In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, I sit down with Kristen Carli, RD and we talk all about her experience in: starting off with an insurance-based practice and then switching to cash-pay, continuing to run a business with a new baby and how she grew her team to 6 incredible RD’s!
Links:
This episode is sponsored by Practice Better. DSC Members can get 20% off 4 months of any Practice Better paid plan with the code DSC20. Use this link to purchase: https://practicebetter.grsm.io/dscpodcast
Follow Kristen on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/kristen.carli/
Check out Second Shift podcast here: https://www.instagram.com/second_shift_podcast/
Check out Kristen’s 12-week media mentorship program here: https://www.itsgillean.com/opt-in-c11c48a2-4839-4b3a-a7ce-6da411c83d9b
Episode Transcript:
Today I’m joined by Registered Dietitian Kristen Carli. Kristen is the owner of Camelback Nutrition and Wellness, a thriving Arizona based virtual private practice. Through her practice, she has developed a passion for nutrition communications and has written for many food and nutrition outlets. Her nutrition expertise has been featured In Style Bustle, live Strong List, MyFitness Pal, and many others.
Additionally, Kristen is often featured via local TV segment sharing nutrition tips and tricks. Kristen has grown Camelback nutrition and wellness to include a team of six others. Since she started in 2019. Not only that, but in April, 2022, Kristen welcomed her baby boy Luca. Today Kristen and I are going to talk all about her experience in starting and expanding her team and how she has been able to navigate being a new mom and a business owner.
Let’s jump in.
Hey Kristen. Welcome to the podcast again. Feel free to say hello to the. Hello. I am so excited to be back. We’ve got so much to talk about. We have so much to talk about. I honestly have this ma , this massive list of questions that I wanna ask you. I wanna ask you about everything. But it’s funny because yesterday, or on Monday or whenever I was.
Preparing these questions. I was looking back, , our last episode that we recorded together was episode nine of this podcast and we’re on 1 29 now, so that’s funny that it’s 1 29, so it’s been 120 episodes . But it’s cool to see, I didn’t go into that episode in, but I do remember it. I remember us talking about, Taking on dietetic interns, that was like that was like the theme of that episode. And it’s just so funny to, it’s so cool to see how much things have changed since then. Yeah. I think for both of us, yeah, for both of us. It’s like an awesome moment to be like, oh, look at how far I think our businesses have both come. I don’t know.
2020 when we recorded. Yeah. Three years ago. That’s like pretty impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. That’s three years ago. . Yeah. That’s funny. I just, I was like, oh yeah. It was two years ago. No, that was three years ago. . It’s crazy. Okay. . I wanna hear, I want you to start off by telling us a little bit more about your dietitian story.
Obviously, you started your practice pretty soon after you graduated. So take us back, walk us through what your dietitian story has looked like. Sure. So I graduated from my dietetic internship in 2019. Took the RD exam like a month later and opened my practice the next month. was always my goal to.
Open a private practice. So I had the backend stuff started and especially during the internship, I was like, gathering as m many ideas and materials and any, anything I could to get the practice off the ground right away was important to me just because I was gonna go all in on this and.
I was definitely excited to make money too. , after being a student for so long, I was like, let’s go, let’s get this show on the road. And I opened my practice Yeah, in the fall of 2019 and then Covid hit. So that was crazy. I had this adorable office space that was really cool and would be a great idea for anybody wanting to do in a.
Office, like in-person visits. It was a medical coworking space. And so it was just awesome. There were like 43 practitioners that were using that office and you would just go in and rent a room, which was great when, initially nobody is showing up. So you didn’t have that crazy amount of overhead.
But then Covid hit and I. Wasn’t really feeling comfortable with in-person visits anymore. So we transitioned to telehealth and at that time I also decided to bring on a few more dietitians to my team, and we’ve been able to do that ever since. In 2021, we opened a new branch of the business, which isn’t counseling patients, but more consulting with businesses.
