In this episode of the Dietitian Success Podcast, I’m sharing a little personal update as I return from maternity leave and settle into a new season of life with two kids at home. I also introduce a new Q&A-style format for the podcast and walk through three topics that come up constantly in the world of dietitian entrepreneurship: raising your rates, my favorite business books, and what’s actually been driving our recent Instagram growth at Dietitian Success Center.

Inside, we cover:

• The question many dietitians struggle with: “What if raising my rates makes my services inaccessible?”
• Practical ways to maintain accessibility (like sliding scales) without undercharging for your expertise
• My three favorite business books and why they’ve shaped how I think about entrepreneurship
• The content shift that helped us go from 10K to 18K followers in a few months

Whether you’re navigating pricing decisions, looking for new business ideas, or trying to figure out social media growth, this episode offers a mix of personal reflections and practical insights for dietitian entrepreneurs.

Links:

• Check out the *NEW* Entrepreneurship Tier of Dietitian Success Center https://www.dietitiansuccesscenter.com/entrepreneurshipfordietitians 
• Follow @dietitiansuccesscenter on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dietitiansuccesscenter/
• Connect with @kristako.rd on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristako.rd/
• If you’re a dietitian looking for more tools to support your practice, we’ve created a Free Starter Kit with client handouts, PES statement & Motivational Interviewing cheat sheets, and our RD community: https://www.dietitiansuccesscenter.com/

Episode Topics:

Raising Your Rates as a Dietitian

One of the most common questions dietitians ask when building a private practice is whether raising their rates will make their services less accessible.

In the episode, Krista discusses how “accessible pricing” does not have a universal definition. What feels affordable to one client may not be for another, which means practitioners ultimately need to choose a price point that allows their business to remain sustainable.

She also explains why even small increases in pricing can significantly affect long-term business sustainability and prevent burnout.

Business Books That Help Dietitian Entrepreneurs Think Bigger

Reading business books is one of the most efficient ways to learn entrepreneurship concepts without pursuing additional formal education.

In this episode, Krista shares three books that influenced her thinking about business growth and leadership:

• The Slight Edge – Jeff Olson
• Playing Big – Tara Mohr
• The Referral Engine – John Jantsch

These books focus on topics such as consistent action, stepping into leadership, and creating referral-driven businesses.

What Finally Worked for DSC on Instagram

Growing a professional Instagram account can feel frustrating, especially when consistent posting doesn’t appear to generate meaningful results.

Krista shares how the DSC team shifted their strategy after reading Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk. Instead of focusing purely on educational content, they began creating relatable “if you know, you know” posts that resonated with the shared experiences of dietitians.

This shift helped increase engagement, reach, and follower growth after several years of experimentation.

Transcript:

Introduction to the Dietitian Success Podcast

Hey there, and welcome to a new episode of the Dietitian Success Podcast. I am your host, Krista Esic. The Dietitian Success Podcast is the business and entrepreneurship podcast specifically created for registered dietitians. I am the founder of Dietitian Success Center if you are new here, if you’re new to the podcast, and I love to talk about entrepreneurship for registered dietitians. That’s my favorite topic to talk about.

We are in the world of entrepreneurship every single day. And when I say we, I mean myself, my operations manager Maria and my content manager Olivia. We are living and breathing entrepreneurship every single day and we’re learning so much through that process. I love having this podcast as a platform to be able to bring you along and share the experience with you, share some of the highs, some of the lows, some of the challenges, and answer some questions about entrepreneurship as well.

Returning From Maternity Leave and a Personal Update

So if you are tuning into this podcast for the first time in a little while, first of all welcome. I’m so happy to have you here. Second of all, this is actually the first episode that I’m recording since coming back from maternity leave. I say live — I’m recording it on Tuesday, March 10th, and it’s going to come out next week. The past few episodes that were released were interviews that I recorded before maternity leave.

