Whitney Bateson is a Registered Dietitian who has a passion for design and technology. Through her program, The Dietitian Website System she helps dietitians launch user-friendly, branded and engaging WordPress websites.
So if you’ve been thinking about launching a WordPress site, or perhaps you have started a WordPress site but you’re STUCK when it comes to design or development, and feeling overwhelmed with the tech stuff – this episode is for you.
Today, Whitney and I talk all about her career path, how and why she started teaching web development/design to RD’s, whether you need a website for your business, the key things that RD’s are doing wrong with their websites and what to do if you’ve started creating a WP site, but you’re stuck.
Links:
- Free Masterclass “How to Turn Your Website Into a Client Generating Machine” Affiliate Link: https://dietitiansuccesscenter–whitneybateson.thrivecart.com/the-dietitian-website-system/6306315b026f8/
- Get notified when enrollment in The Dietitian Website System opens again (and get exclusive bonuses and discounts!) Affiliate Link: https://dietitiansuccesscenter–whitneybateson.thrivecart.com/the-dietitian-website-system/63c726523e741/
- Check out the websites created by DWS Students: https://whitneybateson.com/portfoliowork
Episode Transcript:
Today, I’m sitting down with Whitney Bateson. Whitney is a registered dietitian who has a passion for design and technology through her business. She helps dietitians launch user-friendly branded and engaging WordPress websites. So if you are sitting there and you’ve been thinking about launching a WordPress site, or perhaps you have started one, but you’re really stuck when it comes to.
Two. Design or development and you’re lost in all of the tech. Then this episode is absolutely for you. Today, Whitney. And I talk all about her career path, how and why she started teaching web development and design to RDS. Whether you need a website for your business, some of the key things that dietitians are doing wrong when it comes to websites and what to do, if you’ve started creating WordPress site, but your stuck.
And so before we get into the episode, I just want to mention that Whitney is actually offering. A free masterclass. On how to turn your website into a client generating machine. This masterclass is going to be running on June 6th and seventh, 2023. So if you’re listening to this episode, before those dates sign up for this masterclass.
There is a link in the description of this podcast episode for you to sign up. And if you’re listening after those dates, no worries. Just head on over to Whitney’s website. Again, the link is in the description of this episode and you’ll see a link to join the wait list for the next master class. So with that let’s jump into the episode
Brittany, it’s so good to see you. Thanks so much for being a guest on the dietitian Success Podcast. I am so excited to be here from the fancy show floor to Yeah, totally.
Coming on the podcast. Really excited. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Me too. Absolutely. Okay, so let’s start. I always like to start with, just overview of your dietitian story. How did you get to where you are today? Yeah, so I started my career in school nutrition. I. Thought when I was doing my internship, you always go around and think you’re gonna do oh, I really liked this and so I wanna do this.
And then you do your next rotation and you’re like, oh, I really like this. And I had settled on actually really being interested in policy and food service, oddly enough, and specifically school food service. Because I wanted to make the most impact possible. That was like my reasoning. And so I ended up getting like the best of both worlds of getting a job doing school nutrition in DC, Washington, dc.
So I was like, I’m in the food policy mecca and in and working in school nutrition. So I did that for, almost 10 years. So in first in DC schools, and then I got promoted a couple times in the management company that I was working in and was creating nutrition programming for the districts that we had across the country as a vendor.
So almost 6,000 schools. By the time, I decided to go out on my own and. Over that period of I know we can, we’ll keep going. But yeah that’s like my story of becoming a dietitian. So to speak. Yeah. Yeah. And then, so what was the impetus then for, it sounds like you were thriving in your career, so what was the impetus that brought you into entrepreneurship?
Yeah, so it’s one of those things I didn’t think I wanted to be an entrepreneur when I started out. I definitely was very like, I want a job. I want someone else to be worrying about, my paycheck and all of that. And but what happened throughout my career was, I had always had a creative streak in me, and I was using that as I was going through.
So like in DC public schools, we rolled out salad bars to a lot of the schools, and so we recorded a video and we created a manager’s guide because there were, I. Over a hundred schools in dc Some of them I still to this day have never set foot in. So I need to find, needed to find ways to get people to pay attention to the training materials I was creating and leveraging technology and communication to reach all of our schools and all of our managers and employees.
