This week on the podcast I’m chatting with Laura Jean, an Australian dietitian on a mission to help health professionals build values-based businesses.
Laura’s here today to share with us:
- How to discover what your values are.
- How to tell if you’re currently operating in alignment with those values.
- What to do if you’re not in alignment.
- How to start infusing your values more directly into your business.
By grounding your business or career in your values, you’re more likely to feel satisfied and at ease in your work and attract the right clientele who would be best served by you and your unique self and skillset.
We tried to make this episode as helpful and actionable as possible so you can get clear on your values and then infuse those values into your life and business.
Hope you enjoy!
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Find the notes for this episode at: www.theunconventionalrd.com/episode081
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More About Laura Jean
Laura Jean (she/her) is an Australian Dietitian who practices with a trauma-informed, social justice, human-centered approach front of mind.
She’s on a mission to support dietitians and other health professionals to build values-based businesses where they, and the humans they work with, can flourish.
Connect With Laura
- Website: dietitianvalues.com
- Instagram: @dietitianvalues
- LinkedIn: Laura Jean APD
- Podcast: Dietitian Values
Laura’s Free Workbook
Free Download – Getting Started With Values In Your Business
Episode Transcript
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Erica Julson: This week on the podcast I am chatting with Laura Jean, an Australian dietitian, who is on a mission to support dietitians and other health professionals to build values based businesses. Laura’s here today to share with us how to discover what your values are and how to tell if you’re currently operating in alignment with those values.
Then we chat a bit about what to do if you’re not in alignment and how to start infusing your values more directly into your business. By grounding your business or career in your values. You’re more likely to feel satisfied and at ease in your work, you’re also more likely to attract the right clientele who would be best served by you and your unique self and skillset.
I know that when I was first starting out in entrepreneurship, I did not take the time to get clear on my values first. And I had a few hiccups as a result, which we do talk about in this episode. I tried to make this episode as helpful and actionable as possible. So you can walk away with some real ideas for getting clear on your values and then infusing those values into your life and business. So without further ado, let’s meet Laura.
Hello there, Laura. And welcome to the podcast. You are actually the first interview that I have had in like a year at this point. Uh, so for everyone listening, they probably are aware that I had my first baby last summer and took a lot of time off. So I’m finally 10 months later, , you know, getting back into the swing of interviewing.
So I just wanted to thank you for being my first guest back on the podcast and for your patience in booking this, this interview. So thank you so much.
Laura Jean: Thanks for having me, Erica it’s a pleasure to be in conversation with you.
Erica Julson: So I know that you are incredibly passionate about helping dietitians use their value system to find their path as a dietitian.
And I know you actually reached out to me about this potential topic as a podcast episode, like two years ago now and even then I was like, yes, we need to talk about this on the podcast. And it’s only become more clear that, that this is really important. I think over the last two years, uh, so many times in my Facebook group, the unconventional RD community, people are asking for career advice and they get the widest range of responses.
Dozens of people chiming in with lots of feedback. And I’m always thinking in the back of my head, How does that person kind of cut through all of this disparate advice and figure out what’s really right for them as a unique individual with their own sets of values and life experiences, and how do they get clarity rather than relying too much on these external voices?
So I really think our conversation today is going to be really illuminating for so many people. , so before we get into all of the details about, uh, starting a value based business, I’m just really interested how you got interested in this topic and how you started helping dietitians in this area.
Like, what was that journey like?
Laura Jean: Yeah, well, I have been, you know, as we all do on our own kind of path and we often, I think sometimes we can, we can build the businesses that we need or, or start things that we kind of needed. And so I, um, started out, in my own business in like 2007 and I really loved the business side of things.
In fact, like when I was at, um, we call it uni down here. Obviously if you didn’t pick up from my accent, I’m in Australia. , and so we, like, we were able to do electives and I did sort of marketing, electives cause I was really interested in it and I loved it. And the thing though, where there was always a bit of a disconnect and I was always searching was for like how to do business.
Initially it. I saw a really disconnect between as a health professional, you know, you show up in a certain way, right. And as a quote unquote business owner, which I never really took me a while to kind of figure it kind of feel like I was aligned with that title. So if you are there, don’t worry about that.
And so I was like, oh, that’s really different. Like, that’s not how. Health professionals work with humans. Like that’s not how we think about, the humans we’re working with. You know, we’re not, you know, even just the idea of selling, you know, felt really uncomfortable. And there was all these pieces that I was like, ah, what is going on?
Like, is there something wrong with me? And, you know, spoiler, the, the kind of the industry tells you, so, which there’s some parallels with diet culture, for the, um, non diet kind of, anti-diet dietitians listening along. And so I was like, oh, there’s a big gap. So I started to do my own business and I’ve always been, pretty, I suppose, clear on my values or very, um, most of the time, I’m, able to act into them, not all the time, because we still get influenced by all the things around us.
So anyway, so I sort of set out on my business and I was doing it and really enjoying. And doing it, how I liked it, but I’d be having conversations with people where I realized that not everyone was filtering all of that marketing advice or all of that business advice through their own values, through who they wanted to be.
And so, you know, for many years I was having like little, little conversations with people casually and informally, or me and I, and I I’ve done a lot of mentoring over the years. And I just sort of realized this was, was something I kind of wanted to get back into. And after my third baby in, 2020, when I kind of came back into doing business stuff, I thought, well, I’ll support dietitians around.
Yeah. Bringing their values front of mind. And of course we know. Yeah, like you said, the last two years what’s kind of happened. And I think even now people see it so much more, um, important and so much more a, you know, something to get super clear on. And as a non-diet dietitian, that’s sort of my clinical, like my kind of background of working with, with humans around the relationship with food, I always did that kind of work with the people I was working with because finding their values was a really important part of connecting to themselves, connecting to their body, connecting to what was going on around their food relationship.
And there were parallels a lot of parallels between the diet culture world and the online traditional business world. And so I was like, oh, this kind of same stuff is gonna be, so there was all different things. I did my own kind of, you know, awakening to kind of like solar living, more sustainable living as well in my personal life, in the background.
So probably like, you know, all these things kind of happening and intersected, you know, to that kind of like light bulb moment of, oh yeah. This, this I think is where I want to be going.
Erica Julson: And how do you help dietitians specifically? Like what do you offer.
Laura Jean: So really just support. Um, I kind of consider myself support a support person and a cheerleader.
So the way I work with dietitians isn’t specifically, I wouldn’t call it necessarily business coaching, but business is the, the background it’s like the in to getting clear on your values because for a lot of dietitian, I think when they start running their own business, a lot of values disconnects come up.
So there’s those points where we just think, what do I do? You mentioned that example before about when people, ask for advice and it’s like a little microcosm of what happens out in the real world, everyone piles on with their information, through their values filter. And we have all these layers, like our family of origin, our educational institutional, these pieces that tell us to be a certain way to show up a certain way.
