Passive Income Ideas for Doulas - The Doula Darcy Podcast

Summary5 min read

The Doula Darcy Podcast: Episode Summary Episode Title: Passive Income Ideas for Doulas
Release Date: October 16, 2024
Host: Darcy Sauers

Introduction

In this engaging episode of The Doula Darcy Podcast, host Darcy Sauers delves into the realm of passive income tailored specifically for doulas. Drawing from her extensive background in advertising and her 14 years of experience as a doula, Darcy provides actionable strategies and inspiring insights to help doulas expand their businesses without overextending their time and energy.

The Inspirational Story of the Lactating Deer

The episode kicks off with Darcy sharing a personal anecdote that serves as a metaphor for creating passive income. At [00:46], she recounts observing two deer in her New Hampshire backyard—one mother and one juvenile. Fascinated by the lactation process, Darcy's curiosity leads her into a bow hunting chat room where she discovers hunters' misconceptions about deer lactation.

Darcy Sauers [04:59]: “If you want to make a course for hunters that teaches about lactation in mammals, go for it. These guys would buy it.”

This story not only illustrates Darcy’s knack for identifying niche markets but also underscores the vast potential for creating specialized digital products.

Translating Personal Passion into Passive Income

Building on her deer story, Darcy emphasizes the importance of leveraging one's unique experiences and passions to develop passive income streams. She highlights that the internet offers a global audience, exponentially increasing the potential customer base compared to local, in-person offerings.

Darcy Sauers [10:30]: “The Internet is only limited by your imagination. And there is, trust me, an audience for everything.”

She encourages doulas to brainstorm areas within their expertise—whether it's nutrition, organization, sleep training, or any other specialized service—and transform these into digital products like courses, workbooks, or information packets.

Practical Strategies for Creating Passive Income

Darcy outlines several strategies doulas can implement to generate passive income:

Digital Courses: Creating comprehensive courses on specific topics related to birth and postpartum care.

Darcy Sauers [14:05]: “You don't have to follow someone else's rules. You have to follow your own heart and passion and what your customers need.”
Information Packets: Developing simple, focused guides that can be sold repeatedly with minimal ongoing effort.
Membership Programs: Offering exclusive content through subscription models to provide continuous value to clients.
Workbooks and Guides: Designing practical tools that clients can use independently, such as meal plans or organizational checklists.

Darcy stresses that while creating these products requires upfront effort, the long-term benefits include additional income without the need for constant active work.

Insights from the Doula Village Community

Darcy shares insights from her Doula Village, a community where doulas collaborate and support each other in building their businesses. She highlights success stories and diverse approaches taken by fellow doulas:

Lizzie from Fierce Lizzie: Developed a childbirth education class specifically for unmedicated hospital births, successfully selling it repeatedly to a targeted audience.
Anna Rodney of Chicago Family Doulas: Also focused on a specialized childbirth education class, demonstrating that a single well-crafted product can sustain income.

Darcy Sauers [19:20]: “She just sells over and over again because there's new people that want an unmedicated hospital birth all the time.”

These examples illustrate the viability of niche-focused digital products and the importance of understanding and catering to specific client needs.

Overcoming Challenges and Building Confidence

Darcy acknowledges the challenges doulas may face when venturing into passive income streams, such as marketing and initial product creation. She offers reassurance by emphasizing that there is no one-size-fits-all formula:

Darcy Sauers [21:15]: “There is no magic formula, and anyone who's promising to sell you a magic formula is lying.”

Instead, she advises doulas to trust their instincts, follow their passions, and seek feedback from their communities to refine their offerings.

Call to Action and Community Engagement

To support doulas in their journey toward creating passive income, Darcy invites listeners to join her Doula Village community. Priced at $67 a month, Doula Village offers resources, strategy sessions, and a supportive network to help doulas develop and market their digital products.

Darcy Sauers [22:45]: “If you want to put yourself in the room, virtual room with other doulas who are doing this… it's a great place to ease into that online doula business building world.”

Additionally, Darcy encourages doulas to engage with their local and online communities to gather insights and validate their product ideas, enhancing the likelihood of success.

Conclusion

In wrapping up the episode, Darcy reinforces the transformative potential of passive income for doulas. By creating digital products, doulas can not only increase their earnings but also extend their impact, reaching and assisting more families without the limitations of time and physical presence.

Darcy Sauers [23:30]: “You can work less hours somehow help more people and earn more money. It sounds too good to be true, but trust me, it is true.”

