We were lucky to catch up with Caitlin Self recently and have shared our conversation below.
Caitlin, appreciate you joining us today. How’s you first get into your field – what was your first job in this field?
When you’re inexperienced in a new field, especially in my field, it’s who you know, it’s what you know, it’s a lot of saying yes to things, and it’s a big fat piece of good luck. My first job in the field was a long time coming, as I’ve written about on my blog, it took me a year from completing my master’s and 6 months after licensure to get my first job. This was tough for me.
I started looking for my first job 4 months prior to graduation. I also quit my day job in education the week I graduated. I was ready to dive in with both feet and I may have been overly optimistic. While looking for a job, I was able to work my internship a few days a week, and I got a position as a receptionist at a doctor’s office 2 days a week. I also had my food blog, Frugal Nutrition, which I had not yet realized I could monetize.
Here’s who you know part one – one of the clinical supervisors at my school was the nutritionist at this doctor’s office, so I was able to get my foot in the door with a decent recommendation. The Office Manager also suggested I start working there as a nutritionist once licensed – how exciting! I felt like I was finally on track to have a job as soon as my internship ended. However, when the time came to hire another nutritionist, they didn’t hire me. They had a slightly backwards plan to hire a nurse to do the job of both nurse and nutritionist. Realizing that this was a dead end position and feeling a bit disrespected, I put in my two weeks’ notice. I worried that my disappointment would make me resent the job and my coworkers, so I left before that could happen. Well surprise, surprise, their backwards plan didn’t quite work out and the nurse put in her notice on my last day there! I felt bad for them and their patients, but it was a little comforting to know that I wasn’t the only one who thought their plan was ridiculous.
So I continued pounding the pavement, so to speak. I hosted free events, I fine-tuned up my resume weekly, I went to every networking event and said yes to all.the.things. I started my own practice, which I had never wanted to do, and I dropped off flyers and business cards at every doctor’s office, gym, and coffee shop in town. And I did everything I could think of to get a job or find clients. Jobs were scarce in general, but I sent out over 100 resumes in that 1-year period of time. I was mostly ignored. It was nightmarish. I am a confident go-getter, but I am not a natural entrepreneur and I really wanted to find a job. (Little did I know, in a few short years I would become a reluctant, but successful business owner and entrepreneur.)
Finally, after nearly a full year, I had an interview! They were specifically looking for someone with an integrative background who could start nutrition program from scratch at their conventional office. I was so excited when they offered me this position, and after about 1 month of working there, I asked why they chose me – friends, I highly recommend this! I always ask why someone hired me over the other candidates – it really helps to understand your strengths. In addition to saying I was personable and other nice things, they said they liked that I already understood some of the insurance coding for nutrition, which was going to be completely new to them. So, remember that 2-days-a-week receptionist position that never turned into a nutrition position? Well, the little bit I absorbed about insurance billing had given me a leg up in this interview for a real nutrition position! Equal parts who you know and what you know, right? And a big serving of luck. I didn’t want to disappoint so I dug into understanding it even more to make sure I could be useful.
Once I had this position, it was like the floodgates opened. A previous professor personally requested me as her TA for a course she was teaching, and recommended me for another course. Someone I had interacted with quite a bit during my internship remembered me and reached out when a part-time position opened up in her business. A part-time job I’d previously been rejected from reached out months later with a new project they’d like me to manage. Friends and colleagues in nutrition-related Facebook groups were sending me job postings at their offices, and my physical therapist asked if I wanted to help her patients with nutrition. After a very dry 12-18 months, I said yes to almost everything and kept up 4-6 different positions for 2 years. In this time I also learned how to monetize my food blog and start building it into a business. Hello, fast-track to burnout!
Caitlin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I think I’ve always wanted to help people. But I typically associated that with the authoritative concept of listening to doctors and teachers. I started my food blog, Frugal Nutrition, in 2013 with the idea of sharing my knowledge of putting meals on the table from affordable, whole food ingredients. We didn’t grow up with a lot of money and I started cooking family dinners when I was in middle school. I felt like I had some authority on this based on my experience, but I didn’t know as much about the nutrition piece as I would like, which is what eventually led me to get my master’s in integrative nutrition. I chose my program based on their focus on culinary nutrition, and planned on working in the public health sector in community nutrition & education.
However, during my Master’s degree, I learned that helping people actually means listening to them, not provided blanket statements and just showcasing your knowledge. It was really eye-opening for me to realize that health care providers needed to understand their patients in order to help them – not just match symptoms with a diagnosis and send them off with a prescription and (maybe) a diet plan. I became fascinated with personalized nutrition and the science showing that there was no such thing as one-size-fits-all medical care. I still love and respect the community piece, but I quickly changed my courses and dove directly into the clinical track.
My initial area of clinical interest was mental health – as there were so many individuals in my life struggling with anxiety, depression, and other mental health related concerns. I was learning that food and integrative medicine could make a difference here.
Around the same time, I started developing my own health issues that drove me to dive deeper into what could be going on, not just from the nutrient piece, but with the whole body. Over time I discovered some hormonal imbalances that got me very interested in menstrual cycle health, and gut issues that uncovered SIBO and drove me to learn everything I could about gut health.
