Tips For Creating Doula Packages That Lead To Transformational Birth Experiences For Your Doula Clients with Joanna Sapir
Have you ever considered guiding your doula clients through a transformation not just through your online services, but your in-person doula services too?
In Episode 51 of the Birthworker Podcast, I'm joined by Joanna Sapir from The Business (R)evolution Podcast who is sharing her insight and experience from providing virtual and in-person small business coaching for health and wellness practitioners.
In this interview with Joanna, we chat about:
How to build your business so that it’s pain-free (and sellable!) from day one…
An easy way to pre-qualify your doula clients and stop wasting everyone’s time…
Joanna’s 3-pillar framework to transforming your doula client’s lives…
… and a whole lot more!
Joanna Sapir: Well, my story is like most people in health and wellness. I was drawn there because of changes I experienced in my life or services I experienced in my life and was like, "This is amazing, and I think other people need to experience this." I had been a high school teacher for 10 years. No intention whatsoever of starting my own business. That was not a dream of mine. I've never been in corporate, wasn't trying to leave corporate or anything.
Actually, very much had my calling, but I did leave the classroom and was seeking growth in a new area. I intended to continue in education but in a different capacity. I basically up and moved, me and my two young children. I will note that I had a very traumatic birth with my second one. That was the catalyst for me going, "I want a big, big change." We moved to a county where I knew no one. I'm still here, let's see, almost 20 years later. Got here and found that I couldn't find any place to do the kind of fitness training I wanted to do. That is what really opened up my entire vision of myself.
It was a reconnection to self and where am I going with my life. I got here and couldn't find any place to do the kind of fitness training that I had been doing where I moved from. And that's how I started my business, almost by accident. I was like, "People need this. Why don't I just try this?" And I actually just started it on the land I was living on, outdoors, and people would show up. Then I was like, okay, the rains are going to come. I live in an agricultural county and so I was like, "Maybe I can find someone's barn to rent."
Anyway, ended up finding this warehouse in town and opened it up, and built it out. And what do you know, I was in business! I'm sure that it's the same in the doula world where sometimes businesses struggle to get clients and then sometimes they just take off. I don't know what the factors were, but it took off and it was just me. I found myself suddenly totally slammed. I had young children at home, so I was spending all of the income I was getting on childcare just so I could come to work, I was wearing all the hats in the business and with no business background whatsoever.
Just like you teach, it's like, oh, there's kind of this wake-up call like, "Oh, I actually have to learn how to do business." Probably like you, I'm somebody who, I think it's my teacher's curriculum design mind, I just loved the idea of creating systems and something for this to run really smoothly and sustainably. I started learning all of that and then had even bigger visions for that business because again, I had started it by accident.
Kyleigh Banks: There was no five-year plan.
Joanna Sapir: Yeah. Exactly. So, then I started to create a plan, and I knew that I knew wanted to grow it and really get it to be able to run without me doing everything. Then at some point, actually, somebody showed up and offered to buy it from me. That's when I was like, "Oh, this could be sold. Oh, okay." And then I was like, "That's what I want to do, is build this." I wasn't ready to sell it at that point. I had to question myself and I knew, well if I sold this, I'd just want to go open another gym down the street, which I can't do.
That's what I eventually wanted to do. So building a business to be sellable means you have to build a business that's systematized and can run in some way without you, which sounds crazy to practitioners because the whole thing is based on, "No, but I do this with my clients. How in the world could it run without me?" Well, there are a lot of different ways and you can still stay in client services if you want to in some capacity, however you want to.
But anyway, that's what I did. I built that business to be sellable and sold it. And even while I was still running that business, I started on the side helping wellness practitioners I knew, and that's where my heart was pulled, to the folks that I was working with as clients. Bodyworkers, naturopaths, nutritionists, etc, who just clearly loved their work and were really good at it and were just not doing well business-wise.
It's like not only were they perhaps struggling financially, but even their client experience wasn't as strong as it could be, given their skill level. All of that's part of business. Anyway, that's how I got into this work.
Kyleigh Banks: I love it. Two things came up that I would love to chat about. The first one was, it's really cool how you started just at your house, in your space. I actually see a parallel with that to birth work, which is starting a mother circle. A lot of people come to me and say, "There's no community here." Okay, build one. Do you have a yard? Is there a park? How can we do it? And just something as simple as that. It's not always easy, but it can be really simple. It’s just the beginning of something that has the potential to grow into a very successful and profitable business. I love that.
