How Easy Is It To Grow a Passive Offer?
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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 prenatal space since my oldest was born, 12, nearly 13 years ago.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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? 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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
or hello and welcome back to doula tips and tips. Today we are talking all about passive offers. What are they and how easy are they to grow? Now, one thing that I think we kind of get ahead of ourselves in is thinking that a passive offer will be this like miracle moneymaker in our business.
And the reality is that if you are a local doula who has just been having local clients, you're going to need to grow an online presence in order for your passive offers to take off. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it will take a long time but you need to have some things in place.
So that's what we're gonna talk about today is what things are even required for that to work. I think when we think about someone just like finding an offer online and buying it from anywhere in the world, it sounds very simple, but actually like people need to get their eyeballs on your stuff and that can take some work.
So the first thing that you really need to have if you're gonna have passive offers is an online presence. Now, ideally this is in the kind of realm of having an audience of some kind, usually on social media or if you are on like podcast interviews, if you're doing lives with people, you wanna be online and you want people to get to know who you are.
The part of the reason for this is that if you're gonna be drawing people into your audience who don't know you, they need to get to know you. Where if a doula client has a friend who was also your doula client, there's a no like and trust factor that's already built there because their friend likes you, knows you and trusts you.
If you're bringing a random person from across the country into your world, you need to tell them something about yourself as they're coming in. Most people have a website when they're doing passive offers.
Most people have a social media that's working well for them. Some people run ads and things like that, but obviously you need to have the ability, the finances, and the know -how to do things like that effectively.
The second thing I would say is you need to have a way to get people to stay in your audience. And what I mean by that is an email list. You can have people on your social media. You can have followers, etc., but you do not own that data.
If people give you their emails, they're giving you a piece of their information in order for you to be in touch with them. That is how you're getting paid for things like a live on Facebook, or an ad that you're running, or a podcast interview that you're doing, or if you're doing a Q &A with a local mom group, or a local parent group.
That is how you're getting paid quote -unquote for that thing. is you're getting people's emails. When you get their emails, then you need to have a way to nurture them. So that is the third thing. You need to have a way to nurture them so that they can get to know you, they can either buy your stuff, or they can refer you to other people to buy your stuff, okay?
Now, if someone is saying to you, like, oh my gosh, I think you're amazing, I love what you do, you need that person's email because then they will know what you are doing and they can send people to the stuff you're doing, which is really huge, that's a big deal.
So that is something that I really cannot emphasize enough. Like, if you're going to have passive offers, you've got to have an email system in place. We are gonna talk a bit in a couple episodes about tech stuff.
That is also something that I cover in the doulaBiz Blueprint, which is the self -paced guide, the self -paced program for doula coaching. You can learn more about that in the show notes, you can connect with me on Instagram to learn about that.
But that is something that I specifically go into because it is vital, if you're going to have online offers, you have to have an email system in place. Now, the fourth thing is selling your passive offer.
I wanna talk for a minute about a couple different types of passive offers because I think that I hear a lot of doula's saying they wanna do an online childbirth class. And the reality is, and you heard me say this, if you listen to the interview with Kylie, a couple episodes back, episode, what was it, 202, that one, we talked about how she and I both, the first passive income thing we did was a 10 -hour childbirth education class, and we do not recommend it because that's a lot.
But it's a lot to bite off that big of a... program, right? But you can have something like email templates or client handout templates or you know you can have birth affirmation cards. I sell Instagram templates on Etsy.
So there are all different kinds of things that you can have that allow you to make passive income. It doesn't have to be a whole childbirth education class. In order for a childbirth education class to be thorough, it has to be incredibly long and unless you have professional training in making an online class, recording an online class, that is a ton of work.
That is not how I would recommend you start, okay? So I want you to think about what are some things that you could use from your business now to start some passive income. Could you do templates? Could you do ebooks?
Could you do some kind of small workshop or class? Could you do something that you already are doing with individual clients? Could you do that in a way that other folks can join in it as well? Like maybe it's a Zoom class or something like that.
Now a Zoom class is not technically passive income but it is if you do it live once and you record it and then people can watch it without you being alive. That is then passive income, right? So I don't want to deter you from this.
