Ep 549 – A Practitioner's Mindset: “Fully Booked” with Elicia Crook

0:00:09.1 Elicia Crook: Hello and welcome. You are listening to Fully Booked With Elicia Crook on the ABMP Podcast Network. Get your free 2026 marketing calendar for massage therapists. This is for the therapist who is tired of asking, what should I post? Because the least fun part of running a massage business is sitting down to post on social media and drawing a complete blank. You know you should be posting, but your brain is tired after treating all day, and that's exactly why my team and I plan out our content months in advance. It's also why we've released our 2026 Massage Marketing Calendar for free for you. It's like cheating because we've found all the events and special days in 2026 that you can post about, and it's organized into a handy calendar planner. So when it's time to post, you're not left scrambling or guessing. And it's actually the same one we use inside the Health Leader Co to map out your year. So if you want 2026 marketing to feel organized instead of chaotic, this will help. Grab it here at gohealthleaderco.com/marketingcalendar and enjoy faster, easier social media in 2026. The World Health Organization predicts allied healthcare will remain in shortage until at least 2030.

0:01:21.4 EC: So longevity efficiency in this industry are incredibly important. Today, I'm gonna talk about the mindset of a therapist. I know that you might have heard lots and lots of information and lots of stories around mindset already. My story starts back in 2010 when I first had business coaching, and I signed up to a local business coaching program where it was called Bellarine Business Women, and it was just a bunch of incredible women where we met once a month and our coach would take us through this lovely networking event, which was great, and then she had some higher-end coaching packages as well. And I like to jump in headfirst, like it is just baptism by fire is how I roll. So I was like, right, let's go. I just went straight to the top tier, which included these quarterly and monthly training days where you would go and learn about business. And I was thinking, you know, Facebook advertising, Google, that's what I had in my head of the things I needed to know about business. And the first day, my kids were small, so my son was at kinder and my daughter was at childcare.

0:02:41.5 EC: And honestly, who I wanted to show up as and who I actually was in that moment were two totally different people. So I had run around the house yelling at my kids to get ready and, you know, like, come on, let's go. We've got to go. We've got to go, because I was feeling a little bit insecure about being at this event. I'm like, I feel really young. I feel like everyone else is gonna be older than me. I feel like everybody else is gonna know much more stuff than I do, and I'm gonna be this kind of young, immature, and they're gonna know that I really am not good enough. Like at the deepest level, that's what I was thinking. And so how this was showing up for me was, I was yelling at my kids. Not my finest parenting moment. However, I'm gonna be honest with you as we go, you're gonna learn about my kids because I just happen to talk about them quite a lot. Sometimes because they're lovely, wonderful humans who teach me wonderful things, and sometimes because they challenge the heck out of me as a parent.

0:03:39.7 EC: So I'm like running around like a mad person, yelling at these kids to get ready, and I get to the event, I drop the kids at childcare and kinder, and I get to this event, and I'm 20 minutes early. Now, massage therapists, we're renowned for being early at events. I don't know why we do it. However, as somebody who runs events, be mindful that if you do arrive early, that your trainer is most likely setting things up and running through about 50 things in their head. So their ability to stop all of that and connect with you is not always as maybe intentional as they would like. And I, for me personally, I love to have a really good introduction and entry and start to an event that I'm running. And so when I look back on this, I'm like, I cringe a little bit because I'm like, I was that person. And of course, I'm there, so I wanna talk to her and I wanna connect with her, she's setting up boxes and she's unpacking things and she's running it by herself, and there's 20 of us in the room coming for the day, and she's probably thinking about her content.

0:04:37.7 EC: So I'm already on the back foot because I didn't understand what was happening, but I kind of feel something going on in the room and I'm like, oh, my gosh. And so I'm ready with my notebook and really excited for what I'm gonna learn in this day. And the very first thing that she talked to us about was living above the line or below the line and how our brains delete, distort, and generalize and create the world that we live in. And what really struck me about this above the line, below the line stuff was that it was all about that we are 100% responsible for every result and non-result in our lives. And if we are not responsible, then we can behave as if we are responsible for the responses we have to what happens to us. I found this really, really, really powerful because what I realized was as I was sitting there in that moment, was that I had never taught my kids how to get ready. They were like three and four years of age. So it's at that kind of point where you're still dressing them and helping with their shoes and that sort of stuff.

0:05:47.0 EC: But I'd never actually taught them, this is how to get ready and have your things at the door so that we're out the door, because we'd never really needed to before, it just kind of happened. And so while I don't remember any business learnings I had from that day or the rest of the business learnings I had from the day, and it went all day, like it went from 9:00 AM until 3:30 or something like that, so it was a huge day of learning. But this just like, it was like, I call it a punch to the heart. You know when you're really convicted of something and you're like, oh my goodness, yep, that was really full on.

