Massage Robots

Corey Rivera and Cal Cates explore the existence of rubbing robots and how (unsurprisingly?) they prompt a critical examination of what defines massage therapy. This episode dives into what the robots can and cannot do, why they're happening now, and how you need a human to do massage therapy.

Unreal Rubbing Robot Images
Michael and Aubrey's Podcast
Aescape
Alex: Massage Robotics
Phill the Nightstand
2023 ISPA U.S. Spa Industry Study
2024 ISPA U.S. Spa Industry Study
Massage Cost Optimization Article

Chapters

• 2:45 Michael and Aubrey: Maintenance Phase Podcast
• 8:03 Robots of Possibility
• 16:24 Robots of Reality
• 22:54 Lean Management
• 26:07 Massage Cost Optimization: Lean Operations in the Spa Industry. A Guide to Reducing Massage Expenses
• 29:38 "Time Management"
• 32:59 "Skill Enhancements"
• 35:09 "Process Standardization"
• 40:19 Who Defines Massage Therapy?

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:42

Welcome to the Rub, a podcast about massage therapy. I'm your host, kori Rivera, licensed massage therapist, and information magpie, and today, healwell Executive Director Cal Cates and I are going to talk about massage robots. So here we are talking about robots. Here we are talking about robots officially. Um, I have calcates with me today to help me talk about the robots. Uh, calcates, what? What do you know? What do you know about these robots?

Speaker 2: 1:18

Well, so you know, I don't know a whole lot about them. I think that I know that they are developing. I know that there's a disconnect. That's not true, to say no. My sense is that there's a disconnect between what I've seen and what's actually being created.

Speaker 2: 1:41

Actually being created Because I see, like these pictures from companies that are making these massage robots, where it's like a person, a robot, looking like that looks like a person with arms and legs and whatever you know, sitting next to a person who is ostensibly about to receive a massage, and but what I've read is that it's like an arm like, and not even like a human looking arm, but sort of like a, almost like a, an assembly line arm that like will push on people, um, and manipulate their tissues. Uh, and one thing I do feel like I can say I know is that massage therapists are kind of freaking out about the robots, um, with probably about as much knowledge as I have about them.

Speaker 1: 2:24

So it's a little like how do we slow the roll here? Sure, I'm going to send you, or share with you a picture and you tell me describe this picture for me this picture for me.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Oh, okay, uh. So, wow, I feel like I'm not sure which of us is aubrey and which of us is michael, but, um, feels very maintenance phase. So there is a woman in a what appears to be possibly like a spandex onesie situation, with a matching headband thing, and this person is lying face down with their arms sort of, I think, on a platform. So they're prone on what appears to be basically a massage table-esque situation massage table-esque situation. And then there are these two like white enamel, definitely robotic looking arm-like things and at the ends of them, rather than like anything, that looks like sort of a hand. It almost looks like the end of when runners who've lost part of a limb have like a prosthetic. That's sort of like that scoop. It sort of looks like a short version of that, and so at this moment this woman is having these, these arm things are pushing around like sort of the psis low back sort of area.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Um, yeah, so it does not look like a person, this robot no, it looks very much like a robot. Um, so the thing that you have probably seen, and some of our listeners have probably also seen, is, um, their ai generated images and they I'm not really sure who made them or what they were used for in the first place, but they tend to be. They look like Sunny, kind of from iRobot, yeah, and they they're like holding the hand of an old person or like patting them a little maybe, and like. This is the imagery that has started to go around and that is absolutely not what is going on at all.

Speaker 2: 4:41

Um, we are not we are not there.

Speaker 1: 4:43

Uh, we have, like maybe pieces of that being there, but that's not. That's not what's going on. So, the robot, the picture that I've showed you, this is the escape robot. This is um the one that is rolling out currently in New York in very select locations, so they're sort of in their active beta testing, I would say.

Speaker 2: 5:03

So and I want to say and this might be an age thing, but when you say this doesn't look like a person, definitely I agree with that and you say it looks like a robot, and I'm like I think it looks like robotic arms, because when I think of a robot, I think of a like you know, like Westworld, like it's a person, but it's a machine, you know. So, um, yeah, I mean it is. It is these arms that are anchored to the floor, that have nothing human about them. Um, for whatever that's worth.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Yes, so this is the escape robot. There are a couple other robots that I want to mention, so there's a lot of like innovation going on. Right now. There is a market availability thing happening, which we will talk about momentarily, but there's two other robots that I sort of wanted to mention, three other robots, I suppose. So the first one's called Alex, which has a single arm, as opposed to escape, which has two arms, which has a single arm, as opposed to escape, which has two arms. The Alex robot comes from a massage robotics website that says things like join us and the robots will win.

