Nicole Went Back To School To Become A Dietitian And Started Building Her Private Practice In August!

Rebecca Henson: [00:00:37] Nicole Conteduca is a registered dietitian nutritionist from Chicago who is dedicated to helping people make peace with food, ditch their diet mentality, and live a joyful life. Nicole is committed to helping people find food freedom through practical and experiential approaches. She believes in empowering clients to have a more positive relationship with food and their bodies to help them live a more meaningful life. Nicole’s passion for food and for helping people is what led her to become a dietitian, and she enjoys bringing that passion in discussions with her clients. So nice to meet you, Nicole.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:01:18] So nice to meet you, too. I’m happy to be here.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:01:21] Can you let everyone know where they can find you online?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:01:25] Sure. My handle on Instagram is @no.binge.nutritionist.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:01:32] All right. I can’t wait to hear more about that. Can you talk a little bit about where you started and where you are now with your business?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:01:42] Sure. So my business, well, I thought it started when I started my Instagram back about a year ago, I would say, and that was before I had had any coaching. I just decided to start an Instagram and I started posting some quotes and posting pictures of food, you know every dietitian does, that is how we try to think that you need to get started. And I got a website and did all that stuff, but I never was able to make any sales from that. I did have some people comment on my posts, but they never reached out for any kind of counseling and I never actually asked them to either. So it never was, hey, I’m available for counseling. I think I just posted it and hoped that something would come of it and nothing had.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:02:44] Yes, so that’s where you started?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:02:47] Yes. And so now, after working with Libby, I started with her in August and I no longer am posting food posts, I occasionally throw them on my stories, but they’re not my posts anymore. I have a call to action, letting people know where to find me and how to book appointments with me. And I’m making more clear content and I’m speaking to my ideal client. So people, the type of people I want to work with are actually contacting me, which is really great because before I was really not talking to anybody specific. As I said, I’m just throwing random thoughts in the air and hoping someone caught it. But now I’m talking to someone. I got more clear in my messaging and I have been doing some great programs and have gotten clients out of it. So it’s been pretty awesome.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:03:38] That’s amazing. So, I mean, you literally started your business a year ago. Well tried to, only it wasn’t going so well. It sounds like you weren’t getting the clients that you wanted and then you started working with Libby, see if I’m right here, and learned how to actually make posts that spoke to your clients and call to actions so that they actually reached out to you and become clients.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:04:06] Yeah, it’s been a really nice change, and I don’t think that those are things I would have ever known to do without working with Libby, I would have never had the format of exactly how to reach these people or how to niche down to a specific ideal client. I would have never had those ideas. So it was really nice to get that.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:04:27] I hear you, sister, I was the same with the food pics and kind of never putting out how they could work with me, hoping they would magically figure it out. So were you working a different job as a dietitian before that?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:04:43] So I had a part-time hospital job, it was just close to my house, so I was just doing that, kind of for fun because I liked hearing about the different disease states. And it was not my passion. So I knew I never wanted to do clinical. I was just kind of doing it because, like I said, it was five minutes from my house and I was also doing private practice. So I’m still doing private practice today, but I am no longer at the hospital that has stopped in my time that I would spend at the hospital, I’m trying to spend now on my Instagram business.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:05:18] Oh, great. Congratulations.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:05:21] Yeah, it’s really nice.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:05:23] So let’s talk about the type of clients you work with. I heard your handle is no binge nutritionist, and so what is your current niche?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:05:42] So my current niche is to work with women who are living in a city urban area and they’re between the ages, as my ideal age is twenty-six, twenty-seven. So but maybe a range between twenty-six and thirty-four. They are really struggling, stuck in the restrictive binge cycle, and it’s really keeping them from moving forward with their life. So it’s holding them back in relationships or from forming relationships with other people, friends around them or getting married, having babies. They’re really just stuck, stuck, not being able to form a relationship because their whole life revolves around food and they’re not really able to move forward in life because without forming relationships, how do you get married, how do you have kids and everyone else around them is doing those things? So this is the last part of their life that is really holding them back, which is why then they seek help because if you’re not moving forward with those big milestones, then obviously there’s something wrong and you need to figure out how to go about getting help for that. And that’s where I come in.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:06:54] That is so very, very clear, it sounds like you really know exactly who you want to work with and who you’re talking to. I would love to hear how your niche evolved where you started out, is that who you started out talking to or how has that evolved?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:07:12] So my ideal client has always been the same person, but I have changed, I guess, my way of attracting that person. So in the beginning I thought that my ideal client was kind of more so worried about the restriction part of not eating enough food and always being on a diet. I had also thought I could talk to the realm of different types of eating disorders. I guess that’s where the trouble comes in. This is my private practice is solely based on eating disorders. I don’t necessarily want to work with eating disorders. Someone who’s in the throes of an eating disorder, more so of disordered eating where it’s not as clinically diagnosed. So I had to do a little bit of changing with wording there because I was using a lot of clinical speak and I didn’t want to track someone who was actively engaging in eating disorder behaviors. So more so I’m having someone who is restricting a little and then bingeing, but not in the clinical aspect. It’s evolved in that at first, I was focusing on the fact that they were just dieting, but then I realized dieting is not the biggest problem. When they’re dieting, they’re feeling good, they’re able to lose weight and they’re feeling good and they’re eating their plain chicken breast and broccoli and feeling happy with themselves. But then once the diet fails and they end up on this weeklong binge, first of all, the food that the diet that they were on didn’t allow is when they feel like a failure, is when they feel like they are out of control. That is what the biggest problem was. It is the bingeing aspect of this all. So that’s when I realized I really needed to focus on binge freedom and stopping binge eating rather than just solely stopping dieting.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:09:08] That is very interesting. What a great story of how you basically, it sounds like had a lot of experience, private practice, working with eating disorders and how you really thought that you knew their biggest pain point or problem and then you figured out that it wasn’t actually what you thought, that the problem was in the bingeing and made that super clear right from your Instagram handle. They will know exactly that that’s what you can help them with.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:09:41] Yes, exactly, and so, I would always say, during content calls like binge freedom, I’m going to put that in Las Vegas lights on my content. So you know exactly what you’re getting when you’re looking at my page.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:09:54] That is exactly what Libby tells us to do, is make it easy. Simple. Yes. Let them know exactly what to expect. So that’s exciting. And what a great thing to be helping people with. So have you always had a dream of running your own business?