She leaves listeners with a motivational push to identify their strengths, tap into their passions, and take actionable steps toward building a sustainable and fulfilling doula career through passive income.

Notable Quotes

On Audience Potential:

“The Internet is only limited by your imagination. And there is, trust me, an audience for everything.” — Darcy Sauers [10:30]
On Following Passion:

“You don't have to follow someone else's rules. You have to follow your own heart and passion and what your customers need.” — Darcy Sauers [14:05]
On No Magic Formula:

“There is no magic formula, and anyone who's promising to sell you a magic formula is lying.” — Darcy Sauers [21:15]
On Passive Income Benefits:

“You can work less hours somehow help more people and earn more money. It sounds too good to be true, but trust me, it is true.” — Darcy Sauers [23:30]

Final Thoughts

This episode of The Doula Darcy Podcast serves as a compelling guide for doulas aspiring to diversify their income streams through passive means. Darcy Sauers combines personal storytelling with practical advice, making the concept of passive income both accessible and attainable for her listeners. By fostering a sense of community and providing tangible strategies, Darcy empowers doulas to enhance their professional lives while continuing to support families effectively.

For more insights and to join the community, you can reach out to Darcy on Instagram @thedoula_darcy or join the Doula Marketing Group on Facebook.

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Transcript3 lines

[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 shift gifts 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]
B
Well, hello. It is a beautiful fall day here in New Hampshire in the world of the dula Darcy. And I was sitting, having my coffee this morning and I looked out my back window and my backyard like looks out onto the woods and there was two deer in my yard nibbling on the grass and they were just so cute. And I just thought, this is the best. I'm having my coffee watching these deer. And one was obviously like the mama deer and then a juvenile. It wasn't a baby. Again, it's October and I could, I could just tell this deer wasn't a baby, but it wasn't a full grown deer yet. So watching them and then they walk from my yard out into the woods. And then I did something. I looked back up and I noticed the little deer is feeding from its mom. I don't want to say breastfeeding because deer don't have breasts, but very obviously this deer was standing up and the mom was just standing there and the little deer was getting milk. And then it was kind of funny because the mom just suddenly was just like, okay, we're done. And she gave a little kick and like walked off. And the younger deer just kind of stood there a little bit like, hey, Mom. But anyway, it was so cool. I thought, you know, I'm a lactation counselor and I just love, like, I've never seen that before. I've seen deer my whole life. I've never seen one feeding, eating its mom's milk. So it was just so cool to be able to watch that out my window on a Tuesday morning. Then it got me thinking, like, this wasn't a baby fawn. It was obviously, you know, the deer had just been eating grass in my yard five minutes before. So of course I started googling, like, how long do deer breastfeed? And before you know it, I am in some bow hunting chat room Reddit thread. I very quickly Got there. And yeah, so it turns out, you know, I found like a Google answer that deer do drink their mom's milk for, you know, up to for years. For as long as the mom wants is what it said. So then I end up open this bow and I promise this all as a point. I end up in this bow hunting chat room and I see this guy saying somebody was, they were thinking about shooting a deer, but then noticed that the deer was lactating. And so this one hunter responds like, well, that you can't shoot that deer. That means it just had a baby. And I thought, oh God, here we go. I was getting all ready to be so mad that there's a bunch of men in this hunting chat that know nothing about breastfeeding and having babies. But I was pleasantly surprised at how much the first the rest of the hunters knew. And it was really fascinating on so many levels to think that a, there's a chat room for everything. And it was really great to see all these hunters say, you, you know, that deer drank their mom's milk. It does not mean that the mom just had a baby. They can lactate, you know, all the time. And it was just, there was a lot of great, informative, educated answers. These guys make great husbands. But it got me thinking, there were definitely other hunters that were like asking questions. And I just thought, of course my doula Darcy brain goes to like, you could make a class on deer lactating. You can make a digital course about anything. And that is what today's podcast is about. Doulas. I mean, this is what I do all day long, one on one strategy sessions with doulas, talking about with, you know, in my doula village, like coming up with, then this is my absolute superp, coming up with ways doulas can add new revenue streams to their doula businesses. And with the Internet, there's, you're only limited by your imagination. And there is, trust me, an audience for everything. Do you want to make a course for hunters that teaches about lactation in, in mammals? Go for it. These guys would buy it. So all joking aside, like I said, this is my superpower. I absolutely love. I can, you know, I do these one hour strategy sessions. I can talk to you for about three minutes and that, you know, talk about what, you know, what you where your passions are, what your strengths are, and then boom, boom, boom. Here is a million dollar business strategy of how you can offer a digital product, a digital course, a group program, some kind of virtual something to augment your doula income and help more people. And when I say this is my superpower, I absolutely mean it. I, my local mom