Booked, Busy, and ... Burnt out??
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Transcript
Welcome to Dula 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.
Hello and welcome back to Dula Tips and Tits. You are listening to this on February 14th, which is one day after my birthday and officially one day after I broke my ankle and sprained my other ankle last year.
So far, it is so much better than last year, but you know, who knows, we've given time. Today's episode is about being booked and busy and how that can lead to burnout. I want to talk a bit about what that looks like in your business and how you can rectify some of it.
So being fully booked seems like a dream, right? That seems like the ideal dream. What can happen is kind of two things. One, at least for me, I'll start with myself because we all do this a little differently.
For me, when I was a newer doula, I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I can't wait until I'm like fully booked. But I didn't really have an idea of what that meant. And so as I got booked with more and more people, I also found that my body had a much harder time adjusting after long births.
And so I had a little chunk of time in my early doula days where I would miss any birth that came immediately after another long birth. Like I had to send a backup because I just like could not handle going.
to that second birth if they were back to back. Now these days I can handle it a little better because I have a better sense of when to eat and how to take breaks and how to pace myself and how to not feel like I have to work my butt off the whole time and meaning that I'm not proving myself through my actions so I can rest some and whatnot.
But I think what happens is that oftentimes as doulas we learn what our max number of clients is by going beyond that and then realizing it's not sustainable, right? So I remember a ton of people telling me in the early days, you should have three clients a month, that's a full load.
And I was like, oh yeah, I can totally, three times a month out of 30 days, like once every 10 days I go to a birth. But then I got to three a month, in like month after month after month and I was like, I cannot do this, like this is too many births because of course what we know is clients don't come when they're supposed to, right?
So babies come in the month before, the month after, they overlap each other, they come in the wrong order. Like all of that is a part of this. And so if you constantly have completely full months, what you have is a lot of scenarios where there's some like bunching and you get like four babies in a row, you know?
And if that's too many for you, that's more than you wanna do, it's really hard to sustain that because we do not control when these babies actually are born, right? So one of the things that I think we often look at, and this ties back to not charging enough for our services, is that we get to a full load, so to speak, of clients.
And it's still not enough money, but it's way too much work. And so then we're like, shoot, how do we do this? Because we kind of need all the money that we're making, but we also don't want all the clients that we have, not that we don't adore our clients, but we don't want the amount of work that we've given ourselves.
And then that's a very quick road to burnout. I think about burnout sometimes like shoots and ladders where like you're going along, going along, getting closer and closer to burnout, and then you get like a fast track, right?
A fast track to burnout is like super traumatic birth, a number of traumatic births in a row, or a birth that is, or like a number of births in a row that are really hard, really long, but also getting done with a group of clients and then being like, I just, again, I'm gonna have a birth like any day, right?
Like for me right now, in February, I had a baby race. A baby race is when two clients give birth on the same day. And so one client had an amazing backup, and I was with the other. They were in the same hospitals, we were down the hall from each other, but they were the last two people.
do in February. One was a few days overdue and one was a few weeks early. And so we had an overlap, but that meant I don't have anyone do until the beginning of March. And so when we think about that like cadence, part of what I know is like, okay, this weekend was wild and I wasn't able to go to both both births, which is a major bummer for me.
I'm like, I loved being at the birth I was at, but of course I wanted to attend both of them. And so there's that piece, but I don't come home knowing that I have like four more clients. I know that I don't have anybody else do until early March.
Now, will they all, will the March babies stay in March? I don't know, right? It's possible that one of the March babies will come in February. But the likelihood of that is relatively low and I don't have anybody else do in February.
And so there's like some space there, right? So it's stressful and like exhausting weekend, lots of work. and paying the backup and all of those things, but then some weeks of relief immediately following that to balance that out.
So then by the time I get to the end of next week, I'm going to be like, okay, somebody else's baby can come now. And I'm already kind of like that, except that I love having my birthday to myself. But I mean, there's a space to be like, okay, now I'm excited for another baby, because I've had a little bit of a break from that long birth that happened last, right?