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:10:13] I have, I’ve always known, going back to, I have a degree in business. Then I went back to school to become an RD. I’ve always known I wanted to do private practice and that is what I’m doing already. But I always knew I also wanted to own my own business and do my own kind of private practice. I didn’t ever think it would be this virtual over Instagram. I thought I would have a brick-and-mortar type location and I would be going to my office, which maybe I have someday, because it would be nice to get out of my house. But I did not imagine it would be like this. I imagined it differently, but I’m glad in the way it’s transpiring instead.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:10:56] So what made it transpire this way? What made you start to do this Instagram marketing and take it online?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:11:13] So last year, I saw Libby about a year ago, when I started my business and I actually had done an interview with her then to possibly coach with her. But then after talking with her, I’m like, you know, I’m going to start this myself, I can do this. I saw all these other dietitians that were doing it and I’m like, I can do it. If they can do it, I can do it. So a year later, here we were and I was not doing it. And so that’s why I was like, I need to find, you know, I need to hire a coach. I need someone who knows what they’re doing to help me push me in the right direction. I think it’s just really that I was seeing everyone else be successful in this way. And it made more sense and Covid happened. So I’m like, well, I can do this for my house. And I was like, this is great. Then after seeing Libby’s model, I’m like, oh my gosh, this is even way easier than doing, you know, she has that group model that she promotes. Now, this is so much easier than even doing one on one sessions, this is fabulous. So I’m really happy with the way it’s going now then I guess how I envisioned it originally.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:12:20] Love it, a bunch of good points there, one, get help, right now. I think a lot of us, probably all of us, at first think that we could do it ourselves. Just working with Libby or an expert like Libby expedites your progress and makes it so much faster and easier and more clear to know that you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And when things get hard, you also have the backup that you are doing it right. It’s just groundbreaking having that help. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to just do that as fast as possible so you don’t waste a bunch of time like you did and like I did.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:13:09] Yeah.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:13:32] Also the group program situation where we can go from one on one, which is great to get experience, but to then have a group where we can make it more affordable for people and also make more money ourselves and stay sane while we’re able to help so many more people.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:13:51] Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is so much more affordable for the regular person who really needs this help. It ends up being less time consuming, which is great.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:14:07] Absolutely great. So you are doing an amazing job on Instagram, obviously, and you’ve learned a lot. Do you have one or two tips you could share with our listeners about how to effectively build the know, like, and trust factor?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:14:24] Well, you absolutely need to show your face. You need to go on stories. You need to make people get to know you. And just by putting content out there, it’s not enough. I mean, I started including myself in content and I was getting a lot more traction and more impressions and reach and that helped. But it really helped more once I started including myself and my life a little bit so that people trusted me, instead of just trusting a random bot or whoever was behind the name, they’re seeing that I’m a real person and that I have feelings and then I have struggles. I think that really helps people to relate and want to work with you, because then they know that, you could understand or you have compassion for what they’re going through.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:15:12] So I assume that you do that in your stories?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:15:15] I do that my stories I share a little bit about my family. I share what sometimes I’m cooking, what I’m doing. I try to relate it back to food freedom and all foods fit. So I try to wrap that all together. But I definitely do share my personal side of myself, too, with my family just so people see that I am a real person and not just a cold face behind the business.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:15:42] Yes, yeah. Those food photos don’t have to go in the trash. They can go right into your stories.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:15:49] Exactly.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:15:52] Yeah. It’s so important for people to actually see your face at first, maybe just in still photos and share a little bit about yourself in the captions and then I hear you that really getting to show your personality where you can do that in videos and IGTV or in stories just is a game changer, isn’t it?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:16:16] Yeah, totally, and that is not something that I liked at all before this, I have a personal Instagram and I barely post, I post pictures of my kids, but I never do stories before this program in August, I never posted a story. I never posted a picture of myself or a story of myself talking, oh, my gosh, that was forbidden. But now the more I’ve done it, the easier to become. Now I don’t even get nervous about it. I used to dread it, like, oh, my God, I have to post myself today, I don’t want to do it. Now it just feels like, a girl in my group was like, you just got to rip off the Band-Aid, you just got to do it. I’ve lived by that since. And now it’s easy. I don’t even care what I look like anymore. Before I had my hair done and I’d look pretty. Now it’s like all those rules out the window. I’m just showing up.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:17:12] That’s so funny. And I think people like it more that way. Somehow, they feel like you’re just more real when you show up sweaty or with your hair in a bun or whatever.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:17:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:17:25] I think we all do that at first. It’s makeup and nice outfit. Then it turns into a tank top and messy bun. They have to learn that they’re going to work with you, you’re going to be you. When you’re actually working together, you may not always be perfectly coiffed, right.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:17:45] Yes, absolutely.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:17:47] Love it. So fantastic. Thank you. Those are great tips. Basically, rip the Band-Aid off, get on there, and it does get so much easier as you get going and as you get used to it.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:18:02] Yeah. And now I honestly feel the other way. I’m like, oh my God, I didn’t post. I have to get on these. Before I was like, oh no I can’t, I have to post it. Now I’m like, OK, I have to post. I’m so excited. I have to get it; I want to do it. It’s a night and day difference.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:18:18] I have something to share. I know exactly who I’m talking to and it will help them. I call them insta friends. Great. Love it. So let’s talk a little bit about money. Since you’ve already been able to give up your part time job, how much have you made and what are your goals short term and long term for money?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:18:41] So as of today, I’ve made eighteen hundred and I’m starting my second group next week and my short-term goal is to get to 5K months, and then my long term would definitely be 10K months. That would be amazing. But for right now and I guess the upcoming next few months and maybe the first quarter of the New Year, I’d really like to hit five K.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:19:07] That sounds like a great goal. Congratulations. So with this money that you’ve made from sales, obviously it gave you a little bit of freedom to get away from the hospital job, which was fun for a minute, but not what you really wanted to do. What else does it give you?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:19:29] Well, I am trying to pay off my school debt, which is really important, but then my long-term goals of being able to work from my house or just being able to work less hours and be more present for my kids. I mean, they’re young now, but they’ll eventually, I’m sure, have a million activities. I want to be around for all of that. Then I would love to have a lake house. So I’d love to have a house in Florida and then maybe even a bigger house than I’m in now so that I could have my own office. So a lot of houses I have in my future.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:20:05] Come to Florida. I’m in Florida.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:20:08] What part are you in?

