Speaker 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Tom Jackobs 0:36

Today we're diving into a delightful discussion with a dynamic Amber Briggle, as the brilliant brain behind a Heart-Led Business that's all about connection and compassion to share her journey from passion to prosperity. So join us here on the Heart-Led Business Show as we unwrap her invaluable insights and experiences in the world of entrepreneurial empathy. Let's get this heartwarming conversation started. Amber welcome to the show.

Amber Briggle 1:06

I'm really impressed by all those alliterations, Tom. That was fantastic. Good job. Thank you.

Tom Jackobs 1:10

Well, thank you. That's my favorite poetry type of whatever you call that is.

Amber Briggle 1:15

Well done. I love it.

Tom Jackobs 1:18

Yeah. Of course AI helps out with that quite a bit. It's a lot easier when you ask ChatGPT to do alliteration.

Amber Briggle 1:25

ChatGPT and you did a great job. Thanks for having me today.

Tom Jackobs 1:29

No worries. I'm glad that you're here and it's always good to have a fellow Texan. I used to live in Texas for 20 years. But now that I'm in Taiwan, I always like to talk to other Texans and especially Texans that are moving abroad as well, so I can't wait to

Amber Briggle 1:42

Yes.

Tom Jackobs 1:44

dive into that as well.

Amber Briggle 1:46

Yeah,

Tom Jackobs 1:46

And how you set up your business to be able to do that?

Amber Briggle 1:48

I'm excited to talk about it.

What Heart Led Means

Tom Jackobs 1:50

Awesome. And of course the first question I always like to ask though is what's your definition of a Heart-Led Business?

Amber Briggle 1:57

Yeah. I appreciate that you sent me that question in advance, so I had a little time to think about it, but the answer came to me pretty quickly. I think any one of your listeners who owns a business or owned a business or is thinking about starting a business there, the money is just the, that's not the driving factor. The driving factor is your passion. Like what is it that you can bring to the world to make yourself or your community or your customers a better overall? And it's that sort of, it's that drive, it's that calling that really is, that is the thing that brought you into business. And then, your paycheck is just the icing on the cake, right? So for me, as the owner of Soma Massage Therapy. The drive behind this, the passion behind this is really how can I help people feel more comfortable in their body, mind, and spirit. And just get them grounded and, breathing properly and remove that pain and that stress as much as I possibly can from their lives and make them feel just better about themselves overall. That's gonna make them go out into the world. And just that have that positive ripple effect with everyone and everything that they come in contact with. Right. Like I, when I fell. Accidentally into the world of massage therapy and realized that this was really my calling. I just kept thinking, how can I continue to scale this up to heal and touch as many people as possible? So a Heart-Led Business is one that really, truly comes from your heart. It's about the people before the profits and following that and staying true to your mission. That is really, I think, the definition of a Heart-Led Business.

Tom Jackobs 3:34

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you brought in, the passion and that, that be the driving factor in the business and not, how can I make money in this business? It should be, how can I serve people and by the way, how can I make money at it, right?

Amber Briggle 3:52

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 3:53

That

Amber Briggle 3:54

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 3:54

The money's gonna be the first thing.

Amber Briggle 3:56

The, yeah, I, yeah, I like making money. I'm good at it. I like paying my bills and paying my mortgage and paying my team. But that's not why I got into this business. And I think anyone who owns a business can probably have a, probably a similar similar reaction, right? They got into this because of the love of it. And if you're, if you take care of the people. They'll take care of the business and then the business will take care of your bills. But if you reverse that and you're constantly chasing the profit, you're cheapening your product, you're cheapening your values, and everything's gonna fall apart because at that point, everything's just like a replaceable commodity, right? And your employees, your clients, your product, everything. But stay true to, stay true to that calling and take care of the people first and everything else will fall into place.

Tom Jackobs 4:40

Yeah, I love that.

Finding Massage Calling

Amber Briggle 4:41

Yeah. Yeah,

Tom Jackobs 4:42

So tell me, you said something really interesting and I wanna dive into that a little bit more. How you accidentally fell into massage therapy. Sounds like a story.

