[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dietitian Boss podcast. I'm Libby Rothschild, creator of Dietitian Boss. After almost four years of sitting in my dimly lit windowless clinical office, I had enough. I wanted to feel like my work mattered, so I did something about it. I created a [00:00:20] program that empowers dietitians and nutritionists to create their own private practice from scratch, following my proprietary system.
[00:00:27] Before I did this, I had a private practice of my own while working a full time job, and I learned a lot about building relationships, marketing, and sales, and I'm so excited to be able to share my proprietary framework with [00:00:40] you. Hello and welcome. Today, I want to talk about a really highly requested topic that I also wrote a blog post about if you go on www.
[00:00:50] dietitianboss. com and that's the six best dietitian apps to use with clients. So, if you want to read this episode, head on over to our [00:01:00] website and check it out. I want to have a chat today about those apps and how they've been able to help Clients with growing their dietitian private practice. So we know that as a dietitian and private practice, you are experiencing an incredible journey and you have the ability to work a flexible schedule and make your own hours and maintain that work life [00:01:20] balance that you've been really craving.
[00:01:22] But you're going to need to learn how to improve people's lives and create more impact by using the right tools and this might feel confusing because the tools that are suggested you're not familiar with, or maybe you don't have a lot of experience as an online dietitian, or you're not sure which tools are right for your [00:01:40] stage of business.
[00:01:41] So I want to break down what I recommend and what I've seen work for our clients and our community. And you might be experiencing some logistical and administrative challenges that can be handled by using specific tools that are going to save you some time. But I understand that you can also feel really overwhelmed.
[00:01:59] [00:02:00] I know when I 1st started my business, I felt really overwhelmed by knowing what tools to use. And with artificial intelligence being so popular, there's even more tools now than ever at your fingertips, but it takes time and energy to factor in the learning curve for these tools and knowing what exactly is going to make sense [00:02:20] for you.
[00:02:20] So you're not wasting your energy and feeling frustrated. So I want to first want to talk about the tool that I've mentioned before, and that would be eat love. Now, we're not sponsored by them or affiliated or anything. I just think that it's a great meal planning tool. And as I've lectured before in university.[00:02:40]
[00:02:40] Eat love as a meal planning tool is free if you're using less than two clients in your database. So when you create a login, which anybody can do, you can have up to 2 clients without having to pay for a membership. Now, if you do pay, the fees are really nominal and go to our website and check it out because they might have changed them.
[00:02:59] Those, you know, [00:03:00] the pricing structures update all the time. But what I love about eat love is that. It also is touted as an EMR tool. So you can use this tool while you're getting started, or even if you have a robust practice and you want to have an extra meal planning outlet to use with your clients.
[00:03:18] Now they call them nutrition [00:03:20] prescriptions, which I think is really cool. And they specialize eat love as a company specializes in helping. People like the people that you're serving, customize their meal plans based on their health goals and medical conditions and diagnosis. And it's really robust compared to some of the meal planning tools that I've seen out there.
[00:03:38] And then the app, I think, is [00:03:40] great to use because it's free and accessible. And so, if dietitians are looking to, you know, improve your ability to help people with poor health. Personalized nutrition recommendations or nutrition prescriptions as eat love calls them, then you can use this tool for free and really maximize its value.
[00:03:56] So you can set parameters around the needs of your clients. And if you want to, you know, not [00:04:00] put the calories because you're practicing intuitively and your client is mindful, you can take that off. So there's a lot of personalization that allows you to reach a lot of different types of clientele by using this tool.
[00:04:10] Eat love meal planning tool. Now there's a little bit of a learning curve, just like any tool. So you can go to their website. They have webinars that are free all the time, often for [00:04:20] continuing education credits. So you can learn more about how to use the tool and what makes sense. I do suggest that you use it for yourself first, or you have like a, some, a test person before you start using it with clients just to get into the hang of it.
[00:04:34] Now, they also have a lot of free educational tools on their website, too, that you can use in addition [00:04:40] to the actual meal planning tool. Now, they use artificial intelligence is what helps with their algorithm to create the meal planning tool. So it's really robust. This is a great tool that's growing.
