What Does it Actually Cost to Start a Dietetic Business?

How much does it cost to start a dietetic business?

If you're starting a dietetic business seeing one-to-one clients online, I'd budget around £100 a month for the basic tech you need to run it. As the business grows, you might add admin support at around £120 to £150 a month, and then learning or coaching, which can range from a few hundred pounds to upwards of £1,000 a month. What you need depends on your stage of business.

It surprises a lot of dietitians that it costs anything at all. You've got the knowledge and the laptop, and you're not renting a clinic. But even if you see clients online from your spare bedroom, there's still a business behind those consultations.

And I know spending money feels scary alongside a mortgage, bills and kids, with no consistent income yet. I've been there. I actually hid the first proper investment I made in my business, The Children's Nutritionist, from my husband (that's a story for another day).

What are the non-negotiable costs of starting a dietitian business?

The non-negotiable costs of starting a dietitian business are the four things that let you take on a client, take their payment and deliver the service: a booking calendar, a way to take payment, video conferencing and the right legal contracts.

A booking calendar. Ideally one that connects to your online calendar, so you're not emailing back and forth to find a time. Many have a free version, but if you need more than one appointment type (a free discovery call and a paid consultation, for example), you might need the paid plan.

A checkout or payment system. For one-to-one consultations this can be a simple payment link. You don't necessarily need a monthly fee, because some payment platforms are free to set up and take a small fee when someone pays you. Most booking platforms can take payment too.

Video conferencing. If you see clients online, you need a way to hold the consultation. For longer calls or group sessions you'll usually pay for a plan, which could be around £10 to £20 a month.

Legal contracts. Not tech, but important. You'd be surprised how many dietitians who come to work with me don't have the right legal documents in place for the way they run their business.

What other tech will a dietetic business need as it grows?

The other tech a dietetic business needs depends on what you sell and how you market it: an email marketing platform, a landing page builder, webinar software, an AI tool and a course or programme platform. Your email list is the one I'd start from day one.

An email marketing platform lets you build an audience you own, rather than relying on social media or Google to reach people. (You'll know I bang on about this if you've listened to my other episodes.) You can usually start free, then pay around £10 to £30 a month as your list grows.

A landing page builder gives people somewhere to sign up for your list, usually in exchange for a free guide, checklist or webinar. Your email platform may include this for free. A separate platform with more features might cost around £10 to £30 a month.

Webinar software lets you run a live online presentation or workshop, a great way to attract clients and build trust. Expect anywhere from £10 to £50 plus a month, and you can often pay just for the month you run it. Your usual video call tool won't do, because people unmute and it all gets a bit chaotic.

AI programmes are essential nowerdays, those like Chat GPT and Claude have free and low-cost paid versions at around £20 a month. But you shouldn't put any data about a subscriber, client or someone you've had a discovery call with into it, or link your email or calendar, because you'd be processing personal data and that goes against GDPR rules. For that, you need a commercial plan at around £40 a month.

A course, membership or programme platform hosts your videos, lessons and resources behind a paywall once you sell more than one-to-ones, at around £30 to £100 a month.

When should a dietitian start paying for admin support?

A dietitian should start paying for admin support once time becomes the constraint, usually when clients are coming in and lots of 20-minute jobs (scheduling content, formatting emails, creating graphics) are eating into your week. I'd expect to spend around £120 to £150 a month on a small amount of admin support.

I currently pay my VA £39 an hour for around four hours a month, so roughly £156 a month. That's an experienced VA who already knows my business, and you absolutely don't need to spend that much when you're starting out.

How much should dietitians invest in business coaching or courses?

How much dietitians invest in learning about how to run their business varies massively. A self-study course or group programme might be a few hundred pounds, more hands-on coaching can easily be several hundred pounds every month, and one-to-one support is often upwards of £1,000 a month, depending on the expertise of the coach and how intensive it is.

You can work out things like choosing a niche or what to charge by yourself, through podcasts, books and colleagues. The trade-off is that it takes a lot longer. Whatever option you choose, make sure it solves the problem you actually have right now. You don't need every course, every programme or a coach just because your freelance dietitian colleague has one.

What do dietitians waste money on when starting a business?

The most common thing I see dietitians waste money on when starting a business is a website, bought and set up too early. I understand why. It feels like the obvious thing you need to have when you start a business, so it's easy to spend a few hundred pounds, or £1,000 or more with professional copy and design, before you've worked out what business you're building.

