Rebekah Jones: [00:00:00] I was actually speaking to one of my clients the other day and she said, Hey, I just want to set up this big free clinic for everyone with a specific condition. And I said, that's amazing. So what's our plan to do that? Even mother Teresa had to raise funds to fund her big goals.
Chris: Welcome to how to build a profitable nutrition business.
If you love nutrition and you love helping people and you want to be in the game long enough to keep doing that, then this is the podcast for you. Let's get into it.
In today's episode of How To Build A Profitable Nutrition Business, we've got the amazing Rebecca Jones. I've come across Rebecca's content online and I think she's revolutionising the way we do business. Rebecca is an accredited practicing dietician, holds a Master in Nutrition and Dietetics from New Zealand.
She has extensive experience across Australia and New Zealand and she founded the premium private practice method and now dedicates her time to being a business coach revolutionizing the health industry and [00:01:00] empowering practitioners through digital innovation and advocating for sustainable practice models.
I won't go into it too much, but Rebecca came from a private practice background, seeing a high volume of clients just to make ends meet. There was a lot of unpaid work, GP letters, admins, emails, and it was burning her out. She repackaged her services into high ticket offers and went from near burnout to six figures online without the stress but providing a quality service for her clients.
This is certainly an episode that I think every nutrition professional should listen to. Let's get into it. So welcome back to how to build a profitable nutrition business. And today we are really fortunate to have dietician Rebecca Jones on the podcast. Now, Rebecca and I have had conversations probably over the last six to 12 months, and certainly A lot of common interests and overlap and I won't spoil it too much, but I'm really excited to have Rebecca on because I think what she brings to the [00:02:00] industry is long overdue and add so much value to our profession.
So Rebecca is a dietitian from New Zealand. She was in the hospital system, went into the private practice space, but now has moved over into coaching. And so I won't reveal too much more than that. I'll hand out to you, Rebecca, if you can give us a little bit of a. background on how you got to where we are today.
Rebekah Jones: Yeah, absolutely, Chris. It's so good to be here. And like I said, we're both practitioners trying to help other practitioners. So we've had plenty of stuff to bond over and coming up in the clinical setting ourselves. So it's been really good talking to you. As you said, I'm from New Zealand. So before we get started, if any of my E's are extended and you think I say one thing.
It's not that, and it's probably the other as we go through this podcast, so just a caveat before we get started, but yeah, I'm a registered dietitian, I'm still registered, so I transferred, I'm over in Sydney now, but I brought my registration over, but I suppose like many health practitioners or dietitians [00:03:00] especially, when I was trained, We were taught it was very much a clinical focus and we were taught very much to go into the hospital and that's what it was, um, set up for.
So that's where I spent the first three or so years of, um, my career on the wards in the inpatient scene. But I suppose where you and I sort of bonded, Chris, was the love of private practice. And the potential of what private practice had to offer. And that's always where I wanted to go for so many reasons, freedom, flexibility, like uncapped income and how to help more people and do things my own way and be my own boss and connect with amazing people like you.
So I suppose when I was in the hospital system, like I said, it's a great place. I learned so much, connected with some amazing people and got a lot of experience that sort of set me up for success later. But. I knew I wanted to be in private practice. So I started seeing private practice clients on the side after hours, on the weekends to try and wean off the hospital setting and I'd [00:04:00] managed to wean off to four days a week.
So I had a full day to work on my private practice, which was fantastic, but very quickly, and I don't know if any, anyone else listening to this has sort of tried to wean off, they did the math and thought, okay, how many hourly rate patients Do I have to see in order to get me to an income where I can actually confidently things we've got to pay for in the world, wean off these hospital hours and really grow this business into really what I want it to dream it to be, I suppose.
And when I did the math. It was crazy. I would have to see so many patients and clients. I would have to be working on the weekends. I'd have to be working after hours. I'd basically not be able to spend any time with my friends and family. So rather than getting on that hamster wheel too long, I quickly sort of got coaching from actually outside of the healthcare industry.
