In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, Olivia (DSC Content Manager) and Krista chat through the process used to create & update programs and content for DSC. Together, they walk through how to create programs based on identified needs, and what it looks like to continuously improve and refine what you offer.
Links:
- The DSC Nutrition Counseling & Coaching Certificate is opening up again at the end of March 2024, check out the program information (pricing, components, etc.) here
- Join the waitlist here
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.
In this episode of the Dietitian Success Podcast, I sit down with Olivia Farrow, who is our nutrition content manager at dietitian success center. Olivia has been with me since pretty much the beginning.
Together, we have developed so much content over the last three years and have really worked on developing and refining a process for how we create content, how we update content and programs as well. And so we wanted to share with you an insider’s perspective on what that looks like for us, sort of a behind the scenes and just an honest, transparent. Progress over perfection way.
So we really hope that you enjoy this unscripted conversation where Olivia and I just chat about what we’re working on right now. Programs that and content that we’ve been creating, updating what that process looks like. And we hope that there’s some information in there that you can take and implement in your own business.
Olivia, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me, it’s my first time on the podcast. I know, it’s so funny, we were just like, reflecting on that, because you’ve worked with me and DSC for, since pretty much the beginning.
And I can’t believe I haven’t had you on the podcast before. It’s just so funny. It’s like you have yeah. Anyways, so this is going to be a really great episode because we’ll talk a little bit more about like your role, what you do in DSC, how we create our content, how we’re creating content or updating content right now for the counseling and coaching program.
But first, can you just walk us through a little bit about your high level career path, what brought you to this point today? So I, I feel like I’ve always been drawn to the communication side of dietetics, but never really knew that that was a career path that was possible. I did my Master’s of Health Science in Nutrition Communication at Toronto Metropolitan University, and that was sort of the starting point to where my career has led to.
I worked as a retail dietitian as my first job in dietetics, which is interesting because it’s really the truest form of a generalist. You’re working in so many different areas in the store, but then also working with so many different types of clients and client needs and really feeling isolated, which I’m sure we’ll talk about a little bit about how that led us to some of our realizations with the counseling course.
And then I started my own private practice after having my first child and really wanting that desire to do things for myself and create, which is what led me to reconnecting with you and with DSC. And when you told me about the idea for DSC, it was like, This is the thing that will be super supportive for dietitians like us that are wanting, wanting something like this to, to really help us not feel so isolated in the world of dietetics.
And and yeah, I’ve left my private practice, let it sort of sit on the side now because I’ve realized that my true passion is what I’m doing with DSC, which is, which I’m sure we’ll talk about a little bit more. Yeah, it’s funny because you and I met when we were working in retail.
And then I remember when I had come up with the idea for, I think you had gone on maternity leave, maybe I had left, so we had sort of, you know, lost touch for a little bit, and then when I had the idea for DSC, I remember right. Thinking of you or I think I saw you on Instagram and I saw that you had this awesome private practice happening and I was like I need to chat with her about that and I remember the conversation we had.
I think you were at like a play cafe or something like you were doing work and I don’t know if you had, yeah, you had both of your sons at that time. I don’t know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you would have. Yeah. You had both of your sons at the time. They were like, I think, playing. And you were working.
And you were just like, I knew immediately that you like, understood what I was trying to do with DSC. And we just clicked on it. So, it was just an immediate we just had so many thoughts. We had so many ideas together, collectively. And I think, you know, through that process, you sort of started off doing some more one off consulting projects, and I feel like we just really realized that we work so well together.
We have such complementary skill sets, I think. We work so well together, and so then that’s transitioned into that, into the permanent role that you have right now, which is our content manager with DSC. So, do you want to just talk a little bit about what your role is? With DSE.
Yeah. So I, I manage the content of updating right now, mostly updating and creating and, taking all of the amazing suggestions that we get from members and turning that into what we decide to, create.
So really it looks like exploring the evidence of these nutrition topics and turning them into, usable content that can be practical, that can help dietitians learn how to apply all of this. knowledge that we have in this area to actual dietetic practice and, and really how to support their clients, as well as translating it into client handouts that can be used, and, with the update process, just making sure that everything is updated with the current evidence, and then I also do a bit of the social media management as well, and then just keeping track of all of our content and making sure that it’s It’s updated on time that it’s going out to the right places and that people are aware of what we’ve got as well.
Yeah. And I feel like over the last, I guess three years, I feel like three years, we’ve sort of developed this really efficient Content creation and update process. I think it might be kind of interesting to talk about that in a little bit of detail because we haven’t really talked about that on the podcast before it’s on the website.
