PODCAST EPISODE 15
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of how to build a profitable nutrition business. Today, I have another male dietitian who has pioneered a really successful business up in North Queensland. And so when you hear Mitch's story, you'll certainly relate to just the hard work that he's put in to grow such a flourishing business.
And I'd like to hand over to Mitch. Firstly, mate, thank you very much for coming on today. And if you could give our listeners a bit of a background about health management dietitians and sort of where you started off and how you've got to where you are today. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
And it's something that over the years I've been really I guess really passionate about the business side of things just as much as the nutrition element. And so when I finished uni at Sunshine Coast uni and I think it was 2011, I think it was maybe 2012, I think it was 2011, long time ago.
And and I I did a little bit of private practice work in Brisbane. And I just. I didn't fall in love with the industry and then so essentially I had an [00:01:00] opportunity where a job came up at health management dieticians and Tara diversity owned the business at the time and.
And she interviewed me over the phone. I think I applied the very last day cause I only saw it very late. Applied, got a phone call that afternoon and interviewed the next day. And then I was up here, I think within two weeks. So I was really fortunate to have that I guess my first start. And so since then health management for me has been everything in terms of my identity and who, we've created this business around everything.
And so for me. The business sort of represents an opportunity to be able to help people, particularly in a local community like Cairns and Mareeva and Atherton. So a lot of that sort of Cairns, Atherton Tableland region as well. And for us, we really focus on having a really personalized approach and our slogan is, supportive, friendly and healthy. And those are the three things that we really want to push across to our clients. And that's what we want to be [00:02:00] known for. We've got those three locations. We've got six full time dietitians, including me, and we've got a practice manager and and a full time receptionist as well.
So we we look after. I guess probably every type of client that you would say in a private practice setting and fortunate or no, I use the word fortunate. I think in that because we're 1 of the only sort of businesses in the region, specific dietetic practices In that we've had to make sure that every person we've employed or when we've done some additional training and upskilling, we've made sure that we've got someone that, is really upskilled in that particular area.
And myself, sports nutrition, and we've got another dietician who's excellent at eating disorders and another one, from a gut health. And so we've got a really good mix of those people. But one of the things that I really stand by is that we all have to be good at being, being able to see [00:03:00] everyone, but of course, if we need that extra little skill set we've got that person there that's done the extra upskilling as well.
Yeah, you really need that, don't you, in those regional practices. You need your specialist dieticians there, but you've got to have a generalist approach. Yeah, I relate to that for sure, because our practice was regional, like in central Queensland, so I know exactly what you're talking about.
No, mate you've owned health management dietitians now for nine years, is my numbers correct? Is that right? No, actually a bit longer. I think it's, it was 10 years last year. So it must be 11. I maybe I've got one, but it's definitely over 10. I know that. Yeah. Yeah. So you went from, I think an initial turnover around 300 K to about 1.
3 million, if you don't mind me saying. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't mind. No, that's fine. And I'm a pretty open book. I think. It's really hard. Sometimes people are very closed off about that sort of thing, but I think it's really important when you've got an audience that are, kind to, to benchmark or trying to figure out where you sit and how you're [00:04:00] going.
It's those are things that I think are really important. So no problem there. Yeah. So I mean like that's fantastic growth. You were saying early on you, you weren't in love with the industry, but the move up there and owning your business, has that like really developed the passion because I guess I, again, I'm talking about my own experience.
I'm a little bit the same way. I work better when my own boss, because I can fix my mistakes and I can implement changes and see growth. And, reading your sort of background, it seems like. You know, like you, you really look into the data of your business and make changes and really enjoy seeing that growth that's come from it.
Would I be right in saying that? Yeah, definitely. And I think there's something really. I think it's really cool when you can go I'm going to, we've identified a problem. Let's just say from an administration perspective, there might be something that maybe we could be doing a little bit more efficiently.
And I remember every year. There has always been something that we've changed, and [00:05:00] it's just resulted in either a monetary, return, whether that be more efficiency or whatever, or maybe it's hey, it's made our amazing admin team's job on the front desk just that easier.
