Tonight I made the trek down to Monash Uni in the pouring rain, confused myself trying to find a park in their strange colour-coded carparks with minimal signage and then wandered around lost until I stumbled upon lecture theatre H2. Luckily I wasn't late because I would have missed one of the most informative talks I've been to! I'm going to try and condense the full two hours into an easy-to-read summary.
Dietitians Karen Inge, Miriam Raleigh and Sarah Leung were there to tell us about their dietetic experience, and businessman Josh Sparks enlightened us with stories involving his decision to drop out of the fashion business and open up a series of healthy takeaway food bars called Thr1ve.
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| Poster courtesy of Monash Uni's BND Society |
Sarah is the new kid on the block when it comes to dietetics. Graduating only 5 years ago from Monash Uni, she now runs her own private practice. Sarah talks about the hard life of a 'travelling dietitian,' working out of multiple offices and feeling like her job was very mundane until a trip to the US showed her what the job could be. She started thinking about having a unique selling point to differentiate her from other private practice dietitians, and used her love of cooking/baking. After a false start (almost turning a GP's office into a Chinese take-away!), she assembled her own crack team of allied health professionals to work with. Her practice combines dietetics, cooking classes, massage, yoga, meditation and TCM (traditional Chinese medicine).
Miriam is a paediatric dietitian and Monash graduate. She knew she wanted to work with kids and although she got sidetracked with other jobs, she is now following her dream in her own practice. From the sounds of it, Miriam is very persistent and I loved her story about applying at a UK hospital until they got tired of her asking and gave her a job! She seemed slightly embarrassed by it, but jobs don't often just fall into your lap. So asking and chasing down your preferred employer is the smart way of doing it! Ten years later and she has her own private practice specialising in paediatric dietetics, and has even employed a staff member! She loves it because it is flexible and with two young kids of her own, is important for her.
Both Miriam and Sarah really stressed the importance of learning about business and marketing. They were both unsure at first but quickly learnt running a business was more than renting a room and getting an EFTpos machine!
Karen, as always, blew everyone away with her stories. Her long career coupled with her excellent public speaking, makes for an entertaining time and if you haven't heard her speak yet, make the time to see her when you can. She's sharp, funny and has a wealth of knowledge she wants to share with us! I'm not ashamed to say I adore her, and only slightly jealous of the students she chooses to mentor. I imagine this blog post will be a bit heavy on Karen, but she's great so you can't really blame me.
Karen explains about how she's continually has to reinvent herself and keep the career interesting. She's 38 years in and still loves what she does. If that isn't a glowing recommendation for being a dietitian then I don't know what is! She talks about the days when there were more jobs than dietitians and that multiple hospitals were all begging for her to come work for them. If only it were like that now! Her career has taken her from Melbourne hospitals, to bossing around footballers, to overseas study tours with top dietitians and olympic athletes, to high-profile media spots, her own books, consultancies with large food companies and almost everything in between! Now she spent a lot of time giving back to the community and helping young dietitians.
Karen talks about her career with sports nutrition and says that you don't have to be a athlete to teach athletes how to eat well. It reminds me of the saying, 'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.'
Nathan (one of the students) asked a great question about how to get athletes to listen to you, when you aren't 'one of them.' Karen explained how she went for the star players and got them on board by teaching them how to cook, and teaching them about good nutrition. They would then rally the other guys in the team to listen to her. It makes a lot of sense to go this way, because then you only have to engage one or two people instead of the whole team.
Josh tells us about how excited he was to see an under served nutrition market. As an entrepreneur, seeing something that people could become emotionally engaged with really appealed to him. He looked to break down confusion on the customer's behalf and engage them with healthy food that is simple to understand and visually appealing.
Josh talked about his successes and failures. He says he learned a lot from his failures and it has helped him to build a better business today. Leaving work that may have paid more and striking out on his own to pursue his passion left him feeling more fulfilled as a person. Karen agrees, talking about her rejections and how they affected her personally. But that these knockbacks ended up making her more resilient. "Think of it as a Cha-Cha, a dance" rather than a step back.
The team listed qualities that they believed would make a successful dietitian:
- Persistance
- Good communication skills
- Ability to build good working relationships
- Public speaking skills
- Blogging/use of social media
- Being innovative
- Ability to clearly articulate your 'story' or message.
Mentors can go a long way to helping you learn how to communicate. They also get to know you as a person and coupled with their 'been there, done that' experience, they can guide you into experiences you may not have thought of, but will give you good advice based on your strengths. Karen says a good mentor should be honest with you and help you to be a good dietitian.
Miriam says she has had a few mentors, some she has sought out for an informal relationship. She stresses that your mentors don't necessarily have to be dietitians, it could be a business coach etc.
Josh, from a more cut-throat industry, admired the way mentors can be in this field and offers this: "If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice."
He then explained that when you ask for advice, build a mentor relationship... later down the track they are more likely to offer you investment money. On the flip side, someone who doesn't want to invest in you will often give you advice instead.
I also want to add in another piece of advice he was given: "You tear their eyes out or they''ll tear your eyes out." It really shows the difference between the commercial and the allied health worlds.
Click through to part two...
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