Amber Briggle 4:52

Yeah. It was, I think I've only ever met one person in my entire career who knew when they were a kid that they wanted to grow up and be a massage therapist, like almost. Almost all of us fall into this work and it's, and when we hire a massage therapist at Soma Massage Therapy, we're really looking for someone who already has that sort of like innate calling. To be a healer and then they go to school to cultivate this. You can teach someone massage techniques. You can teach someone proper draping. You can teach them how to fill out the soap charts. You can teach them, open sea close sea and to poke mend and trigger points. But you can't really teach someone intuition and empathy, right? Like you're born with it or you're not. And so we're looking for therapists who are born with that innate calling. And go to school to cultivate it. And just like me, almost everyone on our team just accidentally fell into it. So in my case, I had already gone to a really fancy four year private liberal arts college in Minnesota. And it was a wonderful experience, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do in college. I just knew I wanted to get outta my parents' house. And so that's why I went to school. And then I graduated with a really fascinating degree, but still didn't really know how to apply it or what I wanted to do in my life. And I was living at that time. Eventually I was living in Boulder, Colorado where my college boyfriend, now husband was going to grad school and I was, every day he was getting up and he was doing something amazing and he was thinking about his future and like what he can contribute to the world. And I was working in a daycare and like mad props, like snaps all the way for these, early childhood educators like the foundation of a solid democracy is good education and education starts at birthright. So like hats off to them, but it was not for me. And I felt like I was floundering and I didn't know what I wanted to do. But turns out in Boulder, one of the very best massage schools was right there down the street. And I've always been interested in the healing arts. And I figured, look, it's a one year program. I don't have to go to school for a master's. I don't have to go to school for another four year degree. I can go to a trade school. And find a way to pay the bills. And it turns out I was born for this. I absolutely love doing the work. But it got to a point where I had so many clients that I had no more room to fill them on my schedule. And that's what brought us to being, that's what brought me to being a small business owner today and now a franchisor. We're looking to expand these, this healing and this these values and this calling coast to coast.

Tom Jackobs 7:23

Yeah. How did you figure out that you were born for it? What was that like? Or was it a, was it a trigger moment or was it something that gradually was like, wow, this just feels right.

Amber Briggle 7:36

I dunno, it's just I think, I think sometimes you have to do a lot of things to figure out what it is you don't wanna do in order to narrow it down. So in my case, I went to a four year school and again, I, my, my husband now is a tenured philosophy professor. I love colleges. Like absolutely. There's, and I don't regret going, but it also wasn't entirely for me, right? So I graduate and I'm like now what? And then I'm floundering for a couple of years and I'm working these dead end jobs, and like nothing was fitting. And I, lemme see if I can condense this down further. Growing up we didn't have much. I, my mom was a single mom and relied a lot on government assistance. So we, we had food, we had a place to live. We'd go to see the doctor. We'd go to see the dentist, like we had government assistance for this. At the end of the day if I've got a cough and she's got$5 in her bank account, is she gonna buy food or cough syrup? Like, how do you make that decision? And so she was growing up always looking for these like little witchy concoctions with a slippery elm and apple cider vinegar and marshmallow roots and like all these, all these things that, just try what can I do that's in my kitchen that can help my kids? So I already grew up with this sort of alternative medicine, healing mindset, right? So it was for me, a natural progression then to be interested in a healing art like massage therapy. And so when I, I applied to the program, I keep in mind I'd never actually gotten a professional massage in my life before I went to massage school.

Tom Jackobs 9:03

You never had a massage before you went to massage school.

Amber Briggle 9:06

No, not a professional one. Yeah, not a professional one. I would check out books from the library and my friends and I would practice on each other. This is fun, not really thinking I could ever turn it into a job, let alone a franchise opportunity. But yeah. But I'd never gotten a professional massage. I, I applied, I graduated with honors a year later. It just, honestly, Tom, it just clicked. It just, I had tried so many things up to that point that didn't feel like a natural fit. And like the moment I got my hands on my first client, I was like, oh, this is it. This is what I wanna do. To help people. Be not in pain and to get out of their busy minds and feel their breath and feel their body and just be. It was just such a profound experience and I'm so grateful now that what I'm doing as a business owner and now a franchisor is still massage adjacent. I haven't massaged anyone in probably 10 years. I still keep my license active, but I'm so busy running the business that I don't get around the table anymore. I hire people for that. And I love that. I have now this opportunity through franchising to continue to take this calling really coast to coast. We see probably 1,012 hundred clients a month at our main location downtown. Now imagine if we had 500 locations, coast to coast, how many people we could be.