So brand work media. Just all the consulting side writing, you name it we do a lot of that too. And so now primarily I spend my time focusing on the consulting part of the business with another one of our dietitians. And then I have the rest of my team do the counseling appointments. So I no longer see people anymore.
Cool. Very cool. Yeah. And do you miss, is there anything you miss about I know you’re not working actively with clients right now, but Yeah. Is there anything that you missed about seeing people in person versus virtually? Was there any significant differences for you? The only thing I could think of is me personally, I didn’t really miss anything in person.
Yeah. But I do feel like having an office space did give an interesting element of credibility to the business. Which was cool. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I will say post covid virtual health appointments are, yeah. So more prevalent. , it doesn’t really, most people are used to it as far as like the technical aspect, getting like an older patient online to their Zoom, all that.
Yeah. That was, we had a lot of hiccups like that in the beginning, but Sure. It’s more common now and I think more people understand that people do their practices this way, but it’s been great from a business standpoint because my overhead has gone down a lot. Yeah, for sure. How did you name your business?
I’m curious, where did that name from? From, oh, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you that. Yeah, so Camelback, it probably sounds bizarre for anybody outside of Arizona, but Camelback is a very prominent mountain here in Arizona and it’s also the name of a big street that runs along it. And that’s where my office is or was.
And now I have a business PO Box on Camelback. Camelback is oh, cool. Very prominent Arizona. Term. There’s, and is there, there’s like a hike that goes up it, right? . Okay. Yeah, there’s a few. I feel like I’ve heard of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Big hiking. That’s hiking area here for sure.
Yeah. Okay. That’s really cool. . Okay. So I wanna get into the hiring of the team in a second. Yeah. But I love to talk a little bit about different business models for dietitian businesses because I just am such a believer that there’s so many different ways to be successful when it comes to having a business, running a business.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your business model? So how do you structure. Your services. I think you’re insurance based as well, so if you can Oh not, okay. No longer I could talk about that. Interesting. Oh yeah. Okay. Tell me about that . Okay. Okay so yeah. Mainly how I think about the business is the counseling side, which is the one-on-one patient side of the business.
And then I think of it as the consulting side. So this would be like b2b, any sort of businesses, brands companies, corporate wellness, everything else falls under that consult. Group, so individual people or two brands. That’s how I split it up in my head. With the con, the counseling side of the business we have dietitians all over the country.
I have a team of six, and they’re located all over. and we do these virtual appointments. And we no longer accept insurance. We did initially. We probably did when I talked to you last. Yeah, totally. Cuz I remember you were going, or you had gone through the whole process of getting credentialed and you were like, it was a really long process and there was a lot to that. Yeah. It’s a beast. It is a. . I had learned about insurance initially from my preceptor in my internship, and she I spent four weeks with a private practice dietitian in town, and that’s where I learned how to do all of my job. And then she was, Really a big fan of insurance and she explained it to me and we, I got the ball rolling then.
The benefits of accepting insurance, especially when you’re new and starting out, is that it gets people in the door. It was a great way for me to market the business and I would show up on the insurance plan, like provider’s website. , that was great. But the, actual return and how much I was getting compensated for every appointment was minimal.
And because I was renting out the office space I ended up doing the math. I like lost $10 every session. It just didn’t. Oh, interesting. It didn’t sense. Didn’t make sense. Yeah. So I decided to let that go. The biggest reason why I decided to let that. Which on paper looked so stupid cuz a hundred percent of my patients were insurance based.
The biggest reason I did that was because I didn’t wanna see people in person anymore because of Covid. And at the time, virtual nutrition wasn’t covered. That’s sense changed like drastically. But at the time it wasn’t. And I wasn’t willing to deal with that. So I canceled my contracts with them then.
Wow. Yeah. So what was that transition like then? ? Yeah. I thought was like, was there a moment of oh my God, there’s no clients . Yeah. You know what’s crazy? And this is like what’s been so great ever since yeah. There’s some sort of shift that happens when you’re like, Nope, I’m not doing that and I only accept this and this is what I charge.
