Letting Your Business Evolve With Ciarra
-
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 into today's episode.
Hello and welcome back to Dula Tips and Tits. We are on another guest episode. Today, we have a doula named Sierra from the Austin, Texas area. She is a doula, a hypnobirthing educator, a pediatric sleep consultant, and a doula trainer, so coming with lots of skills.
Sierra, welcome to the show, and I would love for you to share a bit about how you got started on this journey. Thanks for having me here. Rolling on back, how did I get started? My daughter was born 14 years ago.
Things did not go the way that I wanted them to go, but I also didn't have the team around me, the supportive partner around me. I didn't have the education. I didn't have the access to education. So I went in with a goal of an unmedicated birth in a hospital at a military installation and came out with an epidural and pitocin and all that jazz.
Seven and a half years later, different partner, new husband, new got a doula, didn't have one last time, took hypnobirthing classes, didn't do that before, decided on a birthing center, didn't do that before, and my birth was absolutely incredible.
And I looked up at my husband afterward and I was like, I have to help other people do this. They have to know this is possible. And he already had dad jokes for days and said... just doula it. I'm not kidding.
He really actually said that. And so we, my son, when he was 14 or 15 months old, I flew to Florida for a four day intensive program to take a Hypno-Breathing Educator training. And I loved it. I came, I mean, it was a very expensive investment.
But I was just like, you know what, I've been a mom for the last 15, I've been a mom for nine years at that point. But I've been a mom only for the last 15 months. And I'm just, I need something for myself.
I worked a part time job, like at a civil engineering firm. But it wasn't like I was doing something that was pouring into my own soul. And I knew that this is what I wanted to do. So when I came back, I hit the ground running.
Within six months, I quit my day job. And I was because I was only taking one client a month for birth, because I came back and also started kind of a birth doula training at the same time online. And I started teaching classes, I started having people reach out for birth doula help, and I was limiting it to one a month, but then I was getting inquiries for more.
And I was like, well, my work knows I'm going to call in one day a month randomly. They were cool with that. They wanted to keep me, but they're not going to be cool with two days a month, you know? I lead meetings.
And so I kind of decided it's sink or swim right now. Like I've got to jump, and I'm just going to see how it goes. And I did. I went and quit my day job. I started taking two a month because I realized if I took two births a month and taught a class, I was supplementing my income, that I was gone every day, the first half of the day, from my kids.
And instead, I could just do this twice a month, plus a couple of prenatals and postpartums, and be with my kids way more, you know? So and do something I'm just loving. So I did that, and so that's kind of how I got into birth work.
Do you want me to kind of talk about the supplementation from then on? Actually, I want to stop and ask you a question of that beginning part, because it prompted a question for me. When you hit the ground running, how did you get some of those first clients?
Like were they referrals from folks or the people you knew? How did they kind of start flowing in? So I think I had a couple of things working in my favor. So the first one is the hip number thing training.
There were not a whole lot of hip number thing educators here in Austin. So just that helped me stand apart. And to this day, I would say 75% of the people who come through my company are coming because they also want hip number thing.
So that was a big part of it. I think that that really helped me. I posted in a lot of social media groups on Facebook. I just joined a bunch of mom groups. I paid attention to what days you're allowed to post.
Is it Tuesday, you know, Small Business Tuesday? Is it Mama Mondays or whatever? And Small Business Saturday. And so I would look at the rules. I would make sure that I logged on on those days, I would make a little flyer about my upcoming classes.
And at first I was just doing classes. So the first people I did, they actually hired me for a private hypnobirthing group session or class session. So that's five classes that we had together in their home, it was kind of far from me, but I was like, whatever, I need my first clients.
And I joined them five, you know, for five weeks in their home. And it was their first baby. And by the last class, they had said like, they considered getting into a low, but they weren't really sure.
And I was like, well, I'm in training. And I would love to do it. I'll give you like, for super reduced price, if you want to, if you want to do it, since you're already buying my hypnobirthing classes.
And they're like, yeah, that sounds great. I think I charged them like 300 bucks. And I mean, it was less than I charged them for their classes. And they said, yes, they were excited about that. But then, because I was so active, I'm telling you all in these Facebook groups on social media is really great.
