How to Price Your Doula Packages and Pay Yourself What You're Worth
Have you noticed that financial literacy is a super taboo topic within the birth community?
If you’ve been wondering how to get a grip on your finances and start seeing yourself as a true doula entrepreneur, then get out a pen and paper, this blog post is for you.
Things you’ll learn in this blog post:
Why pricing your doula packages is more than just picking a number…
The shocking reality of paying yourself responsibly as an entrepreneur…
My secret approach to birthwork and how it can turn this from a side hustle into a career!
… and a whole lot more!
In this blog post, I’m going to teach you all of the financial tips and strategies I wish somebody taught me when I was starting as a doula. If you are just now stepping into birth work or if you've been in birth work for a while, pay attention and ask yourself, are you organizing your financials correctly? Are you optimizing them? Are you acting like a business owner? Are there some mindset changes you need to make to truly step into that that entrepreneurial role?
If you are just stepping into birth work, know that we cover all of this in-depth inside Birthworker Academy, which is my six-month, mentorship-style doula training program. If you are brand new to birth work, check that out because you are going to need a bit more than this blog post can give you.
The questions I want to answer today are:
How do I price my doula packages?
How do I pay myself?
How much money can a doula actually make?
How to price your doula packages
Choosing the perfect price for your packages is so subjective. It's a balance of what people would actually pay for this service, but also what price allows you to make enough money to be profitable, to sustain your lifestyle, and makes you super happy to deliver these services without resenting your clients/students.
What would people actually pay? The answer to that is 100% subjective. It depends on you potential clients’ finances, their willingness to take a financial risk, and their perceived value of the service that they're going to receive. And honestly, a ton of other factors behind the curtains too. There is no one set answer to this question, unfortunately.
You need to charge a price that will allow you to make enough money to pay for your lifestyle. Which, of course, is also subjective. If you're married and your husband makes a seven figures, you likely don't even need to make any money to sustain your lifestyle. So you could just offer free doula services and your lifestyle can still be paid for. But if you are a single mom to 5 kids, you can't offer doula services for free because you have 5 children to feed and no one else is helping you with your bills. In that scenario, you need to charge enough money to make it worth it.
Lastly, you need to charge an amount that feels super good and authentic to you. When we're talking about pricing doula services, birth doula packages specifically, it can be hard. Sometimes you're at a birth for literally 5 minutes before the baby arrives, and other times you could be back and forth to the birthing space for 5 straight days. It could be five minutes, or it could be five days, so how do you put one sticker price on that? It's almost unfair.
If you think $500 is a great price for your birth package, my question is would you still think $500 is a great price if the birth lasted for five days? This could cause you to resent the situation because you'll think to yourself, "Damn, I did not charge enough. I've been here for five days and I only got $500. That doesn't even cover my childcare, let alone the other business expenses." So make sure you choose a price that is going to feel good and in alignment with you. It's different for every single person.
I give my students inside Birthworker Academy an entire section on making your packages, choosing what offers you're going to put inside those packages, and pricing the packages. I love spreadsheets, so I give my students a spreadsheet where they can actually enter in a bunch of objective information and it's going to pop out an objective price. Once they get that number, they can decide if that price feels in alignment.
I have it set up for both birth doula support packages and postpartum support packages. You can actually factor in a bunch of other offers too like placenta encapsulation or extra prenatal visits, and it'll pop out what the price of this package should be.
I have my students start by entering in the hourly wage they want to make for all of the hours that they're working with this client, which even includes driving time. Then they make a list of all the different pieces that are included in the package, and how many hours each piece takes. For example, the consultation, unlimited phone support, prenatal visits, in-person childbirth education, labor support, postpartum visits, etc.
This spreadsheet totals up all these hours, uses your chosen hourly wage, and factors in expenses like business memberships, books, taxes, childcare, and self-care services like massages or therapy. It uses all of this information and pops out what the price of this package should be, how many births you are going to attend per month, your monthly take-home cash, your monthly expenses, your yearly income, and your hourly take-home pay after taxes and expenses.
The wake-up call every doula needs ASAP…
My favorite part about this process is at the end, I ask my students, is this yearly profit sustainable for you? Do you make enough with this projection to pay your bills, your mortgage, your food, your car, and your kids? Or do you need to start thinking about adding more offers to your doula business that don't require you to be on call all the time?
Sometimes when people start birth work, they want to charge $800-$1,000 for a birth, but they plug in all of that information and realize they're only taking home $10,000 per year if they don't have those other services. It's a wake-up call for a lot of my students to start thinking, "Oh, wow, I have to do something different than the status quo if I want this to be my full-time career and make a sustainable income."
So if that sounds like you, start thinking about ways to add more income to your business without being on call all the time. If you're not following here, I made a free guide for all of the ways to make money as a birth worker without being on call. Click here to check it out! I think you're going to love it.
How to pay yourself as a doula (or another type of birth worker)…
When most doulas are starting out, they don't have very much financial education. I know I didn't. When I was starting, I thought all of the money in my bank account was mine to spend. I didn't have a separate business bank account, a business credit card, savings accounts, none of that. I had one bank account where if someone paid me for birth support, it went straight into that account. I didn't have a plan to organize my money at all. And if you have no clue what I mean when I say “organize my money,” then keep reading.
What I do today is use a separate business checking account where all the money I make in my business goes directly to. This is my business's money, not my money. I don't look at it like it's Kyleigh's money at all. I've made that very clear distinction in my brain now. At the end of the month, I have a set date in my calendar (because if it's not in my calendar, it doesn't get done) where I sit down and look at all of the money that I made and divide it into different savings accounts.