[00:04:51] It's used in universities. It's used for private practices, and it's also used for hospital dietitians. So wherever you are in your journey now, you [00:05:00] can absolutely use this tool. Now, back when I was a clinical dietitian, I would have benefited from using this tool with my clients, with my patients. When they came in, I could have created better nutrition prescriptions than what I was doing with the resources that I had.
[00:05:13] I was using My plate and the nutrition care manual. The nutrition care manual is great, but it doesn't, as far as I know, right at [00:05:20] this moment, have the personalized options in terms of how you can make the meal plans or the nutrition prescriptions is what eat love calls them. So, the 2nd tool that I'm going to recommend is practice better.
[00:05:32] You know that we have been sponsored by them in the past. We have an affiliate code. If you go to our website under the tools, we recommend and even the [00:05:40] show notes under our blog or podcast tab. You can go ahead and use practice better with our code dietitian, boss 20 and get a certain percentage off so you can practice better.
[00:05:51] Much like eat love is an electronic medical record system that is free for the first couple of clients. So that means you can test it and start [00:06:00] using the tool without paying before you have a heavy client load, and that can help you adapt to the learning curve of using the new tool. They also have great support.
[00:06:08] So if you go to their YouTube channel and you even go to practice better. com, they have webinars. I've been featured on them over the years, several times. And they've also been on our podcast. We have tutorials [00:06:20] inside of our library to share with you. How to best use practice better from the most simplest form to setting up and automating your schedule to the more complexity, like, creating workflows.
[00:06:30] So, using practice better is a nutrition software that helps you track and book appointments and gives clients or patients, the ability to schedule and reschedule without having [00:06:40] to play that back and forth game right over email about finding the best time for a session. And best of all, the software integrates with Google drive, zoom, apple health, and even square.
[00:06:50] So you don't have to struggle with managing several different aspects of your session. So it's really great. And they also have this new feature that they announced just a few months ago, where [00:07:00] they are allowing you, they have a tool or some kind of a, I don't know what they call it. We have a feature where you can use AI with your charting so you can use artificial intelligence that is civic compliant to help you chart faster.
[00:07:14] And I think that's fantastic. So I love practice better. And our company loves practice better [00:07:20] because it is a tool that is made for nutrition professionals, and they really stress and emphasize creating programs within practice better. And I think if you're getting started, that's a great way to start using groups.
[00:07:32] And you can even create memberships and courses and sell them. And we've had several of our clients successfully do that. Now, later you might change your mind and say that you want to use [00:07:40] different software that's. Maybe more robust for online business, but I think starting with practice better for creating online programs is a great way to go.
[00:07:49] The third tool that I recommend in this tool, you might be thinking, Oh my goodness, I don't want to use this tool. I don't like it. And that's fine, but I use this tool as a clinical dietitian and it [00:08:00] was my everyday toolbox. And that's using my plate. So using my plate is free and it's a, you know, the government Website based on the dietary guidelines, which I know can be subjective.
[00:08:13] But when I was teaching as a consultant, and I was working as a clinical dietitian, I did use the dietary [00:08:20] guidelines as a framework for helping people and educating as a baseline. So, if you. Decide that you want to make recommendations beyond or past the dietary guidelines. I think first knowing and being aware of what the dietary guidelines are and the associated resources is really helpful as a clinician who stays up to date.
[00:08:36] There are simple budget friendly recipes and they have really [00:08:40] cool tools now using my plate where you can actually change the height, weight, activity level, and age, and you can get a meal plan for somebody based on those personalized factors. And they didn't have. Those types of tailored guidance that wasn't available back when I was a clinical dietitian 5 or [00:09:00] 7 years ago.
[00:09:00] So I think that a lot of my plate has advanced to meet the needs of the users and I'm impressed. So, I think my plate is also, if you go to their website, it's a little bit easier to use than logging in and creating. And account, even if it's free on practice, better and eat love. So I'd say if you're feeling overwhelmed by using [00:09:20] tools, start with my plate and then set a goal to work your way up to eat love, and then definitely practice better as you get more comfortable and confident with your online skills.
