Introducing: The RD Entrepreneur Symposium

Nutrition

Are you a fellow RD/RDN or nutrition or health professional that runs or wants to run your own business? This might just be what you’re looking for to get your business booming.

Well hey there! I wanted to share a little {ok, not so little} project that I’ve had up my sleeve: The RD Entrepreneur Symposium for dietitians, soon to be dietitians, and other health-based professionals that run or want to run their own businesses. Whether that means a brick and mortar private practice, a virtual practice, an online group program, or simply a way to broaden and diversify your income, this is for you!

It’s created BY dietitians FOR dietitians. Nowhere else will you find the guidance to grow your business, attract more clients, and increase your revenue without increasing your work hours, all designed specifically with dietitians and healthcare providers in mind. No more trying to extrapolate what you learned from a blogging course or a business guide and apply it to nutrition and dietetics.

I’ve pulled together more than 16 experts – from six figure dietitians to marketing gurus to tech experts – to show you exactly what they’re doing to be so successful.

There are 4 tracks, each packed with expert sessions:

The Ins & Outs of Growing Your Private Practice
Attracting Clients & Excelling in Your Niche
Mastering Your Efficiency & Increasing Your Revenue
Using Technology, Telehealth, and Systems to Grow Your Business

{See the full session list}

And since it’s a virtual symposium you get to attend all 4, no picking and choosing.

Each expert session comes with actionable steps you can implement right away, plus a workbook to put it all together and a private community for support and interaction with the speakers. There’s an opportunity for accountability partners/mini-mastermind groups as well, because when we support each other, we all win.

[Tweet “Want to grow your nutrition business? This 4 day series of expert sessions will show you exactly how. #rdchat #rdsymposium”]

Although the material will initially be released over 4 days starting March 14th, you can watch or listen from anywhere, whenever you want.

So what will you get out of this symposium?

By the time it’s over you will be able to:

– Magnetically attract clients – no more hunting them down. What’s more, they’ll be the right fit for you – increase retention & referrals and cut down on no-shows and dropouts.

– Put your marketing on auto drive and literally book clients and sell programs & services while you sleep. Sales funnels, CRMs, marketing automation – we’ve got you covered.

⁃ Use your unique voice to stand out from the crowd. There are a whole lotta people out there running health and nutrition programs. Make people pick YOU as their personal expert.

⁃ Stop letting fear hold you back. You’re in a field where you can literally shape your career and your day to day life to look like anything you want, so do it!

Plus more: conquer your taxes, know your worth and set your rates, build multiple revenue streams, and use technology to streamline your systems and telehealth to grow your business.

~~Registration opens soon – get yo’ self on the VIP list to be the first to know when it opens!~~

{And I promise this space won’t turn into all-symposium-all-the-time, but I just won’t be able to help mentioning it over the next few weeks, so hang in there if you’re not in the nutrition/entrepreneurial world. I promise there’s an end in sight.}

Check it out here –> The RD Entrepreneur Symposium for Nutrition & Health Professionals

PJs & Pancakes

Recipe

A downside to self-employment is you don’t necessarily get holidays off.

{This fact is completely countered by the inordinate amount of hours I can spend in pajamas.}

So while I did spend Labor Day actually laboring, I didn’t feel bad about:

a) Working in my comfy chair in the living room

b) Starting the day with a special occasion, holiday-worthy breakfast:

Chocolate Chip Pancakes!

While making pancakes takes a little more time than whipping up a batch of oatmeal, they really don’t take that long. Plus, I always make extra for the next day. {Or snacks later on- whichever happens first. Winking smile }

Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup almond milk
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 Tbsp coconut oil
1 Tbsp honey
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 + cup chocolate chips
1/2 + cup chopped pecans

Instructions

Mix together flour, oats, baking powder, and salt.
Stir in almond milk and water. Adjust water to achieve desired batter thickness.
Add in remaining ingredients: coconut oil, honey, vanilla, cinnamon, chocolate chips, pecans, and anything else you want to mix in.
Let batter sit for a few minutes. While you're waiting, heat a griddle pan over medium heat.
Spoon batter on to pan about 1/4 cup at a time, or any desired pancake size.
Cook a few minutes on each side. You can tell it's time to flip the pancake when the edges start to dry and the center gets a air bubbles.
Eat while warm! These save easily in the fridge or freezer too.

