Are You Ready for the Unexpected in Your Doula Business?
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Welcome to doula Tips and Tits. 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.
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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.
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Thank you for joining us on this journey. Welcome back to doula Tips and Tits. Today, I want to talk to you about what happens when you break your ankle as a doula. Now, welcome to my actual life right now.
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So my birthday was February 13th, the day before Valentine's Day. I started out that day by walking down our basement stairs and slipping and falling down two whole steps and managing to sprain my right ankle and break my left ankle.
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Because why not? If you're going to hurt your ankles, you should do like one at a time. It is kind of a pain in the tush to have both ankles incapacitated at the same exact time. So fast forward to today.
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It's been 12 days. I've had to send one doula to a birth, which thankfully it was one of the backup doulas that I adore. My clients adored her, but it was heartbreaking because those clients were some amazing people and I was very, very sad as I always am when I have to send a backup.
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It's part of this work, but I did not love it. So I also am currently working on coordinating 40 to 50 hours worth of postpartum care for clients. And part of that volume is that that I am not gonna be available and on my foot again until the middle of March.
02:05
And so the problem is that many of my clients can't or don't want to wait that long to have their postpartum care, which totally makes sense. So these are like a variety of families who would otherwise have had like three shifts with me or two shifts with me or something like that.
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And instead they're getting a single shift or two shifts or three shifts with another doula because really they do kind of need some care in the interim, right? Now, why are we talking about this on the podcast?
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I mean, for one, I want you to feel sorry for me because it sucks so bad. And I know you do, I feel your empathy coming through even as I record this, I know that you are empathizing. And this is like almost a full week before you're gonna actually hear this episode.
02:56
So, Part of what I want to talk about today is how we set ourselves up in doula work to handle these kind of things Now this is a unique scenario. I don't wish a broken bone on you by any stretch But what I mean is it's one thing to like have two babies come on the same day It's an entirely different thing to have Three and a half or four weeks that you can't walk, right?
03:28
So there's a level of like I can't do anything like I can't go to a prenatal visit I can't go to a postpartum visit. I can't go to a birth. I can't go teach my childbirth classes I can't even really get out of my basement very well And so I'm just kind of living down here on an air mattress because here we are, right?
03:47
So My life came to a screeching halt However, I have my doula coaching program. I have a private doula coach coaching client Who is doing awesome things in her business? By the way, I just want to take a second to be like she's the most amazing She's just killing it.
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So I have my childbirth class that self -paced I have my postpartum class That's self -paced and I already have my business set up where my doula consultations and my first prenatal visit are all virtual So this coming week, I do have a prenatal visit last week I had a prenatal visit and that's totally fine because all of those things are done on zoom And so I'm able to do them even though I'm sitting here in a boot Okay, so what I want you to think about and not in a way that like stresses you out.
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Hopefully But if it does take a second take some breaths close your eyes Put your hand on your chest take a minute to be like, okay I can handle thinking this through if it's stressing you out. It probably means that you're not equipped for it.
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And I'm going to be super transparent with you. This time last year I was also not equipped for this. Like hundreds, no really thousands of dollars, a few thousand dollars is going to go to other doulas right now.
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For work that I would have otherwise done, right? Just to be clear, like I have doulas on my team now. I love paying them. It's amazing. I love that they're getting clients. I love that clients love them.
05:27
It's the best thing ever. And also I'm talking about paying doulas to do the work that I was supposed to be doing myself because I also still work with clients, right? And so it's not that they're not amazing.
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I'm still very happy to pay them, but it's not payment that I was expecting to make. That's the problem. So my business at the moment can handle that. I have some cushion, which is just a giant gift.
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And also I was even one year ago, definitely not in a place where I could have handled this kind of setback. It would have been devastating. I honestly can't even imagine. I don't want to imagine, you know?
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But I am very, very, very grateful that it happened now when I do have some capacity, both in how my business is set up and the diversity that I have in the income streams, but also in the fact that I have the money to pay backup doulas without worrying about it, right?
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Without being super stressed that things aren't gonna get paid and bills aren't gonna get taken care of, et cetera, et cetera, right? So I want to share with you the diversity of income streams in my own business.
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And then I would like for you to share with me on Instagram the diversity of income streams in your business. And I want to help you think about what that could look like for you and how it could be better.
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So for me, I have a variety of income streams at the moment. Attending births is my biggest income in the business at the moment. Second biggest is postpartum care and childbirth ed. And those are probably like, nah, I would say they're tied.
07:20
I don't have the numbers parsed out for this current year, but in the past they've been tied. Now I have a few different streams of childbirth classes. So I have my childbirth classes that I teach at the breastfeeding center here in DC.
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I have my self -paced childbirth class. And occasionally I'll do a private childbirth class, but I don't do those very often. So it's mostly the classes at the breastfeeding center and then my own class, which is self -paced.
07:53
The other classes that I have are a postpartum prep class. and I have a doula comfort measures class that I teach in person here in the DC area. So the postpartum prep class is entirely self paced, virtual class, I have recorded it and it can be consumed by anybody anytime, any moment, right?
