How To Stay The Course When Nothing Is Moving In The Right Direction In Your Doula Business
Have you ever felt like giving up on your doula business when things don’t go quite as you planned… or when things haven’t grown as fast as you’d hoped?
If you’ve been wondering what to do when nothing is moving in the right direction, then get out a pen and paper, this blog post is for you.
The 3 questions we answer in today’s blog:
Do you ever take on an in-person doula client but let them know that another mom actually has priority for their birth? I don't have a backup doula right now, and I don't trust anyone, so I'm thinking of doing this with my clients.
Does a podcast launch work in tandem with a course launch? Should one come before the other? Do I use an email sequence for the podcast launch too?
What encourages you to stay the course when you feel like nothing is moving in the right direction?
Every Friday, I answer your biggest questions right here on the Birthworker Blog AND the Birthworker Podcast.
To submit a question for next week’s podcast, click here.
Quick life update from Kyleigh: A few weeks ago I thought that I was having a miscarriage. In reality, it was really just a pregnancy that the doctor in the emergency room could not find. It ended up being a pregnancy in my ovary (or in my abdomen, they're really not sure).
Long story short, my ovary ended up rupturing here in Israel and I had emergency surgery to fix the bleeding, take a chunk out of my ovary, stitch me up, and send me on my way.
It's been a whirlwind, but I'm grateful for the healthcare here. I am mindblown at how I was treated with so much respect and how the providers had zero ego. What an amazing change of pace from what I normally experience with my doula clients in the US hospital system!
Okay – let’s get into today’s questions!
"Do you ever take on an in-person doula client but let them know that another mom actually has priority for their birth? I don't have a backup doula right now, and I don't trust anyone, so I'm thinking of doing this with my clients."
I would say no.
Thinking about this very logically, I think, "Okay, if client A is the priority, but client B goes into labor first… and I'm at client B's birth and then client A goes into labor, I'm not going to just leave client B's birth for client A!"
Of course, there are situations where I would leave a birth to support someone else. For instance, if client B was in the very, very early stages of labor and you could tell that this is going to be a very long process, then maybe I would go if client A lived really close by and I could bounce back and forth between the two.
But in my mind, I go to the first person who goes into labor and I stay there until she gives birth. Then afterward, I go support the second person that goes into labor. So to answer the question, no, I would not place priority on moms.
"Does a podcast launch work in tandem with a course launch? Should one come before the other? Do I use an email sequence for the podcast launch too?"
– Hannah
Short answer, launch your podcast before you launch the course.
I've done a couple of episodes on launching a course, Episode 29, Avoid These 5 Huge Mistakes When Starting Your Doula Business, and Episode 41, The #1 Mindset Shift Doulas Must Make Before Creating a New Offer.
When most people make a course, whether it's online or in-person, they think that all they have to do is create the course. They don't realize how much goes into prepping your community and audience to be ready to purchase something from you. When I started the online portion of my business (AKA my Instagram and website), I didn't launch my course for about 9 months. Instead, I used those 9 months to grow my online community. In those 9 months, I grew from zero to 10,000 on Instagram and from zero to 1,000 on my email list… So, by the time I launched my course, I had people ready to buy and I made $14,000 on that very first launch!
So how does a podcast launch work in tandem with a course launch?
I would suggest launching the podcast three months before the course launch, and that’s because the podcast will serve as the long-form content that nurtures your community so they're ready to buy when you launch that course.
For the email sequence for the podcast launch, I would absolutely send daily emails to your email list… and if you have the capacity, even include giveaways to really get your audience excited!
(HOT TIP: If you don’t have an email list, focus on building a list before you launch a podcast.
Then, a few months down the line, you can start thinking about a course launch.
"What encourages you to stay the course when you feel like nothing is moving in the right direction?"
— Marissa, Birthworker Membership Member
First of all, this is not an issue that goes away with time. You don't automatically find success, book yourself out, make a bunch of money, and then never have doubts again. It can even be something that snowballs bigger in the future.
When I first started, my worries were, "Am I ever going to make this happen? Am I ever going to be able to not rent out the rooms in my house? Am I ever going to be able to afford my mortgage? Am I ever going to be able to not put my kid in daycare or with a nanny, and not have a job that I hate?"
Now, my worries are very different (but much bigger in some ways). My current worries are, "Am I going to be able to pay my staff this month? Am I going to make $15,000 this month to be able to pay my bills, pay my staff, pay for my business, and also pay myself?" That's a very different worry than when I first started. It’s like Biggie Smalls says, "More money, more problems."
I don’t want that to be something that discourages you, but something that normalizes what you're going through! I know that every single person reading this has felt this too because we all feel it. It's not going to go away. So instead of trying to make this feeling go away… where nothing's moving in the right direction and you feel like you’re going to quit… let's just normalize that and appreciate it as part of being an entrepreneur.
This is really personal, but I just posted in a mentorship community that I’m a part of, "What do you do when you just feel like firing everybody and closing your business and closing all your programs? What do you do when you just want to burn your whole business to the ground?" It's not that business isn't fun, it's just sometimes really, really hard. The more we normalize that, the fewer people are going to want to burn their businesses to the ground.
When you're ever feeling this way, that nothing is moving in the right direction and you're just not sure if you want to do this anymore, remember your why. Remember why you chose birthwork. I guarantee that you did not get into birthwork because you wanted to be a business person. You did not choose birthwork because you wanted to make a boatload of money. I can, however, guarantee that you chose birthwork because you wanted to make a difference in women's lives.
So remember your why, and ask yourself, is that something you're doing right now? Are you making a difference in people's lives? If the answer is no, focus on that. Focus on helping women have amazing autonomous births that they love instead of focusing on how everything in your business feels like it's failing right now. I think that is going to be the domino that helps your business move forward in the right direction.
Keep in mind that growing a doula business (in person AND online) is a long game!
From day one, I said, "I don't care about short-term success, I want long-term success. 20 years from now, I want to be able to send my daughter to any school, I want to be able to afford my dream house, I want to work when I want to work, and I want to not have to go work for someone that I absolutely hate working for. I don't need immediate success, I just eventually want to find it.”
That was my mantra. Thinking that way and detaching myself from the immediate outcome of the things I was doing in my business helped me find success a lot faster. What you’re doing now, even if it doesn't look like anything is happening, is actually laying the foundation for the massive success that you are going to have in the future. With that mindset, have no doubt that whatever success looks like to you, you are going to find it.
If you play the long game, if you believe in yourself, if you stay the course, if you find a community of people who are right there with you, and if you find a mentor to help steer you in the right direction, I have 100% faith that whatever your idea of success is, you are going to find it in the next several years. We're not going to pretend it's going to happen this month, next month, this year, etc. If that's what we're hoping for and counting on, the second it doesn't happen as fast as we want it to happen, we are going to feel like nothing is moving in the right direction. That is one of the main reasons that entrepreneurs quit.
And I don't want that to happen to you, my friend.
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Meet your host, Kyleigh Banks, a side-gig doula turned CEO of a multi-six-figure birth-focused business. Her passion? Teaching birth nerds, like you, how to build an incredibly successful doula business that allows you to quit your day job, stay home with your kids, and most importantly, make a lasting impact on the world.