Are You Undervaluing Yourself?
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00:04
Welcome to doula Tips and Tits. 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.
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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.
00:36
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Hello and welcome back to Kaylee Daily. Today's podcast episode is about are you undervaluing yourself? That is our question today because it is something that I have been thinking a lot about.
00:55
So you, if you're a doula, you've been around kind of for any amount of time in this podcast, you have heard me talk about sustainability. I talk about that so much because doulas actually have one of the highest burnout rates in most industries.
01:11
So it is an incredibly high thing, super common occurrence. There's a more normal statement that a doula sets their business up to be unsustainable and therefore burn them out and therefore they stopped doing this work.
01:30
So I want you to take a minute to think about that. Like really let that sink in. We work in a field that has an incredibly high turnover and an incredibly high rate of burnout. Now there are all different factors, right?
01:46
There's multiple things that cause burnout, multiple scenarios to consider, but I will say that one of the things that I see frequently is undervaluing. paying, which ultimately is undercharging. Because as a doula, most of the time your clients are not choosing what to pay you, you're choosing what to charge them.
02:10
And so if you're charging them way less than you should be charging them, then or way less than is sustainable for your business, then ultimately you are the one that suffers, not them, right? And so what I want to kind of encourage you is to just take a minute to sort of just sit down and think through what you need in terms of revenue, right?
02:34
And profit. So what I think we sometimes do, as doulas specifically, is use everyone else's prices as our jumping off point for our prices. And my thing is necessarily bad to look at people's prices and get a sense of whether or not you like kind of fall into the normal in this area or whatever area you live in.
03:00
Other people's prices do not have to dictate your prices. So when you think about for instance like Big companies like Target and Walmart, right? They have things like the lowest price guarantee Where you can get a discount on something Though I did this most recently on a video game for my children You can get the video game at a cheaper plate price if you can prove that it's a cheaper price at a different store That kind of pricing is not sustainable for small businesses and isn't what people want in small businesses So in Target for instance, I am a bargain shopper like I thrive on finding things that are like two bucks three bucks and and it's even more Validating I suppose is the word if it was originally like 25.
03:53
I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I have come home from a store and said to my husband How much do you think I paid for this and he's like, I don't know 10 cents and I'm like don't guess so low Like let it be awesome, you know, how much do you think it it costs originally?
04:10
He's like, I don't know 200 You know because he's so used to me doing it, but I'll be like, no it costs $35 and I paid three Isn't that amazing right and I am absolutely that person that people will be like.
04:21
Oh my gosh I love that person. I'm like, I know I found it for two dollars isn't it awesome? I am that person. Maybe it's because I grew up in Kansas. I don't know But that is that is what I love However, if I'm like going to get a haircut, I do not want to find the cheapest person I don't want to why because I've done that and I've gotten some real bad haircuts over the years Because I did that right so there are things That I come to with that kind of like I want to get the best deal there possibly is Mindset and there are things in life that I will absolutely not apply that mindset to I would like to just assert that doula work is on the list of don't buy the cheapest one, right?
05:06
Now I realized that financial ability and capacity very drastically family to family. I am not saying that everyone should be able to afford the most expensive doula around or that even that's necessary.
05:20
I don't think doulas that charge a small amount are always bad doulas, right? But you want to think about what you're communicating with your prices. So take the haircut situation for example. So I've gotten some fantastic $20 haircuts in my life and I've gotten some really terrible ones and the price was the same for all of them, right?
05:43
But the perceived price in my mind is that, or the perceived situation in my mind is that there are bad haircuts because they're cheap and therefore the person doesn't know what they're doing. And so that's kind of the correlation that I draw.
05:59
Whether or not that's accurate When you're thinking about your doula work, that is also the case sometimes that people are going to draw the conclusion that lower price doulas are either less experienced or Just not that good, right?
06:14
And so you don't want that First of all, like that's just not you don't necessarily want a client who's looking for the cheapest doula they can find That's not the ideal client for most people. Okay?
06:26
The other thing to think about is Are you even considering how much you're paying yourself and how much it costs To do this work? So I want to give you a little scenario because I've seen this recently and it just kind of blows my mind a little bit So let's say there's a doula who does birth and postpartum for postpartum They charge $30 an hour for doula work.
