In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, Krista outlines various tech platforms you can use to enhance your business and practice, in the domains of:
- Task Management
- Organization
- Communication
- Website
- Creative
- Video/Audio Editing
- Accepting Payments
- Practice Management
- Meal Planning
- Online Courses
Links:
- Click here to download the Client Forms Bundle Freebie (which includes adult and pediatric intake forms, initial and follow-up chart notes, 24-hour recalland 3-day food record templates)
This podcast episode is sponsored by Practice Better and That Clean Life. Click the affiliate links below to get 20% off the first four months of any paid plan with either platform:
*Affiliate disclaimer: When you purchase using the links above, DSC gets a commission from each purchase.
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the Dietitian Success Podcast. Here at Dietitian Success Center, we’re all about making it easier for you to build your confidence and expertise. So, whether you’re a dietitian or a dietetic student, we’ve got something for you. I’m Krista, your host and the founder of DSC. Now, are you ready to ditch the imposter syndrome and join our incredible, vibrant community?
If so, let’s jump in.
All right, let’s talk a little bit about TAC. Let’s talk about tech. Some people love tech and trying out new platforms and experimenting. Some people absolutely load it. And I hope that this episode. Is for both of you groups of people, regardless of whether you are tech savvy or you’re not so tech savvy. I thought it would be fun.
I am. I love tech. I love to experiment with different platforms. I love to try out different. Different. Different technologies to achieve different things in my business. And so I thought, Hey, why not run through. A list of some of the tech platforms we use on a day to day basis. But then also some of the most popular platforms that many of the practitioners in our community are using in their practices.
And my goal here. Being to reduce the overwhelm a little bit, because let me tell you before pretty much anything and everything in your business. You can find multiple tech platforms that will do. Similar things with slight variations. And so it can be really overwhelming to know where to start. Trust me. I have spent time and energy. Trying to pick the right tech platforms.
And at the end of the day, I think one of the important things to remember is that when it comes to tech stuff, you can search high and low for the right platform, but sometimes most of the time, the only way to know if a platform is going to work well for you, if you like it is to try it. Is to just pay for the first month subscription.
Try it out. You are going to spend money on platforms that you end up not liking. That’s pretty much a guarantee. And so. I hope that helps you not get hung up in analysis paralysis because. I see that a lot where the tech overwhelm can absolutely stop people in their tracks and can hold them up. Big time for making progress in their businesses, in their practices, in their lives.
And so. The idea here being, I’m going to run through some of the main categories of business of practice and go through some of the most popular tech platforms for each. And the goal here being just pick one. Just pick one. From each category, I’ll give some ideas on who I think is the right practitioner for each platform. And then at the end, I’m going to talk through, what do I feel like is the starter kit.
If you’re just getting started, what are just like the must have super simple pieces of tech with nothing extra, no extra fluff. So what do I suggest as the main places to start out with? So I’ll go through that at the very end. Okay. How does that sound? All right, so I’ve divided this into categories based on sort of the start to finish business process ish. So let’s talk about task management.
We’re going to talk about organization tack. We’re going to talk about communication website, creative video, and audio editing, accepting payments, practice management, meal planning, and online courses. I’m not going to talk about each one in extreme detail, but I’m just going to give you some ideas for different tech platforms that you can check out for each.
And again, things that we’ve either used or we see our members using a lot.
Starting off with task management. Now I’ve said this a few times on this podcast. It’s really helpful. And I would say. Essential. In your business to. Have some sort of a digital task management platform. Reason being is because, and I know you were probably the type of person that really enjoys an agenda that likes the feeling of crossing something off of the to-do list.
I totally relate to that and I actually still do that, but I also. Have a digital task management platform going at the same time. What I mean by this is we need somewhere on somewhere. Online where we can keep track of. Tasks in preferably a calendar style format. So platforms like a sauna or click up are a great place to start.
Click up has a really great free plan. I’m not sure if Assata does. We used to use the sign up, but then we switched over to click up. And the reason why having a digital version is helpful is because you can actually map out recurring tasks. And I talk about this a lot in our marketing content on DSE and coming up with your marketing strategy. But in order to really stay consistent with your marketing, you really got to take the guesswork out of the whole process.
You have to make it really easy. For you to keep up with your marketing. And so what that might mean is setting up a real reoccurring task for yourself to. Perhaps send out an email once a week. To post on Instagram twice a week to talk about your freebie lead magnet once a week, et cetera, et cetera. If we don’t have those tasks just automatically recurring in our calendar, we will absolutely forget to do them. Absolutely.
And even things like our business anniversary comes up every year. I am terrible with dates. I can never remember dates for anything. So I have to have that digital task management platform that is telling me, oh, okay. April 8th. That’s the, that’s our anniversary date. I need to have that in the task calendar so that we can actually prepare and do something fun for it.
