Running A Doula Business That Supports Your Life
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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 in.
Hello and welcome back to Dula Tips and Tits today. We are talking about creating a business that supports your life and not the other way around. I'm Kaylee Harrod. If you are new here, I teach doulas how to be more successful, more sustainable in their doula practices so that we have more doulas doing this work and keeping people safe in the midst of birth and helping people transition into this new,
amazing time as a family. Today we're talking a bit about how you create your business. In the last couple episodes, we have been discussing things around energy management, self-care, et cetera, in part because 2025 so far has been a doozy in many ways.
If you're here in the United States of America, there are lots of political things happening. I live in the great District of Columbia and I hear about people losing their job every single day. It is a stressful time for lots of people and politically things are rough and racially things are rough and so self-care is really important.
When we're thinking about businesses, I think about this when I think about the early moments of COVID. It's like, okay, well, yeah, COVID's happening. Like this, there's this big crisis happening. And also you're going to like give birth in a month.
You know, like, I mean, when I'm talking to my clients, it's like, well, your baby's coming regardless, right? Like no matter what is happening in the world, people are going to still keep getting pregnant and people are still going to keep having babies.
So when we think about you working to support yourself, I think it's so important when things are a little bit crazy like they are right now. And when things aren't crazy, like it has to be on both sides of that.
And also I think the reality is that our work is not one that lets us really like take a second, right? Like we can't just be like, oh, I'm having a rough week emotionally. And so I'd like to just like have a week off.
I mean, sometimes the babies give us that, right? But not always. And so I want you to think about creating a business that supports your life. Now, there are different levels to this because I am very aware that some of you listening to this podcast are just breaking into doula work.
Others of you are kind of mid-level and working another job and working doula work. So you're not yet full-time in doula work and then still more of you are full-time in doula work and kind of structuring your whole life around this business, right?
When I think about setting your business up to support your life, there are some basic things that work in my mind in that regard and then like kind of like rhythms to have or norms to set in your business.
And then there are things that are like moment by moment kind of things, right? So I'm going to start with the things that I think are important as foundational things. So one of those things is you set when you do scheduling with people.
So as a doula, when I was brand spanking new, I did all of my consultations and prenatal work in the evenings. The reason for that is that I actually just thought if I did them during the daytime, no one would want to hire me.
And so it was very much about keeping clients coming and keeping clients happy. The reality is I do almost all of my prenatals and consultations during the day now and people still do them and it hasn't impacted my client flow at all.
Now there are times where I have clients that for whatever reason cannot do that and I do make exceptions to that sometimes. But for the most part, I do consultations and prenatals and even postpartum visits between the hours of like 9, 30, 10 a.m.
and like 2 to 2 30 p.m. In part because I help with taking my kids to and from school, right? My husband and I share that responsibility and there's a lot of flexibility there between the two of us, which is great.
But when I'm not at a birth, I want to be available to give him some space to do his work because he does such an amazing job of picking everything up when I literally run off to a birth, right? So part of that is I don't want to regularly have visits or meetings or whatever that cross over that school drop off for pickup time unless I'm at a birth or there's like an exception where like I'll say,
you know, hey, my client is a teacher or whatever and you know, she, there's no way that she can do a visit until after 4 p.m. Could I do like, you know, is it cool if I do an evening visit with her on Tuesday?
And so we kind of figure that out so that we don't have evening stuff on the same nights and we can kind of work around the schedule that our kids have as well. I'm not sure why recording always makes me yawn, but here we are.
So what I do now in terms of creating a business that supports my life is I only have three days during the week. that people can book like from my links so they can book coaching calls, they can book consultations, they can book prenatal visits.
All of those things are on a set schedule Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and so I know kind of are not Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and I kind of have a good sense of like okay these are the times when someone could potentially schedule with me.
It's not just any old time of the day or night right and so that's one thing that's really big because then I know I have some time set aside for myself so how I have decided to set my week up is that on Mondays I spend the morning with my best friend here in DC and it's glorious truly like it is the best way to start the week.
Obviously if a baby comes, I don't get to do that and sometimes like one of us has a sick kid or something like that but for the most part we spend every Monday morning together. Her name is Kim Holly.
She teaches, she coaches around sleep, holistic sleep support and her business is intuitive parenting and so you have heard her on the podcast before. I reference her stuff all the time. She actually has a really amazing sleep class for professionals for people to learn kind of what are the biological norms of a newborn so especially for people doing postpartum support it's really an important class.
Anyway we used to so during COVID we started a parenting group that was like a membership for like responsive and attachment-based parenting and we had a group call on Monday so how our Monday hangout time started was that we would get together do some work on the group and then we would host our like weekly call for our members and then at some point during COVID I think it's been about a year.
a year and a half, two years ago now, we dissolved that group. And so we decided to continue to hang out on Mondays, kind of have our normal rhythm. So I do often have Monday afternoon appointments that I will book.