I know the younger people like, oh, Facebook, but I'm saying these groups are really good. And there was a local group that I was in where someone was asking about childbirth education, I answered a question and a social worker saw it and she worked at an adoption agency and she was working with a young mom who was going to be giving her baby for adoption and needed a childbirth education class and she didn't have time for hypnobirthing her the intended pair the adoptive parents were gonna pay for her childbirth ed and they're like would you be able to kind of make something for her and my rule is you just say yes like if you're if you know you could but you don't really have this structure yet you say yes and you make it happen and I learned that from my mama she was always like if I'm in an interview and they asked me if I could do something it's yes because by the time they want me to do it I'm gonna do it I'm gonna learn how to do it so I created this class for this mother who is going to be giving birth and not keeping her baby so I had to change a lot of things because we're not talking about bonding with the baby and we're not talking about postpartum and breastfeeding you know and when I was at her house doing this class it was me her and her stepmom and I think her dad and her little brother were in the house and we're sitting around she was a senior in high school 18 I'm teaching her and I get up to use the restroom and I come back and while I was in the restaurant I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to offer to be her birth doula for free I was like she needs somebody she only has her stepmom nobody even none of her friends knew she was gonna give her baby for adoption because she said she didn't want anyone to tell her to change her mind and I walked out and I said look you are not obligated to take this offer but I want you to know and you don't have to decide today if you'd like me to be there I'll be there and so they took me up on it and they ended up being that ended up being my first birth even though she quote-unquote hired me or signed on with me after the other people and so it started kind of going from there I really think that people searching for hypnobirthing in Austin really helped me it was a huge investment on the front end but I think that it has been the best investment I've made.
And it kind of rolled on from there. And I did a lot of networking with other birth professionals. I love that. I mean, I love every part of that. But I also love like, we'll get into where you are in your business right now.
But I speak all the time about like my first clients, I charged them 325, you know, because I was just like, I don't know. And also, I'm scared you're gonna say no to me. And also, I don't feel like I know what I'm doing.
You know, like and that's okay, like that. Now I charge more than most people in DC, you know, so it's like, you can be in that place and honor the place that you're in, in that moment and still grow from that spot.
So I love that. Yeah, and that's the same for us. We're in the top two, I think, in price in Austin, Texas. Yeah, but we also have times where there are people that can contact us and they can't afford our services.
And we give it to them for cheaper, you know, we just because you can you're able to give back because you're making money on the other side. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And actually my clients who pay my full price love that I do that.
Like they love that they are paying for that, you know? And that's part of what they want to be paying for because they can. And that, anyway, that's not what our episode's about today but we can get into, that could be the whole episode.
Next episode with Sierra and Kaylee. Stay tuned, we'll be back later this year. So, okay, so where you are now is a very different place from where you started. So can you kind of, I know this is a big ask but bridge that of like where you were and how you got to where you are at the moment.
Yeah, so the next thing that I did was add on a pediatric sleep consulting certification, which again was very expensive. And I was blessed and privileged that I had that money to be able to invest in myself.
And I always knew because I have more of a business mindset, I used to do kind of MLM kind of stuff. Like I knew you have to invest in yourself before you're gonna start seeing the results and I was able to do them.
And so I did and that was about a year in. And at this point, you guys, like I was turning away work left and right. I was having people want to work with me and I was like, I'm at my two max, I'm sorry.
And I was turning away at least two clients a month. And I had people in my life going, why don't you just have people on your team? Why don't you hire other doulas? And I was like, that is so intimidating.
Also, it's not what I wanna do. I don't think so. And it just kept coming up over and over and over. And so finally I was like, you know what, fine. I'm gonna start interviewing people for this eventually.
And I actually replied to a post, somebody was gonna be moving here from California. She posted in our Austin Birth Professionals group and she would get in Facebook. And she's like, I'm kind of looking to work with a team, looking for some mentorship when I get to Austin.
And I just commented and I said, hey, I've considered been like toying around with adding people to my team. I'm happy to interview. and talk with you and see if it might be a good fit. Well, we talked.
