Breaking Through the Plateau: When Your Doula Biz Feels Stuck
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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.
Welcome back to Dula Tips and Tits. Today, we are talking about breaking through your business plateau. Now, when I think about doula business burnout issues, I think of a few different things. One is a doula who's brand new, who's setting out with very few boundaries.
A second is a doula who is doing way more of one service than they ever want to do, or really physically can sustain, and therefore they eventually don't sustain it. The third is when someone gets to a plateau and they don't know what to do, if they don't know where to go from there.
This can be kind of compared to a labor stall, right? Something is not right, but we're not exactly sure what's wrong, and so we have to throw some strategies at it and see what happens. But I think the first step in that is to recognize that you are in a plateau.
So if you're saying like, okay, Kaylee, you know, I've had growth and growth and growth and growth, and then just like steady, like nothing has grown, nothing has shrunk maybe, but it also is not growing.
That's the plateau that I'm talking about. That is the growth stagnation, right? So identify that by looking at either your client numbers or your revenue. Now, client numbers, I think, are kind of an ebb and flow.
So I would look at like a three -month period or a six -month period, like how many inquiries... Did you have in a six -month period and is that significantly lower or higher or the same as the six -month period before that?
Okay the second thing I would look at is What are your business strategies and quite honestly? I find that many people who are in this plateau don't have a business strategy What they actually have is just a business that has been thriving By referrals now the strategy so to speak behind that is that you are amazing and make great Relationships right so that that is something I'm not saying that's nothing,
but you're not like intentionally Taking steps to grow your inquiry right and that I think is a big deal in terms of keeping your business growing There's a certain a point at which like organic growth needs some Behind it right needs a little a little boost and so revisiting your goals, revisiting your strategies, and also looking at your services and seeing if they need to be tweaked are all really important pieces in that time.
When we think about a plateau, I think about kind of like a ceiling of sorts, right? And I think sometimes we of course use this word to mean like a flat space, you know, like it, you know, been hiking up and then we hit the flat space.
That flat space maybe like takes us to another height, another incline at some point, but also might just be that that's the top of that mountain, you know? And what I think can happen in business, if you get to a plateau and we're like, well, this is where my potential ends.
And that's not necessarily true. Like that doesn't need to be true. There is a cap on what your body can do, on what you can have in terms of on call people, right? So like for instance, if you're doing right now two clients a month for birth, you can't maybe sustain doing six clients a month for birth.
So it's not that your number of clients a month can grow significantly, but can you do other services? Are there things that aren't on call that you can do? Are there things that you can add in? Are there price changes you can make so that the number of clients you have brings in more revenue?
And honestly, I would say it's probably a combination of all of those things, like usually it's not just one thing that needs to fix it. Now, when we think about labor, for instance, when there is a stall, my thought process is often like, okay, you know, what's happening with the parent's body?
What's happening with the baby navigating the pelvis? And what is happening with like the process of labor, right? How can we support rest for the baby? parent, nourishment for the parent, hydration for the parent, how do we support rotation for the baby, like navigating the pelvis in terms of movement and and positional stuff, and then like how do we help your contractions be as strong as they need to be and as regularly as they regular as they need to be.
And those three things cannot work independent of each other, they have to work together in order to successfully get past a labor stall, right? And so when we're thinking about business plateaus, you also need to have various strategies.
And honestly, very rarely can someone in labor tell you what that strategy should be. Like very few people in labor are able to say, you know what it is, I am hungry, or like my baby seems like a little stuck in my left hip, right?
So often it takes outside eyes to help you identify what is going on and then to strategize for it. And that is exactly true in our business as well. If there are plateaus that require someone else to come in and kind of encourage us or give us ideas or tell us, you know, what can shift and even just open up our mindset around this.
One of the things that I think also plays into this is overcoming fears or the limiting beliefs that we have about ourselves and our businesses, right? Like if we really think, oh my business could never do that, that's a limiting belief, right?
If we think like I'm kind of small time, I'm not big time like some of these other folks, that is a limiting belief. And so when you think that when you live in that space, you also communicate that to yourself and you're like, man, I'll try this, but I know it won't work.
Well then yeah, you're not going to really put a lot of effort into it because actually it not working is more affirming for you than it working because you will be wrong if it does work, right? So when we think about mindset, I'm very firmly not a person that's like, we just manifest everything we want because my life would be real different if that was the case.
But what I do think is if we are focused on the things that we can't do or the things that we're afraid to do, the things that we don't think are possible for us in our business, then that is what we're going to see more often because that is our like confirmation bias, right?
Like where our body's like, oh yeah, I knew it wasn't going to work. And that comes up frequently rather than being like, oh, this is a little hiccup along the way. You're like, well, one more way I know this is doomed, you know?
And I don't say that with judgment because I am a person that anxiety tries to run rampant in my brain on a pretty regular basis. And so it also kind of jumped me to that place. So I'm not judging you if that's where your mindset goes.
What I'm saying is that is something you need to work on. that will keep you stuck just in the fact that you already thought you would be stuck, right? Like that affirmation of what you thought bad was going to happen, actually happening, is really really harmful to your own personal growth and the growth of your business, okay?
So when you're thinking about this, I want you to really take some time. You're gonna have to look at your actual numbers. This is the time when I think we cannot just be like, I don't know, I've had about this many people, I've made about this much money, absolutely not.
You need to actually dig into that and then know what are the things that you're looking for to see if a stagnation has happened, if you're in a plateau, and then how do you move through that and get yourself out of it, okay?
So for the next couple episodes, the private, the solo episodes on Fridays, you're gonna hear me talking about things to do with business growth. I'm specifically kind of focusing on folks that have been doulas for a while but are needing or wanting to grow beyond where they are and they lack the strategy or vision to do that.
So that is where we're going to be going in the podcast for a bit. I also have a workshop coming up on December 6th at 12 noon all about auditing your 2024 and strategizing for your 2025. So if you have not yet signed up for that there are only 20 spots because it is a workshop that we will be like actually interacting.
I have to cap the number of people and so it will fill up very quickly. We normally have more than that sign up for any of our workshops. So go to the show notes and sign up for that. If you have questions about it shoot me a question at harrad doula on Instagram and I'm happy to answer them for you.
Otherwise I will 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 harrad 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.
Almost every business has a plateau at some point. The main choice in a plateau is whether you stay there in a slump or move forward and grow again. Growth can sometimes require some new strategy, some new guidance and some new intentions. Listen today to see if your business is in a plateau and needs to have a jump start.
Quote from the show:
“Today, we are talking about breaking through your business plateau. Now, when I think about doula business burnout issues, I think of a few different things. One is a doula who's brand new, who's setting out with very few boundaries. A second is a doula who is doing way more of one service than they ever want to do, or really physically can sustain, and therefore they eventually don't sustain it. The third is when someone gets to a plateau and they don't know what to do, if they don't know where to go from there. This can be kind of compared to a labor stall, right? Something is not right, but we're not exactly sure what's wrong, and so we have to throw some strategies at it and see what happens. But I think the first step is to recognize that you are in a plateau.”
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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
