Speaker 2 (00:00.066) Welcome to the Dietitian Business Podcast. I'm Maggie Doherty, your host, dietitian and business coach. In today's session, we have a business coaching session with John Yuhas of Yuhas Nutrition out of Sarah Cruz, New York. It was such a neat session where John came in asking, how do you navigate building a private practice while you have a part-time job and how do you balance this work-life balance?

We got into topics like hiring, client retention, and really spent a lot of time about how to work more on your business instead of in it through implementing deep work time, prioritization, and creating an awesome to-do list. You can't miss this episode. If you have a side hustle, if you're trying to grow your business or you're trying to work more on your business, this one's for you.

Speaker 2 (00:57.614) So tell me a little bit about your practice and what you're hoping to get out of today.

Yes. OK. So long story short, started up in 2024. And this is the year where I actually feel confident that things are moving. It is a lot of CKD, lot of diabetes mixed in there. I do see a lot of Medicare, Medicare Advantage folks. So that that works out really well. I'm stationed in my office is out of a nephrology practice.

I get referrals from that practice, the other practices in the Syracuse, New York area. And also people find me on the insurance listings for, you know, who's contracted with insurance. Those are fun ones. Don't have to put myself out there to get that info. Work's been done. And realistically, like, I think I do it like a day and a half, two days weekly. So, yeah, I'm

really comfortable put it putting those clients in those days. And from here looks like I can expand. Should I expand? Should I? What should I do with my practice? Just knowing that I, you know, I want to keep pretty firm boundaries between work life, home life. I did do some evening clients starting out just to kind of offer that up. When it happened.

when it turned into like more than a day a week and I was kind of going into the evening routine with the family, kind of found that like, you know, it's great to know you're, you know, money, but also you're kind of missing out on some, big life stuff. So yeah, spend most of the time in the office. I do telehealth as well. I think the population I work with is more prone to enjoying that face to face. Not saying that there's yet any specific,

Speaker 1 (02:55.938) population that prefers it, but I think they like having the brick and mortar. The telehealth is definitely have clients doing that as well.

hi. So you have your private part, would you call it like your side hustle or part-time job or like, how would you kind of describe how much time it takes up in your life, business?

Fortunately, I can call it a side hustle. was full time last year and I was kind of doing the building up the practice, getting the business situated through New York. My practice is set up as a PLLC. So I had to get like the New York separate licensure, went to Department of Education and then got the PLLC set up and was doing that kind of casually.

getting the contracts and now realistically at part time, but I can kind of see it progressing. But also if it's progressing for the sake of being able just to see more clients versus like, am I actually getting a target population? I'm actually doing something that someone else isn't doing. So navigating how I can best be effective and also manage my time because I do work in outpatient dialysis.

As the it was the full time job and that's I've reduced in hours, but there is there's a lot to be said for having some structure like that during the week, whereas we kind of know in private practice, you're kind of spearheading things and you can kind of make things fit into kind of the nooks and crannies. So I would say it's a it's a nook and cranny practice right now. I have been able to expand more during the week into it's like reduce my other hours. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:50.062) It sounds like right now you're in a, I don't want to call it a crossroads, but you're at a opportunity where you're trying to navigate the time you spend with this part-time job at the dialysis clinic, your private practice kind of going from a side hustle to a real thing while you balance those two with also your work-life balance with also where can this company.

Right. Yes. So I have that in my mind. The biggest thing that kind of happened recently was that I got life insurance situated, which was formerly a full time benefit I had. So doing that and what else did I get? I hopped on. Fortunately, like, you know, I had my wife's health insurance I could hop onto. So those things like losing those benefits, honestly, kind of like it's one of those strings that was kind of attaching me to something.

So I know a lot of what I've done private practice wise is you'll leap into the deep end and you start swimming, you paddle on it. If you don't know what you're doing initially and then you just kind of pick a little bit up at a time. And then if you have some semblance of what a day is going to look like, that's great. But I think I'm at the point now a year or so, not even a full year really, in seeing clients that

Some things will come at me from left field where at the end of a day, it seems allowed to kind of decompress and pull things together. But it's, you know, some semblance of sanity now that I can kind of dig into. What is this practice? What am I doing going forward? Yeah.