And I think about just there's so many examples, but 1 example is, just going from an old paper form years ago, and then it might take. I don't know, five minutes to input, to input that data into the system, five minutes, times an average of 150 new clients a month.
That's a lot of time. And, when you add that up and then the saving that therefore the time that my receptionist has by not having to do that anymore, I can get them to do another job that, improves another area. And I remember when we first took over and this was a long time ago when practice management systems weren't really in and I remember we had a Google calendar was our calendar management system and we use word doc.
As our progress notes and there was even points that we'd handwrite [00:06:00] progress notes and scan them in, on an old scanner that you'd put that. I was just like, unbelievable. There's no way we could do what we do today. If we were still doing those things. So that's what I love when you can make those small little changes and you can see, an improvement.
Yeah. You are basically a mirror to my business. We started off with Word doc and you could actually put some VBA code into a Word doc that would help populate, if you put in it would calculate BMI. So you could do a little bit of code in the background of them, but they were always really clunky and it never worked.
And eventually we went to an access database, which is. The dinosaur of word, but we built a system around that and it was back in like our business. We started in 2015. It was a mismatch of all these tech products that were slowly coming to the market, but, now the solutions where it just does it all.
So it's yeah, that efficiency you talk about is huge, isn't it? Massively. Yeah. And I think that's probably something that I really strive on is being able to go, okay, what is [00:07:00] the problem that we have? And what is the potential solution? And I, one of the things that I still do, but I did earlier on was I would go out and I'd sit on the, I'd be a receptionist for a day or two days every month and I go out and just the things of being able to, answer the phone, do all the day to day stuff that, you've got a, an admin team doing, but they're just little things that I guess I've always been very fortunate.
I've got a great admin team, but it's just little things that you just pick up on and go, why are we doing it that way? And I was like, we can do that better. Let's change this and this. And then bang, all of a sudden it's, and I think I've been really. Forward with a lot of my staff in that.
I really want them to have the autonomy and have the ability to know that they can make changes. We don't just continue to do the same thing because that's what we've always done. And I really want people to feel like it's their little baby that they can, mold and shape and change for the better.
So yeah, that's [00:08:00] something we try and work on. Yeah, that's fantastic. So you've. Seems to have kept the team together for a long time, like a lot of your, cause you got a practice manager that runs the place will manage a lot of the systems for you too, don't you? Yeah. She is the everything.
She's the heart of the business and we're very fortunate to have her. She's got an awesome mix just of never stressing, never worrying. Nothing's a problem, and And when I when we have our little discussions, the biggest thing that I want from her is not to be 100 percent busy.
I want her to be 60, 70 percent busy with tasks and whatnot, but I want that 30 percent to be open to go, Hey, what do you need from me today? Is there anything I can do to help you with? So it makes people feel like we're really a team and there's someone there to help. And we're not just always.
Flat stick. And when someone comes into your office, there's nothing worse than when you walk in and you're not present with that person. And I want to be able to have that. Someone comes in and ask the question. I want to be able to drop everything that I'm doing. And I want to help that person.
And that's [00:09:00] something we try and push across with from manager perspective as well. Yeah, that's fantastic. What are you, it sounds like an awesome culture that you've built there and that's yeah, we're fortunate. We've had good people over the years and and I think the other thing, and probably being in Central Queensland as well, but, from a, being in Cairns and Tablelands, Most of the dietitians, they're based down south or so on.
So we've really struggled to recruit really experienced dietitians. So one of the things that, and particularly, you might have an experienced dietitian and they might not move because they might have a family or they've got, other family where they are or other commitments. So it's been really hard to recruit.
So what I guess Recruitment strategy has been is to take a relatively new graduate and really put a lot of extra training and support involved. And I can honestly say, we've picked up a lot of really great dietitians that after, 2 years they're potentially better than someone who's been practicing for 5 to 10 because [00:10:00] of all that extra training and exposure that they've been.
And that, that must help with your retention. I'd imagine yeah, absolutely. And we've changed lots over the years. We started off initially maybe with not awesome employee retention. Not terrible, but not where I'd like it to be. And we just kept changing things and improving, salaries and conditions and trying to make it, a really awesome place.
