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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 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.
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Hello there. Welcome to this episode that's coming to you live from Clearwater, Florida. I am here a couple of days in advance of the birth worker retreat. Probably by the time this comes out, the birth worker retreat will be happening. But I came down a few days early because I have been to and hosted enough events to know that I need a little time on the front end of an event and a little time on the back end of the event. Especially when I'm hosting, I need that front end time. So what I mean by that is on Tuesday I have 40 birth workers flying in from all over to attend this event that I'm hosting with Jodi Congdon. And it just, I know now it just goes so much better when I'm not flying in right at the last minute and rushing and just turning around and throwing my suitcase in my room and then going and trying to do a presentation and host 40 people at an event. So I came in on Saturday around lunchtime and it was a beautiful 75 degree day and I took a walk on the beach and I had a great dinner and did some work in my hotel room. And I've just had a couple days to it's like that decompression drive home from work before you have to switch into mom mode. So I'm like switching out of mom mode, switching out of my homework mode and getting into putting on an awesome conference mode. And I wanted to do a podcast episode about this because it really hit me today on day three of being here Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Yeah, I've been here three days already by myself, which might sound horrible to some people, but what I want to talk about is when I say that you can design your business to fit your life, this is what I mean. On steroids. And I also want to point out that it took me years to get here. But this first of all, the birth worker retreat exists because I Wanted a way to get out of cold, snowy gray New Hampshire in January and be in sunny warm Florida and get my business to pay for it and invite a bunch of doulas along. No joke. That is why we created the Birth Worker retreat. We wanted a tax write off event that we could build into our year that included the Florida sunshine. So the way to design your business to fit your life is to look at what is most important to you. And you are your business. When you're a doula, your business is you. And even when you're scaling into starting an agency and adding passive income and multiple revenue streams, none of it's gonna happen if you're struggling, suffering, burnt out and feeling like crap. Whether you are just starting out as a doula and you're getting your first in person clients or you've been at this for 10 years and you're juggling a lot of balls and your business has multiple income streams, you have to take incredibly good care of yourself. And one kind of mantra that has taken me a long time to get my brain wrapped around is that the the better care I take of myself, the more my business grows, the happier and healthier I am. Same goes triple for my business and P.S. for my kids too. It's like the same thing as when you're a mom of little kids, like taking a break, getting a sitter and going and doing something that just fills your cup. When you come back, you're a better mom. So it's the same as when you're a business owner. Taking a break, getting out of your day to day routines as a mom and a business owner only makes you come back better, makes you show up better for your clients. So for me, I have finally learned this. And the baby steps of this were in the beginning stages of my doula business. After a couple years in, I really weaved it into my rate that I got a massage every month. Massages are my thing. I'll take a massage over a designer handbag any day. So even when I was a new doula, I would get a massage every month just as my little reward. It made me feel better. It worked all the kinks out of my shoulders and my neck from holding and shushing babies for hours at a time. And so from there I eased into things like hiring a house cleaner. And you've heard all this before on the podcast, but I hired a house cleaner, so that was my first hire in my business. I couldn't think of things within my business that someone could do to help me, but Hiring someone to clean my house really helped me devote that time towards resting, relaxing or working and growing my business. So now here I am, whatever, 15 years in to being a doula. I don't know, seven or eight years into being an online entrepreneur. I have just taken this to the nth degree. So the things that fill my cup up, the things that make me feel my best are taking long walks outdoors in nature and getting a massage, eating healthy food. Those are my three top things. For you, they might be something completely different. Another, I don't know what you would call it, goal of mine is to be a snowbird doula. I live in New Hampshire and I love it. I love it in the summer and I love it for parts of the winter. Y' all know I love skiing, but I don't love the short days. I don't love the lack of sunshine. I don't love those cloudy days when there's just no light. So I want to have a life where I can take some escapes. I want to get down to Florida or California or somewhere that Arizona where the sun is shining a few times every winter. And once my kids are all out of the house, I'll do it for months at a time. But for now, I've got to take these little weeks here and there where I can get it. So for me, this birth worker retreat this week in January where I am in sunny Florida with this white sandy beach, I can every day I think I've taken three walks a day. My fitness app on my phone is just, wow, you're exercising more than usual. I'm like tripling the amount of steps. I try to take a walk every day in New Hampshire, but it's just cold and I don't get to it every day. And I certainly don't walk for long. But here this week in Clearwater, I have been getting 15,000, 20,000 steps a day outside. Feels so good to put my feet in the sand and just ground into earth energy because you can't do that when the earth is frozen up in the north. And I am a huge introvert. I am really loving this time to be with myself, to just be quiet, to do what I want when I want. I don't have to cook any meals. I can go find healthy food within a short walk of my hotel. I can take walks on the beach. I can go get a massage. I did that yesterday at the hotel spa. It was amazing. I slept like a rock last night. And then this just has opened up so many new ideas for me. Things I want to create for all of you new products, new offerings, and given me the time to actually start working on some of those to get a lot of. I've just done a lot of nitty gritty admin crossing things off my to do list. It just has felt so good to be able to do that here and I'm getting so much more done because I feel so good. Like I said, your dream life, your dream business might look completely different, but for me, I have designed this week to fit perfectly into what my body needs, what I know I need to feel and function at my best. And it's funny because obviously I'm posting all of all these things on my Instagram stories as I go and I'm getting so many messages of, first of