← The Doula Darcy Podcast
The Doula Darcy Podcast
End-of-Year Reflections and Strategies for Doula Business Success
00:32:27
End-of-Year Reflections and Strategies for Doula Business Success Join Doula Darcy as she guides you through her end-of-year process for reflections and strategies to kick off the next year in the best way possible. In this episode,...
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- [00:04]
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Welcome to the Doula Darcy Podcast. I'm your host, Darcy, a business coach for doulas and I love helping my fellow doulas master the art of marketing so that they can grow their businesses and help more families. On the podcast, I combine my decade of experience in Advertising with 14 years as a doula to empower other doulas with the marketing strategies and mindset shift they need to attract more clients and create successful, fulfilling doula careers. Whether you're just starting out as a doula or you're looking to take your doula business to the next level, you're in the right place. Let's go.
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Hey there Everybody. It is December 15th and I want to dive in with you today on a few things that I do at the end of every year year in my doula business to make the most or kick off the next year in the best way. And I have a feeling this is going to be a little different than all the other information that you're hearing and seeing right now online. I'm seeing so many like 10 strategies to end the year strong and five hacks for the new year. Like, I am not into all that. Maybe it's because I'm 50, maybe it's because I've been in business now as an entrepreneur for coming up on 15 years. I just, maybe it's because I'm a mom of three and the holidays, this is a busy time of year and I don't have time for extra work. I just, I'm over the fact of making lists and looking at percentages and setting goals for the new year. I just loosely just want to do better every year and if I don't so just going to tell you, give it to you straight. That's where I come from. But there are a few things that I do and I think these will be really helpful for you all. And a good, it's just, it's good to reframe on this whole end of year planning, end of year strategy conversation. So the very first thing I do as we're coming up towards the end of the year is I like to get myself in a frame of mind of gratitude and celebration. And that is helpful because very often us humans can get into this mindset of lack scarcity, oh my God, another year's over and I didn't accomplish enough and I didn't do these goals I said I was going to do and nothing's really changed and that's just not helping anyone. And most of the time, in my experience it's not even true. I can be feeling that way. And then I go back and look over the past year and there's, first of all, there's always something to be grateful for and there's always something to celebrate. And there's usually a lot more in both categories than I'm remembering off the top of my head. So for me, one of the funnest ways to do this is to go back through my photos. I just sit down last night, I sat by my Christmas tree and went scrolled back in my phone to January 1st of 2024 and just started looking through the photos. And this is so great to do from a business perspective because you go back photos of clients that you worked with, funny moments. If you took pictures with clients and it's just remembering, oh yeah, clients that you worked with in January and February seem so long ago. So it's great to just have those memories and reflect on your time with clients. It's also great to go through these photos and remember maybe conferences that you went to or trainings that you took or events that you went to as a doula, and then also doula meetings. Like, did you snap a selfie when you had coffee with a couple doulas in March? Then you've completely forgotten about that. So it's so great to go back through these pictures on a business level and a personal level and just relive everything. This is also, if you want to get nerdy, a great chance to check that you have kept track of all your mileage. Maybe you forgot to put down the mileage that you drove into the city and had dinner with five other doulas, that mileage counts, those tolls count. So make sure you're also keeping track of those. Make sure you're tracking the mileage. If you had to drive to the airport to fly to a conference, like maybe you haven't written that down yet. And this is your chance to remember all the mileage. And I'll get into that a little bit later on about the tax implications of keeping track of your mileage. But it's a good chance as you're going through the photos to remember, oh yeah, I drove out here for this meeting or I drove, I've rented a car for this conference, all these things. And also it's just fun. And also it just you look back on the personal highlights of your year as well. So if you can do that and again, focus on the gratitude for what you've gotten to experience, what you've got to do this year, celebrating what you did this year. I practically was in tears doing this because I already forgot that kicking off 2024. Actually, probably at this time last year when I was doing this and looking towards 2024, realizing this was the year that I was turning 50. I turned 50 in August, but I was planning for it in January. I wanted this year to be fun. I wanted this year to be celebratory. And I wanted to kick it off like, not feeling 50, not feeling. Not that 50's old, but I wanted to kick it off doing something fun and amazing. Last January 2024, I ran the Key West Half Marathon. And because it was practically a year ago, I forgot about it. So those were the first pictures I saw. Me and sunny Key west with three of my girlfriends and me at the finish line in my brightly colored shirt with my medal. And it was just like, oh, yes. I set that intention for this year, that I was going to be fun and active and do cool things. And that certainly carried on through the year for me. In August, I threw myself a 50th birthday bash. Saturday Night Live theme. I was the Sally O'Malley, I'm 50 character. And all my friends showed up in amazing costumes and we had the best time. And I also did a ton of traveling and a lot of it was doula related. And that was another goal I set for myself that I wanted to. And this is a goal that's been in the works for years. I have been methodically building my business to fit my