The RDtoCEO Podcast
Dive into The RDtoCEO Podcast, hosted by Registered Dietitian and CEO, Eva Haldis, where she shares her journey in entrepreneurship, with discussions on the basics on building a private practice and becoming a confident CEO. The RDtoCEO Podcast is your go-to resource for mastering the art of transitioning from a dietitian to a successful CEO.
The RDtoCEO Podcast
Q&A: Deciding When to Hire & Preparing for Growth in Private Practice
When is the right time to hire your first dietitian? In this episode of RDtoCEO, I tackle this important question sent in by one of our listeners and take you on a journey through the complexities of growing your practice. I share my personal stories and practical advice to help you understand the pre-interview considerations, from determining the right moment to hire to deciding between a W-2 employee and a 1099 contractor. Gain insights into financial motivations, logistical challenges, and how to assess client inquiries and scheduling capacities before making that pivotal decision.
Want a question answered on the podcast next? Send me a voice message, or a text message, and maybe it'll be featured and discussed at the end of next episode! Interested?
You can send me a message on IG -
https://www.instagram.com/evahaldis_rd or https://www.instagram.com/rdtoceo
or send me a voice message or text - (857) VMRDCEO aka (857) 867-3236
Links Mentioned:
Group Practice Exchange
https://thegrouppracticeexchange.com
RDtoCEO Episodes Mentioned:
Episode 11: W-2 vs 1099: Navigating Employee Classification for Your Private Practice
Episode 5: Let's Talk Money! Part 1: Navigating The Financial Reality of Private Practice as an RD
Other Podcasts Mentioned:
Weight Inclusive Innovators: Should You Build A Group Practice?
Want a question answered on the podcast? Send me a message, or a text message, and maybe it'll be featured in an episode!
You can send me a message on IG -
https://www.instagram.com/evahaldis_rd or https://www.instagram.com/rdtoceo
Find more about RDtoCEO at https://www.rdtoceo.com
For episode updates and coaching packages, check out our website - www.rdtoceo.com
Affiliate Links Often Mentioned:
Gusto for Payroll - https://gusto.com/h/eva6486
Practice Better- https://practicebetter.partnerlinks.io/evahaldis9298
*Please note that while we strive to provide valuable insights, our podcast is not a replacement for personalized legal or financial counsel. We strongly advise consulting with qualified professionals for specific advice tailored to your individual circumstances.*
Welcome to the RD to CEO podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm your host, eva Haldis, registered dietitian who one day found herself a whole CEO of a business. Join me as we navigate the world of entrepreneurship so you can go from being an RD who sees clients in private practice to a confident CEO growing the practice of your dreams. Hi everyone, Welcome back to another episode. Happy August. It is the first episode of the RD to CL podcast in August of 2024. And I'm very excited to be here because I have teased this a couple times and mentioned this a couple times the last couple episodes.
Speaker 1:But we I would say we, but it's really just me, I'll be honest, it's just me, me myself and I, but we'll say we. Sometimes I am adding on a Q&A advice column to the podcast starting this month and I'm going to do it for just this month and see how it feels and obviously, if I get more questions also maybe I'll keep it going. My hope is to really do it at the end of every episode and not necessarily make the whole episode a Q&A. But since it is the first episode of August and the first episode will be featuring a listener question, I thought it would be great to make the actual episode, a Q&A question episode. So it's going to be one question that I was given by an awesome listener and I'm going to talk about it, and especially because the topic itself is going to be just a little bit of a lengthier one. So that'll be good for a full episode, but in the future my hope is to really just take about five to 10 minutes at the end of every episode to answer a question about business or advice questions. So if you would like to have a question answered this month and maybe future months, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:There's a couple of ways you can do that. First is going to be and probably the best I would say is through Instagram, at RD to CEO or at Eva Haldis, underscore RD. We'll link both in the show notes, of course, sending me a voice note there would be a great way. Or even just sending out a message. I can, of course, read it it's nice to have a voice note. There would be a great way. Or even just sending out a message. I can, of course, read it. It's nice to have a voice note. This episode will have a voice note, and I think it really enhances the way the question gets asked if I can actually hear it from you, so I would love to hear from you in that way. I also have a phone number which I'm going to link in the show notes as well, although I feel like I'm not going to keep that one as long. So Instagram is probably the best way to reach me for a question, or you can, of course, go to the website wwwrd2cocom and reach us there as well. But I'm really excited to be able to have some questions come in from some listeners, and so thank you for those who have reached out, and I'm really excited to feature our very first one today.