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:20:09] I’m in Sarasota.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:20:11] Ok, I would love to go. Is that north?

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:20:15] It’s south of Tampa.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:20:17] Oh, it is. OK, so Tampa, have you been to burn steak house?

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:20:23] Yes, of course.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:20:24] That is the best restaurant in the entire world.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:20:27] Yes. Food freedom. You can go eat at burn steak, house, whatever you want.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:20:32] God, my husband and I are obsessed.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:20:37] Everyone listening go to Tampa and go eat at Burns Steakhouse. So I love those goals. I mean, to be able to go to Burns Steakhouse, which is not cheap, to have a house in Florida, to have multiple houses, to be able to make that money, those 10K months or more, and also be present for your kids and work from anywhere and don’t work long days. So you have time for family. But those are amazing. That’s what it’s all about, is being your own boss, setting your own hours and making the money you want to have that freedom. Love it. OK, so next question. You’re doing great, by the way. Ok, so around money. I love those goals. That’s so exciting. I would love to hear if you have had a money story, have you had any beliefs about money, anything from childhood or anything you want to share about money story.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:21:51] Yeah. So I grew up, I mean, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. I always grew up knowing you had to have a job and you needed to work for your money and earn your money the hard way. So for me to tell my parents that I would be making money from social media is so strange. My mom’s an immigrant, she thinks it’s crazy. She just doesn’t understand any of how this works. So it’s really funny. So, yeah, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money and then so to be making my own money, it’s exciting and to be my own boss is really exciting too, and to make my own schedule. That’s another thing my family thinks is just crazy. My dad’s retired, he’ll stop by and see me and my husband both working from home and he’s like, this is so strange. Are you working? Can I be over here? It’s just so different than I think with their generation is used to. But my money story now, it’s been really helpful for me to read certain money books. So get rich, lucky bitch or you’re a badass at making money. Those have been really helpful for me because I’ve realized places where I wasn’t good with money. So I really started tracking everything. I have different Excel sheets that helped me track everything that I’m making, everything that I’m spending. It’s helping me with deducting the right amount for taxes so that come year end or when taxes and comes, I’m not scrambling, trying to figure out how much I make. Those kinds of books really did help me, and those were recommended in the program just because I didn’t realize the places that I was really struggling with money. I didn’t even realize I was struggling. So, you know, that really helped to put perspective on how important it was to keep track of things like that in order to run a successful business.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:23:42] It’s funny how, as dietitians most of us are so diligent about tracking, we definitely understand keeping a food budget, but a lot of us never figured out how to run a business or to have a business financial budget. It’s definitely a learning curve for sure. Yeah. OK, so great book recommendations. That’s exciting. I’ll have to check those out. So can you tell us exactly how you’ve used Instagram to grow your business? You’ve talked to us a little bit about it, but walk us through your content creation process and how you develop messaging.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:24:29] So I am part of a lot of different Facebook groups that have to do with binge eating, intuitive eating, food freedom, and through those groups I just scour to see what the main issues are. I also, with my private practice, I work a lot with binge eating, so I get a lot of content through that as well. I also have my own personal experience with disordered eating, so I’m able to recall back to the days that I was struggling and really use that as well. But the content, the content is not really difficult because I feel like I’ve worked within this niche for so long that it’s easy for me to make the content. I guess too, but with being in groups, the girls that are in my group now, I use a lot of what they say for content to which is really great and I’ve been getting a lot more reach and impressions on Instagram because I’m using actual people in my group’s experience, which people really like. I notice when I use someone’s win, client win, that the engagement goes way up. So I like doing that. I’ve been doing that the past few weeks and I’ve really had a great response. So every week how I make my content is I just go and I see what content did best and I recreate those top posts and I do that every week and that’s how I pick out what I’m doing and just how I pick out exactly what foods I’m going to focus on in my posts. It’s basically just I try to do it seasonally to figure out what makes sense. Last week was Thanksgiving. So I had a lot to do with different pies or leftover food or how to eat all foods at Thanksgiving, stuffing and mashed potatoes and not feel guilty. So it’s really trying to stay seasonal being current. So during the election, I posted a lot more on that. You know, it’s really staying in the know.