Speaker 1: 6:08

They've altered their marketing a little bit and unfortunately, now they say things like essentially they're saying that the robot's not going to assault you. That is, that's the marketing choice that has happened for the Alexlex robot um, wow, it's not, it's not not fabulous, which we will also discuss. Uh, the phil robot, which was an indiegogo project, um, is one of my favorites because it um, it's just, it's a single arm and it like sits next to your bedside and extends, so it's like a home based thing, but it also the advertisement says that it doubles as a nightstand, because the robot arm collapses into the little frame that's holding it, which I think is very funny, because I don't know about your nightstand, but my nightstand has a ton of stuff on it all of the time. Yeah, yeah, all of the time, like where do the books go? I see what the books and like and I have a like friendship bracelets and a lamp and lotion water like the water probably shouldn't go there, so no that

Speaker 1: 7:09

was an interesting um selling choice. Um, I haven't seen much about phil. Uh, I think the um both the alex and the escape robot just like powered far ahead of them. So there's a robot that claims it also does laser hair removal, which seems nerve wracking, if anything really. So that was also a single arm one. And then Times Magazine claimed that the escape robot is one of the best inventions of 2024. They did put it in the um robotics category. As opposed to, like beauty or health or medical or anything, there's just like sort of a general robot category, um, and that's where they have placed it. So first I want to talk about how these robots could be really cool and then I want to talk about what I am worried about with these robots, so things that could be really cool. Um, there are people like me, um, who do not like being touched, um, and I don't think we're necessarily few in number. So the ability for a robot to work on a person without having another person involved can be attractive, especially for people who have trauma associated with touch. So there's certainly some options there. I had somebody mention and point out that if it is a robot doing the massage, it is very definitely not massage therapy. It is just a massage and I can certainly agree with that.

Speaker 1: 8:45

As we like to discuss the definition of massage on this show, which I will repeat for you now, in case you have forgotten, the definition of massage therapy by Dr Anne Blair Kennedy. She wrote it in her dissertation and then in a follow-up article. It's based off of conversations with 32 experts from the field. So massage therapy consists of rubbing, but it also includes health promotion and educational messaging. It is for both self-care and health maintenance. The results of massage therapy depend on therapeutic relationships and communication. The results also depend on the training, skill and experience of the therapist, and the setting of the treatment, such as a spa, hospital or shopping mall, may have an influence on the results. So you kind of need a human with that definition. You just, you just do so. The robot can do rubbing, it can do basic massage. It cannot do massage therapy, but for people who just need some rubbing, maybe a shoulder or something possibility.

Speaker 1: 9:46

The other cool possibility with the robots is for research. There's a big problem in massage therapy research where it's very dependent on reporting from the person doing the massage therapy or the person receiving massage therapy, and any time you get a human involved in reporting, it's going to be variable, it's going to be hard to replicate. The most precise way to report things about massage is blood chemistry, but that's not necessarily what we're really interested in in the first place. It's just that it's a consistent way to report. So a robot could potentially be used for two very cool things. One, it could be equipped with sensors that would give us precise reporting on what's happening either with bodies or with the massage that is going on.

Speaker 1: 10:30

And what I'm most interested in is that you could take the person out of the massage and see what's happening, because massage research has tried very hard to eliminate the effect of the therapeutic relationship when doing research. But you really can't. It's just people make connections, humans make connections, and so to try and take that out involves doing research that uses protocols, which is not really what a lot of massage looks like. So now you're sort of testing something that's not accurate to the reality of it, and I don't even know how you would control for a therapeutic relationship other than choosing strangers. But even then, you know, over the course of a massage people tend to make connections, whether they're talking or not.