So as I was. Using that to design pretty materials. And as time went on creating, like we made it an allergy training that actually went out across all of the districts that chart walls. That’s what, who I was working for. So we did this like really innovative stuff and I realized that’s really what I like thrived on.
Those were the projects I really loved where I was blending design, communication technology in new ways and. I wasn’t feeling like there was actually a lot of resources and support for nutrition professionals to get those. Those same skills and resources that we were really looking for. We were the nutrition department, but I was doing almost like marketing and communication and learning work and all of that.
So I just really finally, like one day I was like, you know what? I really don’t want to practice nutrition anymore. I’m still so passionate about the mission though, and I love dietitians. And so I was like maybe what I’ll do is just provide these services to dietitians to help them reach people and be seen as the experts and be successful and get their messages heard and get this really important nutrition information into the hands of the public or, parents or whomever the audience is.
\ and just helping dietitians and giving them like that trusted resource to do it. Because that was the other thing I know. I felt in the wide world of the web, like who can you trust? Who can you trust to develop your website? Who can you trust to develop and give you graphic design help that isn’t going to pigeonhole you into what they think a dietitian is or charge you a bunch of money or whatever.
So I wanted to be that trusted resource as well so that they felt more confident and comfortable going after what they wanted and having that support to do it. Yeah. And so what, okay, so what year was this? That was in, it was a busy year. I thought about starting my business for a year and a half.
I think I was mulling it over. I was also not sure right away that that was what I wanted. It definitely took a lot of. Iterating and I used this book, do What You Are, and it had you do go through some exercises and identify these things. And so I started going to some meetups in the DC area, so thought maybe I wanted to go into development.
And so I went to some coding meetups and I took some coding courses online and WordPress meetups and all of that. And. No position, like really fit. And then I also just got hit with the thing of I don’t actually think I wanna work for anyone else anymore. I think I just wanna do my own thing.
And just built that passion up. So finally in 2017, I remember I went to fci. I made my business cards, and that was the first time that I started telling people quietly and slowly that, Hey, I’m starting a business. If you need. And at the time I wanted to focus on marketing support and like graphic design websites and video editing.
I wanted to teach dietitians how to create their own videos because that’s what I was doing at my other job. Okay. And I started getting like a few clients just word of mouth and calling on people and all of that. And, but I still like, Couldn’t quit my job. I was really terrified to do that.
And I had a talk with a friend and she was like, it sounds like you need like a coach or someone to help you get over this hump. And so hired my coach, wrote my email to my boss on that call that, wow, hey, we need to talk. And then my coach helped me navigate, cause I gave them three months notice.
I gave a lot of notice. Wow. Which, yeah. And so just navigating, closing out a position, I’d basically, even though I’d gotten promotions, I’d been with the company for 10 years. So it was like a lot to unpack. Unravel. Yeah. So that was at the, stopped in 2018. And so the business was like full, fully in May, 2018.
So I didn’t, wow. I didn’t work on it on the side for too long. Before, cause I just didn’t feel I could give my all to both. Yeah. And that’s what I really wanted to do. And I knew that I wouldn’t ever really push myself all the way in the business if I didn’t take my foot out of the Yeah. The job.
Totally. Yeah. And do you remember what some of those first client experiences were like? What projects were you doing? How did you know what to charge people? Yeah, just some of those starter details. Yeah. Initial things. Yeah. There was one site that I volunteered to do for a volunteer organization that I was, it was we were like handing out like produce bucks, at farmer’s markets.
And that one, I did not use a strong password on the website. That one got, had some issues with that one. Oh, shoot. So that was my first, unfortunately. Yeah. And I was actually thinking about this today. I’m like, the first time you do anything, it’s gonna be a little rough. Sometimes it goes great, but a lot of times it’s gonna be a little iffy. And yeah. And then I had another client where we needed to update their theme. We wanted to do some design update updates to their site, but their theme had not been updated in a really long time. So went ahead and updated it, update it, and of course it was just too old to update straight away, so I had to back it all up and then I had to manually like stepwise update it. And so I was just googling a lot. You tubing a lot. It was stressful, yeah. Sure. And I was trying to estimate how long things were going to take, but you just do the best you can.
