Why Do I Have A Team?

May 15

Transcript
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.
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. Welcome back to doula tips and tips. I am talking today about why I have a team and I want to take a little bit of time to go over this because I think it's a necessary journey to consider when you're a newer doula, when you're looking at like what will your business trajectory be like, right?
When I was a brand spanking new doula, I had zero desire to ever have a team or an agency or any of that. And I think part of it was that I was afraid of what that would look like. And I would I knew that if I had a team, I needed to be the one that was doing business well, and was doing it well for the whole team.
And so there's a lot of pressure there, right? Like there's a lot of responsibility that's on the person who's running those things. And that kind of scared me, right? And so for me, I think I also, I don't know, I think I also thought of myself as a smaller business.
And so I was thinking, you know, my business isn't big enough. And I don't think it ever will get big enough. Like I had a lot of limiting beliefs when I was a newer doula. And honestly, throughout my whole life, we're gonna be we're gonna be frank, right?
But then I remember being in my first coaching cohort as a like a business coach, where I was getting coaching. And my coach said to me, you really need a virtual assistant to do some of this work that you're doing, because you just don't have enough time.
And it was incredibly validating to be told, like, why do you feel like you're losing your mind because you're doing more than you actually have time to do. And I was like, I ended up hiring a dear friend who was also like a wonderful friend of the family and amazing virtual assistant.
She's not my virtual assistant now, but that's a recent change. But she is like such an amazing person. And I'm so grateful for the year plus that I had with her on the team. The beginning of that was less scary, because I knew her.
And so it was a personal relationship that I was like, okay, I don't have to like, you know, make sure I'm hiring the right person, like getting someone who's credible, getting someone who's like, I don't know, trustworthy, you know, because she was and I knew that because I already knew her.
The difference that that made in my business was massive, because I was able to offload off my plate, a bunch of stuff about the podcast. Scheduling the podcast writing the show notes all that kind of stuff That honestly took me so much time in part because I really hated doing it And so we would joke when I first hired her I'd be like, okay It takes me like roughly two episodes of law and order to get this done because I like hate it so much That I avoid doing it and she she was kind of like, oh, yeah, okay It takes me like 20 minutes And I was like, of course it does because you probably just sit down and do it and I don't because I hate it so much and so The thing that I found in my business is that I was actually able to have so much more mental space To do so many other things that needed to be done and it was initially just a hundred dollars a month That's all I could afford and so that's what I hired her for right and I was like I don't want you to work over the hours that we've talked about the hours that I'm able to pay you for and So, you know, it was it was a relatively small investment initially for me To to be able to have a lot of time freed up from me, right?
And I think that it was a great way for me to start my team by building with someone that I knew and someone that I trusted so that I didn't have Quite as much anxiety going into having that new person now the next person I added to the team was Kirsten who was the first doula who ever started working with me and I knew I Wanted to start having people work with me But I wasn't sure how I wanted it to look and I was getting loads of inquiries last summer and I was like, okay I know Kirsten is a person that I want on the team at some point I know that it would be amazing to be able to Give all these folks someone else to talk to rather than me.
Just say I'm I'm full. I can't work with you, right? Which is what I was doing at the time It also felt like a really lovely way to bring her on without feeling like I I was like Okay, you've got to be hired by these people but instead I could be like hey these people can't be hired by me because I don't have time for them and so if you are able to do a consultation with them you want to do a consultation with them and they want to hire you Amazing.
If not, that's okay, too because otherwise they're not going to be in the business regardless, right? The other thing that was lovely is that she was willing and able to offer overnight services that I was not able to offer And so right away I was able to start utilizing that with my clients and I had clients have Overnight with her within maybe like a month or two of her starting to work with me And so pretty quickly I was able to expand the services that I offered in terms of postpartum care Because I had a second doula on the team and it didn't require me to do more work now the amount of money that that brings into my business is relatively low because Most of the money that someone pays for a doula is going to her right like going to the doula that they they hired as They should as it should be But it is some income coming into the business It's also like more people who know about the business more people who know about the childbirth class, etc So it's exposure for the business, right?
But I don't want you to think that I added a team especially of doulas in order to have like a get quick Get rich quick. I can't even say that phrase correctly Get rich quick scheme, right because that was not the intention and also not the reality like I don't have that volume And I also pay my doulas a very high rate so that I keep Excuse me a much smaller amount of money then some agencies keep because I think that's equitable like I keep enough money to make it worthwhile for me to have like the forms and the contracts and the Back -end stuff and also for them to get paid well for the work that they're doing because that matters Okay, so So Kirsten joined the team in July of 2023 and then I knew by the end of the year end of 2023 that I wanted to add some more doulas.
