What Time Sucks Do You Have In Your Business?
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00:04
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.
00:36
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Welcome back to the doula Biz Blueprint. I want you to think with me for one second about what things that you hate doing take up too much time on your business.
00:52
There is a purpose behind this, as always, and I want you to just take a minute to think about this. I want to give credit to my coach Lee Ann Kim for this because she prompted me in our coaching call this week.
01:08
Part of what I think about when I think about this is things that keep us from doing the work that we really need to be doing or the work that we really love to do. I have some thoughts, as you might expect, coming to the podcast thinking Kaylee has something to say about this.
01:27
I have thoughts about what things might be sucking time from your business right now. I have thoughts about what things suck time from my business right now. I have thoughts about how the things I'm about to talk about no longer suck time from my business because of how I've set up the processes to keep them from doing that.
01:48
So my hope is to say the word suck as much as possible today because here we are. You know, why not? And to give you a sense of what you can be doing instead if these are things that are sucking time from your business.
02:04
Okay the first one is prenatal preparation. Now this is something that does take some time and that's okay. It takes more time when you're new than it does when you're more experienced. Part of that is that you just have experienced more scenarios and so you have to do less research on things.
02:24
If you know your clients are facing a particular diagnosis or a particular recommendation from their provider and you want to help them navigate that you are understandably researching it. However how to do a prenatal and what to include in a prenatal and how to kind of structure that prenatal all of that does not need to be a time suck for you.
02:45
Okay now I fully appreciate that if you are new to this work it is a time suck right now because you're new to it. Also because I would say maybe you have a heavy dose of imposter syndrome. Maybe. right?
02:58
Just I'm just gonna throw that out there and the off chance that you have a little little imposter syndrome you might be structuring this different every time because you're not sure if you're doing it well and I get that like I was that doula and so I fully appreciate that every time you walk in you're like what am I doing?
03:18
Am I doing it correctly? Right? Like is there a better way? So that's one thing. Now at this point in my business this is not a time suck for me at all. Why? Because I have a very clear standard of what I do in these visits.
03:33
I start with how are you? Is there anything about the pregnancy that I need to be updated on? How are you feeling? How are you doing emotionally? If they're taking my class like where are you in the class and how how is it going for you?
03:47
The second thing we talk about is oh I also ask them do they have any questions because some of my clients come with like a whole list of questions that day and I'm like let's just tackle those now because hey let's just get them out of the way right?
04:01
So what questions do you have before we dive in is what I say because I'm leading this meeting. This is not a meeting that they are leading because I am the one who knows what we need to cover and when we need to cover it and so saying things like I want you to have a chance to ask your questions before we dive in gives them the sense that I have a meeting that we're about to dive into right and then I also am using language that reminds me that I am controlling this meeting not in a manipulative terrible way but in a way that's like I'm the expert here and I am guiding you through this process which is what I am and what they hired me for right?
04:43
So we do that the second the next kind of portion of it is I'll say I like to start with hearing your hopes and fears around birth so that I can get a sense of you know what you're what you're expecting what you're excited about maybe some things that we could dive into a bit and also because fears are different for everyone and it's important to validate and acknowledge those fears along the way and if I know like you have a very strong fear of a particular thing happening if that thing happens in the midst of birth we can address it and that's really important in terms of trauma and moving through that thing in a way that doesn't stick in the trauma center for too long right so that's a piece of trauma informed care that is just like taking time to acknowledge the fears to speak the fears to not pretend like there aren't any fears and to to to hold them like they're real right to have them have them written have space for them whatever that looks like for you so I take notes during this because I think it's helpful for me to have that about my clients um but it's up to you if you want to do that I have I have a client notebook every year where I put my prenatal notes from them, any kind of important information I need, things that I would want to send to a backup doula if I needed to send a backup doula to them, and then I also make notes of things that they ask me to send them so that I do not forget to send them because my brain is just not the same as it used to be now that I have been a parent for 14 years.
06:17
So that's the first thing. The second thing that I think might be a time suck for you as it was for me initially are client forms. Now I want to start by saying you do not have to have forms in your business.
06:32
However, there is a certain amount of information you need to collect from your clients and let me just tell you it is a thousand percent easier to do that on a freaking form because you can go back to the form and see their information.
06:46
Now I'm going to tell you a couple ways that I use forms in my business now. So one is I literally have a form that is my contract and that's set up differently right because it's a form but it's also a lot of written content ahead of time ahead of that form.
07:02
So they read through the contract. The form portion is them signing the contract. I have it set up in a system that allows a legal signature and then they actually pay for it on that same form. So that's one form I use.
07:15
Another form I use is client intake information. So this is things like do you have pets? Is there anything we need to know about parking? Because I live in DC and some people live in areas where you just cannot park if you don't live there etc.
07:28
So that's an important piece we need to know. Do you have pets that you want us to know about? Do you have other family members that will be around that we should know about? Do you have a partner? If you do have a partner please share their information with us.
07:41
So it's that kind of stuff in that client intake form. Now that intake form has also their address their email address and their phone numbers to make sure that I can put their phone numbers their email and their um address into my phone or I can look it up on my phone in that form if I'm like headed to their house in labor or something like that.
08:03
It also has things like are you currently happy with your provider because then that tells me if they are happy with their provider amazing. If they're not happy with their provider we need to dig into that right away because they might be getting to the point where it's really late to switch providers and so I need to know that about them so that I can help them navigate that quickly.
