EPISODE 19 FINAL
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Robbie Clark: [00:00:00] If you work in a clinic, you pretty much conform to the software that they're using, and it may not even work for you. And it's just like, well, I only use a couple of these features, and then I have no idea what the rest of the software does. So you're not really utilizing it to its full capacity, which can A, be frustrating, B, be a bit cumbersome, or C, be very limiting.
Chris Hughes: 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.
Chris Hughes: If you have a nutrition business, you'll have an understanding of the value of time. Today's guest is Robbie Clark. He's a dietitian and founder of HealthBank, which is a software solution that basically saves nutrition professionals or health professionals time. Now, I apologize in advance. This, this [00:01:00] episode may seem like it's a paid promotion, but I promise you it is not.
Chris Hughes: Robbie was initially coming on to talk about streamlining your service and your clinical services, uh, and I sort of sidetracked him into asking him more about health bank. I make no apologies about that because this is a podcast about Building a profitable nutrition and business. And it's hard to be profitable if you're doing all the admin work yourself, not spending the time where you should be, which is with your client.
Chris Hughes: And so having built a bit of a mishmash of tech myself and used other products in the past, health bank is like nothing I've seen before. And it's something that I'd love our listeners to check out. Welcome back to another episode of how to build a profitable nutrition business. I am a bit of a tech nerd, so I'm super excited to have Robbie Clark here from HealthBank today.
Chris Hughes: I was fortunate to meet Robbie at the DA conference about a month ago there in Brisbane, and we just connected through our mutual connection friend, Rebecca Jones. And talking to Robbie, it excites the hell out of me [00:02:00] because I think we may have started our business at a similar time, maybe Robbie, a bit earlier than me, potentially, I'm not sure, but we went through the same struggles, I'd imagine, because that, that back then when tech was not as abundant as what it was, we saw the opportunities that were there and just how we could potentially make our lives easier in practice.
Chris Hughes: Robbie has Basically put everything into action and gone and created a program that is just amazing. And I cannot recommend highly enough for anyone listening. So Robbie, I'm going to hand over to you. Thanks again for your time, for coming on. If you can give our listeners a bit of an insight into the journey from you as a clinician, as a dietitian, when you started to HealthBank, where it is today.
Robbie Clark: Absolutely. And thanks so much, Chris, for having me. As you say, I second that. We just met, we clicked. And when you meet like minded, innovative, ambitious people, you just know that they're your community. And [00:03:00] so I really thank you for having me on and helping your listeners, if I can impart any words of wisdom.
Robbie Clark: But in terms of my background, it's an interesting one, because I'll take you back even just slightly before that as to even how I got into dietetics. And my background, I'm an ex elite gymnast. So sports was always my thing. And I was always passionate about how food can influence performance and not just athletic performance, but also just day to day performance.
Robbie Clark: And so I knew that's what I wanted to do. So I did my undergrad in exercise science and nutrition. And then I came to that fork road and went, right, I could either become an exercise physiologist, or I could go down the path of becoming a dietitian. And like I mentioned, because food was my passion as well.
Robbie Clark: It was a no brainer. And so I did my master's in nutrition and dietetics down at UC in Canberra. And that then allowed me to have [00:04:00] those connections through the AIS as where I trained a little bit. I knew I wanted to get into the sports nutrition realm. However, as time went on, I did a bit of a stint there in terms of a placement at the AIS and other places.
Robbie Clark: But I just knew I wanted to get into private practice, rather than being influenced to go down the clinical path into the hospital system. I just knew that my personality and what I wanted to do with dietetics was suited to that private practice. Moved back to Sydney where I'm from and started looking for private practice jobs.
Robbie Clark: Very challenging to do when you're fresh and green out of uni. But this new clinic opened up in Circular Quay and it was a multidisciplinary clinic and I was very fortunate enough to get in there because it was quite state of the art for its time. Had all these like minded, innovative practitioners who wanted to shake things up in industry.
Robbie Clark: So I worked [00:05:00] alongside. All different types of modalities. Nutritionists. Physios, osteochiros, functional medicine practitioners, massage therapists, acupuncturists, you name it. And, I'm sure everyone who's listening who's worked in private practice can agree, if you work in a clinic, you pretty much conform to the software that they're using.
