Hello and welcome. I'm so excited today to talk about an end of year recap and I want to discuss what we here at Dietitian Boss have learned to help you grow your dietitian business this past year. I want to reflect on some things we've learned as a company. There's been a lot of exciting things and I hadn't done an episode like this last year, but I did do it the year before and it was really popular.
So I want to try to bring this back as a tradition so that I can share And if your recaps, right, not just from our standpoint about us as a company, but from what we've learned about you to help the profession. So first I want to talk about, you know, who are we here at dietitian boss and some of the things that we've done to get stronger and more clear about our identity.
We've had a lot of great things that a lot of great projects we've been able to execute on this year, which I'm really proud of. One of them being that we simplified a lot of our systems this year. So. Who are we as a business? We are the leading company and education and coaching company for dietitians, specifically created for dietitians by a dietitian to help our mission and vision is to help you become a reach your full potential as a dietitian when it comes to business.
And we really want to be the number one. We see ourselves as a number one expert in business. And dietetics helping you navigate the landscape of online marketing, social media, business skills, so that you can create a thriving practice. We know that only 8 percent of dietitians, according to statistics own and operate a business.
And we hope to increase that statistic. And we know that what we can measure is the amount of dietitians we're able to impact. So we've served over 1000 dietitians in the last 5 years, and our goal by 2024 is to serve 10, 000 dietitians. One way that we can do that is by getting involved more in education and academia, so that we can really be involved with electives and dietetic programs another way, perhaps starting a rotation, which is something on my list that I'll share about in a minute.
And then, of course, helping more of you, which is why this year we shifted to a membership model from coaching programs. Now, we still have our masterminds and we, we offer those. Now we do require a year long commitment. We used to have a 6 month commitment in our masterminds. So if you work with us in our small masterminds, which is an amazing way to get support from me and our team.
So it's got me and coach Heather run that and you have access to particular trainings that can help you. We have two masterminds. One, if you're trying to quit or your goal is to become a full time private practitioner, quit your clinical job. And then that's called society. And the other mastermind is called executive.
And it's for those of you who are established in full time and you're working on reaching your goals, operating your practice, whether that's making more money or creating more systems and processes so that you can work less and or both. So those are 2 masterminds running for gosh, 4 years, I think 3 years executive and 4 years society.
So the big thing we did this year to align with our mission of giving every dietitian an option to have the resources and skills they need to start an operated business, right? Want to increase access to education. That's where the membership comes into play. So it's been really fun aligning our mission and vision with our product because we found that we weren't accessible enough with only offering the masterminds, which is what we had done in previous years.
And although it was a great way to help dietitians, the price point wasn't as accessible for everybody to have an opportunity, which is why we, we did change that. So we could help serve more dietitians. Now, in terms of, I mentioned what our, it's called a big, hairy, audacious goal for sure. That's called a BHAG.
Our BHAG is to serve 10, 000 dietitians by 2024. We do have that on our website at dietitianboss. com. If you go to dietitian reviews, we have that as the header. And so we're really clear about that goal and we want to have a better way to track it. Thank you. But especially as we get up in numbers, we want to be able to find a way to track that a little bit more seamlessly, but we're, we are want to be clear with the direction that we're working towards and what we want to accomplish and what we have accomplished so far, we're really proud to have had served over a thousand dietitians and what's unique about us here at dietitian boss, unlike some of our competitors is that we are really for, and only for registered dietitians.
Students, we can serve them as long as they operate within their scope, and we want to impact the future of dietetics, but our company here, Dietitian Boss, is named Dietitian Boss to primarily serve registered dietitians. And so when you work with us, you'll learn all about the community of dietitians, networking with other dietitians, the ins and outs of the dietetics profession, the legalities, financials, the ins and outs of revenue streams.
Code of ethics and social media everything that has to do with us for us by us. And that's really special because as professionals, we all want to have our own network, both within our specialty and outside of our specialty. And so that's something really rewarding that we can give you is that community.
And when it comes to talking about a end of year recap, I wanted to 1st start with, like, who are we and now I want to go in a little bit about the recap of what happened in 2023. So I would say when it comes to business and in terms of the business here, a dietitian boss we were able to as I mentioned, poor switch our primary offer from being a mastermind and coaching to membership model.