Cause I couldn't actually find any other practitioners who were doing anything other than the initial. And then follow up right style. And I transitioned into [00:05:00] what I teach about now, which is high ticket program creation. So in my second year of being registered as a practitioner, I built a really high value program.
It was called Health Not Diet. So my background is very much in the non diet intuitive eating space. And I sold it for 3, 000. And I got this person amazing results. I only had to manage the admin of that one person rather than 10 people. And it was fantastic. And then I thought, Oh my gosh, I only have to sell like one or two or three a month.
And I, that's what propelled me to be able to wait off the hospital sitting in like rapid time. And it was going really, really well. And just, I suppose, naturally I just started talking to. My colleagues and my peers, other practitioners, and they were just asking, like, how did you do this? Because I think, like, Chris, we've, we've spoken about this quite a lot, but so many practitioners get paid for that one hour, but they do four hours of admin and work around it that they don't get paid [00:06:00] for.
So just this other way of working was really amazing and fun. That's how I transitioned to helping other people as well. in Sydney
Chris: well, I love that story. I love how you got there. I mean, you described how, when you were doing the numbers about how you worked out that you're going to have to be working weekends after hours and seeing so many people, you basically just did it.
Described the first few years of my private practice. It was just hard work and I'm a slow learner. I, I didn't get to the high ticket option, uh, like you got to. So I love,
Rebekah Jones: You've got more patience.
Chris: but for me it was kind of like, I had young kids and it was, I just need to work as hard as I can to, to basically put food on the table.
So I couldn't even think of anything else. I was too deep in the problem, but I couldn't think of the solution. And it was really my wife, Stacey, who helped pull us out and really grew our business. But for me, I was just. Just work hard and try and make it work. But after talking to you, like I've said this to you multiple times, like this is something our profession needs desperately is that coaching around [00:07:00] pricing and just that breaking of the mold and not to do it the way it's always been done.
And so that's why I love, I follow you on Instagram and LinkedIn, I just, any of your posts, I just really immerse myself in because I just love it. It's great. Who was your, like your business coach? Was it someone that was, is that where the high ticket idea come from? Like. Somebody
Rebekah Jones: absolutely. And I think what you just described is a lot of practitioners weren't doing anything different because we are just stuck in the way we're taught is a very traditional setting.
So it's hard to think outside the box. So I've had multiple coaches now, and I think it's the fastest path to get to where you want to go. I definitely couldn't have done it by myself, but those first ones, those first coaches who really laid the path and really opened my eyes to, Oh my gosh. Of course, there's other ways of working.
We're actually from outside of the healthcare industry, because if we really reflect and like you're in tech, Chris, like there are so many other businesses and ways of working outside of the [00:08:00] healthcare industry that work really well, and we can just apply it to our system. So that's what I'm really passionate about is aligning the two, because at the end of the day, We do have regulations.
We do have guidelines and things that we have to stick to as healthcare professionals. So really trying to marry the two, but I think you can take influence from anywhere outside of the healthcare industry, but apply it to these experts who actually can help people actually know what they're talking.
They've got credentials and can really drive humanity forward in the end.
Chris: We're in a group called Business Blueprint or my wife was actually the member. We've been in it for eight or nine years now, I believe. And so we get away It's meant to be four times a year, but one of us will typically stay. But I love getting away because it's people from all different industries and there's world class speakers.
And a lot of it is not relevant to my business. Even when we had the dietetic practice, it wasn't relevant, but it still gets you thinking outside the box. And it gets you thinking about your business in a way that you would never think about it while you were at work. At work. And so that's [00:09:00] why the, these business mentors and groups I find so valuable.
And I come from a working class background where this was so foreign to me, whereas my wife brought me into it. And it's just something that I just, you know, wholeheartedly advocate because the of the way it changed my thinking about. So I certainly understand what you mean by the influence of other businesses and how it can positively influence dietetics for sure.
Rebekah Jones: Yeah, absolutely. Once you open your eyes, I think when we, it makes sense, like if you're surrounded by your peers who are working in a certain way, and they're doing initial consults and followups, or they are on the grind, they are doing hourly rates, they are all this sort of thing. It's just what you're brought up to believe is the only way.