It’s either from like the confidence in saying that or not having any other options. But I found that more patients were. Responding to that. Like for example, when I would reach out to a patient, maybe they would reach out to me and they said, Hey, we wanna work with you and whatever.
And then I’d say, oh, let’s check. Maybe your insurance is gonna cover it. And then I check and their insurance didn’t cover it. Then all of a sudden they were like, oh wait, I I wanna find somebody who cover. Yeah. And like they were willing to pay before I even brought it up, so it’s.
It’s been easier ever since. And interesting. It’s been awesome. It totally lucky though, because on paper that looked like a very stupid idea. , but it worked out. No, . That’s so interesting. I love how this scenario to really. , you can really see the pros and cons of either option.
Yeah. And so how do you structure your offer now for one-on-one? Do you guys do like packages? Do you do one-off sessions? We do one-off session, so we’ll do a 60 minute initial session, and then 30 to 45 minute follow-up sessions usually scheduled every other week. Yeah. But we’re flexible with people. We don’t give them a set amount of sessions that they need to sign up for.
If they have budget concerns, we can push it out to every four weeks, every six weeks, whatever it is. We usually say, most patients do every other week, and the reason for that is it’s long enough so that you can actually put a really good effort in and try changing some of your behaviors and try sticking with these goals.
But it’s not too long that you throw in the towel, you get frustrated and you forget what you were doing. Yeah. But yeah, because they’re all private pay, we do give them the OPP option. Just very flexible with that. Whatever works. . Yeah. That’s very cool.
And so let’s talk a little bit about your team then.
So you have now six other dietitians that work for you, which is Yes. Awesome. Congratulations. Yes. That’s really cool. First of all, where are they located? You said that they’re all over the country. All over. One in Michigan, one in Montana, one in Florida. Just all over, I think there’s only one other located here in Arizona, but everything we do is virtual anyway.
and were your decisions around hiring based on location at all, or was it just more so personality fit? I just wanna see how they fit with the team. The real reason I brought on more people was because I primarily focused on chronic disease prevention and management, which was really heart health, diabetes, pre-diabetes.
Weight management. And that’s like what I like, and that’s the, that’s my like area that I love and I can get really excited about. But we kept getting questions about, do you see eating disorders? Do you see anybody with gut health? Is, and while know, as dietitians we can work with any of these people, I didn’t feel comfortable.
I didn’t feel like the best fit for those patients. Sure. I was, when I was hiring, I was specifically looking for dietitians who specialized in certain areas or would feel comfortable with certain areas. So you’re hiring for gaps that you feel like are there? Exactly. Yeah. Cool. So now that . We have one dietitian that has 10 years of eating disorder experience on our team.
Yeah. Yeah. So she’s the girl. Whenever somebody comes in with anything eating disorders, disordered eating related, we pass them off to her. And it’s nice having that just knowing that’s her wheelhouse and she’s fr she’s really comfortable in that. And then, know, other dietitians specialize in other areas.
It’s awesome. , and I feel like there’s a lot of peace of mind in that for you guys as well. And because I know disordered eating and eating disorders, it comes up a lot. . . . And if you don’t feel like you’ve had that specialized training, that can be really stressful for dietitians across the board.
And that, that for sure with eating disorders because yeah, you, it’s just basically the opposite of everything else that we’re taught all the time. . And when you work in a hospital or like when you, when we had to do our clinical rotations in a hospital, everybody’s malnourished.
Everybody’s withering away. Everybody’s needs more food. You pump them with insurers and boosts and all the things, and then when you come. And seek community nutrition. It’s like obesity. Everyone’s overweight. Yeah. Everybody needs healthier options. And so eating disorders were an area that I felt like I definitely didn’t feel comfortable in, and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing or of course apply anything.
And so it was just walking that fine line. So I just feel so much more comfortable with Lauren is our dietitian who handles that and she’s awesome. And patients. . I love that. Yeah. And so were you, was there a specific point in your practice in terms of maybe number of clients that you were seeing every day or every week where you were like, I really need somebody else.
