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The Doula Darcy Podcast
Feast or Famine: The Truth About the Doula Business Cycle
00:22:34
In this heartfelt episode, Darcy returns after a brief break to shed light on a topic not often discussed in the doula community—the feast or famine cycle of doula work. Drawing from 15 years of experience, she normalizes the ups and downs doulas...
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- [00:04]
A
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 shifts 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.
- [00:46]
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And welcome back. It has been a while since I recorded an episode because I have been doing a lot of traveling, but I am back home and ready to dive back into getting more regular episodes out there. So I hope everybody is doing well. And I want to talk about today, the feast or famine aspect of doula work because this is something I don't think that gets talked about and this is something that people when they're talking to me assume that I'm just magically booked in full all the time as a doula. And I'm just here to say actually last week, April 1st, was the 15th anniversary of me starting my postpartum doula business. So I have been doing this for 15 years now and still there's aspects of the feast or famine cycle and it is a cycle in my doula business. So I am here to tell you, whether you're brand new or you're eight years in or wherever you are, if you're experiencing the feast or famine cycle in your doula business, it's normal. I think it just is part of the biz. And let's talk about it. And it because this has been coming up a lot with my one on one coaching clients with the doulas in my doula village. And actually in my doula village we talk about our wins all the time. We celebrate our wins. So some doulas are like, I just signed five new clients, I'm booked till August and that's fantastic. And some are not. And I just want those of you who are not to hear that it's okay. And I have some tips coming for you about what to do if you're in the famine phase of being a doula. But I just first wanted to talk about that. This is just the way it is as a doula. It is impossible, especially when you're first starting out to come out of the gate and ha be fully booked and have a full client load. I got an email a while back from a woman, and she was saying that she. I think she was a speech therapist or something, but she wanted to transition and become a postpartum doula. And so she emailed me and she's. I just want to ask, what's your weekly caseload like? It's like, oh, that's not how it works here in the doula world. You're not walking into a busy speech and language practice where you're handed a pile of files and a caseload. That's. It's just not how it works. We here in the doula world, we get our own clients and they can trickle in. And yes, sometimes it's feast time and we have more than we can handle, but the other side of that cycle. And listen, everything is a cycle if you hang around me long enough. You've heard me talk about the cyclical nature of life and business and that a flower can't bloom all year long and it can't be summer all year long. And the same with our doula businesses. We can't have. We're never. I think a lot of doulas are looking for that perfect moment when there's this perfect trickle of new leads coming in, this perfect flow of clients that you're actively working with, and this perfect calendar full of doula clients scheduled out in the future. And I just am here to say, it's barely ever like that. We're always winging it. Right. And even when you're booked solid, there's always that. I don't have anyone for the fall yet. And I think part of being a successful doula is getting comfortable with that. And part of that is trusting in that the next client is coming. And what I always tell people and what I always tell myself is sometimes you're in this stage of being worried, oh, my God, will I ever get another client again? And then you can get two phone calls, you can get two inquiries on your website, and suddenly you're back to that feast phase where you're so busy you don't know what to do. So what I'm talking to a lot of doulas about these days is just getting comfortable with that unknown. And I'm not here to say it's not scary. It is scary. But do you trust yourself? Do you trust that you have. And I'm talking a lot about laying a strong foundation for your business. In terms of marketing, have you done the work on your website, on your SEO? Are you showing up In Google searches, are people in your community talking about what a great experience they had working with you? Are you networking with the other birth professionals, the other photographers and chiropractors in your community? Are you active on social media, social media? Are you doing all the things? Are you laying that groundwork for the next famine phase, famine cycle of your business? And if you are, you can be sure that the next client will come. But I have a little story for you, because me here, Darcy, owner of a local busy agency here in New Hampshire, like I said, just celebrated my 15th anniversary of opening my postpartum doula business. But right now, April 2025, the economy is a little, let's say bajiggity. And I just have this sense. And from other doulas I'm talking to all over the world, there's, yes, some of you are super busy. Some of you are experiencing a lull. And I really feel like it's this economy thing. People are a little. Just nervous or they don't know, so they're not doing anything. So they're not reaching out to higher doulas right now. So Even for me, 15 years in right now, I also had some doulas with some health issues. Like, we're just. There's a lot of, like, things up in the air, and we don't. We're not booked out super far in advance. And