We have it on our about page. But do you want to just talk about a little bit about sort of the start to finish process? Like where, you know, an idea is submitted. We have that. thread on the community where people submit their ideas for content, what they would like to see more of, and that’s sort of how we like quote unquote triage ideas, and then what happens after that.
Yeah, so, so an idea comes in, and yeah, like you said, we sort of triage it because if, if there’s a number of votes for a topic, or if we’re getting a lot of requests, or it seems like something that’s yeah, why don’t we have this already? We should definitely have this, this would be really practical.
Those will be sort of the requests that we, we prioritize. And from that, it depends on the topic, sometimes the right path is exploring what other dietitians think experts in the field. If it’s something that I’m not overly familiar with, then I want to know what, what the experts would say about it, what they think that these are the top things that need to be covered.
So for example, for our long term care content, we surveyed some dietitians who work in the area who have experience in the area, different levels of experience in long term care, get their ideas about what needs to be covered, what resources we should explore.
And then other times it’s, it’s me trying to Find what best practices exist in, you know, from different countries, the health guidelines. I use a textbook sometimes to find some of the background information or just finding the best quality evidence that’s out there and then working backwards from there to find out what we know so far in this topic and what are sort of the practical steps that dietitians need to know in this area.
And then from that, Now, our process is really about starting with the evidence summary, which is really the most thorough overview that you’re going to find in the topic . So that goes through the background information on the topic. Sometimes it goes through some of the medical information as well, like diagnosis.
And then it also goes through what we know research wise about, you know, what’s the quality and the The relevance of the research that we have. What do we know about the nutrition therapy of this topic? And then really the practical steps that dietitians can apply. How do we actually translate this into working with our clients?
From the evidence summary that gets turned into a video course script, and then we create case studies, right now because we’re doing a lot of update, it’s really more about updating the case studies to make, make sure that they’re aligning with the evidence summary, but oftentimes what we’ll do is we’ll have the practice reviewer who is going to look at the evidence summary and make sure that it’s relevant to practice, see if there’s anything that’s missing, see if there’s anything that needs to be covered that we haven’t covered see if there’s things that they do differently in practice.
And then we’ll translate that into our video course. We record the video course, and we create the handouts.
And yeah, I’m sure I probably missed a few steps in there, but but yeah, it’s really about starting with the evidence summary gathering information on what needs to be covered, and then translating that into all the steps down the line, the video course and the client handouts. And you had mentioned this step of practice review, which, we’ve incorporated a really robust, review process to where it goes through a round of practice review, which is where you bring it to a dietitian who has X number of years of experience in that area to do a full review of the topic, make sure that there’s no gaps, make sure that the best available evidence is, is shown and then we go through a round of technical review, which is sort of that polish piece of let’s make sure the language is all correct, grammar, spelling, values, all of that stuff.
And now we’re also adding on one final polish review as well, so that’s sort of the whole process that you manage, which is really cool.
And we’re like you mentioned, we’re at that point because we have a, guide that we really try and make sure everything is updated every 12 to 24 months, just to make sure we’re keeping things fresh and and up to date. and so now we’re sort of at that point where we’re like going through all the content and it’s we’re up, we’re going through the update process versus just the create from scratch.
It’s create from scratch, some new topics, but then also updating old topics, which has been, fun that we’re like going through that, that process sort of for the first time now, because we’ve been in business for that long. And so that’ll just sort of continue to be our.
Content cycle, I think, moving forward. So it’s been fun I think we’ve really, figured out a system that is efficient, allows us to update and add content swiftly while still making sure it’s super high quality. So that’s been a really awesome. iterative process. So why don’t we talk a little bit because of what we’re working on right now, we’re sort of knee deep in the counseling and coaching program, which if you are a listener who is new to the podcast if you, Go back to episodes 144, 145, 146, I talk about, I get really detailed about like the behind the scenes process of creating that program because I find that that’s one of the best ways to learn about business and different components of business is like seeing how people are actually doing it at the time that they’re doing it and so while we were creating the program, I filmed these podcast episodes to give people that background like insiders perspective in terms of what we did to develop the program, why we developed the program.
So this is a, just for background, if it’s new to anyone that’s listening, we have, we now have a nutrition counseling and coaching certificate of completion program that we have added as a, its own standalone. Course. So we have, of course, all of our content that’s included within the membership. So all of our nutrition content, all of our business content.
But then we decided to create this standalone program because we were getting so much feedback from people that they wanted more in terms of counseling and coaching skills. Maybe feeling like they hadn’t. had much exposure during internship. They didn’t feel super confident going into those client sessions or even just career changers who were going from like an inpatient super clinical setting and they wanted to transition to private practice.