When you’re starting out, you’re just never going to know. You don’t have enough information yet to correctly estimate. So I just, came up with how much I thought I should charge per hour based on, you see some stuff on the internet. Yeah. Whatever. And how many hours and, Depending on what it is, you either eat those hours that you spent learning, which, probably for a lot of us, that’s what you’re doing.
Or if there’s things that legitimately came up, then you go back to them and be like, Hey, you know these additional things. And you try and work with the client and figure it out. So some of them it was just, yeah, updating stuff. Others, it was like building a site from scratch and figuring. Figuring it all out.
But basically just, I was taking on a lot of hours for myself, just learning that I wasn’t charging my clients for. But it allowed me to keep going and moving forward. As opposed to. Okay, I’m gonna charge them an exorbitant amount of money because I don’t know very much. And I’m gonna pass that.
Lack of knowledge onto the client that’s not great. And then also waiting until I knew everything. Unless you start doing the work, you’re not going to know what you don’t know. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. That’s awesome. Awesome. You just keep increasing your rates and increasing and, there were times too, I’m feeling in a pretty good place now with my business. Yeah. After five years. But there were times where I ran the margins on some of my offerings and realized that I was losing money on them, and it was really upsetting, I felt like a failure. Sure. Yeah. And so those kinds of things happen and yeah.
It’s just part of it. Yeah. Yeah. So part of it, I, I feel like I know, I completely remember those moments when I was doing freelancing and consulting work and being like, oh my gosh, the amount of time that I just spent on that project. It was the equivalent of me charging $10 an hour. Yeah.
But it’s just part of it. I think you have to go through that. Yeah. Yeah. And I will say, having a support community of some kind was just, so I had my business coach, but whether you’re in a membership or a mastermind or one-on-one, like just something, because. When you’re in a company and a job like you’re supported by so many different people.
By your boss, by your coworkers, you don’t even realize that there’s people that are guiding you and bouncing ideas and whatever, and then you go out on your own and there’s nothing and no one. Yeah. And I personally feel like you gotta pay for someone to give a blank about like your business A little bit.
Yeah. Cuz you’re friends, your family. True. Yeah. They’re great, but. They also don’t know your business. They can only give like spotty advice and they’re not, they’re just not following the way that Yeah, absolutely. Like they’re fine giving you advice unsolicited because it doesn’t matter to them what the result of that advice is.
Yeah. But they’re definitely not gonna be doing it on like a weekly basis. They’re not gonna keep hearing about oh, this client pushed back on this thing. Sure. And I’m feeling really uncomfortable about what to say. Yeah. Like eventually they’re gonna be like, oh, yeah. And so how long did you do one-on-one client work for?
Before starting, and I don’t know if there was something in between, but before starting? Yeah. The dietitian website system. So a long time and longer than I should have. I, when I started my business, I actually really wanted to create a course to teach dietitians how to do websites. But then as I started doing websites myself, I was like, oh no.
I don’t know how I would teach someone else to do this. And this does not seem like a good use of a dietitian’s time. To learn how to do this. Like it just didn’t jive for a long time. So it had been in the back of my hi, my mind because I had created e-learning with my company and had really seen the value of courses and I liked teaching and all of that.
But we did, first I designed the sites, developed them myself, built them, all of that. But I soon knew I had capacity issues. And so the other thing that happened through all of this was I decided to start traveling full-time. Cool. So that was, so I started my business full-time in May, and then in October of that same year, I left.
Everything behind in dt. Wow. And did a one year travel program with this company called Remote Years. So it’s like they org they organize all the travel. Yeah. You, so they organize like the accommodations and it’s with a group of people. So it was 33 other people and just from a wide variety of backgrounds and.
I just knew I, I did it because I knew that if I was sitting in my condo in DC trying to run my business by myself, yeah, it was not going to be a good environment for me. Yeah. Even though I was terrified of like the lack of stability and like the lack of routine and, obviously there’s a lot of unknowns.
