After ten years of creating and serving the All Access Dietetics community, I have learned many things about life, nutrition, and community.
For those of you that don’t know the background story on All Access Dietetics, here it goes:
In Fall 2007, I was a senior at the University of Illinois applying to dietetic internships. I was using the Academy’s student forum to connect with other dietetics students and chat about applications. No Facebook groups back then! That’s where I met Katie Hamm (now, Proctor). She posted about an idea to create a catalog of dietetic internship profiles to help people search for the right programs for them. Excited by this, I reached out via Facebook message like a total creep, but through our exchanges back and forth, it confirmed my hunch that we were like two peas in a pod!
In April 2008, I got matched to Massachusetts General Hospital while Katie went into her senior year at Kansas State University. After chatting for months, Katie asked if I wanted to launch the dietetic internship business together and start that summer. Of course, I said yes!
In the summer of 2008, Katie had a P.R. internship in Chicago, and I moved back to my parents in a Chicago suburb before moving to Boston in the fall. During this summer, we created the logo on an air mattress in her un-air-conditioned apartment, found a web developer to be a business partner by stalking computer science majors on Facebook (we could not afford a web developer’s salary!), got a small loan from my lovely grandma, and started painstakingly creating our database for the dietetic internship programs.
To start building hype, we launched All Access Internships (our old name!) Facebook Page had over 1,000 users and was featured in the Academy’s journal before we even found it!
Finally, on Sunday, October 12, 2008, when I was in my Boston apartment and Katie was in Kansas, we launched All Access Internships!
Since then, a lot has happened! Katie decided to move on in 2010 to take on a full-time role in P.R. but has been a coach since then. We launched coaching in 2010, hired a team of coaches in 2012, created the all-inclusive coaching (previously the All-Access Pass) in 2014, and now the Get Matched Program in 2018–a course and coaching experience that takes you through the ENTIRE application process!
Here are ten things I learned after running All Access Dietetics for the last ten years:
1. The community is everything.
The magic of All Access Dietetics is hands down the RD2BE community. Back in 2008, before our epic Facebook group, we had a Google Group that was active and helpful. Looking back, it makes sense because dietitians LOVE helping people, right? The magic in our online community is what makes AAD unique.
2. You guys love funny posts.
We’ve tried a variety of Instagram strategies over the years, from food puns to motivational Mondays to advice and blog posts. But what gets you going is our #YouKnowYoureADieteticsMajorWhen posts! I scour Twitter for the most LOL-worthy tweets from dietetics students and share them on Instagram, and the crowd always goes wild! Check out our Instagram here.
3. Always listen to the users.
Feedback is the breakfast of champions! This was a mantra I have lived by with this business. Early on, there was no Get Matched Course. There wasn’t even coaching! That came from surveys we would send to our users asking how else we could support them through this crazy process.
4. I couldn’t do it all.
Over the years, there were student volunteers, social media interns, dietetic interns, coaches, administrative assistants, coaching coordinators, and other consulting dietitians that all helped make All Access Dietetics go, especially when I was trying to manage two or even three other jobs or projects in the worlds of sports nutrition, writing, and speaking. As an entrepreneur, you have to know when to ask for help and who is the best person to ask. So thank you to those that have been a part of this journey and dealt with my crazy emails at midnight for so many years!
5. This is an ongoing learning process.
In 2017, I decided to hire a business coach to teach me more advanced business skills than those I taught myself over the last decade. As an entrepreneur, I loved testing new ideas and getting feedback, but I was spinning my wheels and not understanding what to do with the input. After bringing in my business coach, I now have a clear vision, a solid model, goals, and a marketing plan that I am confident in and don’t want to change or tweak (which is exhausting) constantly!
6. It comes down to confidence.
Katie and I weren’t supposed to launch a business when we were 21. As students, we weren’t supposed to be experts on getting into a dietetic internship (we weren’t DPD directors!). But we were confident knowing that there was a need. We knew we could fill that need if we listened to our community and gave them what they wanted. So ten years later, because of being an overly confident 21-year-old, this business has gone on to impact thousands and thousands of future dietitians!
7. You have to work for it more than you hope for it.
Consistent hard work is everything. And how did I keep myself going season after season? Well, all I can say is don’t underestimate the power of a reasonable quote. I constantly found a new motivator, kept that motivation consistent and found new ways to do that. For months I would wear my Dream-Believe-Achieve sweatshirt, then it was a quote board with a new quote every few weeks, then a timer reminder that showed a mantra, it was a post-it, then a vision board. I did whatever it took to keep reminding myself that consistent hard work is what it would take.
8. You get what you put into it.
As coaches, working individually with so many students, we teach them how to take ownership of the coaching time and our feedback. It’s hard work, but it pays off in the end. And it’s not just the internship process that they realize this. I follow these clients through their careers and learn that this skill leads to so much more. Former clients become rockstar dietitians doing things like running their businesses, working for Olympic teams, traveling the world, becoming Insta-famous, and more!
9. Let your haters be your motivators.
In the first year of AAD, we had to face some resistance from dietetics educators that were unsure of what we were all about. We learned very quickly how to accept feedback, deal with criticism, and even not take anything personally. But we stayed motivated and on track because we knew that students all across the country were so happy with the website and loved it. Dealing with judgment set me up to handle the stresses and challenges over the next ten years. As a business owner, you have to be vulnerable and also be OK with being judged. Either do something with the information or simply use it as motivation 🙂
10. There’s more to be done!
I’ve been dreaming up to the next ten years and thinking about how I can continue with you on your journey as a dietitian. I hope to continue improving the confidence of future dietitians so that the future of dietetics can make an even more significant impact! When you know how to “sell yourself” to a selection committee, you’ll be more comfortable doing that to employers, clients, and the public. And that’s what dietetics needs!
So everyone, raise your glass of kombucha, and give cheers to a decade of a fantastic RD2BE community and all of the past, present, and future dietitians that have made AAD so great!
P.S. Bonus cheers to February 16, my favorite day of the year 😉