0:06:19.3 EC: And I need to change my behavior and change my approach. And for me, that began a lifetime, I believe it will be, of curiosity around how I show up, around what I'm responsible for and what I'm not responsible for, because I'm not responsible for other people's reactions or responses to things. I'm just responsible for my own and also how we create the world we live in. And so a big part of my coaching is that I love mindset coaching. And sometimes my clients will say, I feel like this could be mindset coaching wrapped up as business coaching. And I'm like, shh, no one's meant to know. And it's like, they're gonna know. Everyone knows. Because so much of how we create our world and shape our business actually comes from the beliefs, values, and experiences we've had. And 94 to 96% of our world that we live in, in our mind and in our lives, is actually often lived unconsciously. So we're not thinking, beat heart, beat heart, beat heart, it's just happening. We're not thinking repair cells, again, the body is doing that beautifully. When it comes to running a business, there's often some patterns of behavior that show up that can serve us or not.

0:07:40.9 EC: So I'm gonna share a little bit of some of my learnings from my own experience from that day and beyond, because I did learn about marketing and I did learn about systems and I did learn about a bunch of other stuff that was also really helpful. But my biggest takeaway that day was how our beliefs can shape our behavior and our actions. And the next day that I attended a couple of months later, by then I'd actually taught my children. I took time to teach my kids how to get ready. So with my son, he was a little bit older, so we would put out his clothes the day before so he knew that that was the day that he'd have to get dressed by himself. I taught my daughter how to take her bag that she would take to childcare, I taught her how to take that to the front door so that when we were ready to go, we could just grab those and off we went. And it's not like the next day everyone just did that beautifully. I'm saying that this was like a process of teaching. I couldn't expect my kids to do something when I hadn't actually taught them how to do it.

0:08:40.0 EC: So there are really three things that we have noticed. When therapists are fully booked and/or looking at how they can become fully booked, there's kind of three things they need to have in place. And obviously, the first one is mindset. We call these the three amazing M's. And we know that there are some fundamental shifts that have to go on and in a certain order. There are some skills that are needed to be learned. It's a little bit like learning Latin. The anatomy words can seem unfamiliar or tricky at the start. But the thing is, as a therapist, anatomy doesn't change. I've been doing this for 25 years, and the names are still the same. We might pronounce them a little bit differently depending on where you put your different emphasis on the different syllables, but SCM is still a contralateral rotator of the head, Sternocleidomastoid, yeah. And so when it comes to how to run a business, I believe that business is easier than Latin. Our mindset is the foundation to success because our brains are wired for survival, not mastering business or even becoming exceptional therapists. And it's actually really natural to hold beliefs and stories that have shaped us.

0:09:48.5 EC: But some of those patterns can hold us back. We can have a set mind that is, this is how it is and it's not gonna change, or we can work with our mind. And mindset is about learning about our stories and discovering which ones are resourceful, which ones are serving us, which ones are helping us move forward and grow a great business, and which ones maybe are not doing that. Mindset is not just about positive thinking. It's actually about working with your mind, identifying the stories that we tell ourselves, and deciding which ones empower you and which ones actually limit our growth. As a mindset coach, I am passionate about exploring how we think, speak, and act and how those patterns influence our outcomes. Because often we assume that what we know and do is simply the truth, but the truth is that we have the power to reshape our beliefs for a stronger and more impactful business. The second one is marketing. And marketing is the engine room of growth. Without it, we can't generate consistent clients, build trust, or educate our community about the incredible work that we do. Marketing isn't just about getting your name out there.

0:10:58.8 EC: It's about connection. It's about how you share your story and your values and the impact of your work with all the people who need it most. Effective marketing not only attracts clients, but the right clients, clients who align with your values and are willing to invest in your services. The third M is mechanics. Mechanics are all about creating consistency in your business. Without strong mechanics, it's often difficult to build a legacy business that thrives long term. Mechanics refer to the systems, processes, and structures that keep your business running smoothly or the back end of the business, whether you're in the room or not. They create stability, they reduce overwhelm, and ensure you can deliver exceptional service without burning out. If you only have marketing and mechanics but no mindset, often that's what leads to burnout. If you have mindset and mechanics but no marketing, that leads to no influence. Which means if somebody else opens up down the road or you move ZIP codes, then there's no way to actually build it back up again. If you have mindset and marketing but no mechanics, you have no freedom because nothing is streamlined. So while this podcast today is all around the mindset piece, we're gonna be unpacking mechanics as well as marketing as we go throughout. And you're gonna hear me talk about the three amazing M's quite a bit because I believe it's the foundation to success and has so many outworkings and wonderful stories for us to be chatting about together on this podcast.

0:12:34.2 EC: So our brain is wired for the path of least resistance. What that means is that we will do whatever is safe. Unconsciously, that is our pattern. And if we think about even the work that we do, we help people get out of pain. And people want to get out of pain because it's the path of most resistance to be in pain. In fact, we spend 94 to 96% of our lives living unconsciously. As I shared in our last podcast, I am an NLP Master Practitioner. And one of the things that NLP teaches us is that the human brain is taking on around five million bits of information every second. That's everything you can see, hear, feel, smell, and sense. But consciously, we can only handle a fraction of that, roughly seven plus or minus two pieces of information at once. So to cope with this, our brain uses three main filters. We delete information that doesn't seem important. We distort information that doesn't fit into our existing beliefs or expectations, and we generalize based on past experiences. None of this is wrong. It's actually how we survive and make sense of the world. But it does mean that two people can experience the exact same situation and walk away with completely different meanings, stories, and decisions.