So when you kind of ask what is this practice, I almost reframe it or like we ask like what do you want out of the practice? And what do you want it to, like what do you envision it looking like, being like?

Speaker 1 (06:50.882) right down the year or so. The short term, I think I'm lucky to say it's past the point of like viability. I don't have to worry about is this something like I have to worry about making ends meet kind of thing. I have a good referral pipeline. I have some clients following up. It's a lot of like one and done's. I feel like with CKD, you have a client come in, get the information they need. I try to kind of.

Well, I know that ongoing follow-up can be really beneficial to kind of really cement some of these foundational principles with their diet. But having that being said, you know, down the road, I really want to tackle, I mean, like chronic disease management, CKD in this area and different kind of avenues. The one-on-one sessions, it's very effective.

But also I'm one person. There are other dietitians in the area seeing patients privately, but that's, I think I could say that I'm the one seeing like the kidney disease patients, not that they're not. But what they'll do versus what I do, I think that that chronic disease, kidney disease niche, I can really go forward with like.

group sessions, seminars, even kind of looked into a, there's like a demo kitchen, kind of like a, you can kind of host a class there. Maybe I could set up like a impromptu studio, but the rental fees are pretty cheap. And let the culinary aspect of nutrition is something I might want to tackle. Cause during a session you're thinking theoretically, but when you put that.

practical aspect and I think that's a balance that's needed. And without that, it makes the habits we try to enforce and kind of implement with our clients. It's hard to do without having that culinary cooking kind of mindset with it.

Speaker 2 (09:00.898) Yeah, there's definitely so much potential and like, you pivot from doing one-on-ones to group, you're leveraging your time and you can also make more in that hour. Unfortunately, those groups can be hard to build up and get to a spot where they're worth having.

Texas with our reimbursement rates, typically need four, we typically need about four to five people to equal a one-on-one spot. And so if there's less than five people in a group, then we're almost kind of losing money because we could have just had a one-on-one spot. they're tricky, but there is a lot of potential there for sure.

And that's that's going to be a definitely one of those things where you kind of dig yourself a little bit of a hole. You said if you had less less people in that session, if it turns out like it's one times, two times like you get the word spread. So the marketing aspect of that is something to be considered. But yeah, it's starting to practice like there's a lot of financial holes you kind of dig into and.

the less I need to dig in the red, not necessarily the better off I feel. practice will be just kind of looking at the numbers and things.

Absolutely. I've always had a kind of like a frugal, minimalistic startup mindset where, you know, it's relatively very inexpensive to get a private practice up and running that's virtual. The only cost you're going to have is your EMR, know, your Gmail, Microsoft, email, server, real platform, if you even do a paid version of it. You know, your website, a couple of other things here and there, but it's easy to become profitable quickly, but it's also easy to spend.

Speaker 2 (10:53.994) a lot of money and trying to get there. So it's almost like, know, this one-on-one's working, you want to explore something else. But if you don't just spend time or money to figure it out, then why would you pivot?

Yes. Yeah. And if something's working, why go against it? There's definitely something to be said for like the the burden of one of one like how many sessions can you do in a day? And it's like, you know, I get this reimbursement from one session. What's the say? And I'll do 10 in a day, 12 in a day. Like I'm perfectly fine with the handful of people a day. And then kind of if I book a little bit more, that kind of gives some wiggle room for cancellations. But something that's

kind of stretches my I don't know it mixes it up like the group sessions or doing I haven't dug into like social media part of things. For one I feel like I have a really like squirrel of kind of mindset like there's something shiny over here you go down that rabbit hole and by the time you get back if you do you know what have we gotten from that. But the putting content out is

is a solid idea. feel like for myself, it may be a rabbit hole that I could best serve like, you know, have someone manage that for myself. Or just kind of right now, I'm kind of word of mouth. It's doctor referrals. The population I'm trying to reach right now may not necessarily be that I put the website together is, you know, if you're.

Let's think for this when you look at mine, that's that was me. So I think there's some repair and see.

Speaker 2 (12:39.086) And another way to save money as you're starting your practice is you build your own website. And it doesn't have to be the best website ever. And I took a look at your website and it's got everything that needs to be on there. It's like got the basics and it's good enough. And that's all you really need.