So. Really extending your reach is super powerful. I couldn't agree more.
Chris: Now we can talk about a million things, Rebecca, but there is something specific I would love to talk to you about because of that high ticket item service that you discuss and it's pricing. And I reached out to you in particular and I'll probably, if you were open to it, get you back onto this podcast to discuss a million things.
But, but the [00:10:00] first thing I wanted to talk about was pricing, because this is something that. I struggled with when we had our business. So I spoke about this in some of our earlier podcasts with my wife. She was always wanting to increase our prices. But for me, I am a health professional, like that idea of charging someone more for something that I'm trying to help them with was really conflicting for me.
And it wasn't until eventually my wife had said this multiple times, but it was like, you can't survive. If you can't survive as a business, you can't have that impact. And so when we would increase our prices, I would literally not sleep for the night. I'm thinking, Oh, what's this going to do to our business?
And not once did anyone in any time we increase our price ever mentioned it. They never even noticed that we'd put our price up five or 10 or whatever it was. And like we, our business, we might've been seeing 300 people a week across the business and that's like 1500, 2, 000 a week extra just for that little increase in price.
And not one single client ever mentioned it, which on reflection, I look back and go, God, I'm an idiot. I've left, I waited too [00:11:00] long. So to have you come on and talk about this with your high ticket item is going to be massive. I can't wait to hear what you say.
Rebekah Jones: Yeah. Oh, it's fantastic. And I think it's.
You're not alone. I've been through that process too and I think there's a culture built up that you can't really help people and could be a good person, be a good health practitioner and charge a lot, but you can do both. There's space for both at the same time. So I totally get it and It sounds like exactly like your story talking about price.
If you are listening to this and you're thinking, Oh my gosh, this is so scary. I don't know where to start. I feel like a bad person. We get it right. And we're all in the same boat, but I suppose where that comes from. is for myself, working from the hospital background, it makes sense because not only did we not have to set prices, we didn't have to talk about money at all.
Patients came to see us, we helped them, it was all a merry work, a good world, and then we got paid our salary and we could just leave it alone. And then even if you worked for a private practice for someone else, For [00:12:00] example, yes, you got to talk about money a little bit more, but at the end of the day, the price is still set for you and you get a certain percentage and you don't have to think about it again too much.
But then when you move into your own private practice, not only do you have to set prices about your own worth, which is very confronting, you have to talk about money openly. Consistently, and you have to ask these people that you have a soft spot for because you've got probably got into this industry to help people to hand over their hard earned cash for you.
So it is really scary from this background. So I'm really glad we're having this conversation to just open it up and get it something that we can talk about a little bit more. And as you mentioned, Chris, I, my clients are charging three to now 15, 000 per person. So we're in a whole nother bracket. But yeah, like I said, pricing's really scary because on top of all that, just not having had to talk or deal with money before, when you are putting up your price, like you had with your clinic, you're scared that people will say no.
You're, [00:13:00] you think people will think that you are ripping them off. You are scared that your clients will go to competitors instead of you. So you can get really stuck. So I just want to put that out there. You're not alone. If this is a scary topic for you.
Chris: Yes, it, it. I'm more comfortable with it now, but I'd love to hear your strategy or your thinking about, okay, how much do we charge?
Where do we land on a price? Where does value come into it? What, how do you work these things out as a clinician?
Rebekah Jones: Yeah, I suppose the first thing I, I speak to all of my clients about, and there's lots of different pricing models and basically you can run a successful business using any of them. I'll talk more about.
High ticket, just cause that's my forte and what I do as opposed to like memberships and things, but regardless of what type of business model you have, I suppose the first thing I tell people is that the good news is, and the truth is your mindset can change as you saw with your practice and really your ideal client.
Unfortunately, sometimes you have to take your health practitioner hat off for a [00:14:00] second and put the business hat on to get yourself set up for the It's a success, but your ideal clients are not the ones who are bartering you down on prices and trying to get huge discount. There are so many other people out there that you can help.