And we get these feelings about that. Not necessarily being right, and we internalize it and we think, oh, it’s a me problem. Like I’m no good at marketing. I’m no good at selling. I’m no, you know, I’m not cut out to be business. And for me, the biggest. Thing that I see that, is probably one of the biggest drivers for me is seeing so many amazing dietitians leave the field because they just can’t find their space.
And I think when we can ground in our values, then we can create our space. We can open ourselves up to the possibilities. So that’s me. What I do I feel is support people and. Open them up to the possibilities of what being a dietitian can be again, or what being a dietitian in business can look like and what that looks like for each individual dietitian that I work with can be different.
So I’ve spent three months working with a dietitian on just getting clear on their values. I’ve spent a couple of years, working with a dietitian consistently just on being a touchstone for, for them around their values, in their business, bringing concerns and, and me be giving the support person to bring them back through in their values.
Yeah, so I can, I work with people doing that one-on-one and also have a program at the moment called Radicle, um, which is spelt R A D I C L E it’s. I’m a bit of a gardener. Uh . And so the radicle for anyone who’s ever done, like, you know, that science experiment where. You know, uh, germinate a seed, the very first little, tiny bit that pops out of a seed is called the radicle.
And it’s the part that goes on to create the whole root system for the plant. So, you know, you might have, you know, a giant tree and it’s got this tiny little, little radicle pops out. And so radicle the program is about building the root system, the foundation for your business, through your values. And so that is the main kind of ways I work with people as far as like physical ways.
But yeah, how I work with people is really depends on the human in front of me and what’s coming off for them.
Erica Julson: That’s a genius program name by the way, I love that. And I think this is a really good segue as well, to kind of clarify, what do you mean when you say values? Like, can you define that and then help us understand how that might relate to entrepreneurship or more broadly just like career development.
Laura Jean: Yeah. Awesome. So I redefined values Erica, and I’m a really big advocate for people to get clear on the words they use, all the things that are the words that are important to them through their own values. So if you go to the dictionary, the definition of values is principles and standards to live by.
And that’s not like a terrible definition, although in our culture and in our society, the words, standards and principles have been really overlaid with certain things. Like just those words kind of give us the idea that there’s this certain way to be. You know, if we’ve got principles and standards, then somebody’s not meeting the standards, you know?
Possibly. So it, it creates a bit of a hierarchy. I feel those words, so that doesn’t really gel with my values and it doesn’t gel with what I’m ex talking about when I mean the values. And so the definition that I use is, characteristics that underlie. So they’re underneath our attempts to get our needs met because most actions, humans take.
Are to get our needs met, whatever they might be. So basically they’re the things that kind of, show up underneath when we’re acting. They’re, they’re kind of almost like the whys to, to what we are doing. And we’re always acting through a set of values. They just might not always be ours. And so the work that I do is really supporting people to get clear.
What are their values and how to act through those more often. And when we are not acting through our values to really know why like what’s going on for us, what’s the kind of compromise or other commitment. Because there are commitments we have to getting our needs met around safety, around security, and around belonging, around connection that sometimes mean we do act, um, not always a hundred percent in alignment with our values, or we act in a way where we are, I suppose, working with other values, like the values of a community or values of a workplace.
And so firstly, wanna just be really clear because dietitians, we can be a bit of a perfectionist bunch and acting into our values is not about doing it perfectly. So basically what values are, is just what’s going on behind why we do what we do, you know, in a very layman’s term. And the, the kind of definition I use is yeah.
Characteristics that underlie our attempts to get our needs met.
Erica Julson: And I’ve seen you talk about the difference between values and things that we value. And I thought as someone who doesn’t have a ton of experience in this space, that that was a really interesting distinction that I hadn’t quite thought of yet.
So can we dive a little deeper into that, uh, distinction?
Laura Jean: Yeah, absolutely. I have a few little distinctions that I run through around values, cuz I think it’s really important to get a shared understanding of like, what do I mean? Because values is a word that gets thrown around and people do think about it in different ways.
And when I share my take on it, it’s not to make anyone else think my take, the take to have, but just to make sure we’re starting from a shared understanding and also to offer something different. And if that resonates for somebody else, then take it. If it doesn’t leave it. So when you, if anyone’s ever done a values exercise, or when you think about values, what would often, what often comes up is often we’d see words like say family or friends as our values.
And those things are super important in our lives. Like we value them, but to me, what I hold and have around values are that values are verbs. Values are things that we do. They’re the things that are behind, what actions we are taking and you can’t act into family. So what I hold is that some things are things we value.
They’re the places we play our values out. So our family, our workplace, our business, our friends, our children, if we are a parent, our communities. And so those things can be really important, but it’s like, if we wanna differentiate between something we value, if we think about family, how I hold it around values is, well, how do you wanna show up for your family?
How do you want your family to feel when they’re interacting with you and in there is where you’ll find how I consider you’ll find your values around family. Because sometimes we use those terms too, to kind of shorthand what we mean, cuz for some people they might just have, well, when I say family, I mean, you know, I want to be close to people.
I wanna be loyal. I want to, foster relationships and have all these ideas around what it is, and again, it’s this assumption that there’s a universal way to be with family, to be in family. And I think we need to get much more clear. If we use the family example, we know not everyone has great relationships with their family.
So the values of what family might represent are not universally understood. Even though we sometimes can think that they are, so what we value are just the places we play out, our values. It’s kind of where we wanna show up in our values. A lot. It’s also the places often where we can get values coming back at us.
But our values are really about how we wanna show up in those spaces versus those actual spaces. So yeah, values I have where they are verbs versus nouns. So if you come across a word that you like that resonates for you, I’d be thinking about, well, how do you turn it into a verb? Or how do you want, if it’s like a place, how do you wanna show up in that space and place?
And that will give you a more idea of yeah. What I’m talking about when I’m, when I’m talking about values.
Erica Julson: I love that. And thank you for those practical tips too. Cuz I do, I do think maybe if someone’s just starting out, they might put something on their list. That’s more like a noun and I, I really like that.
You gave us real life examples of how you could hone that a little more, get a little more specific. Do you have any specific methods that you like to use to help someone discover their values? If they haven’t really put much thought into this yet?
Laura Jean: Yeah. I tend to sort of, um, run through a bit of a process.
And I really wanna, again, emphasize that, we are not doing anything wrong. If we put family on there or anything like, you know, it’s just a starting point. So writing out words that resonate with us is a great starting point. And then we can take it the next step, you know, and think about how we act into it.
So there’s no right or wrong when it comes to values, values are verbs. Like I said, values change over time as well. So they’re great things to check back in with regularly because when, when there’s big life events for us, or when we go through our own kind of processes of unlearning, then our values can shift.
So I do recommend people. Check back in with their values. When we hold onto a certain set of values, you know, over a really long time often that can be a bit of a sign we’re acting into other people’s values a little bit. Cause we might just be adopting our family of origin values and holding onto those our whole life without really questioning or getting.