Speaker 1:As always, make sure you are staying up to date on new podcast episodes by subscribing wherever you're getting your podcasts.
Speaker 1:I've also sent out a newsletter last week, which doesn't happen very often, but it did last week, because if you are a listener of the show, you may notice that there was no episode last week, and so I've actually sent out a newsletter talking about what happened, and really what happened was that I was on vacation and lost track of time to getting an episode ready for the week, and so last week I was really embracing the imperfection of not doing a new episode every single week, although my hope is obviously to not have that happen in the future, and I talk a little bit more about that in the newsletter.
Speaker 1:So if you are not a subscriber, if you go to the website, you can join the mailing list there and hear from me and hear about any future offerings that I have. I'm hoping to soon get some things on the website that I want to share, like specific spreadsheets that I have to help me keep track of certain things like credentialing employees with insurance companies and also one of the things that I'll mention in the episode today. So if you join the mailing list there, you'll be able to know when that is coming firsthand. But I promise not to spam your email because I do not send them that often.
Speaker 2:So, without further ado, let's get into the episode in our very first Q&A to hear all the episodes you have coming. I know you mentioned wanting to kind of either do a columnist like asking questions or honestly I mean, this one might be more of a whole episode because it's kind of a loaded question but I'm hoping in the 2025, maybe like Q2, possibly to hopefully be ready to hire my first dietitian and I kind of want to know, like, what are things you've considered when deciding to hire, like kind of even pre-interview, like not about the particular person to hire, although that would be helpful as well, but also like that pre like, is this the right time for me to start this process? How can I prep for this process? And then also that W-2 versus 1099, the different factors that go into that, and what you consider to be the right time for you to start bringing on someone or start the pre-process of bringing someone on. Thanks so much in advance and I hope you're having a great weekend.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much to the listener for sending over that incredible question and it's a great question to ask and I really love talking about group practice growth and I've talked about it in a couple episodes so far and I think a lot of times sometimes for me, especially the way that my brain works, I feel like I have a hard time compartmentalizing like the steps of like where to start, because I sometimes jump into like other things. So really actually taking the time to think about, okay, what are the things that I considered, or what are the things that I think dietitians might want to consider when they are getting ready to hire, and how do we sort of know it's a good time or the right time to start that process and how do we really prepare for that process? So it's a great question and I'm really excited to talk about it today. I will say for me personally in my experience. So I started my hiring journey probably about three and a half, four years ago and, much like my actual private practice, the hiring process kind of happened on a whim as well and I really wasn't thinking about it. So I think the fact that you are already thinking about it is great because it means you're already starting to think about what you want to do when you have a group practice, whereas for me, that wasn't really what I thought was going to happen. But I was at a place and I've said this before on the podcast of you know my son was really young, he was only a couple months old. It was still probably late 2020, early 2021.
Speaker 1:So COVID stuff was still happening and we didn't really have childcare, and so I was really just limited at capacity for how many clients I could see, but also knowing that I wanted to continue to build my business and sustain it, because I was like, okay, I can't really grow it right now with seeing more clients myself because of my time, but there's got to be a way to keep this business sort of going. Especially like I was thinking like, okay, if I have another child in the future, I don't want this practice to go away. Like, what do I do to sort of keep it going? And so my friend Sarah, who's a therapist, was also. We were just talking about it and we were both talking about how we were also referring out a lot. So we were like getting inquiries but unable to see them ourselves because we were at capacity based on our schedules and our availability, and we were both kind of like I think Sarah was like I think I want to start thinking about hiring and I was like that's actually a really good idea.