Speaker 2: 11:15

Well, and I would say that and unless and you can obviously cut this this doesn't fit, but I feel like the way you just characterized it is that we've been trying to control for therapeutic relationship, and that's true. But the underlying thing of that is because we haven't believed, as a community of researchers and scientists, that that is key to the effect, scientists, that that is key to the effect. So we want to tease that out so that we really can say what's happening here is rubbing and the rubbing is what's important. And what you're suggesting now is that, yeah, so what if we actually had a thing that could only rub and we could in fact compare them, but I don't think it's been an accident or like we haven't. Sort of there's really been this understanding, even within the massage profession, that what we do is rub. End of story.

Speaker 1: 12:04

I do. I do wonder if it's if like cart and horse, like is it that we've decided that we just rub because we don't know how to research something that's as malleable as a therapeutic relationship, or so, like it was just easier to go that direction and then that sort of skewed how we thought about ourselves, or did we really think that, like, it's just rubbing and it's not the relationship and we don't need to worry about it at all and it's honestly, it's probably a little bit of low column? Yeah, yeah, that's probably true. So the third thing that has me excited about massage robots and possibility possibility, but a really cool one, if it does happen which is the idea of passive income for massage therapists.

Speaker 1: 12:46

Passive income as a massage therapist is difficult to get without having a sauna or possibly being part of a multilevel marketing scheme or selling some products. Mostly, when we make money, we make it with our hands for a set amount of time and that means that it is only for that set amount of time that you are creating income and that limits us a lot financially. So I talk a lot with massage therapists whose real passion is to work with people who absolutely cannot afford massage For whatever reason. It's just. It's just, it's just not an option, and the massage therapist themselves can't afford to charge less and still have a career and a life and pay for anything really, um. So then now we're at this impasse where the massage therapist has to charge a certain amount of money, um, for their services, and that puts the people that they really want to treat sort of out of their reach. So what if the massage therapist could lease one of these escape robots, which is about $7,000 a month, and the robot could do the basic rubbing part for people who just want some basic rubbing, while the therapist did some paperwork or marketing or billing, and the therapist could do the intake, the therapist could do the outtake. The therapist did some paperwork or marketing or billing and the therapist could do the intake. The therapist could do the outtake, the therapist could do treatment planning, the therapist could tell the robot, maybe, what to do.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Passive income could be a really huge deal. And the escape robot has limitations for the work that it can do, so it can only do work posteriorly and it works from neck to calves. So no arms, no feet, no hands, no neck, no front of the body at all, and I think for massage therapists who are aging out of the profession because they simply cannot do the physical stuff. It's really the posterior muscles that are causing the like physical strain.

Speaker 1: 14:51

So if the robot could work on the posterior things and the bigger things and then the massage therapist could do neck, feet, hands, therapeutic relationship, all of those things, it could be a great assistant, which, really, when you think about the purpose of robots like that's the purpose that I gravitate toward is the one that helps a human do the thing that they're great at but maybe can't do so much anymore, or couldn't do in the first place but could be great at the other thing. So, like there are therapists who are awesome at the. So those are the big three possibilities that I see. Do you have any thoughts about those possibilities? Calcates, I've talked a lot.

Speaker 2: 15:29

Yeah, I mean I appreciate being able to see the collaborative possibilities. I think the price point again is going to reinforce sort of the capitalist stratification. Capitalist stratification, you know, the therapist who is working in a private practice, who is understandably tired after a 15 or 20 year career, isn't going to be able to purchase a robot to help them stay in business. So I see that being helpful and probably most helpful for franchises, spas, places that have the income to purchase one or more of these said robots. So yeah, I mean I think maybe we see over time that the price comes down, but again there will already be a head start in certain sectors of the profession. So, speaking, of spas.

Speaker 1: 16:25

let's talk about what I actually think is going to happen, as opposed to what I wish would happen. So part of the question of this robot thing is like why now? Like why is this happening now? In particular, Things like this, things that cost this much money to create, don't happen without a market available. You just don't spend a lot of money on something that you're just not going to be able to sell or use later and, like in robot, research is extremely expensive. So the answer that I have to why now? Is actually on the escape website.

Speaker 1: 17:02

So they have posted the 2023 international spa association us spa industry study and I have read it. Um, and you might want to too. It's actually quite pretty and very easy to read. Um, it's not full of, um, thick statistical language. It's mostly, um, it's a presentation piece. So, um, I'm going to list you some statistics and I would like your reaction to some of them. So the big statistic is that there are about 21,000 spas in this report and there are about 21,000 job openings for massage therapists at those spas. So 60 percent of unfilled staff positions at spas are massage therapists.