Yeah. So I wanted to make sure I had who I am, what I do, what I offer, how to contact me. Not much more because, you know, the busier you get sometimes, like, is that needed? And because I'm not putting out additional services or offering. So it hits the point. And yeah, it's kind of you can go into a lot of different pathways with what you can do with the practice. I think one of the things I'm doing right now is thinking of

like promotional material or kind of like the logo and implementing that on all my paperwork and things. That's fun. That's a fun thing that that doesn't take up like that higher level thinking kind of stuff. It's, you know, asking people like, you like this one versus that one? So there's fun stuff and there's stuff that like you have to stretch yourself. You know, sometimes it's best served like reaching out to someone like yourself to really hash things out for learning the hard way of like

Okay, there's a reason why these, you know, there's people out there kind of helping people along with us.

Yeah, well, speaking of pathways and learning the hard way, you had a couple of questions here that you wanted to ask. Do you want to go through some of those questions? Do you want to go through your intake form or where do you want to go with this to where you get some of your questions or where you're stuck?

Speaker 1 (14:22.744) Yeah, where I'm at is I have things going and I don't want to give it up to someone that's not me because I know what I'm doing. I've broken this out. I've wasted text of this. I've written stuff down like processes and things, and I've had some good help along the way. But, you know, a client calls me prospective or just one I've had already.

I know exactly what I want to put out there, the energy, the information, the structure from that that initial point of contact. And I also want I'm working on boundaries better as far as like when you take a phone call. I mean, I feel like being a good like in session practitioner, like you kind of hash things out, you get some of things that could be quick, that could take some time. So.

that, you know, sometimes we end up on like a 30 minute phone call, just kind of seeing what you're all about versus like, you know, myself, I want to kind of get to the point and kind of get us to the session so we can really hash that out. But the other thing is like a lot of people haven't worked with a data station before. A lot of people don't know what that means. And they got referred to me and they're like, who is this person? And there's some resistance there from the get go. So you have to be warm, friendly to the points, knowledgeable.

But also myself, like I don't have to think about that. Like I can do that. So when you transfer those ideas and like have someone help you out, you know, that's the trouble of like hiring someone that fits perfectly and there's never going to be a perfect fit. Also, depending on how much you kind of spend on that and how high quality that is. And yeah, yeah. So giving up the reins.

to an extent on the admin part of things is something that could be definitely handy. But also, I think if one head doesn't know what the other is doing, you can kind of get out of sorts of things. if you have two people doing different things in the same practice, there has to be some cohesive communication between the two. In my head, keeping myself straight or the practice is possible in life.

Speaker 1 (16:45.814) It's not, it's nice to honestly go into this like mindset of the practice mindset. So I know what's going on. So it's controlled chaos and inviting someone else into that controlled chaos is yeah, it takes some mental convincing.

Speaker 2 (17:09.108) everyone's path in their private practice, how much they want to scale, how much they want to delegate, how much they want to spend is going to be different for each person. So it's not wrong to do everything. It's not wrong to stay small. It's not wrong to get big. But if you want to scale, you can't do everything and you won't be able to know how to do everything. really the most difficult, know, dieticians were not taught anything about

really management or delegation or leadership. And essentially to create a business, cannot be, you have to be replaceable. And if you are not replaceable and you're needed, it's not a viable business. But you may not want that. the trick is when you start getting stretched thin, it's looking at

Are these administrative tasks filling up my cup or pouring my cup out and making me feel drained? Are they taking me away from the work in a client? Would I rather be in a client session than answering this phone? And if I hire an admin for 20, 25, $30 an hour and I'm seeing a client for 100, 150 an hour, you're making a profit.

And so there's that aspect and you can find the right person and have a really good training policy and find the person who has your same values. And you can also find someone who doesn't have that and have a bad experience and lose some clients. there's a lot of different ways that it can grow. It sounds like your business has gotten to a point where you can only see so many clients in a week and you can only do so much before.

there's a glass ceiling. So if we filled your whole calendar up with clients, let's say max you make 150 a year if we completely booked you out and you will not make more than that unless you hire dieticians or hire an admin so you can see more clients or do groups so you kind of bring more money in. And so it's a little bit of a system where...

