Doula Goals vs Strategy
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00:04
Welcome to Doula Tips and Tips. This podcast is a place where we answer one question about Doula work, both to support you and to help you support your clients. I'm Kaylee Harrod. I've been supporting families in this perinatal space since my oldest was born, 12, nearly 13 years ago.
00:23
I am a birth and postpartum Doula childbirth educator, La Leche League leader and a Doula coach. I love guiding and supporting Doulas as they work out their Doula business. It is a tremendous joy to be trusted in this way.
00:36
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Welcome back to Doula Tips and Tips. I want to start by saying Happy Freaking New Year because it is 2024, friends. And that is both mind boggling and like so lovely.
00:57
I'm so glad 2023 was a rough year for me on a lot of levels. It was also an amazing year for me on a lot of levels. It's wild how that kind of goes hand in hand oftentimes, right? Like our best year in some ways is also our hardest year in other ways.
01:17
You might still hear that I'm a little scratchy. You heard that in some of my 2023 episodes and I am not recording this on that same day. I have spent probably three weeks of December sick and it sucks.
01:33
It really does. It sucks so bad. And also, I'm finally coming out of it and I am ready for some healthy, good days in 2024. So I want to dive right in to Doula goals and dreams because I think that we neglect this a lot in our business.
01:56
Part of it is that we are not usually coming to a doula business with doula or with with business skills. Excuse me. We are coming with doula skills. Usually we're not coming with business skills. So we don't necessarily come with the mindset or the mind like framework of business stuff.
02:20
Right. Like we are like we like nurture people. We like give right. We show up for people in the middle of the night when they're in the midst of their most vulnerable times. Like this is what we do.
02:34
What we don't do is like think about a marketing strategy, you know. And so as a doula business owner, you have to flex the muscle of being the business owner and not just the doula. Now you can be an awesome doula and be really crappy at business owning.
02:53
Right. You can also be really amazing at business owning and really crappy at being a doula. So I'm not saying it doesn't go both ways. What I am saying is as a doula business owner, we have to really lean into both sides of that.
03:08
We can't just be a doula and not also be the owner of our business because those two things go hand in hand. Right? So as we're starting off 2024, I have two awesome things that I'm doing. One is I've partnered with doula training international and I am teaching a workshop for them all about business strategy for doulas, which I'm really super pumped about.
03:35
And then I have my workshop that you've heard me talk about about money mindset. These two things really matter to me because I think one of the main causes of doula burnout is a lack of sustainable funding and strategy.
03:54
We are literally just like one day I'm going to find enough pregnant people to make enough money. And I remember so distinctly the moment of being like, wait, I have enough pregnant people. And I'm still not making enough money.
04:12
What am I missing? Right? Like there was this moment where I was just like, there's something else here that I'm not factoring in to grow my business in a way that I can then really thrive in the role of being a doula and the goals around my doula work because my business is so sustainable.
04:38
Right. And so part of that was coming to the realization that my body needs me to do less doula work. Right. So in 2024 I'm attending a lot less births for the last three, maybe four years. years I've attended between 20 and 35 births a year.
04:58
That's like pretty typical for full -time doulas I'd say. Some doulas do a little less than that, but if this is like their full -time work, they attend a lot of births and so that ranges. For me, it ranges from anywhere from like gosh the shortest birth support I've had is an hour to like 56 hours.
05:23
So averaging that out around like 18 to 24 hours per person for 40 people a year is a lot and it's a very demanding physical job. So part of the work that I'm doing in 2024 is giving my body some time to rest and recover from some of what I've experienced in the last few years physically in my own body and my own health and some of the things I've discovered about myself.
05:54
during COVID. And so that will give me then a good idea of what it looks like moving forward in doula work, what my capacity is like in terms of doula support, right? Birth support. So one thing that I have as a goal and a strategy in my business for 2024 is to not attend births I know that sounds kind of crazy when to me it sounds kind of crazy because that's not how my life has been.
06:30
But my hope is to attend births only until June. And then starting in July, have a solid six months of not attending births. That does not mean that then I'm done attending births forever, right? What it does mean is I would really like to have some months off to see how my body feels when I can like have a regular sleep cycle and things like that.
06:56
And then start that back up in January, if I feel like my body can handle it. Now, the thing about my business is that I am strategically growing the parts of my business that don't need me to wake up at two o 'clock in the morning, right?
07:12
Like my doula coaches, my doulas that I coach do not call me and wake me up at two in the morning, which is glorious. But my my pregnant folks, they do and I love them to death. Like I am not at all saying I don't want my pregnant folks to wake me up at two in the morning.
07:29
But I am saying that my body is seeing the toll that that takes, right? And so what it might look like in the future is spacing births out a bit more. What it might look like in the future is having just fewer births, kind of in different chunks of the year, like in the times when I feel the most alive and energized like the fall and the spring and early summer, you know.
07:53
But it also might look like being really selective about who I support births for because I don't have the capacity in my body to do it in the same way that I once did and I think the reality is that doula work can be really fluid and there is a lovely beautiful wonderful part of that that we can really lean into if we have the strategy that's building up the other bits of our business so that we can do that.
08:27
So this is not the last time you're going to hear me talk about this because I do love a good doula strategy slash goal session but I wanted you to start the year off with that and with talking through what it looks like to have sustainability and I want you to just sit with that some like really sit with what does it look like to be sustainable.
08:53
in my doula business, how do I want that to look? And what does that mean for me? Because it's different for everybody, you know? And me with my like 37 year old body that thinks it's like 82, that is a different thing than someone who doesn't have arthritis, for instance.
09:12
Like who has arthritis at 37? I know I'm not the only one, but also if you don't have arthritis, then your body responds differently to this work, right? And so I, as a person with arthritis, have to take this on in a different kind of way and look at what sustainability looks like for me, and then help cultivate that in others, because that is the piece of my doula work that I'm loving more and more every day, is the cultivating the sustainability in other doulas as well.
09:45
So if you have not already, please join me for my Money Mindset class on January 10th. January 10th at 1pm Eastern, there will be a recording. So for baby comes or whatever, you can look at it later.
10:00
That class is free. There's literally no reason to not sign up. So the link is in the show notes. Please go grab that now, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the doula tips and tips podcast.
10:19
If you learned something today or had an aha moment, we'd love for you to share that on Instagram and tag us at heradoula 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.
10:37
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.
10:52
We'll see you again soon.
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Owning your own business means you have to do all the things on top of helping with births. It can be a lot especially if you don’t know where to start. Let’s dive into what it looks like to strategize your goals to help you succeed through a marketing lens.
Quote from the show:
“Like we are like we like nurture people. We like give right. We show up for people in the middle of the night when they're in the midst of their most vulnerable times. Like this is what we do. What we don't do is like think about a marketing strategy, you know. And so as a doula business owner, you have to flex the muscle of being the business owner and not just the doula. Now you can be an awesome doula and be really crappy at business owning. Right. You can also be really amazing at business owning and really crappy at being a doula. So I'm not saying it doesn't go both ways. What I am saying is as a doula business owner, we have to really lean into both sides of that.”
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Are you looking to GROW your doula business? We have our next doula business webinar on January 10th at 1pm EST. Sign up below:
https://www.harroddoulaservices.com/doula-money-mindset
CONNECT with Kaely on TikTok or Instagram
https://www.tiktok.com/@doulacoach
https://www.instagram.com/Harroddoula/
If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @harroddoula
Kaely Daily is produced by Kaely Harrod of Harrod Doula Services
It is sponsored by The Birth Prep Blueprint Childbirth Class
Music by Madirfan: Hidden Place on Pixabay
