Why Your 90-Day Plan Should Start With Your Life, Not Your Goals
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Kaely Harrod (00:01.25)
Hello and welcome back to Doula Tips and Tits. I am going to talk today about how do we make a 90-day plan. The reason I'm talking about this is that at the time of recording, this is the week that I did my Doula CEO game plan workshop where we talk about 90-day plans and how they actually like give you direction, give you strategy, help move your business forward, etc.
And so I want to talk a little bit today about that topic for the sake of some continuity in the topics I'm discussing this week, but also so that if you were at that workshop, you find hopefully this a little bit helpful or more direction. so, what matters most when you're making a 90-day plan? And I think when I was thinking about this, I think I kind of landed on three main questions that
Seem like the most important information to help you choose what your 90 day plan should be, right? And I think the reason there need to be questions and not answers right now is that I can't just say this is the 90 day plan that Doulas should have in Q3 of any given year, right? Because I don't know that. I don't know.
what exactly your business needs without having eyeballs on the ins and outs of your business, right? So I have doula say to me s things like, Do you think I need to be on Instagram? And I'm like, I don't know. I have questions like what what is your presence like on Instagram now? Where are you getting clients from? Where are you in the process of being a doula? Are you new? Are you not new? Do you have online offerings or not? Like I have more questions than I have answers at first because whether or not you need to be
on Instagram with a strong presence depends on what you're trying to do, right? What kind of work are you doing and where are you in that process of work and how are you trying to use that platform? So again, just like the workshop, this is meant to start the brainstorming process and even maybe a little bit of validation on where you should be in the 90 day plan. So I think
Kaely Harrod (02:20.844)
The first question I want you to ask yourself is what is happening in your life right now? Right? What is happening in your life in the next ninety days? Now, if you're a parent and you're listening to this in real time, you probably have school starting sometime soon, right? And definitely in the next ninety days. If you do like a regular US school system schedule, right? so for us, we start school in gosh, like
Me eleven days, I think. What day is today? Yeah, eleven days. We start school. now I have older kiddos, so my kids are twelve, almost thirteen, fourteen, almost fifteen, and sixteen. and so we're starting two kiddos in high school, one kid still in middle school. but still like the things that come with starting school is like lots of preparation stuff.
Lots of like back to school meetings, lots of back to school paperwork as we're figuring out all the stuff for back to school. And then, which reminds me I need to send their health forms in. and then lots of back to school schedule shifts, right? So I think it was yesterday or two days ago, I had a client text me and say, like, hey, I'm trying to schedule our prenatal visit, but your schedule says it's full until October. And I was like, Yeah.
I didn't open it yet because I was a little bit nervous about what the school year was gonna look like and I needed to just like get my brain together before I put out availability. And she was like, totally got it. Like, don't worry. And I was like, give me one day and then I will set the schedule and then the I promise there's availability in September. it's not that I'm not available, it's that I haven't allowed anyone to book in September yet. So so even the shift of calendar, right?
So the reason I want you to think about what's happening is that I think we often think about self-employment and small business ownership as if it's something that you just need to like grit your teeth and muscle through. And that's surprisingly maybe not sustainable, right? Like that's actually a bad way to live life. And so sometimes it's needed, right? Like there are times when you're in a survival space where you just have to literally muscle through, but not all the time. Like, and so
Kaely Harrod (04:45.838)
Part of what I want you to look at is are you having some kind of emergency thing in the next ninety days or like life crisis of some sort? Are you having a family thing that's a big deal? Are you out of town? Do you have a surgery coming up? Is there like a move that's happening in your life? Right. Like there's just what is happening because that will also tell me, should you just be maintaining stuff or should you actually be like doing some big project, building something new? Like, is there something that you should be doing?
In this 90 days, or is this the 90 days to do nothing? Not nothing, but like nothing new, right? So that's the first question. What is happening in your life? Second question, what is most urgent? So I'm gonna tell you a little story to highlight this. I have a coach. You all know this because I talk about her a lot. Her name is Anna. She's great. she she has like a I don't know, a spreadsheet, I guess it is.