And they were like, wait, how do I, what do I even do here? Suddenly I have an hour to spend with a client instead of 10 minutes. So We were hearing this again and again, so we decided to create this counseling and coaching program. So we’re not going to get into how did we build the program, because again, I covered that in episodes 144 to 146.
But I think, for today, why don’t we talk about where we’re at right now. We’ve run the program Once. So we launched it back in I think it was September of 2023. So we’re getting ready now to launch it a second time. And so we’re going through this whole process of reviewing, updating, refining, etc, etc.
Even just that in and of itself I think is an important point is this, this idea of like continuous improvement and we never release something and then think it’s just done forever. You know, it’s like we have this belief and this mindset that we just want to continue to make our content better and better and better and better over time.
And oftentimes that means that we release it, we collect feedback, we go through it again, ourselves, and then we make the changes. And we’ll continue to make changes until we feel like, you know, it’s the absolute best program. In the entire world, not to be bold, but yeah, that’s one of the benefits to have it being a, it’s a bit of a different structure than DSC where you have access for the lifetime of the program.
And so you get to be. You get to see all of the updates that it goes through, and it doesn’t mean that it’s not the best program now, or it wasn’t when it was first created, but even with DSC, when we update our nutrition content, it’s just going back, you know, looking at it 6 to 24 months later and looking at it with fresh eyes.
With a, a different understanding of, of things and, you know, having all, all of the things that you’ve done in that in between time of being able to see this is something that I want to include the next time we update this. Yeah. Yeah. So do you want to speak to just a little bit some of the work that we’ve been doing lately around update, making changes, how we’ve been doing it,
sure. Yeah. So I would say one of the important things to start with, too, is that when we created it, we were we were still finishing up the courses when the release time came and, and Even though we put our, our fullest amount of ourselves into it, now getting to have a second look at it, there’s things, some of the course, or some of the lessons are, Remaining unchanged. They’re still the way they are. And some of them are going through and thinking, you know, I feel like we need to you know, I feel like this needs to be changed or more examples are needed.
So it’s really about rewatching it ourselves through fresh eyes and seeing you know, this is something that I thought last time, if we had more time, I’d like to add this. And now we have the time. So we’re We’re doing that. So, our process right now is that Krista is watching through, the video again as the first step, and then flagging anything that she sees, and then I’m going through, the second time, and, seeing if there’s anything that I notice, and applying some of the feedback that we got about the program as well.
One of the pieces of feedback that, that we got was that, and I would say that even this is something that we know ourselves and, and part of how we created this program is more examples, just keep adding more and more and more examples. And it’s not that they weren’t there to begin with, it’s just that this is what people need.
This is what we want, you know. People like me who try and shy away from one on one counseling because it is so isolating sometimes in dietetics or in nutrition counseling of feeling like, I don’t know how other people do this. I don’t know I, I need examples of this so that I can grow in my skills and not just be relying on what’s in my head of how to do this.
And so this is what people want, or our members are wanting and, and it’s what we want to see as well, is more examples, so I would say that’s the main thing. That we’re doing. We’re not really removing many areas unless it’s, you know, just talking too much about something that’s too theoretical and not practical enough.
And we’re not really changing too much. I would say the main thing we’re doing is adding more examples and, you know, having, I would say that this, this program was really created with the mindset of we’re seeing our members challenges or the, the The information that we gathered on what people want to see with a counseling course which is part of how we created the program and understanding that information as well as what information we would have wanted to know when we were doing one on one counseling and, and trying to think of how we can provide an example that really meets that need, really solves that challenge that someone’s facing, you know, people who are So, Feeling unconfident with their one on one counseling, not knowing what to say when this scenario occurs, and so we’re really trying to provide those scenarios to them to say, Okay, here’s the scenario, here’s some options of what you could say, and specifically what you could say, we’re giving the script of what you could say, because That’s really what you need, is to hear this is how someone might say it, and, and this is some language that you can borrow and use in your own counseling sessions, so that you’re not scrambling, trying to think of, oh my god, what do I say?
I don’t know what to say in this situation. I’m feeling stuck. Yeah. Trying to help get unstuck with examples. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And that’s a thing that I would just say Just as a reminder for people who, if you’re in a position where you’re, you’ve created a program or you’ve created a course is, I think one of the best things you can do, it seems so simple, but one of the best things you could do is actually just go back and rewatch the whole course in its entirety, because I do feel like you over time, you know, develop new perspectives, new insights, it’s like you were saying before, when we launched it the first time, oftentimes when you go through a first launch of a program, you’re just trying to get the program done.