What was that point where you were like the, I need to find that first person? , you know what it was? It wasn’t really like we got to be too busy or something. It was, I don’t really wanna be doing this myself anymore. , I wanna work on the business instead of in the business. Yeah.
And I also got pregnant, so I was like, I definitely know this isn’t gonna work, having a one o’clock and a two o’clock on my schedule when I have a baby around. Yeah. So I knew I needed to make that shift. . Yeah. And so how did you find, actually, so you have six now, so it’s , how long, like how long did it take you to hire those six people?
Like what’s. I hired probably four at once. Oh wow. Okay. And then, yeah, just to try to fill all the different disease states and different conditions. Cool. And then we have one on staff now that isn’t a dietitian yet. She’s a dietetic intern and she is currently finishing her master’s and she.
handles our marketing in person to doctor’s offices. . So she goes in and does the big lunches and gives the flyers and tells the doctors about what we can offer. Yeah, so she was just recently hired within the last couple of months, but everybody else was like, I guess around summer of 2021.
Okay. Wow. And so was that, how did that feel to go from zero people to four people all at one? Was that overwhelming ? Honestly it felt like a relief just because I had somebody else. Yes, when you’re a solo entrepreneur, there’s so much that you wanna get to and that you wanna do, and there’s just not time.
And there’s so much that I just felt like I needed some backup. And even just to have conversations of bouncing ideas around off of people was super helpful. So I was really excited as far as the, like financial burden of that. , I, everybody on our team is independent contractors, so they are not employees.
I, at the end of the tax season, I give them 10 90 nines, they are independent contractors. That setup has allowed for more flexibility from a business owner standpoint too. . Because that reduces the risk a lot for you as well, right? Because they’re getting paid when clients come in versus you paying them a certain salary every month.
Yeah, exactly. So it’s actually, I think, probably a lot more attainable for people to think about hiring somebody in their business, even if they’re not, being inundated with clients and they have all this money coming in. It’s like you don’t necessarily need to be at that place.
there’s really not much of a risk to bring someone in who gets paid based on the clients that come in. Absolutely. And so I knew that if someone were to come in and pay for a session, a portion of that goes to the dietitian. So yeah, I’m not fronting anything. Totally. Like funding a salary for people that wouldn’t be used fully was never something that.
necessarily consider, but the other benefit that comes from hiring independent contractors is come tax season. Like I don’t have to take out their taxes for them. Yeah. They put it aside and then they pay it on their own. And, legally looking at some of this stuff, Because they’re all using their own clinical judgment, and I’m not telling them how to do X, y, or Z.
Yeah. I’m really just hiring them as a contractor. Yeah. I’m not telling them totally. How to, I’m not nitpicking how they do their job. Yeah. It just simplifies everything for totally you and for everyone. . That’s awesome. That’s very cool. I felt the same way when I brought on the first person to work with me.
Obviously the businesses are different, but there’s just a relief that comes from having somebody from not having to do everything yourself. That’s a pretty heavy weight to carry . Yeah, it’s a heavy weight to carry, right? It’s and then you’re constantly struggling with that feeling of, oh, there’s so many things that I could.
Be doing, and I just don’t have the capacity right now. And so it’s just, it’s so nice when you can really start to think about how can I truly stay? How can you stay in your genius zone as a, business owner, right? And really focus on the things that you love to do and that you’re really good at, and give some of the things to other people.
The, and delegating, I think initially at it’s so important. But initially when you’ve created this baby, right? Yeah. Like it’s hard to give up some of these things to people. , but once. I did. I was like, this is awesome. You’re like, awesome , I can do this more . Yeah. You, it brings up so much time brain capacity.
Yes. And you know that somebody else is over there handling it and looking into it and part of that comes down to trusting the people that you work with. Yeah. And all that. But I just know that splitting things up it’s been so great and so important in scaling the business up. Yeah, a hundred percent.