It felt like a little weird to say, Hey, I just quit my job and started my business and now I’m gonna travel the world as well. And it’s all gonna work out. Luckily it did, but I say all that just for background. So I, we formed like a little group within that travel group of entrepreneurs and we were talking, so I remember, and it’s cool, I can remember like moments in my business based on like the countries I was in.
So I remember in Croatia, yeah, we were in this conference room of our workspace and I was like complaining about doing the math and I was like, if I wanna get more websites, then I need to. Do or make more money. I need to do more websites, but I physically don’t have the time to do all of these websites, but I don’t wanna pay anyone because I don’t have enough money.
Like I want all the money for myself. And then the other people I was, and actually one of them is my now fiance was in the group. Oh my gosh. Cool. We connected a lot on the entrepreneurship stuff and so many other things, obviously. And they just really encouraged me to look at it again and look at what’s the cost of hiring someone and what.
Does that do to your hourly rate and how much money you make and all of that. And it became very clear that yeah, I need to hire someone. Hired Ron, who actually still works with me today. He’s amazing, our developer. And then I hired. Nikki, who is our designer and I worked for with her for many years, but she was in the program with me as well.
And then Zoe, who was my marketing assistant and did other like blogging and social media stuff for me. So those were some of my first hires just from that group. And the joke was like, by the end I was going to just be hiring everyone. Yeah. And employing everyone in our travel group. So we did websites for a couple years like that and then just.
It’s just a lot of work. And we needed project management as well. And at one point I had gotten really burnt out and I said I needed to take a little bit of a break from just selling constantly and so we did that break, but then that break came at the cost of their contractors.
They’re not employees. Yeah. And so they’re. Money went down, so they found other work. And then when I was like, okay, we’re ready to go. Yeah. Some of them like didn’t have the bandwidth anymore and so trying to replace them just wasn’t really working. Just one of the positions, like from a project manager perspective, and I just realized, I can go one of two ways.
It can either. Finally take everything that we have in our system because by that point we had created like a really airtight process of how we build websites and what we do and what we know works and the prompts that we give to our clients to gather information from them and how we guide them.
So that was really good and I was really proud of that. But then just project managing the whole process from beginning to end was a beast. So I decided to just skip trying to hire a project manager and just build it into a course. So that was at the end of 2021, we finally, some of the core team we met and said, okay, yeah, we wanna build this into a course.
What’s it gonna take? What are the modules we want? Creating templates, designing those, getting those built. And then we launched the first. Cohort in May, I think of 2022, I believe. Yeah. So we moved pretty quickly because again, we had so many of the processes already figured out. We just really needed to pull it all together.
Yeah. and so we ran it three times last year. Yeah. May and then like June one and then like in October or something I think. And yeah, and now we’re launching it again and just like continuing. Yeah. Oh, and yeah. And so we’ve run it one time this year and so we’re about to go into our second cohort of 2023.
So cool. Yeah. And so what does the program look like now? What do people actually get when they join the dietitian website system? So what, we still do some of the work for people. It was really important. To me, to not put the onus on dietitians to learn like how to point a d n s record to a hosting, website and installing WordPress.
To me, there’s some skills that when you learn them, you can keep applying to them to your business, like copywriting or email marketing. Like those are good things for a dietitian to learn, but learning how to install WordPress. That’s not a skill. Yeah. You’re not gonna teach that to anyone else.
There’s no point in you learning that. So we take, so we have page template, page layouts that we’ve created based on what we have over the many websites that we’ve personally developed, seen what the right structure is for a high converting dietitian website. So we have these layouts and then we have copy templates that go along with them.
And it’s very like plug and play of You should say this for your headline, and it should be between five and seven words. And so we have all of that. We have logo templates, color palette templates font pairing templates. So if anyone’s coming in who doesn’t have any of that, we have that too. So that’s like the core set of like content, and then we’re installing those layouts on WordPress for you.
And then we’re teaching you so many different things. So it’s a live cohort. Everyone goes through it together. But there’s pre-recorded videos each week, and so it’s six weeks, but we have two weeks of downtime, like two weeks of you just implementing and no, like new content. But otherwise it’s four weeks of content.