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:26:48] So, I mean, you just throw out so many important points, starting out when you don’t know exactly the messaging in on Facebook groups or just trying to find your ideal client where they hang out and listening to them. Through all of those experiences is how you learn that their biggest problem wasn’t the actual dieting, it was the bingeing afterwards. So you shifted your messaging to reach your niche. Also just then, once you get clients, learning from them and hearing them and using those words and struggles and client wins, definitely, to speak directly to that person who needs the hope that maybe they can actually overcome it as well.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:27:38] Yes, I think another learning curve I’m having now is, so my ideal client is in her mid 20s and I am not, but I’m realizing that their language is a little bit different than mine. So I’ve been going through and trying to see what the cool trends are, how people are talking or the acronyms that they’re using now. So that’s been kind of fun.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:28:00] That’s funny. Learning to speak your ideal clients speak, and if it’s a different generation than you. Yes, that’s absolutely important to get into their groups and listen to how they’re speaking. So you can just relate, seem relatable.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:28:19] Yeah, exactly.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:28:25] That’s fun. So those are great tips. The Dietitian Boss method teaches that you have to get started imperfectly. What did that look like for you and how have you adapted from there?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:28:55] Yes, so definitely starting imperfectly is hard for a dietitian who wants to do everything perfectly and with a plan. So that was scary at first, but I just accepted that. Instead of me killing myself, trying to figure out content right away and trying to make sure I had the perfect content and the perfect color scheme for the first couple of weeks of the program, I just reposted other dietitians that I really liked their work. So I did that and created my own captions for those. That saved me a ton of time in the beginning because as I was figuring out the whole program and the gist of it and how to go about making my own content, I was still getting my content out there, my beliefs out there, and getting some followers, which was good and being able to talk to my ideal clients. I was posting things that resonated with me and with them. So then after a few weeks of that and doing some market research and really figuring out kind of how I wanted my feed to go, then I started making content and it was really hard at first. It took me a lot of freakin time to figure out Canva and the editing stuff. Then the captions were taking me a long time. That in the beginning took a lot of time. I’m like, oh my God, is this ever going to get easier? But now it’s so simple. I can do it all really fast. I give myself a ten-minute time limit for captions, my content creation is just basically recreating from last week. So it’s just changing up a few words and pictures and images so it doesn’t take long at all. I really enjoy it. So I used to think that this was something I would dread and I was like, oh, I’m not creative, I’m not good with art. It won’t look good, but now I love it. I love doing the content. I feel good at what I’m doing. I feel confident in what I’m doing. So now I look forward to it. I really enjoy it.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:30:57] That’s so true and such a good tip to kind of play with using other people’s posts of course, give them credit, but using other people’s posts who you admire. It’s nice for them because they’re getting credit and they’re getting their word out there. But you’re also seeing what your people like, how many, who likes what better without wasting a bunch of your time trying to create it. Then once you hit your stride, you do you and you figure out how you can recreate some of those things that worked really well in your own words and your own style. Then it does get so much easier from there. Once you figure it out, once you get in the rhythm of, hey, this works great, here’s my three types of posts and I’m just going to kind of keep that template in Canva and switch out pictures and switch out words. Great, great, great tips. So you’re doing really well, I would love to hear how you approach sales and how your mindset has evolved.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:32:00] Yeah, so my mindset has definitely changed. I used to be one of those people who would be so nervous about talking about the price and I’d be really scared about giving the price. It’s still something that I’m working on, but I definitely feel more confident in asking for the money. I know now that my services are worth what I’m charging, and I even think that my services are worth more than what I’m charging. So I’ll plan on charging more as my group expands. I definitely used to be really scared that I would get a discovery call, I’d be so nervous and I treat them now, I remember I watched scripts on how to have a good discovery call. But now I’ve really created my own and just tried to make it a conversation between me and the other person and try to make it a little more personal. I’ll say I still have some work to do, but I’m getting better every time I’m getting a little bit better. And, you know, you could only get better.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:33:04] Absolutely. Practice makes perfect and just doing it and practicing and like you said, preparing, listening to some of Libby’s sales examples and kind of making a little script for yourself. I love it. You’re doing great, sounds like and raise your price when you’re ready. One more question and then we’ll wrap up, and I so appreciate your time. Can you provide a specific example on how the Dietitian Boss method has empowered you?