Cuz there is a point where you hit that max capacity. Yeah. And if you want to move to that next level, there’s no other way . No. There’s no other way than to free up your time. Time in the day to buy your time back. Yeah. And so how did you hire these people? Like how did you find them? I’m just always curious about that.
Yeah, I used LinkedIn oh, interest. I did the LinkedIn jobs and. Immediate feedback. And I think I also posted the job postings on my website, but most people found it through LinkedIn and within. A week or two, I was all figured out. I had, I definitely interviewed a lot of people. , I blocked out, a week at least of just back to back interviews with people just to really find what I was looking for.
But LinkedIn was great because I believe they were free postings and . It didn’t. It wasn’t like I had to go market it, and yeah, hook it up and promote it E everywhere it was, they came to me . That’s awesome. Yeah. And what do you feel has been the biggest learning, for you as a business owner in terms of hiring a team?
One thing that I think. . It is hard once you have a team is having to have some of those conversations, like confrontational conversations. Sure. About, maybe performance is lacking or this isn’t going the right way, or there was this sort of concern, whatever it is. Yeah. I’ve had to be more direct and try to have those conversations, which is hard.
Yeah. But it’s also part of being a leader, so I’m really forcing myself into it. . Yeah. And. , there’s ways to do it with kindness and while still being direct and make sure that people understand and need to change their behaviors. But that that’s the hardest part. Yeah. And that’s such an important skill to just learn, but I feel like there is such a learning curve with it cause it’s so uncomfortable.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard. Yeah. And so finishing off this piece around hiring and then I wanna talk a little bit more about just your life as a mom and a business owner. Do you have, or what pieces of advice would you have for dietitians who are thinking about making that first hire? , I would say definitely look into the independent contractor situation.
Depending on what you’re hiring them for. Like for patient appointment sessions, it’s pretty straightforward. You can take a portion of it, and you know what they’re making, what you’re making, what the patient is bringing in. But depending on some other for example, we do a lot of consulting work where we do writing.
And writing projects are typically charged per word. And my dietitians that do consulting work for me are, they charge consulting hours, so an hourly fee. So we’ve definitely had issues where this is charge per word and the dietitian spent 10 hours on it or something, and it’s okay, that was probably too long.
We’ve now lost 200 bucks on this, or whatever it is. Oops. Yeah. But those things, it’s good. I guess advice would be to have a little bit of buffer so that you can still pay your team if that were to happen. But then quickly correct it and say, Let’s maybe we could, what we’ve started doing is give me an estimate for how long this you think this is gonna take. And then if this is gonna take too long, I don’t assign it to that dietitian, you know? Cuz ultimately we need to be able to profit. I don’t wanna just lose money left and right. But yeah, that’s been the little bit tricky because we’re not just charging. The client an hourly rate and I’m paying my dietitian an hourly rate or so it just, making sure that at the end of the day we’re netting
Yeah, of course. And I actually don’t think I even included this cuz we were talking about it before, but I don’t actually think I was recording at the time. So you actually are not seeing clients or patients one-on-one anymore. That’s just entirely your, so when you’re working. Nine to five every day or whatever your schedule ends up being are.
You’re doing mostly consulting stuff, correct? Yeah, so we have one dietitian on our team Victoria, that handles a lot of the consulting projects with me. Gotcha. And so she will mainly do a lot of writing. I will do recipe development, food, photography. We do a lot of media, tv, media segments now. So my.
Job is figuring that out, whether that’s pitching the brands, locking them down getting set up for the media segments, all of that. That is what I mainly spend my time doing now. And the reason for that is one, I think I enjoy it more personally. I didn’t know that was an area dietitians could work in at all.
Yeah. And I also did not realize how lucrative it is. Yeah. I. trying to prioritize my time being spent there now because it is, it’s just such a ball. I have a great time doing it. . Yeah. I’ve been spending a lot more time with media and Do you remember how you got some of your first consulting clients?