Just curious. Now your family of origin values may be your values. Great. You may have the exact same set of values, but often it’s just bringing that opportunity to be curious, to what’s going on for us. So if somebody was interested in figuring out what their values are, the first there’s a couple of ways you can come at it.
So you can kind of look at it a bit. Retrospectively or like, you know, if we think about like a scientific study, you can do like a, a retrospective case study where you can just look at, well, well, how do I act? Your values are found in your actions, so you can look at how you show up and you can see how you do that.
Like, when you turn up to family events, how do you show up? Or how do you want to show up too? Sometimes? Cause you know, family history stuff can get us act in certain ways where we’re not necessarily meaning to. How do you want to show up in your, in your business? Like how do you want to be remembered?
So there’s this kind of set standard, um, way you can go through values. So I go through that in a sec. The first step is to find like the words like the, what are the words, where we kind of like bed our values down in. And so you can do like, you know, online values, assessment tools, there’s heaps of those.
Actually I think, did I send you that business workbook? I’ll send it again just in case I didn’t, I’m pretty sure I did, uh, which is like a workbook that I’ve got, which basically works, walks people through this process because I think that’s great for people to have something to, you know, we love our handouts, right?
Our workbooks and worksheets to work through things. So I’ve got one about these steps with some links to some online values finders. So you’re starting with a list of words. So you can just brainstorm, just sit down and write about, or write down, like all the words that resonate around who you wanna be.
You can find big lists online. And as I said, I got link to one of those and you can do the values, assessment tools, another place. And another fun exercise that I recommend people do is to think about your 80th birthday and. Write a little, just a little paragraph speech from people from different parts of your life.
Like what are they gonna say about how you showed up? So you might have, probably won’t have your parents doing a speech. Um, you probably, you might have a child, like one of your kids or your, your sibling. You might have, um, someone in your community, maybe a professional colleague, about how you showed up or maybe somebody like a client, like, you know, suspend reality here.
You might not be inviting one of your clients to your 80th birthday, but like, how would you want people to talk about you and how you showed up over your 80 years of life? And in those little snippets, you’ll find words that come up and often words that repeat. And they’re the words that are important to you about how you wanna be seen, who you wanna be in the world.
So you start with this big list of word, right? And they’re just words right now. And then first what we can do because often you’ll have. A whole lot. And it’s like, how you gonna act into like 20 different things. So then you can pull them into categories and like find commonality. And so to use an example, you might have something like compassion and kindness and trustworthiness and loyalty and things like that.
And maybe that’s a group for you when your group in these categories, it’s through your own kind of understanding of yourself. So I like, I just used the example there where I kind of grouped trust in there with compassion, but for someone else, trust might be over here with fairness and justice and compassion might be with yeah.
With kindness and other things. So you group them based on your own understanding of view and what makes sense with. And so that’s a really good place to start. And then, yeah, there’s steps. You can go into turning those into like action based statements. So you can actually use them that are really, helpful to like guide your actions or use as a decision making tool.
You mentioned before about the practical stuff. And this is the really thing, one of the big things I’m clearly passionate about many things, but one as aren’t we all like multi passionate entrepreneurs. But one of the really big things is when it comes to values, is that making it practical? Because for a lot of us, our experience with values might be like a list of words on a corporate like website, or maybe a workplace that speaks these values.
But gosh, don’t act into them like, you know, they talk loyalty and then they treat you like crap as an employee. So a lot of us are experienced with values as like a lot of lip speak, and I’m really passionate about values being practical. And that’s why I often give lots of examples and talk about like, what are the steps we can do?
And when we have our values, we have our words, one of the most. Kind of game changers, I think, is to turn them into how we wanna act. So firstly, even just turning them into verbs, so compassion becomes compassionate cuz it’s how you wanna act. And so you can group them into categories and start thinking about how they become actions for you, in your world.
And that’s a good start I could talk day.
Erica Julson: Yeah, no, that was super helpful. And so I’m coming at this obviously from an entrepreneur perspective. So you’re talking about actions and I’m like, okay, great. Like these are concrete things that I could infuse in the actions that I’m taking in my own business.
What about people who maybe aren’t entrepreneurs or maybe they want to be in the future, but right now they’re working for another company. Like how can they still bring their values into their career? In that sense, if they’re not in charge of maybe everything that they’re doing and that, you know, if they had to follow some other companies guidelines and things like that, do you have any advice
there?
Laura Jean: Yeah, it’s a tough spot to be and where we’re in a bit values, disconnect. And I think one of the biggest causes of burnout is actually existing out of our values for too long. So when we have a set of values and we’re having to act out outside of alignment with those values, and I mean, not the only cause, but it’s definitely something that gets a whole lot of health professionals, dietitians, particularly.
And I think, people who have found the kind of more weight, inclusive, non diet aspect, even more so it gets us burnt out because we have these values. And often, like that example, I said before, where you might be working for an organization that says loyalty’s their value, but they don’t treat you in that way.
And that can make us feel more taken advantage of if we’re thinking about in that kind of view and particularly if one of your values is loyalty and you’re like, well, that’s not how I show up in that space. So our values, the first place we can start is getting clear on our values.
So we really know. So when we feel uncomfortable, when we feel burnt out, we can check back in, is this because. It’s a values disconnect like what’s going on. So we have knowledge. The other thing we can do is we can start by turning our values towards ourselves because our values go both ways. Often we think of our values as just been how we show up outside, but our values can be how are, how we show up for ourselves.
So if you are in that space, like let’s use that. We’ll continue with that example. And you are not being shown loyalty by your employer. How do you show loyalty to yourself? How do you take care of yourself? And this is where boundaries can come in. So you decide how you are going to show up based in your values.
You can’t always show up a hundred percent in certain spaces. Like you said, we don’t always have that. You know, it’s not, not just us in charge of what we do. So sometimes there is a values compromise. And so you do what you need to do to take care of yourself in that, to be able to stay there, or you make an exit plan.
If it’s too much of a values disconnect, and really they’re the only two options is either to stay there and make sure that you know how to take care of yourself, despite acting out of alignment with your values, act into your values as much as you can. Right. But there will get a point where. You can’t.
And so it’s taking care of yourself as much as you can, and also knowing what’s kind of a line for you or what’s your exit plan? If the values misalignment is just like, you know, a NoGo zone. And so being really clear, really knowing yourself around that. So having some, I suppose, they, you could think of them as like values boundaries.
Erica Julson: Mm. I like that.
Laura Jean: Um, and I just wanna take one little extra point. There is sometimes for the people who hold certain identities showing up in your values, isn’t always possible either, no matter how much you have your own boundaries and how much, you try and create your own sense of safety. So I just wanna acknowledge, there is some privilege involved in being able to show up in our values and being able to walk away from a job because it doesn’t align with them.
And so I just really wanna acknowledge that that’s not always available to everyone. And so, yeah, that, that is unfortunately reality of the fact that we exist in a system that might have different values that we have that we hold
Erica Julson: mm-hmm that is really important and this is just sort of coming up for me too.