A beautiful website doesn't change the fact that nobody knows you exist yet, and sadly people won't just stumble across it and book in with you. And if you haven't done your market research, you might not know who you're trying to reach, what words to use to appeal to them, what problem they want help with, what they'll pay for, or whether there's a profitable opportunity there at all.

I'm not saying don't have a website, just don't make it one of your first investments, or you can end up building the shop before you've worked out what you're selling or how you'll get anyone through the door.

How do you know if a business expense is worth paying for?

A business expense is worth paying for when it solves a problem your business has right now. Sometimes thats a tech tool, sometimes its learning what to do. The question I'd ask is: "Am I buying this because I genuinely need it, or because I feel like I should have it?"

Those are two very different reasons to spend money.

Dietitians tend to fall into one of two traps. Some spend nothing, cobbling free tools together until they realise it has cost them a lot of time. Others get carried away buying everything a "proper" business seems to need, like the £1,000 website on day one.

The answer isn't spend nothing, and it isn't buy everything.

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Episode transcription:

Sarah Almond Bushell: So what does it actually cost to start and grow a dietetic business? Today I'm going to answer that question honestly for you. In this episode, I'm going to break down what you actually need to spend money on when you're starting out, what you can add as your business grows and your needs change, and maybe most importantly, the things that I see dietitians wasting money on way too early.

Now, one thing that surprises a lot of people when they're building a business online is the fact that starting and building a business costs money at all. There's often an assumption that, "well, I'm just going to see clients from my home office, so surely I won't need to spend any money to do that." I completely understand why you'd think that. After all, you've already got the knowledge, you've got the qualifications, you've got your computer, and you're working from home. It's not like you've got a clinic to rent. But the fact is there are costs involved in running a business, whether you like it or not.

Even if you're seeing one-to-one clients and entirely online from your spare bedroom, there's still a business sitting behind those consultation sessions. Now, I know that might not be what you want to hear when you're trying to grow a business alongside a mortgage and bills and kids and all the other costs that come with real life, and especially when you don't have any consistent money coming in every month. The idea of spending money on your business can feel uncomfortable and scary at first. I completely get that.

Trust me, I have been there. I'll never forget the first proper investment I made in my Children's Nutritionist business. I actually ended up hiding this investment from my husband Ryan at the time, but that's a story for another day. of course, what you need to invest money on depends massively on what stage you're currently at in your business, because you don't need the same tools and support and level of investment when you're starting out with your first few clients as you do when you've got a busy business that's bringing in consistent money. And that's what I want to break down for you today.

I'm going to give you three different tiers of investment. So we've got the minimum that you need to get started and get your business off the ground. Then we've got what you might add when your business starts to grow and your time becomes more valuable. And then those bigger investments that can help you get your business to where you want it to be faster.

And I'm also going to shed some light on where I think dietitians most commonly waste their money when they're starting out in business so that you don't end up making the same expensive mistakes. There's a lot of good stuff to cover today. So let's dive in, shall we?

Okay, let's start with level one, the minimum. At this stage, we're mainly talking about the basic tech that you need to actually run your business. The things that help you book calls, take payments, deliver your service and communicate with your clients. So you don't need loads of fancy software. You just need the basic systems that allow you to operate your business. let's go through what I would consider the essentials. number one is a booking calendar.

This is what people use to book a call or an appointment with you. Ideally, you want this to connect to your online calendar so you're not manually emailing people back and forth trying to find a time. Now these tools often have a basic free version, but if you need multiple appointment types, for example, to book a free discovery call and an option to book a paid one-to-one consultation, then you might need the paid plan. Number two is a checkout or payment system.

So you need a way for people to actually pay you online. If you're selling one-to-one consultations, this could be a really simple payment link or checkout. But as you start creating things like digital offers, you can then also have options to offer additional products or upgrades before someone buys. Now, the good news is you don't necessarily need to pay a monthly fee for this.

There are payment platforms that let you set things up for free and then take a small transaction fee when someone pays you.

The majority of the booking software platforms that I talked about first of all there will have a way to take payment. And so this is great for your one-to-one consultations.

Number three is video conferencing. So if you're seeing clients online, you'll need a way to actually have the consultation. it could be something like Zoom or Google Meet. If you want longer calls or group sessions, you'll usually have to pay for a plan, which could be around 10 to 20 pounds a month.

And number four is legal contracts. Now this one isn't really tech, but it's a really, really important one. you'd be surprised at how many dietitians that I know who come to work with me who do not have this in place. You need the appropriate legal documents and contracts for the way that you're running your business. So those four are the non-negotiables, if you like. They're the things you absolutely need because they allow you to take on a client, take their payment, deliver the service and run the business properly.

