Breaking Traditional Business Rules
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Transcript
Unknown speaker 00:04
Welcome to Dula Tips and Tits, the podcast where we cut through the noise and get real about what it takes to build a sustainable doula business. I'm Kaylee Harrod. I've been a doula informally for 14 years and full time for seven.
Unknown speaker 00:20
Around here, we don't sugarcoat stuff. We talk autonomy, owning your worth, creating a business that works for you. No fluff, no burnout, just the honest truth on how to be your own best boss. Let's get into today's episode.
Unknown speaker 00:35
Hello and welcome back to Dula Tips and Tits. I am talking today about how you should be breaking all the rules. Now, what do I mean when I say that? Keep listening so that you have the correct context for what this even means.
Unknown speaker 00:54
When I say that, what I mean is traditional business practices don't always apply to us as doulas. Why is that? Because our services are unique, right? The way that our services are offered, the things that we do for clients, the way that we can kind of adjust services last minute.
Unknown speaker 01:21
All of that is very unique to our field and so therefore the way that we show up, the way that we do it isn't necessarily perfectly in line with other business practices, right? Now, I want to be clear about what I'm saying.
Unknown speaker 01:41
I am not saying, please do whatever the fuck you want in your business and don't follow legal guidelines. Or, you know, don't follow, like, ethical standards. Please for the love of all good things. Don't be crazy, right?
Unknown speaker 01:55
But also, traditional marketing. strategies, more traditional business building strategies, more traditional customer journeys, customer lifetime with you, like, there's a lot of difference in how we apply these things to our business because of the type of client, the type of clientele that we have and are working with.
Unknown speaker 02:27
So what I think is important for you to think about is how are you trying to fit your doula business into strategies and models that aren't intended for it to fit into? Right? So let me give you an example of this.
Unknown speaker 02:46
I probably like gosh, early pandemic, I would say now. I was creating an online class. And first I was making it to like be um taught live and then I was making it so that I would do a birth planning session with people at the end and then I eventually made it like self-paced because I was like I don't know you know I want I want to be able to like sell it in mass and whatnot and um I spoke to a I don't remember if they were marketing I think they're marketing but I spoke to a company that was essentially like their whole niche is people who have online courses and they like make them go viral right and I remember being like oh okay this is like I could just like start selling millions of classes you know like it it was so it was such an interesting conversation to look back on now because on the one hand I'm very grateful for it like on the one hand I had no concept of what an online class could possibly be and so I lacked the imagination of how I could sell this class right and also the way that they imagined selling classes wasn't going to work for my class right so we talked and I you know I was kind of saying like okay how like I mean for one I didn't have the money to do the program they were trying to sell me it was like a thousand dollars and at the time I was just like people spend a thousand dollars on programs like I just was like what you know because I just didn't have any money and um and I I certainly wasn't in the habit of investing in my business at all I just couldn't like I just literally didn't have the money to do that right and I remember something that she said that was along the lines of like,
Unknown speaker 05:03
yeah, you like, tell people about your class, and then you maybe do a free workshop for them, which now I understand this is a funnel, right? And then you maybe do like invite them to purchase the class at a discount.
Unknown speaker 05:23
But if they don't, you can always just like keep them on your email list and help them purchase it later. And I remember thinking at some point like, yeah, that's not really how that works for me. Like if I meet a pregnant person on the internet, right, like an internet person comes across my childbirth class, and they're 36 weeks pregnant or 29 weeks pregnant, right?
Unknown speaker 05:50
Like, then they decide not to purchase my class. It's probably been like a couple weeks. I do have a short window of time that I can keep advertising that class to them, but I actually can't do that for very long because they're just going to have their baby and not be in the market for a childbirth class anymore, right?
Unknown speaker 06:11
And I could market other classes to them, like I could market my postpartum class to them, for instance, I could market, you know, but it's not a thing like where I can continue to sell them this thing, if they've said no to it, I have a very short window of time to offer it to them again.
Unknown speaker 06:34
And it's certainly not a thing where I can be like, oh, now I have 1000 people on my list that I can continue to offer my childbirth class to, right? Because I don't even know where those people were in pregnancy, like they might already be delivered within a week of that, they might be delivered six weeks after that, they might be delivered six months after that, right?