The first week is all about making sure you’re really clear on your ideal customer. Branding, what’s your website strategy based on your goals and your business, and what’s your service model and all of that. And then week two is about setting up your systems. So what’s your email situation? Email marketing software, what’s your scheduler looking like?
And then copywriting and using our templates and my guidance on how to write good copy. And then week three, we deliver your website to you. That’s been set up. You gave us your brand colors, so we’ve implemented at least some of those basics. And then our students will then watch our videos and actually customize the layouts based on what they’ve already put together with their copy.
Find your photos. We always like to find photos after the copy’s in there. It just makes it a lot easier than. Just randomly going to a stock website and being like, I just need photos of women. Yeah. Yeah. That’s very difficult. So week three is all about that and week four is about SEO and blogging and wrapping up and launching your site.
And then in the, in terms of like support in addition to us, doing stuff. Then we’ve got the forum, a live forum for the six weeks. I’m in there, my developers are in there. My tech support VA is in there too, so we’re just, Answering any questions that come up, whether it’s strategy or how do I change this button to look this way?
Even though our videos cover a lot of that, but it always comes up. That’s that’s always the name of the game. You watch the tutorial on YouTube and you’re like, but it didn’t do that for me. Yeah. Oh, help. Yeah. But we’re there to help. And then we have live calls.
So we have office hours with me for a few of the weeks, and then we also have office hours with one of our developers for a couple weeks near the end when you’re actually like diving into the nitty gritty tech of the site to just get questions answered on the fly and all of that. Yeah.
Yeah, that’s. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s so awesome. I love how you’ve structured it, because even to me listening to you talking about it, it’s oh my gosh, in six weeks you could have. A finished website, like that’s incredible. That’s a month and a half. That’s zero time in the grand scheme of things, given how long I’ve seen it take people to finish WordPress sites particularly, right?
Yes. Like, When they’re trying to do it themselves, like I’ve seen this so many times where it’s like they start and they start off strong, and then all it takes is you get to that very first roadblock and you cannot figure out how to do it, and you’re sitting on this site unfinished for months and months at a time.
Yep. So it’s incredible. Yeah. And then I also love that part of the course is done for you too. It’s not just, okay. Yeah. This is a self-paced, you’re gonna go through this on your own time. We have this forum here for you if you have questions. Yeah. It’s no. Like we’re gonna set up the bones for you and then you can fill in all the gaps.
But yeah. That’s incredible. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s a timeline and I give, a sample project plan so you can fill in the dates. And we’ve got a calendar because I just really find that I thrive off of deadlines. And yes, it can feel like, okay, this is a lot of work to get done in six weeks and every one of our students is different in how much time they spend, per week on the course.
But, usually it’s Probably six to 10 hours, depending on how much they’re putting into it and how much they already had developed. But, having those timelines, and we’ve had feedback from our students saying that, like having the deadlines really helped them like keep moving forward.
Yeah. And like you said, the having support that can help you get over those roadblocks is so important because Yeah. It’s a confidence thing, I think. Is you’re, Because there’s so many levels of confidence that you need when you’re putting together your website. You need to be confident in your offer and what your services are.
Then as you’re writing your copy, you need to be confident about like showing up as the expert and being like, I can do this for you, and then you need to be confident in your design and development skills and if any of those things trip you up, it just can take you out and yeah. Make you give up, especially if there’s no one else like cheering you on.
To be like, no, it’s okay and it’s totally fine that you didn’t know how to do that. We’re gonna solve that for you. Or here’s something to get your. Wheels turning again. And then you can like, keep going. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it shouldn’t take Cool. It just a, yeah.
A website. I really don’t like having a website take so long because your business is moving so quickly. Like my business changed so quickly every year that I was in business. Yes. So if you have it sitting like a, you’re not getting any clients from it. So it’s just like a waste. And probably by the time you’re ready to launch it, like things have changed.
And so you’re constantly like changing it while you’re trying to launch it. Yeah, totally. Okay, so let’s talk about websites for a second because, yeah, I don’t know if you recall, but I feel like back in 2020 there was a. There was a narrative I feel like, a little bit within the dietitian community particularly.