Joanna Sapir: Yeah. What a beautiful, organic way of bringing people together and then getting to learn from folks and hear where they're at, how they're feeling, and what support they need.
Kyleigh Banks: Something else you were mentioning was creating systems and figuring out like, "Oh, I actually have to create a business. There's something else I have to do here." I tell doulas, do yourself a favor and do that from the beginning, but a lot of doulas come to me when they're just getting started and just going to their first births. But there are always the star students who just have success really fast, like you said. They go through my programs and 6 months later, they're fully booked.
I think sometimes we have a little bit of imposter syndrome and we're a little bit scared and we can't dream that big. But I just have to say that when it happens, it can happen very fast. Just like Joanna said, her business took off very fast. So, from the beginning, if you can, set up those systems and listen to both of our podcasts to learn those systems.
Joanna Sapir: Yeah, absolutely. Otherwise, I've heard you talk about this, the burnout. You can get totally, totally burned out without that. And then when you're in burnout, that's a really awful place because you don't even have it in you to slow down the way you need to and build those systems and processes in your business that are going to run. It's kind of too late. So yes, get to it before it's too late.
Kyleigh Banks: What I would really love to talk about today is helping our clients really have true transformation. How can we piece together something that's bigger than just a doula package? Something that's more than just the prenatals, the birth, and the postpartum, and how can we really facilitate that transformation?
Joanna Sapir: Yeah, that's what makes my work so meaningful is to be able to help people really envision what is that transformation they want to deliver to their clients. Our starting point is looking at who their ideal clients are, who their favorite people are, and what is that journey. If you've worked with people you can identify like, "Oh, here's two or three dream clients. I loved them." If you were to take them and go back to the very first time you met them, knowing now where they were at, the road they've traveled, now you can see even in retrospect all the stuff they needed, what would you have wanted to give them from day one?
What's the journey they needed to take? What's the dream service you would like to have provided them? That's where we start, is in that big, dreamy place of what do your people really need? And if you could go back and give it to them from day one, what would it include?
Kyleigh Banks: I feel like we think that a lot when it comes to courses because it's something that we have to create, so it's something that we have to put that thought into, but I don't think people are having that realization that it's true with in-person services too. I love that.
Joanna Sapir: Yeah. I'll just say really going off on this idea is that that might include services that are not you providing them. I imagine that there are many doulas who actually are bodyworkers, but maybe you listening are not and you know that bodywork would just be an awesome piece of your services. That's still something you can build into your packages, right?
You can find somebody that you want to be providing those, and you're contracting with them, but you are the one selling and delivering that package. What do your people need? I imagine that in doula work, that can go way beyond just the doula support, so much more. Especially thinking of new first-time moms. Man, the amount of support that they could and would love.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah. I am obsessed with all of this wisdom you're dropping. I don't know, I think I'm maybe just in a time of my life where I see how we can serve women better. We can do that by understanding that transformation, but also understanding how to get that into the hands of people that need it and deciding to create something from the beginning that is transformational. The fact that you brought up that you can bring in other coaches and mentors really just blew my mind right there. Because again, we do that for online courses and programs, so why can't we do that for in-person support too?
Joanna Sapir: Yeah.
Kyleigh Banks: Brilliant. Tell me a little bit more about your framework. What do you need besides figuring out what journey you want to take people through?
Joanna Sapir: It starts with knowing who your people are. And I've heard you speak to this, you talk about perfect-fit clients. And so really drawing those lines too, really not just working with anybody that comes along. When I help clients, we just look for whatever patterns emerge when we identify who have been your favorite clients. Sometimes it can be actual personality characteristics, and then sometimes there are demographics in there.
We look for patterns in who are your best-fit people and who you love working with. To me, that's where it starts. That can be so empowering, as I'm sure you know for any small business owner, but particularly people who are doing such transformational work. We get burned out when we work. I shouldn't use that phrase again, but we get burned. That's what I'll say. We get burned and reactive when we work with the wrong people for us. We think that that's business, and no, that's just the lack of systems and lack of boundaries. So, that's number one.
Two is with those perfect fit people, what's that journey? What's that beautiful service that you can provide that is going to help them achieve the ultimate result thereafter?