It was a great fit. She's complete opposite of me, which I loved. And she's like much more spiritual and, you know, very in tune, like I've been in tune with my body, but I'm way more type A. She is way more artsy, like feely person.
And so, but by the time she moved here, I had actually already added other people to the team because people saw that post and started sliding into my DMs. And I was part of a doula association here where they had known me from that.
And I do think that it, for sure. And I've actually have had people tell me, one doula came to me a couple of years after my, you know, me doing this. And she goes, when you first showed up, we were like, who is this chick?
Like who does she think she is? She is just like starting an agency. She's been doing this for a year and I knew, I was intimidated by that. I knew that people were going to go, who is she, who she thinks she is, but I just had to do it and it worked.
and I added postpartum doulas because I didn't want to do the postpartum work. I'm certified, but I didn't want to do it. Mama loves her sleep. And I added Jess to my team for postpartum, and she's still with me now four years later.
And she's booked through next February, you know, like we it's been wonderful. So that's how I started my agency. It was kind of by accident. And at one point, we had like 12 people or something like that on our team.
And I've slowly kind of cold the herd to the people that really, we work well together. And it's easier because otherwise, I was just feeling like I was on call all the time. I didn't know if I could trust that they were going to show up to their births.
I'm like, now I need to take less births because they're taking births that I'm on call for. I want to be with my family too. So that was how I started the agency. And after a year of that, having another girl on my team, named Samantha, a year after she was on my team, I you know, I mentor everybody that's on my team, I would like decompress after birth with them and talk about those things.
And after doing that for a while with her, I was like, man, we work really similarly. But she has strengths I don't have. And I have strengths she doesn't have. She's really good at anatomy and like spinning babies.
And I'm, I've taken those trainings too. But it doesn't stick with me like it sticks with her. She's a rock star research. Like I asked a question and she has me awesome answers within like 30 minutes, you know, she's the half of my brain that I don't have.
And so I just asked her to go get coffee with me. Well, tea, I don't drink coffee, but that's another story. She told me if I would have known you don't drink coffee or wine before this whole thing, I don't know if I would have trusted you.
So she went and I said, you know, I'm thinking, do you want to join forces? Do you want to partner together where we're on call because the burnout rate for doulas is five years. And I don't want to burn out.
And she's like, you know what, I don't either. She had small kids and we were both really nervous about it. Talk to our husbands. They were a little sketch on it. They both were like protective of us, you know, saying this could be bad.
And We did it. We jumped in and we started only letting people hire us if they wanted both of us and we filled our books immediately. Like it was just, we were so scared, you know, but it worked. And we actually put out, I have a Facebook group for the families that hire us called Empowered Families ATX.
And in there, before we did it, I did a poll. Like if I was a partner, Zula, would you have hired me still? Yes, no, or I would have needed more information. And I explained why I was going to go do it, or why I was considering it.
And all but one person said yes, and the person that didn't say yes said I need more information. I was like, well, that's a good poll. I feel like, all right, I'm going to do it. And so we did that about a year after doing that together, I went into a massage.
She was going to be taking the reins on the phone. And I said, I'm going to go in a massage, which I loved, like what a perk of having a partner. Everyone's in a group text with both of us. So I didn't have to worry.
after the hour I came out and I text her and I said okay so you're gonna think I'm crazy but I want to start a podcast and here's like 20 episode ideas I have and I've been wanting to do it ever since I listened to the birth queens when I first became a uh birth doula and I just want to do it and she wrote back and she goes I'm really confused you said that you were going into a massage could you relax yeah I think you like that's not how my brain works thank you that is not how my brain works I had 27 new ideas for my business uh huh yeah I sure did I was like you don't have to do this with me but I'm gonna do this and she goes well of course I'm gonna do it with you so that's how birth baby podcast was spawned and honestly my intent in doing this podcast is that I teach classes where people have 12 and a half hours with me over five weeks and I still can't teach them everything they still want supplemental information and I would always say oh I just need to make a podcast so I can just give you the episode about tens units or I just need a podcast so I get and I started doing lives on Facebook and sending them the links but not everybody has Facebooks so I decided uh if I didn't have to repeat myself a thousand times I would save myself a lot of time so yes this will be an investment monetarily but it is a free resource for people who can't afford to access it otherwise and I'm not gonna have to repeat myself and I could just give it to people in Facebook groups that aren't even my clients how wonderful to give them free information so that's what I did and then about like I don't know maybe eight months later we had had a bunch of people coming to us new doulas wanting to be on our team for the agency and I was like gosh when I was talking to them they're it was so clear that they're they were lacking so much information that I feel they should get in their training and I was blessed that I had a background of business I had a background of you know I was a project coordinator at a civil engineering firm I had a million projects,
I had like five or six project managers, they were engineers, I'm not, and they have 10 projects each that I'm helping navigate through a system in the city. And so for me now it's just like my doulas and their pregnant clients.