Tom Jackobs 10:26

Yeah.

Amber Briggle 10:27

healing. Making feel better. So yeah, it just, I dunno. I just fell into it and it just feels like the most natural thing ever. Yeah. I'm really grateful to be in this place.

Tom Jackobs 10:34

It's a great way to multiply your talent as well. And I see this a lot for a lot of practitioners that are, they're doing the work and then at some point they're like, I'm fully booked. I need to be able to multiply myself. How do I do that? And then they became a business

Amber Briggle 10:51

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 10:52

Owner and try to do both at the same time. And that's usually a recipe for disaster.

Amber Briggle 10:58

Oh my God. Yeah. Yes.

Tom Jackobs 11:00

for a while.

Amber Briggle 11:00

Yep.

Tom Jackobs 11:01

So how did you then the transfer from, or the transition from being a practitioner into being the business owner?

Amber Briggle 11:12

Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was out of necessity because I was doing the massage and then in between massages, I was answering those phone calls that we missed and answering the emails and running payroll and hiring massage therapists and doing the marketing like it was. It was a lot, and my children were tiny. Then like I think when we moved into our first brick and mortar, my son was in kindergarten, which means my daughter would've been. Like one or two, tiny children, and I would work and I'd get up and I'd get'em to school and I'd go massage my clients and I'd run my business and then I'd go home and I'd run my business some more and I'd go to sleep at midnight and I'd wake up the next day and it was exhausting.

Tom Jackobs 11:51

Yeah.

Amber Briggle 11:51

It was just truly out of necessity. It was scary because that meant as a massage therapist, I take home a hundred percent of it. If I hire someone, I don't, and so I was a little bit worried about the financials of that, but it just, it, I just. I just simply couldn't do it anymore. I was killing myself and the business was failing to thrive as well, because I couldn't dedicate my time on the business if I was working in the business, right?

Tom Jackobs 12:17

Yeah.

Amber Briggle 12:18

So that was really quite honestly what made me step back as a massage therapist. And eventually then, then hiring a front desk team and giving them the phone. And having them answer the calls like that was, it was my baby. I had built it and I was, there was a trust factor there, right? And then they did a great job and I'm like, shoot, how can I continue to make this as big and as impactful as I possibly can without burning myself out? Which brought us to franchising and what I'm really excited about is that truly Tom, anyone can do this. You don't have to be a massage therapist.

Tom Jackobs 12:51

Yeah.

Amber Briggle 12:52

No offense. No offense, sir, but you could own a great clips. Like you don't know,

Tom Jackobs 12:56

I could.

Amber Briggle 12:56

Anything, you dunno, you don't have to have hair to run a hair salon, right? So you don't have to be a massage therapist to run a massage therapy studio. And so I'm really excited with these franchise opportunities that I have Now the blueprint and the playbook for you to be able to really, truly make your small business a success without needing to, burn the candle at both ends to do it. Like we, we have the tools to help you. And I really wish I would've had more resources earlier on in my career because I just think about how much further Soma could be at this point. But we're here now in this moment and I'm really grateful for it. And there's a, the timing is always gonna work out just perfect. So I'm glad to be here. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 13:38

Yeah. And it's a journey as well. And it's everybody's journey,

Amber Briggle 13:41

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 13:42

even if you got the business education early on it probably wouldn't have been at the right time when you needed it.

Amber Briggle 13:48

Yep. Yeah, that's right. There's, you just have to just trust the process. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 13:52

Yeah.

Amber Briggle 13:53

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 13:54

I'm curious, when you were transitioning then out of being in the business and being on and working on the business. Who was your first hire? Was it a massage therapist or did you hire somebody else?

