Forms and Boundaries Needed to Start Your Private Practice

Yaa Boayke: [00:00:01] Hey, guys, welcome to today’s episode, and we got a few questions about administrative work, having a private practice, as well as navigating, being organized, maintaining a part-time clinical job while also running a virtual practice. So let’s dive into the first question that we got, which is how to handle office forms. That’s one of the concerns a lot of people have when starting their practice is having all the things figured out. The Dietitian Boss method really encourages you to create things as they come versus trying to create all the potential forms that you may need in one sitting. Being able to tackle things one thing at a time actually reduces overwhelm and allows you to move forward faster. So when you think about getting paid by clients, what’s one of the first things that you think about? Well, I’ll just go ahead and answer this question. They need to, of course, book with you. Right? So one of the first forms that you would want to create is a simple intake form that gathers some information that would be helpful for you to discuss that insight that you gather on a discovery call. So that’s a form that you would definitely want to have, is that and you can use technology such as practice better to make that process seamless. If you don’t want to invest any money and you’re starting out, you can have a Google form. But of course, there are some legal things that you want to consider and HIPAA compliancy, things you want to consider as well. So you always want to get some type of legal counsel when deciding what to use. And ultimately what you want in this practice or virtual practice is to move towards an education model, not so much MNT. So if you are focusing on that, using a Google form isn’t as big of an issue as, say, you’re someone who’s working with someone with Hashimoto’s or they have liver failure, then you would want to use a more standard medical health record charting system like Get Healthy or Practice Better. So make sure you have a good intake form that’s important. The next thing that you want to start thinking about is what are the next steps to get your client from being on that call and then being in your program and being able to help them. You can create a slightly more advanced intake form that gathers some insights, like their goals being more clearly laid out than maybe on that first form that you created for them. You can also have them write out some of the skills that they want to work on, maybe some mindset barriers they want to work on and have them document that at the start. It doesn’t need to be a super thorough intake as it would be in a hospital, because, again, the Dietitian Boss method does really push and lean towards an education model, meaning you’re not going to be doing extensive health histories. Again, this may not apply to you. Maybe you do want to have a virtual practice with medical nutrition therapy, and that would be a different conversation. You would, of course, have a more detailed form, but if you’re following the framework, you would want just simple information, things that are going to help you get your client from point A to point Z. And that document will allow you to guide the conversations on your coaching calls every week. And the coaching calls that we recommend are structured in a group setting allowing you to maximize your time because you’re able to serve a group of men or women or adolescents or whoever you’re working within that setting versus divvying up an hour to each of those people. So if you’re collecting all these initial forms, you can see these general themes that can help you really start to shape your program and what value you’re going to provide and working through the hurdles that they have acknowledged on that document and every week to then plan your program as you go. So in essence, all you really need is a form to get those clients ready to get on the phone and then a document once they’ve onboarded and paid everything, getting them set up that way and then that way you’ve got some good insight from just those two documents. And of course, once you have that intake form, you would want to ensure that they have completed a contract and that contract is going to outline the relationship that they have with you in this program. So it is, again, going to be case dependent. If you’re doing the more nutrition education focus, you’re going to obviously outline the group education calls. You’re going to outline the rules for communication. Do they get to email you? Do they not get to email you? So you can work with a lawyer to outline what should be in your contract. So you are keeping everything kosher. So those are the most important documents, everything else like handouts and things like that. That’s all stuff that you can figure out down the road. You don’t want to go creating a bunch of handouts around portion control or how to eat out or how to balance your plate, things like that, you can just create as needed versus trying to create all those forms at the start. So I hope that answers the person’s question that asked about office forms, really, those three are good enough to get you started. And the next question someone asked was being able to juggle their online practice with their part-time clinical job, so kind of going back to what I just talked about, if you’re going to have an online practice, you just need really good structure and some basic things to get started. You don’t need to overcomplicate this. So really create those three forms that I just talked about. And then what you also want to do is block out time on your schedule and dedicate hours for your private practice versus your hours that you’re dedicating at your other work and be very, very clear about the boundaries you hold around that time that you’re working on your private practice. Like, what space are you going to sit in? Is it a special chair in your house? Is there a room in your house? You really want to set the stage and really treat this as an official thing versus like I have this on my calendar and I’m not going to hold myself to it because I have this other job. And that’s really what’s bringing in money right now. So you really have to treat it like it’s something that’s paying you a lot of money right now by setting boundaries around where you’re going to do this work, how much time you’re going to spend on this work, and what are some things that you’re going to tick off your list every week. So you move the needle. So if you’re making this transition, get those forms ready, set up space, make sure you have time blocked out and write out a list of things that you need to do for the week. And it’s going to have to start small and the Dietitian Boss program, we actually have a Dietitian Boss Priorities checklist and we organize priorities as A, B and C tasks. I won’t go into that all now because it won’t make much sense to you listening. But if you do decide to be a part of the program, you’ll learn about that. But you can actually take the core of what that is by this bit of advice that I’m about to provide you. Essentially, when you think about your business, you really want to bring things in the order of importance, right. So you want to ask yourself, is looking at squiggly fonts really important or is it you learning how to use Canva this week? That’s important, right? So squiggly fonts for your logo should be more specific or actually learning how to use Canva this week. What really matters, like what’s actually going to move the needle? It’s definitely going to be Canva first. So that would be on your task list then. What else is important? What we just talked about having a form, so that could be second on your list. And of course, in order for people to get to that form, you need some type of link, some type of calendar booking system. So that’s something you can add to your list. So getting started is as simple as that, deciding that you’re going to organize your day to devote time to this and you’re going to have an environment that’s set up for this and you’re going to have your list of maybe three or so tasks that you’re going to hold yourself to. And you want to make sure that the task you’re looking at are realistic. Right. And not something like daunting because you only know what you know right now. So I gave you a couple of pieces of advice for free on this episode that you can apply to. Those could be your action steps. And you just want to keep, rinse, wash, repeat this cycle as often as you can, because part of being an online nutrition coach, Dietitian Boss, having this practice really requires consistency and having a system in place allows you to be very consistent. So if you’re making that transition or maybe you want to do both for now, but at some point you will make the transition starting and organizing yourself now as if you’ve made the transition, is actually going to be a very powerful thing for you to do right now. So if you are ready to do this, you want to tell yourself that you’re really doing this and commit to it and just start taking action. And the tips that I just provided are enough to get you started. If you want some more productivity tips and you have questions around this, be sure to follow us on Instagram and check out when the sticker box comes up in the story and drop your questions around this. I look forward to answering more questions about this, and I’m wishing you all the luck in starting your online private practice. Until next time.