Now, we still offer coaching and membership and masterminds, but the reason that we're primarily pushing the. Membership is because it's an accessible price point where we can help more people. And the more I look at the mission and vision of dietitian boss, I asked myself, well, how can I think in reverse?
And if I want, if we want to serve 10, 000 dietitians by 2020 by 2040, then what can we do to what, like what actions can we take to reach that faster? And yes, we were able to really ramp up YouTube this year, which is great. So we could reach more people. Our free content is great. So if you never end up buying anything with us, we release our podcast every week.
We really see YouTube video every week. We're on Instagram every day. So we're really big on and now we're starting to blog in 2024. And so we're really big on putting free content out there, but to get the support that you need, in addition to the continuing education credits. You are invested when you pay for something.
We wanted to have an offer that would give you continuous support that would be something manageable that you could maintain throughout your lifetime as a dietitian. So the membership I've created called the library is intended for dietitians to use throughout the entire lifespan of you being in practice.
So as long as you're working as a dietitian, you will find benefit from being a member inside of the library. So, what I want to talk about with the team is that I'm excited to say we have 1 of our accomplishments is that we've had a lot better retention with the team members. So, in the past, I have had dietitian, like, Clients, dietitian alumni, you might even be listening that have been part of the staff here and they've helped out with coaching and various things in the company.
And that's been awesome. And a lot of them have gone on to get their master's degree or go full time in their practice. And they weren't able to stay here at dietitian boss and help us on a part time basis. And so I decided to hire somebody who would be Able to stay longer term, and that would help us with having that stability when it comes to staffing.
So we've got Dr. Heather, who is a retired naturopath and she travels the world and lives in Peru now, and she is a facilitator of retreats. So she she's really amazing. And she's on the podcast almost every month, not only interviewing our clients, but also we were on here together. And so you've, you learned about Heather.
She has been able to support our clients. So she coaches with me, she provides coaching. She's a great compliment. She's highly empathetic and she had a private practice for over 10 years. So she has a lot of experience when it comes to patient care, marketing, managing sales. She's written books. She's a, you know, renowned author and speaker.
So having her on staff and having her. Stay long term is great because that means that we're able to retain staff and it makes it easier for us to give a great standardized experience for, for you, for our, for our clients. We've also been able to have the same assistant and tech VAs for years, over 2 years now.
I did put that on our website on the about page, like, which staff members had been here for over 2 years because it's a sign that our business is maturing. So I used to not be able to have staff members stay that long for various reasons. Sometimes it's because I needed a short position filled other times.
It's because I wasn't clear enough about the role. And then lastly, I would hire people that didn't want to be here long term because they wanted to grow their own practice. And so we had a good run, but then I was left not having someone fill that role. And so I had to look at how I was making hiring decisions and be a little bit more strategic about who would be a better fit for that role.
So those are business lessons for me and for us here at dietitian boss. And that did cause some stress. Because I want to hire a person who's a good fit, but I also want to hire a person who can relate with our audience. I want to hire somebody who wants to stay long term. So there's a lot of factors to consider.
And we have talked about that on other episodes. So in terms of our team and retaining staff, that is a huge win for us because it means that there is less chaos on the back end of the business. And it means there's more stability when it comes to the marketing and branding, and it means that there's more standardization when it comes to clients getting that experience.
Experience. And so another thing that I'm really proud of is providing coaching for team members. So not every single staff member in the company wants coaching, but I do provide coaching for most of our staff. We're looking to upskill. So, let's say that they want to learn how to be a better leader, or they want to learn skills with when it comes to problem solving or anything aligned with our values here, a dietitian boss, such as integrating balance into your life and having more courage.
Right. Improving resilience. And so I provide coaching for all staff members and help keep them accountable to their goals and let them lead at their own pace so that they feel like they're getting a lot of value working here, a dietitian boss. So that's something I have tested in the past. Oh, way beyond this just past year, but it's something I've actually implemented effectively and consistently this past year.