And I don’t know if I was just the, I just observed this because I remember hearing it and being like, wait, what? But there was just this narrative around not needing a website and you could just rely on social media for your business and that’s good. And that’s it. Which I have always disagreed with, but I’m just curious to hear your thoughts on this.
Like, why do you need a website as a business owner? Yeah. I think it’s such a nuanced argument and obviously everyone’s coming at it from different perspectives. So someone who, their tactic to help people is to use social media. They’re going to amplify the message that social media is what you need and that you don’t need a website.
Yeah. Whereas of course I will say I help people with websites, so I understand that. You hearing me say you need a website? Comes with a set of, aspects. So what I want to say is that a website helps you at a specific stage of your business. So if you are just getting started and you are still figuring out your niche, you’re still figuring out your services, you don’t have clients yet, and you’re really wanting to start, Working with clients and getting some money in the door because really as a business owner like that is a number one.
So important. Also, it just helps you learn what, how to refine your offer and your wording and how you’re presenting yourself, so we can’t. Refine our businesses in a vacuum. We can’t just sit here and think about it and hope we’re gonna get better. You need to actually interact with customers.
So when you’re just getting started, don’t spend your time and money on a website. Get your first clients first, and be working through that whole process. But then as you start getting some clients, Where are you going to send them, where are they going to read about your services?
How are they going to get their questions answered about what you do? How are they going to book calls on your calendar? How are they going to get on your email list? How are they going to find you in Google? Like, all of those things can’t be solved with the social media profile. Like your posts are not seen by everyone.
There’s no way that people can get a clear understanding of your entire business and what you offer just from your social media presence. Yeah, and some people will say, oh, you need, a funnel or a landing page or whatever. But to have a funnel, usually like a landing page is for a very specific one.
Outcome. If you’re selling like one service. But a lot of us have a few different things we’re offering or we want to have some blogs and all of that. And even if you were to develop like a single landing page site to direct to one specific thing, you need to be very honed in on what your message is.
And that takes time. And time is money because if you wanna quit your job, you need money coming in the door so to, so a website is going to help you. Get clients coming to you more from organic search and Google, it’s going to have people getting on your calendar and booking calls. They’re going to be able to see all of your services and do that without you having to be necessarily following up one-on-one, searching for people.
So yeah, it does a few things for us. It saves us time by basically being our salesperson and being that reliable salesperson. All the things that a salesperson does. Answering questions, getting people, booked in on the calendar for a discovery call. Displaying services and giving information about services, talking about testimonials.
That’s what your website does and it does it all the time, 24 7. It’s not requiring you, so your website is also saving you time and especially the new business owner. You maybe don’t have the time yet to hire a VA, or you don’t have the capital and resources yet to hire a va, so you’re doing so many different things.
So any way that you can maximize your time with systems that are like the right systems. I’m not saying that you should go out and buy a HubSpot c R m and have you know, these really complicated systems, but a website is a very obvious. Used, well-documented solid system to get more sales into your business and more leads.
Yeah yeah. Yeah. And why do you suggest creating a website through a process like the website system, the dietitian website system, versus just outsourcing the entire thing to a developer and just saying, yeah, here you have it. Give it back to me when it’s done. So a few things, because we also used to do this ourselves.
Now our prices reflected the amount of work that we put into sites. And so you can get a developer, you can find your nephew, you can find someone on internet to build a website for you for nothing or pretty cheap amounts of money. But, the tech piece is only a part of it. A very small part of it.
Really what we want for a site is for it to be strategic and all the things that I talked about with it, booking you, sales and clients and all of that. It’s not going to do that if it hasn’t been put together in a strategic way. So thinking about what is the branding that’s going into the site, what are the words that we’re using?
What’s the copy? What imagery is being shown? How are we laying out the services? What’s the customer journey? How do we want people to go through the site? How are we adding email subscribers to your list and what kind of sales process are we baking into the site? So many website designers and developers, they’re going to touch on maybe a few of those things, but probably they’re not going to touch on all of them, especially the ones.
Where they’re lower cost, they’re just going to build you a site. They’ll maybe ask you a few questions if you’re lucky. But I’ve also heard people say, yeah, I hired these people, but I just had to tell them everything that they had to do. And so yeah, you solved the tech problem. But we’re still dietitians.