And I think it's really honorable that there's a lot of practitioners. I was actually speaking to one of my clients the other day and she said, Hey, I just want to set up this big free clinic for everyone with a specific condition. And I said, that's amazing. So what's our plan to do that? Even mother Teresa had to raise funds to fund her big goals.
So we have to get you with time and energy and financial resources to be able to do that long term goal. So it's long term thinking, and really, if you're scared that. People aren't going to get the help they need because they can't afford you at the end of the day. And this might rub a few people the wrong way, but there's lots of other practitioners out there who are charging really cheap so they can just go see them.
But I just want you to focus on your business goals and providing more value so that you can put your prices up. Um, does that make sense?
Chris: [00:15:00] Uh, I love that. Like we, there's a couple of points that I just want to recap there because. One, you said that the clients that barter you down, or we always found that the, the people who we gave things away to, or they paid very little.
were actually the most difficult to deal with a lot of the time. Now, not always, like it was, if I was to try and group them, it was certainly the people that you thought you were doing an amazing thing for by giving it to them really cheap. They never really appreciated the services as much, whereas those that sort of paid for it, they valued it a lot.
So that, that is, is the first thing. And the second thing was then about Like your client who would like to open up a clinic for free is that you stay. So I said to me, you can't provide the service that you're seeing when, because we would see bulk bills initially to just, you know, lots and lots and lots of people at low cost.
They didn't pay the government paid. Um, And that was actually a really poor service I delivered because I had to see so [00:16:00] many. I couldn't deliver a good service. So I needed to charge more to, to actually give myself the breathing space and the financial means to actually provide a good service. And so your client that was then going to buy.
Obviously build enough financial security where she could then do more benevolent work and help people and offer free clinic. Just really strikes a chord with me. So I love hearing that. Thank you.
Rebekah Jones: Absolutely. And at the end of the day, if you, if you don't have enough revenue and profit and you go out of business or you burn out because you're working crazy hours in the next 10 years, no one's going to get helped.
So we actually need to put your oxygen mask on first in order to help more people long term. And as health practitioners, we tend to focus on other people and helping them But actually in order to help them, we have to help ourselves first. And this is where kind of the business hat has to come in. And I love what you said.
Like you have to start high. I don't know if you've heard about the way that Tesla did their sort of financial plan for their business is that they like health practitioners had this huge mission of doing this amazing [00:17:00] thing for the world, right? Having. electric cars, for example, saving the planet, like climate change.
It's very much like the health of the planet as opposed to health and health of people. But they knew that with their business plan, they couldn't just provide free electric cars to everyone in order to do that. In order to have that long term game, they actually started at the top. If you can picture a triangle where their first car, their first EV was actually, it was something like 250, 000 a car.
It might even be higher. And now that's not the average price. I don't know about you, Crystal. I couldn't afford that 250, 000 vehicle. They aimed it at the top one to 10 percent of the market. Now, the reason they did that is because they knew with their long term If they were able to sell just a handful of those, it would straight away, give them the cash injection, the time, energy, and resources in order to bring on new team members, have time to actually develop that [00:18:00] car, make it better, make it cheaper, and then create a cheaper version for the rest of the market and work their way down.
Like that. So that's exactly what I was saying with this other clinician. If she wants to do something free, first, we need to get her in a great position where she does have her oxygen mask on first so she can provide these free services and not be worrying about her own bills and her own health.
Chris: Yes, yeah, yeah.
I love that. I've heard the Tesla story and it's worked, hasn't it? Like the successful model. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that's fantastic. So if I, okay, I've come to see you, right? Let's say I engage you as the business coach. I, particularly back when we had our business, really would have struggled for coming up with a price.
How, What sort of things are you suggesting that because going from bulk billing to saying, okay, I'm 3, 000, for example, what, how do I work out the value? And I guess the features to build into something like that, that I could sell to clients.
Rebekah Jones: Yeah, really good question. I suppose the first thing that I say to people is sometimes it needs to be a bit of [00:19:00] unlearning and awareness of how they're currently sitting there prices. So a lot of people listening and I did this, I'm as guilty of this as anyone else. I suppose when you're first starting out, if you have no experience, you have no runs on the board. If you don't have results with clients, just price it so that you can get people in the door so you can start helping them.