I was a little bit scared to do that but also like okay I have a lot of inquiries coming in you know like as long as I'm adding people and they know they don't have a guarantee of how much work is going to happen to them you know because I have people coming into the business that are willing to do consultations but I don't know that those people are going to hire them right like they may or may not and if they're talking to multiple people on the team it might be that they choose one person over the other or whatever we were still working we are we do work with like a primary doula model where like someone hires the particular doula who's on my team and so you know they might interview with three or four people and out of those three or four people they're deciding who who feels like a good fit of course some people decide not to hire anybody and some people decide they only want to talk to one or two of those people that are available so it looks different every time but I knew that I needed to start adding some more people but the volume of work I was getting was more than I can handle just with Kirsten and I and so I reached out to a couple doulas that I wanted to add to the team and then from there kind of started to get an influx and inquiries and said okay well I guess if I'm going to do this I need to just hire enough people that I actually have enough like doulas to give people to choose from right because I don't want it I don't want to have inquiries coming in that I'm just turning away because I can't offer those services so I brought seven more people onto the team the beginning of the year so around like February and then started slowly working on getting them on the website and things like that my um broken ankle time frame was when I revamped the website a bit and added the team page and added people's bios I have since added um two more people to the team and so there are nine doulas total that work with me now um and honestly it's lovely like it's wonderful I love it I adore it it's it's amazing um and it has given them work which I love it has given doulas I mean doula clients a chance to have a doula and to be still within our business which is amazing um and so it is something that I am really enjoying it's not something I'm doing perfectly right now by any stretch there's still lots of growing pains from the business side and also I like I'm hoping to start regular team meetings and things like that but that has not happened yet because of my life being a little crazy with the broken ankle situation this whole year has been a bit wild because of that um but I I have some aspirations now, right, for a bigger team, for a more cohesive team, and also for some ongoing education and things like that that can be a part of that.
So that this being on this team is a huge benefit to the doulas as well. So that's a little bit about why I started to have a team and kind of the timeline of the team. I am going to dive a bit into why or when it might be the right time for you to add people to your team so you can start thinking about that.
But I know that some of you might be a long ways from that. What I do want you to consider though is the long term look of your business. Because I think we think really small when we're small business owners.
Like we're like, oh, imagine next year having like 30 people as clients, right? We're like, what about five years from now? Like what do you want your business to look like in the next decade, right?
Like in the next 10 years, what do you want it to look like? And maybe you'd say like, okay, I don't know that I want to have a business for 10 years. Okay, well that's fine, you know, but then that's what you want it to look like.
You want it to look like you've retired from this business or you've closed this business down in the 10 years, right? And so what that looks like is different for everybody. But I just want to encourage you to have an open mind of when and how this might apply to you, all right?
If you have not done so yet, I would invite you to join our newsletter list. The link is at the top of the show notes. And what you would expect from that is bi -monthly newsletters. Actually, it's every other week.
So sometimes you get three, if we have a long month and the Fridays all fall in the right time. But every other, every other Friday, you get a newsletter from me talking about educational things, things that are going on in my business, things I'm learning that I want you to learn from, and also updates on the most recent podcast.
So if you want to stay in line with the the newest stuff that's happening in the newsletter, please go ahead and join that link. It is in the show notes. You can also talk to me on instagram at haraa dula and I can hand you that link there.
But I would really love to have you on the list. 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 haraa 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.

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Today is all about the journey to building my team in my business. Why I did it, how it has gone! If you’re a small business owner you need to consider when and how you’d build your business team. That may be soon or maybe it will be later, but regardless it’s something people need to consider.

Quote from the show:

“I think that [starting with Hunter has my VA] was a great way for me to start my team by building with someone that I knew and someone that I trusted so that I didn't have quite as much anxiety going into having that new person. Now the next person I added to the team was Kirsten who was the first doula who ever started working with me. I knew I wanted to start having people work with me But I wasn't sure how I wanted it to look and I was getting loads of inquiries last summer and I was like, okay I know Kirsten is a person that I want on the team at some point I know that it would be amazing to be able to give all these folks someone else to talk to rather than me. ”

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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