What Should Your First Offer Be? How to Create a Service Dietitians Actually Want to Buy
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[00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to the Dietitian Boss Podcast, where we help register dietitians, start, grow, and scale a business that they love with confidence. I'm Libby Rothchild, registered dietitian and founder of Dietitian Boss, and today we're diving into one of the most important questions you'll face early on.
What should my first offer be? So whether you're billing, insurance, running a cash based practice or dreaming of launching a course, today's episode will walk you through how to create your first service that actually sells and why that's the best place to start right now. An offer is the specific service or product. That you're providing in exchange for money, and it's how you help someone solve a very clear problem. An offer could be a 30 minute consult, a three minute session, a bundle for somebody who has PCOS, auditing for somebody who.
Is looking to [00:01:00] improve their meal planning, or a session for new graduates, to help them build their resume or improve their clinical skills. if you bill for insurance, your offer absolutely matters. You're still offering a service, even if you're not charging the client directly, right?
if you're getting paid through insurance, your offer and the logistics of your offer absolutely matter. For example, I help. people with diabetes lower their A1C using personalized MNT medical nutrition therapy support. It doesn't have to be fancy, but what is important is to have a clear offer.
And before you create a product, like a membership or a signature course, your first offer, being a service will help you get clear. So I'd say create a service first and then a product. Meaning have you ever sold anything people have purchased? That is your time, right? It could be speaking, it could be you doing a consult.
It could be you doing some 10 99 contract work. [00:02:00] Maybe you're doing an assessment. Selling a service first before creating passive income can help you create better passive income, and we'll get more into that later. So dietitians often over build and stay stuck.
And this is the most common issue that I've seen in the last almost decade working with dietitians. So let's be real. Most dietitians overthink we're perfectionists and we overbuild. And so I've seen this. A hundred times. For example, you create a 12 module course before testing if people want it. Or you write 40 pages of handouts before you've booked a single call, or you build a membership before you've coached even five clients.
And the truth is that's backwards. So you don't wanna build before you test. And that's what's so important in business. And it feels, scary. To test things. So that's really what can help you learn more data points about your audience. So whether you offer a service, especially one-on-one, you get [00:03:00] live feedback and you can even solicit feedback and ask people, you can send them an questionnaire after and ask them, what could you do to improve?
How satisfied are you on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the highest when you ask for feedback and you just even offer a service. You can learn how people describe their pains, and frustrations also called pain points. And you notice what questions come up again and again. You'll see some themes and you'll see what actually gets them results.
And this is really helpful. So you know how to expand when you go to create, improve your offer or create products like a membership or a course. So I always say provide your service several times before you create a product or even a hundred times. Before you create a product so that you're more clear about what that product should look like, and that's how you stop guessing and start knowing what people really want.
Now, have I seen our clients create a product that's been successful before they've offered a service a hundred times, yes. But usually those particular clients that are [00:04:00] successful are really specific with knowing what people want. So remember that the point here is to get clear on what people will pay you for and what they'll consistently pay you for.
And the other reason that dietitians often get stuck is because of comparison. So you see someone on Instagram launch a course or starting a membership and you feel behind, but what you're not seeing is how many hours they've spent building their confidence, testing their message, and helping clients one-on-one before they started to scale.
So inside of my membership, the Dietitian Boss Library, we help you simplify and test your offer, which takes some time and feedback. We give you plug and play templates and coaching. You get regular coaching and real time feedback so you don't waste time building something that just doesn't sell. So you might be wondering why starting with a service is smart.
I want to reiterate that you should be starting with a service, not a product. If you're a beginner, start with a service example. Could be, [00:05:00] instead of creating emotional eating course offer 60 minute session, helping people identify their binge triggers. Or instead of a three month PCOS group, you might want to consider offering PCOS roadmap.
Call with Clear next step.
Instead of building a resume course, you can offer a one-on-one resume review if you offer that or any kind of clinical skills. Instead of an intuitive eating masterclass, you can offer your first session script for dietitians. And yes, this does work with medical nutrition therapy and eating disorder dietitians.
I provide virtual support for teens in eating disorder recovery with a focus on structure neutrality and small behavior wins.
You're not changing your clinical skills. You're learning how to communicate your offer clearly to your ideal client. And this is a business skill, and we teach this inside of the Dietitian Boss library. So you might be wondering how to build your offer, your first offer, right? How to step by step, build [00:06:00] it.