friends are sick of me because this is what I do. We go out for drinks and dinner and I written a business, verbally written a business plan for every single one of them, and they just won't do it. But my friend Betsy, who I probably will have on the podcast, I, she loves, she's the one who plans all our ski trips, all our other trips. She loves it. And she plans the itineraries of what we're gonna do in these new cities that we go to. And I'm like, you, you could, she should totally have a bachelorette party planning business. And I have on multiple occasions told her all the different ways she could market it, how she could structure the actual business, and someday she will do it. And she will come on this podcast because we have a few other things we want to talk about. But my point is there is something if you are thinking, if you're at. Here's what I want to say. If you're a busy doula and you're juggling multiple clients a month and you're just stretched thin and you're hitting that, what I call the different glass ceiling, but this glass ceiling of how much you can earn because there's only so many hours in a week that you can offer as a postpartum doula, there's only so many births you can attend in a month. There's a, an a limit to the income that you can earn. And we're all, you know, we all pretty much have kids. We have other people we're taking care of. We have lives. So, you know, you can't work all the time. There are so many things that you can do to bring in. And you know, I always joke about a million dollar business plan. Whether you want to bring in a million dollars or you just need an extra 500 bucks a month, there is so much that you can do as a doula with the training and experience you already have. Amy Porterfield, who is the queen of digital courses, says you just have to be 10% ahead of the person that you're teaching. So I guarantee if you are listening to this podcast, you have something you have a lot to offer. Moms, families, the people having babies in the world just based on your obsession with birth and postpartum, you know what area. So start to make a list of the areas of birth, the areas of postpartum that you really love, and book a strategy session with me. Cause I will I love to drill down into this and help people figure out how to turn their passion, their expertise, their experience, their certifications, their training into something that is going to help them earn a little extra money to kind of take the pressure off so that you're not burning the candle at both ends, so that you're not spending every waking minute away from your own babies. And so the cool, cool, cool thing about the Internet is that it opens up a worldwide audience to you. So things that you might not work in your town in person will work on a global Internet. Let's call it a stage. So for instance, here in Dover, New Hampshire, if I was trying to teach a class at the local library on deer lactation, you know, it would take a lot of work on my part and who knows, I don't know. Could I get two hunters to sign up this fall? Maybe, but. And then I have to go to the library, teach the class in person and all that. But if I record my class on deer lactation, I can sell it to hunters here in New Hampshire, in Maine, Vermont, Montana, Idaho, like everywhere, all throughout Canada, Alaska, the uk, I don't know. Do they hunt deer in Australia? Maybe not. But anywhere where there's English speaking hunters that need to know about deer lactation, I can sell that course. So. Meaning the audience gets exponentially bigger, even though that is a super, super, super niche down class. So if you want to teach about creating a baby gift registry for twins with brown hair, you could do that. If you want to teach, you could. And here's the other thing. You could come up with 10 different. You know, when people talk about an online business, they think, oh my God, you know, I need, I need five classes and all sorts of different structures. You don't, you could, you could have one offer, you could have one little packet of information that you sell, that you create on Canva tonight and just sell over and over and over again. It doesn't have to be super complicated. Yes, you could create a $400 17 module childbirth education course that is jam packed with information and oh so good and is worth $400. Absolutely. You absolutely could do that. And you could absolutely make a million dollars doing that. You also could tonight on Canva, create a five page workbook on I don't know how to make healthy soup for postpartum for breastfeeding. You know, some really niche down detail oriented guide that you sell for 29, 2999 or you know, $25 and sell that. You could have them that could be a million dollar Business. There are no limits. And there are. Here's what I want you to hear. There are no rules you can listen to. And it's great to do this. Listen to all the strategies, learn from the experts. Everybody's going to try to sell you, oh, get my 10 step process for doing this. Like, that's great. But you can, you don't have to follow someone else's rules. You don't have to follow someone else's strategy. You have to follow your own heart and passion and what your customers need. What do people need? So a great way to start thinking about this is what do people ask you about a lot? What are some common questions you're always answering? What are you known for in your doula community? What are you known for in your community? Are you the doula that is really good at nutrition and cooking and stocking freezers? Are you the doula who is so good at organizing and packing hospital bags or organizing nurseries? I mean, there's a million different things that you can create that provide value to people that people are willing to pay for. You just need to create it and then you need to sell it. And I'm not gonna lie, it's not like you create something on Canva tonight and you wake up and you sell a thousand of them in the morning. There's a lot of work to make