So you can get experience. So that's sort of another category, but I know there's going to be another portion of this audience where. They've been in this industry for a while. They have runs on the board. They have experience with clients. They're good at getting results. They're good at what they do, but they're still charging the same rates as a new grad or students who have just started.
And if they were in any other job other than their own private practice, like they're in a corporate job, for example, over the last, say, 10 years of practicing, they would have had so many pay rises and promotions and, you know, bonuses. But we don't do that. For ourselves. So first and foremost, it's really becoming aware of why is your price, what it is right now.[00:20:00]
And a lot of practitioners start with, they look at other practitioners. So we look at the market. So if you're in PCOS, for example, you might look at other PCOS, dieticians, nutritionists, naturopaths, whatever modality that you're in. Then we say, cool, how many years experience do I have? We tend to take the average of the rest of the market.
And then depending on our experience, go slightly lower. For a new grad, 120, 150, I've seen 80, even with dieticians who have master's degrees, or we go slightly to the top, which is like 250 an hour for those experienced clinicians. So then they basically try to compete by lowering their price or giving more free stuff or more free time from themselves, and it just leaves them in a sort of rat race.
And this It's not strategic, it's not a business plan at the end of the day. And it's super exhausting and actually can be quite bad for our industry as a whole, because if we're all racing to the bottom, we're basically [00:21:00] telling the population, this is what we're worth. This is how much you can expect to pay a dietician.
And we're actually just setting the whole place up for success. Now, the other thing I've seen is also just choosing numbers because they sound good. 1, 1, 1 9. And when we ask why, there's no thought process behind it too. So the first thing I get people to do is say, why have you picked the price that you have?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And I can go, I'll, I'll continue on. Because I suppose the thing is like within that one 20 to $250 per hour, I suppose the big thing here is that for an hourly rate session, and this is where my work comes in. There's only certain price point that you can charge per hour in the market, but at the same time, there's a reason for that because there's only so much value that you can provide in an hourly consult.
In order to increase your price, my practitioners who are charging four and five figures, it's not because we're just taking their current service and slapping a higher price tag on it. It's because first we actually increase the value. [00:22:00] Of the service they're providing and then naturally a higher price tag falls off the back of that rather the other way around So there's sort of two parts about this and number one is your value is not about how much time people spend with you It's about the result It's about the value that you provide.
It's about how you actually help them. And then part two is really about, it's not just about the stuff either. It's actually again, about the result and the value. So because you spend more time with them or because you have more stuff, you have more videos, trainings, you have more eBooks, you have more recipes that doesn't make it high value.
So I suppose if we skip ahead to like how you actually do raise your prices, we want to charge what A, you are actually worth and B, what actually value you provide your audience. So we do this with two things. Number one, we need to know your numbers. So your money map, what is, what are your goals? How much do you actually need?
And then two, we can increase the value by [00:23:00] actually restructuring the service you provide. So we can dive into both of those two buckets. But I think
Chris: so with the money map that you're talking about, like you desired annual income, like what want to be earning per year.
Rebekah Jones: Absolutely. I get all my clients to go through this money mapping, like knowing your numbers.
There's so many practitioners who absolutely do not know their numbers. But if you got out a pen and paper right now and you said, cool, what is my current What is my actual revenue goal, either monthly or annually? How many, and this is for business owners who are parents or do work part time, how many hours do I actually want to work per week, per month, per year?
How long does it actually take to deliver the service that I'm looking for? Providing how many clients within that? Can you actually serve per month or per year? What are the costs of my delivery service? Cause some of my clients added a lot of testing, DEXA scans, microbiome, like genetic supplements are included all of these sorts of things.
Like what is the cost? So therefore what is the profit margin [00:24:00] and how many hours do I actually want to work in business? And we look at all those numbers and say, do these match up?
Can I get to my revenue goal? Per or profit goal per month or per year with my current lifestyle, with the number of clients and will it actually get them a result as well?