Speaker 1:I didn't even consider that I should hire somebody because I was just referring people out to the other dietitians that knew who are all wonderful and in the area. So it was kind of like, oh, I didn't even think that that was an option for me, I didn't really consider it and so when I sort of actually had that thought come to mind, I was like, oh, this could be interesting and that's about all I did to consider it. But then, of course, is when I started that process and luckily I felt really fortunate that I did it with my friend and having Sarah be a therapist actually helped out, because one of the resources that we both used that really was helpful in the logistical stuff is the group practice exchange, which is a membership website but it's like a database with tons of templates and resources for hiring in group practice. It's for therapists but as an eating disorder dietitian a lot of the work I do, so similar to therapists that I found a lot of the tools and resources they had. When it comes to hiring, therapists were very similar, and so the group practice exchange was really, really helpful for me because it took a lot of the guessing game out for me as far as, like, there's like an employee contract, there was like a breakdown of the 1099 versus W-2. As far as like employment, like cost, there was offer letter templates. There was a lot of just research in there that I wasn't even thinking about yet when hiring, and so I would highly recommend looking at the group practice exchange, even if you want to do it for a month and go on and download a couple things. Like I said, it's for therapists. But it was just so incredibly helpful and I think for me it took a lot of the stress away of those logistical planning things that sometimes delay us from really acting.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest key thing for me, and the thing that I really want to start with, is when we're considering hiring is also considering our why, like why are we going to hire somebody? And I didn't also think about a lot of this stuff when I was first hiring. I want to also just say that before I get into any more of this conversation, the thing about the internet in general and probably social media and it's interesting for me to even think about it now compared to when I started hiring. There's so many other resources now than there were, just in terms of more podcasts, more stuff. I'm probably also seeking out that information more, so it's probably in my algorithm more, but there's just so much information out there that sometimes having so much information makes us feel like we should know it all before we do anything. And I just want to say, like when I first started, the things I know now I didn't know then. In five years, the things I know then will not be the things that I know now. Right, like it just it's an evolution and none of it's going to be perfect and you just sort of have to start sometimes.
Speaker 1:But I think when we are thinking about making a career decision, such as growing a group practice, we do want to think about why we're doing it, because if it's just for the money, I will say group practice is you shouldn't go into it just for the money, because one sometimes it takes time to make money, and I talked about this in my financial episodes that I've had, which I will also link in the show notes because it's not to say that private practice and group practice is not profitable, because it certainly can be and is, but it takes way more time than I thought it would take. And I think one of the things I was like, well, I can't see more clients but I want to make more money, so I'm going to hire and like, when you think about the math of it, you're like, yeah, that's going to be more money coming into my pocket and I didn't really consider how much more money I would also be spending to have an employee. The time that it takes. The investment of time is also something. You know resources that I'm buying for employees, because I do employee the employee model versus a 1099. So there's just like a lot of different things that I wasn't expecting, I think, when I first hiring.
Speaker 1:And I think just doing it for money is not enough, because one, that just it just takes time. But two, I think the stress of any job right, like it's any job, any job has stress. It has to be worth it and so if you really like the aspects of the job, it makes the stress sort of worth it. And so I think when we are thinking about like should I, should I hire, you know, and when should I hire? Like those things to consider.
Speaker 1:I think one of those things like there's going to be sort of two answers to that of like the logistic stuff, like for me, those logistical things over time, I have limited amount of time and limited time to add more clients onto my schedule, so I was at capacity for one-on-one clients and the other thing was that I was getting I was still getting inquiries but unable to see them and referring out. So I was getting enough inquiries that I was referring people out and my own schedule was as full as it could be, and so that's obviously going to be something and I've seen people post about this in different Facebook groups and sometimes dieticians have really great answers for it. Like I had two to three months of wait lists or something. I don't even know how to gather that kind of information. But I will say and I knew enough that I was referring out consistently to know that if I brought somebody on I could get them to start growing their caseload pretty slowly but sustainably, and I'm going to talk about some of the things you'll want to have set up ahead of time. One of those things is making sure that you have that information of how many inquiries are you getting.
Speaker 1:But for me it was that it was limited amount of time but still getting inquiries for new clients, and so that was like, okay, this could fill somebody else's schedule. Was the logistical part of it right? And then the other part of it for me was I was physically not having enough time. But also I think there was a part of me that was like ready to do something else and add something else to my tasks. I think, as a mom especially, this is really nice and I always say this to dietitians who are moms, who are clients of mine. But I mean, even if you're not a mom, but like it's nice to have a job that I can do when my son is sleeping, which is literally right now, I'm recording this podcast when my son is sleeping, which is literally right now, I'm recording this podcast while my son is sleeping.