Robbie Clark: And it may not even work for you. And it's just like, well, I only use a couple of these features and then I have no idea what the rest of the software does. So you're not really utilizing it to its full capacity, which can A, be frustrating, B, be a bit cumbersome, Or C, be very limiting. So, having worked there and then in another clinic with another software, I was like, there is nothing here that really caters to the nutrition, fitness kind of professionals.
Robbie Clark: So I said to myself, I think I can do this [00:06:00] better. Well, here we are. And that's how I came to the idea of building a platform like HealthBank, which is essentially a practice management software. However, I evolved it into more of a digital clinic software. Because even back then I saw The way that health was heading was in a more digital way.
Robbie Clark: And again, this is all pre COVID, right? So before telehealth, before that even became a thing, I knew that I wanted to have some form of video embedded within my platform. And so, yeah, we built out this product, which is a digital clinic software, allowing practitioners to build a business and manage their clients.
Robbie Clark: And their appointments and all of their medical records through health bank. But the clencher was how the clients engage with their practitioner. So we also that was our other [00:07:00] target market. It wasn't just the practitioner. We also wanted to really cater to the clients to better engage. With practitioners because once you have that happy man,
Chris Hughes: yeah, exactly, exactly.
Chris Hughes: So you'd started your own practice by the time you started health bank. Would I be right in saying that?
Robbie Clark: Absolutely. Yeah. So I was trying to build out my own private practice and got to a point in my career where my books were filled. Daily, and I was very fortunate enough to have a fantastic mentor. So that really does help for any of those who are starting out, um, and wanting to build their own private practice.
Robbie Clark: And it took about three years to actually get to that point. And yeah, I was really quite humble and grateful that I'd built this great private practice. And I just wanted something more.
Chris Hughes: Yeah. Was it also born out of that, the need to make your life a little bit easier? Like just because those solutions weren't there?
Robbie Clark: Definitely. And I won't [00:08:00] name the software that we were using, but it certainly has its purpose. I want to make that very clear. Software is built by whoever the founders are. For a purpose, they see a purpose in market, maybe for specific practitioners. And then that's the type of features that they want to build up out to cater to those practitioners.
Robbie Clark: But I wanted something a little bit more specific and also from a digitally driven as well to make people's lives easier, including my own. So you're absolutely right. I wanted to streamline my Admin workflows, and I wanted to streamline my clinical workflows as well, because I wanted to travel. That was my passion.
Robbie Clark: I wanted to be able to still work if I wanted to while traveling, but also know that I can do that anywhere around the world, and also to Cut down the hours of my day that I have spending on [00:09:00] admin to then either free up my own time, alternatively, choose to take on more clients to earn more money. So there's that flexibility piece in, in, in freedom.
Robbie Clark: Yeah.
Chris Hughes: Oh, it's huge, isn't it? It's one year that. Living the dream of being able to work from anywhere, but what you were saying about reducing those clinical tasks. I had, I interviewed Mitch Smith, who's got an amazing practice up in Cairns a couple of weeks ago. And Mitch said he sits out the front once a month and actually works in admin.
Chris Hughes: And he said that he will do the jobs so he can get an insight into his staff's day. But because a lot of the time staff won't raise, they won't raise the issue that, Oh, I think we could do things better. So he'll be doing their tasks going. There's a better way we could do this. And then he comes up and finds a solution.
Chris Hughes: So you and I were talking before we started recording here and I said we had our practice and we had a awesome software that was we were paying for that we were using for our booking system, but it didn't suit us clinically. And we ended up building our [00:10:00] own sort of mishmash of tech, which. It's outdated technology now, but I'd worked out the amount of savings that it was bringing us just by streamlining a lot of those solutions.
Chris Hughes: And so it was about 50, 000 in admin costs a year. It was saving us 120, 000 in dietitian wages a year. So like an investment in any of these solutions is well worth it for the clinician, particularly when you start to calculate time. Don't you?
Robbie Clark: Absolutely. And I asked. Practitioners to really ask themselves the question, if I do invest my time in learning how to utilize a product that is going to eventually get me there, what are the outcomes going to be?