And that's where a lot of my clients, the reason they go high ticket is because if you sell a 3, 000 program, say you want that mysterious 10 K months that everyone talks about online, right? That's three to four clients a month, rather than a hundred clients a month. So it will probably take you less time to deliver.
You can actually improve the business. You can do it even if you're a stay at home mom as well. And all of these sorts of things. So knowing those numbers first and doing a bit of an audit on that, I think is really, really important.
Chris: And imagine like for me, that amount of clients per week, the quality of the service you could actually provide is phenomenal.
Rebekah Jones: Oh, we can talk about this all day. So this is, I think this is one of the, I'm so glad you brought this up because this is one of the biggest things that [00:25:00] changed my mind about. High ticket in the first place, because I actually spoke to a practitioner and he said that he had 12 clients per day. And we had a bit of a back and forth, but I was like, there is no way the 12th client that day is getting the same value as client number one that day, because A, your coverage is drained and the admin you have to do around that.
But also this is the reason if you're contained to an hourly session, A, so many conditions. And I always say like, 10 years of binge eating can't be undone in a one hour consult. We're setting people up for success. But this is why we also see clinicians just throw information sheets and throw everything they can at the clients because they're worried they won't come back. So
Chris: trying to fix them in one consult.
Rebekah Jones: It's crazy and we do the follow ups, but maybe they don't turn up. Maybe there's DNAs. We can't forecast income this way as well. So the biggest thing that changed my mind about everything was this thing called [00:26:00] revenue for fulfillment. And I don't know if you, if anyone listening has heard of this before, but if you've been checking out from this podcast right now, this is the thing to take away.
Revenue for fulfillment. Basically, how much you charge. If you say charge. A thousand dollars that money you can do two things with either a you can be like great. I charged a bit more I've got a thousand dollars or you know after tax a thousand dollars after tax day to play with either a I can go pay my bills buy my kids some new shoes all those sorts of things which i'm All for but b you can actually put that money into improving the service and getting clients and patients better outcome.
So if you're only being, if you're only charging 180 an hour and you've only got one hour, you haven't got much room to provide a better service. But if you charge 10, 000, let's do an activity. If I said you had to create a 100, 000 service, what could you then put into it because you've got that money to actually put back into the service?
You might have Other members [00:27:00] of MDT come in like physios, like a pelvic floor physio, a psychologist. You might get them a private chef so they don't have to prepare any of their meals. You might fly to their house and redo their cupboard for them to set them up for success. They might get the DEXA scans.
They might get all the testing. All the supplements might be included. Like the world is your oyster at this stage. There's no limits because you've got that cash injection. So it's not just about making you more money as a practitioner. It's about getting clients better results. Does that sort of make sense?
Chris: I love that. That is so beyond where I was five years ago that I love, I love it. Like, yes. And those clients are out there. They exist. So it's what else you can do. And you're right. Like you try and do a lot of those things, obviously not chefs and whatever you try.
Rebekah Jones: We've got the ends of the spectrum going on here.
Chris: You try and work with other multidis, other professions and try and collaborate and work together. But if you've built that into the price, that can be the norm, not the exception. So yeah. So revenue to fulfillment, what [00:28:00] else could you do? Revenue
Rebekah Jones: for fulfillment. Yeah. Oh, I'd be happy to share with your audience.
I've actually got this big checklist, which is not exhaustive, but just examples of some of the things that my clients are putting into their programs to get them to be this valuable because I think this is really important to just open awareness. Like they can have it. That's absolutely fine. But
Chris: thank you.
Rebekah Jones: No, you're so welcome. There's so many practitioners sitting there, or maybe even listening to this thinking like, man, like that all sounds fantastic. It'd be great if I could charge 2000, 3000, 10, 000 per person, but I'm already having. Financial objections at 200 an hour. And I think they're sitting there thinking, of course, like the more I charge, the more objections I've got.
And you alluded to this before, that's not actually the case. And I think what this revenue fulfillment idea conveys is that the service we're providing at this end is not the same. So we can't really compare the two because that's comparing apples with oranges. If that makes sense. Of course, I wouldn't pay any [00:29:00] more for a one off hourly session, depending on what was in there.