And so when we think about being booked, part of what we want to think about is not only how we space our clients, but also what that looks like financially and what other services we're adding in. So for me, you already know that I teach childbirth education, I do some lactation support, and I do postpartum like daytime care postpartum work.
And then I do business coaching for doulas. So what that looks like for me is, of course, I'm still doing the podcast. I'm still doing my coaching, I have a masterclass next week, which by the way, you have not signed up for it yet.
You need to do that, especially if this episode resonates with you, like this is the very thing we're talking about in that masterclass. So next Friday, the 21st 10am Eastern, but it will be recorded.
So if that's not the right timeframe for you, or if you are at a birth or something like that, then you can sign in for the recording, you need to register though, or you won't get the recording sent to you.
So register with the link in the show notes and grab your spot quick, because there we're promoting it a lot this week. And so it's getting filled up quickly. So when we think about that, like growth cadence, right, part of what it needs to be is that you kind of have an ebb and flow in which services you are doing at a time.
Now, if you listen to Wednesday's episode, you heard Evan talk about about the different hats and like the size of the hats, which I think is awesome. Like this is my biggest hat in my business. This is my smallest hat in my business.
And those change over time. Part of what burnout is impacted by is the same like monotonous work over and over, right? And I don't mean, I mean, we love births, we love postpartum, we love our families and our clients.
What I mean is if you feel like you just are going to birth and going to birth and going to birth and going to births, there's nothing else you're doing. And you kind of feel like you have to keep going.
That is a perfect scenario of burnout because you don't have any reprieve from that cycle. This is where people will take like sabbaticals and things like that because they're like, I just need some time off from this thing, even though I love this thing, right?
I just need some time out. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the early warning signs of burnout. One is feeling really upset if someone goes into labor, especially if you're a birth doula. Now, if you're a postpartum doula, a big piece of this is exhaustion.
So especially if you're overnight, if you get sick, you start to feel really fatigued, you start to feel like you're like not functioning well. Those are signs like you are overdoing it, you have got to be careful to make sure that you are getting enough sleep if you're a postpartum overnight doula.
If you're a birth doula and you're like, please, for the love of all good things, don't go into labor, there's a little bit of that that's just normal. There's a little of that that's like, while I'm sick or while I'm at this other birth or whatever, you could not have your baby, that'd be amazing.
We're not actually saying that to anyone, we're just putting it out in the universe. But if you legitimately get called to a birth and you're like, I just can't go like I'm just tired, my body is tired, I'm emotionally tired, that is an early sign.
I mean, I would say it's a middle sign, it's a mid sign of burnout. If you start to do consultations and you hope someone doesn't hire you, that is a mid sign of burnout as well. If you start to feel like you want people to have interventions, because the birth will end faster, also a very big sign of burnout.
And to be fair, we need to really be cautious that we are in fact, not putting ourselves in a space that we're compromising the birth for our client, right? Like we bring a certain amount of energy to the space and we cannot come with the like, gosh, I hope you have an emergency fast, so this is over kind of energy, that's not okay.
And so those those are some signs. I think the other idea is that success in doula business does not have to equal higher numbers than anyone else, right? Like we sometimes talk about experience level and we're like, oh, I have, I've been to this many births, you've been to that many births, like that feels like really amazing.
big deal. But like I met someone at some point who was like, Yeah, I've been doing this for two years. And I've gone to like 120 births. And I was like, dear goodness, like how many births you go to a month?
And they're like, Yeah, it's been a little crazy. I'm like, you don't say like, that's a lot like, okay, this experience is great. But like, are you still going to be a doula in a year? Right? Like, do you still like this work?
Like, have you been able to sustain your like sleeping and eating patterns, right? So part of what you want to think about is, how do you keep your number of clients in a sustainable range, while not letting your numbers your like financial numbers fall?
What does that look like in terms of balancing with other services? I firmly believe, unless you charge a whole lot of money, you cannot run a really sustainable, successful doula business with just one service.