So here's a four step framework to create your first offer for any of your clients that wanna buy from you. So first you wanna identify what's called the pain point. for example, somebody says, I keep losing clients after one session, Or for example, I don't know what to eat at night when my blood sugar has dipped or increased, or, I'm not sure I'm newly diagnosed with PCOS and I don't know what that means.
in terms of, what I should put on my grocery list at the store, Or how I should change or modify my workouts or sleep. if people are telling you these things, these are examples of frustrations and pain points that people have, you can find these out by asking people, having conversations with people and asking them through direct messages, through Facebook groups, reading comments that, are already public online from, let's say competitors or people who help people in similar arenas.
You can also listen to what your own clients say. And start having conversations with people that [00:07:00] struggle with similar things that you help. For example, if you're in the prenatal space and you want to be talking to moms regularly, or pregnant women, and if you're working in, chronic kidney disease, and you want to be having conversations with people whatever stage that you're focusing on stage one, two, or three, et cetera, you also wanna offer a mini transformation.
So that's really part of positioning your offer as something that stands out. this means that you help with part of the solution, right? Not everything you're offering a mini transformation. for example, you're mapping out three step system for meal planning, helping people build, a two week recyclable grocery list, or food swaps that can help you normalize your blood sugar when you're dipping low.
these types of ideas are not solve their entire problem, but they're help give a mini transformation or outcome that will help them find some resolution. You keep this small and make it doable, right? this is what's make what you do sellable, right? you're breaking down the problem into [00:08:00] small, achievable steps that you're help guide them through from point A to B.
the next step in this process would be to name it clearly, no one wants to. transform their journey, right? they want a clear outcome. for example, you could say PCOS, onboarding session PCOS, grocery list planning or normalize your blood sugar meal planning, these ideas are specific and they don't necessarily. help lower A1C in total, but they're help you teach how to manage blood sugar more successfully, right? That small transformation.
The fourth step would be to test and improve. So this is where we often wait for perfection and we don't wanna move forward 'cause we're not sure if the name that we've thought of and the many transformation that we have is air quote enough. But the idea is that if you take your concept. And you're not waiting for perfection, but you're talking about it, you're posting it, you're having conversations with people, asking them if your idea would be helpful, [00:09:00] and then you're selling to people.
That's really what's gonna help you get more data. And if you join us inside the Dietitian Boss Library, we do give you templates and ideas and coaching to help you improve your concepts so that you can make more sales. But the idea here is just to get started without having something that's perfect, because we can't really know how to improve our offer or our mini transformation until we start with something basic.
So there are trends that can make our offer even more important, right? For example, remote care, as we know, is booming. And as dietitians, we want flexibility and clients are expecting virtual support and they have more access and knowledge about virtual support being an option that's viable for them.
Insurance reimbursement is competitive, right? So to stand out, you do need a clear service positioning, even if you're billing for insurance. these venture backed companies, like we're thinking Nourish and Fay [00:10:00] they're marketing very heavily. They are spending a lot of money on marketing and they have a lot of money backed behind them that, smaller practices, even group practices can't compete with. But remember that these companies cannot solve every single need. So there's absolutely still room for us dietitians growing our practice as well.
What happens here is consumers, they do see ads for dietitian services like Fay and Nourish. And they start looking for more support even outside of some of those platforms, and that's where you can come in. So your offer, if it's clear and you can attract clients who want something more personalized or flexible, then you have a better chance of people considering or booking with you.
But if your offer is vague, then you're more likely to have people scroll past if you're promoting on social media or just not really think about buying from you,
So what should you do next? Here's what I want you to do. I want you to write down the number one struggle that your clients, or let's say your audience are talking about, and [00:11:00] try to narrow that down. Then I want you to turn that concept, that struggle into a service that you can offer. Let's say keep it simple into a 30 minute session to start.
You don't have to offer that forever, but at least for now. Really getting some data points and learning some patterns and behaviors. Write a name for it even if you don't love the name forever. Just something that can help you market it better. And then I want you to share this on Instagram, a newsletter if you have one.
Or you can even use this name and direct messages this week and reach out. Email people that you know asking for referrals. Then I want you to track who responds when you do some outreach and what they might say. Are they engaged? Do they have any follow up questions? This is the first step to making sales with confidence.
And if you do want support in building and testing your first offer, whether it's for a specific niche like diabetes and blood sugar control or private practice, maybe you're also helping dietitians improve their clinical skills or maybe resume coaching as a side hustle. I'd love to [00:12:00] support you. I wanna invite you to join the Dietitian Boss library we offer.
Templates, social media captions. We offer case study simulations to help improve your clinical skills and business building skills. And we also offer monthly coaching calls and regular, coaching inside of our member only forum. So if you check out Dietitian Boss.com and join the library, we look forward to seeing you there.