The next five things in this level are a little bit more dependent on where you are in your business. Some of these things I'd start thinking about quite early on, while others you might not need until you're a bit further down the line. But one thing I do want to say now is that not essential doesn't mean not important. And that's particularly true for your email list, which I think you should be starting from the very, very beginning.

That brings me nicely on to number five, and it's an email marketing platform. And as you probably know, this is what allows you to collect people's email addresses and keep in touch with them. And if you've been listening to some of my other episodes, you'll know I bang on a lot about building your email list very early, and that's for a very clear reason. It means you can start building an audience that you actually own rather than relying entirely on things like social media or Google search in order to reach people. this is one of those things that I would wholeheartedly recommend you start thinking about very early on, even if you don't have a huge audience yet. You can usually start with a free plan when your list is very small. And then as your audience grows, you might start paying somewhere around 10 to 30 pounds a month, depending on the platform and the number of subscribers on your list.

Okay, number six is a landing page builder. this is what helps you actually get people onto your email list. It gives people somewhere to sign up and hand over their email address, usually in exchange for something useful like a free guide or a checklist or even a webinar. You can create basic landing pages for free, particularly if you've just purchased an email marketing platform, because these often include this functionality. But you can also buy a separate platform that has a few more bells and whistles and features. And if you do that, you might be looking at around 10 to 30 pounds a month.

Number seven is webinar software. So this is what you'd use to run a live online presentation or a workshop so that people can watch you and listen to you. And this is a great strategy to attract potential clients, to build trust with people and to sell your services. for this, you could be looking at, well, actually anywhere from 10 to 50 pounds plus per month, depending on what you want to add on to your basic subscription.

Quite often with these webinar softwares, you only need to pay for the month that you're running the webinar and then after that you can cancel your subscription. It's important to know that you do need a specific webinar software rather than just using your usual Google Meet or your usual Zoom channel where people can mute and see each other and unmute and generally it just becomes a bit chaotic.

Okay, number eight is an AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude. Now there are free versions and there are even low cost paid versions of around 20 pounds a month. And yes, this might get you started from day one, but you cannot put any data in there that relates to a subscriber, a client, or a person you've had a discovery call with. You can't link your email, you can't link your calendar or anything like that.

Because you're processing personal data and that goes against GDPR rules. So you do need to have a team's plan for those and that will cost you around about 40 pounds per month.

Number nine is a course membership or programme tech platform host. So if you're starting your business only selling one-to-ones, you can ignore this one for now. But if you start selling a course or a membership or want to deliver a group programme, you're going to need somewhere to host everything that your clients are paying for. this is where you can store things like your videos, your lessons, your resources and your other content and give clients access to everything in one place behind a paywall. these platforms can vary quite a lot in price actually. You might expect to pay somewhere around 30 to 100 pounds a month for that. So that's level one. They're the main building blocks. Now, as I said, you might not need all nine of these at the very beginning. You might only need three or four to begin with.

And if we're talking about the absolute minimum you need, and you're starting with solely one-to-one consultations, you need a way to let people book an appointment, a way to take payment, and that could be the same thing, a way to actually deliver the consultation, your legal contracts, and ideally a way to start building your email list. the basic infrastructure of an online business, I would budget around about a hundred pounds a month for this level.

That brings us to level two. And this is where we move away from the basic infrastructure of the business and start talking about investing in support. at this stage, maybe you've got clients coming in, business is starting to get busier and you're starting to feel like there just aren't enough hours in the week. there's lots of little jobs taking up your time, like scheduling your content, updating your website, formatting emails, creating graphics, keeping the backend of your business organised these jobs might only take you 20 minutes here and there, but when you add them all up, they can eat into a surprising amount of your week. And this is where I'd start thinking about paying someone to take some of that admin off your plate. I'd expect to spend somewhere around 120 to 150 pounds a month on a small amount of admin support.

That might give you a few hours of someone's time each month to take care of some of those jobs that you don't need to be doing yourself. I currently pay my VA £39 an hour and I use her for around about four hours a month.

So it's roughly 156 pounds a month for a few hours of support. 39 pound an hour, you might think that sounds like a lot. That's what I pay for an experienced VA who already knows my business. you absolutely don't need to spend that much when you're starting out. The point really isn't about the hourly rate. It's that once time becomes your constraint, paying someone to take some of those jobs off your plate can actually be a really useful next step.

That brings us to the third area where you might choose to invest as you build your business and that's learning, coaching and support to help you grow. In business, inevitably you're going to come up against questions that you don't have the answers to like, how do I choose my niche? How do I improve my marketing? How do I turn what I know into an offer that people actually want to buy? How do I increase my income without working more hours? How do I know what to charge?