Speaker 2 (19:33.034) as you delegate, it's finding those things that what could someone else do? And if someone did this, would I be happier or be able to make more money doing a higher revenue hourly task?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the higher the more skilled like actual dietitian kind of stuff versus, yeah, those those items. And it's I think like in my head, you think so much like, know, you have to be like exactly the same as me, like dietitian with like my ideas, my mindset, my philosophy to really kind of put that forward. But it's kind of like it is yet more of like customer service, just like.

setting a point on the schedule and like the whole what do I offer thing. I know I kind of like a kind of an open book to an extent like when you're taking clients in especially like they find you on the website insurance coverage like I can do a lot of things if it's a really unique niche kind of thing. So I would can refer out to others but there's not necessarily a blanket.

How I can help until we get to that session. So communicating how you train your admin, your outreach coordinator, whatever you would call that. I think I'm kind of more in my head about it, but also I'm so in depth in the sessions that I don't necessarily like give myself the time to reflect on that.

I think that the reflection on it and actually doing something with it, do different things and how much capacity we have to hire them on it for me. It's like, you know, how do I even set that up in my practice with my I'm like a one person corporation. So when I put someone else in there, I can have to rework the corporation and that's it. So it's probably not that tricky or difficult to do. But the.

Speaker 1 (21:41.442) visioning of like, yeah, like the leadership part of things, having someone employed under myself. That's like not like I chose the positions I took as a dietitian, not necessarily being management. But it is it is my practice. that'd be a bit different than like you get like initiatives trickled down from the top that you have to sell. So it would be my stuff. It would be, you know, just me to kind of sell those things. So those are what's going through. That's what's going through my head.

with these things and not necessarily who that would be, but I would say more of how do we get that done from the process perspective.

How do you, upon a process, how do you hire someone on?

Yeah, how you hire someone and how I have to read if I need to. I guess I wouldn't have to restructure my business because it's not necessarily that they're a partner. It would be employed under me as like a 1099 and what that would amount to be taxes and things. So it's it's a couple layers of those little things I'm not comfortable with as far as doing taxes. I did it. This was the first year I did it with my business. And that was like ripping a giant bandaid off.

Now that I've done that, I understand it more. But that's like the 50 other things I've done for this practice where I haven't done it, now I understand it. And then slowly like, once you do it once, you kind of have an idea. it's kind of a, maybe it'll be in my head about it, but also don't have the time to really look at that. And numbers wise, client wise, through the week, I'm in a decent place where I'm...

Speaker 1 (23:22.382) I do have a little bit of a backlog of referrals, but I've made a melodic round with that. And the other thing with that is I could honestly have someone hired on admin wise. Still, I could focus more on getting those initials to turn into follow up clients. I think that I'm kind of so like I am present in my sessions.

And I think it's a tricky line between selling yourself versus getting them that help that they need. Like selling your stuff on follow ups. So not like a cliffhanger, but more so like how do we get that initial all that work you put into getting that client, the referral, getting it all into your EMR. And that's a lot of work.

I got it down so like the initial client paperwork, onboarding, everything, it's not that challenging now. But it would be nice to just have that client there. Or none of the follow ups. It's such a easier practice because you they know who you are, you know where they are. So it's also kind of navigating what's how can I be most effective as a practitioner? What's that follow up cycle look like?

I know there's, was it like the third party platforms where they have dietitians on and they want you to do it week by week. So there's a certain kind of client that benefits from that. It's not everyone. If you want to push someone into that, they have a choice to come see you. So navigating that, like, I feel lucky to do what I do when people come to me for the...

you know, the sessions that we do. So honoring that, but also like trying to see if we can. It's not a one stop shop, you know, it's not a doctor's office. We need to really workshop stuff to make these habits into, you these, these choices and habits, these habits into like, like a, get that discipline going with things. So it's being able to kind of morph my mindset into that holding off on the,

Speaker 1 (25:46.314) administrative end of things, or having that off my mind could be helpful. Especially when I'm going through like in a day, like looking at my emails, looking at my itinerary for the day, and there's a lot of admin there, like follow up this client call, call this one for possible follow up. And I kind of, I I definitely like have laxed on those. I see those there. It's like, okay, that's not a pressing thing. But those things add up. I'll say, fortunately, like I'm not.

that far into like making these processes up that I can't, you know, completely like change it up or tweak it. So navigating what works best for me, my practice and everything, it's it's an ongoing kind of journey and what we do. Yeah.