I just got back from maternity leave with my second baby boy, Ramsey. I took a few months off and I’ve started back to work on very, very limited hours. So with this episode I’m going to start with a little personal update, then I’m going to talk a bit about how the structure of these episodes is going to be changing a little bit to something kind of new and creative and fun. I’ll talk you through that and I’ll also talk you through what we are working on as a company and as a team because I love to bring you along on that journey. Then we’ll get into some of the questions and content.

As a little life update, like I said, I just got back from maternity leave with my second baby. I’m on super limited work hours. I work about an hour a day, maybe an hour a day, because of course I have my sweet baby boy home with me. I’m working during naps, which are still kind of unpredictable. My husband also works from home, which is really nice. We’re very lucky to have that.

He works for a company but he works from home, so during his lunch hour he’s able to do some childcare while I get a little bit of work done. Sometimes in the evenings when I’m watching TV I’ll also respond to emails because I often just don’t have the capacity to do that during the day.

So it’s an interesting season of life. It feels busy. It feels like a lot of task switching every day. But we’re rolling with it knowing that it won’t always be like this. It’s also really fun. I love that I get the balance of hanging out with my little guy while also getting to do a little bit of work and use my creative brain every day. That’s been really fulfilling.

I definitely feel like I have lived ten lives by the time 8 AM rolls around, but that’s just being a parent.

So that’s my little personal update.

How Dietitians Can Raise Their Rates Without Feeling Guilty

Now I want to talk about raising your rates, because this is something that comes up all the time for dietitians. Someone recently asked whether increasing their hourly rate by $10 would make their services less accessible.

One thing that I want to emphasize is that earning a living wage and keeping your services accessible can absolutely walk hand in hand. Those two ideas are not mutually exclusive.

But something I hear a lot is the term “accessible pricing” being used in a way that makes dietitians feel guilty about raising their rates. And the question I always ask is — who decides what is accessible?

What might be accessible to one person might not be accessible to someone else. There is no universal definition of accessible pricing. Because of that, you ultimately have to choose the price point that works best for you and your business.

There are also options available if accessibility is important to you. For example, you could offer sliding scale spots for clients who truly cannot afford your regular rate.

My therapist is a psychologist and she charges $220 per hour, but she also offers sliding scale options for people who need it. I think that’s a really thoughtful way to approach it.

But the key point is that increasing your hourly rate by $10 is not really about accessibility. Instead, I would encourage you to actually look at your numbers.

Look at how many clients you see per week and calculate what a $10 increase per session would actually mean for your annual income. What seems like a small increase can actually make a huge difference in the sustainability of your business.

Sometimes that difference is what allows you to prevent burnout or continue operating your practice long term.

This principle also applies to group programs, consulting work, and freelance work. Every organization and every client will have a different price point that works for them. That’s why pricing is dynamic and there is never a one-size-fits-all answer.

Best Business Books for Dietitian Entrepreneurs

Next, I want to talk about business books and how I actually make time for reading.

If you’re inside the Dietitian Success Center entrepreneurship membership, you have access to our business and personal development book guide where I share a long list of books along with summaries so you can decide which ones are most relevant for you.

But today I want to share my top three business books.

Reading business books is one of the best ways to improve your knowledge without needing to pursue another degree. It’s one of the least expensive ways to learn high-quality information.

People often ask how I make time for reading, and the answer has changed depending on the season of life I’m in.

Before kids, I used to read for about ten minutes every morning with my coffee. Now that I have kids and mornings are more chaotic, I mostly listen to audiobooks.

I still read fiction before bed for about ten minutes, but I don’t read business books at night because I don’t want my brain going into strategy mode right before sleep.

Audiobooks have been amazing. You can get them through your library, and if you have Spotify Premium there are actually a huge number of audiobooks available through that membership.

When I’m driving, running, walking, or cleaning the kitchen, I’m almost always listening to an audiobook or a podcast.

Three Business Books That Influenced My Entrepreneurial Mindset

Now let’s talk about my top three books.