Speaker 1:And I don't think that and I don't want to like glamorize this like no work-life balance thing, but sometimes it's just hard when you have a little kid, like you have a little kid at home, you know they are six, they're not at school or they're. You know, for us it's like the camp is closed or they have an early dismissal and like your time sometimes is just not. You can plan for it as much as you want and just sometimes doesn't work out. So having a part of my job be something that I can do, that's like at weird hours when he was napping, or, you know, writing emails when he was napping or taking calls for new clients while he was napping, that was something that was like I could do. That I couldn't also, but I couldn't do, like you know, cause when he was much younger his naps were maybe inconsistent, right, so I couldn't confidently say I had an hour block of time that I could see a new client, but I knew he was going to nap and I could, you know, send out a couple of emails. I could do whatever other things I need to do that weren't necessarily going to be in front of a client. You know, call an insurance company if I need to, whatever it might've been at that time.
Speaker 1:So I think, just also knowing that like I wanted to do other things and be able to do those other things, maybe that wasn't like one-on-one with a client so I could still have work things to do, but it didn't require me to just be with clients the whole time I was working. But also, I think, just for my own ADHD you know I get bored easily kind of thing. Like I love seeing clients but I know that I can't just do that, like I love doing different things, and being a group practice owner has really allowed for that. It gave me. You know, I do different tasks all the time. Sometimes I could do a better job of organizing those things, but I'm I'm sometimes doing admin stuff. I could do a better job of organizing those things, but I'm sometimes doing admin stuff. I sometimes do marketing stuff.
Speaker 1:I'm sometimes doing, you know, leading and doing supervision with my team, having meetings, and it gives me also the space to and, of course, I see clients. And then it gives me space to do other things like more passion projects such as working with dietitians and doing business coaching and now having this podcast, and so I knew that that was really important for me was to have sort of this, a job that I could do different things at, and so that was like what was really appealing to me for group practice and I felt ready to do that and to add on different parts of my job. So I would say from the like what are you know? Not the actual logistical parts of like being ready, but like how am I feeling about the work I'm doing and what do I really want to do? I think other things that might be considerations for dietitians when they're thinking about hiring is like maybe you really enjoy doing supervision and like teaching and leading. You know I've always found like I really enjoyed working with interns and, you know, sort of teaching newer dietitians about health at every size and weight, inclusive approaches and how to work with eating disorders, and so I was like I think I would really enjoy doing that more in my job and I do now I do that with my team.
Speaker 1:So there was aspects of hiring that I felt like ready to take on on top of the logistical parts of it that are also really important right Like are there actual clients to give to a new clinician? So I would say like those are just some thoughts I have around what we would want to consider when you're actually starting the hiring process, you know. The other thing is you know, and so this is where we're starting with like the group practice exchange or just having some systems and things in place. Like, once again, because the internet is out there and Facebook groups and questions, like even podcasts like this one, it might feel like I need to know all this stuff right away, I need to have it ready to go immediately, but I certainly did not and I think that's okay. I think there's some things that you'll want to, you know, have a good idea around, but nothing's really permanent. I mean, everything really can change and I will say I feel like group practice for me has really been an evolution of how I do things.
Speaker 1:But some of the main things that I would say are important to like the pre-planning process of how do I prepare to start hiring is you know number one? How do I prepare to start hiring is you know number one? Okay, number one is probably going to be the W2 versus 1099 conversation. I just posted a whole episode about this a few weeks ago so I'm going to link it in the show notes. So take a listen to that.
Speaker 1:But you want to think about the actual structure of how you're going to want to hire somebody. The main thing I'll give you the like TLDR on it is a 1099 contractor is a contract worker who comes in and I look at it as like someone's coming into a specific task and really and I'm like I'm using, you know, very general terms here but you like can't really tell them what to do. So, like you can't really set certain hours, you can't really have certain things that are like set on this thing very specifically in your contract and they can kind of they're kind of like working for themselves but under you in a way, like you're kind of like high in the geo task, whereas a W-2 employee they are more an employee of your business and there are going to be like rules and regulations or like standards of care that you as the employer can set. And I think making that decision early on is going to be really important. Not to mention the state that you live in may also dictate whether you can do one or the other, but I have seen digestion do both ways.