Then three is how do you actually get clients and roll clients in that and sign clients up? That's the sales process, which I know you teach. So, those are my three main pillars. Outside of that, outsourcing the things that you don't need to be doing, the things that are not your zone of genius, or just simply the things you don't want to be doing so that you can focus on what you do want to be doing and leading the business and really getting to carry out the vision for the business.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah. Can you touch on the importance of knowing who your perfect client is and only serving them? How do we change our business to be perfect for our perfect clients? Do we need to change our copy and our messaging, or maybe change our offers even?
Joanna Sapir: Yeah, I think there are two sides to it. On the marketing side, what's our messaging and how do we call out to the right people, and how to repel the wrong ones? On the sales side, which is actually putting in place, I call them filters, or red velvet rope policy is a term I say too, that really kindly refers the wrong people away and brings the right people in.
In your marketing and your copy, and just even how you talk to people verbally, I always say speak their language. It's amazing when it comes to marketing how we put on this persona. We think, "Oh, I'm supposed to be marketing now and I'm supposed to sound like this." And we start not talking like ourselves and using these often bland, general words that somehow we think are marketing, and we want to do the opposite of that. We just want to be completely authentic and ourselves, and very importantly, use the language of our ideal clients. When you use their language, you're going to be calling out to more people like them.
I have my clients, we have a very fancy document. I'm being sarcastic, but it's called the PPGD. It's such a creative title, it just stands for pains, problems, goals, and desires. It’s a T-chart where we collect the pains and problems and goals and desires of our clients in their own words. It's a collection of direct quotes specifically from our consultations. It's from a particular moment. It's one moment in time when somebody has actually said, "Hey, I'm interested in these services," and it's right then. So, it's not when they're first exploring or educating themselves, it's not after they've been through the journey, because different language comes out there, and that's great for your client's stories, but for calling in more people, it's right when they're experiencing something enough that they're compelled to action.
In the case of doula work, I would imagine, unless it's postpartum work, the time is basically because of where they're at in their pregnancy. What are they saying? Why are they looking for a doula? What are they scared of? What are they looking forward to? What are they worried about? What are they excited about? And then even getting deeper with stuff. We want to get into feelings and emotions. It's way more than just, I want somebody to help me prepare for the birth, or I want somebody to help me at the birth.
It's like, "Okay, well why is that important to you?" Whatever they say, keep going. "Well, why is that important to you? What do you mean by that?" And just really understanding. On the one hand, when we have those kinds of deep discussions with people in our consultations, you're connecting with them on a super important level for you to be able to serve them really, really well. It's not just surface-level stuff. It's like we're getting deep here, so you can serve them more powerfully. But then it has the added benefit of really helping you understand how your people are feeling and thinking and what this experience is like for them at that point. Use that language in your marketing.
That's the one aspect of calling them in. For the filtering process, that can be done in a number of ways. I have two different versions of my sales system. One of them is usually for, I say for brick and mortar in-person businesses, and the other one is for online businesses. But there can be some kind of hybrid, I could imagine birthworkers using both of these. The in-person version is a phone call, and not the consultation itself.
It might be billed like on a website, a schedule, a free phone consultation, but it's a very particular process where it's essentially filtering them out. It's a pre-qualification process where you get to ask them the questions just to make sure that they're at least on target. They may not be the bullseye of the target, but they're on target. From there, you invite them to a full real consultation that would be in person.
Kyleigh Banks: Wow. That's fascinating. That blows my mind. I've never thought about it that way. Most doulas go into just a regular consultation of, "Why do you want a doula? Here's my package, here's the price, let's go over the contract." Just that. So, to do that filtering before is a very good idea. I'm obsessed with that.
Joanna Sapir: Oh, yeah. It's fantastic because first of all, it means you can have a really deep, full consultation and you're not spending time doing a deep full consultation with the wrong people. What it means is that the only people who get invited to that real full consultation, whatever it ends up being called in any given business, your conversion rate there is super high, 80-100% basically. So that initial, pre-qualifying phone call is just to make sure this somebody you want to invite to that real step.
I know as a client myself, I've been through a process that doesn't have that. It's a little bit of a bummer because I'm spending my time as a prospective client too in a consultation with this provider and for let's just say price. I don't know their prices. We talk and talk and talk and talk, and then I finally find out their prices at the end and I'm like, "Oh, that's way more than I was anticipating or intending to spend.” They wasted their time and mine.