And usually it's like one off things like to on this coming Monday, I'm meeting with my copywriter. And so that's like a really lovely, super chill appointment. So there are times where I add a Monday appointment, or if I'm like catching up from being at a birth, then I'll add somebody in on a Monday.
Tuesday, I either have marriage counseling or a date with my husband. So this last year, my husband and I have been going through a lot and we have been going through marriage counseling. And it's been really great.
And part of what has been really helpful for us is to get to have time where we are spending time together and there's no pressure to like back to the kids or any of that kind of stuff. So Tuesdays, primarily both of us save that day to hang out together.
Every other week we have counseling, so we usually still go to breakfast and then we do counseling, but we otherwise go on a date sometimes the whole day. And it's a really important relationship for both of us, right?
We are both very committed to our marriage being good and thriving and healthy. And so it's been really wonderful for us that we're able to build that in. Obviously, again, when babies come, et cetera, that gets interrupted, but as much as we can, we keep that kind of rhythm.
So then we're not, I mean, I think earlier in our marriage part of what, well, for one, we had babies super fast after we got married. So that's part of it. But also, you know, when you don't plan something, it doesn't happen.
And so we would be like, oh, we should go on dates. We should go on dates. We should go on dates. And we never really did it. And then it'd be like, oh, we've been saying that for weeks now. And so part of our thing right now is that like Tuesday, that is like on our calendar, you know?
So then that's our normal rhythm. Similar to my Monday hang out with Kim, like we, for a long time, I would have meetings booked and whatever. And she'd be like, geez, just like put me on your calendar.
I'm like, sorry. So she is literally on my calendar now. Like Mondays, it says work with Kim. And really, we don't work. We, I mean, we brainstorm business stuff sometimes, but we mostly like hang out and drink coffee and, you know, eat delicious pastries.
So that's how my week starts out. Now, personally, I love that. Like it is a glorious way to begin the week because I'm coming off a weekend where oftentimes I've had to teach. So I've had to work, right?
Like I don't, I don't get every weekend off. And then I've also had the kids home. And so they're quite intense. I love them dearly, but man, they are intense. And so I'm coming off of those various things.
And having those days, where I know I can kind of recalibrate and then jump into work stuff, either like in the evenings or Monday afternoon a little bit. And then Wednesday, I really have like, okay, I see clients and things like that.
So that is part of my foundational, like setting my business up to support my life. Because long term, I want to have friendships and I want to have a marriage that I love, right? And so those two things are really important to me, those two things are very high priority right now.
So those two things are protected in how I set up my schedule, right? Those are also two things that tend to kind of go by the wayside. When I get stressed out, I get like relate less, right? Like I like interact less effectively and less deeply shallower.
I don't, cannot speak in English sentences today. And so, so So that normal schedule is also part of what gives me joy and what helps me have this sense of support in my life and have some balance in who I am as a person and also who I am as a mom and who I am as a partner, all those different layers.
So that's kind of my foundational thing. Now again, I'm going to say this for the millionth time on this podcast that you do not need to set up your business like I set up my business. So I am not saying that to say, I'm not telling you what I do to tell you that you need to do what I do because that's not, that's not a thing, right?
I'm giving you some examples of how I set my life up in a way that works for me. So if you tell me, okay, I normally work on like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday at this other job and then I'm mainly doing my due list stuff on Thursday and Friday.
Okay, great. Well then how are you going to set up your Thursday and Fridays so that you don't just like work yourself into the ground, right? Because one of the biggest things of burnout when you're working another job on top of doula work is that you don't have boundaries and therefore you work 24 hours a day.
When you're a business owner, you could literally always be doing something, right? And so part of what I want you to think about is what does it look like in my current stage of life and business to have some foundational boundaries that make my life the priority and not my business because my family and even just myself, right?
This isn't just necessary if you have kids, you have a partner, like this is necessary for you. And so I want you to really take some time to think about that. Now the other, the other, the other layer of this, I feel like I should say I did have two babies come in the last five days.
So if I feel, feel and seem a little tired. It's true. I am a little tired. And that's why we're talking about this beautiful topic right now. So when we think about kind of taking things in stride, in terms of creating a business that supports your life, that also needs to be like a moment by moment decision.
And you need to set yourself up for success long term. So I'm going to just share what I do for this at this point. And I am sharing this with so much humility because I have not been good at this. This has been something I really suck at.