We can talk about VIP days and all those sorts of things
Chris: later.
Rebekah Jones: But when you've got a better service where they're more likely to stay for long term, because you've got more consults, they've got other forms of support in there, they're going to pay more because A, it's more likely to actually get them the result.
Everything's done for them. So if you send them the supplements you have, their meals delivered to them, you are a phone call away rather than having to wait for the next consult. For example, they're more likely to get results if they buy into it. And it's completely different to how they've worked with potentially other practitioners where they haven't seen the results.
And the past.
Chris: Yeah, that's right. And if you compare it to weight loss surgery, people will drop 20 grand on surgery for, for an outcome. Like it's, we can get them results without, without needing to go under the knife. I think that kind of a useful comparison. I, I think I might know the answer to this already, but okay, let's say I'll come up with a price.
Let's say I'm going to charge 6, 000 for [00:30:00] example. Yeah. Do you, do you? Recommend or is it horses for courses where the client pays that up front or they're on a payment plan, but there's a commitment. I guess my point is there a commitment that there's no backing out of that. And that's not to be like a harsh business person, but it's that commitment that you want them.
The results are there for them at the end of the process. Program. You know what I mean? It's not that look, try before you try it for a month. If you don't like a pull out, because then you're doing it as a service for the, for what you're offering.
Rebekah Jones: Yeah. I think with this, like there's a lot of nuances in terms of what the program looks like with my practitioners, I focus on let's create the best service and then decide the price tag rather than being like, I'm going to create a 6, 000 program and then decide what goes into it.
So we create the dream service first. I think that's the intentionality around that is much more aligned with us as clinicians, it's much more ethical. So definitely starting with that, and then we can set the price for that. And every clinician is going to be different, but to answer your question in terms of like paying up front, the say, like a payment [00:31:00] plan, I've seen both work, but I think both of them, and sometimes a payment plan with, when you get to higher prices, they both help the client.
Invest in themselves, because those who pay attention, you know, how many of you have 10 inbox that you haven't even opened because it was low ticket. So actually charging more, if you're going to pay me 10, 000 to work with me, you're probably going to show up and do the things. And a lot of our services, whether you're a physio, a psychologist, a dietician, a nutritionist, a naturopath, Chinese medicine, they, we actually require the patient to do a lot of stuff.
We can't do it for So the more we can get them bought into the service, the better. But when it comes to pay up front, the payment plans, like I said, I've said, seen both work, but they both need a commitment. So this is where I put a lot of emphasis on legals as well. So like agreement. So if some people can pay up front, that's great, much better for your business, having a cash injection for revenue, for fulfillment, rather than dragging it out, and that's where practitioners get stuck on the hamster wheel because they're getting.
[00:32:00] 150 per consult, and they've only got that much to play with at any one time. But where payment plans can come in handy is when you get to higher prices. If you think about other things in our world, like a mortgage, for example, we don't typically sit there and go, can I give a million dollars upfront right now?
We think about how much can I afford per month? So that's how a lot of people think about these. Plans as well, but I get it in writing about the payment plan and then there will be buyout clauses There will be refunds like stuff happens in life as long as you've got them written down in an agreement So that it's not this emotional thing and you can just say this is what we agreed to Then I think that's the safe place to do so legals are super important the more you charge as well.
Chris: Yeah. Okay. Yep Oh great. That's Answered my question perfectly. Look, we could talk forever, but I just want to quickly summarize a couple key points there for what I've taken away from today is one, don't plug yourself the smarter ways to do it and to break that [00:33:00] mold and that mindset and look at what else is out there and By all means, reach out to Rebecca.
People can follow you on Instagram. We'll share in the show notes, your Instagram, LinkedIn, email, your website is now live, I believe.
Rebekah Jones: Hopefully by the time you listen to this, it will be there. If not message me.
Chris: New website going up now. So we'll put all those in there, but it would be certainly, don't follow down that traditional path of time for money, there's smarter ways we can do it.
And as a profession, we. I only going to improve and provide a better service if we adopt this method rather than the Medicare bulk bill time for money slave labor has been doing for eons. The other thing is that revenue for fulfillment where you can charge more, but that means you can provide more for your service.