06:52
They charge $900 for a birth package Let's say the $900 gets broken out into roughly four hours of prenatal work Two hours of postpartum work five -ish hours of like, you know Work behind the scenes and emails and writing birth plans and that kind of stuff 16 hours at the actual birth.
07:13
Okay. Now that with drive time if you're in DC where I am Then that's around 35 hours worth of stuff. So that right there puts you at a 25 per hour mark except Also, you have to maybe pay for parking Like in this area in DC almost always you have to pay for parking.
07:36
You also have to pay for food. You also have to potentially pay for childcare or like a dog sitter or something like that you Probably have to pay for The next day some of the things that you're needing to do or maybe you're losing some money Because you have to not go into another job or you have to cancel a postpartum shift.
08:00
But also this isn't counting in like the eight or ten hours of sleep that you need after this right? So what I want you to consider is that you are making yourself work if you're charging this amount of money.
08:15
If you're charging $900 you're making yourself work for less money than some states have as their minimum wage. Just like let that sink in for a minute because the minimum wage is not what your goal should be.
08:34
And I'm not saying I am not a proponent of every doula charging crazy high amounts of money or never doing births for cheaper or never doing free births or anything like that okay. But what I'm saying is that that stuff is only sustainable if your actual package prices benefit or Kind of counteract it, right?
08:58
Like I take one very low cost birth per year, but I can do that because my other prices are higher, right? And I can compensate for that. And that's how I was able to add that in, not by just being available for only lower price births, right?
09:20
So I just want to challenge you not to set the rate that I have, not to set the rate that someone else has, but to break down some of your numbers. The rate that you have now, did you have any fees when they paid you that?
09:36
Did you get gas at all? Did you drive to them? Did you pay for parking? Did you pay for food? Did you pay for childcare or dog care or whatever? How many births are you with them? How many hours I mean, where you're with them at their birth?
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And how much did you actually make in profit from that? And do you feel good or bad about that price? And would you take a different job at that hourly rate or not? Because ultimately, we're not just in doula work to make money and be our own bosses.
10:14
But if we want to be our own bosses, we have to make money or we can't continue in business, right? And so if you're just making $12, $15 an hour, then you could go work at a store and have like health insurance and whatnot, right?
10:31
Like, because that's not sustainable to have on a $12 or $13 an hour salary that you're giving yourself through your business that doesn't give you small, doesn't give you health insurance, right? Like you, you then qualify for state aid and things like that, right?
10:47
So I just want you to take some time to break this down because I think we do ourselves such a really drastic disservice by having having our prices so incredibly low that we are not even able to sustain our business with them there.
11:04
Okay, so I would love to hear if this is a struggle for you and if so, what piece of it is hard for you? The easiest way to get in touch with me is on Instagram at Harrodoula. The link is in the show notes.
11:22
Please send me a message. Tell me what your struggle is in charging the money that you need to be charging. All right, I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the doula Tips and Tits podcast.
11:41
If you learned something today or had an aha moment, we'd love for you to share that on Instagram and tag us at Harrodoula. 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.
11:58
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.
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We'll see you again soon.
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What determines your value for your business? Is it your skill? Is it the work you put into the business? Is it just you being you? Today we are diving into putting a price on your skills and hard work as well as making sure you are giving yourself the credit you deserve.
Quote from the show:
“So I want you to take a minute to think about that. Like really let that sink in. We work in a field that has an incredibly high turnover and an incredibly high rate of burnout. Now there are all different factors, right? There are multiple things that cause burnout, and multiple scenarios to consider, but I will say that one of the things that I see frequently is undervaluing. paying, which ultimately is undercharging. Because as a doula, most of the time your clients are not choosing what to pay you, you're choosing what to charge them. And so if you're charging them way less than you should be charging them, then or way less than is sustainable for your business, then ultimately you are the one that suffers, not them, right? And so what I want to kind of encourage you is to just take a minute to sort of just sit down and think through what you need in terms of revenue, right?”
CONNECT with Kaely on TikTok or Instagram
https://www.tiktok.com/@doulacoach
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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