Speaker 2: 17:41

Interesting. I mean, I think you know my first reaction, of course, is that this is I'm not sure how effective, but it on some if we're't have enough humans to do these jobs and so we could get these robots. But I think that you know when I think about it. I mean, the thing about massage is that I mean, unless you have a robot that can provide multiple massages simultaneously, we're still in the same situation of one massage at a time is what can happen, and so maybe you're solving that you don't have a live person to hire for this job, but you still can't sort of offer more massages if you have a robot. So I'm curious how spas would sort of do that math in terms of is it worth making the investment?

Speaker 1: 18:40

I'm not sure. I do know that, like as far as pros of robot over human goes, the robot doesn't get tired, the robot doesn't call in sick, the robot is always available. The robot theoretically doesn't make anybody mad for customer service reasons. I mean, you never know. The seven thousand dollar a month lease price tag comes with maintenance and some marketing stuff, so you don't have to necessarily worry about it breaking down or at least not being able to fix it. If it does, um, it does have some safety features on it. Um, it only applies about 50 pounds of pressure, which is less than a lot of massage therapists apply. All right, like human massage therapists who, especially people who just go for it. Yeah, so I can. I agree that this is a workforce shortage problem. The question is, what problem are we actually solving with a robot?

Speaker 2: 19:40

Well and and I mean you know part of when I think about what you could, the kind of workforce support and training you could provide with $7,000 a month, and the sort of sustainability that we could build into the profession if we're willing to invest that much in a machine.

Speaker 2: 19:57

And again, this is where, philosophically, I'm possibly not a good conversation partner for this, because I, you know, people aren't going to go away and so if we replace people, you know, which I think is it's a very simplistic way to describe it but if we have robots doing jobs that people could do and possibly that people are better at doing, those people have to figure out how they will make a living. And you know, we know very well that massage therapists are not well supported, particularly in environments where they're seeing six or seven clients a day, five days a week, and they're not getting the kind of training and support they need. So of course, they're burning out in five or six years for emotional reasons, for physical reasons, and $7,000 a month could do a lot to address some of the issues that lead to burnout and people leaving the career.

Speaker 1: 20:51

So there's definitely a money thing. I would like to give you a couple of statistics for what massage therapists make according to this report. So massage therapists working in spas make generally less than $50,000. That includes tips and half of them work between 33 and 39 hours a week. There is no description on the statistic of whether that is hands-on hours, but from experience when people talk about massage therapy hours they usually mean hands-on and they don't actually like. They won't necessarily tell you that that's what they mean, but that's usually what people are clocking. It does appear that for most spas 31 hours is considered full time, so benefits are attached to most of those jobs. Which awesome, well done everybody. But 33 to 39 hours a week for 50k, including tips so not necessarily 50k including tips, so not necessarily 50k. Um isn't a lot and doesn't get you very far. And 88 of massage therapists are women um, I don't know the percentage of that percentage who have children, but I would think it's safe to say that some of them do, probably many of them. Um, and 50k is not. It's not going to get you very far with a family or really with just you.

Speaker 1: 22:06

So the report talks about the biggest problems for spas to hire massage therapists, and the biggest problem is finding qualified candidates. So, yes, it is absolutely a workforce issue. We just don't have enough, and that's not news for us. We do know that we don't have enough people for lots of reasons. Part of it's the pay. Part of it's the treatment. Part of it's this job is really hard. Part of it's that we don't understand the job. There are so many reasons we don't have enough people. Part of it's COVID and people just leaving the profession and we're not like we're not replacing them with our graduates. We'll talk about a lot of those things in later episodes, but the thing that I really want to talk about today is why robots are attractive for really anything in America, and that is because we are a nation based in manufacturing and manufacturing has certain principles, and when you apply manufacturing principles to humans, it doesn't always work out. So let's discuss how manufacturing principles got into things like health care and human service, everything.

Speaker 1: 23:28

There's a style of management that's called lean management. It's very, very popular. Lean management originally came from japan, so in the 1950s, japan was producing three times the amount of cars that america was producing, and they tended to be more reliable, and the entire world was like what, how, and Japan had come up with a system called the Toyota production system, which now is known as lean management style. So there's three parts to the Toyota production system. It's all about reducing wastefulness and like sort of tightening up your manufacturing chains and making sure that everything is working together properly, because when you have a production line, anything that slows down your production line slows down production at all, and mistakes cost money, and that's just how manufacturing works. So three pieces and remember this is Japan.