And I'm being really honest, we actually lost a little bit of our culture. I reckon about midway through, probably the 5 or 6 year mark. And I don't, I probably can't put my finger on what it was particular, but we really worked hard in the last 2 to 3 years to change that. We run work retreats, we, we do lots of professional development and lots of that support we're talking about from a manager perspective.
And I think that's really changed a lot as well. Yeah. Yeah. So that to be honest with you as well, mate we lost ours. We had a great culture and lost ours. And it was actually part of the demise where we decided to sell the business because yeah, [00:11:00] we just had enough. And you were saying earlier in, in the questions that I sent you, you'd be up at four, go to the gym, start at six, you get home at 6.
00 PM, then you're up till midnight doing work. And that was us with the young family. You just, we were just burnt out. So the culture lost was our fault. But we just had enough, so make kudos for keeping it going and turning it around because it's so important, isn't it?
To have a good culture, like when everything is just humming together, the business thrives. Yeah, definitely. And it's. And I think, without it, it just takes one person to either be the really good culture adder or the subtractor and it's just, I don't know, little things like everyone comes in and they all like everyone here is really good friends with each other and I think there is one person in particular in this business that makes it.
And I think that person adds a lot of value to us and that stuff that you just, you can't put a price on. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. So mate, over the years, if I can [00:12:00] dive a little bit deeper cause obviously you've had good growth. You've got a great business. What are some of the key aspects that you think have really fueled that growth?
Yeah, I think there's probably been a myriad of things. I think the efficiency element that we spoke about before those little, we moved to a, using clinical, we moved to a lot of other data tracking. One of the things and probably just talking about that, that growth from an overall revenue perspective. One of the things that I have no problem doing is making sure that my staff know and our dieticians in particular know their numbers. I want them to know, okay, what's been their revenue for the month. We've got a really sort of good spreadsheet.
And it's got, revenue how many initial, how many new clients, rather how many total appointments the average revenue per appointment what's their review ratio and there's 1 or 2 other metrics, but they're like our key things that we keep track of. And every month when we do that [00:13:00] data, I sit down with each person and go, okay our cancellation rate, that's what it was.
And so I sit down with everyone, we go through that data. And I think if say, there's been a lot more cancellations, we don't look at it as what are you doing wrong? We look at it and go, okay, what's happened over the course of the month? What sort of things have you been working on? What are some thought processes around why this could be occurring?
And then we can put some strategies in place that can help improve that. Because I think, Otherwise, if we're not always looking at some of that data that comes through, I find that you just continue to do the same thing. You get stuck in the mold and it could be like, you get a client comes in and they're really motivated, really keen, just a weight loss client.
And if you frame it in a way of, Oh, you're actually doing really well. Like, why don't I see you in a month? That person goes I'm not doing really well. Like I, I come in here for help. Like a month is too long in their mind, but they may not repeat that. So it could be like, you made some really good changes.
This is really great. We're going [00:14:00] to make a few extra tweaks in the plan, but I want to see you next week. And what we're going to do is we're going to really work on that accountability. We're going to keep a food diary and that person can walk away feeling supported and almost like they're being nurtured.
So that little thing might actually make the client. Get better results by coming back more frequently. So stuff like that, just the way that you phrase things, I find is really important. So I think that's been a big part of is looking at the data. Yeah, it's huge, isn't it? And it's, I've had this conversation on the podcast before, is that it's a real balance.
I find for a business owner to have that conversation with the staff. Because the staff, it's easy to think that, oh, you're just thinking about the money. And hand up, yes, I am thinking about the money, but it's not the only thing I'm thinking about. I have to think about the money because I need to pay the bills and your wage.
But to help the client, it's contact, it's support. It's the more contact you've got, the better their results. So it's a bit of a challenge. And Matt, you're big on customer satisfaction, which is what I'd love to hear about. Like, how do you address that? [00:15:00] Yeah. So we we have a really simple customer satisfaction survey that goes out to every client.
So they receive a text message within 24 hours. That's all automated through Pet Talker, which is like a link on of Clinico. And so basically 24 hours after their initial consult, they get a text message and we tell them that it's coming. So we say, look, you're going to get a text message.