Robbie Clark: What am I going to get from it? Is it more time with your clients? Is that what you want to do? Or is it more time to yourself? Or is it lessening the burden of all that admin stuff, which we as practitioners really. Loath, but it is absolutely [00:11:00] necessary in order to run a successful business. So you're trying to look at why these things are important.
Robbie Clark: And for me, because I am so passionate about what I do, it, for me, it was more around, all right, this is allowing me to be more personalized with my clients. So with data, with tech, I'm able to get all this information. And let it do all the interpretation for me to provide more personalized insights. So that was a huge tick for me.
Robbie Clark: Second thing was it's going to streamline my workflows. Okay, that is obviously really important. Lessen the headaches of what comes with admin. And it was also enhancing the collaboration. Of my clients with me, so that engagement piece was so important for me, and it should be for other practitioners as well, because that's where we see the better health outcomes.
Robbie Clark: As soon as that engagement piece is enhanced, [00:12:00] we then see those better health outcomes. So it was clear as day for me, and that's when you can then start working towards something.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, I love what you said there about the client engagement side of things, particularly now with what we've got in the space of wearable technology and being able to really get input from our clients.
Chris Hughes: Like with that software I was talking about that we'd built, for me, there was a selfish component. It was actually just about making our staff and our team's life easier. But I actually wanted to free up our admins time so they could actually spend more time with the clients when they come in and just nurture them before they actually come into the console.
Chris Hughes: Now, with what you've got in that wearable technology space, the world's our oyster, isn't it? There's some really exciting opportunities.
Robbie Clark: Absolutely. And if you think about it, what that is doing, it's allowing for a real time health system. So you are retrieving or receiving this data from wearable devices in real time.[00:13:00]
Robbie Clark: And again, that's part of health bank, right, is a repository for this information. So it is constantly being updated. So every time a practitioner accesses their clients. profile, they know what their sleep is doing. They know what their exercise has been for the past week, two, three months. And they're able to then have that data in front of them and talk to it in real time in the consultation, rather than sending someone a questionnaire that is a very subjective.
Robbie Clark: And can sometimes be retrospective. So that then is, you're not really getting quality data that you're getting from real time. So what we're doing is shifting from subjective data to objective data. Which is then allows pracs to really do their job, [00:14:00] which is where the excitement lies.
Chris Hughes: So HealthBank will be able to, correct me if I'm wrong, it'll be able to integrate different wearable technology and then, if you like, translate that into one system in HealthBank for the clinician to interpret.
Chris Hughes: I straight, if that's correct, then that's amazing because having my diabetic, clients with diabetes, they'd come in and there's all different blood glucose monitors or there's different exercise apps and you waste a few minutes just trying to get your head around how to interpret the data and all these different things.
Chris Hughes: Apps. If you're translating that into one system for the clinician, so it's presentable in the same format most of the time, that's huge.
Robbie Clark: Absolutely. And you would know being in tech, it's if a product has an API, which you can call upon and integrate it within your platform. All that is essentially doing is allowing the two systems to talk to each other for those who aren't necessarily tech driven.
Robbie Clark: So say for example, let's use Fitbit. If someone has a Fitbit device, we have integrated that within [00:15:00] HealthBank. They just need to log in to their Fitbit account and then it's pulling the data in real time as it would through the Fitbit app. So then that's being put onto HealthBank. So again, every time the practitioner now has insights.
Robbie Clark: To that from their profile, rather than needing them to say in an appointment, Oh, hey, do you mind pulling up your Fitbit app? And let's have a look at that data. It's like, no, no, no, I have access to that data through your health bank account. Yeah, that's exciting. And I do want to preface this. People think it's quite scary.
Robbie Clark: It's a bit of a big brother moment, but at the end of the day, we're all about consent and permission. Obviously it is the client who is providing that permission or consent to share that data. We are very ethical in that regard as well.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, of course. And great to hear. I certainly understand people's concerns in that space [00:16:00] for me.