I'm. What. What's it gonna be like? And I thought, I've been having these little thoughts of, should I even. Should I just go all in on doula darc and coaching and my doula village and just close this agency thing up? And then today, I was at my local coffee shop here in Dover, New Hampshire, and I was actually meeting with another doula who had asked to meet with me and pick my brain and get some advice about the local doula scene. And I. And we were sitting at this busy coffee shop, and I said something about at. What I do at Doverdula is this. And this man in a suit who was three feet away from us working on his laptop, he just said, excuse me, but do you own Doverdula? And his face, he looked like he was meeting Taylor Swift or something. And I was like, what does this businessman. I was like, oh, God, is he gonna start selling me stock insurance or something? And I said, yeah, I do. And he said, oh, my gosh, you saved my life, me and my wife's life. And I said, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So he said it was you. He said it was Your team, He said, you, team is incredible. He told me his name, he told me his wife's name. And he's actually, we've been meaning to reach out because we're expecting again, but he just went on and on and started gushing to me and this other doula about how amazing the postpartum doula support he received, he and his family received from my team, how life changing it was. He went on and on and as I was standing there, I just said, darcy, you idiot, how could you ever think of not providing this service to the community? So this is my tip. I'm not telling you this to toot my own hormones. I'm telling you this because it's very easy to forget when we're in a slow cycle in our business. It's very easy to forget the importance of the work that we do. It's very easy to forget the impact that you have on families. It's very easy to forget the reason you started this doula business, the reason you took this training, the reason you chose this path in the first place. And what I want you to do in any moment where you are questioning yourself is to go back and read the reviews on your own website, go back and read a nice email from a former client, go back just and think about what you've done and who you've helped. And remembering that is a huge piece of what can get you through the slow times of your doula business, the famine times of the feast or famine cycle of doula business. The other thing that I was reminded of this morning, we were talking of this other doula and I were just talking about postpartum doula work in general and how so much of it is normalizing what's normal and that people, first time parents especially haven't been exposed to what having a newborn baby is like. And it struck me that it's the same for doulas. Many of us had corporate jobs before where every week, every two weeks, our paycheck was just deposited into our account. We didn't have to think too much about it. We just showed up, we do your work and you get paid. You don't have to worry about where the money's coming from or that we, so many of us come into doula work with no exposure to entrepreneurship. And that is why one of the reasons it's super scary, this whole feast or famine thing, we're not used to it, but I hope that me here telling you that it's normal makes it better. And yes, you can do things like have some cash in a savings account for those famine times. Planning ahead to stretch your dollars to get you through those famine times. But that's what entrepreneurship is. That's what setting yourself up for success as an entrepreneur is. And it's normal and you need to learn new things. Just like when you have a baby for the first time, it's big, it's different, it's scary, you feel like you're doing it wrong. You have a million questions and it looks really messy. I'm here to tell you if that's how you're feeling right now in your doula business, in your doula entrepreneurial journey, it's normal. It's normal. You're not doing it wrong. You're fine. I hope this helped you. The other analogy is that, and here's where I promised you some tips, you we get to the famine phase, we've had some clients, we've done some good work, we got paid and then boom, it's a lull and you're freaking out. And I always have to say it's not because you stink as a doula, it's because you just came off a busy contract. It's just because you were at, you just had three due dates and a two week time span and you're super busy. And you probably let up on your social media posts. You probably, probably let up, you didn't network as much, you weren't as active, you stopped marketing your doula business because you're so busy being a doula. Of course you're going to have a little bit of a lull. But back to that foundation I talked about. If you have that solid foundation of a good website. And by good website, I mean it shows up when people in your area Google doula near me. You've had, you have consistency in showing up on social media. You people know about you in the community. When you have that strong foundation and that takes years, that's the other thing I want you to hear. It takes time to have that consistent branding image in your area to carry you through those times when you're too busy to be actively marketing yourself. So it's common to get to this famine time, no clients coming in and you think, oh my gosh, I'm doing something wrong here again is where it's also like when there's a new baby in the house and the baby's fussy and so you start to change the formula, you start to. Or you start changing the timing of when you're breastfeeding or you change up the detergent because you think maybe that's what's bothering the baby. Or you buy new sound machine or you start changing all the things, you start changing all the variables and you don't even know which thing is helping and which thing is making it worse. Same goes for your doula business. Keep it simple and go back to the basics. If you are coming off of a feast, phase in your doula business into a famine cycle where you don't have much clients. Clients. Get busy on your marketing. Get busy on building that foundation. Do some work on SEO on your website, write some blogs, schedule some posts out for the next few weeks on social media. Schedule some coffee dates with local maternity photographers and doulas and other people. The work do the basics. Don't think, oh, I don't have any clients right now, maybe I need to scrap my whole website or maybe I need to change up my lead magnets or maybe I need to offer a new service. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I need to go take another training or get another certification. And nine times out of 10 you don't need to make major changes like that. You just have to go back to basics. Networking, social media, work on your website, blogging. All the basic tenets of marketing that I am always talking about and by the way, I am always teaching about in my doula village. We have a guest expert coming in this week to talk about SEO. There's already a lot of information in there on SEO, but this is just something that we can always be learning about. We can always be making our websites better in terms of showing up. If your website shows up when people are googling about doula care that's so valuable, that's legwork you don't have to do. That's networking you don't have to do. That's social media posts that you don't have to make. If your website ranks high in Google searches, you're golden. So if I will say if your website is not ranking high in Google searches, yes, trash it, start over, get a new one that does. And I could talk for hours about it, but we have the doula website templates. Go to douladarcy.com to find those. That's an affordable way to get an SEO friendly professional looking website. Or take the time and energy and money to make your own. But that is something that's worth changing. If you're not showing up in Google searches, you want to make that change. But I'm talking about like you've created a lead magnet. You've created your packages. You have your sleep consulting services, but you think, oh, my God, I'm not getting clients. Maybe I need to lower my prices. I hear this all the time. Well, I'm not getting clients. And it's like doulas assume it's because they're too expensive. So maybe I'll lower my rates or maybe I'll offer a big discount. I would suggest you only do that if you've gone on 10 interviews and eight of them have said you're too expensive. That's not why we're not hiring you. But I'll bet a million dollars that's not the case for you. I will bet that you're not going on interviews because people don't know you exist. So I always say, fix the right problem. Don't lower your prices to combat the fact that you're not marketing yourself. Market yourself more. Put yourself out there. People need to know you exist. And these famine times in your doula business are a great time to invest your time and energy into the marketing and promotion of your business. And then what happens is you do that, and then a few weeks go by, your phone rings seven times and you're back to the feast phase, and you get really busy, and then you pull back on social media, and then next thing you know, you're back in a famine cycle. And again, I just want to normalize. That's how it is, especially the first couple years. I'm going to say it takes a solid two years to really get your name out and get to a place where you do have some sense of continuous leads coming in. But again, it's never perfect. It's never. I think we're all. Myself included, I think we're all out there looking for that perfect wave of clients coming in, clients that we're working with, clients booked for the future, new inquiries coming in. And it just. Who knows. I was gonna say it doesn't exist because who knows what is the perfect phase? Have you also ever. Here's what I want you to think about. The number of clients you have right now, the level booked level with clients that you are right now. What would the doula version of yourself from a year ago think of that? What I'm trying to get at is are you at a place right now that a former version of yourself would be so thrilled and psyched to be at, and yet the current version of yourself isn't happy with it? It's like the grass is always greener. Like, no matter how booked we are, we always want to be more booked. No matter how much money we have in the bank account, we all, we always feel like we need and that right there is something to really pay attention to and start to realize, do I really need more? Do I really need more money in the bank account? Do I really need more clients? Maybe, yes. But maybe I need to just get comfortable with this level that I'm at. So that's a whole other podcast episode on that mindset of. And it comes down to, like, when will you feel safe? What. What amount of money do you have to have in the bank account? What amount of clients do you have to feel safe? And then what can you do to feel safe right now? No matter what those numbers are? Because that right there is the key to, I don't know, being happy, enjoying this crazy entrepreneurial ride. So more on that later. But I hope that this was really helpful. I hope that me normalizing the feast or famine cycle helps you. I would love to hear from you about this. So shoot me a DM over on Instagram at Thedula Darcy. Let me know how you handle the bajiggity ness of the feast or famine cycle. And I can't wait to come back next week with more tips for you.
- [21:51]
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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 @ the Doula Darcy 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.