life, and my kids are grown, so I have so much more freedom now in terms of being able to go places. So this year I wanted to do a lot of traveling and I wanted my business to pay for it. And boy, oh, boy, did I accomplish that. So this is the other reason I brought tears to my eyes, was this was a big year for my doula village, too, my membership community. We kicked it off in January. I went honestly from running the Key West Half Marathon. I flew home for my son who was a senior. My middle guy was a senior. He had a very important basketball game. So I was home for a few days for that. And then I was back in Florida for the birth worker retreat where there were 12 of the doulas from my doula village at the birth worker retreat and like 30 other amazing doulas and sleep consultants and birth workers. And we all just had the best time, but it was really special. That was the first time we had a dozen of the my doula villagers in the same room in person. So we all schlepped into the elevator and made them all squish into the elevator and we all went out and took pictures on the beach. So I just have so many amazing pictures from that. It was super special. And then after that, we had our main retreat for my Doula Village, and we did it again in October. Two separate groups of amazing, awesome doulas. I just, it was so special to have so many chances this year to be with them in person. And that just has really. I'm so grateful and I'm celebrating that for sure and then doubling down and making sure that is happening again in 2025. And it sure is. I think we probably have 13 or 14 doulas this time. Some the same, some different that are coming in January to the birth worker retreat. It's not too late to get in on it. If you want to come, head to thebirthworkerretreat.com use Grab. Actually Grab a friend and you each can use the coupon code Bizbesty25, the number two five. So Bizbestie two five. And you'll each save $150 at the 2025 Birth Worker Retreats. So come join us there and kick off your year in such a great way. Okay, so back to. So you're going through your photos and you're remembering all the things that you did, all the things you actually did accomplish this year, and that's putting you in a great mood of feeling accomplished, and that's huge. Another way that you can do this is also go back through your client list. However, mine's in edula biz now, but I used to keep a spreadsheet as the year went on and just go look at the names. And while you're doing it, if you're sending out holiday cards, even better. That's another great way to just spend some time in gratitude for these families that you had the pleasure of working with, the pleasure of serving. And then if you're sending out holiday cards to them with a nice handwritten note, I finally just got all mine in the mail. It's so awesome because a, it's the thing to do. It's the nice thing to do in the holiday spirit. But also those families you worked in, worked with in January, it's like a great little reminder for all the families, like, oh yeah, my doula loves me. And oh yeah, I have three pregnant co workers. I have to make sure I tell them that they need to hire Darcy the Doulas Agency. So I consider holiday sending holiday cards as part of my end of the year strategy. It's a reminder to all my families. I this year sent cards to the families we've worked with for the past three years because I think I might not have done this. Last year, I think it fell through the cracks. But this year I wanted to definitely do it and I did. And I love getting cards from my families too. And I shout out to all the families who have been sending me Christmas cards for the past 10 years. I love it so much watching these babies and families grow. It's just so special. I love the photo cards. They're amazing. So I love this whole. I just love the whole scene. So while you're going through your client list and sending your holiday cards, if you've listened to my podcast before, if you've listened to me long enough, I want you to be tracking who and asking your clients who referred them to you so that at the end of the year, now is the time you can be looking at that list of who has been referring you all year long and analyze that. Where are the majority of your referrals coming from? Are they coming from. Are people saying they found you on Google? Are people saying they found you from a certain chiropractic or a certain doula or what? And whatever is working really well, you want to double down on that in 2025. That is the epitome of working smarter, not harder. If a certain doula or a certain chiropractor sent five referrals to you this year, you send them a holiday gift, you definitely send them a holiday card with a handwritten note, you take them out to dinner, you do something to celebrate that and thank them so that they continue to do that in 2025. This also really lets you see what's not working. And maybe if, maybe, for instance, if you put a lot of time and effort into TikTok this year and not one of the clients who hired you says that's where they found you, maybe you let TikTok go and put your efforts into something that is working well based on the feedback that you're looking at from this list. I always want to encourage doulas to work smarter, not harder. And then this is like that. This is looking at the evidence of your doula business, looking at where your clients hear about you, where they're coming from. We want to be working with that evidence and not just relying on feelings or stories in our head or what we think is working in our businesses. So I think this is just one of the most important things that you can do at the end of the year. And then once you have looked through all your photos and you're feeling so grateful and so celebratory, one other thing you can do is hopefully you've kept track of. I like to jot down. I keep a spreadsheet of my numbers in terms of my marketing or my social media. So I keep track of how many Facebook friends I I have, how many followers on my Facebook business page, how many Instagram followers, how many people on my email list, those kind of numbers. And whether you jot it down once a month or check it once a month or even just once a year. That's another thing is that where this is something that I tend to feel that I feel like, oh my God, I'm posting on social media so much and I don't really think my audience has grown. But when you're looking at the evidence and you have the actual numbers every year, I am blown