Speaker 1: 24:21

So the first piece is called Muda, which is has to do with wastefulness and non-value-adding activities. So the idea is that anything that doesn't contribute is probably not something that you should be doing. So if you're having too many meetings, which seems to be a problem for everybody right now, perhaps some of them are wasteful and maybe you should cut down. Muda does give space for things that are not directly value-adding, like inspections, but are an extremely important part of the manufacturing and like producing something process. So inspections are included as useful, just not necessarily directly value adding.

Speaker 1: 25:01

The second piece is called Mura, which is uneven or irregular work. So this addresses things like bottlenecks and wait times. So for things like customer service, you go to the doctor, you have your appointment time. Doctor's behind you wait three extra hours to your doctor for 15 minutes. This is a more of a problem With factory work. There's ways around this to make sure that maybe, like one piece of the production is not overproducing which then creates a bottleneck in a later piece of production. So the idea is to sort of even out your production. It might be a transit problem, maybe you can't get the pieces to the place that they need to go, but there's ways to work with uneven amounts of work.

Speaker 1: 25:40

And the third one is called MURI, which is overburdening your people and equipment. And there's a piece of the Toyota production system that America tends to forget, and I bet you can guess which one it is. So we, when you read things that are sort of westernized about the Toyota production system, the overburdening of your people and equipment tends to get left out. And wow, does it get left out with service things that are trying to establish lean management principles. So I found this incredible article that spelled it all out for me, which is awesome because I didn't have to make any guesses. This article is called Massage Cost Optimization Lean Operations in the Spa Industry A Guide to Reducing Massage Expenses. So there's this disconnect that happens between people who do massage therapy and people who own massage therapist business when they are not the same person or not a person who has experienced it.

Speaker 2: 26:33

So I know in the editing you could just play this twice, but I want you to read the title of that article again. It has two colons Because it's so loaded Yep.

Speaker 1: 26:44

So here's the title again for everybody Massage Cost Optimization Lean Operations in the Spa Industry a Guide to Reducing Massage Expenses. The website it's from is called Faster Capital, by the way, which you know, just be honest. So that's good, because so much of it is without regard for massage therapists. And I want to say right now that this is not every spa at all, because if it was so, 21,000 job openings for 21,000 spas does not mean there's a one to one ratio of employment gap, right. It means that some spas treat their people really well and have great jobs and do a wonderful job managing people and customers and time and all of those things, and some of them clearly do not, are not not so good with that.

Speaker 1: 27:37

And I think this philosophy is the reason these robots are happening right now and it is the reason that those spas have so many openings, because this is the way that they think about their massage therapist. They think about them as robots already, and if you already think about your workforce as robots, then what's the difference replacing them with an actual robot? So I figured to the big question that people would have about these robots is is my job in danger of being taken over by a robot, and I think the answer is possibly, and the possibly happens when people are already treating you like a robot, and that sort of includes you if you're treating yourself like one. So please don't do that either. So we're going to go through a bunch of this.

Speaker 2: 28:17

Yeah, go ahead this first block of text and nowhere in it does it mention the person who will be providing the massage.

Speaker 1: 28:32

So it's about the bottom line and about the customer experience so that the most of the article on the only place that the article really says anything about massage therapists directly that is to their benefit has to do with educating them, particularly in cross-educating them into other um like into esthetician Aesthetics, yep, and I guess laser hair removal, I'm not sure which I guess is aesthetics but but cross-training them into and that's not about right. That's not really about making your massage therapist better. That is about you being able to make the most of their time, getting more out of them.

Speaker 2: 29:06

Yeah, so it's about increasing the usefulness of a human a human who could be a massage therapist or not or not.

Speaker 1: 29:15

Yes, yeah, so I I took some choice. Highlights um, I'll link the article in the show notes. I highly recommend you read it, even if it's just so that you're aware of how a person who might hire you might be thinking about you. But here are my very favorites. So, cal, would you read the first heading and the first selection.

Speaker 2: 29:39

Time management. Streamlining appointments, implementing a dynamic scheduling system that adjusts for the varying lengths of different massage types can significantly reduce downtime. For example, sandwiching shorter sessions between longer ones can optimize the use of time slots. Synchronized breaks, coordinating break times among staff to ensure continuous client service can prevent potential revenue loss from unavailability.