Unknown speaker 06:56
But what I do know is none of them are still pregnant years later. Now they might be pregnant again, sure, but also maybe not, right? And so now I realize the timeframe that they had in mind, what they were kind of talking to me about is more along the lines of a like business to business kind of offer, right?
Unknown speaker 07:15
That's like, okay, I'm offering you my coaching, I'm offering you marketing, I'm offering you, right? Your business is still going to be here in three years. So you can live on my newsletter list for two, three years before you really can do coaching with me.
Unknown speaker 07:33
That's reasonable, right? Like that's also a totally different audience of people. And so I think as doulas, sometimes, and I mean, honestly, social media is the biggest thing. Like take marketing advice for social media and we apply it to ourselves.
Unknown speaker 07:57
as if we're like influencers. And I'm not saying there's not a single doula who is an influencer. Like there are definitely doula influencers, right? But also there aren't. Like also there are loads of doulas who are never gonna be influencers and don't need to have the amount of money that are influencers, right?
Unknown speaker 08:16
The amount of audience that are influencers. I'm not saying the amount of money. I do want you to have the amount of money influencers have. What I mean is you definitely don't need the amount of followers an influencer has, right?
Unknown speaker 08:29
Like that is just not necessary if you're selling yourself. Like you're selling your in-person services. You don't need millions of followers, you know? And your content is going to become irrelevant to your people as they process through this time of their life, right?
Unknown speaker 08:49
There is a very short window that someone wants and needs a doula. And then... at some point, usually relatively soon, they're done with the need for that they're done with the need for childbirth ed, they're done with the need for postpartum education, they're done with the need for lactation support, right, like that stuff is over.
Unknown speaker 09:08
And so it is certainly not something where it's like, I can get millions of people to follow me. And then all of those millions of people keep following me forever, right? No, they don't because they had their babies, they moved on, other kids are in preschool, you know, like they just don't need your services anymore.
Unknown speaker 09:27
And they're probably going to stop following you, they're going to stop interacting with your content, they're going to stop whatever. But that also means the life cycle of your work with someone is shorter and more potent than the average online business person, right.
Unknown speaker 09:45
And so it needs to be more streamlined, it needs to be more clear, it needs to get to the point faster, it needs to be a little bit more aggressive, but not in a negative way, right, like just incredibly straightforward in a positive way.
Unknown speaker 10:05
And without that, you're actually going to keep like just kind of straggling along because you're applying methods that don't even work for what you're trying to do, right. And this is where I think I will be the first to admit that I have a very, very strong proclivity to trying to figure shit out on my own, like 1000%.
Unknown speaker 10:31
I'm like, Oh, you sell pepperoni pizza, I bet I could make pepperoni pizza, right? Like that, that is my default brain. And, and it is exhausting, to be honest with you, because I'm like, Oh, I don't need that thing.
Unknown speaker 10:44
I could I could make that. And my husband's just like, for the love of God, why don't we just buy it? And I'm like, no, I can I can make it. And he's like, but why do you want to like that is make any sense, you know.
Unknown speaker 10:57
And when I think about business, I think there's one thing if it's like, I actually can't afford to invest in this thing, right? It's entirely like, I am self taught on a whole fucking lot of business stuff.
Unknown speaker 11:14
And I don't want that for you. Like it is really hard to be in that path. And I do not want you to need to take that path. But I didn't choose that path, right? That is where I was financially at the times when I needed to learn and I am proud of myself for my resilience and my work ethic.
Unknown speaker 11:34
But could my business have grown like 1000 times faster if I could afford actual business coaching or actual marketing advice or actual systems that work? Yes. Yes, my business could have been so much faster, so much bigger, if I had been able to afford to outsource and pay for things.
Unknown speaker 11:54
right, but I couldn't. So I had to fucking just like put shit together on my own. It's not a good way to do it, right? Like it's not a helpful way to do it because you're just always trying to validate if you are even doing it right.
Unknown speaker 12:09
Like you're just, there's just always this feeling that you could be missing a vital piece, you know. And I think one of the things that I really think about quite a bit is the ways that the ways that people get things going when they invest in themselves versus the ways things people, people like struggle and like, just like barely get through with when they don't invest in the in themselves.