So that's been another win in terms of our team. Now, when it comes to projects that we've executed this year, we have implemented the 4 day work week. And so, if you're on our email list, then you would have seen that we announced that we heard back from so congratulating us, because it's. It's been a big accomplishment.
There's a lot of systems and processes that we needed to have in place in order to execute the four day work week. So I'm really proud that we do that. And what that means is that we provide service for our clients. Monday through Thursday, and so we don't do email communication. If you have a question and you want to email into support, which we get emails every day from paying clients and non paying clients.
We have an auto responder and we have in our policies and on our website updated that we will respond Monday through Thursday, excluding national holidays. So that, of course, there's been a couple of things here and there where people have wanted us to respond on a Friday. And that's normal for when you have a new policy and you have to kindly remind people, but it's allowed more flexibility for our staff members as well.
It's been as well as it's been good role modeling for our clients so that they can implement some level of flexibility and their practices as well. So you don't have to do a 40 work week if you don't want to. This is a choice. But for us, it's allowed us to integrate that balance, which is part of our value to the work that we do.
And it's been really fun. I've really enjoyed it. And now we talked about that four day work week and implementing that for years before we actually got to do it. So that's been a huge accomplishment this last year. I think it was the second quarter of the year where we were able to do it. And if you want to learn more about that process, I'm almost positive I did a podcast episode on it, but if I did, if I did, I'll link it below.
And if I didn't, I'll consider doing another one with one of our staff members. So you can hear from their perspective because that's always fun. Now we launched the membership not this year. I think it was last year that the end of the previous year, but in 2023, we relaunched the membership a couple of times.
And that was really fun because we learned about audience behaviors. And we got to learn through a webinar, right? I did live webinars. that were free, what feedback you had, what you liked and disliked. I was able to gather information about your preferences so that I could create a better experience for the next launch.
So that's been exciting. We also revamped the membership. So the membership, when it first came out was intended to help you just start your business as a dietitian. And now the membership called the library has expanded. So the membership allows you to to grow your business. It's not just for starters.
So we've added more materials and we have resources and accommodations to help you throughout your entire lifespan in private practice. So it's the most affordable option where you can have access to our curriculum, which is trademarked, and you can have access to me and my staff. So we run regular live calls, coaching calls.
We have guests come in, CEU opportunities, as well as a forum where you can ask questions and get them answered Monday through Thursday. Thursday, a community of other like minded dietitians. And then, of course we have exercises and a road map. So as you're executing the curriculum, right, that covers all four stages of business and I have that on my website, that's my trademarked framework.
You can have access to our resources and access to our staff to ask questions, which is invaluable, right? So that as you're going along your journey, you have that help and it's affordable. And if you decide like some of our clients that you want more help, we do have options for coaching. And if you decide you want to go into our mastermind, we have options for that as well.
But we believe you starting with the membership is a great place as a great foundation. So one of the biggest accomplishments in summary that I can say we've achieved here this past year is upgrading the membership. So we started With just saying, okay, the membership will help you start your business.
But now this past year in 2023, I've added enough content and gotten feedback where I've integrated, okay, this is not just for beginners anymore. This membership is now for intermediate and advanced dietitians who are looking to scale. So I've got resources on finance, budgeting, hiring, management, quarterly planning, annual planning, and content expansion.
So not just looking at managing 1 platform online, showing you how you can create content calendars and manage multiple platforms to grow your brand online. So there's lots of great resources. Another thing that we've done in the membership is added resources for clinical skills. So based on request, you know, adding some.
Modules and training about case scenarios, handling difficult clients, motivational interviewing. What are some situations you might be encountered with? So you can provide a better service, retain your clients, feel confident as a dietitian. So whether you're still working in clinical. Or you are a full time practitioner, having access to our resources through the membership is a great way for you to get support and you have access to me and my team, which is exciting.
Now, another thing that I'm really proud of that we accomplished this year, what would be lending higher. Hi, very high paid speaking gigs. So there's been multiple speaking gigs that I have been invited to and I'm really proud of and I'm now part of an elective at the University of North Carolina. So I teach 3 lectures about nutrition and entrepreneurship and a newly developed elective, which is.
