Brainstorming in Your Doula Business
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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.
Welcome back to Dula Tips and Tits. I want to share a fun fact about me to start us off today that you probably do not know. I grew up in the Midwest, so I currently live in DC, but I grew up in Kansas, and I was homeschooled.
Now, thankfully, that does not mean that I have a family of white supremacists, which I'm real thankful for. However, it does mean that I had a lot of brainstorming in my life growing up. I remember one of my mom's favorite phrases was, I think you can figure that out by yourself.
And I hated it. I was just like, what? Come on. And she would be like, I believe in you. And I say that now to my kids, knowing full well how annoying it is to them. And I love it. It's the best thing ever, in part because I'm like, it's true, though.
I believe in you. And I believe that you actually can figure this out. And you figuring it out is going to teach you so much more than me telling you how to do it. However, the thing that she also taught me was a good group brainstorming session.
And she would say, there is nothing that is a wrong idea here. just literally dumping things out of our brain. And so everything is up for grabs. Anything that you think of can come out and be on this piece of paper.
We can later be like, what did that even mean? It doesn't matter because here we are brainstorming together. And I think one thing that I take from that and use in my business a lot is the thought that sometimes other people have ideas that we don't have, that we can jump off of, right?
And I think this, I mean, I've talked some about this on the podcast where I'm like collaboration is important and it's hard to see what you need to change in your own business. But I think also just the fact that in life, we benefit from hearing how other people do things, right?
Because there are solutions and ways that people manage things that we would not have thought of. One way that I see this in doula work is getting to hear about how doulas show up for their clients, how doulas show up in their prenatal visits, what kind of services they focus on.
Because for me, I think it's really easy to kind of get in this space of like, yeah, I've been doing this for years. This is how I do it. I think I do it really well, blah, blah, blah, which can really quickly equal, I'm like doing it the best, right?
Or like, I have all the answers to this. And the reality is that's not true. I was just having a conversation this week, well, last week now, with the doula that I'm coaching, I'm doing private coaching with her and her business.
And she was asking me like, you know, what do you think about this? We're working on a contract. And I said, you know, it really depends. Like, if you want to communicate this thing, then you need to have that in your contract, right?
That needs to be important. It needs to be highlighted there. If you just want to kind of explain this to the people that are working with you, then you can have that in a different kind of document, like a manual or like, you know, a workbook of sorts.
That's like how and why I show up the way that I do in my business, right? And I think the lovely thing there is that there's not just a cookie cutter way to do everything. The hard thing there is then you have to figure out which thing you want to do, right?
One of the things that I do professionally and personally is help lead La Leche League meetings. Now, to be fair, I have not led one in quite some time because my life has been crazy. And in DC, we have these meetings once a month.
And so many of the meetings now line up with when I have childbirth classes, which means it's not something that I can regularly attend, although I do love attending them. And it's something that I've done for 11 years now.
So, it's something I like really, really love doing. So, actually maybe only 10 years, but close to 11. It was like 10 and a half probably. So in that context, what we often do is we have people share questions and concerns.
And this is of course around breastfeeding or pumping or bottle feeding, breast milk, like that kind of demographic of folks, right? And so someone, let's just say someone's dealing with a latch issue.
And so they say, hey, my name is Kaylee and I have a two month old and we've like had a hard time with latching this whole time and we've been using a nipple shield and things have gotten a lot better.
And now we wanna stop using the nipple shield but we're not quite sure how to do that. As a leader, we could just jump right in to like seven strategies for getting rid of a nipple shield which I mean those, there are seven strategy.
I mean, there's, we could do that, right? But what we do instead is say who has had experience weaning off of a nipple shield. Has anyone had experience with that? And if you have, what did that look like for you?
What that allows for both the person who asked the question and also the rest of the folks in the group is to get a chance to collaborate and to normalize the fact that there are many strategies, not all the strategies work for everyone, and that it's really important that we kind of keep that individuality in the process as we're kind of exploring what might work for that family.
Now that's of course dealing with a newborn. So it's a different scenario than dealing with your business. But when we're thinking about your business, we also need that kind of perspective. And we need to be able to say, hey, I'm working towards this goal.
Has anyone else done that yet? Like has anyone else made this kind of class? Has anyone else done this kind of shift in their business? How did it go? I love to hear about it because I'm kind of nervous about it or whatever, right?
And what we see at the end of that is actually like a ton of collaboration, which is really, really, really important for the success and sustainability of our businesses. So the reason that this is today's topic is that I have a class coming up, a workshop coming up on December 6th at 12 noon Eastern that is a paid workshop.
So it's only $37. The reason it is paid is that I want it to be small. There's only gonna be 25 seats and we're going to take time to actually collaborate. That means you get my real insights on your business and you get to share your insights on other people's businesses and here, there's for yours.
So we are troubleshooting how 2024 went and looking at your strategic goals for 2025 and actually mapping out a plan to get you to those goals so that you leave the workshop, not only feeling inspired and hopefully like having some good motivation to move forward, you also have like real action.
steps of what to do to get you to that place. It's on December 6th, 12 noon, spots are going to go quickly, and so I want you to grab one today. The link to sign up is in the show notes. If you have any questions for me about it, always hit me up on Instagram at harradoula, and I'm happy to answer those for you.
I'll 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 harradoula 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 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.
In your doula business it’s vital to take a step back and reflect on the year—what went well, what didn’t, and where there’s room to grow in your doula business. If you’re ready to get focused, intentional, and strategic for the new year, I’ve got just the thing for you: a two-hour, interactive workshop where we’ll do this exact process together. Let’s set the stage for your strongest year yet!
https://harroddoulaservices.thrivecart.com/level-up-your-doula-biz-2024-pod/
I will continue to say it until I’m blue in the face. We need outside perspectives on our businesses to help us thrive! Whether that’s because we don’t have all the ideas or because we haven’t walked this out yet and feel a touch stuck. Today we are diving into that again. Because, dear doula, you need it!
Quote from show:
“I had a lot of brainstorming in my life growing up. And she would say, there is nothing that is a wrong idea here. just literally dumping things out of our brain. And so everything is up for grabs. Anything that you think of can come out and be on this piece of paper. We can later be like, what did that even mean? It doesn't matter because here we are brainstorming together. And I think one thing that I take from that and use in my business a lot is the thought that sometimes other people have ideas that we don't have, that we can jump off of, right? And I think this, I mean, I've talked some about this on the podcast where I'm like collaboration is important and it's hard to see what you need to change in your own business. But I think also just the fact that in life, we benefit from hearing how other people do things, right?”
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
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