I'm hearing three main themes from what you just shared. One, hey, how do you hire someone? How do you know you have the funds to hire someone? What do you do company structure wise? What do you have them do? How do you find the time to do that? Two, how to better retain clients, get more efficient in sessions. And third, the other theme I noticed is it sounds like you are so busy working in

your business and that your job that you don't spend any time thinking about your business or working on it. Cause I can hear right now as you're just kind of having, I don't, you know, just having this hour to like process, like I can hear you're, you're starting to connect these pieces where it sounds like you just haven't had the time to think about what you want your business to be, how you want it to work, how you make it work for you and not you work for it. And so the first thing I'd say is try to set aside at least

at least 30 minutes a week, ideally an hour to work on your business. That means not seeing clients, not doing admin stuff, but looking at where you want it to grow, how many clients you want to see per week, how much money you want to make in order for you to make the amount of money you want to make, how many clients you need to see. Let's say you want to make 200 grand. How many clients would you need to see per day, per week, per month?

Speaker 2 (28:04.974) Okay, if it's a hundred clients per week, you can't do that. So you would need to hire another dietician or two to get to that number. So doing some financial work to see, how much money do you need this business to make? As you think about your work-life balance, how many hours you want to spend in your business? Okay, let's say you want to spend 30 hours in it, but you need to see 30 hours of clients to get your financial goal. Again, you have to sacrifice.

one or the other make less money or hire more dieticians in your practice to get to that 30. So I think that's a key part that you're missing in your business right now is like that reflection time. you had like, your gears are turning. They just, they haven't turned in a little bit cause they've been so busy working.

Yeah, and it's one of those. I feel like it comes in waves where the initial building up the business. There was a lot of that's lot of what you're talking about. The reflection, how we're doing with our business, where we're going. And then when clients started tricking in the door, you know, your attention kind of spans to that more so. And you kind of lay off on this. And I know I know I have a significant to do list that I want to dig into.

Of which, you know, there's the million different things, but mine is like insurance contracts. I'm kind of making that right now, like the extra ones like case by case. If a client pops up and. It's a great fit, we can kind of go down that pathway, but also those take some time. So that yeah, the weekly kind of like reflections on the business and where that's at, where it's going. It does help like the before this podcast I did a.

It's like a questionnaire of what where I'm at. I think like honestly part of it's like philosophically with the business. What am I trying to do? What are the numbers look like? The the outcomes, income expenses, number of clients a month or a week, month. And that is something that I do kind of think about. But like a formal way of navigating what those projections look like.

Speaker 1 (30:15.566) I will say if it wasn't for like being my own business, I would honestly like hate that kind of like perspective on things. But it's like me in the driver's seat. It's not like a, you know, a game or like an idea like, you know, let's hash this out what we can do. it's yeah, me in the driver's seat, how I can kind of dictate the progression of this business in my life. What the one thing I kind of think of that was we've been talking is it'd be nice to have a

telehealth component where I have some days strictly telehealth for the selfish purpose of just like being able to kind of be home and like around more like it for like kids kind of stuff. Not not that you're like they're busy days but you know it's like it's currently like summertime where I have like kids home it's nice to have that I mean that 15 minute 20 minute break.

You can kind of break off and do some family things. Whereas in office, you know, a of people prefer it. But if I could kind of situate the the days where the telehealth isn't. It's not just like squeeze in there. It's something I planned out. So that would be something that I kind of morph into to.

Have you done values work before? Like identifying like your top five values in life?

values.

Speaker 1 (31:42.086) I don't, well, not specifically that practice, no. Yeah.

It sounds like family is one of your values and says like, Hey, if I can take a day and structure it to be telehealth, so I get to honor this value of family and kind of maximize these little breaks and see my family. Awesome. That's going to make me feel more fulfilled. I'll link it in the show notes and send you after, but Brene Brown is a great psychologist and she does a lot of work on values and guilt and shame and things like that. And she has a values workshop shape worksheet. I did it.

about a year and half ago and my two values were flexibility and freedom. Flexibility, excuse me, no, I think it was freedom and family. And it was very eye opening because I realized with my roll up my group practice, I was

not flexible. I was locked into either client sessions or meetings with my dieticians or leadership meetings or kind of my whole day was scheduled out. So there was not flexibility. And there really wasn't much freedom anymore. I was 12. I was like in a corporate position. And I was so tired at the end of my days that I wasn't excited to hang out with my daughter. I was exhausted and like not looking forward to it. And there was this big wake up call like

Oh my gosh, my two most important values in my life, freedom and family. I'm going completely against those at this job right now, which is what made me take a step away and kind of restart this business where I have a lot more flexibility. I get to see my family a lot more. And it sounds like that value thing could be helpful for you just as you connected that, oh, I want more Tell-Elf days so I can be at home and see my family.

