Diversifying your income can save your business... or wreck it

A few of you have asked me to talk about diversifying income as a dietitian, so we’re going to spend some time here over the next few newsletters.

But before we get into the what (the actual streams, the options, the how-to-start), I want to talk about the part you may not have considered yet: diversifying can absolutely take your business down if you do it the way I tried to do it.

Which sounds crazy, because DIVERSIFYING is the key to a successful business, right? (true).

A couple of years ago, I lost half my freelance writing clients in a single month. My income dropped by 50%, basically overnight. And what made it even worse is that freelance writing for publications was accounting for around 90% of my stable income at that point. I had built almost my entire business on one skill and one type of client.

So I did what I imagine a lot of you would do. I panicked productively.

I made a product. I started pitching brands. I got active on social again. I started blogging again. I began learning YouTube. I made all the graphics and outlines for a podcast.......

All at once.

All while still writing for the clients I had left.

Four or five months later, I had burned myself out completely, and I had nothing to show for any of it. I made a few dollars from my finished product (but definitely not more than I’d spent making it). I never published a YouTube video. I never made a podcast. I ended up with a lot of half-built projects and a brain that felt like complete mush.

Diversifying didn’t save me. It led me to frantically applying for jobs and almost ending up in an office building again.

But that’s not because diversifying is bad. It’s because I approached it the wrong way.

1. I never got honest about how urgent the money actually was.

There’s a big difference between “I want to build a second income stream over the next 12 months” and “I need to pay my bills next month.” Those are completely different problems, and they call for completely different moves.

Everything I threw myself into was a long-game play. Products, brand partnerships, YouTube, podcasting... none of those pay you next month. (Almost none of them pay you in six months, if we’re honest). I was trying to solve an emergency with a strategy that only works when you’re not in an emergency.

If you need income NOW, you need something that converts to money quickly. That might be boring. But it buys you room to think, which is what you need as a business owner.

2. I tried to get good at six things instead of one.

You cannot learn YouTube and podcasting and brand pitching and product creation simultaneously while running the business that’s currently feeding you. I know that sounds obvious written out. It did not feel obvious at the time; it felt like necessary hustle.

What I’d do differently is commit to microlearning. Pick ONE thing. Get genuinely competent at it, not expert-level necessarily, just competent enough that it produces something. Then add the next one.

Getting 1% better at one skill consistently beats getting 1% better at six skills, then giving up on all of them because you’re burned out.

So what did I actually do to get out of it?

I signed up with a telehealth company and started counseling 10-15 hours a week.

… and that was 100% NOT what I wanted to spend my time doing, but it made me money and let me breathe. It took my financial panic off the table almost immediately, and once the panic was gone, I could actually think again and make a real plan.

Sometimes the smartest diversification move is the unglamorous one that just lets you breathe.

And to be clear, I’m not on the other side of this looking back. I’m still in it; still figuring out which streams are worth building and which ones I need to let go of. Still reminding myself to slow down and take one thing at a time. So we’re talking to each other from the trenches, here.

Next time we’ll get into the actual options: what’s realistic for dietitians, what pays quickly versus slowly, and how to pick the one to start with.

Until then: have you tried to diversify and had it blow up in your face? Or found something that actually worked? Tell me what happened.

Something you’d like me to talk about in an upcoming newsletter? Leave it here!

Leave your questions!

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