And I say that with the asterisk that if you run just one service but you have other members of your team that do that service, then maybe yes. But even then, having only one service is very hard to make a sustainable business out of that because that service has to be duplicated so many times or has to climb to such a high price depending on where you live, what your financial situation is.
But if we're talking about we need this business to sustain us to make our lives work, then it has to be something where you are balancing it with other services and other things in your business. So one of the things that I think makes a huge impact is to take a few minutes and think about what it is about your burnout that is needing to shift.
And I say that because some people don't need fewer births. Some people need more money so that they can recover better from their births. Some people just need money built in for self-care. Some people need massages and things like that so that their body is better able to sustain the number of births they're going to.
Some people need fewer clients and more income and so something like raising your rates makes a lot of sense or adding on services to your package so you're working with fewer people but spending more time with those people and having more holistic care with those people.
That looks different for everyone. Part of what I think about as a doula is we should not be cookie cutters of each other in business and in practice as doulas. You really have to take some time to dig into this a bit.
To be fair, when you're burnt out, it's a hard time to brainstorm how to be not burnt out. You almost always need help getting out of that space. When we think about someone who's going through grief, someone who's going through trauma, someone who's going through stress, and we're just like, you need to stress less.
How is that helpful, right? Or you need to like grieve and let yourself heal and then like pick up life. No, these people need someone to walk alongside them as they're doing this, right? And to give them real strategies like, I am going to give you a breathing pattern to do for anxiety and not just be like, you should be less anxious, right?
Because that's unhelpful. When you're thinking about a cycle of burnout, part of what you need is eyeballs outside of your business to be able to be like, Hey, I've been there and you can do this thing.
And that's exactly what I do for people. And it matters so much to me because I have been in and out of burnout so many times since I started this business of mine. And so I want to help you not dip into it quite so deeply, not have to dig yourself back out of it and to have some strategies to avoid it altogether.
So if you're feeling stuck in this burnout cycle, you're not alone. I've been there. Most doulas I know have been there. I think this is a field that has high burnout for a reason. We're very trauma-adjacent in birth work.
There is a lot of potential harm that can happen. There's a lot of potential implications for health and mental health. And so I think that this field has a burnout rate that's very high for good reason, which means we need to have kind of some anti-burnout strategies that are significantly more in depth than other fields need.
So we are diving into this in Friday's class, next Friday, February 21st, 10 a.m. Eastern. It is, excuse me, a live masterclass taught on Zoom by myself, and we will be digging into how to figure out what kind of pivot needs to happen in your business, how to do that pivot, and we'll have some space for questions and answers so that you can get some specific feedback on your business stuff that's going on.
Again, that class will be taught live, so I recommend that you come live if you have a birth or you have another obligation and you're in a time zone where that's ridiculously early, then we will have a replay, but you have to sign up for the masterclass to get the replay.
So go ahead and sign up for it. The show notes have the link, and then you'll get all those juicy details about how to break yourself out of the cycle, and how to then not go into the cycle quite so frequently, okay?
All right, I will see you on Friday at the class, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Dula 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 hiradula so we can celebrate alongside you.
If you've 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 our best to help you out.
We hope you 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.
Growth is awesome, until it’s not. Sometimes growth comes at the cost of your sanity if you haven’t set boundaries for how much growth is too much. What number of clients can you handle? Are you paying yourself enough money? Is what you’re doing sustainable or a survival strategy?
Quote from the show:
“And it's still not enough money, but it's way too much work. And so then we're like, shoot, how do we do this? Because we kind of need all the money that we're making, but we also don't want all the clients that we have, not that we don't adore our clients, but we don't want the amount of work that we've given ourselves. And then that's a very quick road to burnout. I think about burnout sometimes like shoots and ladders where like you're going along, going along, getting closer and closer to burnout, and then you get like a fast track, right? A fast track to burnout is like super traumatic birth, a number of traumatic births in a row, or a birth that is, or like a number of births in a row that are really hard, really long, but also getting done with a group of clients and then being like, I just, again, I'm gonna have a birth like any day.”
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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