Of course, you can try and figure all of these things out by yourself. You can talk to your colleagues and your friends. You can listen to podcasts. You can read books. as you can imagine, the trade off is that it's going to take you a lot longer. this is where you might decide that you want to invest in something like a self-study course or a group programme or more hands-on coaching support. This is an investment that you can make at any stage of your business.

When you're first starting out, that might be learning the basics of how to set up and market your business or understanding how to actually start getting your first few clients. And then as your business grows, you might need help with something completely different, like creating offers, improving your sales process, or figuring out how to make the business less dependent on you. The amount you invest here can vary massively depending on what you need and the level of support you want.

You could spend a few hundred pounds on a self-study course or a group programme, whereas more hands-on coaching can easily be several hundred pounds every single month, and one-to-one support is going to be upwards of a thousand pounds a month, depending on the person and how intensive the support is that they offer. this is obviously a much bigger investment than everything else we've covered today.

But remember the key is making sure that you're investing in something that solves the problem you actually have right now. You do not need to buy every course. You do not need to join every programme. You do not need to have a coach just because everybody else does. You just need the right support for the stage you're at and what you're trying to achieve.

So those are the three different areas of investment that I'd think about as you build your dietetic business. The basic infrastructure, the admin support when your time becomes the constraint, and the learning and coaching you need to get your business where you want it to be faster. Now, I think it's important we talk about those mistakes that you can make with your money, as it's particularly easy to make those mistakes when you're early on. Because when you don't yet have much experience of running a business, it can be really difficult to know what you actually need and when you need it.

I see a lot of dietitians spending money on things simply because they see other people doing it. So they end up paying for all of these things, but way before they've got the other parts of their business in place that actually make those investments useful. And I think that this is such an easy trap to fall into when you're starting out.

A good example of this is a website. A website can feel like one of those basic things that you have to have as soon as you start a business. You might spend a few hundred pounds or sometimes considerably more getting one designed and set up. But believe it or not, a website isn't something you absolutely need straight away. Because if nobody knows you exist in the first place, having a beautifully designed website isn't going to magically change that. People are not just going to stumble across it and book. If you haven't yet worked out how you're going to get people to see that website, you can end up spending a lot of money on something that isn't actually solving your biggest problem.

Plus, you might not even know what the website needs to say yet. If you haven't done your market research, you might not have worked out properly who you're trying to reach what the problem they actually want help with is or what they're willing to pay for or whether there's actually even a profitable opportunity there. So you can spend a thousand pounds or more getting someone to write fantastic copy to design your website and build everything for you before you've even properly worked out what business you're building.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying you shouldn't have a website, what I'm saying is I wouldn't make it one of your first business investments just because you think "I'm starting a business, therefore I need a website". Because you absolutely don't. I'd make sure you've got the things that actually make the website useful first. Otherwise, you can end up spending a lot of money building the shop before you've worked out what you're selling in it or how you're to get anyone through the door.

Dietitians actually tend to fall into one of two traps when it comes to spending money on their business. On one side, you've got the dietitian who thinks, "well, I don't need to spend anything because I've already got my laptop and my knowledge and I can just get on with it." So they try to do absolutely everything themselves. They use only the free tools. They cobble systems together. They spend hours trying to work things out that they've never done before and eventually they realise that not spending money has cost them a lot of time.

And then you've got the complete opposite, the dietitian who gets a little carried away and starts spending money on all the things that they think a proper business needs, like the fancy £1,000 website on day one before they've worked out exactly who their audience is or how they're going to get people to the website in the first place.

But both of these approaches can cause problems because the answer isn't spend nothing and it isn't buy everything. It's about understanding what your business needs right now and what it doesn't need. The question to be asking yourself is, am I buying this because I genuinely need it or because I feel like I should have it? Because those are two very different reasons to spend money. if you can get better at telling the difference between them, you can save yourself a whole lot of money in those early stages.

And actually I've created something that I think would be quite useful if you're trying to work out what you should be spending your money on in your business and when. It's my free master plan. It's a step-by-step guide that takes you through the key aspects of building a successful dietetic business in the exact order you need to take those steps. So instead of potentially spending money on things that your business simply isn't ready for yet, you can see what you need to focus on now, what comes next and what can wait.

And that will give you a much clearer idea of when it actually makes sense to invest and where your money is best spent at different stages. You can grab the free master plan in the show notes of this episode. Bye for now.