08:27
Now another thing that I used to do is I used to have a birth preferences form which kind of went through like what are you hoping birth will be like and honestly it was super freaking long like I included all kinds of options people could have like would you want pictures after the labor if I can take pictures on your phone or not right.
08:48
Now these are things that I do often talk to clients about still but I do not have this birth. preferences intake form any longer because I found that over time I didn't use it very much and so then I found it unnecessary in my business but for about the first like two to three years I used it a lot and it was very very helpful for me to structure what we needed to talk about in the prenatal visit to make sure that we really got through all the things that mattered in that visit okay now the the last thing well I use forms for other things as well but those are the main forms I use for every client the last the next thing that I find is a time suck is emails what I mean about this is I have a few emails that every single client gets so a welcome email when they first sign up with me and after visit email after our first prenatal and our second prenatal I have a few emails that I like to send like a birth bag and things like that just kind of generally to everybody and then after we finish a package I always send a wrap -up email that's like hey thank you so much for working with us if you need any services in the future make sure you let us know and then ways to give me reviews okay now I used to write all of those emails from scratch but friend that takes so much time like just way too much time and the reason I was writing them from scratch is I was like hello Liz like I'm so happy that we got to meet today blah blah blah blah blah and saying people's names and using particular things two things changed one I was able to write those emails either without names or with just a few places that I needed to add names in so I could easily copy and paste them and send them to people the other thing is I started having more consistency in my prenatal visits where I knew every single person was going to go through XYZ with me.
10:56
And so I could include that in every single post prenatal email because I knew that we had talked about that because we always do talk about that, right? So do these emails need a little bit of editing every time?
11:09
Yes, they do a little bit, but not much. And that saves me so much time and decision fatigue. Imagine the space in your brain of not thinking, gosh, this person signed a contract. What should I send to them?
11:27
Right? Like imagine that's just gone because you're like, oh, let me send them their welcome email with maybe the links to schedule our prenatal visits or the link to my client portal. If you have a client portal with resources in it or whatever that looks like for you, imagine just copy and paste that sucker in there and add their names.
11:48
And that is all. Okay, now. What I think is important to think about in this is that these things are important for your business. So I am not saying these are things that are sucking time. Oh, I forgot about using that word.
12:05
They are time sucks for you and they are important to the client experience. If you were in my last masterclass, that's what we talked about. Your client chemistry, like how to really make that good doula client connection.
12:19
And that matters for the rest of your business because those people are going to refer to you or not, right? Now what I want you to think about is how to have these things, but make it easier for you, right?
12:36
And one way that you can do that is by having templates for these things. Another way that you can do that is by learning how to do them from other doulas. Now, I know if you're listening to this podcast, you have heard me talk about the doula biz blueprint course that is currently open for enrollment.
12:55
These are bonuses that are included in that course. So you literally get the client forms that I have used that are Google forms that you, my friend can open and make a copy of and use the same form without needing to make your own.
13:13
And I cannot tell you how much time that will save you. You also have a template of my emails. You have a template of the prenatal preparation. You have an entire recorded prenatal preparation session with me and my sister who happens to be one of my clients.
13:32
So we talked through the birth planning session. We talked through like preferences in birth. What would she want? What would she not want? What she's afraid of? What she's hopeful of? Fun fact is she was actually pregnant when we did that and I did not know that yet.
13:45
She actually did not know that yet. She found out about two weeks later and I just got to help have, I got to help. her have that baby um about a month and a half ago. So um so you have access to all of that forever.
14:00
So imagine instead of going into your next prenatal being like oh what should I talk about you just open up the thing, open up the course, Doolabiz blueprint course, watch that prenatal prep session and be like oh I know what I'm gonna talk about this this this and this no big deal done and done right imagine imagine how much time anxiety and grief that gives you back in your life right well you don't want the anxiety back but I mean you get the time back and you skip the anxiety because who the heck needs that right you also skip some of the imposter syndrome because you're not saying is this even what I should be covering because you're saying okay Kaylee has literally done this with hundreds of families so this works it's a good system and I can just replicate it.
14:51
because she gave me permission to replicate it, okay? So the enrollment for this course ends this week. So I do not want you to delay getting in. April 26th at midnight Eastern is the last time that it will be offered at this price of 497.
15:10
497 is the full price of it, but there are over four ways to break it down into smaller payments. So if that price point is what's keeping you from signing up, please go and check the other options for paying because I do not want you to delay getting in when I know for certain the price is going up the next time I open it because this course has way too much in it to sell it every time for 497.
15:37
So that is all for today. We are gonna go, we're gonna jump into some new guests coming up in the spring. I'm super excited for some of the folks that I have on who are gonna be talking to you about different things that I want you to know more about and really like just continuing to motivate and encourage you.
15:59
And I do not take that privilege lightly. So until next time, 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 hiradoula so we can celebrate alongside you.
16:24
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.
16:48
We'll see you again soon.
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Every business has those things that you just have to take the time to do even if it takes . It doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy that thing but that it can be a time suck. Today we are discussing how to make those things more productive to get them done, and ways to lead conversations to get a result faster.
“So what questions do you have before we dive in is what I say because I'm leading this meeting. This is not a meeting that they are leading because I am the one who knows what we need to cover and when we need to cover it and so saying things like I want you to have a chance to ask your questions before we dive in gives them the sense that I have a meeting that we're about to dive into right and then I also am using language that reminds me that I am controlling this meeting not in a manipulative terrible way but in a way that's like I'm the expert here and I am guiding you through this process which is what I am and what they hired me for right? ”
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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