Disclaimer: This is based on my personal income. It's something I figured out with Megan, my CPA, so I will tell you the numbers, but please don't follow these numbers exactly. Find a CPA that you trust and they will help you nail down the right percentages for you. In theory, this strategy is absolutely something that every single business owner should be doing.
I put 30% of my monthly income into a personal account, AKA I pay myself 30% of my business’s income. Let's break this down: if I'm charging $1,000 for birth support, I'm only taking home $300. That’s very different than assuming, “If I charge $1,000, I profit $1,000.” No, that's not how this actually works.
So after 30% goes into my personal account, 15% goes into my tax savings account. I set aside money every single month so I'm not screwed at the end of the year with a huge tax bill that I was not prepared for. That’s what happens if you just put all of your money into your personal account and pretend like it's all your money. It's not all your money, some of it is Uncle Sam's money (if you live in the US).
Recently I just added an investment savings account for retirement money. For me, I put 15% into that. So now, if I pay myself 30%, add 15% to my tax savings account, and 15% goes to my investment savings account, then the remaining 40% of all of the money that I make every single month stays in my business checking account to pay for all of my other expenses.
Let's make the math easy and say I make $100,000 this year, I only make $30,000, $15,000 goes toward taxes, $15,000 goes toward my retirement, and $40,000 goes to my expenses. That's insane. It really puts into perspective that if your business makes six figures, that does not mean you are making six figures.
You cannot ever look at the money you're making as your personal spending money. You have to use separate bank accounts to see that big-picture view, set financial goals, and manage your money. This is when you step into that business owner role. This is where you put your big girl pants on. You’re an entrepreneur. It's no longer a hobby, it's a business. You own a company, and the money your business makes is your company's money, which you get paid out of.
To make this happen, you need to create a business checking account, and open savings accounts for your taxes and retirement. Start putting away a little bit of money in those and create a system to start paying yourself instead of just winging it. No more winging it. We're going to be official entrepreneurs because we want to make this a long-term career. This is not a side hustle. And if it's still a side hustle for you, I encourage you to ask yourself why? It doesn't have to be. You can make as much money as you want to make.
How much money can a doula actually make?
A lot of people get into birth work, but don't take it very seriously because they assume that doulas don't make much money. Wrong. The three-pronged approach I teach in my programs is super important. Number 1 is the in-person services like in-person doula support, in-person childbirth education, etc. Number 2 is the live online offers like virtual doula support, online coaching, group coaching, and workshops. Number 3 is the passive offers like e-books, pre-recorded classes, pre-recorded courses, things like that.
When you start incorporating all three of those things, the sky is the limit. There are birth workers making seven figures per year. There are even some making way more than that. Even a moderately booked doula, let's say three births per month, that starts to incorporate this three-pronged approach can absolutely make six figures per year.
If you do three births per month all year, that's around $50,000. If you add in a monthly live paid workshop, that's another $1,000 per month. Then if you add in the pre-recorded birth courses, e-books, or any other passive offer, that could literally be another $35,000 per year. That right there is $100,000 per year with just those three things. The potential you have with online offers is exponential. There is no reason you can't turn into the next Mama Natural, Pain-Free Birth, or Free Birth Society and go on to make seven figures. I know it sounds crazy to dream that big, but I'm not kidding.
Someone reading this blog right now is going to create a six-figure online birth course this year, maybe not even from scratch. Maybe they're doing our childbirth educator training program and using our curriculum to curate their own course, and they are going to go on to make $100,000 in 2023 from the online birth course they create. Someone else reading this right now is going to become a fully booked-out doula. They're going to create a doula agency and become a millionaire in the next decade.
If you’re thinking, "Wow, can that really be me?" It absolutely can be, and I need you to dream that big. Then I want you to dream even bigger. When you're a birth worker, there's no income cap. You're not limited to how many hours in a day you have or how many births you can attend.
Start asking yourself, what else can I do to impact lives across the world that does not necessarily require me to be on call all the time? Then go do that. Add those kinds of services to your website.
That's how you make this doula thing a sustainable career.
If you're going through this and you decide you want expert help to get you there faster or with less stress, you know where to find me. You're in the right place reading this right now. Just shoot me a DM and let's chat about how to make your goals come true.
I want to leave you with some homework. I know you don't read blog posts for homework, but I know you're reading this blog because you want to better yourself and your business. So I want you to do a really deep assessment of the backend of your business and specifically the financial part of your business. Do you have a business bank account? Do you keep track of your income and expenses? If yes, then ask yourself, what are your next steps? How are you bettering yourself? How are you increasing your knowledge around your business finances? Which experts are you hiring to help you?
I hired my CPA in early 2022, now she does my bookkeeping, and she's my financial coach too. When I'm not the expert, when I don't have the time to learn something by myself, or if I just want it to be done faster, I will hire an expert to help me. It saves me so much time and money in the end.
The investment that I made for Megan to help me in my business was less than $2,000, and in 2022, Megan saved me $21,000 by making a few simple switches to the backend of my business that I could not have done without a CPA. I spent $2,000 on Megan and she gave me $21,000 right back in one year. That's what's possible sometimes when you turn to the experts and put your money where your mouth is.
If you’re not at that point in your business, or if you're not even sure what to price your packages at, maybe you need some more help with that. If you don't know to create online offers so you can not only give back to your community, but you can live in financial abundance and give back to yourself and give back to your family, if that's you, let's do it together.
I would love nothing more than to help you get there because all I wanted when I was starting was someone to help me get there. I couldn't find them, so I became that person. Let's turn your passion into a fulfilling career that not only feeds your soul, but it feeds your bank account.
thank you for listening
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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.