I probably got them from Upwork. Yeah. That’s where I started, which I think I listened to one of your episodes way in the evening about how to earn an extra thousand dollars a month. Yeah, I think that it’s probably like episode five or something. Totally . Yeah. And y you were the original inspiration for me looking at Upwork, but I remember you saying in that episode, like some projects on there, Say, yeah, I need 500 recipes for 20 bucks.
Or just ridiculous. You do have to weed totally through, you do a hundred percent ridiculous. Posts out there that just, it’s like people accept it. I don’t know why, I don’t know why you would do that, the cost of food and all of that. So I’m just, Kind of planning through some of that now.
But yeah, Upwork was definitely a great first place for me to start reaching some of the brands, especially for like startup brands that are, just looking for initial content to get rolling. Yeah. And just to build up your portfolio too, so that you can get some of those bigger brands. Absolutely.
And so where do you get most of your consulting gigs now? Networking. , all networking. Just people I know people, somebody knows somebody else. They’re working on this team, they left this company, now they’re over here. Just, it’s crazy how connected this community is. But yeah, just networking and being, never burn a bridge
Yeah, totally. That’s awesome. And so you’ve probably gotten to the point now where you have consistent clients that work with you every month. Yeah. Which is awesome. Yeah, depending, every single situation is different. But yeah, there’s been, some clients that I’ve been working with for the last two years and we do something almost on a monthly basis, whether it’s recipe development, food photography, speaking on their panels for their conferences bringing them in and doing a media segment, writing for their blogs.
But usually once. and you can tell who like is gonna be an awesome client to work with. Like totally. You just jive with the people and everything, like they’re friends. And that’s a, another good thing about doing this sort of work is I gain different coworkers. They don’t work under my umbrella of my business, but I work with them.
They’re colleagues that I work with on a regular basis that are my friends. That’s, networking has been huge. I used to feel really slimy about networking. Yeah. . Like before I was a dietitian, like that word was like, ew. Yeah. You’re like, what does that even mean, ? Yeah, totally. But now it does feel it.
It’s so natural cause yeah, and I don’t know if it’s just cuz it’s like I care. About what I’m doing now. Like I care about nutrition, I care about food. I think this stuff is interesting. I could talk about it for hours, , yeah. Or I, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just being older, but it doesn’t feel as forced and slimy anymore.
It’s definitely like you, you probably have more confidence too, right? Like probably you just have more, you bring more, you’re like, I know I can do an awesome job at this. , probably so much easier, to picture yourself, right? . Yeah. Yeah. Just finally through. , all of that imposter syndrome stuff that comes when you’re first starting.
Okay, so let’s, I wanna shift gears a little bit and I wanna talk about being a new mom, being a business owner. Yes. I think every person who starts a business or is thinking about starting a business and knows that they wanna have a family at some point, has this thought of okay, but how does this work?
Like, how does one do both things? So first off, Let’s bring it back. What were some of those initial thoughts that you had about running your business when you first found out you were pregnant with Luca? I knew, I think the first thing that came to mind was I’m not gonna be available for any scheduled appointments necessarily as often.
Yeah. And I still have calls and things like that where I will need to be at somewhere at a certain time, but I knew. . I couldn’t do 40 hours of that a week. I, that wasn’t gonna work. So that was the biggest one. And that was when I hired the other dietitians to take on the patient side of the business.
And then I knew I wanted to maybe bring in more money with doing less work. doesn’t everybody. And , that’s where media really was awesome because, for a certain amount of You know it, you’re, basically getting compensated for so much more. For example, a media segment. We’re not only bringing the brand in front of the TV audience that has a certain reach, we’re also using our dietitian expertise to show why we like it and acting as a spokesperson and then being the chef and the recipe developer and the.
Prop department, all of that is part it’s a lot of work for these media segments, but for a two minute segment you can actually take home some good money. Even though there is a heavy planning portion of it. I could do that when Luca is asleep on a nap or falls asleep at night or, I don’t need to do that between the hours of nine and five.