08:18
My in person child or my in person doula support comfort measures class is for doulas and I supposed to have one today, the day that I'm recording this and it is cancelled. It got cancelled and those folks got moved to March because my foot, right?
08:38
So that's a class that was impacted by this. So like a couple hundred dollars of revenue, right? My podcast does not currently make money, but it is a source of people coming into my world who then come into my doula coaching program.
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Now, I have three different ways. to do doula coaching. I have my self -paced doula coaching program which is just the modules of the educational piece. It's called the doula biz blueprint. It is amazing walking you through essentially everything I use to run my business and helping you imagine what your business can look like.
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I have the version of that with live coaching for eight weeks and I have the version of that without live coaching for eight weeks and then I do private doula coaching where I work one -on -one with someone and just dig into their business for three months we meet and then for three more months they have access to me via voxer and that is another stream of income.
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That's entirely virtual. The client that I'm working with in that right now is in LA so she's not local to me and that is an awesome stream of the business as well. Now a smaller thing that I offer is on Etsy I have doula's Instagram posts for their for their businesses.
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That is like a $37 kind of offer right so a small offer that makes some money but isn't super crazy huge but I want you to understand that like all of those different things add up and come together even though they're not huge things right.
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So I want you to think about what this can look like in your business. Now maybe you're kind of a traditional birth and postpartum doula and that's really all you do right now like birth postpartum nothing else.
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I would encourage you to start teaching something. The reason I say that is that you can impact so many more families teaching classes and it's not something you have to be on call for and I know you've heard parts of my story before so you know I got to a place of like all right I'm making $80 ,000.
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dollars a year. I love this place. But also like it's a busy place. My body is being used for all of this work. I'm on call constantly. I have people calling me at 2am to wake me up and go to births.
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And then I have postpartum shifts in the daytime. It was not a sustainable workload. And $80 ,000 was not what my goal was. It was I had not yet met my goal because I wanted I want to be able to live a good life here in DC, right?
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I want to be able to take my kids traveling. I want to be able to be generous with people who are in need. Like these are things that I dream about. And so at that point, I was like, Okay, this is not the income that I need or want.
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And also, I don't want to go to more births than this in a year. Right? So if that's you, if you're listening, and you're like, Kaylee, that is absolutely me. Like I do not want to go to this many births anymore.
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Or you're saying, I am making the amount of money that I want, but my body's exhausted. Or you're saying, I am not making the money I want and my body's exhausted and therefore I need to have some other way to make some money.
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So I know talking about money is not people's favorite thing. However, businesses don't run on joy and satisfaction as one of my dear doula coaching clients reminded us this week in our coaching call.
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And so I want you to think about how do I get from where I am right now to where I need or want to be in the future and what kinds of services could get me there. Now, I do not want you to get off of this podcast and be like, holy hell, Kaylee.
12:52
I don't even want to think about if I break my freaking ankle and then I have to send people to all this work that I otherwise would be getting paid for, et cetera, et cetera. Please do not leave with that kind of freaking out sort of energy, okay?
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I want you to take a second to reflect, give yourself some space. If you're freaking out, it's probably because this is a necessary thing that your business needs. You need to have some cushion and I get that it just doesn't come out of nowhere.
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I understand that fully appreciate that. I would love to hear from you. What does it look like in your business right now? Could you handle an injury like this or not? And if so, what it, why, how can you handle it?
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That's amazing. I'm so excited for you. And maybe I want to have you on the podcast, right? And also, I think most doulas can't. And so more often than not, I'm going to hear from a doula that says, gosh, I could not handle that.
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And I'm like, yeah, so how do you build that up in your business so that you can handle it? that's what I want for you that's what you need in a business is to be able to have that kind of cushion okay now if you have not connected with me on Instagram before head on over there at Harad doula I would really really really love to connect with you there in part because I love to hear your stories I love to see you grow I love to comment on your things and be like you are the most amazing doula ever I like that kind of of interaction and encouragement also I love to hear from you what kinds of things you'd like to hear on the podcast so head over to Instagram at Harad doula connect with me there and 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 So we can celebrate alongside you.
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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.
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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.
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We'll see you again soon.
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So I broke one of my ankles and sprained the other. These unexpected things happen, but is your doula business set up to have times when life happens? Today we are talking about what it can look like to have something go wrong and how it can affect your business.
Quote from the show:
“But if it does take a second take some breaths close your eyes Put your hand on your chest take a minute to be like, okay I can handle thinking this through if it's stressing you out. It probably means that you're not equipped for it. And I'm going to be super transparent with you. This time last year I was also not equipped for this. Like hundreds, no really thousands of dollars, a few thousand dollars is going to go to other doulas right now. For work that I would have otherwise done, right?”
CONNECT with Kaely on TikTok or Instagram
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Kaely Daily is produced by Kaely Harrod of Harrod Doula Services
It is sponsored by The Birth Prep Blueprint Childbirth Class