Speaker 1 (33:38.892) Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because the the other positions I've had, it's it's it's that structure. Like I I do appreciate the structure in a day. But you also I do appreciate breaking up that structure, too. It's more fun to have a build up and you kind of break at it. But still have the structure there. So you have that to guide your days, but also, you know, in the way that you.

I do for myself, I kind of enjoy and I'm able to be more present in which is also why I kind of basically mix my evening sessions. Unless like, you know, it's like a once in a while, not even like a whole evening, like one clients one evening every now and then the I know there's a lot of there's a lot work out there now being done with like the third party, like dietitians under these companies where

I feel like people are doing like full day Saturdays and Sundays. I have like a colleague doing that. like in that space where, you know, that's like life happening. Like I want to kind of keep those bounds. So during the weekends, I have that solid, that kind of the guidelines, having the implementing the telehealth work held out lines with the values that I think that would be a good little practice to kind of do, to kind of assess.

That big picture to put words to what is happening and the chaos of my brain with the practice.

Yeah. So let's, let's go back about that first, topic about how to hire someone. It, it sounds like right now we're in a spot where you could hire someone or you, or you couldn't, like there's a couple different directions you should go. The first thing I would do is it sounds like you have a to-do list. I would, I would look at that to-do list and prioritize it into high, medium, and low. High meaning things that

Speaker 2 (35:41.486) need to get done within 24 to 48 hours or there's going to be a consequence to some sort. Medium, you don't do any of the medium stuff until you've done all the high. Typically there may be a deadline within like a week or the consequence just may not be as severe as those heavier deadlines. Low priority things for me are typically fun. They typically don't have a deadline, don't have a consequence. It could be like making a social media post.

things like that. So I would look at your do list and categorize them to high, medium, and low. And then as you look at those things, what are things only I could do versus what could I automate? What systems could I use to automate this task that I'm doing? Or three, what could I delegate? What could I outsource? What could I hire someone to do? And as you kind of look at that, like, here's all the things I need to do right now.

What can only I do? What can I spend some time and figure out how to automate? And what can I delegate?

OK, it makes sense because I definitely have that in my like mind to be able to do that for sure. It's kind of like the go into the murky waters and haven't done that before and then just making it happen. So, yeah, I that I have the my to do list process is also chaotic right now, just in the summertime and everything. I do have the having in my mind the things that like in the next one to two days.

Like that kind of thing, like what I need to do after that, it's kind of OK, all that gets blended together. So just having that process like we sleep, I cannot the weekly reflection on things to see where that's at. I feel like for me, that may be like on a Wednesday or Thursday because midweek, I feel like I hit my stride with getting the flow of things on Monday. I honestly forget that I was a dietitian when I go to work and then like something starts, you know,

Speaker 1 (37:48.078) I have a productive day, but it's where I left off the last week. can be tough to kind of plan it. So midweek, check in what's happening, what I can do better and automate and kind of get that to do list more situated. So, yeah, I'm totally going to like take this. I've been using like like the scribe kind of software stuff and are putting it in like like the to do list kind of planning stuff for myself. So I'm going to totally.

So I'll usually use that with this and prioritize, look at what it says and realistically kind of workshop that way. I think that's a invention of scribe software has changed my life and going into a practice of this time too, it's very helpful. using that for myself, any which way I can automate those kinds of things as well as handy. So there's also a question of

I mean, I can automate my own automations with like, you can do like AI agents to do some things, but you know, you need a person to do a lot of things. There's, and that's one of those like go down a rabbit hole of all these things you can do and automate where like a person would be able to kind of give you straight up feedback. And then you're kind of doing some AI work where you still have to put the mental effort into it.

If there's a way to kind of remove that mental efforts that you can someone you can kind of. I mean, I feel like trust is built. So if you have someone hired on board. That you can trust you can kind of, you know, give them the freedom and leeway on some things. Whereas if you do like a lot of a lot of AI kind of stuff, it's not completely like 100 % there and like the little things you're not catching can snowball.