So I have worked very hard to get better at it. A few things I do. One is if I know I have a really crazy week, I make sure I block off some extra time the week before or after that. So let's say I have a week where I'm seeing like three people for postpartum support.
And I teach classes three nights during the week. Like, really, it's like an. abnormally crazy week, right? If I teach a night class, I almost always also teach a weekend class. So sometimes I have like Saturday I have class, and then I have Thursday, I have Wednesday, and maybe I have a Tuesday appointment.
And so I'm really like working, working, working, right? When I think about that, then I have to kind of factor in like, okay, well then what does the week after that look like? What is the week before that look like?
And how can I kind of buffer? If I don't have a lot of choice, I mean, I can just reschedule some things, right? But also if I feel like I can't do that, I need to add some space around those other things.
So I'm gonna use this past week as an example for me, because I had two babies come within four days of each other. So what happened for me was I had, I taught a class on Tuesday evening. Immediately after the class ended, I got a text from a client, said she was contracting.
She thought maybe she was going into labor. She wasn't quite sure. Et cetera, et cetera. Fast forward a few hours, we're all at the hospital together, right? She has her baby the following morning. When I'm leaving that birth, I hear from another client, they've been contracting all night and they think maybe their water broke, they're going in to get like checked and see what's going on.
And so I'm leaving one birth and hearing about a potential other client in labor and working on kind of scrambling to figure out like, who else is available, et cetera, et cetera. One baby came a bit early and the other baby was coming like pretty much right on time.
So they were not supposed to be in the same week, right? So then this scenario plays out where the second group of clients knew I was coming home from a birth. So the second couple, they knew that I was working on having a backup for them and their labor kind of fizzled out that day.
So I said, okay, I'm going home, I'm sleeping as much as I can so that if you need me tonight. I am available to you. So I slept most of the day Then I slept most of the night and I was up some Like in the evening afternoon evening when my kids were home from school and kind of hanging out with them Checking in on my clients.
My clients called me a couple times overnight the next night They were laboring but mostly at home by themselves and then I joined them The following morning like around nine ish nine thirty. So so for me My what my week was going to look like is that it was going to be Monday and Tuesday my normal Monday and Tuesday and then I had a Tuesday night breastfeeding class and then Wednesday I was supposed to have a consultation a pre-natal visit and Something else.
Oh and a call with my copywriter and then on Thursday I was supposed to have a visit with a client who'd given birth a few weeks ago another pre-natal visit and something else. Oh, and a coaching call for the due list that I'm coaching right now.
And so on Tuesday night, when that client went into labor, I sent an email to all three of the things scheduled on Wednesday and said, hey, I have a client in labor, there's a good chance I'm going to have to reschedule.
I want to do that. Okay, great. And I said, first, I'll let you know, because I didn't know yet if she was going to give birth actually. And then I emailed as soon as I went to the hospital. So this was like at 10pm.
And these appointments were the next day, right? So I emailed them at 10pm and said, listen, I'm headed to the hospital, I'm going to need to reschedule, I'll reach out as soon as this baby comes. Not because I didn't think I'd be home in time.
But because I have decided that when I'm going into a birth at nighttime, not having slept, I need to give myself the next day to sleep if I am home from the birth. I mean, as a doula, we all know, if you go in at 10pm, you might not be home until the next night in the middle of the night, right?
So it's possible that you won't be home to sleep during the day. And you actually won't be available for those appointments. But if you are home, you need to sleep. Because in a scenario like that, an overnight birth, you don't sleep.
And so then you're awake all night long, and then trying to do your normal stuff and honestly doing it kind of crappy because you're tired, right? So, so then fast forward to that, that evening, my other clients seemed like they were maybe going into labor, I did the exact same thing, emailed people and said, Hey, I think there's a good chance I'm gonna have to reschedule.
This is what we're looking at. At that point, I also touched base with the breastfeeding center in DC because I had a class for them scheduled Thursday night. And I was like, maybe I'll maybe I'll be done maybe I won't I'm not sure yet, you know, as the day went on on Thursday, I then canceled everything I had on Friday, because I was like, Like even if I'm home, again, I'm going to need to sleep.
And so when you think about that, like part of I think what we have to think about, and I realize, so the caveat here, big asterisk, is that I only do this work. I work for myself primarily, right? So these are all things that I have the freedom to cancel.
I have the freedom to reschedule. I have the freedom to kind of set the standard here, right? If you have a full-time job that's outside of doula work, you can't just like call off. Obviously, you're going to have to be a little bit more creative about what this looks like.
It can't necessarily look exactly like mine, because mine is based on the fact that this is all that I do. All that I do sounds ridiculous, but this is my full-time work, right? And so aside from a few classes that I'm really not going to reschedule, I can reschedule things, the things that I have the freedom to reschedule.
