Private Practice Kickstart: Essential Tips for Launching and Growing Your Nutrition Counseling Business

Join us to learn key tips for entrepreneurs in the private practice space! We will welcome four seasoned dietitians who will each share their best advice for you, including:

1. Business Logistics with Amy Williamson. She’ll cover essential steps for setting up a business as a dietitian, banking lessons you don’t want to learn the hard way, and accepting payments and parity laws.
2. Case coordination and team building Kristen Murray.
3. Marketing mindset, strategies, and playing the long game for a profitable business with Minh-Hai.
4. Establishing a practice that supports client safety and trust and what can help you have not only a successful business but a sustainable one with Virginia.

Learning Objectives:

Following this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Name three things to do and/or consider when starting your private practice.
2. Name the #1 marketing strategy for building and maintaining a private practice.
3. Name three things to consider before growing from solo to group practice.
4. Name three core components for building and tending relationships.

Amy Williamson Bio:

Amy Williamson, MS, RDN, CEDS, CDCES (she/her) is a Registered Dietitian and the owner & founder of Seeds Nutrition Counseling, a group private practice in Dallas, TX, specializing in the treatment of eating disorders and disordered eating. Additionally, Amy is a CDCES and loves working with folks living with diabetes who want to heal their relationship with food and their bodies. When Seeds Nutrition Counseling was born in 2019, it was a solo, cash-based practice. In 2020, we began accepting health insurance and have grown into a flourishing group practice! I love the opportunity to work with other RDs who are interested in getting started with an insurance-based practice, empowering them & supporting them in this journey to practice and live life in accordance with their values.

Kristen Murray Bio:

Kristen Murray, MS, RDN, LD (she/her) is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, and owner of The Intuitive Eating Center of Northeast Ohio. She completed her undergraduate degree in Exercise Science at Cleveland State University and her master’s degree in Nutrition at University of Akron. Kristen opened The Intuitive Eating Center to bring weight-inclusive and non-diet care to Northeast Ohio. Her priority is to create a safe, welcoming space for individuals of all sizes, ages, races, gender identities, and abilities to support healing. Kristen is passionate about helping people become competent and happy eaters. She supports her clients in finding a more peaceful and flexible approach to health and nutrition that feels unique and authentic to them. Kristen specializes in weight-inclusive medical nutrition therapy, Intuitive Eating, eating disorders, PCOS, and body image.

Minh-Hai Alex (she/her) Bio:

Minh-Hai Alex, MS, RDN, CD, RYT (she/her) owns a weight-inclusive nutrition practice, Mindful Nutrition, in Seattle, WA. She’s also a trauma-informed yoga and iRest teacher, a certified body image coach, and a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She co-founded Zing Bars, available nationwide.

Virginia Newman (she/her) Bio:

Virginia Newman, MS, RDN, CD (she/her) has been a registered dietitian nutritionist working with eating disorders for 7.5 years and has owned her private practice, The Radical Dietitian, for 6.5 years, where she provides eating disorder care and support contained within a trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming, queer-friendly, fat-affirming, and liberatory practice space where connection, safety, and consent are prioritized. Virginia trains and supports new providers with trauma-informed care and fat liberatory praxis that understands the importance of relationship and safety as containers for the profound work of eating disorder care. Virginia has worked with families and children, adolescents, and adults throughout her career, is a Body Trust Provider certified through the Center for Body Trust, and authored the chapter on orthorexia in Springer’s 2020 Adolescent Nutrition academic textbook. She is white and identifies as a queer cis female survivor, an ADHDer that navigates CPTSD symptoms and has a history of orthorexia and recovery, a tarot practitioner and hand cream maker, and, as of recently, lives in the woods in north Seattle (Seattle being her home of almost 20 years) with her partner and two cats, Filius & Bug.