Like just starting out when I was younger. I don’t know that I really even put any thought into what to pay attention to, to even realize if you’re out of alignment with your values, is there like certain emotions or icky feelings or something that can be a sign that maybe there’s a conflict there?
Like what should people look out?
Laura Jean: Yeah, I think our body particularly has a whole lot of wisdom when it comes to when we’re acting out of alignment with our values. and it can show up in ways where we feel that like that icky, ickiness feeling, and what’s really important is to practice and to get super curious.
So, you know what it feels like for you because we’ve got a whole lot of signals that our body gives us, right? Sometimes you’re just hungry. Uh, but you, you really wanna get clear on understanding your own body and what shows up for you. So how to do this is you can either think in the past, like, what did it feel like when you’re in workplaces?
And they asked you to do certain things. So often things will show up for us in our body. And, and then maybe just getting super curious about what happens as you move forward so that you really can connect to what it feels like for you. When values misalignments are coming up. Often we have like a little, little, either felt sense or just that little, you know, we often call the little voice in our head that says, don’t do it.
Don’t do it. So trust that trust yourself. And this is a really big part of values. Work is learning. is connecting. We, we all have self trust, so it’s not really learning to trust ourselves. It’s probably unlearning all the things that told us we couldn’t. And so connection to our self curiosity and a whole boatload of compassion for when we do things that we didn’t necessarily wanna do, or when we do things that maybe aren’t moving us towards our values or when we are just still learning and figuring things out.
So get curious, connect yourself and your body and be compassionate through that whole process.
Erica Julson: And I think that ties in so well with entrepreneurship as well and marketing tactics. , I think we touched on this a little bit, but, I feel like. There’s different strategies, obviously for marketing on the internet.
And I just really see in our community, like there’s like visceral negative reactions to some types of marketing for some people. And then usually there’s at least one method that you’re like, yeah, this feels like really good and authentic and, almost like easy and natural. and I think it’s okay to lean into the ones that feel good for you and tying it back into the diet culture thing too.
Not feel like you have to do it a certain way, or there’s only one right way, or like, this is the way to get clients. If it doesn’t feel right to you, then you don’t need to do it that way.
You know?
Laura Jean: Yeah. That’s a really good point. That feeling of ease, cuz just the same way as there’s a feeling when we’re not in alignment, there’s a feeling in our body and in ourselves when we are now, that doesn’t mean that it all happens easily.
Of course, because we know we still gotta put in the work, but there’s a sense of ease around it. Exactly what you’re saying. Like it’s like that one doesn’t feel so hard and that can be a sign at something in a line with our values. And when it comes to most strategies in business they’ll work, right?
Like most strategies, if you give them the time will work. It’s whether they work for you for your values, for who you wanna be in the world. And. We can, we can do that without necessarily judging or pulling down somebody else because they’ve got a different way of doing it. So we can focus on ourselves, mind our own business.
As one of my mentors said figuratively and literally, and focus on who we wanna be, how we wanna show up in our values and just do that and not worry about what everyone else is doing and having to pull other people down because they might just have different value set, or maybe they’re in a different stage of really getting clear on their values.
Maybe they’re being still more influenced by those cultural and social values. And that’s okay. We don’t have to judge or, or, or put our own values on somebody else. We can just come back to like, how do I wanna show up so we can see that stuff. It’s really, actually, our judgements are really great information about our values, because if we find ourselves judging other people, it’s often telling us some really good stuff about what’s important to us.
It gives us information for our value. So when you do find yourself judging and hand up over here, I judge I’m, I’m gonna be very clear on that. What I do with that judgment as much as I can, is use it for information for me. So what does that tell me about how I wanna show up if I’m over there judging that person like, Ooh, I won’t do that.
Like, what am my gosh then? What is it telling me about how I want to show up and what am I doing about it now?
Erica Julson: Yes.
Great, great advice. Yeah. I feel like it’s easy sometimes to fall into the trap. Focusing on what other people are doing instead of what you’re doing. and then,
Laura Jean: well, yeah, yeah. If we focus on other people, then we don’t have to get into our own business.
We don’t have to examine the disconnects that we are acting into and we don’t have to sit in the discomfort of, yeah, I don’t wanna do that. So now I’m gonna have to do the hard work of showing up in a different way and I’m going, I’m gonna get judged by that. I might lose connection. I might lose a sense of belonging.
And that’s a very real thing and they’re very real needs that humans have. You know, we do worry about what other people think of us. Not because there’s something wrong with us, but because we’re human. So that’s okay. What I find is we can, we often get to a point like a bit of a rub point where the discomfort of acting out of our values becomes worse than the discomfort that can come.
When we do act in our values and people perceive that in a different way, because the actual discomfort of not being ourselves becomes bigger and greater than the discomfort that might come from some of those other kind of human needs.
Erica Julson: Yeah. And
I feel like if you are experiencing that disconnect and you wanna do something a different way, I doubt you’re alone.
there, you know, there, there’s probably at least one other person out there feeling similarly. And then if you feel courageous enough to go your own way, like other people will probably really get a lot from that, watching you do that. And then feel like they could do that too. You know?
Laura Jean: Absolutely. So like when we’re in our values, one, it, it, it helps with how we feel like, you know, we feel that ease.
You mentioned before we feel like an alignment. Like I said, it’s not always easy, but we feel ease. You feel there’s such a different felt sense, of how you show up in your life and how you are within yourself when you are acting in alignment with your values. And we’ve all probably had those moments.
So you can think about it, how that shows up. So there’s that piece, there’s the plan in the seed. There’s the whole opportunity to tell people, well, Hey, oh, I could do it that way too. You know? And I have many people that reach out to me when I’ve posted something or shared something to say, oh, that made me.
Think that maybe I can do that. Maybe I can talk about that. I’ve been working part-time as a dietitian since, since I started my first business in 2007. And so I’ve never went back to full-time cause once I figured out part-time I was like, what is everyone doing? Like working full-time and again, privilege as far as like, , there there’s privilege involved in being able to make that choice, but I’ve always had these conversations with people like you could work part-time and planted those seeds.
And that’s a really great part of. Showing up in your values, you, you just might plant a seed of permission that somebody else didn’t know they needed. And that’s, that’s culture changing that’s system changing, particularly in our dietetics profession, we are so rigid, you know, traditionally.
And so when dietitian are doing things differently and that’s the beautiful thing about the TURD space, is that we’re unconventional and we are doing things differently and it plants a seed for somebody else to go. Maybe I could do that. Maybe I could do it differently. Maybe I could listen to that little dream that I have in my heart and act into that.
The other piece about showing up in our values is not that we’re doing it for this, but it’s a really great marketing tool because you show to the humans, you wanna work with who you are and how you show up. And you are the dietitian that somebody out there is looking for. Somebody out there is looking for a dietitian with your mix of values, with how you talk to things with how you wrap words around the work that you do.
