The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ – Start, Grow, and Simplify Your Business

56: Ready for Myofunctional Therapy Clients? 3 Steps To Guarantee Your Success

• Carmen Ball – Dental Hygienist Career Change Coach & Myofunctional Therapy Business Mentor

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What if you’re not actually stuck… you’re just not using your time in a way that matches the life you keep saying you want?

In this episode, I’m breaking down the three non-negotiable steps you must put in place if you’re done spinning, done stalling, and done letting your schedule boss you around.

This is for the hygienist who’s hanging on by a thread, the therapist who trained but never got the business support she deserved, and the woman who wants RESULTS — not more excuses, overwhelm, or information she never implements.

If you’re craving a wake-up call wrapped in a hug, momentum that actually sticks, and the confidence to take messy, imperfect action (instead of waiting for the universe to send you a sign), this episode is going to land exactly where you need it.

Grab your ☕ coffee and your courage — and let’s dive in! 

Xo, Carmen

Join The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1295968461846242

Need help? Book a "Get Unstuck" call today: myofunctionaltherapytrainingacademy.com/discovery-call/

SPEAKER_00:

Now, I titled this podcast Three Steps to Guarantee Your Success. Mainly to make sure you stop multitasking and pay attention because, as you know, guaranteeing anything is hard. Now, I know that if you do the work that I teach you, you will have success. But here's the truth, my friend. I can also guarantee what's going to happen if you don't do the work. You're not going to have success. If you're a burned out, bored dental hygienist who knows that you can't do this forever, or you've already taken myofunctional therapy training but feel stuck on how to actually start, grow, or simplify your business, welcome my friend. You're in the right place. I'm Carmen, a dental hygienist who once sat exactly where you are: overworked, physically tired, mentally done, knowing that there had to be more, and wanting the fastest, simplest, most organized path forward with someone holding my hand along the way. This podcast is for women who don't want more information. They want transformation. They want clarity, consistent clients, predictable income without building a business that takes over their life. They also want support while they do it. So if you're ready to stop spinning, start moving, and finally make sense of what comes next, grab your coffee and your courage, my friend. Let's build a business that works for your life, not one that runs it, so that you can build a life that you're genuinely bonkers about, because that's my superpower. Well, hello, friend, and welcome back to the podcast. I am really happy you're here. I know I say that all the time, but I know that for those of you who keep coming back to the podcast, you're here for a reason, okay? Um, because a lot of you have some sort of desire on your heart, whether that is uh hoping to leave dental hygiene and build a life that your bonkers about and get into myofunctional therapy, or some of you guys are just hoping to um get your business started. So we are going to be going through three things. I'm going to teach you three things that will help you avoid being in the same place next year. Now, if you are listening to this in real time, it is January and we all love us a New Year's resolution, but we all know that they peter out rather quickly. And for some of you guys, that petering out happens as quickly as January 2nd. Okay. Now, many of my audience, so those um just in my sphere, those on my email list, and those who are part of the Profitable Myelfunctional Therapist Facebook group, they want to have a thriving business. Many are already trained, but they haven't put those skills to use yet. So learning three tactical skills that you can put to use today is going to help you be a step closer to building a life that you are bonkers about. Now, I titled this podcast, Three Steps to Guarantee Your Success, mainly to make sure that you stop multitasking and you pay attention to what I have to say today, because as you know, guaranteeing anything is hard. Okay. Basically, we are guaranteed to die and have to pay taxes, and that's it. Now, I do know that if you do the work that I teach you, you're gonna have success. But the the same truth is also I can guarantee what's going to happen if you don't do the work. You're not gonna have success. So I said the same thing to a student the other day in coaching. Uh, she, in a nutshell, she is afraid to really get the ball rolling because she is afraid of failing, which let me first say is totally normal. Okay, we already have um that that's just a normal response. Okay, but in true Carmen fashion, I had to give her a big dose of tough love that if she didn't start getting the ball rolling, that she was guaranteed to fail. Okay. So she was worried about failing and you know, kind of like the what if. And it's like, well, girlfriend, if you don't do anything, you that is gonna be the outcome. Okay, hard stop. So let me tell you a little bit about me being in this situation. So I was a hundred percent here in the same situation when I was just starting out. I have shared with the shared this with you before that my program taught clinical stuff, but the business training or how to implement it or how to get started or how to have it be anything but like grabbing out of a you know, like a a grab bag, it