The most interesting piece of all, was that these three areas are so closely connected, and these body systems influence each other, presenting with a wide variety of symptoms. I did a lot of research to find some of the best courses covering these topics and started chipping away at a list of over a dozen different courses and trainings to start to figure out how we could really help our clients and patients, and get past the prescriptive nature of medications and diets. All while continuing to really listen to my clients and their experiences. You really do learn so much more from your clients than from any higher education institution!
As a result, I learned so much about how people get where they are, and why it’s important to meet them where they are rather than provide them with a generic protocol. I learned that figuring out what you can add – vegetables, meditation, more sleep, probiotics, more protein, etc. – is much more effective and sustainable than starting with the things you “should” remove.
Now, I’m able to take a lot of education and information and let that inform my assessment when I’m working with a client, but it no longer becomes the basis of my assessment. The person sitting in front on me, with their lifestyle and symptoms and financial constraints, form the foundation of the plan and we build from there. My job is time-consuming because I don’t have a lot of protocols and handouts that work for everyone. I don’t think gluten-free or intuitive eating or keto is going to be the best fit for each person and I use some of these advanced and extreme interventions more sparingly than I did when I first started. I hope my clients feel like I’m truly partnering with them and balancing the science, clinical experience, and their individual situation to help them find solutions to their hormonal, gastrointestinal, and mental health concerns.
The one thing that really supports my practice is my food blog, Frugal Nutrition. I’ve been working on this for nearly a decade and turning it into a source of income was really rewarding. I’m able to post recipes on there with my clients in mind, and that does save me time down the road when clients are looking for ideas. My website has over 400 recipes with pricing and nutritional information, to help my readers (not just my clients) feel confident they can cook nourishing, delicious meals that are well within their budget. I am also starting to build a YouTube channel (Frugal Nutrition) so I can provide some of that more generic nutrition education and cooking tips in an accessible, but non-dogmatic way. My clients have often requested more educational content to read, watch, or listen to, and I don’t always have a resource that provides information in a really balanced way, so that’s one of my long-term goals with my channel.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
This is going to sound completely cliché, but I had to unlearn the idea that it’s uncool to try hard. I’ve always been a hard worker in my own way, but there was some underlying part of me that felt I had to make it look easy and seamless. I was afraid to turn my hobby blog into a business, and afraid to start a nutrition practice because I would look like I was trying too hard. I watched other people succeed and they made it look so easy, and it made me feel like success was completely impossible. I can remember being placed in what was essentially remedial French my first semester of undergrad – I had taken it in high school, so I wasn’t allowed to take 101 or 102, but I wasn’t good enough for 201. I was mortified! I dropped French and took Japanese instead. (Which, incidentally, I was much better at and I actually lived in Japan from 2015-2016!)
So when I started my blog, I didn’t share it publicly with friends and family – I was embarrassed to be doing something that I wasn’t an all-star at right out of the gate. I read about success stories and looked at my measly 100 visitors a month and decided I would always keep it as a hobby and never use it as a business because there was no way I could succeed. Fortunately, a colleague of mine who is a successful blogger and fellow CNS set me straight in about 2019 when she showed me how hard everyone works to have a successful blog, and that sure, there are random lucky overnight success stories, but those are the absolute exception and should NOT be your guiding light!
That advice helped me in my nutrition practice as well. I was initially afraid to beg my entire contact network to be nutrition clients for one of my courses in my master’s program. But I learned that when you ask your friends and family for help, and you show them how hard you’re working – they want to help you! I had people driving over an hour to come to our school’s clinic just to help me with my requirements for graduation! This helped me realize that it’s ok to be a try-hard. There’s no shame in working hard and asking for help, and putting yourself out there. I recently mentioned in my newsletter that I was having some issues with algorithm updates on my website and made a gentle request for folks to show some love to a certain post and many people did exactly what I asked!
Humans are good, and we want to help each other, especially when we know someone is trying hard.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Hands down, connecting with providers through networking is what built my practice. For me, when I was looking for a job, I was very active in our alumni Facebook group. Mostly, I was answering questions based on what I already knew. As a result, I was presenting myself as a wealth of knowledge, and this established me as a bit of an expert in certain categories. I was only doing this to be helpful since I was taking so many trainings, but in the end, it helped me to network with other providers – opening up many referral pathways.
I also connected with my clients’ doctors and therapists, and set up coffee dates with any providers who were willing to give me 15 minutes of their time. I would call doctors to let them know I was working on nutrition with their patient and this could eventually change their needs for certain medications so “is that ok with you?” Doctors LOVED this. It doesn’t always generate referrals right away, but some of those providers remembered me when their patients needed medical nutrition therapy, and it really helped me grow my practice.
The second most effective tactic was actually a bit of SEO for my practice. Fortunately I had a bit of experience with online marketing, so it was how I naturally set up my websites. But if you’re starting out, I definitely recommend taking a marketing or online SEO course for nutritionists (happy to refer you to one if you need it!), so you can learn how to optimize your own online presence.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.frugalnutrition.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frugalnutrition/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FrugalNutrition/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/caitlinself
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/frugalnutrition
- Other: https://www.caitlinselfnutrition.com/
Image Credits
Caitlin Self Becky Stavely