Speaker 1:I've always just gone the W-2 route and, honestly, the main reason I did it early on, before I really fully understood everything, was that was all I knew about it and I was like okay, I want to hire. I want to hire W2 because I, because of the work that you know my practice does is very specialized. I want to make sure that I'm able to, like legally, really be like you have to. You have to have this approach. You have to do it this way you have to meet with me weekly to do supervision. You know you have to be able to answer somebody within 24 to 48 hours and having a contractor, you can't really do those things, you can't really give them those kind of guidelines, because once again they're kind of an independent, literally an independent contractor, like independent from the business. In a lot of ways they're just hired on for a task and that might be seeing clients, and so I definitely think that it gives people sort of like less control.
Speaker 1:The other thing also is that sometimes dietitians get freaked out about the whole W-2 versus 1099 thing and how much it's going to cost, and once again I talk about this a ton in the actual episode that I have on this. But there are situations that people will hire independent contractor but then like treat them sort of like they are an employee, as W-2. And that's something you also want to be cautious around, because at the end of the day, the whole thing with W-2 versus 1099 is also like as W-2 employees, you as the employer have to pay payroll taxes, and so if you could get audited by the IRS and be like oh, more money if you have a 1099 that you're treating as an employee Once again, all this is in my episode about the W-2 1099. I don't want to spend too much time on it here, but it's going to make a really important consideration because it's going to also impact how you do things as the employer, whether it is that you have contractors or employees on your business. But aside from that, the other thing that you want to consider is like your state employee laws, and you can probably just literally Google your state and employment laws. Yeah, let's Google like Pennsylvania employment laws or what do I need to know to hire in Pennsylvania, and the internet can probably tell you honestly some good information.
Speaker 1:Of course, I'm not a lawyer and this is not like legal advice. If you can, if you have an attorney, you can certainly seek one out or an accountant. But I know that this is like the realistic part of me is I know that a lot of us early on in business, it's not like we have all that much cashflow to like pay a lawyer to tell us all this stuff. So having things like once again going on the IRS's website they explain a lot of this stuff the group practice exchange, once again, like I mentioned, they have a lot of resources on these things, and just seeking out professional resources from professionals who also do this work can be really, really helpful to get a better sense of what you need to do. But there are going to be some things that you're going to have to do as an employer in your state. Depending on where you live, you might have to register with the state in different ways and things like that. So that's something that you'll want to look into, like what do I need to do?
Speaker 1:And one of the reasons that I really love using Gusto, which is who I use for payroll, and this feels like I'm using I'm about to say an ad, which I'm not. This is definitely not sponsored by Gusto, although I do have a referral link that I will put in the show notes. But in Gusto is who I use for payroll. They have been really helpful, too, in just the setting up process of a lot of these things, like depending on when you hire somebody, if it is a W-2 employee, and putting in their information. They'll also tell you like you need this tax number from this department and they'll link it to where you need to go to find that account number or like who you need to call to get that information. That's been really helpful for me because most of our employees do live in Pennsylvania but in different parts of the state, so I've had to do that in different areas of the state and I also do have an employee that lives in New York, so when I was adding her into our gusto for payroll, they also were able to have have a third party that helps you with the setup of a lot of the employment stuff in New York that at the time I was like I just want somebody else to help me with this, but it's honestly not that confusing. So having just some general sense of your state laws and if you want to do W-2 versus 1099 will be important.
Speaker 1:And also, nothing is permanent right. So if you start 1099 and then you switch, switch W-2, not a big deal it helps to know some of the stuff up front so you don't have to change it down the road, but you always can. One of the things that I changed is when I had my first employee, I actually changed how much I offer and pay because I didn't take into consideration that I'd be paying payroll tax on top of employees' hourly rates and it was much higher than was profitable based on what we were getting reimbursed from insurance at the time. It's a little bit different now, but after my first employee actually left, I've since structured our payment a little bit differently. That might be another thing that you are like well, how much am I supposed to pay somebody, right?