it just it didn't have it, okay. Business training was a footnote in my program. So I had to figure it out, which I did, which I did quickly because I wanted out of dental hygiene. Now, I know that many of you do too, okay, but you are not taking steps because hygiene is your safety net, okay? And you can just be lazy and not pursue the goal, or you can be uh uh scared and not pursue the goal. Whatever, you can still have a paycheck and not have to get the sweaty pits, okay? That wasn't me. My health, my mental health, my physical health, my gosh, everything depended on me leaving dental hygiene. Now, if you haven't already listened to episode 54, where I talk about taking up a bad habit that was making me someone I didn't recognize, I'm not gonna tell you what I did, but I want you to go back and listen to it, okay? Uh, so in this episode, I'm going to be teaching you three things that you can put into use today to start making a difference so that you are ready for those myfunctional therapy clients, okay? So that you can guarantee success. All right. The first one, my friend, is you have to have margin. Margin equals time, okay? You have to have this. This is the time where you have to do your learning or your planning or your setup or your marketing, okay? So, in my world, in my coaching, I call this butt in the chair time. So, regardless of what you're going to be here doing here, um, these are your business hours. Now, this is very important, whether you're just starting out. Um, many of you guys listening to this, I know you're already studying with me, so you know what this means. But this is just setting aside the time so that it gets blocked on the calendar. And this is your butt in the chair time, okay? These will become your business hours, okay? So you set these very early on. And the reason I have you set these um these early on is so that you can tell people when you see clients, okay? Um now, a lot of you guys are in the operatory. So if you're visiting with somebody, you have no idea when you're going to be talking to somebody who really is your ideal customer. And when they say, Oh my goodness, this sounds like me, it sounds like you could help me. And they say, Hey, how can I work with you? When can I work with you? And you tell them, Well, I don't know. I haven't figured that out. Do you think that's gonna help you? Do you think that's gonna give you any credibility? Does that make you look professional and like you are put together, or does it make you look like you are a chaotic mess? I call this a soup sandwich, okay? Do you how would you feel if you called a dental practice and said, you know, I think I need to come see you? And they say, Well, we don't know when we can see you. How are you gonna feel? You're gonna just think, well, you're it's not gonna be a positive thought, okay? So when you know this time, that is one of the things that's a decision that you make and you can check it off. Okay, I can tell you right now, this exact week. Well, I had to say it to my husband this morning because we are looking at um buying a lake rental property here that's next door to us. And he wanted to know when this week I would be able to meet with the realtor. And I said anything but Wednesday or Friday, because on Wednesdays and Fridays, I have butt-in-the-chair business time. I might have clients, but also during that time, I'm doing other things. So that is when I am in my office. Okay, so that's when you're going to be in the business and doing business things. Okay, we will talk a lot uh a lot more about that. So that was number one. Number two, stay in the material. My friend, motivation is only gonna change your day, but momentum is gonna change your life. And so many of you guys, and if you are my student, I might also be talking to you. You've got to quit falling off the wagon. Okay. Falling out of the material is like reading the same chapter again and again and again. I don't care whether you're moving forward like the tortoise or you're doing it like the hare. Okay, when I did it, you guys, I was the hair. I was the one who wanted to get out of hygiene so bad. I um I spent all my spare time doing my learning. Okay. I don't care what pace you're doing it, you're both going, they're they're both going forward. The reason that you have to stay in the material is because it's like reading the same chapter over and over again. You you just don't remember it, okay? And you lose momentum. So that's number two. Okay. I don't really have a lot more to say about that. It's very self-explanatory. Stay fresh. I don't care whether it's a half a lesson. Everything, if you're in my programs, everything that I teach has a pause button. Okay. All right. And then the third thing that I want to teach you today is what we call here at the Profitable Myofunctional Therapist, the decide and do process. Okay. This is the process that I teach. You decide ahead of time what you're going to do. You put a plan in place and you work the plan. How boring is this, my friend? But it is the thing that makes the difference. Okay. So step one of the decide and do process is you're going to decide. The second step is you're going to take ugly and perfect action. This is very hard for us as dental hygienists because we are type A plus personalities. We're perfectionists. Um, because we're perfectionists, we're our procrastinators, okay? So in my practice, you will hear me say this, you hear my students say it. It's always a thing. Take ugly and perfect action. If you take no action, you absolutely know what's going to happen. That's the guarantee. You are