Like this this episode today is not to make you think like okay well thanks Kaylee I obviously shouldn't do this. What I mean to emphasize here is that and honestly this is from my own experience. Let me just interrupt myself and give you this background.
So I created my childbirth class at the beginning of the pandemic. When I was terrified that we were just gonna like drown in poverty because we both my husband and I both took a significant cut in our pay because our work was in person work and was impacted wildly by the pandemic time, right?
So I created my childbirth class and I honestly really struggled to get anybody to buy it for a long time and I was like it's an amazing class. Like my marketing was not good. It was like I have a childbirth class you should take it.
Like that was how I talked about the class and I give myself loads of grace because I just knew nothing, right? But then I remember taking a class about getting your honor. online classes to sell. And I was like, wait a second, this could sell like to hundreds of people a year, like this could be huge, you know?
But then the more I dug into that, I was like, what's a funnel? Okay, wait, what's an email sequence? Okay, wait, what's an automation? Okay, wait, what do I have in terms of ads? So that got incredibly overwhelming for me, right?
Now with time, I have figured out some ways that the class can sell. It's still not scaled to the point that I want it to be, in part because I did not have thousands of dollars to put behind figuring out a funnel to get it to sell the way that I want it to, right?
Now I have more of that now, and I am putting more money behind it, and I am in fact getting a lot more sales. So that is something that has taken me three years to scale, right, so I wanna just add that context in.
Now, Granted, if you're saying to me, okay, Kaylee, right this minute, if I had a class, I have a couple thousand dollars to put into learning how to run ads or to put into, you know, having systems in place so that this works on its own, or to hiring someone to help me put those systems in place, then you are the perfect candidate for this, right?
So do it. So go do it. Amazing, wonderful. Hire some tech VAs, get your shit out there and change some lives, right? But if you're like, I'm going to start a passive income stream, because I don't have enough money, it's going to be very hard to get it to grow, because you need money to market it in order for it to grow in many cases.
Now, that's not always the case, right? But I just want to be real about the fact that people who have massive growth in passive incomes is because they also have a big marketing budget behind that growth.
And oftentimes that the spend up front is quite high. And then of course, there's a return that makes it worth it. But in the meantime, that upfront spend is significant. And many of us small business owners cannot handle that cost.
So I'm going to stop there for this one. But we are going to dig into the tech piece, dig into a couple different things about business in the next couple episodes. So stay tuned for those. If you have not yet checked out the doula biz blueprint, I do recommend that you go look at that because it is self paced, you can go through it at your own pace, you own it forever.
So this is a resource that you will continue to go back to all throughout your doula business. It is right now only $4 .95 because at the beta price, it's going to go up from there in the summertime.
you to get in while it's still relatively affordable and we have it set up where you can buy it on a payment plan but you can also use something like after pay or a firm so you're getting it now and paying for it later if you're not familiar with those systems they are honestly magical systems you should look into them but also go get the doula biz blueprint because you can because it's on these systems and you can get it for a much lower rate so i want you to grab the the link from the show notes it is in there it's harradoulaservices .com slash doula biz blueprint with dashes in between each so doula dash biz dash blueprint connect with me on instagram at harradoula and i will give you a bit more information and share how you can join all right i will see you in the next episode Thanks for joining us for this episode of the doula tips and tips 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.
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Let’s talk about growing that passive income. How nice would it be to have something steady coming in that is easy to do? Like you have the knowledge and background to do these things like having an online class or creating a parent guide.
“So there are all different kinds of things that you can have that allow you to make passive income. It doesn't have to be a whole childbirth education class. In order for a childbirth education class to be thorough, it has to be incredibly long and unless you have professional training in making an online class, recording an online class, that is a ton of work. That is not how I would recommend you start, okay? So I want you to think about what are some things that you could use from your business now to start some passive income. Could you do templates? Could you do ebooks? ”
CONNECT with Kaely on TikTok or Instagram
https://www.tiktok.com/@doulacoach
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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
Music by Madirfan: Hidden Place on Pixabay