And so after a while I was like telling Samantha, man, these people don't know this and gosh, she's asking me this question, like nothing against her, but why, how much did she pay for her training? Because she got screwed, you know?
And I said, don't, I text her, I even have a screenshot of this, I said, don't kill me. And I only said one word each. And it was, but I want to start A. And then I said, birth doula. And at the same time she wrote training, y'all, this was each one text, one word texts.
And she said at the same time, training shows, I knew you were going to say that. And I said, I'm just so tired of people not knowing stuff, it's not fair. If they're taking a training, they should get this stuff.
And she said, I'm in, I've been thinking about it too. Let's just do it. And she keeps having, you know, imposter syndrome. Who are we? Who are we to do this? And I'm like, we want me to do this. Like if we have the information, I know I'm capable.
I know we have the information. And if other people don't think that we're qualified, that's all them. I can't be bothered, you know? And so here we are. We just launched Birth Baby Academy. We have our first cohort of people starting September 27th doing a weekend workshop with us.
And one's flying in from Rhode Island to do it. That's very exciting. And then we have our online self-paced program starting in November. I'm gonna be doing that portion of it and making it so that some people can access it if they don't wanna come for a weekend workshop.
Damn, that's how I got where I am. I love that. I love that because so many parts about this I resonate with so much. I'm like, are we the same person and how we did our do-it stuff? So I have a question.
All from necessity. I mean, yeah, like it's, I think the other beautiful thing about it is that we, I mean, you and I are very similar just hearing what you've done and how you've done it. The way that we've done our business is very similar.
But we're not the only genre, right? Like we're not the only way to do it. It's not like you and I are doing it correctly and other people aren't. It's more that you and I are passionate about the same things.
Like lack of education is a big deal to us. Like having access to education is a big deal to both of us clearly. So those are some of the things of course that shine in our businesses because that's the stuff that like fires us up.
And we're like, I wanna be able to send credible information about TENS unit so people aren't reading this crap on the internet. And like that's, and I might as well just make an episode about it. That's the exact reason why.
I started my podcast as well. I have a question for you though about your podcast. Is it still talking mainly to parents or is it talking to doulas? It is talking mainly, well, there's a lot of information, pretty much every episode is going to be a benefit to parents.
Most of the episodes will also be a benefit to doulas, especially newer doulas, because there may be topics that you haven't considered talking about. We have guests on that are pediatricians. We're talking about when your baby has jaundice and you're in the hospital and they want to keep your baby an extra night so they can test their bilirubin again in the morning.
Do you really have to stay overnight? Well, you can help your client. If you find out about that, you learn that from this pediatrician. Now you have that also as a resource for your doula clients, right?
So that was one of the other things we really liked is, for example, we just did a couple of episodes with a local midwife. We talked about prodromal labor. And that's very beneficial for clients to listen to.
But then it's also beneficial for newer doulas who haven't had experience with clients with prodromal labor. They're like, what the heck's happening? They listen to our podcast. They don't quite know how to reiterate it yet because they haven't been doing it much.
And you have to do this a lot to be able to comfortably be able to replicate the information that you're getting in your brain. And so you're like, here's a podcast episode. Here's a little bit of information from me.
Here's a podcast episode as a supplement. And then that's a free resource for your clients. And I think that is the really big thing that I love because these midwives are able to send this prodromal labor episode to their midwives free clients now and go, OK, listen to what we talked to Sierra and Samantha about and go take a bed of driller or unison, please.