You’re just trying to finish it, get it done, so you can get it out there into the world, and so, there were certain things that like, for example, the first time we, we released it, we’d be like, oh yeah, for sure, this lesson needs to be in there. And then now as we’re listening to it again, and we’re going through it again, we’re like.
Okay, probably doesn’t like going through the content again, where you’re like, okay, let’s just trim out anything that’s not completely, totally necessary. I think that that’s another big learning for us to is like, how do you set up a program or a course to how do you optimize it so that people will actually complete it?
Because I think that’s one of the most important things for us, right, is making sure and that’s why we made this program a certificate of completion program, because we want to Okay. Make sure that people get through the whole thing and get a ton of value out of it. So how do we actually design it in a way that helps facilitate that process?
And part of that process for us is trimming the stuff that doesn’t absolutely need to be there. And you kind of made the point around practical versus theoretical. And that was one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we got during the initial creation of the program was just that, you know, people were like, Okay, I’ve gotten a lot of theory in my education.
So I understand what CBT is. I understand the theory behind it. But like, how do I do this? And so we’re really like looking to fill the gap of the how do I do this? That’s like our main focus with this program. So as soon as we feel like we’re getting too theory based, we really try and Trim that out so that it’s just the bare minimum of theory that somebody needs to know in order to understand the how do I do this part?
And then why don’t we talk to you about just the what we’re going to be including now with the Q& A type sessions. Because that was a big, that’s been a big trying to figure out. Piece for us is you know, one of the again, pieces of feedback that we got at the very beginning of the program as we were trying to design the program.
And this is really how we approach. All of our program development is like we ask what people want, and then we try and build a program around that, which sounds so, but it’s I definitely at the very beginning of my business, I didn’t do it that way, right? We create a program that we think people need, but now I think we’ve really learned that no, no, you ask what people need, you create a program based on that.
So anyways, and sometimes it takes some time to figure out what is that thing? Like, how do we address that pain point or that challenge? And so one of the. pieces of one of the pain points that we were hearing is people just wanting more sort of like discussion, advice, Q& A around hey, I have this scenario, what do other people do to address this scenario?
And so we’re really trying to focus on that piece for this next round of the program. So what we’re ideating on right now is having monthly Q and a sessions over the course of five or six months where we have sort of more of a panel discussion, so somebody can pre submit their question, their case, their scenario.
We want to make it. A pre submission process that people don’t have to feel like they have to show up on a live call and be super vulnerable and, you know, talk about this challenge that they’re having, which can be really difficult. And I know, Olivia, you were saying the other day, like, when we were on the call, you were like, I that would probably prevent me from a course like this, if I felt like I had to like, show up and just talk about it.
Something like that, right? Yeah, just being super vulnerable because because really part of the target audience for our counseling course is people who are feeling kind of awkward. Yeah, about like social interactions. These these counseling interactions. And so we assume that at least some of you are upon a live q& a call and share this super vulnerable thing.
So yeah, yeah. That’s sort of where we’re leaning towards is making it anonymous because of them. Yeah, and so people can anonymously submit a scenario, a case, a question, and then we’ll do more of a panel discussion around, like, how would others address this? Have they encountered it? What has that looked like?
And so that’s sort of how we’re, we’re really excited about that, I think, and then that will feed. Content moving forward, like we’ll be able to, take chunks of those recordings and add them to the course content as well, or have sort of a separate module in the course that is just those recordings.
So people can learn from those in the future. And that’s really where we’re at right now. So we’re going through the update and re record process. Do you want to just talk for a second about how we, actually create the materials? Start just with the Google Doc, create the slides on Canva, go through a review, record them, upload them?
Yeah, yeah. So right now, all of our scripts are written out on Google Docs which is where we do a lot of our creation. We do everything, yeah. We do everything, yeah, because we can, we can suggest and we can comment on each other’s ideas and we can share ideas and it’s a really easy way to do that collaboratively.
So right now we have, we have a pretty organized, course outline process, and we’ve been using Airtable right now for organizing our, our, our everything, which has been really great. And we’ve found a system that really works where we can, add our comments and then assign it to each other, on Airtable.
And then we get an email that says that something has been assigned to you. And then we can go back through and, and see what comments each other has made, go through the Google doc and, So if, if I was starting from scratch, Krista had said, you know, this lesson I think needs more examples or, you know, let’s take a look at this lesson, it feels a bit funny, then I would go through and either suggest or comment on areas where I think, Something could be added or something could be changed.