So there might be 10 gastro dietitians in your area. Five non diet dietitians, 20 general dietitians. Two renal dietitians, you know, so, but you are, you, there’s no such thing as competition, we show up as ourselves. And when we show up as ourselves, then we are the dietitian somebody else is looking for.
And that shines through. So being ourselves, being that to me, that’s what being authentic means. You know, that words bandied a lot about in business and, you know, marketing countries, you know, be authentic to me being authentic is shown up in our values. And that is a great way to show how we’re different to it.
It gives people information about how we work and it gives us a filter as well to kind of run things through whether it might be saying yes to a client, whether it might be saying yes to an opportunity, we can go well, does that align with my values? Does it move me towards my values? And that’s a really little once, you know, your values a really little quick kind of like check in, you can do, is, does this align, does this move me towards my values?
So if you’re thinking about, will I say yes to that opportunity, that job, does it move me towards my values with who I wanna be in the world and you can use it so super practically it doesn’t have to just be a list of words on a website or in a bottom drawer that nobody ever looks at again.
Erica Julson: Yep. And I think that helps so much with this feeling that a lot of people have when they’re just starting out of like, maybe they don’t know enough or they feel a little bit of a quote unquote imposter syndrome and things like that. And I think if you take the time to get clarity on your values and show up authentically and all that, it gives you this inner confidence.
I feel like, um, where even if someone maybe challenges something that you’re doing or saying, or criticizes you, or has a different view, it doesn’t like shake you in the same way, cuz you’re like, okay, that’s fine. I, I understand that you maybe have a different opinion or whatever, but, but I know in my core that this is right for me instead of when you’re .
Not quite sure. And you’re kind of like waffling around, you know,
Laura Jean: yeah, yeah. Or trying to please everyone or give into everyone else’s values and what I kind of think of it or is it even goes beyond confidence. It’s just a grounding. It’s a grounding in ourself and that’s, you know, why that word radicle really resonated with me for my, my group name, because it’s really about grounding back in ourselves.
Who would you be if you became, who you already are? You already, are you be you ground back in yourself, ground back in your values, ground, back in, who you already are and show up in the world like that.
Erica Julson: And for people who have their own brands or businesses, and they feel like they have a good sense of their values, how can they make that known to their audience?
Is it just like an unsaid thing you just show up in your values and it comes across without being said, or should it be more explicit where you’re like a tab on your website, like values or something, you know what I mean? Like how do you, how do you make it known what you
stand for?
Laura Jean: It’s gotta be both end.
I really think it’s important to have your values there somewhere. I do have them on my website. You can talk about them on your socials. You know, you could do a whole like content series about it, and it’s also about showing up in it because we’ve all been through that experience of, of, of, of interacting with say a company or a workplace or whatever, where they’ve got those values and they just don’t and it actually feels.
Super gross to be in, in connection or, or community with somebody who says one thing and does a different thing. Right? So yes, we say what our values are and then we act into them and we also bring that compassion. So this is where that compassion comes in because when we don’t, it’s okay too. And we can talk to that.
And you know, again, another word that gets bandied around online is like vulnerability, you know, being vulnerable, which, you know, sometimes can be supportive. Sometimes can be a bit performative, but I think where we can be vulnerable around our values is we can share if it’s align, if it’s, you know, if it’s appropriate, if it’s, if it’s something we want to share, you don’t have to go into every nitty, nitty gritty detail around things, but we can share where maybe we’ve made choices in the past where it didn’t align with our values, or maybe we ha we do in the future.
We, we do do that. We, we do harm and we can acknowledge and accept that and we can share, wow, these are my values. This is how I acted. This doesn’t align. And this is how I’m going to do it differently. And that can be a really important piece. So it’s not about when we have our values somewhere that then there’s this pressure like, oh shit.
If I’m not perfectly sorry, I cursed. I’m not sure if that’s allowed here. That’s fine. um, and, um, you know, I’m not perfectly, you know, compassionate. That part of me that there’s, you know, I’m not doing it right. I’m doing it wrong, but we can, we have our values there as a guide, a space to come back, to come home, to, to ground into not as a, not as a stick, to, to whip ourselves with when we don’t.
You know, we’re not perfect. And we can share those experiences, not necessarily publicly like with our clients, if we don’t want to, but you can, you can, that can be approach just you can go through when, when things don’t align. So that it’s, it’s, it’s a constant feedback loop. It’s not linear. It’s not a, like, here’s my values.
And I just keep going forward. It’s like, here’s my values. Here’s how I’m acting. Whoops. That wasn’t quite one I wanted. What’s gone on. And we feed that back in, is that value still aligned for me? So sometimes when we act out of alignment with my, our values, that’s the first question is which one is the truth?
Which one is my truth? My actions or the values I say I have. So we get clear on that. And then we can figure out if it, if it is actually our value, then what’s gone on and how do we do things differently? Or what is the thing going on in the background? That means we can’t show up in that value. Is there something there?
And can we change that? Can we do that differently? So it just gives us that jumping off point into curiosity and connection with ourselves. And so using that, so yeah. Have it on your website, talk to it explicitly saying things like, you know, maybe it’s when you’re doing a launch of something and you’re saying, you know, one of the things that I’ll often share is like, I’ll never create a sense of false scarcity around the launch.
Like if there’s a set number of spaces in a, in a, in a program, whatever, I’ll let you know. Not to make you take action out of that feeling of scarcity, but just to, to give you the facts, right? So we can be really clear and I’ve found using my values makes marketing so much easier because I can just literally explicitly say to people, this is what’s going on.
Sometimes this is a tactic used to try and leverage you into saying yes to something, to override your own trust in yourself and your values, why I’m sharing this is because of X, Y, Z. And so I can be super explicit. And, and for me, that’s a really makes it makes there’s that ease that you talked about before that comes into it.
So act into them, talk to them, talk to them a lot. People really appreciate that. And mm-hmm, , I’d encourage you to think about like, who are the people that you follow, that you really like, who are the brands that you buy from, you know, that regularly and. What are their values? Often we can, we can really identify it, or we have this sense so that we, that they’re our kind of people.
And that’s often a values alignment. We see their values coming through in their actions. And that is like something that we resonate with ourselves. So the more you do that, it gives the opportunity to the humans you wanna work with to find you to resonate with you and who you are. And it also gives the opportunity for the people who don’t wanna work with you and who you probably don’t wanna work with either to say no to walk away, because you’re very clear if someone comes to my page, or my website or my, you know, Instagram handle, at dietitian values, which would be in the show notes of course, um, you know, and, and reads my post.
They’ll see my values very clearly and very quickly. And if what I’m sharing. It doesn’t resonate then they don’t have to stick around. And the truth is, is if what I’m sharing, doesn’t resonate, then me supporting them. Isn’t gonna resonate either. Like I’m not gonna be the right fit for them.
We don’t have to have exactly aligned values. But like, I talk a lot about, systems of oppression, about racism, about sexism, about all of that stuff that actually impacts on our personal experience navigating the world. But also that there is bigger picture stuff for us to consider.