Speaker 1: 30:08

Potential revenue loss from unavailability. Yeah, so one of the things that I think worry employers about massage therapists is their need for breaks. It seems to be a constant dislike for hiring a human and massage therapy. For those of you who listen, who don't actually practice, it is exhausting. Concentrating on one human for an hour takes a lot. I don't know if you've ever tried it before, but it's pretty intense.

Speaker 2: 30:44

Well, and I think that's important, because when people ask me all the time, oh, aren't you so tired? And what they think is like my elbows and my wrists and my hands are tired, and it's like once you've been doing massage for a little while, you actually your body sort of figures out that this is what you're going to do with it. And I mean, I think there are certainly unsafe ways to practice, et cetera. But the exhaustion is psychosocial, emotional, energetic, sort of like. Yes, exactly as you said, corey, to focus on a single person for one hour is tiring, yes, yeah, and the peeing and eating huge buzzkill for productivity right and massage like.

Speaker 1: 31:26

Breaks between massages are not necessarily for the peeing or eating. It might be for changing the sheets right and for doing whatever notes that you do, or even cashing somebody out, depending on what kind of staff you have working with you. So it's not really downtime, really no synchronized breaks. So coordinating break time to ensure continuing continuous client service does indeed prevent potential revenue loss, but it also prevents your massage therapist from making connections with each other, which, if you're sort of into this lean management style, especially if you're hardcore about it, might be to your advantage. Because they don't talk to each other and they don't rise up. Yeah, they don't organize Right, but they also don't find support among each other.

Speaker 1: 32:13

And since massage therapist retention is clearly an issue, clearly a problem, then part of the problem is going to be making sure that your therapists have a support system and they themselves are part of the support system. Management can do a fantastic job and if you don't feel like you are working with your coworkers and a massage, that's pretty hard because we work in a room alone with a client, so making connections is difficult anyway and ensuring that you never see another human that you work with is a very good way to not make connections and a very good way to stress out your therapists. So that's the my time management selections. There were so many more, but those were the uh, the top two.

Speaker 2: 32:57

Wow.

Speaker 1: 32:59

Um for skill enhancement. Like I said, this is really the only area where they discuss massage therapists directly, and it is um discuss massage therapists directly and it is um to make them more useful and cost efficient. As people per hour, essentially so um equipping them with a diverse set of skills, um to increase billable hours and um to keep therapists trained on techniques and trends.

Speaker 2: 33:26

This is so.

Speaker 2: 33:28

So the cross training I could I could riff on that for a long time, because you didn't become a massage therapist necessarily to then also become an esthetician or whatever else.

Speaker 2: 33:37

But ongoing education, it says, regular workshops on new techniques and trends, keep therapists at the forefront of the industry, making their services more marketable forefront of the industry, making their services more marketable and I feel like this is a thing that we continue to see massage therapists do to and for themselves, that they think that they need a monetizable, trademarked technique or sort of that.

Speaker 2: 34:04

They have to play into this idea that clients have, which is I did this thing to myself or, because I'm engaging in this type of exercise, I need this kind of massage that I saw on TV and that the idea like as if we dig into burnout and the things that lead to therapists leaving the profession, a piece of that, a big piece of that, I think, is not being prepared to be in the space of other humans on the regular, professionally speaking, and so when I think of that, I think is not being prepared to be in the space of other humans on the regular, professionally speaking.

Speaker 2: 34:31

And so when I think, of course, of ongoing education I'm thinking about. How do I prepare my therapist to be in the energetic and emotional space of strangers all day long, and that techniques, sure, but that's not I mean. Again, it just really highlights, it makes very transparent that these quote massage therapists could be anybody and that the thinking about this really is these are units of production and how do we make them more productive? It's really not about their well-being, their sustainability, their engagement with even the people receiving the service.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Yes, and that brings us to process standardization. So would you read process standardization for me?

Speaker 2: 35:16

Establishing uniform treatment protocols ensures consistency in service quality while minimizing training costs and errors. For example, a spa could standardize the sequence of massage techniques used across all services to ensure every client receives the same level of care.