That's one obvious example, something like a price range that you can qualify people on ahead of time before going into that in-depth consultation. But like I said, there may be other personality differences or even I imagine that in birth work, there may be a pregnant mother who already knows of some medical complications, and maybe that's not something you deal with.
So, just really kindly refer people out who aren't a fit for you to others. That's where having a strong referral network is awesome too. Especially when you have friends and know what their specialties are or who's really right for them. What's amazing is, even if we think, "That person's a pain in the ass," they could be somebody else's perfect client. We're all different.
Kyleigh Banks: New doulas, a lot of the time, want to serve everyone. I feel like it's taught in a lot of the mainstream doula training programs that everyone needs a doula, so you need to serve everyone. I don't actually think that's serving women. I don't think that's serving ourselves when we try and do that. I love how you're helping us look at it in a different way and feel confident that we can turn people away and know it's okay to turn people away. Even if you're not making a lot of money yet, it's still okay to turn people away. It's really building your business "correctly" and sustainably from the beginning.
Joanna Sapir: Yeah. It is really interesting when folks are not making enough money or times are dry, that's how they'll feel is, "Of course, I need to take anybody who's here." And yet it really works against you because when you're working with somebody who's not a good fit with you, and it's a struggle, it's like your whole energy around your business is different than it would be. You're not feeling in creative flow. You're not stoked to be there, and you're taking time away from an opening for the right person. It sounds counterintuitive. I mean, if somebody's truly struggling to feed themselves, then I get it. If that's the only opportunity that comes up.
In my program, it's actually a milestone that we celebrate when somebody turns away their first client. It's not that we want people to turn them away. It's not like that has to happen. I mean, because you may be great and be calling in wonderful fit people, but we do celebrate it when somebody turns their first perspective client away because they do it from such an empowered place, understanding, "I was able to see that this was not somebody I wanted to work with, or this was not somebody I could really help."
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah. In terms of, okay, we found the perfect clients. We know who we want to work with, and we know how to speak to them. We know the transformation we want to take people through. Do you teach any sort of simple framework of translating that framework into something that we actually take clients through?
Joanna Sapir: Repeat that? I didn't actually understand the question.
Kyleigh Banks: No worries. We talked about figuring out what transformation we want to take our clients through. In terms of birth, how do we actually put that into something that we offer as part of our package? Let's say, okay, the transformation I want someone to have is to avoid a traumatic birth experience and look back on her experience and say like, "Wow, I did everything and I wouldn't change a thing." Is there a way to almost reverse engineer that and put it into practice?
Joanna Sapir: Yeah. I mean, that's how you build your packages. A lot of this I leave to the practitioners I work with, but I guide them through a process. I break it down and we start very simply by looking at, “Okay, here's where they are now. What's their starting point?” And we kind of start doing some brainstorming around how do they need to feel, how do they need to think, what do they need to think, what do they need to do? And just start breaking it all down into different ways of seeing it so that you see that, oh, some of it is actually around beliefs. Some of it is actually around emotions. Some of it's actually around the action. Things like what to eat or what movement to be doing, or exercise, or whatever.
So, you kind of end up with all these different buckets and you see these different pieces, and then you go, "How do I help make that happen?" Let's say it's something challenging like shifting beliefs. You get to choose how you want to do that. It might involve you putting together a series of videos that you love from other places. I mean, maybe there's something as simple as TED Talks. It might be some readings that you have. It might be you doing the readings that they get to put in their ears and listen to you. You can be so creative in how you do that.
One thing I do really, really regularly have to note to my clients is for the most part, when people are working with me, they're creating programs or packages for the first time. I work with skilled and established practitioners who most often are selling session by session, which again, wouldn't necessarily happen in a birthwork context, but it's the first time they're developing a programmatic approach to what they're doing. Often their inclination is to want to build out this whole thing and have all this perfection, have it all built before they ever even enroll somebody in it.
I do encourage people to sell it and build it for somebody as you're taking them through it. And then you've got all that laid down for the next person, and then the next person you're going to want to add and revise and tweak, and then the next person, again, add and revise and tweak, and it's going to be a dozen people before you can be like, "Boom, here this program, step by step by step by step." And then you can even put in some automations where certain things are delivered to them without you having to do anything manually. It just kind of all happens, but you let that take place over time. You don't go for perfection from the beginning.