Amber Briggle 14:05

Yeah, so I just kept hiring massage therapist'cause that was the need. We just kept having clients requesting appointments and there was just no room on the schedule. So I just, for a long time just was only hiring massage therapists. Eventually I hired a very part-time office assistant who could just basically kinda help me with some of the bookkeeping. Entering the client intake forms, running reports on gift certificates and whatnot. I was still functioning as the receptionist. It was really only after we moved to, it was after COVID. When we moved into our now current location, which is twice as big as what we had pre COVID. And we, it was much more visible. I realized, I'm like, I really am gonna have to have a front desk staff because people are gonna be walking in off the street asking about us. And I really, and I, Tom, I wish I would have invested the money in that front desk staff years ago, because if you're in pain and you call, and I don't answer because I don't know, I'm with a, I'm with a massage client, or I'm picking my kids up from school, or I'm having a sandwich I don't know, if I don't answer the phone and you're in pain. You're just gonna call the next place and I'm gonna miss out on the opportunity to meet you. And having, investing that money in a front desk team was probably the best investment I could have made in my business. And we've really just taken off ever since then. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 15:28

Yeah. Yeah so my first hire was a admin assistant and like what you experienced. He did a much better job than I did

Amber Briggle 15:38

Yeah,

Tom Jackobs 15:38

in terms of the admin work and just organization and things like that. And I was like, why did I not do this earlier? And, it was back in,

Amber Briggle 15:47

Why didn't you do it?

Tom Jackobs 15:49

Because it was gonna be money out. And didn't have a lot of money. It was money out and I was like, how can I afford, and my business coach at the time, who's still my business coach now, which is always fun. She was like, don't be stupid, Tom. Like you're doing$10 an hour work and you should be, and you're getting like$60 an hour, or you're doing a hundred, you should be getting a hundred dollars an hour. So why are you doing$10 an hour work?

Amber Briggle 16:16

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 16:16

That's a good point. So when I hired him, it was only 20 hours a week.'cause that was all I

Amber Briggle 16:20

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 16:21

at the time.

Amber Briggle 16:21

Yep.

Tom Jackobs 16:22

And the next week I had more consultations and more sales on the book than I

Amber Briggle 16:28

Yep,

Tom Jackobs 16:28

in the previous 3

Amber Briggle 16:29

months yep.

Tom Jackobs 16:29

I was like,

Amber Briggle 16:30

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 16:30

yeah, my energy was, scrubbing the toilet and filing paper and not working with people and

Building an Absentee Team

Amber Briggle 16:36

Because you were working in Yeah. Because you were working in the business instead of on the business. Absolutely. And now, yeah I can totally relate. And now I have this fantastic management team. I'm essentially an absentee business owner. I, the only time I go into work is maybe once a week to actually get a massage and then when I'm there Yeah. Quality control. And and and maybe I'll sweep a hallway or fold some massage sheets. Like I do. 99% of my work here at home, and if I'm not at home I pop into the office and there's really no room for me there. Now you're in living in Taiwan. My family's moving to Europe this summer. My husband got a fantastic job at a university there. And I just told my team last week fully expecting them to panic and they're like. Okay, we never see you anyway. How does it matter if you're working, from right here in Denton, Texas, or working from Austin or working from Colorado Springs or working from Stockholm? It really doesn't matter. And so it, so that was that for me then, investing into that in the management team, which essentially, when I invested in my management team, it wasn't with the eventual plan that I was gonna be moving to Sweden. The plan was I'm gonna be working as the franchisor, and so I can't be working on the daily operations of my flagship studio. I need to be working on the brand. But through this franchising process, I've been able to really extract myself from the daily goings on at my studio. I have a fantastic team, which allows me to be an absentee business owner, and now I'm gonna be, keeping my finger on the pulse of Soma Massage Therapy and continuing to franchise. But from Sweden. So it's, you, I like you. I feared that investment of a team. But once you get the right team in place and you're taking, and you're taking care of them, going back to my first answer, you take care of your team. They're gonna take care of your business, and you can take care of the things that really matter. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 18:30

Yeah. There, there were probably when you announced that to them they were probably saying too, oh, good, because now we have another hour on our schedule. We can actually get a client in here that pays us.