Really impressive that this dietetic coordinator, right? The program director created this elective and she invited me to speak. And so the 1st lecture I teach is nutrition. Sorry. It's a social media and ethics. The 2nd lecture I teach is multiple revenue streams. And the 3rd lecture I teach there as part of this elective is called nutrition software.
And so those are all really great topics. I'm super excited to be a part of that. And being a part of teaching and academia and for pay and as a part of an elective, so fingers crossed, I'll get invited next year. If all goes well, because the elective is a test in general to see if the students really like it, it's a great way for us here.
Dietitian boss to reach our goal, right? Remember, I mentioned our big, hairy, audacious goal, which is reaching 10, 000 people, 10, 000 dietitians. So we have a better chance here at Dietitian Boss to reach more dietitians in the future of dietitians through nutrition students by being involved and integrated and partnering in academia.
So, not only me saying that, but me actually being able to do it has been really exciting. So I'm really looking forward to getting the feedback from that, because I'm still teaching it. We're in the thick of it right now and learning how I can get hooked up with more of those opportunities. I am. Looking into creating a rotation and I have a meeting with an internship at the end of the month this month to talk about what that can look like.
So I can create an elective. I know that there's some systems in place and some checks and balances and I have had people ask me. I think I tested a few years ago to have students as a come to dietitian boss for an elective, but I want to create like a formal process. And I know that's just going to mean I have to dedicate some time to that project.
So I believe I'll do that in 2024. But again, I want to stick with the recap of 2023 right now. Another accomplishment we had this year was a brand sponsorship with practice better. So that was really fun. They were able to pay us and I have. Various podcast episodes where I gave them a plug, and then I also have an affiliate code and that's listed in the show notes.
If you want to join practice better, which we, we absolutely recommend the software management tool. We have we've had them come in as guests inside of our library, and I've also been a guest several times. throughout the last few years. And I, if you log into practice better, I am there under one of their webinars and I'm also under their YouTube channel.
So we've hooked up together practice better and dietitian boss, me here from dietitian boss to talk about how to use practice management tool, which is nutrition software to improve your practice. And so that's been really fun to have paid brand sponsorships with software. And then lastly, one of the other accomplishments.
From our business this year, from a project standpoint, meaning like what we've executed successfully has been licensing. So my work, my curriculum here at dietitian boss is licensed in higher education. What that means there's a few ways to do licensing models. If you're interested, I can do a whole nother episode on it.
So make sure to let us know, give us some feedback about this topic if you're interested, but I have an agreement, right? A contract signed with the. With the higher education company and with them, they license out my work and I get a monthly fee for the amount of units sold. So there's a few ways to do it.
I could either do a flat fee or I could do per user fee, but I am being paid to have a part of my teachings integrated into another dietetic higher education organization. Right. And so that's really exciting. And that means I'm receiving royalties for the work that I already do. So if I could just do more of that, then I could reach the goal of hitting, targeting and reaching more dietitians faster.
Right. So everything I do in dietitian boss is all based on reaching more people. And when I say reaching, yes, I do mean through free content, but I also mean I'm primarily. Meaning paid content, right? So we want to help people through our paid services because we know when you join the library, you are more invested, right?
When you commit to coaching with us, you are more invested in the results in the process of your work. Now, when it comes to metrics. I already mentioned that we have retained staff longer, like several years for our key players are coach Heather and our assistant Karen, who is our tech VA. She's with us.
She's been with us for years. I'm really proud of that and having them here for for several years. Another thing I'm very proud of with retention is that we have a really high, retention rate for our membership, and that means that most of the members that join stay in our membership. No, not everybody.
Some folks leave last. I saw we had 2. 8 percent churn, which means that 90 what? 97 percent of the members stay in the membership. Which is really good. That means that the membership is providing a lot of value. So in looking at those metrics and deciding how we can create a better experience, it means that I'm confident.
We, my team is confident as an organization to try to get more members. Cause we know that the, that the product is good. So if the retention were to be lower and people join it and leave very frequently, that means I would need to spend more time making the membership. No, I will say I'm obsessed with the membership.