Just take your one person, and you can have your bare-bones idea. I was just saying about the belief shifting. It's like you can go, "At the very least, I have these readings and I would want them to have these readings," and you can ask them in your consultation too. "If I were to give you some readings, would you be willing and able to take some time to do that?" And they say, "Yes." You say, "Great." So, that first person is readings, but like I said, maybe you have this vision of, "But I also want to have this on audio for them." And so you can do that over time. Those are just really random ideas.
Kyleigh Banks: No, that is so cool. Especially someone listening who has in-person clients but they don't have a comprehensive coaching program, and they're really just doing the basic in-person stuff that most trainings teach. I love that you're giving them that step of, "Okay, take the clients you already have and start implementing little things and just start noticing what's working, what's not, what you can change."
Joanna Sapir: Exactly.
Kyleigh Banks: And just piece it together.
Joanna Sapir: That's exactly what you do. Exactly.
Kyleigh Banks: I tell the story a lot, but one of the biggest mistakes I made in the beginning of my business was trying to create a comprehensive program as one of the first things that I ever created. And now I look back and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. That took me 800 hours to create. I'm not going to redo that." I wish, instead of it taking me 800 hours, I just built it slowly, slowly, slowly, and then would've been easy to transform into a really high-touch program.
Now I look back and I'm like, "Oh, you can tell I'm reading a script, or I can tell I'm trying really hard." And so it's interesting. If you build it more slowly from the beginning, it's much easier to grow into something really high touch and really high value, so I love that.
Joanna Sapir: Yeah, and it's proven. I mean, it's really organic because you might have ideas of like, "Oh, this would be so cool." And then you try it with three or four clients and it's like, it maybe doesn't have the impact, or they're just not doing it, and you're like, "Oh, they just don't do that even though I think it's so great," or whatever. Yeah, you want to test it all before you systematize it. It should already be running and working.
Kyleigh Banks: For sure. Something like that happened to me when I first became a doula. Postpartum support came with my package, four hours. And no one would book it. They would pay for it because it would come with the package, but they'd just be like, "Come next week, or come next week. Come next week. I'm fine. My mom's here." And after a while, no one was booking it. And I'm just like, "Okay, the people I attract are not people that feel like they need extra support. So, why am I trying to push that down their throat? Why am I even wasting a single word on my sales page about that if that's not what they want?" That's how I implemented that for sure.
Joanna Sapir: Yeah. Interesting. I can imagine that there is so much postpartum support needed. I could imagine that those first few weeks is where the family's all around, but then after that, so there's a whole opening there for anybody who wants to serve them.
Kyleigh Banks: Exactly. For someone else to come in and pick up where my support ends, because it doesn't go beyond that. Oh, I love that. I think my biggest mind-blown moments were just realizing how we can treat our in-person services more like a transformational coaching program than just birth support. I think that's definitely where birth work is going. I mean, my life changed when I realized that we don't have to actually attend people's births to make a huge transformation.
I know we talked a lot about attending births and working with clients in person, but who's to say that you can't take that entire program and then create something online where you're just doing it virtually too? So very, very cool. I'm excited to start sharing these with my students inside my programs, inside my membership, but also for them to hear it on the podcast.
Will you tell us where people can reach out to you? I know you have some awesome free stuff, and I know some people are going to be heading your way.
Joanna Sapir: I have a podcast, so it's called The Business (R)evolution for Practitioners with Joanna Sapir. So, that's a great place to get more education and insight. And then we have a free business strategy scorecard for your listeners, and that can be found at joannasapir.com/birthworker.
Kyleigh Banks: Amazing. Thank you so much. I'm very excited to add your podcast to one of my favorites and listen, especially after hearing what you're saying today. Thank you for sharing that, and thank you for donating your time here today. And yeah, that was a lot of fun.
Joanna Sapir: Yeah. Thank you for doing the work you're doing. I'm a bit older than you, and it's like doulas existed when I was having children for sure, but it wasn't as common as now, and it's such needed work for women.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah, thank you for saying that. I feel like, I've only been a doula for four years, and even in these four years, there are tens of thousands more doulas, which is only a great thing. Yeah, very excited to make an impact.
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.