This chocolate chip pancake recipe is my go-to pancake recipe, but that doesn’t mean I don’t switch it up almost every time. Some of my favorite additions:

Mashed ripe banana instead of/in addition to the honey.
Pumpkin puree
Coconut yogurt
Pecans, walnuts, and coconut
Cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, or almond extract

Speaking of being self-employed, look what I got in the mail the other day:

Build-A-Sign sent me 5 of these car magnets to advertise my nutrition counseling company. Don’t they rock?

Up close they’re a little grainy because of the printing-on-a-magnet-process, but once it was on my car, it looked fantastic.

I love that they’re magnets so I can take it off or move it any time I want. I did learn that my bumper is made of plastic though. Luckily my trunk is not!

Did you have to work yesterday? Are you self-employed? Do you work from home or in an office? Or somewhere else?

*I’m 19 weeks pregnant today! Hop on over to tiny sneakers to find out what’s up these days.*

The 26th Year

LookBack

There’s something about birthdays that makes you look back and think of all the things that have happened in the last year. Most people think of New Year’s Day as that time of reflection, but birthdays make so much more sense to me. It’s amazing what can happen in a year, and looking back at all you’ve done in the past 12 months gives you excitement and encouragement for the next 12.

So here’s a look back at my 26th year. {Ugh. 27 means I’m a legit grown-up, doesn’t it? There’s no escaping the responsibility of being an adult or sneaking by as a “kid” anymore…except at heart, of course.}

May of last year brought my 5th month of grad school:

Exactly a month after my last birthday, I made probably the biggest decision/change/risk/leap of the year: I quit my job and started my own business, a nutrition counseling & consulting company.

Celebrated 3 years of being married to my best friend.

Finished a 24 hour bike ride with my mom.

Went on a fantastic vacation with best friends.

The travels didn’t stop there; it was a year of wonderful trips and destinations: Chicago, Cville, San Francisco, Charleston, Virginia countryside, Asheville…

I tried Bikram hot yoga for the first time, which resulted in the most sweat generated in a single hour in my entire life.

The one thing that seems to be missing? The slew of races I had penciled in on my calendar. I’ve spent almost the entire past year recovering from a knee injury. I’m still a little lost in limbo- just starting to get back into things, but not yet really training.

I did however, get to do pretty much the best race ever: The Rugged Maniac. There was mud. Obstacles. Mud. Fire pits. Water slides. Mud. It was awesome.

Phew.

So, here’s to another fabulous year, hopefully filled with injury-free races, exciting travels, business success, and fun with friends and family.

What was the best thing you did this year?

Moving On

Business

Feel so alone but at the same time
I feel so alive
My time here is over
I’m off to a new place
A new life

It seems like yesterday I had it all
And nothing was wrong
But the times are changing
And I am moving on…

(Weekend Excursion, Moving On)

Thank you SO MUCH for all of your support about my new business adventure.

I’m both very excited & very apprehensive.

So many days I would come home & find myself very….blank. Empty.

I absolutely loved working with my patients, but as a whole, my job was not very fulfilling. I wasn’t passionate about it.

At first, that’s how I thought it was supposed to be. I mean, no one would work if they didn’t have to, right? Wrong.

Have you ever been asked the question, “If you won the lottery would you quit your job?”

As I kid I used to [snottily] reply “Of course not. I would love my job. Duh.” (Ah, the wisdom of a 5 year old).

But I think my 5 year old self was on to something. Why shouldn’t I love what I do so much that I wouldn’t quit if I was a bajillionaire?

This isn’t something I just thought about out of the blue. I’ve been thinking about it for years. When I say I wasn’t passionate about my job, I really mean: I was miserable.

Being unhappy at work bleeds into your every day life. I wasn’t being the person I wanted to be.

I had always dreamed & planned to start my own counseling practice one day. I was going to work at my job, start a company, then eventually work for myself full time.

That’s all well & good, but nothing was happening.

So I decided to take the plunge. My job & I went our separate ways, and I dove in to start my business head first.

I’m not really sure what I feel. It’s an odd mixture of relief & sheer terror.

Even though I have no idea whether I will succeed or not, I can feel the weight on my shoulders lifting. It’s not gone, but I’m definitely standing taller.

And I am moving on… 🙂