With our charting lessons, I just created a whole new Google Doc and and put in different pieces from it because it, it just needed a fresh page to start on really. And, and then once that script is written out and it’s been reviewed twice then all of our slide decks are in Canva.
And we love Canva for, we use it for a lot of things and for client handouts as well. And, we’re really trying to make sure that Our slides are simple and that we’re not just sitting there reading from the slides. I think that we, we all hate that. So it’s it’s trying to make sure that the slide provides a, an experience where you’re getting the information in a concise way, and in a way that really makes it applicable to what you’re learning.
So going through creating the slide decks in Canva, making them visual, making them simple and concise, and, and then we record The actual video lesson in Canva, once that’s recorded and from the script that’s written out in Google Docs. But it’s, I would say, it’s not, when you hear that we’re recording based on a script, it doesn’t sound like we’re sitting and reading from a textbook.
It’s not super boring. We’re trying to make it we’re trying to make it really enjoyable because we, we really like to keep our lessons concise and enjoyable and easy to listen to. And we’re also trying to when we provide an example script, trying to include that in the slide. So that as we’re reading it out, it sounds like somebody’s saying it and it’s, it’s, it’s not just someone reading dryly from a script.
Mm-Hmm. . So yeah, we read from the script in a, in an exciting way. We record it on Canva and then I like to go use D Script, which is a program we use for a lot of our editing. Which it. Takes the recording and writes out a transcript of it. We can erase all the ums, which is super helpful for me because I say a lot.
Me too. And then what’s really great too about Descript is that you can improve the audio quality, you can switch things around and if you notice after all of that editing that there’s still a typo on the slide, you can go back through and Add a new image, over your audio, and then, yeah, then it gets added to the site.
It’s, it’s a lot of steps, but I, I feel like we’ve got a really good system down where we can we can edit it a few times to make sure that we all agree with where it’s at, and and yeah, and yeah, a really good quality lesson. Yeah, and I think now we’re at the point, too, where we can really focus on, now that the So, the course is done.
The core of the course is done. Now we’re at the point where we’re just going through, we’re updating, we’re refining, and we can really focus on the marketing piece now. Cause that was sort of the other thing last round, is we were like, we didn’t really have a solid, thought out marketing plan because it was just, it was rushed, cause we were so focused on trying to just finish the program for the launch date.
So, that’s really our priority now, is the update. the marketing plan, et cetera. And then we’ll just continue to do this process over and over again until I don’t even know if there’s an until, I don’t even know if there is either.
I feel like we’re just like obsessed with continuous improvement and just like making things better and better. And yeah, again, that is, like you said, that is the value in joining this program is you’ll just continue to get access to. All the updates that we do , which is great. Yeah. So, so yeah, that’s kind of where we are at.
That’s what we wanted to talk about today, is just doing an unscripted, view of how we actually do things. Just sort of a behind the scenes what we’ve learned, how we do things. so obvious. And so obviously we are working on this program right now. And so we’re, we’re about to go into the second launch of our nutrition counseling and coaching program.
So if this is a program that you are interested in, make sure to join the wait list. posted. We posted the link for that below this video description. And it is important to be on the waitlist because you can only actually join if you’ve been on the waitlist. We also have special discounts for just waitlist people and we cap enrollment as well. So we only have a certain number of spots every time. So yeah, make sure to join the waitlist if this is something that you’re interested in. And all of the information about pricing, what’s included, curriculum, etc. is on the sales page, which is linked below this video as well. So make sure and check that out.
But yeah, that’s pretty much what we wanted to talk about today. Anything else you wanted to add? Oh, maybe the open house. Oh, yes. Great. Yeah. Awesome. Yes. So as part of, this launch, we are going to also be offering two 30 minute, what we’re calling open house sessions, where we will just be myself, Olivia and Maria on our team will be on a zoom call that you can pop into.
So you can ask us any questions that you have about the course material. Whatever you want. And so, if you’re on the wait list, you’ll receive emails for when those will be happening, the Zoom link to be able to access those. And so make sure and get yourself on the wait list if you want more information about those as well.
Thanks for mentioning that. I forgot about those, but they’re going to be great. I’m excited about it. That’s the first time we’re offering that too. So that’s part of this too, is like learning about the marketing and sales process too, and like what works, what we want to do differently, et cetera. So, and what questions should be fun.
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Cause then those questions we can add to the sales page in the future. So yeah, that’s it. Thanks so much, Olivia. So good to have you on the podcast. We’ll have you on the podcast again since we work together every single day and let’s keep talking about the work that we do. Sounds great.
Thanks. Bye. Bye.