all, so many nice messages, but also a couple of those oh, must be nice messages. And I just want you to stop and check yourself every time you catch yourself thinking and looking at somebody and thinking, oh, must be nice. And instead of thinking, must be nice, be happy for them because they're making choices they've made that happen. The person who has the most beautiful house in your neighborhood, in your town that you walk by, or they have beautiful landscaping or just whatever you admire about, or a fancy car in the driveway and you think, oh, must be nice. I bet you they worked really hard for that. I bet you they deserve it. And instead of resenting them, check yourself and think, wow, I'm so happy for them. I wonder how I could do that too, if it's something you truly want. So trading in your resentment for an abundance mentality, for gratitude for thinking, wow, I'm so happy for them. I want that too. I want to try to get that too. What do I need to do to get that? So if you are one of those people watching my Instagram stories and thinking, oh, my gosh, it must be nice to have all that time to be able to afford a massage, to go to Florida, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I want you to hear me when I say I spent the first 40 years of my life deep in the struggle bus of suffering martyrdom. I was raised in New England and that whole Yankee mentality of if you're not suffering and working yourself to the bone like you're a bad person, that is a thing in New Hampshire. I don't know. We're descended from the Pilgrims. And there's just. I was so raised in the mentality of if you're not working, you're basically lazy. You should be working every waking moment of the Day. And if you're not, you're a lazy, no good son of a gun is what my grandmother would have said. She's called everybody a son of a gun. So anyway, no one handed me a doula business that had all these trips built in and massages and time for exercise. I had to build it out of thin air and step by step create it in a way that served me. It took time, it took years. I didn't decide to start an online business and digital courses and digital products and all my things. I didn't decide to do it and then all of a sudden be able to first of all afford monetarily and like on my calendar. I wasn't magically, all of a sudden able to take all these trips and do all these things. It took time and it took devotion to craft my offers to build the things I do and the ways that I help and serve in ways that made it possible for me to do this with my life. And the whole nugget I want you to take from this is that you can do this too. You absolutely can design a business to fit the lifestyle of your dreams. This is what I'm doing with doulas that I'm coaching all the time. And it starts with, you can start today. It starts with little micro decisions. Where can you carve out 10 minutes today? I don't care if you're nursing a four month old. Where can you carve out small pockets of time and just take really good care of yourself instead of putting yourself last in your business, in your family, with your kids? Instead of being a martyr, where can you realize you're at the top of the food chain and the better care you take of yourself, that trickles down to everything in your world. So where can you take 10 minutes to sip your coffee while it's still warm? Take 10 deep breaths? How can you make parts of your day more sacred? Okay, you're probably going to shower today. Can you drop some essential oils in the water? Can use a sea salt scrub? What little things can you add in to what you're doing to just make them more special? Make you pause. That's what it all comes down to is make yourself pause and be more present. So how can you weave these little things into your day and then how can you start to work towards the bigger things? And it starts with creating the vision. What are the things you want the most? The things I want the most are sun in the winter. I want to ski though. Also I want massages. I want time with friends. I want time to go to yoga. I want to take walks in nature. Those are my things. Those are my core things. I know when I do those things, I feel happier and better. What is it for you? And maybe you don't even know. Maybe you have been making yourself a victim of martyrhood for so long, you don't even know what you like or what you need. P.S. ask me how I know this. We are just trained as women, as mothers, and then this rolls into our doula work. Like that. We're better women, we're better mothers, we're better doulas if we are suffering and working ourselves to the bone and saying yes to everything. And that's not true, you're going to burn out in every aspect of your life so fast if you continue to function in that way. Saying no is another piece of this. Looking at your life and looking at what you can say no to, what can you declutter from your to do list? What can you say no to so that you have time to rest, to sit and breathe, to take a walk, to do these things that I'm talking about. One thing that helped me with this was hearing the quote that every yes you say is a no to something else. So every yes you say to a client to bend over backwards to do something for them, to take a shift when you're already extremely tired, that is a no to your sleep, which is so important to your health, That's a no to your family, That's a no to whatever. So thinking of your tasks for home and business in that way, like everything you're saying yes to is a no to something else. So make sure you know, the way I structure my days now and my weeks and my life and my business is the yeses I say are for me first. And it sounds a little selfish, but it's not. Because when I say yes to myself first and build my days and my weeks around taking a walk, getting exercise, getting my vitamin D sunshine, I am happier and healthier and I am a better mom to my kids. And I'm a better doula business coach, a better doula agency owner, it just all runs smoother than if I'm just burning the candle at both ends, suffering and working myself into a tizzy. I can't show up for anybody when I'm like that. And again, ask me how I know. This has been a long time coming for me. A lot of learning for me, a lot of personal development, a lot of working with coaches, a lot of reading books and working on my mindset. I'm not gonna lie, it's hard to go from that suffering martyrhood mindset to one where you think, oh, what would feel good in my body today? Let's design my day around that. So I hope that you found this episode helpful. I am really excited here because I'm going to get this into the queue and then I get to go hang out with a bunch of amazing doulas and birth workers and show up for them well rested and full of energy to serve and to teach and to give, which is going to make the event and the experience for them better versus if I had rolled in here three hours before it started, exhausted, stressed about my family, blah blah blah blah blah, and just half showing up. So let me know what you think if you're coming to the birth worker retreat. I will see you so soon and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
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Thank you for tuning in to the Dula 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 @thedula 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.