So having a digital task management platform is really helpful. Again, a sauna or click up and. And so I have that. We have that for sort of the overall overarching tasks in the business. And then I also have a paper and pencil day to do list. That’s the system that works well for me, I used to only use the digital task management platform.
Like I only use click up for my day to day stuff as well. So at the beginning of the day, I would just go in and I would put my tasks for the day, but. I don’t know, I really miss the paper and pencil. So if you resonate with that, I’m with you. I hear you. I like to have the paper and pencil list. Now we are also experimenting with platform called air table. Still TBD on whether we love air table or not, but it’s basically. One platform where you can have databases for sort of everything in your business.
The reason why we’re doing this is because we were finding that we were having like Google docs and Google. Sheetz, which is like an Excel document, but it’s the Google version. We’re having a bunch of different, like trackers, where we were keeping track of different things. And we wanted to bring those all into one central location. So we want to keep track of our content and when it’s being updated and all of that good stuff.
And so we have that, but it’s just living in different files and it can be a little messy. So. Air table is helping us bring everything together. So TBD we’re still getting used to it. It’s a little bit of a steep learning curve. I don’t think you necessarily need to go the air table route. Unless you are interested in organizing your life and your business in that way, check it out.
It’s a pretty cool platform, but a great starter is click up or a sauna. Okay. So that’s the task management next is organization. So having some sort of an organizational system, and I think really the two simplest. Platforms that you want to leverage here is having a Google calendar. And having Google docs. So Google calendar is really having a digital calendar again is really important.
I think that when you’re running a business, you cannot have a paper and pencil calendar anymore because it’s going to get way too confusing. If people book sessions with you, if they reschedule, if they cancel often that stuff is done through your practice management platform. So a platform like practice better or healthy or Jane app. And it’s linked to your Google calendar.
And so if you’re not using your Google calendar, if you’re trying to use like a paper and pencil agenda, That’s going to get confusing and mistakes are going to get made. So it’s helpful to just get used to starting to use a Google calendar. So there’s Google calendar. And then I also highly recommend Google docs.
I recommend it over like word docs or Excel documents. Reason being is because you can have. First of all, you can always access your Google documents from any computer. So if you’re using word or Excel, you know that when you save it, it’s saved to your computer. And so if you go to log into a different computer, or let’s say your computer dies and you have to get a new computer, sometimes that stuff can be lost.
I’ve had that happen to me before. And so Google doc docs is basically just like word and Excel, but it’s just an online. Version. And it’s the Google version of all of those applications. So highly recommend that it’s also really helpful if you’re working with multiple people on different documents.
So that’s huge for us. We. When we’re doing our evidence summaries, for example Olivia might be writing them. And then if I’m doing a technical review, we need to both be able to work off of the same document. And we need to know that the document. We are looking at is the most up-to-date.
Whereas if you’re sending word documents back and forth, that’s just really inefficient and you don’t actually know. Sometimes it can get confusing as to which one is the most up-to-date version. So highly recommend Google docs. I also really like the platform Calendly C a L E N D L Y. If you are, you may not need this.
If you are using a practice management platform, if you’re seeing. A lot of clients, one-on-one your practice management platform will take care of this for you. But if you’re being, if you’re meeting, sorry, if you’re setting up a lot of meetings outside of that practice management platform. So for example, for me, I’m often booking podcast, episode guests or, if I’m just meeting with other partners or whatever, We don’t want to have to go back and forth and say, Hey, does this date work for you?
Does this date work for you? Does this date work for you? So instead what Calendly does is it basically links with my Google calendar and it shows times when I’m available. So I can just send somebody my link for Calendly, and they can just book a meeting that during one of my available times that they are available to.
So we don’t have to go back and forth with dates and times. So it’s super efficient. So if you are, if you’re booking a lot of meetings outside of one-on-one clients, then you’ll probably want to take advantage of Calendly.
Okay, so next is communications. Now what most people do is just set up a Gmail account.
If you want to have a, so you can set up a free Gmail account, if you want to. And so it’s just going to be like your name or your business [email protected]. If you want to have your [email protected]. So for instance, [email protected]. You have to set up something called G suite. Now, this is still a Google application.
So G suite is still created by Google. So you’re basically setting up a Gmail account, but you have to pay for it in order to get the, at your business name.com. I just find that this looks a little bit more professional, but just keep in mind that you do have to pay for it. So it’s not a necessity. And then if you are finding that you, if you have a team of people or if you have contractors that you’re working with highly recommend slack, Slack is a messaging application.
And it is a great way to be able to communicate with your team. Everyone just downloads slack to their desktop, and then you open it up in the morning and then that is how you communicate with each other. And that works really well for us. We’re able to communicate with each other all day, every day on slack, we could send. Quick messages to each other.
We can share documents. We can share funny stuff. We can. Just chat about everything and anything. It’s a really efficient form of communication.