I'm a lot more lax about rescheduling them than I used to be where I used to be like, okay, if I'm going to be home by 5pm, I'm going to teach my 6pm class. And my husband will be like, Kaylee, you're exhausted.
Like why are you coming home? We haven't seen you in 30 hours and you're coming home to teach. And I'm like, sorry, you know, like, I know, I probably shouldn't have done that. But the reality is that that was kind of the feeling of like, I have to get stuff done.
I have to not disappoint anybody. I need to keep people happy. I need to write, which is all the opposite of helping my life thrive and be supported and helping me have the stamina I need to do this work well.
Now, there are lots of factors here, right? Tapping into your community, tapping into support systems, having a good length, having good language around what it looks like to reschedule. Like my go-to language is a baby is coming, I'm going to need to reschedule with you.
I will be in touch as soon as that baby is born because that gives me freedom to have that birth be long or short and reach back out to them when I have the capacity to do that. So like I came home from the second birth and slept for a very, very long time because I'd had two overnights in a row.
I mean, I slept one night in between, but I had two nights that I didn't sleep essentially. And I got a little bit of sleep at the second birth. It lasted a lot longer than the first birth did, so there was that dynamic as well.
But I came home exhausted and so I slept. And then I was awake at like midnight because weird scheduling after being up all day or up all night, sleeping all day, et cetera. And so then at midnight, I'm emailing people saying, okay, I'm home, you know, I'm back to scheduling.
This is what my week looks like next week. So, what I didn't do is come home on Friday at like, I think I got home at like 2 p.m. or something. I didn't hit the ground running. I wasn't like, okay, now let me schedule these people and get this stuff back on the calendar because none of those things urgently had to be put on the calendar that week, right?
Aside from babies coming, most of what I have is not incredibly urgent. So, it can be pushed a day or two days. Now, in that scenario, I might offer some times that I don't normally offer like Tuesday afternoon or something like that, right?
Where I can say, hey, I have this time slot that I'm willing to give you that I don't always give to someone. Part of why I keep those days free is that I do have those time slots. So, I can say, okay, here we can do this Tuesday afternoon thing or like right now my daughter is doing track and so I have more time after school.
I have a longer window of time after school that I don't have to be there picking someone up. And so there's that piece to where I can say, okay, I can, I can come to your house at four because my daughter doesn't need to be picked up until five, right?
So there's just a little bit more flexibility in my own life. So as you're thinking about this, I want you to think about what does it look like right now in your business? Like is your business currently supporting you well?
And if not, what can you do about that? Because it is important for that to be there. And if it is not, you have to figure out getting it there. As I have discussed in the last two episodes, we have a new rhythm here on the Doula Tips and Tips podcast.
And I appreciate you, my lovely faithful listeners, for supporting me in this for them. We are now doing a full episode on Wednesdays, and then the plan is to start Q&A episodes on Fridays. However, I can't do that until you beautiful, wonderful people submit questions for those Q&A.
So that question form is in the show notes. So if you're listening right now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever the podcast post is that you're listening on, you can go to the show notes. There is a link there that's called Ask Me a Question.
And all it asks for is your name, your email, your question, because I want to respond back to you to let you know when your question is going to be answered, and to make sure that you kind of get an actual answer and hear that when it comes out.
So please, when you're finished listening to this episode, go to the show notes, ask a question so we can start up those Friday episodes. And then in the meantime, I will see you next week on Wednesday.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Dula Tips and Tits podcast. If you learned something today or. or had an aha moment, we'd love for you to share that on Instagram and tag us at hiradulah 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.
ASK A QUESTION!!! My plan is to start Friday Q&A (we need a new name, I know!) but first I need your questions! Submit them using the form below:
https://www.harroddoulaservices.com/ask-me-a-question
As a business owner life can be tricky and we can let our business run and ruin everything! But that’s not the best way. We need to intentionally set up our businesses to support our life and desires and not the other way around. We need to start in the foundations and then work in moments of crisis as well to set boundaries and live a life that is well supported by our businesses and not the other way around.
Quote from the show:
“When I think about setting your business up to support your life, there are some basic things that work in my mind in that regard and then kind of like rhythms to have or norms to set in your business. And then there are things that are like moment by moment kind of things, right? So I'm going to start with the things that I think are important as foundational things. So one of those things is you set when you do scheduling with people. And then there are things that are like moment by moment kind of things, right? So I'm going to start with the things that I think are important as foundational things. So one of those things is you set when you do scheduling with people. So as a doula, when I was brand spanking new, I did all of my consultations and prenatal work in the evenings. The reason for that is that I actually just thought if I did them during the daytime, no one would want to hire me.”
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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
