All Doula Businesses Need Support
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Transcript
Welcome to Doula Tips and Tits, the podcast where we cut through the noise and get real about what it takes to build a sustainable doula business. I'm Kaylee Harrod. I've been a doula informally for 14 years and full time for seven.
Around here, we don't sugarcoat stuff. We talk autonomy, owning your worth, creating a business that works for you. No fluff, no burnout, just the honest truth on how to be your own best boss. Let's get into today's episode.
I want to talk for just a minute about how sometimes we need just the tiniest bit of strategy to get our businesses moving forward. Now, um, I want to share with you a little bit about my year and I'm not going to go into great detail.
I know that I've shared some things off and on, on here this year about breaking my ankle and other things. Um, but it's been a hard year. Like there's been a lot of different aspects of life that have been really challenging.
Um, one of which was breaking my ankle. And when I fell, I broke my left ankle and I rolled my right ankle. And so my sprain and my right ankle essentially had to wait to try to heal until my left ankle healed because it had to do all the work until then because the right, the left ankle was broken.
And so I was in a boot for, I think it was a total of five months, but maybe four months in a boot or maybe three and a half in a boot and then two in a brace. Um, and then I, one of those months on in a boot, I was also on crutches.
Um, and then I have been in PT now for about a month and I have many weeks left. Like I don't know how long. I think I'm technically approved for six and then they like can re -approve or whatever. So, um, so the long story short here, the point of this is I still have pain every day in my right ankle.
Um, and I have a different range of motion. So like I oftentimes I really like to squat down, um, to like when I'm doing yoga or when I'm teaching classes and I still can't squat like I normally would because my ankle can't bend that far on the right side.
So, um, I can only do it if I'm assisted in some way or supported in some way. And so there's, that is still impacting my life, like on an everyday basis, right? So there's movement that I like to do that I regularly do that I still can't do.
And I have pain in the back of my pelvis and in my low back from the imbalance that I've had all year from having a broken ankle. So on a physical level that has impacted me when I broke my ankle and I shared this in an episode in probably like late February.
Um, when I broke my ankle, it also cost me a lot of money because I had to send back up doulas to do a lot of my work. And so there was a huge financial piece of it that thankfully I was able to bear, but also made a big dent in my business, right?
Like took a big chunk of what I would have had for things like marketing and expansion and stuff like that. And so it was a setback for sure. And then in my personal life, emotionally I've been dealing with a lot of stuff in my marriage and in just like the transition into high school for my oldest kiddo and all different sorts of things there.
And so that can be something that like emotionally and mentally keeps you from really like moving yourself forward, right? Like it can get you very stuck because you sort of feel like I don't know how to manage something or I don't know where something is headed or how it's gonna go or what it's gonna look like.
And so I just feel like super stuck in that one spot. And business wise, like that's really tricky because you need to move. Like you can't stay stuck for super long or your business isn't gonna go anywhere, right?
And so I share all this to say like there have been some pivotal moments in my business that have I believe kept me going. And I think part of what I find crucial is having people outside the business who can reflect back to you what they see because you get so stuck in just the gunk that is around you in your business and your personal life sometimes that you can't even look for a way out of it,
right? And so there are a few key conversations that I had that really stand out to me. And I have moments in my coaching that I've had with clients that are also these kinds of moments that are something that I'm like really proud of because I can kind of see that shift that I know the feeling of, right?
Like I've had that shift as the receiver, right? But I've also seen that shift as the giver of this information. So the first one was at the beginning of the summertime I was just in a really rough spot emotionally and feeling like super, super overwhelmed with life.
The financial impact of my ankle was really catching up to me in the business and in our family's finances and it was just like really, really stressful. And so I remember saying to my copywriter, so I have this wonderful, wonderful woman on my team who writes amazing copywriting and she writes my newsletters.
Now we collaborate on them, like I talk about, I share with her what I want them to be about and how I want her to write them and all of that and then I approve them before she sends them and I tweak them and whatnot.
But like when I tell you she is a magical human, she is a magical human and I was talking to her and I was just like, I don't know, like I know nothing. I have zero content to give you, I don't know what I wanna say to people, I don't know what I wanna talk about, I don't know what anything should be right now.
And she was like, okay, like why don't I look back through our other newsletters and get some ideas and basically just send you some newsletters to approve and I'll just do it on my side. I've been doing it enough for you at this point that I know you well, I know your business well and I'm happy to do that and you know, we've been at this for a while so it's perfectly fine to like kind of revisit some things that we've talked about already.
And I was just like, oh, that sounds amazing. Like I literally started crying when she said it because I was like, oh, I literally had not even considered that that is something I could do, right? And then, so that was one pivotal moment.
Around the same time, I remember saying to one of my best friends, one of my dearest friends who is also a business owner and works in infant sleep, you've heard her here on the podcast, Kim Holly, and she's gonna be on again soon.
She, I said like, I just want like some time off. And she was like, you know that you get to decide that, right, like you own your business. So if you need time off, you can give yourself time off. And I was like, I mean, yeah, but she was like, yeah, but seriously though, like you can do less if you need to do less for a little while.
And I mean, that's not a quote from her. Like she said it probably in a much more magical way, but in that moment I was like, oh, you're right. So my plan for the summer and the last two summers, I think I've had guests on the podcast all summer long.
And that's lovely, except that the work to do that is really top heavy, right? So the front end of the summer is a lot of work. to record those episodes, to coordinate schedules, to get people, you know, scheduled in for a call and then to write all the show notes, to schedule everything out.
Like it takes a lot of time. And so that was my plan. And I had kind of felt crappy because I was like, I keep not scheduling with people and I'm having a hard time keeping up with everything and I like forget things.