away by how much my audience has increased because it's like watching your kids grow. You don't as their parents notice them growing on a day to day basis, but someone who hasn't seen them for six months or a year is, oh my God. It's the same with your social media audience numbers and email and web analytics and all that stuff. So I'm not saying I'm not a big fan of tracking this every week. If you want to, great. But to me that makes it. I want to keep this fun. So I used to do it every month and I've gotten lax. I'm jotting it down maybe once a quarter, but definitely looking this time of year at how much all of those things have grown and celebrating that and like patting myself on the back, that's hard work. I'm showing up every week on social media, I'm showing up every week in my email. I am fostering these conversations that are feeding my business. So it's great to have that moment of, oh, okay, this is all this work I'm doing, it is working. My audience is growing and that is great. So once you're feeling good about all the clients you worked with, all the fun you've had looking at your photos and how your audience has grown, then let's look at the money and hopefully that has grown too. The reason you want to look at this is that if you're paying your taxes quarterly, you have a payment, your final payment for the year is due in mid January. So now is a great time to look at what you've earned this year. Compared to last year. And make sure what you're planning on paying in January is tracking. And do you have enough? Do you have plenty? Do you have a surplus? Great. Or do you need to shift some things around and come up with that money? So make sure that you're on track to pay those taxes. And a fun part of this time of year is when you're looking at those numbers and realizing you've earned a lot more this year than you did last year. And that's fantastic. But maybe you didn't realize it till now and you haven't been. You didn't adjust your quarterly tax payments enough. So this is a great time to reinvest some money into your doula business. Even honestly, no matter where you are at tax wise. I was just talking about this with a couple of the doulas in my doula village that I would this time of year I always make some big investments in back into my business because I would rather spend my money on me. I'll bet on myself any day. I'd rather spend the money on me and my business than paying it to taxes. So investing in my business at the end of the year cuts down on my gross income and my profit, which means I don't pick, which means I get to pay less taxes. So for instance, sometimes this is a great time to buy a new computer or a new phone or sign up for a conference or a training that's coming up early in 2025, like the birth, work or retreat in Clearwater, Florida. What are some good investments you can make right now that will reduce your tax burden and also pay off for your business? One of the biggest ones is your website. And because I think honestly, doulas, we don't have that many expenses. We really don't. We don't have storefronts, we don't usually have brick and mortar offices. We don't have inventory, we don't have supply. We have very minimal costs. And that's great. One thing, and I'm all for running your doula business on a shoestring. You really, there's not a lot you have to pay for, but I really think you do have to pay for a website because the money you invest in a website, you're going to get back, I don't know, threefold, tenfold, who knows? You're going to get back more than you pay in. So for instance, I'll just use the doula website templates that my team and I have created. It's 300, it's 200. And 97. So let's say $300 for the first time investment. Once you get one client contract, it's paid for itself and then you still have the website for the rest of the year. There's like the $55 monthly fee for backup and hosting and security and having McKenna on call, but which again pays for itself. When you have a good website that is ranking well in Google, meaning it has good search engine optimization. And when people in your area are googling doula near me, if your website is coming up, that's like you have an employee. That means like you're out at a birthday and your good old employee, your doula website is out there roaming the streets and getting you new clients. So investing in your website and here's where this all ties together. If you have analyzed your client list and your referral list and it's all people that are referring you're getting your clients from or Instagram, that's fantastic. But if you could stand to have more clients, if you need more clients, investing in a website is one of the most beneficial, cost effective ROI things that you can do because it's a few hundred dollars for your website is going to get you contract after contract after contract. Analyzing all this and see if whether it's you get a new website that works better or upgrading your current website, maybe paying someone to do your SEO, maybe joining my doula village for $67 and learning how to do your SEO and getting tips from me coming to office hours. Invest in making your website better because that is something that is going to pay off tenfold over the next year. All right, so the other thing that you can be thinking of and looking forward to, or maybe I should say looking ahead to is paying your taxes. I'm in the US so this applies to people in the US but there are three areas that as doulas you can really focus on to take advantage of at tax time. Number one I already alluded to is mileage. Mileage is a doula's best friend because the government gives you like US government, I don't know. 67, 68% look it up per mile. 67 cents. I'm sorry, not percent. 