Redefining Success In Your Doula Business
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Transcript
Welcome to doula tips and tips. This podcast is a place where we answer one question about doula work, both to support you and to help you support your clients. I'm Kaylee Harrod. I've been supporting families in this perinatal space since my oldest was born, 12, nearly 13 years ago.
I am a birth and postpartum doula childbirth educator, La Leche League leader, and a doula coach. I love guiding and supporting doulas as they work out their doula business. It is a tremendous joy to be trusted in this way.
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Welcome back to doula tips and tits. When we're thinking about success in life and in business, I want you to have a broader understanding than you maybe currently have.
Now, if you're new to the podcast, this is a podcast and we talk all about doula stuff, right? Doula business, doula work, doula care, doula success, doula sustainability, et cetera, et cetera. What I want you to think about in today's episode is where are you kind of waiting for success in a way that is unnecessary?
And what I mean when I say that is that we often have this standard for what we want things to look like and we kind of decide to celebrate once we get there, rather than thinking about the journey there as part of the success.
So when we talk to our clients, right, oftentimes we're saying things like, oh my gosh, look at you. You like put clothes on today. We're like celebrating the small things, right? And we're encouraging them to also celebrate the small things.
We're encouraging them to look at their lives as like kind of microcosms, right? Like little chunks of time of surviving the space that they're in and being like, I fed myself. I fed the baby. I changed the diaper.
I went to the bathroom. Look at me killing it at life, right? But in business, we often have these lofty goals for ourselves and we're unhappy until we get there. And that is not fair. It's also not sustainable.
Like we need to have rewards for our brains to be able to tell our bodies and brains that we are doing a good thing in order to feel motivated to keep doing it, right? So when I think about this, I think about how our personal life and our professional life are intertwined.
And the reality is that those are intertwined in a way that is not the same for people who don't own their own small business, right? Like when you own your own small business, it is your life. Your life is your business.
And I'm not saying you don't have some like delineation between them, but I'm saying like, you know, if an emergency comes up, it's all you, but also if like things are amazing, it's also all you. And so what can happen is that when life is stressful or life is hard or life is full of grief or sadness or pain or joy, our business also is full of those things.
And there are ways of course to compartmentalize and outsource and all that kind of stuff. But I'm thinking like if you're a small business owner who's literally doing everything yourself, which is most of you listening, right?
And mostly that's how I am still too. Then what you need to think about is how do you celebrate yourself in the little moments rather than thinking I will celebrate when I bring in X amount of revenue, or I will celebrate when I have X number of doula clients a month, or I will celebrate once I get to X number of birth supported, right?
Whatever it is, what are the smaller goals that get you there? Because if you wait until you're at the pinnacle of your success to celebrate yourself, you're going to be incredibly discouraged. And also it's going to be really challenging to even come to a place where you can grow towards those goals.
So one of the things I think about is breaking down our goals into smaller goals. And I mean, as silly as this sounds, like if I have, you know, a thing on my to do list that is publish my podcast episode, right?
So like my life has been really crazy the last couple of months and I'm currently in like, you know, graduation season for eighth grade for my oldest and also like his braces are coming off and he's changing schools to a high school and then clients are having babies and all these different things are happening in our life and it is really hard to sometimes have the time and ways to keep your normal routine and so today's episode is being recorded today and is going out later than it should be like it should have gone out at midnight but I was at a birth yesterday and then I had a training to do and it has just been a long time and I haven't gotten back into the rhythm of recording in advance since I got back into the swing of things after spring break and so the reality is that my life is such right now that I need to do a little bit of day -to -day work and that's okay.
I'm allowed to do that and it's okay to also admit that like it's okay to be here and say listen my clients are getting amazing care for me my business is still growing and also like my life is hard right now and therefore business is also kind of there are some parts of it that are taking a little bit of a backseat and that is okay you know and it doesn't have to be like that forever it doesn't mean I'm telling you like do the least amount of work you can but what I am saying is like it's okay to be where you are and give yourself permission to do that so let's say we go back to the podcast right and on my to -do list it's publish a podcast episode now I could I could you know have just that and then it would have to wait until I'm completely done with the podcast editing it putting it online etc etc before I mark that off my list or I could say record the podcast episode and then transcribe the podcast episode and then write the show notes and then make the graphic and then post it on my website and then post it on buzzsprout and then post it on social right and then I can start checking off things and celebrating my wins before I have the whole process finished and I know that's kind of a silly example because it's something I do twice a week so it's not like this big looming goal but it's something that is clear how the breakdown happens right so what I want you to think about is like if right now you're saying to me like okay Kaylee right now I have one client every few months and your goal is to have two clients a month then the celebration I want you to have is when you have a new client anytime you have a new client anytime you have a month that's full even just one month celebrate the heck out of yourself because that is how you're going to keep going that is how we keep our mind and body invested in this without feeling like a failure when we haven't yet gotten to the big lofty goal that frankly takes work to get to right like all of us really have the mindset that if if I'm like I want to do 100 pull -ups and right now I can't do one pull -up that's not a reasonable thing for me to think I can do like this week right if I say like I'm going to start doing pull -ups today and I'm going to be able to do a hundred 99 of people are going to be like Kaylee seriously like do you know nothing about how your body functions and the fact that you have to like work up to that but if I said by the end of the year I want to be able to do 100 pull -ups still kind of a big number right but if I'm like invested in working my tush off it's possible you know but what we think about sometimes is the fact that we have this big goal we're going to celebrate when we can do 100 push -up pull -ups but if I can't even do one right now I need to celebrate when I get to the point of doing one right like that's how I'm getting eventually get to 100 is by celebrating one at a time and and working my butt off to do the next one and not waiting until I have a hundred to celebrate so I want to challenge you today to think about something small that you can celebrate now I know many of you that listen to the podcast don't necessarily hang out with me on social media but I really want to encourage you to go to social media so open your phones open your instagram app click at hara dula and DM me so send me a message of what is something in your business that you're celebrating because that is something that we not only need to celebrate in ourselves we need other people to celebrate as well and I would love to celebrate you and give you a shout out and that I think can be beneficial for all of us so that is your homework from today's episode I know I don't usually give homework but today's homework is open the instagram app go to my profile at hara dula send me a message Kaylee I am celebrating this and I want you to do that right now so that I can also celebrate the heck out of you while you're celebrating yourself okay All right, I'll see you on Instagram and then in the next episode.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Dula tips and tips 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 Haradula 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 Dulas 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.
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Business success is such a broad concept. We can define it a variety of ways. Oftentimes, when we own a small business we define it in ways that are actually incredibly unhelpful because we are looking way too far into the future. In Doula Businesses we need to learn to celebrate wins and steps toward goals and not just the big goals that we have!
Quote from the show:
“So when we talk to our clients, right, oftentimes we're saying things like, oh my gosh, look at you. You like put clothes on today. We're like celebrating the small things, right? And we're encouraging them to also celebrate the small things. We're encouraging them to look at their lives as like kind of microcosms, right? Like little chunks of time of surviving the space that they're in and being like, I fed myself. I fed the baby. I changed the diaper. I went to the bathroom. Look at me killing it at life, right? But in business, we often have these lofty goals for ourselves and we're unhappy until we get there. And that is not fair. It's also not sustainable.”
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
Kaely Daily is produced by Kaely Harrod of Harrod Doula Services
It is sponsored by The Birth Prep Blueprint Childbirth Class
Music by Madirfan: Hidden Place on Pixabay