Go medicate yourself to sleep, please. I love that. I think part of part of what I love about the ability in this work to kind of make it your own is that you can sort of see how it evolves. And I also really love that all throughout what you've said so far, you're highlighting things like this was expensive and I could afford to do that because that's also a very key piece.
Right. Like not everyone can afford to start with an expensive training. Not everyone can afford to add expensive certifications right away. I love that you acknowledge that because I think I do not love when people are like, oh, just get trained in these three things.
And I'm like, if I had five thousand dollars, you know, like I remember as a new doula being like, I have the money for the training and nothing else. Like, that's all I have to invest in this. And I get that it would be faster and better if I could invest in more, but I can't.
And so as a personal like on a personal level, I think I don't love that because I think it just assumes everyone starts into this work with, you know, thousands of dollars to invest in things. And that's not the case.
However, I do love the ability to like, like kind of open yourself up to. the possibilities of this business, right? Like, and when I think about birth work, I think about like, curiosity around how it's going to go, right?
Like, we can't come to a birth and be like, I already know XYZ. I mean, for sure we do that sometimes. Like, we come more like, I'm pretty sure this is what's going to happen. And sometimes we're right.
It shows us what's up. Sometimes we're right. Sometimes we are not right. Yeah. And it is something that we have to be like, who knows? Like, let's see where it goes from here. That doesn't mean you don't have strategy.
It doesn't mean you don't have tools. It doesn't mean you don't have a game plan, but what it does mean is there are possibilities out there that you haven't even thought of that could be what's coming up.
And that, I mean, for me, if I, if you had said to me in 2017, like, guess what your business is going to look like in 2024, I would have been like, that's hilarious. Like, in no world am I going to be coaching doulas, but here we are, you know?
And it feels like the most perfect thing ever, you know? Yeah, two things. One is, along the way, I would have it would be from necessity, like, I did hip number thing training, now I want to help these people be able to have their babies.
So I need to do a birth doula training. Now I'm doing those things. I'm serving clients and people I hear people complaining about, there were a few things. One, people wanted their placentas encapsulated, my husband was like, absolutely not.
We're not doing that in this house, you're gonna need to go get your own house. And I hope you can pay for it all with placenta money. I hope that works out for you. We're not doing that here. He actually asked me how much would you make each time you encapsulated a placenta and I said about 200 bucks.
And he goes, I'll pay $200 every time you don't do that in this house. We're not doing it. So that was out. And then another thing people needed was lactation. And I have my eye breastfed two children past a year, each of them, but I have this weird aversion to breastfeeding.
When my children latched, and when I got on a pump, I have this weird nausea thing and it's like gag thing that happens in my throat. And I have an anxiety surrounding not being able to put this down so weird.
I can't believe I'm saying this on a podcast. Like if I can't put the baby on my own boob and soothe it, I can't really participate like my mom anxiety peaks for them. And I'm like, I can't nurse your baby for you.
So I don't really know I can't do it. And I can do the first like hour or two at the hospital, but then mama's out. But Samantha, my partner, she is amazing. And she wanted to do lactation. So she is a lactation counselor, like, and that was really good for her.
She's so good with anatomy. And I was like, I'm not gonna remember all the name of these ducks and all of these things. And it's just not my jam. And that's okay to like, realize what's not your jam and don't do that.
But then sleep, I struggled with my own kids sleep. I didn't even know I had postpartum anxiety until I was a birth worker. I was like, Oh, sure had that. And so much of it was because I was sleep deprived.
And the mom shaming kills me in all facets of the world, everyone's mom shaming or parent shaming. And so when I heard about sleep consulting, and I had clients. who are struggling with mental health because they were exhausted, I was like, you know what, this would be a natural progression to be able to help the same clients.
That's a great thing to think. What can I do to help the same clients and have them be clients for longer or in a bigger capacity or like expand the offerings that I can give to these same people without having to find new clients to give this new thing to.
Sure, you can provide it to anyone, but that's a really nice benefit. And then second of all, if you don't have money to invest in these things, one of the recommendations that I would make is to like look for a collective or an association in your area.
So for us, Central Texas Doula Association, I think you can do as low as like $40 for the whole year on some of the tiers of membership. And we have additional trainings that we do as an association.