24 hours after it's just a really simple 1 question answer. And basically, the question is, we've actually just changed it yesterday. So we had a how likely are you to refer? To a friend or a family member, and we've actually just changed that just the wording slightly were on a scale of 1 to 10.
Did we meet your expectations? And because I just, we didn't want it to be like, if you're not a person that's going to refer, that's totally fine. But in your head, you just might have that association. So we wanted it to be, have we met your [00:16:00] expectations? And so for us, anything under a 9 or a 10 is we need to do work with that.
And it might not mean that there was anything wrong or anything negative with the consult, but it might just be maybe what we, what they thought they were going to get was different to what we delivered. And so if we've got that disconnect with a client it means that maybe we could have done better about asking, what it is I can help you with today, or what are you going to get the most out of?
Because we often. Had this little, what we think a client needs versus what they want might be different. And that might be the only thing is that we provided an awesome service, but it just might not have been what they wanted. And so that can be more around our line of questioning, or when we introduce ourselves, what we're going to do today, that sort of stuff.
And so we get. A report back from pep talker and we get a bit of a summary that says, okay this dietitian had an average, of 9 or 10 out of 10. And then it goes through each of the responses and people can put a comment in if they want [00:17:00] to as well. The client and then all that feedback will go back to the dietitian every month.
So they can get an idea of, they might go, I did so well with that client and they come back and it's a six and you go, Oh. What happened there? Like I miss that. So yeah, it's a really good little training tool, I think. And we want people, and if it, our goal is that if somebody doesn't score us really well, we'll pick up the phone and call them and just, say, Hey, we just noticed you gave us a five out of 10.
Was everything okay? We really want to make sure we're meeting your expectations. What did we miss? That sort of stuff. Yeah. Do your dietitians. Enjoy like that time of the month where the stats are coming in almost like it's the report cards are coming out. I'd like to see how I done.
Do you find? I guess it's personality dependent, isn't it? But it's it is. Yeah. And some just love it because it's okay, I want to see it's a, you can look at the calendar and go, yep, it's full. When you get some sort of like quantitative data that says, this is how [00:18:00] you've done. I find some people are really good with that and other people hate it.
And I try, I'm really aware of that and it's, I don't want it to be a, oh, this is how you've done this month. What's going on? We just, we make it a really good, enjoyable conversation. What do you think you did really well? What could we do better? That sort of stuff. And I find it's not too much of an issue, but I'm, I am very aware of that.
That's, I don't want it to be a report card. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard, isn't it? Because it, it is so important for their development as a dietician, not just your business really, isn't it? Like you're not Yeah. If you don't enjoy that self reflection, like, how do you grow?
You've got to know what are the areas you need to focus on, but, and it's it's interesting because we never used to do it. And it was staff driven, dietitian driven that we did it and I was always like I don't want this to be the report card situation. I reckon nearly every dietitian said, have you got my numbers [00:19:00] this month?
I'd like to have a look at them. And and I guess it helps them. It's that development thing, but also makes them feel. If they, they are doing well, they're getting that feedback that they are doing well. And, I think no matter how many times you can say, look, you've done a really great job this month.
Well done. Irrespective of any numbers, when you've got that data there, it's almost like that proof, yeah. So it's been dietitian led. It's not being something that, and then, so now I've just implemented it because there's been that many people that wanted it. That's just what we do. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. How good. And what about what marketing strategies for you there? Cause what's the population of Cairns? So last time I checked, it was about 170 of stable population and then I think it can be up to double that and during a dry season, but generally 170. Yeah, wow.
And yeah, okay. Is there many other dieticians that you're in that are based up there, like? Yeah, there's another small little practice, just a sort of one man one, one female show. And and then there's another lady who does a little bit of [00:20:00] sort of part time. So there's a couple of little part time sort of people that do a little bit out of practices, but we're the main Business per se across, yeah, those locations.
So there's none in Mareeba and none in Atherton except for us. Yeah. And so what sort of marketing strategies have you used that you found successful over that time? Or is it word of mouth or. Yeah, I think the biggest thing I think is that word of mouth reputation, nothing beats that, but probably.