I am a Strat marketing strategist, but for most dietitian business owners, They’re, that’s not their strong suit. Their strong suit is so solving the health problems of their clients and doing these other things. So you’re really in that same boat of you’re having to drive the bus of what your website is going to be. And so you may think that you’re saving money and time by having this person build it, but you probably are spending time trying to figure out things as well. And then you’re not getting that strategic input, which is really what. Is the differentiator between your site being successful or not being successful because you can get a pretty brochure site too. You can pay people a lot of money for a really pretty brochure site, but if they didn’t use strategy to ensure that the way the site was laid out was specific to what your goals were then it’s just, it’s going to sit there and not make you money.
Yeah. And then the other thing that I’ll say too is oh God, I forgot my train of thought. Oh, no worries. Okay. Oh yeah, I’ll come back to you. I knew it would. I was like, okay. The other thing that I would say is that, as I was mentioning before about what are the skills that dietitians should learn versus not learn.
And one of the reasons that we really love the course and the way we’ve put it together now is that, Our students have skin in the game, like they have learned what it takes to put a strategy into a website, and they now have that knowledge so that when they want to launch a new course or a new service or a new program, yes they can come to us and ask us to help them if they want, but they can also create that page themselves.
They can figure out how to add that to the site. Same with copy. I mentioned copywriting is just such an invaluable skill for any business owner because you’re writing copy all the time, whether it’s for emails and lead magnets and presentations and sales pages and social captions, all of that. Or you’re reviewing other people’s copy and guiding them.
You want to know how to write good copy. So when you outsource all of this, you’re just constantly relying on other people to write this and you’re not building up those good, solid marketing chops. That we still need to have, you can’t outsource everything. Yeah. I have a marketing coach.
I’ve outsourced my social media stuff to her, but I still need to drive the strategy of. She’s asking me what are the topics that people are asking you about? People can’t read your mind. You still need to know those things. So learning those skills is really helpful. And then when you want to change things on your site, knowing how to do it is really valuable too, because we are changing things so frequently in our businesses to test things out and add new things and a new opportunities come up.
So we need to have that on the website. And of course, yeah. In our course we’ve got videos that if you do have someone helping you have VA on your team, have them watch our videos, share your login with your VA and have them come into the course and watch stuff and do it, that’s fine too.
But otherwise you at least know how to make those edits on your site. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, and I was thinking the same thing too. I was like, yeah, cuz I think often we, we don’t really think about the, if we decide to outsource something, Fully, we don’t really think about the maintenance then that comes after that, and.
The flexibility you’re gonna want when suddenly you wanna change a price point on an offer that you have on your website, or you wanna add a sales page for something. And it’s like exactly like you have to have those skills to be able to do that still, or else you’re gonna continue to pay for somebody else to do it.
Which maybe it’s not that hard and you could just do it yourself. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We use page builders in inter chorus. It’s not a set theme where it’s like, Coding required or anything like that. So they’re super flexible and we show you how you can move sections around from other pages and mix things up.
And so yeah, you need to add a row for a new service, like just duplicate it and add it, and we show you and it’s yeah. So easy. Yeah. As opposed to Yeah. Having to call on someone. Totally. And we do, we still maintain the sites for our clients too. So again, with the tech stuff, We’ll offer the hosting and the maintenance and for very reasonable monthly fee after, and it really pays for itself in terms of aggravation.
Yeah. And even we’ll offer up to 15 minutes of email-based support a month too. So yeah, we’re always there. You can always ask us questions, but then for those things where, it’s gonna take a little bit of time to make that edit. You know you can do it so that you don’t have to be spending the money on having a developer do something that really isn’t too hard.
Yeah. Once you know how to do it. Totally. So I’m curious, what do you feel like is one of the biggest mistakes that RDS are making when it comes to their websites? Yeah. So I would say that, there are a lot of mistakes and I actually have a class coming up that we’ll talk about at the end we have the link that’s going to be in the description for the podcast.
Yep. Where I’m going over like the big mistakes that I see dietitians make, and I’m giving examples too, because it’s not enough to just know what they are. It’s really understand why are they mistakes and how do you fix them? How do you overcome them on your site? But I would say the a number one mistake is not forming a connection with your visitors.
