when they were in massage school the for them created and they executed on it. And now they are massive clinic and brand.

Yeah, so I thought that was a pretty impactful episode. We had Rebecca de Acevedo on a number of times I thought those were really impactful. And then I pulled out some of the hot topic episodes that like stirred up some controversy and pissed off some people. So Clarence is episode about hiring females only, and we Ruiz episode where he talks about, you know, female bodies and then Joanne's rebuttal to that about, you know, health at all sizes. We did episodes on getting fake reviews, firing clients. And then there was a whole series of COVID episodes, I went through those and we touched on some pretty, like deep topics during that time. So like things about like keeping your clinic of flow, we did a whole episode on conspiracy theories, what it was like to test positive as a frontline nurse, policing with your friend Mike, talking about self isolation and effects on mental health. And we did the episodes saying goodbye to ctmh like that was a pretty big shock to the RMT community. And then my last notes are just you know, some of the cool things that people were doing so we had someone on who was the cartoonists, Linda, the episode was love your longevity. So this is a senior massage therapists who treat seniors we've had a blind RMT and Nomad therapists actually to Nomad therapists. We've had equine therapist therapists who do Reiki, Matrixx repatterning, we've had multiple authors who are also RMTS RMTS who do hypnosis or RTT, which is rapid transformational therapy. We had the casino massage series, we've had death, doulas, we've had people talking about micro dosing, micro dosing, oncology massage, myofascial release lymphedema. Like when I was going through our episodes, I'm like, holy crap. If there's a topic you want to know about, like we've we've probably got it. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Everything is so so great. Awesome. All right. Well, I appreciate your time, guys. I'll let you get back to the Batcave there. can get on with all the the new ventures and everything else that you were working on before the podcast. I really appreciate it. I'll link some of the episodes that I've learned. Like more about you like your backstory, like when you talked on the massage therapy podcast with Heather and Nicole I that was a really great introduction to like, how you guys met and then like the podcast and all of that. So I love that I'm going to share that link as well. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks so much for your time, guys.

Thank you, Kristen. Congratulations on 100