Something that we've been very fortunate over the years is there's probably 2 elements and the 1st 1 is just a good steady base of GP and other health professional referrals. We, it varies, but like the other day, we had 30 new referrals come through in 1 day. But we get an average of about 150 new clients in a month.
There's a really good referral base there. And then the 2nd thing we was probably. Four or five years ago, we, I was really [00:21:00] negative on sort of print advertising or any of that sort of stuff. So I really wanted to make sure we had a really good digital presence. And of course you can do your website and you can do make sure all of your SEO and whatnot is up to scratch and there.
But I think the biggest thing there was, We engaged News Corp, so they have a really good digital advertising element and it was stuff that I'd never seen before. So it was to the point where it was, Google search words. We'd have a big list of kind of, key search terms or, dietitian near me or, the sports nutrition advice, that sort of stuff.
So we have a Google search element that would then put us to the top in terms of advertising. And then we'd have a social presence. Display ads, which have our, logo or a picture of a dietitian doing a console or me doing some sports nutrition work or something like that.
And then if somebody was [00:22:00] typing things into their social media or into Google, when they go across to their social media, we would come up almost like a display image because they were identified within our target metrics to be a person of interest or an interesting, lead. So they would get like a display ad and then we couple that with, we'd have Google search, we'd have display and we'd have, what's the other one? It'll come to me soon, but we had another element to that as well. So it was like a 3 pronged approach where we could try and target a lot of people that were qualified leads. And the best thing about it is we've got a. Dashboard where I can see if a person has come through from say, they've clicked on that display ad in their social media or on the side of a website that might come up or whatever they click on that and then it would take him through to our website and our book online page and I could follow their whole process to find, did that [00:23:00] person actually book in with us and then I can figure out, okay, how much that click cost us.
So it's not a cheap. Alternative, but it was really great for brand presence and getting conversions. But I compare that to the old days where you put something in the newspaper and you've still got no idea, have you, whether they, where they've come from. That's what I hated. Yeah and you get that it's going to cost me a thousand bucks to put an ad in the paper, but how many, unless you put a call to action and say, 20 percent off if you saw this ad.
We would get nothing. We just, it'd just be a waste of, it'd just be brand recognition would be the only reason we would do it. And the other thing that you can do, and it's pretty cool is that somebody clicks on an ad, right? And then what it would do is it bring us through to our website. And if they wanted to call us, It would generate a different number.
And so that number, when they clicked on it, it would come through to our whole phone system and it would get recorded the conversation into our portal. So I can actually listen and say, okay, this person called [00:24:00] up. They'd like to see a dietician. What was the whole process? And so I can see, what's actually going on.
So it's really cool to be able to track all of those things. Yeah. Is that dial pad? No, it was part of their News Corp system. Oh, I'm all part of that. Yeah, in the portal. Oh, how good. Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. And I just was very negative on the, just pay money and hope for the best type thing.
I just never wanted to do that. No. And mate, looking at the Taipan's singlet behind you, you look like you're involved in the community a fair bit as well. Yeah, and I think that's probably a really big element being a community based organization like the type hands. We look after type hands and have done for 11 more than 11 or 12 years because they're looking at Tara was looking after them when they first were here.
We've been involved with, we try and get involved with lots of little organizations as well. Local swimming or cricket or netball, those sort of things as well. So we, we try get that, brand presence and recognize recognition that way. And I think being a smaller [00:25:00] community than a bigger.
A bigger regional center or a city, we have the ability to do that. And I'd like to think. That we're very fortunate in that they someone's play netball. They're doing lots of training and mom and dad, identify and go. Hey, Jenny's not eating very well. We might go and see Mitch from, health management dietitians, or we might go and see health management.
It's not like we'll go and see a dietitian and then search for it. And I think that's being part of that community gives us the ability to do that. That bit of recognition. Mate, it's obviously paying off for you. You've, sounds like you've built yourself quite the business up there. And it's a real service to the community.
And and I imagine you're probably getting into the online space as well. Do you service outside of that's really interesting question. And I just saw some metrics the other day and it was a, I know Peter is doing it and another lady is doing a heap of research into benchmarking private practice and so on and our online. The amount of [00:26:00] appointments we do that are online based, I reckon a less than 5 percent of our total business. And then I've seen other businesses that are probably 90 percent online. And I think, I wonder if it, I'm not quite sure, but I feel like a lot of that probably comes from a private from a bigger city.