So that’s been very helpful for me, just being able. prioritize that work. . And I think, I think, having a big life change like this also forces you to make some of those hard decisions that otherwise maybe you wouldn’t have made at that point, but you needed to make. Yeah. . Yeah, I think it definitely has made me more gutsy.
I think. So anxious. I remember during my internship, I one day got to work as an intern behind the scenes of a media segment with actually a good friend. Now another media dietitian here in Arizona, Jillian Barkum and. I was behind the scenes with her and we, she was setting up and she had her little lines that she had to do, and I wasn’t gonna be on camera at all.
I was just there to take behind the scenes pictures and I was like, heaving in the corner. I was like, I cannot believe you’re gonna be on air soon. This is, So stressful. And she’s what? Why are you so nervous? I was like, I’m like, I’m hyperventilating over here. I don’t, I, so I never thought I’d be able to do this work.
I thought never in a million years I would never want to do this. No way. But now I love doing it and I’ve gotten over that fear partly because I’ve proven to myself that I can do it. So here we are. We could do it again. But yeah, confidence that just comes with age and experience.
But yeah, I never thought I was gonna do it and now it’s I have to, I gotta do it. Let’s get this show on the road. And it puts things into perspective like, Coming home to him. It’s who cares? Yeah. He’s so cute and boo. Like we get to go, come home to him. Like it’s okay, it’s just tv like it. That’s awesome. It puts things in perspective. Yeah. That’s so awesome. And so did you take, and I know we were talking about this before, but we weren’t recording at that point. Did you take time off from your business when you have Oh yeah. And what did that look like? Yeah, we laughed because I’m pretty sure I answered emails from the hospital like either that day or the next day, which is so stupid.
I do not recommend. I think I just felt like I needed to make sure everything was, and it’s stem, it’s dumb, it’s it’s probably more of a control issue than anything else. But I think that if I would do it again, I would try to really check. Really check out because I was checking emails the whole time.
I officially went back to work after six weeks. But I was pretty much working partly because I guess, , it’s my business and I need, I felt like I needed to oversee everything. Partly because I wanted to like a little bit of I love this stuff and I don’t wanna go without looking at it, . Maybe partly too, because I’ve needed a little bit of a break from baby stuff. Like I need to entertain my mind in a different way, but I probably. Be more deliberate about planning that next time. Instead of just seeing what happens. . Yeah. I really appreciate that perspective cuz I think just in, in terms of other people that I’ve heard talking about this topic and I haven’t, heard a ton about it, but it’s I remember this one pod podcast specifically and it’s somebody who I’ve worked with as like a business coach in the past, and she was talking about how she was like, you have to make sure that you have three months at least, where you’re not doing, you have nothing that you’re doing business wise, absolutely nothing.
And I’m like, I just can’t imagine myself being. Okay with that. . I just don’t, that’s just not my vibe, , no. I just love your business and you like it. It’s Yeah. That you’re passionate about. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So it’s nice to hear from somebody who feels that way as well and has successfully gone through that process.
Yeah. That’s, I dunno if it was a success, but it definitely but you figured it out. I figured it out. Yeah. You figured it out. Yeah. It’s postpartum is like a crazy part of life. But I definitely felt like. I was super excited to check my email . Yeah, fair. Fair enough. Not deal with anything freak or hard, but I was like, totally, you just wanna stay on top of things.
I feel that way too. I feel more stressed if I’m not if I go away on vacation, I’m still checking my email because I don’t wanna think about the fact that I have things in my email that I’m not dealing. Like it’s just, that’s too much. I don’t like that . I like to just stay on top of things. , it feels good, right?
Yeah. Do you check your email on weekends? Yeah, me too. . I do . Totally do work life balance. What’s that like? Yeah. It’s hard when you love, but I’m with it. I’m fine with it. Yeah. It doesn’t bother me. I’m like, oh, I’m fine with it. That makes me feel good if I just know that nothing’s burning down and everything’s still rolling.
in the background. Totally. I only I think only entrepreneurs will know that. Yeah, totally. It’s truly just like if I were to explain, To anybody else. It’s like your life and your business are one and the same. They’re one. Yeah, they’re one. They’re so intertwined. It’s just insane.