Amber Briggle 18:39

Right. Amber's not gonna be in here all the time getting a massage.

Profit With Heart

Tom Jackobs 18:42

Awesome. So let's shift gears a little bit. We've been talking a little bit about the money side, but how do you balance the profit, making sure that you have profit in the business and still being heart-led?

Amber Briggle 18:55

How do I balance profit and being heart-led? I feel, I don't know. I feel like it's just a simple answer. I just do it. I reverse engineer my price point. So what are my costs? What do I need to pay my team to give them a fair living wage? We have a no tipping model here at Soma Massage Therapy, which is

Tom Jackobs 19:15

Okay.

Amber Briggle 19:15

unheard of in this industry. But if you've never tipped your physical therapist or your chiropractor. Why are you tipping your massage therapist? And then when the economy gets tight as it is now, people still might be coming in for their massages, but then they're not gonna be tipping you as much or at all. So now you're back to earning just this piddly based salary at whatever corporate studio you're at, right? But if I can pay you a fair living wage that's going to, employee retention is gonna be higher. The stress for both the therapist and the client is gonna be lower and everyone's gonna be happy, right? So what's that price point? What I need to be paying people? Then you build in, cost of your fixed expenses. Rent, utilities, insurance. We don't sell any retail products. So I don't have, outstanding bills and vendors and whatnot. We have, what supplies do we need? What equipment do we need to replace, right? And then what do I need to pay my bills and keep my business out of debt? And then that's your price point and, and that you just, you take, again, you take care of the people. The people will take care of the business and everything's just gonna fall into place. Now, we did have to raise our rates this past year and I was so sad about it. So because I don't, when money is tight for everyone, the last thing I wanna do is make it tighter. But the reality is everyone needs to raise the rates because every, the cost of everything is rising. And so if I wanna be able to continue to get my team. Raises and bonuses and have high quality equipment and provide high quality care, then we needed to adjust our rates accordingly. Fortunately we haven't really lost any business from it. People we're our, we're ahead and shoulders above the rest. And so I think, people recognize the quality in our, in the services we provide and keep coming back'cause

Tom Jackobs 20:57

Yeah.

Amber Briggle 20:57

We're the best. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 20:58

Hundred percent. And I witnessed that too in, in my personal training studio that I started in 2008, which was just a really great time to start a small business and even though there was a recession going on and everybody else was saying, oh, pricing and, but. I was always of the mindset that it's, there's the same amount of money in the world, in fact, there's probably more money in the world now, and it's just not, people are just choosier on where to spend it, spend it on things that are low quality. So if you're a higher quality, higher price point, people are gonna find you because the money's still there. It's just

Amber Briggle 21:39

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 21:40

circulating as much as it was before.

Amber Briggle 21:43

I think massage therapy is fairly immune ish to downturns in the economy. People might eat out less and have more dinner parties, right? They might not buy clothes at the department store. They might go thrifting, right? But if your back hurts, and you can only put an ice pack and you know biofreeze on it for so long before you need to see a professional. And, so people are gonna continue coming back for that care. And then when you, when we've leveraged ourselves with the way that we have as being more medical focused. We have a no tipping policy. We do take HSA, you get a full 60 minutes on that table. We're not gonna shortchange you with or 55 minutes, like all these things that, you know, that that we're able to provide. That kind of puts us above the rest. Then you start getting into that mindset that this is self-care and not a thing that I do. A fluff and buff twice a year on my birthday and anniversary. So we've really like leveraged ourselves firmly in that medical massage model. We're also, fortunately, mostly immune to tariffs. I don't run a burger joint, so beef tariffs don't affect me. Don't run a coffee shopper bakery. Coffee and chocolate tariffs don't affect me. Tariffs affect all of us, but less directly in the massage world. So we're really quite fortunate to be in this space that we're in that though the economy is tight, our books are still pretty booked. And we're really grateful for it. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 22:59

Yeah, that's, that's I'm glad you brought that point up because there, there are certain industries like, hair, I wouldn't know about, but.