And she's like, yeah, because you're exhausted and you're stressed out and you need a break. And she was like, why do you wanna do the guest episodes in the summertime? And I was like, I don't know. You know, that's what I've done.
And she's like, well, why don't you just not do it? Like, how about you just don't? And in that moment I was like, oh yeah, cause I get to decide. And I talk about that all the time in business, right?
Like you get to decide what thing actually works for you, what things actually good in your business, what things need to shift. But in that moment, I was like, oh, I hadn't even considered that I actually could just change my mind about this.
And what I ended up doing is I just sent an email to all the people I was trying to schedule with, all the guests and said, hey, listen, I'm still super excited to have you on the podcast. I'd really like for you to be on, but I'm not gonna do guest recordings until the end of the summer.
I'm gonna do them in August and September. And these are gonna be fall episodes now instead of summertime episodes. And everybody was super gracious with me. Like they were like, okay, great, awesome, wonderful.
We'll schedule for the fall, no big deal. And I have now recorded most of those episodes. Many of them have already come out with you to you all. And so you've heard them, right? And honestly, it was one of the most like revelatory things when I was like, oh, I could legitimately just change my mind about this and then tell people that I'm not gonna do what I was planning to do and that's okay.
The other thing that came out of that conversation was me deciding to re -release my top episodes. And so that meant I literally sat down, looked through the episodes, picked out some of the top, like I picked out 12, I think it was 12 or 13 total out of the top 20.
So there were a few that were kind of like, I don't know, wouldn't be the best to redo. And so I picked some of the ones that I thought would be the most helpful, excuse me. And what I did was I sat down, I wrote all those out.
I put it on a piece of paper, wrote out all the episodes, the numbers so that I could search them up and put them back on the podcast thing and all of that. I put the numbers, I put what the episode was about.
And then I sat down and in like a matter of an hour, recorded a three or four minute intro for all of those episodes. Like really just like, hey, this is why we're listening to this one. This is what you can expect to hear, et cetera.
And it took zero time to do that. So the point of that story is that I was in a time when I was incredibly overwhelmed and having the perspective from another person helped me figure out getting out of that moment of overwhelm and being able to have one thing taken off my plate.
Now, these are specific moments of burnout, some might call it overwhelm, personal turmoil, family issues, etc. But I think what's really important is that the perspective from outside the business is what was actually helpful in getting me kind of unstuck and then able to really focus on the other stuff that was happening and not on the business stuff, which was a big piece for me at the moment.
One of the things that I think about in my coaching is moments when people have trauma in their life, moments when people have been through illness, moments when people have loss and have death and have burnout.
And as a coach, I think we think about business coaching and we think about being able to say, oh, I coach this person and they made so much more money. And Becky, my private business coach or my private doula coach that I worked with all through the first of the year, she has made massive strides in her business, right?
Like she is growing left and right. Her business is thriving, like she's doing awesome. So there are those wins, of course. But I think also like as a coach, I want to be someone in someone's business that can also say like, hey, it's okay to let this part go, like it's okay to pivot here.
And for this to be a new direction or a new season or new time for you. It's okay to not market that service anymore, right? It's okay to take a step back from this for a little while. I think that permission is just as valuable like that affirmation, right?
It's just as valuable as someone helping your business grow and your revenue streams increase and your email marketing to improve and all of that. Like, it's just as valuable for someone to say to you, it's okay to stop doing this thing.
And it's okay that in the midst of this really hard time of your life, your business looks different than you thought it would. Because that is normal. That's how life works. And that's how business works, right?
So when I think about coaching, I think like I could come on every week and be like, let me tell you my like 10 best success stories and there are there are success stories, of course. I mean, honestly, like the doulas that I work with, I'm so frickin proud of them and all of the stuff that they have accomplished, and how they continue to show up in their life and their business and for their clients.
I mean, I could brag about them on and on and on and on. But what I'm saying is that there are also times where you need someone who can look at your business and and have compassion and have empathy and help you figure out how to make it easier for you and help you figure out where things can fall by the wayside and help you figure out what things to stop working so hard on, right.
And that is just as important, like setting healthy boundaries, and having people help you make space in your life is part of how we sustain this work. So that is today's episode. I just want to encourage you that you sometimes need extra eyes on your business from the outside.
One of the things that I am doing right now for just the next couple days is 10 minute strategy calls, where I hop on a call. And I hop on a call with you with the doula. And we talk about one thing in your business that you like really needing some strategy around maybe you're needing some strategy for growth, maybe you like really hate that service, you need some strategy for stopping it, whatever that looks like for you,
that is what we are working on. And that is a free offering for a very, very limited amount of time. And so if you have not already signed up for one of those, I would run and grab one like right this second, because they're going to fill up super quick.
And then I'm super excited to talk to you about whatever the thing is in your business that you need some extra eyes on and you need some outside perspective on because it is honestly life changing to have that.
Okay, so go sign up for that call. And I will see you next week in our Friday 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 Harad 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. 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. We'll see you again soon.
We ALL need people outside of ourselves for help, encouragement, and strategy in our businesses. As a doula I’ve been on the giving and receiving side of this! It is vital and life changing. Tune in today to hear how this could impact your business.
Quote from The show
“There have been some pivotal moments in my business that have I believe kept me going. And I think part of what I find crucial is having people outside the business who can reflect back to you what they see because you get so stuck in just the gunk that is around you in your business and your personal life sometimes that you can't even look for a way out of it. nd so there are a few key conversations that I had that really stand out to me. And I have moments in my coaching that I've had with clients that are also these kinds of moments that are something that I'm like really proud of because I can kind of see that shift that I know the feeling of. Like I've had that shift as the receiver, right? But I've also seen that shift as the giver of this information.”
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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