Speaker 1:So this is a little bit of a kind of depends kind of question too, around determining how much you're going to pay somebody. One thing you want to look at, of course, is maybe like where you live and like average hourly rate or average salaries. I would say a lot of private practices and group practices don't start out a salary my team are still hourly employees but you want to look at how much money you're also getting from insurance companies If you take insurance, or how much your private pay cost is the average amount that you're getting per client. I would say and I think a good rule of thumb is I remember my bookkeeper telling me this early on is 45% is a good percentage as far as how much you're paying somebody based on your revenue and I've also heard 45% to 60% is a good safe area that kind of keeps you out of the red or out of a negative. So I've always kind of been a little bit more conservative with it and try to aim around the 45% to start, because you can always increase what that is over time. If you're insurance companies, if you're in network with insurance, if their rates go up or if your private pay and then your rate goes up, you can also change that.
Speaker 1:I don't have it set with my employees that they get 45%. I just determined the actual hourly amount based on around 45% and also when I determined it it was not using any kind of percentages. It was just like I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do that. Just to give full disclosure, my employees currently get paid 50 an hour for client facing time and we also pay $30 an hour for admin time. Admin time is for things like meetings, discovery calls. The meetings are just like meetings with us, like meetings with me, the team supervision, like work meetings that are like with our team in particular, and then that's typically what's considered admin time and then we do the $50 an hour for the client facing time.
Speaker 1:Since I started hiring we've had a couple of changes in, like one insurance company went up, the other one went down and so it's sort of evolved with that. But you know, I haven't raised our private pay rate in a while. I'm probably going to do that pretty soon. So that might determine, you know, in the future how much our employees get like if there'll be increases and things like that, if there'll be increases and things like that. But also, as my team has grown, while we've kept their hourly rate the same, I have this year, just this beginning of 2024, added on our first benefit, which has been health insurance.
Speaker 1:So I did not offer that right away and I think people sometimes worry that they're not going to find employees if they don't offer benefits right away. And I don't think that's necessarily the case. I mean it hasn't been for me. I often will say to interviewees and people that I'm talking to or applicants is I know it's a privilege to be coming onto a job that you don't get benefits with right away. My hope and my values as an employer is to one day be able to offer all those things, but I have to do it in a sustainable way for my small business in order to do that, and right now that means that I can't offer a lot of those things. We do offer it now for full-time employees, but that's a really new thing. I'm hoping to add on more as we go, but those are considerations that I've taken and that's also why having that 45 to 60% of your revenue going to paying somebody, it will allow you to have those funds there to one reimburse you as the employer too, because you're going to be doing a new job of leading a new clinician but also to be able to have money in there to pay for other things, if that is something you want to do down the road.
Speaker 1:But I don't think that's something that you have to do right away and I think it's okay and I think you'll find clinicians that still want to work for you, because you may find that people really want to do the type of work you do, but they don't want their own private practice, they don't want to take on the risk of having a business, they don't want to take on all that stuff, they want to just do that work and that is a perfect person to hire and bring onto your team and maybe, depending on what age they are. Maybe they're showing their parents insurance, maybe they have a partner, or that they have their insurance, you know, and that's something that you want to work towards, but it's not something I think has to be something you have right away, because it's just financially not sustainable or feasible for smaller businesses, especially when you're first starting out and hiring. So that's the only thing I would say about that is like, don't stress about not being able to offer a lot of things. Things that I was like I can offer when I was first hiring was, you know, like education, development, like I offer supervision. For a dietitian to do supervision on their own, they would have to pay anywhere it's like 150 or more. So it's something that's included into their job, it's professional development, and now they get paid admin time for that too. I send resources all the time. I've done CEUs. I cover license renewals, things like that. So there's small things that I will offer. It's just not those standard benefits of health insurance and short-term, long-term disability, 401k. Those are all things that I'm going to hopefully add on but just not currently can do all those things. So I think that's also good.
Speaker 1:And once again, coming back to the group practice exchange. They had a lot of that information in there too, which helped me sort of understand what are the things I can offer. And in the group practice exchanges, like employee contract, they have it all written out too, which was really nice for me to say. I remember in the contract they had something on a bonus structure and I remember reading through it and being like, do I want to do this? And it just wasn't something that I felt like was in alignment with what I wanted to do and how I could keep track of things, and so I took that part out. But it was something that is like oh, that could be something that I could keep in and take into consideration. So I think having some sort of templates ahead of time can be really helpful too, so you can kind of see what other people are doing and figure out if it's something that would be something you'd want to do.