Chris Hughes: I'm someone that I just, I'm an early adopter. I love the fact that if I was going to see a clinician, I wouldn't have to share that data. It's saving me a job. But yeah, look, mate, when I first come across HealthBank, the thing that I loved was your pricing strategy. I just, I saw it as so unique. So I'm just plugging the hell out of health bank here.
Chris Hughes: I don't, this is not normally a promo, but as you can tell, I'm a bit of a health bank fan, health bank is free. Technically for users, there's no subscription cost. It's a charge for essentially passed on to the client. So it's like having a FBOS terminal if you like, and then you're passing on that cost.
Chris Hughes: So you're not paying for it unless you're making money anyway.
Robbie Clark: That's exactly right. And that's the thing, I think, as being a practitioner myself, having worked in clinics, in bricks and mortar clinics, where you're either paying rent or a commission on your appointments, or in worst case scenarios, a [00:17:00] combination of the two.
Robbie Clark: So practitioners then have all these overhead costs. Costs, which obviously now with the cost of living is also problematic for a lot of people. They're trying to find ways of how they're going to practice, which is also why we've seen a shift to the digital space because there are far less overheads, but.
Robbie Clark: Subscription costs go up too. So not only are you thinking for practitioners about subscription costs for software, and by software I practice management software, but then if you're doing telehealth you might then need to have the premium version of Zoom, which so you don't have that 40 minute limitation, and then you might have your accounting software on top of that.
Robbie Clark: All these costs then start adding up. But I built this product so practitioners deserve every dollar that they earn and can retain that as best as possible. So you're right, it's a zero dollar subscription. So it's completely free for practitioners [00:18:00] and we have just put on that one dollar booking fee which goes to The client wears that cost at the time of Appointment confirmation or payment and that's very transparent as well to the client.
Robbie Clark: The cost is broken down. It's in the terms and conditions. So it's not as though we're trying to hide it. We're just trying to celebrate it in order for practitioners to really earn their living.
Chris Hughes: I think it's. More evidence that this is a solution built by a practitioner for practitioners, because like you say, like particularly early on that the stress, the financial stress for health professionals was just where this podcast is born out of.
Chris Hughes: Like I've been through it. It's quite stressful trying to make ends meet. There's so many different costs each week to have something that you're not going to pay for unless you're actually making money. And essentially you're not paying for it, you're passing that cost on. And yes, a dollar matters, but it's still only a dollar for your client.
Chris Hughes: I just loved it. I thought it's such a genius pricing strategy that I think is fair [00:19:00] and don't think particularly the results and the engagement that the clients will get out of it, it's a pretty, it's a small price to pay.
Robbie Clark: Definitely. And what some people might find that uncomfortable in terms of putting a cost onto their clients, the way I basically say to them is that they can absorb that 1 cost by reducing their whole appointment cost to the client by a dollar.
Robbie Clark: And then that basically works itself out in the wash, essentially. So yeah, there are ways around it and being adaptable to that type of modeling is absolutely achievable. And I really like what you said about It's the financials that really burden practitioners and you couldn't be more right, especially if they think about all the admin that they do on top of seeing their clients, they're not paying themselves for the admin.
Robbie Clark: And a lot of the times they're also not including [00:20:00] any of those admins time into the costs of their appointments either. So all of a sudden out of the goodness of their own heart, they're doing additional admin, whether it be. Collating personal emails, or reminder emails, or text messages, follow ups, and things like this.
Robbie Clark: Where what they're not really focused on is, imagine if that could be automated, for example, that can cut down in a whole week, free up 30 percent of their admin time. And that's at least another five clients in their week in which they could be making, you know, So again, it's trying to streamline things to get it out of the way where you can focus on then your marketing, perhaps, and then getting more clients through the door.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, I've said this multiple times on this podcast, Robbie, that health professionals traditionally, and I'm speaking from experience, I'm not good at business. We get in to help people and [00:21:00] sometimes we need to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table that no, you need to charge for your services.
Chris Hughes: Your time is worth something. Stop giving it away for free. And yeah, so I, I completely understand. It's why we built Mealsie. I used to sit on weekends instead of doing things with my kids, like what I should have been doing, I would, I'll be building a meal plan for someone that might take me one to two hours.