that talks about like your offers, like which which offers do you have? How much do they make? And how many of them do you sell? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I filled that all out one one year. I was right at the beginning of my coaching with her. So it's a couple years ago now. And I had been saying to her, Okay, the reason I need a coach is I need to grow my coaching, my doula coaching. Right. I wanna have more doulas that I coach. I wanna have more group programs. I wanna have more whatever. At the time I was coaching doulas, but like
less than a dozen at a time, right? Like it was like definitely a smaller number of doulas and I only had one or two packages for coaching. So like it was a small offer. And my kind of narrative was my doula services are thriving. I don't need coaching in that. What I need is coaching in my coaching services. And she took one the other thing I was saying to her, so this is context that matters, is I am
the primary source of income in our family and I need to make more money. And she, I remember so distinctly, she said, Okay, Kaylee, you know I say this lovingly, but you need to make more money quickly, correct? And I was like, yes. And she was like, okay, so why are we trying to grow a program that's very small that is not going to very quickly make you money? And I was like, what do you mean? She was like, well, why don't we raise your doola rates? And I was like,
Kaely Harrod (07:09.684)
I don't think I can. Like, I'm not sure. She was like, I know, I know mentally, this is not what you thought you needed. She was like, But your doula services are thriving. You have constant stream you have a constant stream of inquiries. Why not raise that rate and raise the number of people that are hiring you? That is a quick avenue to cash. And then once you have cash stability, we can really like in a spacious way dive into.
the coaching. And I was kind of like, that's not what I planned on. You know, and she was like, I know, I know. Take a couple days, like, have your fit about it. She was like, I really think this is what we need to do. And she was right, right? She was absolutely right. The fastest way to make more money was to sell more of the offers I already had. That's almost always true. And so what is most urgent for me in that 90 days when I was chatting with her, it was to make more money in on a 90 day basis, right?
Maybe the most urgent thing for you is to to adjust how you're marketing, adjust how you're networking, et cetera. And so what that urgency is differs person to person. But I think that needs to be the second question when you're kind of thinking through how to set your goal. The third question I want I want you to think about is where are you in business? So this is where I think we can get a little bit Frankenstein-ish with our business.
our business strategy and planning is that we lack context sometimes for when business information is pertinent to us, right? So I'm gonna go back to Instagram. So I have a lot of people saying like, I know I need to be more consistent on Instagram. And when I ask them like, well, what are you doing now? They're like, I just finished my training. I like just became a doula. And I'm like, do you have an Instagram? They're like, Yeah, yeah, I have one, but I don't, I've never posted on it. And I'm like, okay, well then consistency is not what you need.
Right. Like you're actually not at a place of consistency. You don't even have anything there. So, like, maybe you need an Instagram account, maybe you need some content on your Instagram account, but also maybe not. Like, maybe that's something we table until you like have a contract or have a package or have a business card that you can physically set down at places in your local community because you want physical people to have your services, right? Not Instagram people online. And so
Kaely Harrod (09:34.926)
Part of the context of whether this business plan and business direction even is helpful to you is what what is going on in your business and where are you in this process, right? If you're fully if your goal for 90 days is to be fully booked and I ask you, like, have you had any doula clients? And you have not, that's not a good ninety day goal.
Right. It's not that I don't want you to be fully booked eventually, but it's not gonna happen in the next 90 days, probably, right? But if you're telling me like, hey, you are I'm like half booked right now and I want to be fully booked, that is a good 90 day plan because you probably can feasibly do that in 90 days, where it's not possible or not likely to do that if you are only starting out and you have had like one client ever, right?
So I want you to think through those three questions. So again, question number one, what is happening in your life? Question number two, what is most urgent? Question number three, where are you in your business as you're writing down your 90-day plan? Connect with me on Instagram at Haroddoula and tell me what your 90-day plan is because I would love to cheer you on and be just someone in your corner who's telling you you got this. All right, I'll see you in the next episode.
This episode walks through a practical way to build a 90-day plan by starting with your real life, your most urgent business need, and your current stage in business. Kaely explains why the best plan is not a generic one, but one shaped by your season, your cash flow, and what is actually feasible in the next three months.
She shares examples from her own doula business, coaching, and family schedule to show how to decide whether you should maintain, grow, or pause new projects.
Quote from the show:
“I think we often think about self-employment and small business ownership as if it's something that you just need to grit your teeth and muscle through. And that's surprisingly maybe not sustainable. Part of what I want you to look at is are you having some kind of emergency thing in the next ninety days or like a life crisis of some sort? Are you having a family thing that's a big deal? Are you out of town? Do you have a surgery coming up? Is there like a move that's happening in your life? Because that will also tell me, should you just be maintaining stuff or should you actually be doing some big project, building something new? So I want you to think through those three questions: what is happening in your life, what is most urgent, and where are you in your business as you're writing down your 90-day plan.”
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Doula Tips and Tits is produced by Kaely Harrod of Harrod Doula Services
It is sponsored by The Doula Biz Blueprint Self-Paced Class for Doulas Launching Successful and Sustainable Businesses!
Music by Madirfan: Hidden Place on Pixabay