This episode of the dietitian success podcast is sponsored by practice better and that cleanly. We’ve partnered up to bring you an incredible client forms bundle freebie that is going to save you a ton of time and streamline your business systems. With this value packed bundle, you get six client forms for free that can be uploaded directly to your Practice Better account, including both adult and pediatric intake forms, an initial and follow up chart note, and 24 hour recall and three day food record templates.
And the best part is they are fully customizable, so you can adjust them to fit your practice style. Just check out the link in the description of this podcast episode to download your forms bundle today. With that, let’s get back to the episode.
Okay, next we have website. So. I’ve talked quite a bit about website on this podcast before I am a firm believer that businesses should have websites. To have that online presence. And to be able to start building your Google traffic. Now I I typically recommend, so there’s often the question. That comes up.
Do we start with a platform like Wix or Squarespace or do I start with a WordPress site? I. So for me, I’ve always started on Wix. Wix is a really easy way to DIY your website. Super user friendly, easy to figure out. I’ve never used Squarespace, but I think Squarespace is similar. Whereas WordPress is going to be a little bit more intense. WordPress.
Typically, if you’re not super tech savvy, it can get challenging. You can get really stuck in the weeds with WordPress. If you’re willing to hire a developer, then you can absolutely go ahead and get started with WordPress. But I have seen quite a few people get stuck on a WordPress site and it takes them way longer than they thought that it originally would.
And so if you’re looking to just get a website out there into the world, highly recommend that you start with Wix. And you can always transfer it to something like WordPress down the road. Creative. Really the only platform you need here is Canva. I think everyone needs a Canva account. Canva is super affordable for the value.
We use this platform every single day in DSE, every single day. And I think that the Canva pro account it’s around 200 bucks a year. Which is wild for the value that you get out of it. So, definitely considering if you feel like you’re going to use it a lot, definitely recommend the canvas pro account or I think it’s camera pro whatever the paid version is. Canva is there for you to design any of your Instagram posts to design any flyers marketing materials? Really a slide decks, anything and everything.
I use Canva for all slide decks. Now I don’t use anything like PowerPoint or Google slides. I use canvas for everything. So it’s such a powerful platform.
And I am using currently to record this video. I am actually using a platform called descript. So if you’re doing a lot of video and audio editing and recording highly recommend descript, it’s an incredible, super. Super powerful platform where you can do some really awesome video and audio editing, and they’re constantly releasing new features. I don’t know if they have a paid. Or sorry, a free version. But we do get a lot of use out of the paid version.
It makes it really easy to edit. For example. Now I’m not really going through and editing these podcast episodes right now, just for the sake of time. Just so I can, put these episodes out there and not have to worry too much about spending a lot of time on each one. But if you’re doing YouTube videos, for example, if you’re doing podcasts, then having a platform like descript is going to help you a lot.
I would highly recommend it over something like I movie. It’s way faster when it comes to audio and video editing.
And then when I record interviews, then I do that on zoom. So just, I, we have a paid zoom account, so we. Get the version that allows you to talk for longer than I think it’s 40 minutes. So we use zoom a lot and we host all of our team meetings on zoom as well.
Okay, so the next piece is accepting. Payments. Okay. So now this kind of goes hand in hand with the next one, which is practice management. So if you are working with clients, one-on-one, you’re going to want to have a practice management platform. Practice better is the most popular one that we see our DSC members using.
It tends to be the best option for the solo practitioner. Now if you are working in a group of practitioners. So if you have contractors that work with you, If you’re in a group practice, or if you are offering direct billing. So you’re actually credentialed with insurance companies or you’re you So you, when a client comes to see you, you build the insurance company directly, you do not build a client, then there’s other platforms that help you facilitate that.
So healthy Jane app, for example. So if you’re doing a lot of direct billing, those might be better options for you, then practice better. But if you’re not, then practice better is a great place to start. We’ve done quite a bit of work with practice better just because it is the most popular platform that our, we see our members using.
So practice management platforms basically allow you to do anything related to your clients. So book sessions, chart. Collect intake forms process payments. Submit it, communicate with your patients or your clients, and they’re all secure. So you don’t have to worry about that piece. So definitely get yourself practice management platform.
If you are working with clients, one-on-one. But the reason why I wanted to link this back to the accepting payments piece is because. When you are. Working with clients, obviously you have to be able to accept payments. And so payments are all processed. Online payments are processed through. A payment processing platform and the main payment processing platforms are square Stripe and PayPal.
There’s others out there. We use Stripe and we use PayPal. But basically how this works is you set up a free Stripe account, and then you’re actually going to link that with your practice management platform. So though a client will pay for your services through practice better. So you’re going to create like a checkout page on practice, better. They’re going, it’s going to look from the client’s side.