Amber Briggle 23:07

For example, yeah.

Tom Jackobs 23:09

But I still buy razors. Hair still grows a little bit, but, so I still need to buy razors and people still need to go get haircuts. They need to, they need to see the doctor, it's all that and I love the fact that you have that no tipping policy.'cause that's one

Amber Briggle 23:22

yeah.

Tom Jackobs 23:23

thing. I went to that, that one very large chain. Be named, where it's on the, like on the front desk, your massage is valued at$80 or whatever, and so you should be giving a 30% tip, which is$24 to your like, why don't you just charge me the 125

Amber Briggle 23:42

It's

Tom Jackobs 23:42

bucks? I don't care.

Amber Briggle 23:44

It's so stressful Tom? Like when someone's like elbow deep in your glutes and they're finally relieving that sciatic pain, the last thing you should be doing is thinking about your checking account and how much you can afford to tip without pissing off your massage therapist, right? Just go for the freaking massage. You've never tipped your physical therapist or chiropractor. Why are you tipping us? And one more point too, and I feel so validated. COVID pissed me off so much, but I feel so validated by this stance of no tipping, because during COVID, what were the very first businesses to shut down? It was hair, nails, bars, restaurants, retail, massage, service industry, right? Who got to stay open? Physical therapists, chiropractors, doctors, dentists, I'm opening my mouth at the dentist, right? And they don't have to close. So when you put us in the service industry, you cheapen the work. You don't see the value of it for either the profession or even for you yourself with the, this wellness based model, right? Because you're thinking of it as a treat. Someone's bringing you a margarita. And so I just feel so validated with this and I'm so excited. To be franchising. I really want to just completely transform the industry and retrain the entire country to think about massage as, as medical as something necessary. Yeah.

Franchise and Contact Info

Tom Jackobs 25:03

Of course it's for sure. Awesome. Well, how can people learn more about you, Amber, and all the great stuff that you're doing, and potentially open up their own massage?

Amber Briggle 25:12

I love it. Thank you. Yeah, so you can find us at mysomamassage.com. Soma is short for somatic, so mysomamassage.com. You can read about our styles, our rates, our ethos, our, there's resources on there, on, self care and self massage and webinars and whatnot. If you're interested in franchising, at the top of the page, there's a button just called it's Nationwide Franchising or Franchising Nationwide. Click on that. Read about our franchise opportunities. At the bottom of the that page, there's a a form that you can fill out to receive a, your free discovery kit. I'd love to talk with you more and if franchising is not right for you, but you know someone that this would be a great opportunity. Again, you don't have to be a massage therapist. You just gotta be a hard worker and interested in wellness, right? I can teach you the rest. If this is good for someone, if you introduce me to them and they become a Soma Massage Therapy franchisee at some point in the future, then you for introducing me to them will get either a thousand dollars cash or a year of free massages. So think about, maybe your niece got laid off. Maybe your son-in-law came into some inheritance money and is looking to make a break. I don't know what it looks like, but if you know someone that would be a good fit for them, please send them my wagon, mysomamassage.com. You can also find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook, but not X, because they're gross.

Tom Jackobs 26:32

I really do appreciate you and everything that you're doing and definitely that your help. Other people out. So thank you for that.

Amber Briggle 26:39

Thanks so much, Tom, for the opportunity. It was great today.

Final Thanks and Wrap Up

Tom Jackobs 26:42

You're welcome. And thank you listeners for tuning in to today's show. We really do appreciate it. So make sure you're checking out everything that Amber's doing. We're gonna link all of that down in the show notes, so make sure you're clicking down there and checking out that franchise opportunity as well. Or if you're in the Dallas Fort Worth area, go into My Soma and get a great medical massage'cause everybody doesn't, does need that for sure. And while you're down there clicking around in the show notes, there might be a review button. If you could give the show a rating and a review, we would really appreciate it that just helps spread the word about the Heart-Led Business Show. And until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2 27:20

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.