If that’s not where somebody is on their own journey experience, then I might not be the coach for them. But if somebody is, then they’re gonna be like, oh my gosh, thank God. I finally found the person for me. And that is exactly the same thing that the humans you wanna work with will feel when they come to your communication, your blog, post your, whatever it might be, where you are really letting your values come through.
Erica Julson: Yeah,
I, I just thought maybe I could share some examples yeah. One like, one example of, getting clear on your values and changing them as you go in the entrepreneur space. When I first became a dietitian, I did B school by Marie Forleo, uh, which is like an online program that it’s been around for a while now.
But it wasn’t that old when I did it. And there was like a Facebook group with thousands of people in it, and you sort of pick up on other people’s marketing tactics and I was so green. And so, um, what’s the right word. Eager to like, make a sale and like make it happen and all that.
So somebody did this to me, a marketing tactic, where they posted that they were looking for like beta testers for XYZ course that they were launching and they posted it in the group. And then you could like message them. And then what you got back was like, oh yeah, I’m looking for a beta tester, but it’s like a hundred dollars to join or whatever.
And like you, I felt in that moment, like, oh, well, I already said I was interested and almost like this pressure to like follow through with it and pay this person, even though, you know, initially when you hear beta tester, you’re thinking it’s free. Uh, I would assume most people, so that kind of felt icky, but I joined and I did it and they probably got a ton of people that way.
And then. I don’t know, a few months later I was doing my very first online thing with another girl and we tried that same tactic and it instantly, I was just like, as soon as people messaged me, I was like, oh no, this doesn’t feel, this feels wrong. Like this, isn’t the type of marketing that I wanna do. And that really stuck with me.
And then even this last year, I did a marketing program. Taught a strategy that was like, oh, posting your Facebook group, or you’re send out an email to your email list. That was like, I’m looking for three people who wanna do X, Y, Z, which to me felt like the same bait and switch that I had already learned the lesson for in the past.
And so even though a lot of people were like, oh man, I sent out that email and got like 20 signups. It’s like, I’m not going to do that because it’s not in alignment with my values. And I already know that and like I learned that lesson already. So that’s just an example. I think of how you can use that in a re in the real world.
And then another one that I recently leaned into was, and I think this relates a lot to the diet culture thing as well, sort of just like questioning things that appear to just be the standard way to go. Like , uh, like marking up payment plans. I never second guessed that. I was just like, oh yeah, like obviously payment plans are marked up 20%.
Like, that’s just what people do. and then, and then someone in my Facebook group was like, Do you have to do it that way? Like they brought up the like, but why are we doing it that way? You know, what is the ripple effect of that? And then I really thought about it and I was like, I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna punish the people who don’t have large sums of cash upfront, cuz I was that person too back in the beginning and I hated that I had to pay 20% more just because I didn’t have like several thousand dollars in the beginning.
It’s like punishing the people. Who need your help? The most kind of, um, or like, you know, it was like poverty tax or whatever. So I decided not to do that for my course when I relaunched it last year. And I, like you said, like talked to your values. I like actually say that in my webinar, like this is the payment plan option.
It’s not marked up marked up like. A dollar just because of rounding or whatever, with the, with the payment plans. So I think that was really powerful and I’ve actually gotten a few people who like messaged me, like, Hey, I love that you did it this way or whatever. So those are just two examples from my own.
Experience over the last few years.
Laura Jean: Yeah . And that piece of getting curious around why we do things and challenging the status quo and running through, through our own values filter when we do do that. So we can go, okay, well, this is what it is. Does that align with how I wanna show up? Maybe it does.
There might have been heaps of people in that group. You know, who said that, that was, that were fine with doing that strategy of saying, I need three people, um, and not giving all the information up front and they weren’t overtly lying. They weren’t saying it was free in it, but like that bait and switch feeling that you had.
So when you run it through your values filter, this is how it feels. And somebody else runs it through their values filter. And they’re like, that’s fine by me. And some people just even, you know, run that whole idea of being in private practice or a business owner through. Values filter and go, I can’t do that.
So our own values filters are really personal. They’re really individual and it’s, but it’s such a powerful tool. And yeah, I actually did B school as well. several years ago, a while back. And same and, I think that’s probably one of the reasons that really, like pushed me into doing this work is that automatically I ran so many things through my values filter and was like not doing it, not doing it, not doing it.
And I realized not everyone does that. And what happens similarly to the diet culture space is like, it’s like when the, when the diet fails, cuz it always does the person blames themselves. And when the marketing tactic fails, because it doesn’t always align with somebody’s values, they blame themselves.
And there’s even a whole lot of like talk about it in the business world. Like it’s a mindset issue. You’ve got a money block. You’ve got a problem with selling, you know, and you see programs. Do you have a problem with selling? Well, here’s the solution and.
You don’t have a problem. There’s nothing wrong with you. You don’t need to be fixed. It’s about figuring out who you are and how you wanna show up and finding the ways to do that. Because there are a million ways to run a business. There’s as many ways to run a business, as there are people who wanna run business as, and you just need to find out the way for you and values is just one way to come at that as well.
So it’s not the only way. It’s not the one way. It’s just one way to get clear on that one way to come at who you wanna be as a business owner. And yeah, and to start questioning it because there are heaps of those tactics, you know, there’s things like the ones you mentioned, there’s things like charm pricing, like ending pricing with the seven or a nine there’s things like overriding consent.
So in emails, you know, somebody signs up for a thing, an automatic, you add them to this thing, and then you tell them about all these other things that they never consented to. And it doesn’t have to be a thing. We make complicated and get stressed out. I’m like, oh, I just won’t have an email list because I just don’t know how to do that.
We bring it back down to relating. I can just ask, you can just say, Hey, you signed up for this. I’m gonna talk about this program. If you don’t wanna hear about it, or if you do wanna hear about it, click here and people can consent and then we can move forward. And that again, if that’s, if it’s in line with your values and we get to make our own choices.
And so I suppose just we can run things through our own values filter. We make our own choices. The thing that I would just add in there to be really real and, transparent about it is sometimes when we do things differently, it, it is slower, right? So you mentioned those people use that tactic, which didn’t align for you.
And I had 20 people sign up. And so we get the idea that, well, that works right. That, that works. Other things work too. They might just take a different timeframe. They might feel slower. But when it comes to your success or feeling successful, if how you get to being successful is not aligned with your values, it won’t feel like success to you.
So it’s really important that how you get there and the strategies you use and how you show up in your business is aligned with your values. Because then when you get to that point of what success looks like for you, which also I’d recommend redefining for yourself, it will actually feel successful because you got.
Not by compromising who you are and who you wanna be in the world and how you want the world to be by being yourself, by showing up in your values. That’s how you got there. And that’s how it’s gonna feel successful. And you might be able to use some quicker strategies. You might be able to use some shiny tactics, but if they don’t align with you, you’re not gonna feel great.