We have meetups we do in networking and things like that, which is going to help spread you. And then also look for like, sometimes there's collectives, but also You might want to work for an agency to start out, it might not be you know, not everyone who's worked for my agency wanted to stay forever and they knew that and I was fine with that agency owners know that we're not going to probably have you forever.
And this is a stepping stone. But you learn so much by working for someone else's business, all the people who have gone on to have their own businesses after working for me or working with me I like to say better.
They know how to use Trello now, they know how to send they've seen all my questionnaires they've seen my contracts like there's big benefits and having that agency work. Oh, 100% and I talk about that all the time because I think we kind of, I mean there's different flavors of this and do the work of like you know whether or not you want to do agency work or not and I'm like, this is not a permanent decision.
If you need money right now, and you don't even have a website, then join an agency, be choosy about who you join right like the ask questions look at their contracts make sure that that you align with them.
But they do the marketing work and if they already are getting clients, you're going to get clients at a different kind of speed, because you're you're joining into that that marketing that they've done in the name of that group.
And that's, I mean for me as a team leader you know it's I, my doulas joke that we're a non agency agency because I mean we are an agency but I don't like that. They're like, you're not agency. Yeah, my team.
But sounds a little bougie. I know my team. They know that I want them to have thriving businesses if that's their desire. And many of them have gone through my business coaching, so they, they are like learning alongside and actually have access to things like my intake forums to replicate if they'd like from my business coaching because I think having gatekeeping in those things is what keeps people from being able to do them well and protect themselves and have sustainability and build in some of those good boundaries.
I love what you were saying about placenta. I'm sorry. No, I was just going to say the burnout rate is so high. We need more people as it's y'all, there's enough work. There are so many pregnant folks, so many.
We need people to support them. Your placenta thing is hilarious to me because I cannot envision cutting into an organ. I almost passed out the one time I saw an organ cut open. I can do all sorts of things.
I can be in a C section. I can pull teeth out, like I can do so many otherwise gross things. I cannot handle cutting someone else's organ. And so placentas have always been off the table for me because I'm like, absolutely not.
I can put it in a bag with ice for your other placenta encapsulator, but I will not ever patch nor cut open your placenta. I could literally hold one in my, I haven't, but I could hold one in my hands bare handed.
It would not bother me at all, but don't give me an IV and I can't watch you get one. I can be in a c-section but no ids please thank you. That's hilarious. We all have our thing. I have a nurse friend that I was telling her about the placenta thing when I've considered midwifery school off and on and she was like oh girl I can't even handle watching someone cut their toenails but I'm a whole nurse like but cutting toenails grosses me out she's like thankfully that's really never part of my job you know it's like I literally watch and participate in surgery she's like it doesn't make sense and that's okay so like as a midwife you also don't have to do a placenta encapsulation as long as I don't have to cut it I'm good I'm fine that's one thing I will never evolve into a doula for life never a midwife for me I cannot do any of the medical stuff I can watch a repair I can watch a c-section IVs are never happening and if there's a hemorrhage happening because of my own hemorrhages I have trauma like I couldn't do it yeah yeah I'm still my hang up is the the repairs I'm not sure that that's I also just don't know that I want to be the person in charge of all the medical things I'm way too empathetic I cannot have that all on my shoulders I love it that I'm not the one to make final decisions I every time there's a sketchy situation when I'm gonna birth I'm texting Samantha going and this is why I'm not a midwife yeah yeah yeah exactly and probably why I will be an IBCLC before I'll be a midwife right there you go yeah and you're not on call as an IBCLC yes exactly exactly um okay so I want to wrap us up only because we have been chatting for a while but we could we're gonna chat obviously like five more times forever yeah for sure episodes um I like to end with asking you what is something that you wish the doula is listening to this new and kind of can take away from this and I realize I'm putting you on the spot asking you that you are you guys she did not send me this question I had no time I wanted you to get the real life authentic answer right um something that I would love for people to to take away is that whatever decisions you make,
like you can always pivot. And you know, I have people that have joined my agency thinking that this was just a stepping stone for them. And three months later, they're asking me, how do I make it so my website reroutes to your website?
