Welcome to The Tech-Savvy Dietitian Podcast — where we believe your systems should support your practice, not sabotage your sanity. Hosted by Courtney Vickery, a registered dietitian turned web designer and tech translator for private practice owners.

If your day feels like an endless loop of sending forms, chasing clients, and juggling way too many tools that don’t talk to each other, this episode is for you.

We’ll unpack:

✨ The three biggest admin traps that keep you stuck in overwhelm
⚙️ How to simplify your systems and automate what actually matters
📩 Quick wins you can set up today — from email templates to smarter scheduling

By the end, you’ll know exactly where your admin time is disappearing and how to reclaim your energy (and your evenings).

Mentioned in this episode:

• Practice Better

• Zapier

• Mailbutler

• Apple Mail templates

Work with us: decletdesigns.com

Instagram: instagram.com/decletdesigns

Welcome to the Tech Savvy Dietitian Podcast, where we believe that your systems should support your practice and not sabotage your sanity. I'm your host, Courtney Vickery, a registered dietician turned web designer and tech translator for private practice owners who are tired of playing calendar Tetris and inbox Detective.

 All right, so today's episode is all about admin overwhelm. If your day feels like a never ending loop of sending forms, chasing clients, and trying to remember which platform does what, then this one is for you. We're going to talk about why it's happening, what to do instead, and a few quick.

Wins you can start using today to free up your brain space.

So I want you to picture this. It's 8:00 PM at night. You've already had dinner and you're trying to get the kids in the bed, and you remember that your chart notes are still not done. Your inbox, well, we don't talk about it. You just remembered that you forgot to confirm Tamara's client yet again. , I know exactly what that feels like because that was me.

I had my own private practice, um, called Vickery Wellness and I was that person. , I felt like I was trying to do it all with systems that didn't work for me. And of course when this happens, it's going to lead to burnout is inevitable because we cannot do it all, even though we would like to try. So here are three things that I think are admin traps that we all fall into that make us continue to feel overwhelmed. Number one, you're doing tasks manually that don't need to be. Manual. This is something I see all the time, and I completely understand that sometimes we're afraid to let go of that control, especially as dieticians who are perfectionists, um, to, you know, let something do it for us.

But I really, really encourage you to give it a try. Um, you know, for example. You shouldn't be mailing emailing a client their intake form yourself every time. That is absolutely not something you should be doing. If you use an EMR, like practice better, it should be sending those things automatically for you.

You should not have to be thinking about that. You should. Set up systems that we're gonna talk about so that it automatically onboards those clients for you, so that all you need to do is review everything before their session begins. The second thing I see is that, you know, we've tried to do this, so we've duct taped a bunch of tools together, but nothing's.

Actually connected or talking to each other. Um, we've got a Google form over here that we're trying to like list all of our inquiries in. Then we have our email and there's task and emails we haven't responded to in there. And then we have a calendar, but we don't have it connected to our EMR. So all of those appointments are not showing up on our calendar.

We're having to add them manually and we're forgetting it's unnecessary. All of those things can be connected together. But the main thing out of all of this, before you even open that browser is if you don't have a clear workflow, then all you're gonna gonna do is be playing catch up and be reactive to everything that happens, which.

Will lead to burnout. You have to figure out your process and how you want it to work before you put the things together. Be like building a house with no house plan, no floor plan. You can't do it. You can do it, but you'll drive yourself insane and I do not recommend it. Um, so I'll just use an example.

You know, if someone's using, uh, scheduling via email, that's another thing that is, uh, the hangup I have when I see people trying to do it. Um, even colleagues or friends, if they message me and they're like, Hey, do you wanna get together or hang out, like co-work together? I'm gonna send you my scheduling link, because it is a waste of time for us to both be like, well, I'm available Monday, Wednesday, Thursday at this time, blah, blah.

We're not doing that. Here's my link. Let's find a time. Let's move on with our day. So don't schedule via email. Have that scheduling link ready. Do not send your Zoom links manually. It should be connected to whatever you're using to schedule. And the same thing with the intake forms. It should be automatically sent.

However that looks, whatever system you have, I promise there's a way to do it. Um, and again, once you get that process figured out, that should be one of the first things you set up. So how are we gonna do this? Like, this all sounds great, but how, how do we get to this point? So once you figure out your workflow, you need to think about what can I automate now?

Do I have to touch this thing or could it happen automatically? Maybe you don't know the answer, but then you know, that's when we go and we talk to chat GPT or Google or whoever or me, you know, you can ask me questions and find out if it can do that. So for example, you should be automating your scheduling.

You should be automatically sending intake forms and reminder emails. You should not be doing that. It should do it for you. And you can do that with systems like practice Better and Calendly and using Zapier or you know, for the Zaps and the automations. The other thing that you can start doing right now is stop starting from scratch.

Every time you need to create templates for all the email replies you already send, um, your onboarding process should be repeatable. It's the same thing every time. Um, and then you should have templates for your social media captions. And I don't mean. Templates in the sense that they say the same thing every time.

I mean, the structure should be the same so that you're not sitting there thinking again, what should this caption be? And using all that brainpower when it really should just be the same structure every time, because you don't need to be retyping your cancellation policy 37 times a week. Right? We should not be typing that out.

That should be honestly in your email signature, but it should also be a template. Think about all the things that, so like you're frequently asked questions, what are the things that you regularly send emails about and find yourself doing every time? Make the template and you can save it in Google Workspace as a template.

Or I actually use the Apple Mail app on my desktop and connect it to my Google workspace. And it has an app called Mail Butler, which is exactly what it sounds like. And it helps me, you know, create all of those templates. And then it helps me create tasks as well. So I can assign a task to an email, but we won't get too in the weeds about that.

But that's just an example. So speaking of that app, you need to pick your primary tools and let them do their job. Stop trying to Frankenstein things together and trying to make things work that don't figure out what you need by figuring out your process, looking at what you can automate, what things do you do that are repeatable, and then find a tool that does that and simplify.

If practice better does 80% of what you need, then let's not add to it. You know, let's, let's not duplicate the work here. Let's try to simplify. That's the goal for me as well this year is simplify everything. So here's some quick wins that you can have today set up. One automation, like an email that triggers when someone books and confirms their appointment.

Create one email template, whether it's what's your cancellation policy or, um, you need to schedule a follow up or whatever it may be, uh, that you find yourself sending a email a lot, make a template for it. And then I want you to audit your tools. I want you to paper, spreadsheet, whatever you need to make a list of all the tools that you currently have and use or have access to.

And then I. Look at which ones do you use daily? This is something I've been working on myself, like I've made a list and it's like, where do I naturally go every day anyways? Because I know for me personally, being neurodivergent outta sight out of mind if it's not something that I'm just going to do automatically as part of my routine.

Then I'm unlikely to use it. So figure out what your tools can do. Which ones do you use daily, and which ones are you creating more work for yourself? That could be simplified or automated. So if admin stuff is draining your energy, it's not because you're bad at business. I want you to remember that you just haven't built the right systems yet, and that's something that is completely fixable.

So I would love for you to send me a message and tell me your favorite admin hack, or tell your most ridiculous tech fail. If you feel like sharing, I'd love to hear that too. And don't forget that next week's episode is all about how to set up a wait list that will filter non-ideal clients for you. And don't forget, if you need extra help, you can always book a tech strategy session with me.

I love nerding out about this stuff. And then we also have several free resources on our website decletdesigns.com. Thank you all and hope you have a great week.