I think that, both useful in their own ways, but setting a process for myself to reflect, to do, and automate. I think that's handy to move forward with.

Speaker 2 (39:56.462) Yeah, and set a calendar event or put on your EMR like a one hour time block on Wednesdays from eight to nine or nine to 10 or over your little break, total one or like the end of the day, wherever you're most, whenever, whatever time of day you're most creative. Or I always loved the idea of start with the most important thing. So you'd start Wednesday mornings with that. And I live and die by my EMR. If it is not in my EMR, I'm going to forget about it or not do it. And so it's.

You said this out there.

Yeah. And so then you can kind of also leverage time blocking and like planning out your day with your EMR. I love doing that, but I put that on your calendar. And now you have your to-do list, high, and low. Now you kind of this deep work time. And before going into the deep work time, you already know what you're going to be working on. It may not be the high priority thing because the high priority may be working in the business, but it could be that thing that's most important for you to think about.

work on develop.

Exactly. I have like having I feel like in a month or two month time, if I haven't had like a higher priority thing that advances my business, kind of really kind of see if we can rope that in. If that makes sense, like, you know, being client focused day to day. Absolutely. That's that's like got to stay present with that. But if there's nothing driving it forward in a direction that you talked about, like in line with my values, but also progression of the business.

Speaker 1 (41:24.596) Maybe I got to look at that and how do you do you block off your what would you call that like block in your calendar? Because it's such a I feel like in my mind kind of ambiguous because there's a lot to it, but just like business reflection our or something like that.

There's an expression or a term called deep work. Where like the deep work by the philosophies by Cal Newport. I'll send you the book after I'll link in the show notes too. But really it's just like time that you are working on your business and not being interrupted by other things. So you can call it whatever you, whatever you want. When I worked at my group practice and people had access to my calendar.

I I called it something like, what was it? I think I put like personal appointment. It's like nobody would bother me during that hour. But you got, I love just business reflection time or, or business work or.

Speaker 1 (43:00.458) Yes. Yeah, because my my Google calendar, we were in a pretty strong relationship right now. Yes. Yeah. And it helps everything else. want to say, like, if you use an ICAL trial Google calendar, I'm sure there's other stuff out there, but like the integrated most of my stuff into it. And I can see how low coded where I'm going and put that there. So I just need that. I would need a little.

like one color for that. So I swear I was quite disorganized before I started my practice and out of necessity, I became more kind of driven to kind of organize things because without it, it's just absolute chaos. For one, just the communication back and forth between my referral sources. If I don't look like I have order in my practice, you know, got to keep that ship.

Speaker 1 (43:25.422) built and from there it kind of kind of trickled down. So that structure and like kind of incorporating things like this into that structure has been very, very helpful. And that's still a process that that count. Like I used to kind of hate going into like the calendar beginning of the month and kind of workshopping that. But now it's less it's pain. It's less painful. And then by the time a week comes up, it's already in there for the most part.

That's very helpful. So you can almost take out the thinking that week for just the sake of just, you know, one scheduling clients and knowing when that's happening. But those blocks and things. Yeah.

Do you use Google Task?

I think so. I don't use Google tax. I know. I think we use the same EMR civil practice and I have tasks there. And I my one one other colleague was saying something about like outlook tasks was I kind of hate that idea. I just kind of opposed to it because it's not the user friendly.

I'm going to send you a link on how to set up Google Tasks because what I love about it is it integrates with Google Calendar. So what I have a lot of my dieticians do is we create that to-do list, the high, medium, and low, on Google Tasks. So you have three different ones. And then I also have people create to-do lists, like personal or marketing, referrals, and kind of putting different categories. And you can add due dates in it. And so then it pops up on your calendar.

Speaker 1 (45:05.964) It does.

I feel like that could be a helpful tool for you. I used to use it a ton. I really liked it. And then I realized again, for me, everything works better on my simple practice. I have like, not a hundred, I have like 20 calendar events and I just, I time block my whole day, whatever I don't get to, move to the next day and I put the highest priority one first. I found that works best for me, but I did use Google tasks for a while and have a lot of people who find it helpful.