Because I don't want to do this stuff. I want to work for you forever. And I have those people. And then I have people that come in thinking that they want to work for an agency and they're going to love it.
And they're like, no, I want more autonomy. And I don't really want to do things the way that you do it. And remember that you can just always pivot. That's the beauty of this is that just like every, you know, every birth is different.
Like you were saying, it's a puzzle. And I say that all the time. I'm like, I'm solving puzzles constantly. And the puzzle is always changing. And the shape changes with everyone. But it's an unsolvable puzzle, for sure.
For sure. Sometimes we never get the answer. And there's also maybe a missing piece. And we just weren't given in the beginning. But when with your business, you can run it however you want to. And if something's not working, change it.
That's fine. like you don't have to commit right now to how you're going to do things forever. Do what you need to do to get off the ground and like start running and don't get discouraged if the person that you reached out to doesn't reply to your email.
Sometimes that happens and sometimes I'm guilty of it and I'm so stinking busy that I can't see straight and it's not that I don't want to meet up. So give people the benefit of the doubt, find the people that you can in your area and network, network, network.
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, what you said about that, like posting in those Facebook groups, that does not feel like it's paying off at first, but that pays off. I promise you, people will be like, I've seen your name everywhere.
And, and you're not going to see that in the first year, but two, three years down the road, every single client that comes in is going to have heard about you from someone. Yep. And that is how your business is going to thrive a couple of years from now.
And that work is done kind of in the grind of that first year or two, first year or two. Right. Yeah. You just got to keep on. Yes. Very much so. And it's discouraging, but it does pay off. Sierra, I appreciate you taking the time to be on the podcast.
And for folks that are listening to this, Sierra mentioned that her first cohorts in September, this podcast, we are recording in September, but we, it's going to come out later in the year. And so to reach out and hear about what's coming next, it might be that her self-paced thing is almost ready.
Go and check out her stuff, all of her links, her social media, everything is in the show notes. So connect with her, obviously for one, the awesome things that she has, but also because having community in this dual work is vital to our existence.
And so getting to know people and having that encouragement and community is so incredibly helpful. Sierra, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. And I can't wait for all the future episodes we do together.
Yeah. Thank you so much. but it was nice to be here. All right, we'll see everyone in the next episode. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Dula Tips and Tits podcast. If you learned something today or had an aha moment, we'd love for you to share that on Instagram and tag us at hiradula 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.
In your doula business it’s vital to take a step back and reflect on the year—what went well, what didn’t, and where there’s room to grow in your doula business. If you’re ready to get focused, intentional, and strategic for the new year, I’ve got just the thing for you: a two-hour, interactive workshop where we’ll do this exact process together. Let’s set the stage for your strongest year yet!
https://harroddoulaservices.thrivecart.com/level-up-your-doula-biz-2024-pod/
Every doula business is birthed differently. There are a variety of ways to grow your business and make it the business of your dreams. Today’s guest, Ciarra Morgan is here to share with us how she has grown her business faster than many folks do by taking brave action!
Quote from Ciarra:
“Within six months, I quit my day job. I was only taking one client a month for birth, because I came back and also started kind of a birth doula training at the same time online. And I started teaching classes, I started having people reach out for birth doula help, and I was limiting it to one a month, but then I was getting inquiries for more. And so I kind of decided it's sink or swim right now. Like I've got to jump, and I'm just going to see how it goes. And I did. I went and quit my day job. I started taking two a month because I realized if I took two births a month and taught a class, I was supplementing my income, that I was gone every day, the first half of the day, from my kids.”
Meet Ciarra Morgan:
Ciarra Morgan is a birth and postpartum doula, HypnoBirthing educator, pediatric sleep consultant, birth doula trainer, and creator/cohost of the Birth, Baby! Podcast. She is a wife, mother of two children, and has a passion for helping parents navigate their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journeys. If you would like to learn more about becoming a birth doula, be sure to check out Birth, Baby! Academy at www.BirthBabyAcademy.com
Connect with Ciarra Morgan:
www.EmpoweredBeginningsATX.com
CONNECT with Kaely on TikTok or Instagram
https://www.tiktok.com/@doulacoach
https://www.instagram.com/Harroddoula/
If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @harroddoula
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