Unknown speaker 12:41
And that difference is honestly massive. Like there's a huge difference. When someone is willing to day again and put effort into their things. And when someone doesn't do that, and doesn't have the kind of wherewithal to have like, not the wherewithal, but like even the, even the finances, even the bravery, even the desire, even the gumption to outsource, like to be like, I don't know what I'm doing,
Unknown speaker 13:13
but you do, can you please teach me that that is like a brave thing to do, right. But also, you're then setting your business up to have realistic things happening that because you're working with someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
Unknown speaker 13:29
Now, of course, it needs to be someone who does know what they're talking about. This is where I'm like, hire a doula to be your doula coach, right? Like, I am a good doula coach, in part because I understand how doula businesses work, you know.
Unknown speaker 13:42
So it's not that your intuition and your, your tenacity and your like, self fulfilling drive are bad things. It's that there are plenty of times that you're gonna be spinning your wheels when you don't need to be.
Unknown speaker 14:05
And that's the thing that I want you to miss out on. Like, I want you to miss out on the unnecessary chaos of it. I want you to miss out on the unproductive time. I want you to avoid the times when you know you need to change something, but you don't know what it is and you're just completely stuck, right?
Unknown speaker 14:27
And honestly, it's not that I just make magical business things happen, right? But I promise you, every single time I work with a doula for coaching, there is something so clear in their business that usually when I bring it up to them, they're like, oh, really?
Unknown speaker 14:53
you think that and I'm like yeah and they're like I never would have done that and then they shift it and they're like damn that is the thing my business needed I'm like yeah I know yeah I know like that's and it's not I'm not saying that from an arrogant place like I'm not saying like oh yeah I can see things that no one else sees no I can see things that you're not seeing I know that why because I'm an outside set of eyes and I have a different perspective from you and I have a different level of experience I have a different amount of information right I have different nuance in that information even and so there are things that I can see that you aren't currently seeing in your business and it will be smoother and easier to fix those things if you have guidance in that so I would love to hear what is some business advice that you have heard that you kind of have tossed to the side in terms of your doula business like what are some ways that you have owned the difference that you need to hold to do your business well even when it goes against kind of traditional business advice okay share that over on instagram at hara doula the link is in the show notes and while you're at it share with me your business page and your like marketing strategy and all of that I would love to encourage you I would love to support you I would love to get to see what you're up to and cheer you on in a really authentic way I will see you in the next episode thanks for joining us for this episode of the doula tips and tits podcast if you learned something today or had an aha moment we'd love for you to share that on instagram and tag us at hara doula so we can celebrate alongside you if you found this podcast helpful we would so appreciate you taking a second to leave a rating and a review on your favorite podcast app that helps other doulas find us as we do this work together this podcast is intended as educational and entertainment it is not medical advice or business advice please consult your own medical or legal team for your own needs around your health and your business we'll see you again soon
ASK A QUESTION!!! My plan is to start Friday Q&A (we need a new name, I know!) but first I need your questions! Submit them using the form below:
https://www.harroddoulaservices.com/ask-me-a-question
Be a rule breaker!!! I am talking today about how you should be breaking all the rules. Now, what do I mean when I say that? Keep listening so that you have the correct context for what this even means. When I say that, what I mean is traditional business practices don't always apply to us as doulas.
Quote from the show:
“I am not saying, please do whatever the f*** you want in your business and don't follow legal guidelines. Or, you know, don't follow, like, ethical standards. Please for the love of all good things. Don't be crazy, right? But also, traditional marketing. strategies, more traditional business building strategies, more traditional customer journeys, customer lifetime with you, like, there's a lot of difference in how we apply these things to our business because of the type of client, the type of clientele that we have and are working with. So what I think is important for you to think about is how are you trying to fit your doula business into strategies and models that aren't intended for it to fit into? Right? So let me give you an example of this. ”
CONNECT with Kaely on TikTok or Instagram
https://www.tiktok.com/@doulacoach
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Doula Tips and Tits is produced by Kaely Harrod of Harrod Doula Services
It is sponsored by The Doula Biz Blueprint Self-Paced Class for Doulas Launching Successful and Sustainable Businesses!
Music by Madirfan: Hidden Place on Pixabay