Yeah, like I feel like I have a good process for my like specific client tasks in simple practice. the there's a lot of ambiguity to the outside life. So I just either put up things like a note on my phone or a note on my computer. And it's a whole like, where did I put that to do list? I probably lost a lot of those. And if it's like really important task, would usually come to me.

But yeah, to have something standardized that I can access like right there, that can be handy.

think that would help. I used to also have a paper to-do list and I would have high, medium, and low. And then I got a column of future ideas. And it was like any business idea that I came up with, I'd like put it here to think about. And then I lost the to-do list. And I'm like, all of my ideas are gone. And so that's another thing that I really like about Google Task is you can't forget it. It's organized. It integrates with your calendar.

Speaker 2 (46:42.638) And so I think if you know your calendar's working for you, leverage that opposed to finding a whole other.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, because I got the I'm on like a Google business page or I have Google business accounts. So I have a lot of Google integrations. But that one said like, hop up on my calendar would be handy to see. Yeah, it's like you reflect at one point and then you kind of set that up. It's not like it's there every day. And I feel like with a to do list, I feel like constantly adding and taking out and it

I get sidetracked a lot. If anyone's out there listening, they know me. I get sidetracked.

And also being a business owner, know, we're doing client care, we're doing marketing, we're scheduling, we're doing administrative, we're billing. And so it's really easy to get scattered brain because when you are a solo practice owner like yourself, you're doing everything. And so if you don't have a to-do list, you end up seeing a client, submitting one claim, charting, emailing, shoot, I forgot to. And so we're kind of ping ponging back and forth. And so what I really love about

having a good to-do list and time blocking is when you focus on one task or category at a time, you're so much more effective versus when you bounce around, you forget stuff and we're just, then we just get drained. And so I always love telling my solo practice owners to time block. so whether you do client care in the morning and marketing on Monday afternoons, client care all day, Tuesday, Wednesday, you do

Speaker 2 (48:24.43) billing in the morning, admin afternoon, of planning task, batching your stuff by category, either by full day, half day, or like putting time blocks. And then you'd feel a little bit less, less, not totally not scattered anymore, but less scattered when you have a plan and you have, again, that same structure and you kind of know where you're supposed to go versus you think about those days where you just open up your computer and you go, it's like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

Yeah, if there's like a build up to like you have so much going and that day is just like you you go a million miles an hour in a million different directions, but having that direction and consistency with the simpler tasks can be really helpful to count the continuity because you work on something that makes a lot of other things and you're not going to get like the follow through that you would if you just had that focus. I think right now I'm kind of in that like

backed off hours on my other position, put more into this, but also that's more clients. And I'm the one responsible. If there's like a rush of clients, it's me that did that. So reflecting before I set that up for myself, not like I think we've probably all done this, like, you book a whole bunch of people one day and you're like, OK, that's future me's problem. And then that that calendar day comes and you're like.

What? did I do this? Yes. Which rules not that's in. mean, that's kind of how I think we kind of earn our stripes at sometimes, but also being able to kind of. Yeah, those really busy days and kind of implementing like the kind of a space to kind of breathe time, like I don't want to book that into things, but like I do it. You know, when it's been a kind of crazy day like it.

Same day charting is a great thing to do, but if you kind of do too much, you gotta have that space to kind of like take a break. Yeah. So there's a lot going on with the chaos of the practice.

Speaker 2 (50:36.864) there's a lot going on and there's a lot of potential and there's a lot of enthusiasm and motivation that's able to propel your practice forward. think you just need to almost kind of like horse blinders, have someone put some horse blinders on and get some systems to make your work more efficient. So I think between the to-do list, time blocking and spending one hour a week really working on your business should

kind of help you take that next step to get where you're going. Speaking of next step, this was the fastest 50 minutes. I'd love to keep talking more. John, tell people where they can find you. If they want to follow, check out your website.

Yes, it is now completely all on UHS Nutrition, Y-U-H-A-S, UHSnutrition.com. thinking about spreading into social media, not that excited. I'll have my, maybe my wife has more interest in the socials to, steer that ship. But for now, yeah, find me on there. And if you're in New York area, I have a lot of, insurance contracts out there. So come find me. CKD Nutrition, Diabetes.

Just healthy living. So that's my kind of shtick.

I love it. Well, thank you for your energy and the chat today.