Sector, I don't know, but it's really interesting in that regional space, no matter how much we try and push a bit more online, we really struggle. And even just with our News Corp advertising, we took out like a bit of a separate side that would be in addition to what our current spend is within our, Atherton Tablelands and Cairns region.
And we really targeted that kind of Townsville, Mackay Darwin type. Centers and we're really, we're not getting a bit more recognition, but not really getting much traction. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if it's just because of our regional area that people want to come in and do more of a console, but yeah, not much.
What do you [00:27:00] have a big social media following do you use social media? We do probably nowhere near to the extent of some other businesses that do it really well. One of the things that I've been, like we want to push that space, but as you're probably aware, it is a massive time intensive process to make content, to promote that.
Thank you. And I just, I don't know, I think our target market has shown us time and time again that probably where we are, it's not that extra time is not warranted in terms of doing a lot more online, maybe down the track, but I just, I don't know where we're busy where we're doing. I just don't know if I want to invest that time to do the online space.
Maybe I'm wrong. I'm happy to take the feedback, but yeah. Mate, I've got a another guest coming on soon who you might want to listen to because he is online. So it's Aiden Ewer. Oh, I know Aiden. He does an amazing job. He is [00:28:00] excellent. Yeah. He's, he is the perfect example of killing the online space. Yeah, his strategy, I actually listened to him at the DA conference and he was yeah, his strategy was basically probably very similar to, us starting a business head down, bum up for years with not a lot of return. Whereas now he's starting to reap the rewards years later from his social media strategy, but I we're about to talk soon.
So I've got a heap more questions for him. So it's a full time job, that social media space. It's very time consuming. I can see there being a point where you probably have a person that's almost in charge of just that whole space. But yeah, it's my wife's a social media marketer. Her job, her niche is online course creators specifically.
But. She's a little bit like you running your business, actually, that she says. You can contract that space out, but as the business owner, like your business is through your brain 24 7 almost, and [00:29:00] so you're thinking of things to post. So she says, if you do get someone else to do it, you've still got to have your fingerprints all over it because it's something that, you, you can't contract out those thoughts that, you're running of the business, but anyway, you've got to have the bandwidth to do it. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. Mate, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm just going to finish off with one more question. If you can give, we'll just pick one piece of advice because you've given me so much today, but if you could pick one piece of advice for any budding nutrition entrepreneur who's into the space or getting into the space, what would that be with starting a nutrition business?
I would say know your numbers and not just from a financial perspective, but If you are, if you're trying to implement something, you want to have a bit of a baseline of where you're at. And then if you make some changes, how much does it cost you to make those changes? Or how much does it save you?
And then what is the metrics look like? Because I feel in a [00:30:00] lot of times we make decisions based on what we think is the right way to go. But then the metrics might tell us or the data tells us something different. And I think that if you've got something to back that up, you can then go great.
It cost us this much, say in advertising, or we did this, what was the outcome? And was it a return that we wanted? Conversely, if you allocate You know, I don't know another 10 hours or 20 hours to do a task across a month. How much is that costing you and how much is, what's the return on your time investment as well?
I think I found over the years that. I initially, I just made a lot of changes and I kick myself sometimes and I go what was the outcome of that? And was it actually a good change? And did we get any customer feedback on that? Or, so I really like to have that bigger approach of where we're at.
So knowing your data and your numbers is really good because you can make more informed decisions. Yeah. Great advice. Great advice, [00:31:00] mate. Thank you for your time. If anyone wanted to follow you or they had any questions, if you are open to that, what's the best way for them to reach out? Yeah.
Look so I'm a big phone sort of person. My phone number is 0 4 3 0 5 double 2. Seven and I'm usually pretty quick on the phone. But for anything that's a bit longer my email is [email protected] au. Alright, and are you on LinkedIn if we share your LinkedIn Yeah. Thing as well.
Yeah, LinkedIn. Yep, absolutely. We'll do that. Okay. Mate thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it. And this will no doubt be really beneficial to anyone listening. No worries. Thanks for having me.