You’re not gonna feel great about that sale. And it’s gonna reinforce that idea that you are no good at sales, but actually you might just be using a strategy that doesn’t align with you and your values. So to be successful, to feel successful. It does, I think, how you get their needs to align with your values, just as much as where your going needs to align with your values.
Erica Julson: That was, there are so many tidbits in that, in that conversation, it was just like, yes, yes, yes. lots of pullable quotes from that. So what if you are listening to this and you’re like, oh man, I feel like I need to almost do like a values audit on my business. like, mm-hmm, , I haven’t really thought about this much.
And I feel like there’s some things I’m doing that I might wanna change. Like what do, what, what should people do if they’re coming to the realization that they wanna make some changes in their business? Where do
we even start?
Laura Jean: Firstly, don’t get overwhelmed. Right? Don’t think like, holy shit. There’s, I’m sorry.
I cursed again. There’s all these things. It’s my, it’s my most gentle curse. One of my most gentle curse words. So I I’m, I have been running things through a bit so sorry, Erica. Um, So, yeah, so, so don’t get overwhelmed, stop and pause. So firstly, get clear on your values. Get super clear on that because we do sometimes run things through other things, or you might have heard something I said and thought, oh yeah, do I have to do that?
Should I be doing that? Is that the quote unquote right thing to do so slow down and pause and ground in you. Who you are, your values, how you wanna show up and then just take things slowly. The next time you write a post, run that through your filter, don’t go spending time stressing out about things you did write in the past.
If there’s something that is really like obvious that you wanna talk to do that. So like, if I use a quick example, when I very first started, talking to the idea of values, I would talk about showing up and standing in our values. And then somebody shared with me about actually using that term, like standing is actually ableist.
And I was like, Yeah, well, well, I never even thought about that. I didn’t get in the shame spiral. I didn’t like get overwhelmed and think, oh my God, I’ve got posts on my Instagram where I’m using that word. I jumped on my stories once I felt once I’d grounded in my values and done my own process, work, not reacting.
Right. So not reacting, but responding. So grounding in my values, coming back to those values and realizing, okay, well I wanna address this. And also I don’t wanna go deleting things and pretend like I never, so I addressed it and just said, Hey, it’s come to my attention this. So I won’t be using that term anymore.
I have used it in the past and sometimes it comes outta my mouth and I go, whoops, sorry, ableist and move on. You know, so we can have that process. So if you find there’s things you’ve been doing in the past, or as you go forward in your journey, you realize things like you just mentioned that example, Erica, about the payment plan.
It’s not like you, we don’t have to spend time ruminating. Oh my gosh, I did all these things. We recognize that, you know, we come by it honestly. And now what, what’s the, what’s the next step? So don’t get overwhelmed, grounding your own values, and just start from where you are today. Start with the next step. Now, if somebody comes and shares something with you, then be open, be thinking about your values, be grounding in your values. And sometimes somebody will share something with you and say, well, that was hurtful.
That was harmful. Um, you can ground in your values and you can, you can look at well, where do you go to move you towards your values? And who’s this human that you’re wanting to have a relationship with as well. So there can be those interpersonal stuff. There can be thing we post. So just starting running things through from, from kind of like forward facing, when you have time and capacity, if you’re doing a website update, you might run through now, sometimes there’s things that are just so big, you’ve go change.
’em straight away. Right? You just gotta action it bit. Like I can’t keep going with that, but a lot of things we can just change over time as we are doing things naturally. So you. You know, do a website, refresh every, every X, you know, months for yourself, or however long, or maybe years depending how, how much you like getting into that, or you might be updating blog posts for some SEO benefit.
And you can also, at the same time, just run through your current value, filter around language. Is there language you used five years ago that you just don’t use anymore? So you can change that. And so we can just, um, run things from this point forward on through our values filter. Um, so we don’t have to stress out, get overwhelmed and think we have to do it perfect from day one.
When you realize there’s that disconnect, you just have that opportunity to make a choice. How do I wanna act now? How do I wanna move forward?
Erica Julson: Mm-hmm
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the membership geeks. They were formerly known as the membership guys for a really long time and they just rebranded maybe a year or so ago.
I’m assuming for the same reasons they realized using guys like wasn’t in alignment with their values for their brand. And so they, they completely changed the whole thing. Um, I thought that was admirable that. You know, I don’t know. Some people might feel like, oh, I can’t change it now. Like my SEO, or like , you
know?
Yeah. I’m already known for this.
Laura Jean: Yeah. Well, a really a big example of the chicks. Um, you know, who used to be called the Dixie chicks and they realized that was somebody brought it to their attention. They changed it. And maybe if people might have seen a recent song by Lizzo that had a, um, disabled slur in it, Lizzo, rewrote, and rerecorded the song and just put it back out there, no drama, and it can feel like a drama.
It can fill in ourselves when we want to kind of be defensive and all those kind of things. It’s just an opportunity to stop to ground, to not react and to really think about who do you wanna be? How do you wanna show up in the world? Is this the hill you wanna die on? But also like, it can be really simple.
Yeah. People can, you can change your name. So there that’s three good examples. To remind ourselves if you get stuck in that point and feel like I can’t move forward or feel like it says something about you as a human, it doesn’t, it just says something about the values that you’ve been shared with, from the culture, from the social kind of programming and we can’t know everything.
We can’t know every word that might be a slur, or might be a word that isn’t used anymore or that certain people find, discriminatory or uncomfortable. And somebody through their values filter might go, well, I can’t believe you don’t know that. but if someone doesn’t know it, they don’t know it.
Yes. Maybe they could be more quote unquote, well read, you know, through my value system, but they’re running their whole world through their own value system. So this is the point where we can, we can look for that judgment piece. So rather than judging someone, we can just open up that opportunity for change if they’re open to it.
Cuz some people aren’t as well and okay. They’re the values you wanna operate by that’s okay. But I probably won’t be, we probably won’t be in relationship and that’s okay too. so you know, we can just highlight things, like you said, with the payment plan, somebody mentioned it and it just got you questioning so we can yeah.
Um, we can do that
Erica Julson: another good, like
the reverse example, uh, I don’t know, maybe a year or two ago. Do you remember when convert kit, the email marketing platform was gonna rebrand to Seva or something? I’m not a hundred percent sorry, pronou. Not that yes, but it was, um, like a religious term, in other cultures and I guess maybe they weren’t aware of that and they spent like six figures on this rebrand.
And then obviously when they announced it got a lot of feedback and they were like, okay, just kidding. We’re gonna remain convert kit. And you know, even though they had spent six figures on the rebrand, they said, oh, this isn’t right. So we’re not gonna do it.
Laura Jean: Mm
yeah. And they could have got all defensive.
They could have stuck their heels in. They could have been like, it’s a word. Anyone can use, you know, all of those things we can use to justify why we do things, but it depends what our, what our value is. What’s the value you wanna act into. So they chose to act into their community and community is a big value of convert kit.