Like they’re paying you through practice better. But it’s actually processed through Stripe. So you need a Stripe account and you need a practice better account. And then when you have Stripe, you can also do things like send invoices. If you’re doing, let’s say consulting or freelancing work. So for example, if I did a consulting project where a business hired me to review some of their recipes, I can just send them.
I can create a digital invoice in Stripe. It’s connected to my bank account. And so I can create the invoice. I can email them the invoice, they click and it, in that email, there is a link for them to click and pay for the service they pay for the service on credit card. That money goes straight into my Stripe account, which then goes straight into my bank account. So, and then Stripe, basically just charges a transaction fee.
So that’s how you quote unquote, pay for those platforms. But really essential to have one of those or a couple of those setups. So like I mentioned some people prefer to pay via PayPal, some via Stripe, so just depends. Now on the lines of practice management, if you are not working with clients one-on-one and you’re doing more consulting or freelancing work, I used to really like HoneyBook.
I used to use HoneyBook a lot. It was a great platform because you could. So you could invoice clients, but then you could also do things like get them to sign forms. So for example, If I have independent contractors agreement, let’s say I can send that through so I could set up a client in HoneyBook, and then I can send that client, my contractor’s agreement.
I could track where we’re at in the process of. The project and the project completion. It will tell me if they’ve paid the invoice. You can do all of that stuff through the platform like HoneyBook. So if you’re doing more consulting and freelancing work and you’re not doing one-on-one client work, then something like honey book might be a good option for you.
Okay next, we have meal planning software.
Now, just depending on your preference, you may want to offer meal plans. You may not want to offer meal plans totally up to you. There’s a few options out there when it comes to meal planning, but I would say the most popular for sure, in terms of our community, is that clean life. There’s also eat love and there’s a few others as well that I’m not familiar with.
Again, we’ve done a lot of work with that clean life, just because that’s, again, the most popular platform. That our members use, and it’s a really comprehensive, really simple, easy to use platform. They’ve also changed their pricing. It used to be a lot more expensive. Now they have a beginner tier that I think is $30 a month, which is pretty great.
So, even if you want to just experiment with it, you can always just pay for a month and see how you like it. But if you are not interested in offering meal planning, then that’s, this is not one that you have to pay attention to. But the other reason why I like that clean life is because they have things like recipes, grocery lists, that sort of thing too.
So it’s not. Just like that structured meal plan that you. That you, a lot of, I think dietitians practitioners don’t love the idea of there’s a lot more with that clean life that you can get. And so we do partner with them. This podcast is sponsored by them. They sponsor a lot of our podcast episodes.
By the way, they aren’t, they don’t monitor what we say. In this podcast. So, I’m not required to talk about practice better or that clean life in this episode, in any sort of way, I’m truly speaking from experience that these are just platforms that the majority of our users are using.
And so it makes sense for us to partner with them so that we can offer you guys things like discounts, which we do. We have discounts with both of them, so you can get 20% off your first. Four months with either platform. Those links are in the description of this podcast episode, but, anyways, just wanted to fully disclaim that that they do often sponsor our podcast episodes.
And then last but not least, if we is, we have online courses. If you’re thinking about creating an online course if you just do a search in this podcast for online courses, I have other episodes. We’ll talk about this in more detail. But there are a few options here for you as well. Practice better does allow you to create online courses from within their platform. But there’s also platforms like Kajabi, teachable, and Thinkific that were designed for online courses.
So they’re really comprehensive if you’re really serious about creating an online course, definitely check out one of those. We used to host DSE on Kajabi when at first, when we first started, when. I first built the platform. I built it on Kajabi. Kajabi is an amazing platform, but it is not cheap. It’s not cheap.
Can’t remember what their I think they start out. I think their plans start out at like over a hundred dollars a month, so it’s not inexpensive, but there’s a lot of capacity there. So. Yeah. But otherwise I’ve used teachable as well. And I really like teachable and it’s a more affordable option.
Okay. So I hope that there was a few platforms in there that maybe you haven’t heard about before, maybe were new for you, maybe you think will help you in your practice moving forward. If I were to recommend a starter kit. So just the bare essential minimum. Tech platforms to get started with, I would suggest click up for task management. I would suggest Google calendar and Google docs. I would suggest G suite.
So you can set up that email address. I would suggest Wix for your website, Canva for design work. Stripe for payment processing. Practice better for your practice management platform. And then if you are interested in offering meal planning, I would recommend that clean life. Okay. So that was a lot of tech platforms.
But hopefully that helped to simplify hopefully that helped to skim away some of the noise. So you don’t get stuck in the weeds and just remember. Just remember not to stay in that space of analysis paralysis. If you feel like it’s been too long, that you’ve been assessing different tech platforms, it’s time to just take action, choose one and move forward. All right.
Thanks so much for listening. Have an awesome week and we’ll see you next Thursday.