guaranteed that nothing is going to happen. But if you take some sort of action, at some point you get to evaluate it and you get to determine what worked, what didn't work, what do I need to do differently? Okay. You get some data. Okay, we don't evaluate off of our gut. We get data, we look at it, and then we take more ugly imperfect action. We don't redecide, my friend. We don't burn the whole damn thing down and start again, which I know most of you guys are doing. Oh, it's not perfect. I'm gonna just start over. No, first of all, if you're gonna study with me or you're gonna hang out and be part of my community, I want you to get comfortable with the concept of um taking ugly and perfect action, and done is better than perfect, and getting very comfortable with B work. Your girl here knows that that is very difficult because if you know anything about my past, I was the student who went from being my first stint in college. This cracks me up, but I had a blood alcohol higher than my GPA, my friend. I mean, I even missed the day to sell back your books, which back in the day was beer money because I was skipping school. So I had no uh I had no goals, I just had no direction. So I had to sit it out and wait five years and petition the board of education for a fresh start, which I got. But mind you, I lost five years of my life having to wait for that. Um, and that's a whole nother conversation, but it seemed at the time, it seemed easier and cheaper, probably easier because I was looking for the easier way back then. Um, it seemed easier to wait for five years rather than go back and retake all of those classes. So I waited five years, then I got a fresh start, which means I got a new GPA, and I was a 4.0 student. So absolute perfection all the way, you know, to graduate school. Um so it's really hard for somebody like me and probably you two to get comfortable with B plus work. But my friend, if you're gonna be a successful CEO and a business owner, you have to get over yourself. You got to get comfortable with B plus work. And remember, done is better than perfect. Okay, so the other thing, the last thing I want to tell you about the decide and do process is who cares what your feelings say. Okay. Now, I don't mean that to say that how you feel isn't important in all of those, you know, kumbaya, let me give you a hug type of things. What I'm telling you is your brain is going to serve you up all sorts of different things that you should do to walk away from your plan, to make changes, to reschedule, all of that. Um, your brain wants to minimize pain and prolong pleasure. Okay. Building a life you're bonkers about involves some pain. And and quite honestly, my friend, whatever goal you're working towards involves a little bit of pain. Okay. Um, this morning was a prime example. I set my calendar up on Sundays. I know exactly what my priorities, needs, and wants are. Everything has a spot on the calendar because you know your girl does not do a to-do list. Okay, everything's on the calendar. But this morning, when I looked out at my lovely, glorious paradise, all I saw was cold. Okay, frost on the grass. I took the dogs out for our, you know, 6:45 a.m. hike, and my nose was running and my ears were cold. And my first thought was I don't know if I want to go for my walk at eight because from eight to nine, I go walk. Okay. Two to three miles. And this morning it just didn't seem like I wanted to do that. What I really wanted to do is shuffle my schedule and walk when it would be a little bit warmer. Okay, sounds really great. Also, I do have a workout, uh, a weights lifting session scheduled this afternoon. So while it sounded like a great idea, my brain is like, hey, you should do this, you should do this, you should do this. And I said, shut up. We're gonna just do it. And the funny thing is, is while my brain was pulling its shenanigans and doing its tomfoolery up here in my cabeza, my fingers were putting the bow tie in my on my shoelaces and was putting on my you know, stay warm under armor shirt because I was going. And my feet knew that I was going. My brain just apparently was last to get the message. So it doesn't matter what your feelings say. Okay, you have to remember your brain just wants to keep you safe. And every time you're trying to do something new, it's scary. Your brain wants to minimize that pain and prolong the pleasure of just being happy doing something worthless like scrolling social media. All right. So, what do I want you to do with this episode? Number one, tiger time. You've probably heard me say it before. I want your tiger time on the calendar. If you do not think you have enough time, friend, you better figure it out. You better figure out how to buy that time, okay? And if you are not in the profitable myofunctional therapist Facebook group, you want to get there because here very soon, my January 23rd workshop is about determining your enough. Your enough is the bottom line, figuring out how many hours you need to work. Yes, your brain's gonna serve up all sorts of things. Like, I need to work the number of hours that I'm working. I can barely make ends meet. That might not be the case, and it's probably not, okay. And so when you figure out what's the bare minimum numbers that you can or numbers, the bare minimum hours that you can work currently in this season, okay, not forever, uh, so that you can buy some more time on your calendar, that's gonna give you uh more time to do this, okay? So, first the tiger time goes on the calendar. So you're gonna block it, okay? If you don't work on Fridays, which I know a