passive income passive. Meaning you've got to put in the marketing strategy, you've got to put in the promotion. But once you do, and once you do start earning those sales, once you do come home from a birth and you check your notifications and you sold three of your information packets at 25 bucks a piece. So you made 75 bucks on top of what you were earning while you were at that birth. That is amazing. And it builds as the days go on, as the weeks, the months, the years, you are continuing to earn on that one product that you created. So the first step is figuring out what it is you want to offer. And the best way to do this is talk to the people who know you. Talk to the doulas in your area that you know really well and talk about your passions and your strength. And it's really, it can be real eye opening to talk to the people that know you because they might point things out to you that you didn't even think of. And this is one thing I just love about my doula village in our office hours is we have conversations about this all the time. People are, you know, will say, oh, I'm thinking of doing you know, creating a digital course around this aspect of VBACs, and you get 10 other doulas weighing in with their ideas and their thoughts, and what do you know? Fifteen minutes later we have an even better idea based on that person's knowledge and strength and the input from everybody else. The other cool thing about my doula village is within the video library, I have interviewed a bunch of other doulas that have created digital online businesses. And they're all unique. For instance, me and like Kylie of birthworker.com, like, we have these robust online businesses with many, many different offerings. And that's great. That's just how she and I both are wired. Like, we love creating new things. But I also have an interview in my doula village with Lizzie from Fierce Lizzie. She has created one childbirth ed class, and her little niche is her class is for people who want to have an unmedicated hospital birth. That's her one offering, and that's what she just sells over and over and over again because there's new people that want an unmedicated hospital birth all the time. And she is. She's earning what she needs to earn just from this one class. I also have a great interview with Hehe Tranquility by Hehe, where she outlines what the way she's structured her her business. And Anna Rodney of Chicago Family doulas, who has a childbirth ed class. There is. Everybody wants to know the magic strategy. And I say, this is again, this parallels like being a postpartum doula. All my clients are like, okay, Darcy, just tell me the magic breastfeeding strategy. Tell me the magic strategy to get my little newborn sleeping, and there's no answer. It depends on the baby. It depends on so many. It depends on the parents. It depends on the home. It depends on so many different variables. It's the same with creating your online business. There's no magic formula, and anyone who's promising to sell you a magic formula is lying. There's as many different humans as there are on the planet. There's that many ways to create an online business. And I'm not even exaggerating. You can create whatever you want and absolutely take courses, learn from other people that are doing it, surround yourself with other people that are doing it, because that is the way to grow and the way to learn. But trust your own gut, follow your own passions and help people. That's really what it comes down to. And you can't go wrong. So if you want to, I'd love to have you join My Doula Village. If you want to put yourself in the room, virtual room with other doulas who are doing this and you know, a lot of you, I've been talking so much about Amy Porterfield and Digital Course Academy, which is an amazing, awesome program that a lot of you took advantage of, but if you didn't because you're not quite ready. My Doula Village is a great place to ease into that online doula business building world we for for a lot less money. It's only $67 a month, so I'd love to have you in there. I'd love to hear, even share in my free group, in the doula marketing group. Share what you're doing, share what you're thinking of, get some feedback, share in your local mom groups like, hey, I'm thinking about creating a course about, you know, helping new parents establish great baby sleep habits and good sleep hygiene. Like, tell me what do you want to learn? Get the community talking. And it's amazing what you can glean from those kind of conversations. So I hope that my goal today was a to share this funny story about the the deer I saw lactating and the hunting group chat I ended up in. But also in all seriousness, to plant the seeds that there's options out there for you as a doula. There's options out there for you if you are a busy doula burning the candle at both ends and you need to make some kind of change to make your life a little bit easier without sacrificing helping as many people as possible. That is the craziest thing about digital courses products in an online business. You can work less hours somehow help more people and earn more money. It sounds too good to be true, but trust me, it is true. And I just will not rest until I'm helping more doulas do that. So I hope this has planted a seed within you to start paying attention. Pay attention to what really lights you up. Pay attention to what people ask you about, what people ask your advice for. And this goes for doula, you know, in your client work, but also among your friends. What do people come to you for? And maybe it's yeah, freezer meals, but maybe it's compassion, maybe it's cheering on. You know, what are your fundamental strengths? And any way that you can design a business around that is gonna be a winner. So I hope you found this helpful. Shoot me a DM on Instagram. Tell me you heard this and tell me your idea for your online doula business. I love this stuff.
[23:40]
A
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.