67 cents per mile. So that means for every mile that you drive, that's 67 cents that you can deduct from your income. So as a postpartum doula especially that has been huge for me some years. So every time you drive to a client's house and home, if you're birth doula, every time you drive to a client's house and home for a prenatal. Every time you drive to and from the hospital to go to a birth, every time you drive to have coffee with the doula friends, every time you drive around town hanging up flyers, every time you drive around town passing out your rack cards. Anytime you are in your car for business, write those miles down or and better yet if you're not really organized, get an app like Mileiq or any of those apps that while you're just automatically helps you do that. I've heard really good things about Miliq. I just keep a spreadsheet honestly. But you know me, I'm nerdy like that. But like I said, this time of year as you're going what's very easy for me as a postpartum duo because I keep track of my shifts. I can very easily just tack on mileage to that and see how much mileage I have in terms of going to and from clients. But like I said going through the pictures, you remember. Oh yeah, I drove to the airport to go to the donut to fly to the Donut Summit. That mileage is a tax deduction. So is what I paid to park in the parking garage and so is my plane ticket. So really going through spent, you know spending a couple hours is gonna is a really good investment of your time. Spending a couple hours to make sure you are claiming every single mile that you drove for your doula business. It really adds up and it makes a big difference. The other category that I see sometimes doulas not taking advantage of is education. We can deduct what we spend on a Ardula trainings Ardula continuing education. Any business class that you pay to take. If you're in my doula Village your my Doula village membership is absolutely a tax deduction. One on one coaching with me or anybody those are you're investing in your business. Those are education. I don't know if the you'll have to obviously I'm not a tax specialist. Go find a tax person in your local town that specializes in small businesses that can help you with this. I forget like I forget if something like business coaching or my doula village is counts as education category or advertising category but accounts is one of them and accounts and I had a year where and it was December and I was there was a. It was actually it was the first time I was joining a mastermind and it was a big chunk of money, more than I had ever spent on myself and I was so nervous but there was Something in my gut just telling me that I had to do it. And boy am I glad I did. But even that year I was so glad I did because that huge check I wrote ended up being took me from owing money on taxes to getting a big fat refund. And it just worked out that way. Like it just happened. I was on that line and that tipped me over the edge. So I think that's why I'm such a big fan now of looking at what you're spending and what you owe. And why not? I would. I got so much more from joining that mastermind for the next 10 years of my doula business than if I had just paid some taxes. So reinvesting in your business and yourself is always a good idea. The other category that doulas can really pay attention to in terms of tax deductions is advertising. Because this is when I've heard doula say I don't spend any money on advertising. Ah yes you do. Even if you don't buy Facebook ads or ads in your paper or anything like that, what you spend on your website, that's advertising. What you spend on everything, printing your rack cards on Vistaprint or Canva, your Canvas Pro subscription, all that stuff is advertising expenses for your business. And let me tell you, it adds up and really helps you out. And then don't forget to include and these don't fall under advertising or education. There's something like membership category. But everything dues you pay to your doula organization, the fees you pay to like Doula Match and all those things, everything, pretty much everything you spend on your doula business is some form of a tax deduction. So make sure to go back through. Sometimes this looks like me going back through my credit card, my business credit card receipts or statements, excuse me. And just making sure that I have put everything I've spent on my business into some category for my tax lady to use as a deduction. And she tells me if something is or isn't so highly recommend working with a tax professional to help you take advantage. And trust me, I did my own personal taxes forever, even the first couple years of my doula business, and then finally decided to cough up the money. And man, she saved me so much money it was worth whatever I paid her because she ended up saving me so much money on the back end. So highly suggest finding a tax pro. Highly suggest that you adopt this attitude of looking back on your year with gratitude and celebration. And like I say in my doula village, every Wednesday we do our Wednesday wins and I just, I always say celebrate a win, big or small. Because what you celebrate expands what you appreciate appreciates. So even if you just started your doula business, even if you had to take time off because of a surgery or a sick family member, whatever, I guarantee you, everyone, you have something to celebrate about the work you have done this year. And trust me when I say that one of the best ways to tap into that is writing out little handwritten notes to every family you worked with. Because it helps you remember the impact that you had on them. It helps them remember the impact that you had on them. And that just I promise that energy will come back and flow and set you up for more abundance in 2025. And one of the things I'm celebrating is this podcast. I realized as I was looking through my photos, my a photo of the logo of the podcast popped up and I was like, oh my God, that's right. This year I turned 50 and I launched a podcast and I have been loving it. I love this as a new way to connect with all of you. I love when you all DM me to say you heard a certain episode or email me. I just love it. I love you guys are loving the podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday season. I for one, the Doula Darcy, am certainly grateful for all of you here. I think being a doula is the best job in the world. And I love helping you all get to be a doula more by working on your marketing, growing your business, scaling your business, and here's to a prosperous 2025 for all of us.
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Thank you for tuning in to the Doula Darcy Podcast. I hope you found this episode valuable and I'd love for you to join me on the next one. Let's keep the conversation going. Shoot me a DM on Instagram heduladarcy or join my free Facebook community, the Doula Marketing Group, where we dive deeper into growing your doula business. If you enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast on your favorite platform. Your feedback will help more doulas discover the show, which in turn helps more families find the doula support that they need. And I believe that that is how we save the world.