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:33:37] Yeah, so, the group, the people in my group have really all empowered me, I felt like we had a really supportive group and everyone was out there doing the same thing, putting themselves out there. It really helps, I think, to see other women and other dietitians doing this and supporting one another. So I think when you’re able to support other people, it just brings positivity to yourself. I just feel really empowered as a woman in dietetics to be my own Dietitian Boss, this whole group really empowered me to do that. It has empowered me to make this program that I would have never done before and it’s continuing to stay in contact with the girls in my group and having them comment on my posts or write me a comment in my stories, it just makes me feel good and it makes me feel like I have a support group who I’ve never met, but I feel like I have. And that’s really cool.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:34:43] That is so cool, women supporting women and especially having a group of dietitians who understand all of the struggles that we share and having that group support is such an important part and also helps you realize that you providing group support for your ladies in your group. Same thing. They’re going to feel like that camaraderie and I’m not alone in this and these struggles that I have. So you are amazing, and I want you to tell everyone where they can find you one more time so they can all go follow you on Instagram.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:35:24] I am @no.binge.nutritionist, yay!

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:35:29] So you’ll have a lot more insta friends after this.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:35:33] I’m so excited. Follow me.

 

Rebecca Henson: [00:35:36] All right. I want to thank you again for your time. I hope you have a great evening.

 

Nicole Conteduca: [00:35:43] Thanks so much.