Speaker 1: 35:37

Woof, all right, so let's talk about equality versus equity. Truly yes. So equality means everybody gets the same thing, and equity means everybody gets what they need, which is not necessarily the same thing, it's just not so. This, this process, standardization, is a concept that I think. The idea that if you give everybody the same massage, they're getting the best service possible is sort of part of that thought, and it's callous, callous, speechless.

Speaker 2: 36:20

I mean this thing about the same level of care. No, they'll get the same steps of service. That's not value. That's like on a basic level, CYA, Like you really want to make it so that, like, if Trent is available today, great, and I want to see Trent because I saw him last week. But if you know Twyla is available this week, it's fine, I'll see that person because I know that at this spa it's really not even about the therapist. They will rub my feet for five minutes and then they'll rub my lower legs for five minutes and then all of these. I can expect these sort of 12 ways that I will be touched and it's not about again just pulling out the therapeutic relationship and a huge part, I would argue, of the value of massage therapy.

Speaker 2: 37:10

And this is you know, how much of our energy do we spend on helping consumers? Franchise owners, spa owners understand that rubbing is good and I never want to be confused as a person who is saying rubbing is bad, Rubbing is great. We all know that, like predictable, firm rubbing of the nervous system is generally calming for people and anyone can rub when we add the therapeutic piece. I mean, they're not inventing social work robots, right? So I feel like this is the disconnect that we have to continue to really bring out into the open. It's so easy to fall into this. Well, yeah, this is how our culture works. It's about monetization and it's about, if I own the spa, I should be able to make as much money as possible, and the people who make that money for me are actually tertiary at best.

Speaker 1: 38:09

They're? I mean, they're an asset, right, they're like they're a labor asset, yep, and I want to talk a little about how the appearance of these robots means that the robots are in a space to define what massage therapy is in the public eye, and that is the thing that really worries me. So I think the robots could be really helpful for some things. I think it's cool the tech person in me thinks it's cool but these robots so this process standardization thing these robots do not create massages the way chat GPT creates sentences. That is not what's happening, and if you've seen any of the commercials or heard anything about it, you would absolutely understandably think that's what's going on, because the advertising doesn't stop you from thinking that it doesn't say that. Because the advertising doesn't stop you from thinking that it doesn't say that, but because of the way people think about AI. Now, when you say something has AI attached to it, then that is sort of the picture everybody gets. So what the robot does is follow a protocol. It has standardizations, it has a lot of them because it's a robot and it can keep track of many things. So the people who are using the robots can choose protocols. They can also direct the robot, like if you have that specific spot, like by your shoulder blade that, like you just can't get to, and the robot can get to, you can directly ask it to work on that area, but it doesn't do an intake and it doesn't ask questions and it doesn't figure out that it doesn't ask questions and it doesn't figure out that. You know, you spent too many hours yesterday playing with the grandkids and maybe picking them up wasn't such a great idea. It just doesn't. It can't do that, and being able to do that would take an immense amount of data, which I can absolutely guarantee that they are tracking. So if anybody was going to get that data, it would be the people who own the robots. So if you do use one, please read the agreement, which is quite long. But, as in everything now, they are definitely keeping track of your metrics for sure. Privacy is not a thing. It's not a thing, not really.

Speaker 1: 40:23

So robots are attractive for employers and the big worry is that is this going to define what massage therapy is? And if it does, and if it is, that is so sad for everybody. It's so terribly, terribly sad for all of us, for massage therapists and for clients and for patients and for just everybody Humans, humans in general because massage therapy is so so much more than rubbing and can do so much more for you than just push on muscles. The public already has this idea that that's what massage therapy is. Most massage therapists have experienced this. Most, I think, clients have experienced it as well, when they go to somebody who's really good at massage therapy and they come out of the appointment and they're like wow, I feel totally different and amazing in a way that I didn't expect. I just thought you were going to like rub my neck and then we were going to be good and that's. That's not what happened. There was like I can't even explain it, which is part of the problem, right, and so we, we have a hard time explaining it.

Speaker 2: 41:23

Yes, well, and we have a hard time sitting still with the ineffable, like we're mad, we can't explain it and we just, it just makes us uncomfortable. So, if we can, if we can, you know, take a reductionist lens and really, you know, zero in. We know this thing is, is part of what's happening, and so we're going to really focus on this and and you can't, you can't bring the, the production mindset to human connection, which again makes it, you know, fall way off the radar of anybody who's trying to make money.