I am obsessed with any product I create. I want to make sure that the product is what people want. I'm constantly asking for feedback. I'm learning what I can do to make the experience more intuitive. Even right now, we're changing the interface to make it a little easier for folks to navigate the inside of the portal, which is where you access the training modules.
We're actually adding some gamification. So we're adding badges so that people can get points and there's like a letter board system so that you can see. Where you're at, in terms of progression path, we're also adding certifications and I'm looking at getting it approved for self study right now. It's not self study approved.
It's approved for live only. So I'm constantly trying to figure out how I can make the program a better experience. And I do think that that does help us with decreasing retention. So we have. Surveys automated and we send them out if somebody does want to cancel. We ask them why and we follow up with people and see what we can do to improve the product so that we can create a great experience.
And then I would say the personal part of the reflection for this year, as many of, you know, is that I'm pregnant. And so I'm really excited. And in 2 months, I deliver a baby boy, and this will be my 1st pregnancy. This is my 1st child. My husband and I are very excited and I'm really grateful that the team is able to help me out.
So that we have a lot of systems in place here in the business. And because I delegate so much of the workload and we've have so many of our systems and processes dialed in, I feel really confident about maternity leave. So I will talk more about maternity leave in a future episode and I'll publish it in 2024 after I can, I can do one about how I prepared for maternity leave, and then I'll do another episode about how things went after the fact.
But I'm feeling really good about it. And some of the things. I've done to plan ahead include planning more ahead with content than ever before. So I actually recorded all of the YouTube videos for 2024 in 2023. So I filmed the last one today and we are in November. And so that means that before the end of the year.
In 2023, I was able to get all of 2024 recorded. So that means however many 40 something videos, which means once a week for YouTube. And that's more than I would normally do, but I did that because I wanted to have that. I wanted to make sure it was done and I wasn't sure how long I would need to.
feel like I'm getting back into the swing after delivering my son. So it was just a personal choice I made in terms of getting that content done. So if, and when I'm ready to create more after I, you know, deliver my baby boy, I can come back, but I won't need those recordings until 2025. Now, with the podcast, we're also, we are scheduled ahead but we're not scheduled for the entire year.
Now, I don't want to record the podcast ahead for the entire year because it's important that we keep the podcast fresh. So at least 1 or 2 episodes, at least half of the episodes for the month. We record 1 a week right now. We publish 1 a week. At least 1 is going to be, And usually is about current events and things that come up like this episode.
Right? And then one is a client interview, which happens, you know, not randomly, but it happens when a client is, you know, wants to share their story. So we can't batch those ahead. Now, some of them we can batch ahead when it comes to education and trainings. But the podcast is not something that I would have.
Completely done for the year ahead. I might have, let's say 60 to 80 percent of the podcast done ahead, but more like a quarter ahead, not necessarily the year ahead. I also want to note that I have not always been this organized in the business. It's taken a long time. And it's taken retention of staff to be here for a while to help out with the processes to give me the space to have the ability to plan this much ahead.
And I'm obviously motivated too, because I'm, you know, delivering my baby boy. And so I want to be able to have time with him and come back to business and have less things on my plate so that I don't, you know, just in case if I'm not feeling a hundred percent, I don't have to force myself, but I can still get those assets out there.
And aligned with our mission and vision of serving and impacting more dietitians. So I would say to round out this episode, when it comes to predictions for 2024, I think that long form content is going to be a big thing in the dietetic landscape. I think long form content, meaning a podcast episode and YouTube video, long videos.
Meaning like, not shorts, like 5 to 10 minute videos on YouTube and podcasts that you can publish consistently. I really think that's a good way for you to stand out as a dietitian and I see long form video being a great way for you to showcase your value and your brand in the online landscape. So that's something that I see is important.
I will say video marketing. Also, I see as being a trend. I think that video marketing is something that you can take advantage of easily by showing your face on Instagram stories or Instagram live or TikTok. You can do shorts on YouTube, but most importantly, long form video on YouTube. I think I really want to push more dietitians to do that.
I actually just did a training inside of the library about YouTube. For our members so that they can learn how to set up their profile, create shorts and post produce videos for YouTube, because it's such a great way to get your brand out there. And YouTube is a very large search engine. Over half of the internet users are searching YouTube every day.