So what does your schedule look like now then? So now I. Have we have a nanny share for Luca and one of our other good friends has a baby around his age and we do the nanny share at her house. So seven to four, Monday through Thursday he’s with the nanny, which is great. And then on Fridays, I we have a little mommy and me day, and right now he’s in music class.
I think in summer we’re gonna switch that to a swim class. And I like having. The one day where I can pretend to be a stay-at-home mom and see that side of it too because there’s, so I wanna be involved with him and I want him to see certain things and I wanna be there for it.
I do find that like after a full day of that, I am wiped. Totally wiped. It is the hardest job to have patience for a little one. It’s a lot of work. So I think one day is good . Yeah. But yeah, we have fun on our little days, but yeah, that wor, that’s been working out great. We used to have him in daycare.
and the daycare, the daycares start accepting kiddos at six weeks, most of ’em. Wow. I didn’t get a spot for him until three months. I don’t know if it’s like this in Canada. You’ll have to tell me because like it is the wait list here. Are insane. I walked in maybe three months pregnant to a daycare and they were like, oh yeah, it’s like a three year waiting list.
I’m like then why am I even here? Yeah. Should I get on the, for number three? What this is, this, I get on the list for baby number three right now. Yeah. So that’s challenging, but the nanny has been awesome for us. Very cool. And that’s so cool that you’ve just found this awesome balance too between being able to work and then being able to do the mob thing during the week.
And that’s the biggest plus of Yeah. Being in charge of your time is how Absolutely. Deciding how you wanna split that up. Yeah. And it may change, like right now, it’s one day. I think when I first had him in daycare, I had him in daycare for three days a week, and then I would do two days with him.
And I found that I wasn’t getting enough work done and , it was just a little bit too much, so I switched it. So it’s ever evolving for sure. And depending on his stage, it may always change, but right now, That’s working really well, and I like being able to decide how I spend my time. Yeah.
And so on that note, do you have any advice for new mom business owners? . It’s hard. It’s hard, but it’s also like you’re the boss, so you get to decide. , you know what that looks like for you. , I would just say be open-minded. I was probably too close-minded in me being such a planner type a color, coded my highlighted, calendar the whole thing.
I was like, I’m gonna do two days with him and three days it, and if it doesn’t work or something needs to shift. is okay and honestly happens a lot like Luca’s only 10 months old. And the amount of times I’ve, we’ve changed his routine and his sleeping and his eating and it’s, babies change a lot.
And that’s been a big lesson for me is like being able to adapt and right when you get the hang of one thing, they go through another developmental leap and now everything’s different, be flexible I think would be my advice. , love that. Love that. Thanks so much.
Thanks so much for chatting with me. Course. That was so great. That was so great. Oh good. I’m so glad we got to catch up. Me too. I’m so glad. So where can the audience find out more about you and the work that you do? Yeah. So if feel free to follow me on Instagram at Kristen dot Carly, you can see what I’m up to, what my life is I’m sharing a lot right now about being a media dietitian, so if that’s interesting to you, come check that out. And then I actually did just start a podcast. That’s why I’ve got this fancy mic. I know that. I know. So it’s not nutrition related. It’s actually all about. Being a working mom and I started it with my sister-in-law.
Yeah. And oh my God. Cool. Yeah. Our podcast is called Second Shift. It is a podcast for working parents, by working parents. Wow. So check us out. We’re on Apple Podcasts. We have three episodes out. But yeah, it just all about navigating the balance of the scramble that is full-time working parenthood.
And it’s fun to hear. That we’re not alone because the stories Yeah. Are hilarious. Yeah. But yeah, that’s where you can find me now. Those are my two fun projects that I’ve got going on. That is so cool. We’ll link to all of those in the description of this episode. All right. Thanks Kristen.
Have an awesome day. Thank you. Bye.