0:13:53.9 EC: Now, I don't know if you've ever experienced this, where you're with a friend and you witness something, you see a situation happening, and you're like, oh my goodness. And they're like, yeah, wow. And you're like, what? How did we see the same thing? When we understand this in business, everything starts to change because we realize that people aren't responding to reality. They are responding to their filtered version of it. Your clients, your team, even you and I, are deleting, distorting, and generalizing all day long. That means clarity becomes one of the most valuable leadership skills you can have. Because the clearer your messaging, your expectations, and your offers are, the less room there is for confusion, misinterpretation, and hesitation. It's also why great leaders ask better questions instead of making assumptions. When we work with these filters instead of fighting them, communication improves, trust builds faster, and decisions become simpler and more aligned. Mindset coaching is about learning how to course correct or calibrate when the information we are filtering is no longer serving us. So for me, I was filtering information that I... One of the universal fears, that I wasn't good enough when I was going to this first business course.

0:15:10.5 EC: And when I started to filter it differently, I was able to take the information and change my behavior. So that instead of expecting my kids to just automatically know how to get ready for the day, even though we've done it thousands of times before, I was actually taking responsibility for my job as a parent, which was to help them learn one of those really basic but fundamental life skills to get out of the house. This is where something like goal setting can be really powerful because we're actually giving our brain specificity and clarity of exactly what we want. I don't know if you've ever bought a new car and then you start to see it everywhere. A number of years ago, we bought a secondhand Mazda CX-9 and it was black. And this was just, I call it a sexy car. And my daughter always pulls me up. She's like, mom, how can cars be sexy? I totally think it was. Leather interior, sunroof, power steering, heated seats. I loved this car so much. And it was really functional because we could sit the seats up in the back so we could put however many kids were coming to wherever we were going could fit in and we could put a bunch of stuff.

0:16:13.7 EC: And it was just, I loved this car. Actually, in 2017, when we bought this car, we drove from where we live in Ocean Grove up to Brisbane, which is, for the Bluey fans, where Bluey's from. It is 1800 kilometers or 1118 miles drive. We did 17 events in 22 days with our kids in the car. So we would drive four to five hours, we would do an event that night with our kids in the room, and then we would get up and go somewhere and we'd drive the next day. And so a quick story about that before I jump in back into mindset, is that we were driving home in the car and we're a few hours from where we needed to be and I was having a nano nap. And the kids go, oh, mom, and James, my husband, said, mom's asleep. And seriously, I heard them ask the questions. It's like I wasn't quite that asleep. And seriously, Toby says, to me, mom... Toby says, what's the opposite of a sandwich? And Anniella says, why do we have armpits? And I kid you not, everything else had been, can I have a snack? Can I have my iPad? [laughter]

0:17:19.7 EC: So anyway, we're driving up and down and this car was amazing. But what happened was when we bought the car, it seemed like Mazda had manufactured 30 to 50 of these black Mazda CX-9s and put them in my town in Ocean Grove before we left. They hadn't, but what was happening was that my unconscious filters were being really, really specific and were actually getting all of this out and starting to notice the Mazda CX-9s around. When we don't set goals, we're at risk of drifting aimlessly, which leads to becoming like a taxi or a barista in the treatment room, just taking people's orders. It's like they come in, a client comes in, and you're like a meter, just running a meter. It's like, come on, let's go. Instead of being that... Taking authority and being that health leader. And that can lead to being at the mercy of other people's opinions, even in massage Facebook groups. I don't know if you've done that before, but goals are the thing that tell our brain what it is that we want, to set the direction that we want to go, a little bit like Google Maps.

0:18:22.4 EC: If I wanna get to Brisbane, then I've got to put that destination in, and most of the time it gets me to where I want to go. Side note, did you know there are no goal police? There's no goal jail. If you set a goal and you don't reach it, it's just feedback. There are so many things we need to focus on in business, our clients, connecting with them, building rapport, assessments, notes, compliance, associations, laws, health funds, marketing, Google, Facebook, cleaning, reflective practice, insurance, first aid, KPIs, rebooking. We can get kind of knocked off course by many things. A thought is just a story we tell ourselves so long that we begin to believe it. So for you, what's one thing that you wanna focus on in your mindset for this year? We're setting the intention. What is one thing that if you were like, if I could just change this one area of my mindset, start to shift the story that I tell myself, whether it's about money, whether it's about goals, whether it's about boundaries, whether it's about your cancellation fees, what is one thing that you could focus on that might start to shift and make a huge difference when it comes to your business?

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0:19:32.2 EC: Subscribe to the ABMP Podcast wherever you listen to great podcasts, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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