Making More Money As a Doula
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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.
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. Hello and welcome back to doula Tips and Tips. Today we are talking about making more money. And who doesn't love talking about that? I mean, I don't know anybody who is wanting to make less money this year, in 2024, this coming year.
And also, I think it is something that doulas struggle with talking about. And so I want to just, you know, look it straight in the face and just take this challenge head on and talk about it because it's a necessary part of business.
The reality is that if you are charging a price for your services that puts you in a deficit, you are doing harm to yourself and not really serving your clients in a sustainable way because that is not something that you can sustain.
So yeah, maybe you're serving a few clients at a lower cost, but the end result of that is a burnt out doula that then stops doing this work. So I want to talk a little bit about ways to make more money.
And obviously, there are a wide range of things, but I want you to think about kind of where you are in terms of what your next thing should be because I I think when we're thinking about a doula business, we can't just think, oh yeah, okay, so, you know, I, this is my business, X, Y, Z is what I do, and I serve X number of clients, and so therefore, how I make more money is serve more clients, right?
Because in my business, for instance, this next year, my goal is to actually attend a lot less births than this year. And in the last four years, I'd say, I've attended between 25 and 35 births a year, which is a lot, like a lot of births.
That has given me a ton of experience really quickly, but in 2024, my goal is to attend less than 15 births. Now, I'm not gonna say no to like a backup birth if I'm like, oh, I'm already at my 15, but I can if I need to, right?
But I'm not holding that in such a way that like I won't assist other doulas, but I'm not going to allow as many people to hire me because it is something that... I need to limit for my own body and my own family's sake, right?
So that's where I am in business. So my business making more money does not look like having more birth clients. In my business, making more money looks like selling more online classes to people who aren't birth clients all over the world, right?
It looks like having more coaching folks, like more doulas in my programs and more experience doulas, signing up for my quarterly planning and things like that. So those are things that my business growth looks like that might be different from yours.
If you're saying to me, okay, Kaylee, I've had three clients, I need to make more money next year, then having more clients is a valid way to do that, right? Because you don't have too many clients already.
However, if you say to me, this last year, I attended 30 births, but I didn't make enough money. My first question is how much are you charging? Because attending 30 births should be a full time load of it as a doula, meaning that you should make money as if this is your salary job, right?
Like this is a business. And so having a full client load should equal having pay like you have a full client load, right? But the reality is that doulas chronically under charge. And I know that this is a message you have heard from me over and over and over and over and spoiler alert, it's going to come back up a number of times in the future because it is a major problem.
It is a major issue. And I was on the side as a new doula of saying, why do we need to charge more money? I don't see how it's detrimental to anybody else for me to charge smaller amounts of money. The reality is that I'm not going to charge more money.
is that it is detrimental. I was wrong. I did not fully understand the concept of undervaluing a profession. And I didn't understand the wear and tear on myself on my body and the impact to my clients when I was feeling fairly burnt out on a pretty regular basis, right?
So that soapbox is not the only reason for today's episode. But let's say you're a person who had plenty of clients last year. And in fact, maybe you had the number of clients you'd like to have every year, and you didn't make enough money, then you need to look at what you're charging.
What are your packages? How much are you are using an expense? Is like, do you have a bunch of services that you're paying for that you don't need to be paying for? Right? How can you kind of bring your bottom line up?
And how can you bring in more money, but not do more work than you're doing now? Because you are potentially doing the amount of work you want to do, right? Another scenario is you are doing like, let's say you know, you're attending births but similar to me, you're saying like, I can't really do more than like 12 or 15 births a year at this point and so I need more income from other income streams and maybe you have those streams already and they're not making enough money or maybe you don't have them and you need to add them in.
So that might be adding in childbirth ed or adding in postpartum care if you're only doing birth at the moment adding in lactation if you're not doing if you're only doing postpartum care. Adding in extra services like I, a do -like coach, is an artist as well which is so awesome and so one of the things that she would like to offer is like belly casting and painting and that makes perfect sense because it's adjacent to her work as a doula and also like plays on her enormous strength of doing art and her love of doing art and it gets her in front of people but it also isn't something just to like get up at two in the morning to do, right?
So it's a little bit more sustainable in terms of that. So when you think about making more money I want you to get really specific because what I think we sometimes do is look at it like very abstractly like I need to make more money what does that mean?
How much more money do you need to make? What money do you make right now, right? What is your goal financially? Like do you have the numbers of what you need on a monthly quarterly and yearly basis for your business to be sustained and those things all really, really matter because at the end of the day the sustainability of our business is our business, right?
Like we can't have a business that's completely falling apart at the seams and expect to continue having it. Like that's not how that works, right? So when you think about how it can look to be sustainable, I want you to think about the work that you're already doing, the work that you'd love to do in addition or instead of the work that you're doing, how much of each thing do you want to do?
So for instance, when I think about my fiscal year, I look at how many births do I want to attend? Okay, then how much am I going to charge for those births? And then how much revenue is that going to bring into the business?
And if I attend 12 births and I charge $3 ,000 for those births, then how am I making the rest of the revenue that the business needs? Am I making it through coaching? Am I making it through postpartum care?
Am I making it through classes? What does that look like? Because the reality is that It's important for us to have a really clear idea of how the revenue is going to come in. That also gives us a very clear path to growing that revenue because if I'm saying like, I don't know, I want to make 150 ,000 in revenue, but I'm not sure how, then what is my goal there?
Like how do I advance towards that thing? And how do I know that it's working and celebrate it and keep myself going in the middle of the year? Right? I don't because I don't know that it's working because I don't know how and when I am trying to get to that goal.
Right? So what I really want to encourage you to do is take a minute, sit down, write down what you actually mean when you say, I want my business to make more money. Like where do you want that money to come from?
Do you want to charge more money for your services? Do you want to have more services that you offer? Do you want to have more clients that are buying your services at the same price they are now? Like what does that look like?
Because otherwise you really can't make a game plan for moving towards it without that information. Okay? Now, if you listened to the last episode, you heard about the upcoming class in January. If you are listening to this episode and anything about this charging more money, making more money, etc.
resonates with you, this class is for you. So January 10th, 1pm Eastern, I will be teaching a class called doula Money Mindset, How to Feel Good About Charging More Money. I think doulas tend to feel crappy about charging more money.
We tend to feel crappy about charging at all. And that's something that is really a problem in terms of sustainability. So this class is free. It is open to doulas. I would love to connect with you there and help you work through some of your doula Money Mindset.
and also to give you some resources to move forward in a more sustainable way in your business. The registration link for that class is in the show notes, so go ahead and grab your spot now. The spots are limited to only 100 people and these classes tend to fill up pretty quickly, so I would love to see you there.
Go ahead and grab that link, put it on your calendar, 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 at herradoula so we can celebrate alongside you.
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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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How many times have you said “I need to make more money in my business”? Today we are talking about how to make that happen but also what it looks like to raise your prices, or add a service to make that financial goal.
Quote from the show:
“If you're saying to me, okay, Kaylee, I've had three clients, I need to make more money next year, then having more clients is a valid way to do that, right? Because you don't have too many clients already. However, if you say to me, this last year, I attended 30 births, but I didn't make enough money. My first question is how much are you charging? Because attending 30 births should be a full time load of it as a doula, meaning that you should make money as if this is your salary job, right? Like this is a business. And so having a full client load should equal having pay like you have a full client load, right? But the reality is that doulas chronically under charge. And I know that this is a message you have heard from me over and over and over and over and spoiler alert, it's going to come back up a number of times in the future because it is a major problem.”
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