So it's a great opportunity for you to rank for keywords. So if, let's say you're specializing in, in prenatal nutrition, if you rank for prenatal vitamin and prenatal nutrition, and those keywords are. Words that you make videos about those are topics that you discuss and let's say folks are searching that and you pop up.
They're more likely to watch your content and then become a email subscriber a loyal fan and a paying customer because you have put your content out there. So I do think that's a good way for you to get started or for you to expand. Your service, your marketing efforts in 2024, the other last prediction I have is that short form will continue to blow up and short form would be vertical video.
That's under a minute or 30 seconds. So you can either repurpose your long form content into short content, or you can just. Film a short video and publish that. And that's a great way for you to, you know, get your name out there as well, but it's not going to have the same impact as long form content. So if I were to choose one, I would say long form, but the easy thing about long form is you can easily repurpose a long form content piece like a YouTube video or a podcast into something short form.
So that's something to think about. Now I want to talk a little bit. About some success and failure as we wrap up today's episode, so I would say the main success that we've had here, and this has to do with your progress as well. A dietitian boss would be retention. That's the number 1 thing I'm very happy about this year for us, having a 2.
8 percent success churn rate. That means what, like 96 percent of members are staying in our membership. That's exceptionally high. I've never had that high of retention rate in any other program. That means that the people that are members inside of our library are happy and they're staying with us. And so that's good.
That means that I'm something with the price point and the offer and the deliverables and the way we're doing the program is very successful. So that is my number one. Biggest takeaway from this year is that we're doing really good in terms of the membership because members are staying and they're happy.
A second biggest success would be retention of staff. So meaning that our staff are staying. So we've got two members that have been here for over two years, two staff members. And that's a good sign for me maturing as a business owner for making better decisions and having better business management on the back end, which has not always been easy for me because I've had to learn a lot of these skills on the job.
And I've made some decisions about hiring people that, that were very clearly short term hires, but then it wasn't the best decision on my part because I needed someone that would be more sustainable. The third success which is arguably the first would be pregnancy planning. So I'm very grateful that we're pregnant and being able to plan so diligently for my pregnancy has really helped alleviate any anxiety for me as well as keep my staff focused and allow me to feel good about maternity leave and then come back also feeling stress free because things are in order very much so more than they've ever been before.
So. I'm happy about that. And I will say that I've been building a business that will allow me for a family and flexibility since I started. So I had the end in mind about growing a family when I started this business as a big motivator and to see it come to fruition, even though I haven't delivered yet, but so far has been, has been really exciting.
Another success. Has been branding for the business, which I'll mention in a minute has also been a little bit of a sticking point. We have decided to make the brand a little bit less feminine and whimsical and more about being inclusive for all genders because. In alignment with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics here at dietitian Boss, we really want to help we want to support the field.
We want to support dietetics as an industry and not just as a gender. When I first started this business my personal values are really truly to help women. I love women empowerment and I love helping women become financially independent and feel like they're their own boss. With that being said, that is a different business than helping the field of dietetics.
So as I've really leaned into branding we have modified our brand and our logo to reflect a more gender neutral color scheme and logo and whole aura so that we can start appealing to more diversity in dietetics. And I think that my personal beliefs about, you know, supporting women and women empowerment are still there.
I sit on the board for a company called million dollar women, and I mentor women as a volunteer, and that's great. And I believe in that and that's part of who I am, but that doesn't mean that that value has shown through as dietitian bosses matured, because we want to be more we want to be, we want to be seen as a number one resource for business education and dietetics.
So, therefore, the diversity piece is really important. So, I would say that's bold of success. And then in a minute, I'll talk about failure because it's, it's tricky to change your branding and because people recognize us so much for, you know, pink shades and whatnot we've had in the past. And to phase that out, it means that we might not be as recognizable at least at first.
So, so there was some success and failures to that, but I'm willing to take that risk. For the long term payoff and alignment with our mission and vision. So this year we started taking SEO more seriously. We were so focused on Instagram and let's say podcasting the first several years of being in business and even joint ventures were doing webinars with, you know, the let's say I did a lot of webinars, I've done webinars with.