Speaker 1: 41:56

Yes, yeah, and like you can't even bring it to like the conversational part, right? If you have a script for massage therapists to talk to the people that they are treating, then there is no space to really find out what kind of treatment that client needs. And now you're doing a disservice to your client, although they may not know it. But you could be doing so much more and your therapist could be doing so much more. And those clients I mean I don't know if you've ever experienced having a massage therapist like move away or stop working, but it is extremely upsetting for people.

Speaker 1: 42:31

So if you can keep your massage therapist particularly if they're really good, they are worth so much. And if you're in a spa situation where you have lots of offerings and lots of things for your clients to do, having a massage therapist those people come back to all of the time means getting them in your door. So whether or not your massage therapy piece of your business is making a ton of money, people are coming back for that and then you can find other ways to monetize their stay. I mean, whether it's, you know, it could be food, it could be products, it could be all kinds of things. But getting them in the door and getting them in your door is one of the biggest challenges. But, man, if you have that massage therapist that they're coming back to they're, they're never leaving ever.

Speaker 2: 43:19

Yeah, and of course I want to say, and then you're changing the world. But I then, like the cynical part of me is like, oh, but that's not actually appealing. If your goal is actually to turn every human encounter into a monetary unit, you are honestly not thinking beyond your, your brick and mortar space, to what happens when that person goes out and doesn't honk at someone on their way home or doesn't, you know, respond to that text that you know was going to set off, you know, some flame throwing, like it's just that this is the potential of massage therapy and making space for those experiences to happen for people, and you know I look forward to the day when that is considered valuable in a way that is important, and you know, I don't know how far away that day is, but I still hope that it's a day that I'll get to see Me too.

Speaker 1: 44:10

So if you're a massage therapist, know that you are in great value right now, because there is not a lot of us. And if you are a good massage therapist, know that you're in incredible value and please do not underestimate your worth, whether that's in the money you make or the people that you're in incredible value and please do not underestimate your worth. Whether that's in the money you make or the people that you see you are, you are spectacularly valuable. If you're a business owner, try and think beyond the numbers. It's very hard to quantify an experience for people. You can try, but even people who do it professionally and write surveys will tell you that it's a difficult thing to break something down in the numbers. So a better thing to keep track of is what people say as opposed to like the numbers. They might circle on a feedback form. You need to know what their experience was like and once you do, that's the thing that you can also use for your advertising and that's for everybody who owns business. Whether you are a massage therapist or not.

Speaker 1: 45:12

Client quotes are, as we say at HealWell, worth their weight in gold. They are how people notice you. They are how people come back to see you being rated a 10 out of 10 is great, but a 10 out of 10 on today is different from tomorrow's 10, or maybe equal to an eight yesterday. Numbers are extremely, extremely variable. So when you're in a service profession, make sure that you are trying to track the service part of it and not just the numbers. And believe me, those robots are only concerned with the numbers. They are not going to track an experience because they don't understand experience. They're robots. Final thoughts Kyle Cates.

Speaker 2: 45:51

Yeah, I think the only thing I would add to what you shared is really an invitation to the massage therapy profession and to massage therapists to think and feel long and hard about what it is you do and what it is that makes you unique from a robot. And notice, just start noticing how you talk about what you do, what you let slide when clients or employers characterize your work and and how often you sort of just shrug off the things people say that are uninformed, that you know are incorrect and and sort of reductive, and to just work on again. Here we are back to soft skills, as they often call them, but work on how you can communicate the missing pieces and and really we. This is. This is first and foremost about I can't even say taking back the narrative about massage therapy, because I don't know that we've ever owned it, but there are plenty of people who will happily run with it, and we are sort of whinging on Facebook rather than sort of looking inside and saying, okay, how do we really decide what this is and how it's different and that it's not a cage match with robots?

Speaker 2: 47:02

Robots aren't going away. We won't stop them. We have to differentiate ourselves and that's really our work to do. No one else is going to be invested in doing that for us. Yes, I hope I contributed anything to this conversation. Okay, Thank you.

Speaker 1: 47:30

I didn't know what you had in mind, but you know, I mean obviously, because you and I talk about this so much, I'm like, well, we know this, but we know this, but a lot of other people don't. That's been the biggest challenge by far is figuring out what I know and what other people don't, and getting information out there that's important. Information out there, that's important. Thank you for listening.