[00:09:30] So then I'm going to also mention Canva because you know that I love Canva and here at our team We actually give you Canva templates to [00:09:40] use for social media Like Instagram so that you don't have to think about making the graphics So I'm going to suggest Canva because it is such an intuitive easy to use tool where you can create graphics for social media and You can create a mood board, a brand board, your own logo.
[00:09:56] You can design business cards, flyers, posters, and you can even [00:10:00] create something that you want to print out and put in your own office or workspace at home, but what I really love about Canva is that we create all of our digital assets for the business, like our podcast, cover art. And our YouTube thumbnails, everything for our content, you know, Instagram, et cetera, from using Canva.
[00:10:19] So it's a [00:10:20] great tool. And if you're wondering, Oh my goodness, how do I get started? We have a lot of resources inside of our library, which is our affordable monthly membership to show you how to properly use Canva and not just showing you how to use it, but we give you some templates that you can just work from, right?
[00:10:33] So you can make your ebook and sell it from using Canva, which is fantastic. So if you're running a program or if [00:10:40] you're trying to create something Pretty or attractive as an educational tool for your clients. Canva would be the way to go. So another tool that I really like would be QuickBooks. So QuickBooks is going to be an online QuickBooks is going to help you with managing your finances.
[00:10:56] And you might've remembered that Jenny from Simple Profit, she's a therapist. And [00:11:00] a CPA, she's been on both the podcast and a guest inside of our membership called the library to talk in depth about finances and managing your finances at different stages. So if you go on to our website, dietitianboss.
[00:11:14] com, we recommend several tools and QuickBooks is one of them, online QuickBooks. So you can check that out on our website. [00:11:20] If you go to recommended tools, or you can just. Go back to some of our episodes with Jenny, even search those episodes on our website under the podcast tab, and you can listen to what she suggested in terms of how you manage your finance.
[00:11:33] It's really important. And if you're just starting out, of course you can use a spreadsheet. You can use an Excel sheet or maybe a Google sheet, and you can [00:11:40] start tracking your expenses and your income. As you start to get a little bit more advanced in your business, you're going to want to use a tool like an online tool.
[00:11:49] There are. QuickBooks is as affordable, but there's also another alternative called wave that's free. So they're both great. I have more experience with online QuickBooks, but our clients do use [00:12:00] both. And I just want to say that using something to manage your income and be able to understand your financial statements, your profit and loss statement, how much money you're bringing in, what your expenses are.
[00:12:11] That's going to help you make decisions. Especially if you're looking to grow your practice and you want to know, should you add a group program? When should you take time off? [00:12:20] Are you ready to hire a contractor or an employee and logging into your online tool for your financial management, like online quickbooks or wave is going to help you understand when and how to make those decisions.
[00:12:33] So, I hope this was helpful today and discussing what some of the options are for you. For your online tools. One tool that I did [00:12:40] not mention is chat. I do want to say it's currently not HIPAA compliant. There are some extensions you can use to make it HIPAA compliant, but that's a little bit too advanced for me right now.
[00:12:50] So, I'd love chat because you can ask questions, you can generate meal plans, and you can also get ideas for the content that you want to create for social media to promote your [00:13:00] business. So, I think that. Chat GPT is another great tool that a dietitian should be using in their toolbox, whether you are online or you're not online, because you can enhance your skillset and add more value to your clientele by having these resources at your fingertips.
[00:13:16] I hope today's episode was helpful and I'd love to know which [00:13:20] tool you cannot live without. So make sure to find us on social media, over on Instagram at dietitian. com. Boss. com and send us a direct message or shoot us an email back when you get one of our emails from our weekly newsletter where we share the highlights of our podcast episodes and our YouTube episodes.
[00:13:35] Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to talking to you next week. [00:13:40] If you're looking for support to start grow and scale your dietitian private practice, I want to invite you to work with me and my team. We have a few different options. Head over to dietitianboss. com. and apply to have a conversation with somebody from our sales team to discuss your [00:14:00] options for your budget and stage of business.
[00:14:02] Head over to dietitianboss. com and we look forward to connecting.