Because there are so many websites out there, and if we want to catch the attention of our customers, we need to show that we’re different. We need to show that we understand our customers better than anyone else out there, and nine times outta 10. It’s really about using great copy to form that connection.
So we do want our branding to be on point. We don’t want to deter people with just Outdated or a brand that really doesn’t speak to our customers, but after people are, on the site for a second, they’re gonna read. That’s how they’re learning about you. So they’re reading the copy.
And if you’re using very generic terminology or just having very, like textbook medical or stilted, speech, then it just, Doesn’t get people to really get that emotional connection to you. And we want them to really be feeling like you know them and you get them. And so using really specific words that actually come out of the mouths of your customers when they’re describing their problems to you and what they want.
And the things that they’ve tried. All of that needs to be on the website in order to form that connection. And that’s really going to go a long way. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Okay. So where can dietitians find out more about the dietitian website system? Yeah come to my class. I, so the class is how to turn your website into a client generating machine.
And we’re going over those five mistakes. So you’ll learn a lot through that class. And then I will be talking all about the dietitian website system at that point, and I’ll be opening enrollment up on that call. As soon as you’re ready, you’ll be able to enroll and get into the course.
We only open enrollment a few times a year, so this is your chance. And yeah, that class will go over all the details, the things that I talked about today. You’ll get to see some more things. You’ll hear about some of our students’ testimonials and what they’ve really enjoyed most about about the course.
And yeah, that’s what I would say. That’s the best way to learn about it. Awesome. And what dates are that, or what dates is that? Or is, I don’t know. What dates is that? Yes. Is that class running? We are going to be hosting one on June 6th at Okay. 11:00 AM Eastern time and then another on June 7th.
So it’s a Wednesday at 1:00 PM Eastern. Awesome. Either fit it in with your morning coffee or your lunch break. Yeah. Or somewhere in between. Yeah. So and so if people are listening to this in between those launch windows, because that often happens, so if we’re listening to this after Yes. The launch windows closed, do you guys have a wait list that people can join?
Yes, we do. Cool. So we’ll include that link Yeah, perfect. In the description as well. And so yeah, we have our wait list for, and honestly if you’re listening to this we do open the wait list. We open up the course early to our wait list people, and then we also give you some discounts and awesome bonuses too.
So even if you’re listening to this before the class, sign up for the class, but then also if you want. Sign up for the ma for the wait list as well. And you’ll be the first to know when the next cohort opens and get some really great trainings for me as well. And then some bonuses and discounts on the course.
Cool. Yeah, so all that information will list that in the description of the episode here, and then I’d love to wrap up by knowing what is next for your business. Yeah, so we are, so we’ve gone through so many different iterations of different things. Every year feels like we are redoing, revamping the business.
And I, yeah, I can’t believe that last year was the first time that we launched the course. Like it’s still I can’t believe that’s, it’s only been like one full year that we had the course. In not Whitney fashion, we are not going to be changing anything else. We are just going to be running the course this year.
Love it. So yeah, I’m just super excited because it really works. We have so many beautiful websites that have come out of, and we can actually link to my website. We’ll link to maybe some example perfect sites in the description too, that it’s just always so amazing and I’m so proud of what our students accomplish.
And so I just really want to. Get as many dietitians through our course and help them with their websites and just have dietitians feel like they have someone in their corner when it comes to the tech. Awesome. And help more nutrition entrepreneurs be successful. Yeah, that’s what I’m excited about.
Oh, cool. That’s awesome. Yeah. It was so good to talk. It was so good to chat with you. Thanks for sharing all of that. Yes. There was so much. Useful information in that. So thank you for your time. Thanks for being a guest. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much, Krista. It was great. And couldn’t have had more fun, so thank you very much.
All right. So I hope that episode was super informative and helpful for you. There’s three links in the description of this podcast episode that I want you to check out. The first one is for Whitney’s free masterclass. How to turn your website into a client generating machine. The second one is to get notified when enrollment for the dietitian website system opens again. And then lastly is you can check out some websites created by past dietitian website system students.
And so those three links are in the description of this episode. Make sure and check those out.