Speaker 1:So I think, as far as like logistics and having those things you want to like, look into those sort of for the like what do I need to know to start that process of hiring on? So let's see, what did I say? W-2 versus 99, having that understanding, figuring out what your state is requiring you to do as an employer and, yeah, figuring out kind of what you want to offer as far as like benefits and things like that down the road or like some things that are like additional things that you can offer employees if it's not those official benefits right away. The other thing I will say and once again a lot of these things are like systems and people see online talking about like they need to have all these systems in place. I don't think we need to have all those things ready to go right away, but having some are nice, because the more once you bring on a clinician, you're going to have more clients in your practice to sort of keep track of.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that have been really, really helpful for us and this is something that I hope to eventually have on my website that you can buy and download is our tracking spreadsheet that I use for any new inquiries. If you're a business coaching client of mine, you've probably seen it before. Actually, I think when I was working, when I first started working with Hannah, she showed me hers and then I took like kind of what they used and made it my own and changed it over the years. But really it's been helpful for me because when I keep track of, we keep track of all the inquiries we get, so any, any new potential clients, and it also helps us sort of keep track of one where they're coming from, so like where, what referral sources are they coming from? Which helps us for marketing and the future of like oh, we get a lot from therapists or we get a lot from Google, or like where do I really want to focus in on my marketing efforts?
Speaker 1:But the other thing that really helps me with is keeping track of the process of like where people are in in the process of things. So like when they first reach out, we have a, you know, a dropdown. It's like initial contact made If they've scheduled a discovery call, like we have a dropdown that says with who, when is it, and so it helps us sort of keep track of things, because you're going to, the more clients you get, the more to keep track of, right? So there's going to be ways that you're going to have to figure out, like how am I going to keep track of all of these clients that we're going to be getting, but also what the inquiry tracking sheet does is. It allows you to actually see how many inquiries you're getting. So, like I was saying in the beginning, the like logistical things that I took into consideration when hiring which was my lack of time to take on more clients and being full myself but also having clients that I was referring out but I didn't necessarily know like I wasn't using the tracking sheet then, so I didn't necessarily know how many people I was referring out, but I just knew that I was referring people to other clinicians often.
Speaker 1:But having a tracking sheet of some form, you can actually kind of see oh well, last month I referred five people out and they were clients that wanted services that I offer. I just I couldn't see that. Or you could see, like, okay, this month we're getting. We had 10 new inquiries this month and eight of them became new clients. We can see those numbers and know that we're getting at least eight solid new clients a month. And you might say I can't take on any more clients If I have a new clinician who's coming on part-time. Is eight enough to fill their caseload based on how quickly you're hoping to grow somebody? To fill their caseload based on what you know, how quickly you're hoping to grow somebody. Maybe you can see that, like in the summertime numbers tend to go down and then in the fall they really pick up and you have like a ton of new inquiries and then you sort of know okay, I have enough people coming in and reaching out to actually start to fill out another person's schedule. So having some data somewhere can be really, really helpful.
Speaker 1:I think it's the only thing that I wish I would have done sooner, but a lot of the other stuff I've kind of just learned as I've gone. Honestly, I mean, I think once you have the logistical stuff down, of the basics that I've mentioned, of just W-2 versus 1099, getting some templates of contracts or job expectations, job descriptions, having some sense of what you're looking for and how you're going to structure it, I think after you get to that point. So that's what I was going to say. But, yeah, a lot of the other stuff I have just kind of evolved as I've gone. Like with my first employee, when it was just one new employee, I I trained them all through. We would do Zoom calls and I would show them how I did stuff. Eventually I started recording. I recorded Zoom videos where I share my screen and I show how to use our electronic medical record system. So now I have those things a little bit more streamlined, where I'm like here's the videos on how to use Practice Better and how to find the notes that we use and all these things.
Speaker 1:I have it a little bit more streamlined, but before I would just do it one-on-one and eventually, as the team grew, I was like, okay, I can't do this every time. There's some stuff that I need, you know, that is helpful for me to meet with them about. There's some stuff that I don't need to be and they can just learn on out as I went. I think the other thing you know before, you sort of these are all like pre-planning of, like you know things I start to think about when it's time and when you actually do it, you know, feel it out Like, okay, I want to meet with somebody weekly and just check in with them on how things are going. I find that to be really really helpful, one for supervision, because we do that with our clinicians anyway, but also in the beginning, just really checking in more frequently on how things are going, what questions they might have, logistical questions on scheduling and all these other things. A lot more stuff comes up in the beginning with that stuff and then as they get more clients, it's more around supervision. But it helps me also know how they're doing, how they're feeling with clients and have a better sense of what's going on.