lot of hygienists don't, or whatever, one day a week, then you gotta protect that, okay? And it might not be the whole day. You might say, All I can do right now is three hours. I think that three hours is very minimum. I think it's the minimum that you need to have to put towards this dream. So you have to protect it, okay? Now I will tell you our February workshop is going to be about setting up your time management and your calendar system. So make sure that you're in the Facebook group. But you protect that time. So that means blocked on your calendar, whatever that time is, okay? And this is your butt-in-the-chair time. You got to set boundaries around this. That means telling your boss, no, you're not gonna work that extra shift, telling anybody, just like me telling my husband, I can meet with the realtor on any time but Wednesday and Friday. Okay. Um, this also is a boundary thing, but I want to call it out because I'm seeing it a lot. This means a conversation with husband, spouse, significant other, whatever. Okay. He just thinks this is a cute thing that you're doing, and perhaps you've done. Done a lot of cute things. And by cute things, I mean all sorts of things that you've attempted to find other ways to make money that you've quit on. Um, he doesn't realize how much help you need. And so when I say having hard talks with husbands, this is a conversation I have with a lot of my coaching students. You need more time. And if this means that your husband has to put a meal on the table one night a week, then that needs to happen. You guys need to figure that out. If that means husband needs to do bedtime, bathtime, whatever, if husband needs to have kids until noon on Saturdays, that means he has to do it. The biggest thing here is he just doesn't understand the importance. Neither did my husband. When I started building this multi-million dollar business, first of all, he thought I was crazy. Second of all, he just thought it was this cute little thing I was doing until it wasn't a cute little thing I was doing, until it was a real thing. Okay. So to this day, to just last week, on Wednesdays, because I work until six o'clock, Scott is responsible for dinner. Now I can either be a control freak and fret about that because let me trust you, he's not gonna serve something nearly as healthy as what I would make, or I can get the ingredients and give him the his marching orders. So typically, which is what I do, typically I will say, okay, I work until six o'clock. We're having a chopped Italian salad. All the ingredients are on the platter on the top shelf in the fridge. Okay. I will come out of my office at six and dinner can be ready because my routine is so um is so well defined that normally we make and have dinner and cleanup between five and seven. So if I work until six and if I have to come down and make dinner, that's going to set my evening self-care, relaxation, sauna, stretching, yoga time. That's gonna mess that up. So I have those boundaries with him, and he knows when I come down at six, we're gonna eat dinner because we can eat and still be cleaned up by seven. Funny thing is, last Wednesday I was done at 4:30 with clients because my last couple had rescheduled. Do you think for one second on God's green earth that I let him know that? Absolutely not. I have him trained and he is down there chopping away, which he was already doing at 4:30 when I went down to refill my water. I came back up to my podcast studio, I closed the door, and he is none the wiser. I went down at 559. There is no way I'm gonna let him know that I'm bending my boundaries to come down early to make a meal that he's gonna put in front of me. No, no, no. Okay, so that was a fun side note. Uh, and then the other thing, you know, when it comes to time, you guys, this might not be what you want to hear, but buy more time. In my business, I have had many different helpers, if you will. I've had business managers, I've had lots of different uh contractors and team members. And what I have found to be the hardest is this is such a niche therapy. It is hard for me to have a content writer who can write content like me. Okay. So if I had hired, I remember back years ago when I had hired somebody to um help manage and grow my business, and her services included writing a blog. And the first time she wrote a blog for me, it took me longer to make it actually sound like she knew what she was talking about and to make it actually sound like me. It made no sense. So sometimes you have to get creative in buying more time. Yes, I know that you're probably sitting here going, I don't want to spend any more money. But to build a business, you have to spend money. And so for me, that means having a housekeeper. Because guess what? On Tuesday mornings from eight to 10, that buys me two hours of quality focus time. And and I get to work doing the stuff that I love, and somebody else gets to work doing this, doing what they love, and I get to pay them. You might not think you have the money, but think about it, okay? Or make it, figure it out, figure out how to do it. Uh, and and I don't I don't mean that in a bougie, entitled way. I have a housekeeper because it's hard for me to have somebody else do certain aspects of my work. I need to do it. So I only have X amount of hours. So if I can have somebody clean my house and give me back those two hours on a silver platter, you can bet your booty I'm doing it. The other thing is, is like getting your groceries delivered. It seems it's it's a no-brainer. In my life, it is a no-brainer because I live 30 minutes out in the country