The first one is The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. This book is all about how small consistent actions over time lead to exponential growth.

In business there are many activities you will do repeatedly that feel like they’re not moving the needle. But the combined impact of those small actions eventually compounds.

We actually experienced this in 2025. For years the business was growing steadily but slowly. Then suddenly we experienced a noticeable jump in growth, and I truly believe it was the result of all those small consistent actions adding up.

The second book is Playing Big by Tara Mohr. This book is particularly relevant for women who are learning how to step into visibility and leadership.

When you go from working a traditional job to running a business, suddenly you have to put yourself out there, share opinions, speak publicly, and build a personal brand. That can feel very uncomfortable at first.

Playing Big helped me tremendously in the early stages of my business and it’s actually a book I should revisit.

The third book is The Referral Engine by John Jantsch.

This book focuses on how word-of-mouth marketing drives business growth. It explains how to intentionally create referral systems in your business.

For Dietitian Success Center, word of mouth has consistently been one of our top three marketing channels. People talking to other people about your work is incredibly powerful.

What Finally Worked for Growing DSC on Instagram

Now I want to share a case study about our Instagram growth over the past year.

Earlier in 2025 I was honestly feeling frustrated with Instagram. We were posting consistently but it didn’t feel like the platform was driving meaningful results.

Follower growth alone doesn’t necessarily translate to business success, so we were tracking things like how many people downloaded our free resources from Instagram.

Compared to channels like Google search and SEO, Instagram was underperforming.

At that point we made a decision as a team: either we go all in on Instagram or we deprioritize it.

We decided to go all in.

All three of us read the book Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk. Regardless of how people feel about Gary Vee, that book was one of the most practical guides I’ve read about how social media works today.

After reading it we completely changed our approach.

We started creating more “if you know, you know” type content. This means content that speaks directly to the shared experiences of dietitians.

For example, dietitians know what it feels like to be called a “nutritionist,” to see misinformation on social media, or to have someone trust a TikTok influencer over their professional advice.

Those inside jokes and shared experiences resonate deeply with the audience you’re trying to reach.

Once we leaned into that type of content, everything shifted.

Some posts flopped, but others performed incredibly well. We started seeing large spikes in views and shares.

Eventually that translated into follower growth and more importantly, more people downloading our free resources.

For context, we’ve posted 937 times on the DSC Instagram account. That’s a lot of trial and error.

But that process is exactly what The Slight Edge talks about. If we hadn’t posted hundreds of times, we wouldn’t have discovered the content that finally worked.

Another interesting observation is that it took about five years to reach 10,000 followers. But after hitting that milestone, growth accelerated significantly.

Within three months we went from 10,000 followers to around 18,000.

There’s probably some social validation that happens once an account reaches that point. People may assume the resource is trustworthy because so many others follow it.

That doesn’t mean smaller accounts aren’t valuable, but it’s an interesting phenomenon.

That said, Instagram is not the only path to success.

If Instagram isn’t the right platform for you, that’s okay. Take what resonates and leave the rest.

Just make sure that you’re not avoiding it purely because you haven’t developed the skill yet. When you start something new, it will feel awkward and imperfect.

Even now we are still experimenting. My personal business Instagram account is something we are still trying to figure out.

Growth is always a learning process.

Closing Thoughts and Dietitian Success Center Resources

I hope you enjoyed this slightly different format for the podcast. Whether you are listening to the audio version or watching the video version, thank you so much for being here.

It feels really good to be back recording the podcast again.

If you want more coaching from me, make sure to check out our Entrepreneurship Tier inside the Dietitian Success Center membership.

This tier includes a one-on-one strategy session with me where we map out the next steps for your business. Throughout the year you can also submit audio or video questions for on-demand business coaching from our team.

You can also post questions inside our community where an incredible group of supportive dietitians are always ready to help.

That community is one of my favorite parts of what we’ve built.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I will see you next week.