Chris Hughes: So the, these solutions are inevitable and it's great that it's a practitioner that's gone and built it for practitioners and that's quite clear. You can also order pathology through HealthBank as well now, can't you?
Robbie Clark: Yeah, so again, that's where I really looked at, okay, what do practitioners do in their day with their clients?
Robbie Clark: And then also, how many different pathologies are there? Portals, do they have to log into in order to place these types of orders? For example, a lot of people in the nutrition world, they might, um, prescribe functional pathology or just general pathology to explore certain, um, [00:22:00] biomarkers. They might then prescribe stool tests, salivary tests, urinary tests, and then they might also prescribe.
Robbie Clark: Nutraceuticals, so supplements, whether it be sports nutrition or sports performance, or whether it be chronic disease management or interventions, they might use the assistance of certain practitioner only supplements to help with their programming and their protocols. Now, to do that, you have to log into multiple portals, whereas what we have done with HealthBank is Done it all under one roof.
Robbie Clark: So practitioners can prescribe pathology and supplements to their clients through health bank. And then that's all they have to do. Health bank would then take care of the rest of ordering the kits, the supplements, the referral forms, and then sending them off to the clients.
Chris Hughes: Wow. So what, what about if [00:23:00] someone, cause I'm thinking of myself like with, When we had our business, we had a lot of our data already entrenched.
Chris Hughes: So there's a real friction point in moving across to HealthBank. If someone's already established, how could, would HealthBank deal with that?
Robbie Clark: Yes. We are one of very few software companies who offer a free migration service. So we understand that there is legacy software that people use, and that is their reluctance in the first place.
Robbie Clark: All my client files are there. All the client attachments, documents are all there, but we, HealthBank, help with migrating all of that data over to our software. And that takes the stress and the headaches away from the practitioners. Because it is, it's a huge undertaking. And this is just another way of showing our customer service of how we want to support [00:24:00] practitioners who utilize the software.
Chris Hughes: Wow, I'm thinking about the time that must take you guys as well. There's a lot of work in that still.
Robbie Clark: There is, there certainly is because we have to QA everything and make sure that it's A secure and we're not just using people from offshore for example and doing it. Everything stays here onshore in Australia.
Robbie Clark: Including our servers. So from a data security standpoint, that's really important to us. And I think it should be also for practitioners, considering that there've been some breaches with certain organizations or companies. We take data security, cyber security very, very seriously.
Chris Hughes: I think anyone listening to this probably thinks that this is a paid promotion, but I, I promise everyone, Robbie, this was just purely a connection at the DA conference.
Chris Hughes: Uh, and I wanted to get Robbie on because it's an area I'm so passionate about having worked in this space. And I thank you for your time for coming on. To me, I don't [00:25:00] have a practice so much now, but certainly if we were scaling, if I was scaling back up into that space, it's just a no brainer. Like you, you have to be smart with the solutions that you choose.
Chris Hughes: That's going to save you time, which ultimately is going to save you money. Yeah, definitely.
Robbie Clark: And I think also for people who are transitioning, whether it be to bricks and mortar to digital, it can be very confronting and very overwhelming. But we have really designed something where the sign up process is easy.
Robbie Clark: And it's just that migration of data that's probably the most challenging, but also transitioning out of university. It's getting out of that textbook headspace and then into the real world of practice, which again, it can be overwhelming for new graduates, practitioners. Those who are like, I have no idea where to start.
Robbie Clark: Not only did I create something that is almost like a business in a [00:26:00] box. So you can start seeing clients from the get go. If you've got all your business information and admin, and also we've created a full day workshop of helping people set up their business to transition into the digital space as well.
Chris Hughes: Yeah.
Robbie Clark: Win win.
Chris Hughes: Wow. Love it. Well, Robbie, mate, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. If anyone would like to get in contact, we will obviously put the health bank details in the show notes and below if anyone wanted to reach out to Robbie personally, are you okay if we put your LinkedIn profile on there, mate?
Robbie Clark: Absolutely. Not a problem at all.
Chris Hughes: All right, we'll do that. Thanks, Robbie. Appreciate your time. Thanks, 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.
Chris Hughes: Thanks.