for me to go to town, go in a store, no thank you, and get the groceries and bring them home. You're talking minimum two hours of my time. What can I do in my business in two hours of that time? So I get my groceries delivered. Is it perfect? Nope. Uh, do I sometimes get a spaghetti squash that looks like it's been dropped, kicked, or ace ventura down the road? Yep, happens. Do I get a cucumber that's half rotten? Yep, I do. Um, do they not have ingredients? Yes, sometimes it happens. But you know what? I am willing to roll with those punches rather than go to town and get my own groceries. Uh, another thing is a meal service. I'm not currently doing it now because I'm just so in love with cooking my own healthy meals. Remember, I have significant health goals this year because my health number, my quality of life health score last year was so low. Um, so I'm not doing it now, but there are some great affordable meal services. HelloFresh is the first one that comes to mind. I can't think of the other ones that I've tried. You don't have to do it every night. I used to do plans that would do like twice a week. And then I would do like a simple crock pot soup or salad, something like that, so that it was simple on the week nights. So you can think about something like that. Yes, it might cost money, but again, remember your trade, you're doing a trade-off. Okay. And you can also try and get more time by finding somebody else. Maybe you can meet another woman in business or another mama who's starting a business, something like that. And you guys can trade time. You can trade taking care, taking care of each other. For me, here's here's my honest opinion. And it's tough for a lot of you to hear. This needs to start with your husband or your significant other. Okay. Um, I see this so much where the woman thinks that the man can't, you know, well, he can't, he can't get the kids ready for bed. I have to do that. And I think you have to do some mindset stuff or really unpack why that is. All right. So I think that covers it for Tiger Time. Next, starting this week, do what I call it's not my phrase, the minimum effective dose. I think it's from Tim Ferris. Do the minimum effective dose to keep you moving forward. You might have a week where everything is wonderful, and then you have a week where um the universe seems like they're plotting against you, doing something to keep going forward. Okay, you had three hours planned, now you have a sick kid, now you don't know how you're gonna stay in that lesson, stay in the material, keep studying, keep fresh with it. Can you get 15 minutes in? Can you get the rest of the lesson done? That kind of stuff. Just find something that allows you to stay in the material and keep going forward. All right, and then the decide undo process. I want you to make your first decision. Okay, we're gonna start small, my friend. Now, if you're trained, the first decision I want you to decide is if you're confident with your training. If not, my friend, gather up your funds. Okay, get into my program. Who cares? It's a sunk cost. You will recoup it. I can promise you, if you come and study with me and you do the work, the boots on the ground work that you are taught, you will recoup it. Because what's your alternative? Well, I already, I already spent$3,000 on a program that didn't deliver. So what are you gonna do? Nothing but talk about it and complain about it. No way. Okay, you got to move forward. So you gotta get over that. So decide if you're confident with your training. If you're not, get your get your credit card out, friend. If you are, your first decision is to set your business hours. Hard stop. Okay. Business hours. This is when you're doing business. Yes, you might not have clients filling all those hours, but that's okay. Your butt needs to be in the chair doing something. Because I can guarantee you, if you set three hours a week to do business and you don't have clients, you're gonna have three hours of stuff that you can work on, okay? Next, if you're not trained, then the decision you need to make is if you want to keep saving episodes, if you want to keep listening to episodes and sitting on the fence, which cannot be comfortable, by the way, or it or make the decision that you're ready to take the steps to build that life, that life that you want. Okay. If that's the decision, then you went you get enrolled and we go from there. I'm gonna walk you through everything step by step after that point. Okay. So make your first decision. If you're trained, are you confident in it? If you're not, you know how I can help you. Okay. And then, very last friend, if you are not in the Profitable Myelfunctional Therapist Facebook group, you've got to get there. That's where all these monthly workshops are going to be. So wherever you're listening to this, you can get, you can go join. That is a wrap, my friend. That is all I have for you today. I have given you your homework, I've given you your marching order. So go do it. Okay, and more importantly, until I'm back next time, thank you for letting me be part of helping you build a life that you are absolutely bunkers about. I hope you loved today's episode, friend. I pray that it lifted you up, motivated you, and taught you something. If so, would you stop right now and go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review? And lastly, make sure you've joined the profitable myofunctional therapist Facebook community. Links to all the goodies can be found wherever you're listening to this podcast. That's it for now. Cheering you on, my friend, and we'll chat soon.