Speaker 1:But you'll figure that out as you go as well, right? Like, not all of it is going to be something that you can like to a T plan, for Some of it has to just be have a hired person and then you know, think about, like, what do you want as the employer? For me, I like meeting with my team and now we do team meetings. Now there's more than one employee, but having those check-ins is also part of the job that I really like. I really missed having co-workers to talk to during the day when I was by myself as a solo practitioner. So it's nice to meet with my team. We're all virtual, but I still meet with everybody. At least you know at least somebody once a week, which is really really nice, and so you can sort of figure out those things as you're going and feeling it out and how you want it to do.
Speaker 1:But as far as like things to start to consider and how you know, it's the right time. I think this is just kind of my initial thoughts on it and, yeah, I think the next step, of course, then is posting the position and starting the interview process. I think that can be a whole other thing to a whole other episode of like how do I know, like, who I want to hire. I will say this I think, depending on the work you do, a lot of skills can be taught, but I think the most important thing that you want to consider when you're interviewing is the personality and fit and values alignment. Do you want to talk to this person every week? Does this feel like a person you can lead? Does this feel like somebody that is going to be a good fit for the type of clients? You see, there are skills that can be taught, but, like, I think the personality is going to be really important because you don't want to have somebody on your team that maybe.
Speaker 1:I remember like interviewing somebody and they just finished my sentences for me and I just remember thinking like I'm always going to feel like I have to, like that's just like my own stuff, but it was just like this is not gonna be a good fit for me. Honestly, it was just like that was one thing I was like if I meet with this person weekly, I know I'm going to feel like I'm going to feel something about it, and it was like one of the main things. That sort of was like I don't think this is going to be a good fit for just me and my team. It doesn't even mean there's anything wrong with them as a person or as a decisions. And so when, before you get into that part, of course, of like the actual interview process, I would say the last thing that might be really helpful if you don't want to like get a membership to the group practice exchange, but you're like, well, I don't even know what I want to offer people, honestly, I would say, go into some of the Facebook groups, whether it's dietitians in group practice or dietitians in private practice, or even search like Indeed or anything for, like, dietitian private practice jobs and look at other people's job postings and see what you like and see what sounds like yeah, that sounds like something I would want.
Speaker 1:Or you know how many hours can I really offer somebody? In the beginning, I always say somebody like you know, we started them off at like a minimum that they need to offer us availability is five hours a week and it'll grow. All of those things are going to take time as well to figure out, like what's going to be the right fit for your practice. I think in a future episode I'll talk about how do we determine our clinicians, caseloads and like how do we know that information of like what's going to make it profitable or how many hours can I expect of somebody? But that's all going to be the next step and so that'll be a next future episode where we talk more about okay, I'm ready to hire, now what do I do?
Speaker 1:But since this episode is really about like the pre-planning, I hope my thoughts and some of my experiences have been helpful in this conversation and to the listeners who sent in the question, I hope this was also really helpful for you in answering your question. Who sent in the question? I hope this was also really helpful for you in answering your question. You are a group practice owner that's listening. I'm curious what things you considered when first hiring and what made you really wanna take that leap, and if there's things that I said that maybe you were like no, I don't really think that was the case for me, but this was. I would love to hear from you Once again, whether that's through Instagram comments on podcasts app that you're using, or wherever you get. I would love to hear that feedback. So that is going to wrap up our very first Q&A question episode.
Speaker 1:Like I said, in the future it'll be more of a shorter segment, but in celebration of the first one, I'm really excited to be able to have shared this information and to have it be a question for someone that's listening to the podcast. So thank you again to the listener who sent that in. That was a lot, as always. I hope that was helpful and if there are future topics that you would like to hear about, please let me know and feel free to reach out on the website or on Instagram. All the things that, of course, I mentioned will be linked in the show notes, and that's all I have for you today. Hope everyone has a great rest of their week and I will talk to you next time. Bye, thanks for listening to the RD to CEO podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for any resources mentioned or find more at wwwrdtoceocom. Never miss an episode by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.