Whereas if you're charging a capped lower rate, then there's, there's nothing in there for you to improve your business and time included. And then the last one was about. Provide, create the service that you want to provide, [00:34:00] then add the price. I love that because that's something I like, even after talking to you multiple times, I'm thinking, I've been thinking price first.
Okay, how can I come up with features to make that valuable? Whereas it's not, you've got to think of the client, the service, and what you want to deliver as a clinician that's going to help the client. And then you build the price around that. So is that a fair summary? I know we could talk for hours, but
Rebekah Jones: you've done a great job.
And I think. Like that last point is really important because we are doing stuff to help people at the end of the day. So that intentionality, that ethical clinical element around it, I think is so important. But once you start creating your best case service to help your clients get the results, more likely to get the results, to do it faster with less effort from them.
Naturally, it's going to be worth more, just like anything that's a bit of quality is going to be a better value at the end of the day. So I think you've summed that up beautifully. Oh,
Chris: thank you. Now, to finish off a quick question, and I'll make this a bit of a theme with the folks asking us how to build a profitable nutrition business.
We've got [00:35:00] listeners that, And you to the business side of things or people that have been in the nutrition space for some time. If there's one piece of advice that you could share with them, that's going to help them survive or sustain a business so they can continue to make the impact that they aspire to do.
What would that one piece of advice be?
Rebekah Jones: I think it's two parts here. So number one, I really want everyone listening to this to really get clear on their own worth and their own value. So do a bit of an audit. On yourself. How many years of education and training have you put into where you are today? How much professional experience, how many challenges have you overcome?
What achievements have you had? What client results have you achieved? What specialized skills have you done? How many PD events have you gone to? How much money have you sunk into your degrees? And what unique perspectives or approaches do you also bring to the business? Where you might have multiple degrees or multiple specialities as well.
And really get to a point where you're thinking about that and thinking, Man, like. I'm good at what I [00:36:00] do. Like I am high value because if you don't back yourself first, no one else will back you. And then the one key, the next step is actually being able to articulate your value to the customer. Because a lot of clinicians, what I see them do is say, Hey, I have a nutrition business.
You can sign up to an hourly consult with me as this much, but they do so much in that, that they're not articulating. Cause many clinicians who are listening to this probably already do send emails for free already do provide resources already do message their clients after hours do admin work. So instead of saying, Hey, it's an hourly consult for this month, if you could just list all the things that you actually do.
And then say over six weeks, all of this is worth this and just articulate what you actually do in your business. I think it's going to be the first step game changer for anyone.
Chris: Oh, that is such a gold message. I love that. Like one, you were lifting up the, the whole nutrition industry [00:37:00] by advocating that.
Because I think, again, reflecting on myself, we're guilty of not selling ourselves. I wrote a book and wouldn't even put my photo on it. Why? So you've got to put your photo on it. No, I don't want it. Because it's that, I don't know, like imposter syndrome. You kind of, who the hell am I to write a book?
Rebekah Jones: That's why you've got to do the audit first and back yourself. I actually went to a talk last night and one of the best quotes I've ever seen was, we're at an age, especially on social media and things like that, we're Influences are out and experts are in and it's our time to you're really good at your craft.
And what I do, and the reason I do this is because I want to stop these people who are amazing, who actually have credentials, who can actually help people articulate. How good they actually are and come out of hiding at the end of the day.
Chris: Oh, and they're everywhere. They're everywhere. Like you look at your network on LinkedIn and you're just so many amazing people.
I love it. Thank you so much. We could talk for ages, Rebecca. Thank you so much for coming on. I will definitely [00:38:00] reach out and try and get you back on for multiple other episodes and features, but we'll leave it at that for today. So thanks for your time.
Rebekah Jones: You're so welcome. Thanks for having me. I love what you're doing.
Chris: Do you find this podcast valuable? There may be other nutrition professionals out there will also. If you like, share and subscribe, it's going to help other nutrition professionals make an impact on the world, just like you. Thanks.
