What Are Your Next Doula Business Steps?
-
Transcript
Welcome to doula tips and tips. 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.
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.
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Hello and welcome back to doula tips and tips. Today we're talking about next steps. So this is something that I think about frequently because I think it's very easy in business to feel like something needs to go or move or change or grow or whatever, but we're not sure what it is.
And I just want to tell you a little bit about my journey into online offerings because man, it has been a journey. So and I was making it from scratch using some like beautiful illustrations from a company called the educated birth.
If you are not familiar with them, they have some of the most amazing resources and illustrations and just like a wealth of information. I actually have a professional membership with them. So my team and I all have access to their infographics and their childbirth ed stuff and their handouts and all of that and it's awesome.
My clients love them and they benefit from all of that. So anyway, so I made a childbirth ed class and it was entirely virtual. And I was kind of like people are going to buy this obviously, right? Like people are just going to find it and buy it.
Also at the time, I think it's worth noting that my marketing efforts were something like, hello, I have a childbirth class, which I just want to normalize because I don't have a background in marketing, right?
I don't know about online sales. Like this is not my forte at all. And so at the time, I had, first of all, just gotten on Instagram. Like I felt like so incredibly old. I'm 38. So I'm not like crazy old, but like I for sure I'm the Facebook era.
And then Instagram came and I was kind of like, I don't know, do I need that? Like who needs another social media platform? And then I was like, Oh, I guess I should have it for my business. So you can scroll back in my Instagram to all the way back to the original videos.
And it was right at the beginning of the pandemic. And it was a good effort. I was dedicated to learning the ways of Instagram, but it was certainly not something I was great at at the beginning. And so what I did is I created this class.
And then I was like, okay, the class is out there. It's live. It's online. It's like available for people to do it. And nothing happened. And so then I think it was probably the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram.
Honestly, I started getting ads for like classes about selling online classes. So if you've ever heard of like a funnel or like online marketing or ads or any of that, that is where my world went. And I was like, oh my gosh, I had no idea.
Like I'd never thought of the fact that you could like get hundreds of people to sign up to your class and it could like sell on its own and things like that. And I'll be honest with you, I'm still not at that place.
Like I do not sell hundreds of my class, right? Like I'm working on it. I'm slowly learning how to have a good working funnel that like makes me not have to constantly be tweaking it and all of that.
But it's not, I'm not at a perfect place with it. Like I'm still not making loads of revenue on my online class like I could be. Like I will be at some point in the future, right? Near future, hopefully.
But what I think, what I started to realize is that there are literally endless things you can tweak. So imagine being in a class and someone saying to you, it could be the color of the words on your page.
It could be the actual words themselves, like how you said this thing, right? It could also be like the spacing. It could be how many things are on that page. It could be how many pictures there are.
It could be where the button is. And I remember just being like, I'm gonna lose my mind before I get this class to sell. Like that's what's gonna happen is I'm gonna lose it because how can I possibly control for every variable as I'm trying to figure out why this class is not selling yet, right?
So at the time I was kind of like, okay, well mainly I'm gonna sell this to my clients then and then see what it equals in terms of them being well -educated and how they perceive it, like how they like it, et cetera.
And my clients started loving it, like really loving my class. And so I was like, okay, great, wonderful. So the class is good, right? And like they feel well -educated. We're going into birth with like a really good understanding of what's happening and what to expect.
So, you know, I kind of tested it out on my own that like the class is not the problem. The class is amazing. The problem is I don't have a good marketing strategy for it, right? And so as a solo business owner, I spent the next couple of years being like, what do I tweak about this, right?
Like do I change this? Do I change that? Do I make it a different color? Do I change where it's hosted? Do I change how much it costs? Do I change, you know, like the language around it? And truly endless things should be changed.
And when I met my coach, so my business coach, I met her almost two years ago now. When I first met her, I remember saying to her, I have this childbirth class that could sell on its own. Like it could do like, you know, it could be passively selling.
And she was like, Kaylee, it's gonna take a ton of work to get that working. And she was like, I'm not saying you shouldn't do that because at some point, yes, you should do that. But in the meantime, it's probably wise to work on growing other revenue in your business so that you can get to the point of affording to do that.
And I was like, okay, great, thank you so much. And so that kind of clarity and having like, having the next step and also the reason for the next step was huge for me because it's so easy to look inside your own business and just be like, I don't know what to do next.
And in that moment to pick something really random. I know so many business owners that love making stuff in Canva and they will tell you when they don't know what to do next, they just redesign things in Canva.
And that is not moving their business forward, right? Like that's not a productive use of their time, but that's what they do because they enjoy it. And because they're like, I don't know what to do next and so I'm gonna do this thing that technically is working in my business, so technically, I'm doing something, but they're not, right?
Like they're truly not. And I think normalizing that matters so much because we just like toss ourselves into this space of being like, I'll figure it out, rather than actually making productive steps in the right direction because that is what moves the needle, not just you like redesigning something beautiful in Canva or like posting another reel on Instagram, right?
It actually takes you you having some strategy and you having someone else on the outside looking in. So part of what I love about the work that I do is getting to do that, like getting to hear people's businesses and what they're dealing with and what offers they have and celebrating them and also being like, Hey, you know what I think you should do is add this thing.
Like I think you should have a QR code for that. I think you should have an email list so that you can market this to more than one person, right? I think that you should automatically have a way that birth clients flow into postpartum clients, right?
And so that, that kind of strategy is what moves your business and doesn't just kind of keep you stuck in this space of, of trial and error and constant experimentation. So, um, you should be hearing, um, I think in the next episode, uh, from Becky, so she's my private doula coach that I, or I was her doula coach.
She was my private doula coaching client that I had at the beginning of 2024. We just wrapped up, um, not long ago, and she has made some amazing moves in her business. And so you're going to get to hear a little bit about that and about what it means to have private doula coaching and how that could help expand your business and grow your business.
Um, and so stay tuned for that because I am super excited for you to hear kind of the transformations that she experienced. All right. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the doula 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 Herrad doula 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.
Never want to miss what we’re doing for doulas? Subscribe to our newsletter! We won’t spam you, but we do promise amazing content and classes! https://www.harroddoulaservices.com/newsletter
Taking steps in your Doula business is vital to forward movement. Do you know what your next steps are? Where are you headed in your business? Today’s episode dives into that and more!
Quote from the show:
“Like I'd never thought of the fact that you would like to get hundreds of people to sign up to your class and it could sell on its own and things like that. And I'll be honest with you, I'm still not at that place. Like I do not sell hundreds of my class, right? Like I'm working on it. I'm slowly learning how to have a good working funnel that makes me not have to constantly be tweaking it and all of that. Like I'm still not making loads of revenue on my online class like I could be. Like I will be at some point in the future, right?”
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
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
