Hey there!
It’s Krista, your dietitian business coach. I wanted to pop in and share some tips related to productivity that our business members tend to struggle with at their start.
As a dietitian entrepreneur, do you feel like:
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- You’re always getting things done last minute (or not at all)?
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- You can’t think strategically about your business?
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- You’re always procrastinating until “next month?”
This is why having a dietitian business plan for each month is so important. When we have concrete goals, plans and tasks, we are more likely to achieve them.
Setting Goals as a Dietitian Entrepreneur
Setting goals for your dietitian private practice business plan can feel scary. You may only achieve a fraction of your goals… that’s a GOOD thing. If you achieve every goal, you’re not setting the bar high enough. Try to set goals as if you were unafraid of not achieving them.
As a dietitian entrepreneur, setting goals is important at any stage of your business (ie. Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced). However, the goals you set at each stage will likely look different. For example:
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- Beginner – goals might be related to getting your first client or finishing your website
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- Intermediate – goals might look like increasing consistency of new clients, implementing an email marketing strategy or making your client onboarding process more efficient
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- Advanced – goals might include the creation of a group program or online course and coming up with a launch strategy in order to achieve your financial targets
Think about your goals in terms of:
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- Your client/product goals – ie. how many clients do you want to take on this month? Or how many products (ex. Online courses or e-books) do you want to sell?
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- Monetary and financial goals – ie. how much money do you want to make over the course of the month, quarter or year?
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- Project goals – ie. what projects do you want to start or complete? (website, online course, group program, etc.)
How are you spending your time?
In DSC’s Productivity Toolkit, we provide you with resources to understand where your time is currently spent and how you can get valuable work done without feeling so overwhelmed.
How we spend our time as dietitian entrepreneurs matters. Without a boss or manager telling us how to spend our time, we are entirely in control (which can feel pretty overwhelming).
Similar to a 3-day food record, we can record how we are spending our time.
This record of our time can be eye-opening,
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- How often are you scrolling through your phone?
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- How long do you spend watching TV at night?
Our perceptions of how we spend our time might be different than reality and doing this activity can help us to realize that.
Ideal Work Week for Dietitian Entrepreneurs
The next step is to map out our ideal work week, we work through this and some examples in DSC’s Productivity Toolkit.
We start by identifying our daily “non-negotiables,” ie. what are the things that you need to include day-to-day in order to show up fully in your business (ex. Moving your body, meal planning, getting enough rest, etc.) If things are important to us and our business, we must schedule them in.
Then, we start to factor in our other commitments:
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- When will we work on our business?
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- What will we do during those hours?
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- What other obligations do we have to factor in?
Mapping out your ideal workweek can help to ensure you are feeling prepared to enter the week, leading to greater productivity and reduced overwhelm.
Productivity
Productivity as a dietitian entrepreneur is all about prioritization.
In DSC’s Productivity Toolkit, you’ll learn practical strategies for reducing overwhelm, taking action and getting more done in less time as a dietitian in private practice or running any type of business as a dietitian entrepreneur.
To be more productive, we can start by defining three big, high-value, business AND personal tasks that we want to complete either that day or that week (depending on how much time you have to dedicate to your business). These are the things that are most important to do right now. To come up with these tasks, think about:
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- Tasks that move your business forward
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- Tasks that help you make progress in your business
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- The personal tasks that help you put forth your best self in your business, like personal development and self-care
Completing these high-value tasks first helps to ensure that if emergencies come up and you’re not able to get anything else done, at least you know that you’ve gotten the important stuff done.
Eliminating Distractions
We can’t talk about productivity without talking about eliminating distractions. Try these steps if you feel like you are constantly distracted in your business:
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- Turn your phone on mute/night mode/do not disturb during your work time
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- Turn your computer notifications off (that means email and iMessage notifications!)
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- Turn off social media notifications on your phone (always!)
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- Close your email
Productivity and planning are important steps as a dietitian in private practice or a dietitian entrepreneur. We can easily become overwhelmed and distracted, especially in the early stages. Setting goals, completing high-value tasks first, and mapping out how we want to spend our time can help move your business forward and reduce the overwhelm that often comes with entrepreneurship.
The DSC Business Project Lab includes access to 40+ courses for dietitians including the Productivity Toolkit where you can learn more about productivity and planning in your business, work through the action steps, and get valuable resources to help you along the way.