Dietitian connection and practice better and speaking at the Academy Nutrition Dietetic State Conferences, that was a lot of the ways that nutrition entrepreneurs, those are a lot of the ways the dietitian boss got the message out and this past year. More towards the end of the year, I wanted to implement a project for more of this coming year in 2024 to do better at ranking for keywords for search.
It had just been something that had not been a priority for me. Everything else had worked so great for us. So that's a project I'm excited about. We already do rank for quite a few keywords, but we want to rank higher for certain keywords. So we, we've been doing great with YouTube, but YouTube is separate from.
From the Google ranking system. So now we're posting blogs starting in November and then all of 2024. That's the goal is to post blogs regularly. In addition to the podcast, in addition to YouTube videos, in addition to Instagram. And it's a lot, you know, there's a lot of content management. My goal is also to be the best in our industry for pushing out content, right?
Having the, not only the most content, but also good quality content that really solves problems and helps dietitians, helps impact them. I would say that YouTube is also a success because it's almost monetized. And although being monetized on YouTube is not necessarily our goal, our goal is to increase click-through rate and get dietitians to click on YouTube videos and to take action, whether it's growing our email list or getting you excited and getting you to join our programs and become a client, which, which does work, and we're really grateful for that.
We're just a, we're a. I want to say a thousand hours away from hitting our watch time requirements to be monetized. We have enough subscribers, but we need more watch time hours. So that's something that I believe with more time and consistency and perhaps some, some better topics that are more relevant to what dietitians are searching for, that'll help us get monetized and be seen in front of more dietitians.
I will say that the keywords that we rank for on YouTube are not high volume. They're not high search volume. So. There's not too many dietitians searching for dietitian private practice on YouTube, but that does give us an opportunity to really be the, you know, seen and be the primary leaders in the space of YouTube, which is what I'm all about.
So I feel really good about that. So, in terms of failure. For 1 of our launches, we did not meet our launch goals. We did not hit our conversion numbers that we had expected. So that was you could say a failure. And there's a few things that we're going to adjust for next time. We also didn't secure a collaboration with a software company that I was hoping for.
So 1 of our brand or sponsorships with software did not come through. So that was a disappointment. And then we did not. Get our webinar CEU approved for our launch. And I wanted to, and I it just didn't, didn't happen. So if you're familiar with the process for getting a CEU approval you have to submit it, pay for it and go back and forth with with the CDR and I just wasn't able to get my stuff to get there in time for that.
So I have a whole list every time we launch. I have, we have a process about what we can do and how we can improve. So I'm really clear about what to do to improve next time so that we can reach more people, add more quality content and give credits for folks to attend live for free. So we'll make improvements next time.
But those were some of the things that didn't go as planned this past year. So I want to be honest about what did. And didn't work. So what can help you grow your business this year? As a dietitian, I would say my tips about getting ahead on long form content, because it's an area where not a lot, it's not saturated.
There's very few dietitians on YouTube. And if you're consistent on podcasting, that's also a great opportunity for you to build rapport. I see a lot of our clients are finding success with podcasting and then video marketing. So whether that means you're using video for. Showing your face TikTok or Instagram or any other platform, whether it's Facebook or anything, really just YouTube shorts, putting out video and doing so regularly as a part of your strategy for building your brand is something I highly, highly recommend going into 2024 to help you grow your business.
And then finally short form. So short form and video marketing are. Similar, so what I mean by video marketing is do anything to be on video, but specifically short and long form. So I believe my, my opinion and observations about the field and about the trends of marketing right now would be if you can get ahead on some of those options to build your brand, you will be in good shape.
So dietitian boss, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and I want to invite you to join the library where we have 96 percent retention, meaning of course you're, if you don't like it, you can leave. It's month to month or annual, you can choose either one, but our clients like it a lot. They stay, they hang out, they get to know each other, they spend time with us.
And most importantly, they make their way through our curriculum and templates that save you a lot of time as you're starting building and growing your successful dietitian business. I hope this was helpful. We'll see you next time.