Um, and so they chose to act into that and to show up. Listening to their community to actually put action to the values they say they have not just lip speak because some corporations would just have gone through with that because the money, the sunk cost, all of those pieces, which you, which we have on a micro level in our little businesses, we’re not spending the money convert kit does, but we have sunk costs, right?
You spent money on a website, you’ve put time and effort into a thing. And then somebody says, or somebody shares information or you become aware. Let’s say that there’s a, that that might not align with your values. It, it, it can feel kind of tempting sometime, or, you know, it’s a natural human instinct to, to be defensive, to, to kind of just in our heads.
I kind of justify what’s gone on for us. That’s that’s normal. I think that’s where our values can be a space to ground back into because then we can go and does it move me towards my value of, listening to people, maybe that’s one of your values, being compassionate, Being, um, somebody who’s open to doing things differently or whatever it might be.
And it’s just that opportunity for us to make a choice. You choose whatever you want. Like I’m not here to say be the values police and say that if you don’t act into your values, then there’s something like, we all make compromises. We all have other things going on, you know? And so we do, we do the best with what we’ve got and sometimes we don’t even do our best and that’s okay too.
We make our next choice. And then we deal with the consequences of that consequences, not being positive or negative just are like, you know, there’s an, we take an action, there’s an outcome. So, and we take care of ourselves. And one of the biggest tools I think we can have when we are trying to act into our values is to have a toolbox, to have the strategies, to take care of ourselves and particularly our nervous system when we take action and maybe it goes well, but other people have an opinion of it.
Maybe it doesn’t go, well, maybe we find out it’s not it’s harmful or hurtful for some people. So we have the skills and tools to take care of ourselves. No matter what actions we take and what, what comes from that. And that is like one of the most powerful things I think we can do as business owners is know how to take care of ourselves, our nervous system to ground ourselves.
And that’s why I love value so much because there is space to ground back in when we do take an action. And, it’s not necessarily like we need to course correct. We can come back to our values. We can ground in that. When we take an action and other people are judging us, we can ground in our values and go, well, no, this is the choice for me, even though it’s hard to hear that feedback, it’s hard to have people not happy with us, but if that’s our values, we can ground in our values and know that it’s the right choice for us.
So our values create a space to ground in to come home to that we can yeah. Take care of ourselves cuz we do need to do that as business owners and it’s not just bubble baths and, and, and days off, although. They can be fun too. It’s also knowing how to take care of ourselves in the hard moments.
Mm-hmm when we’ve got, when we’ve got feedback that, wasn’t exactly what we wanted when yeah. When we might have to change something big or just when we are doing something we know is a hundred percent aligned, but not everyone likes it.
Erica Julson: Great, great feedback. As we wrap up here today, is there one thing you really hope people can take from this conversation?
Kind of like a, a closing wrap up, to leave people with.
Laura Jean: Um, oh my gosh, wrapping myself up. I, I use a lot of words, Erica. One of the things that I, that I do talk about is actually to wrap more words around things, cuz we’re really always looking for that like little bit, you know, the little sound bite, the little word that perfectly explains exactly what we’re trying to say.
Use more words, use less labels, you know, say what you wanna say in as many words as you need to say it and don’t apologize for it. So that could be a wrap up with, with the little bits, but basically just be you, you know, figure out who you wanna be, who you already are, how you wanna show up and, and just keep coming back to that.
Keep getting clear on that, letting it change. And like I said before, bringing the curiosity, bringing connection and bringing a bucket load of compassion for yourself through the whole process.
Erica Julson: Yes. Self-compassion sometimes entrepreneurs they overlook that piece. I think
Laura Jean: well humans, right?
Yeah. Um, and particularly if you’ve been socialized, in certain identities that encourage you to just only compassion being a one way thing, like only extended out to other people, doing it to yourselves really hard. And, um, I know I mentioned it somewhere in there in cuz I, I know mentioned it, but when it comes to our values, they are just as important to extend towards ourselves.
So if you’ve got the value of compassion, maybe you’re really good at showing to other people, but the place to work on it is how you extend it to yourself. So remembering that your values are how you wanna show up for all people and you are a people, so it’s for you too.
Erica Julson: Mm. Really,
really good. So I am sure a lot of people listening are just.
Having their minds blown with this conversation and would probably wanna follow along and hopefully continue to learn from you around this space. So where’s the best place for people to follow you? Like what platforms are you on?
Laura Jean: Yeah, so I’m. dietitian values. And I don’t know, I don’t need to spell that around here cause everyone knows how to spell that one.
So dietitian values on Instagram. So just at dietitian values, I’ve got a podcast called dietitian values podcast and our website, dietitian values.com. And so come check out, connect, like if you’re ready to say hi, if what I’ve shared, um, resonates and you wanna be in conversation about it, I’m here to be in conversation because I love, as you can tell, I love talking about this.
If you’re more a lurker come listen to the podcast, get a bit of a feel. I will let you know. There are a few more Cursewords. So if that’s not your thing, I completely understand. It’s not everyone’s thing, so that’s cool too. So yeah, come listen to the podcast, check out on my Instagram page, but reach out more importantly, because I love being in conversation and connection around this.
It is one of my values to be in connection with other humans around this, to be able to talk about it. So rather than it just be there, but also, There’s space for the lurk too.
Erica Julson: perfect. And then you mentioned that workbook, so I’m sure you sent it and I will put the link to that in the show notes for the episode.
So anyone listening, you can find that at theunconventionalrd.com and then just find the post for this episode, and there’ll be a link right there at the top. But if people also wanna go directly to your, website or wherever you have it, how can they get it? What’s the best
place for them to go?
Laura Jean: Yeah, just at dietitianvalues.com and there’s like a little banner for the workbook and full transparency. I do ask you for your email to download it. So just so you know, because again, even though that’s a standard business tactic, I’m not, not gonna pretend you just go and you get workbook yet. I do ask for email and I will share things with, if that feels align for you and if it doesn’t and you just wanna the workbook and run away.
That’s cool too. But yeah, you can grab it from dietitian values.com.
Erica Julson: Great. Well, thank you so much. I love this conversation and, uh, it feels so good to be back in the interview zone. so thanks for helping me dust
off the cob webs. Thank you for having me. I’m glad we got here. And I really appreciate you, keeping us on track with coming together for this conversation.
Cause, um, yeah, it’s one that I love to have and hopefully it’s planted a seed for somebody out there to just, yeah, just start getting curious. Great. Well, thank you so much. Thanks.
Yeah, that’s it for today’s episode.
I hope you found this conversation incredibly enlightening, and as always, if you are not yet in my free Facebook community, the unconventional RD community on Facebook, I highly recommend joining Laura is in that group and participates in conversations there from time to time. Obviously i’m in the group it’s a great place to connect with other wellness professionals who are interested in starting online businesses so if you feel like you are an unconventional wellness professional go to the unconventional rd community on facebook and request to join
Erica Julson is a registered dietitian turned digital marketing pro. She has over 12 years of experience blogging and building online businesses and has taught over 900 wellness professionals inside her signature program, SEO Made Simple.
