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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
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doula or you're looking to take your
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doula business to the next level, you're in the right place. Let's go.
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Hey, everybody. I figured for this week's episode of the podcast, we could talk about one of my favorite subjects, money. And I think we don't talk about this enough, especially in the doula world, especially as women. And why not? We all have money, we all need money, we're all making money. Let's talk about it. So what made me think of this is a couple of the doulas in my doula village have all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, they've worked very hard and have been building towards this, but they are now here in 2026, having five figure months consistently, which they were not before. So it's a testament to their hard work and the marketing foundation that they have built and everything that they've poured into their business. But as. And you know what? Side note, here's what I love about the community we've cultivated inside of my doula village is everybody's celebrating them, cheering them on, like, way to go. There's not a whiff of like, oh, must be nice. It's more along the lines of like, congratulations. If I'm not there yet, you are modeling for me that it's possible and you are showing me the way, and I celebrate that and I can work towards that for myself. It's such a great community and there's so much power in just that that we are fostering that money mindset, that mentality that five figure months are possible for all of us. And come along with me and it can be great. But that's. I wanted to do a podcast about, like, what do we do as doulas when all of a sudden the money starts rolling in and we're not used to it and our nervous systems are not used to it? That's what I want to talk about in the second half of this podcast. First, I want to just give you some action tips, like, for the physical, like, what Do I do when I start bringing in all this money? And then I also want to dive into, like, the Energetics and the mindset of that as well. So be. And the reason I want to do this and the reason I was sharing with them in the my Doula Village Facebook group is I got burned the first year because I was a doula for, let's say, probably eight years before I started my agency and before I started working on my passive income streams. And then when all of a sudden all that clicked and I started raking in the dough, I got burned by taxes. I am embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me that, like, tripling your income means you're going to triple what you owe in taxes. And so when I got that tax bill, I was taken aback and just it was like a gut punch. All of a sudden. I owed a lot of money that I was not prepared for. So now I really. I'm like the catcher in the rise standing on the cliff. I want to save you all from not having to deal with that. So what? So we talk about this a lot. If you've been around me, birth worker retreat or in my Doula Village. I love the book the Prophet first by Mike. Mike Hallowicz. I don't know if that's how you say it, but if you want to read it, great. He's super funny and super real, just talking about the way we humans are with money. But the gist of it is you're running your own business. And the point of that is to make money. And so many of us run the. And this was me for many years. I just earned as much as I could in the hours that I had available to me in the week. And that did pay the bills. And like, if there was ever any extra in my business account, I just. I just spent it. So what he's talks. Mike Kalowitz talks about in profit first is to pay yourself first. Pay yourself the profit first. And he talks about separate. Setting up five different bank accounts. And I heard people talking about this, and I was like, well, that is an annoying waste of time. And I just didn't want to go to the bank. I couldn't imagine, like, having five separate bank accounts. So long story short, I eventually did it and now I love it. So you start one of these accounts is for your profit. And every week I look at the cash that has come in And I put 3% of that. He says to do like 1 to 5. So I do 3, 3% of the gross money I earn Every single week goes into this profit account. And this includes for my agency. You know, I don't earn 100% of the cash that comes in for my agency, but I still shave 3% off of that and put it into my profit account. The second bank account he tells you to open is for taxes. And this is the one that has really helped me every week put money into that tax account. So if you are, if this is your first year raking in a lot of dough, the like, a great rule of thumb is to take 30% of what you earn and put it into a tax account. Whether you do that monthly, weekly or when the checks come in, whatever. But that is, hopefully you won't need to pay that much because you're on top of your tax write offs and all that. But just to be safe, 30% is a great rule of thumb. 30% of your gross income you put away for taxes. And now what I've done, now that my income has kind of leveled out, I know you know what I'm earning each year. I just take what I paid the year before in taxes. Divide that by 52. I set up a scheduled for 52 weeks of the year. I set up a scheduled transaction for every Friday. I just put that number from my business bank account into my tax account. And then quarterly, when my taxes are due, the money is just there. And it's not stressful. And even though it's a bigger number than I'm I used to pay for sure I have it. So it's not, I don't get mad about it, I just pay it. It's easy. It's done it like this, just this alone. Creating a separate tax bank account for me has saved me so much mental anguish and stress. Like tax time is just not stressful anymore. So highly recommend that you do the same, especially in the years when you start to really make some money so that you don't get stuck with a big tax bill. Then the other bank accounts he talks about are like, then you have your operating expenses account, then you have, honestly I can't even remember what the other ones are because I, so I have operating expenses and then I have like just the general business account that all month, all money gets paid into. And so his point of the book is that you're the entrepreneur, you're the business owner. That takes a ton of hard work and a ton of risk and you deserve to be rewarded for that. So that's what your profit account is for. He says every quarter, take half of what's in your profit account and spend it on something fun. Don't reinvest it in the business. Don't use it to pay a bill. Use half of it for something fun. Fun. And that is your reward for being the business owner. And I love this. So I use my profit account money. I always spend it on skiing because that is my big love. So I bought myself a new ski coat and ski pants last year. I bought my ski pass, you know, my season pass. And you know what he says is when you spend it on something fun, you spend it on something beautiful for your home. You spend it on your ski pass. Every time you see it, every time you look at it, it's like this little dopamine hit of like, I bought this with my business and I love skiing and now I love it even more. Like, I'll be shushing down the slopes or scanning my season pass and I'm like, my business did this and it's just the best. So highly recommend doing setting profit aside, setting tax money aside. And then also I will say another just random tip, not from this book as doulas. Sometimes, especially those of you, you know, taking big carrot deposits and big deposits for like 10 weeks of overnight work, think about opening a high yield savings account and putting those deposits in there. If you've got a $10,000 deposit that you're going to sit on for five months, put it somewhere, it's going to earn 4% interest, 5% interest, like make a little money off of it. Also, that is going to save you and protect you because it keeps it out of your account and you're not going to spend it because I don't know about you, but I do not spend those deposits until the work has been completed because you just never know. Start a high yield savings account, separate account for your retainers and your deposits, whatever you call them. This will really help you. Okay, those are my, like, physical action tips. Now I want to talk about the money mindset and the energ, like the energetics around, all of a sudden earning more money because this can really trip people up. And the book I love about this is every year for the birth worker retreat, Jody and I do a book club where, you know, if you want to, you can read a book. And then we, at some point during the birth worker retreat, we do have a little book club. So this year, or I should. Yeah, this year In January of 2026, the book I chose, actually, and I think Jody chose Profit first. This is awesome. I didn't even plan this Jody's book club was profit first. Mine was the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I love this book because it is about how we as human beings handle success, money, and just the good things in our lives. It was a fascinating read. So, you know, have you ever heard of like, it's. There's an alarmingly high statistic of people who win a lot of money in the lottery. They're bankrupt within a year and it's because they just can't handle having money. And it's like a nervous system thing. If you rate you grew up poor or struggling for money or your parents told you that money's hard, you have to work hard for money, or money is bad, money is evil. If you all of a sudden get a lot of money, your nervous system is going to be like, let's get this out of here. So a lot of lottery winners just spend it all. And I noticed this about myself as my business. Even before the year where I earned a lot and got burned with taxes, even before that, as I was just starting to earn more money, I would, you know, see this number in my bank account and be like, well, that can't just sit here. It's subconsciously. And I'd be like, well, and luckily I'm blessed to have been raised by parents who, while they taught me money was hard and a struggle and you had to work hard for it. They also taught me like to save and invest. So I would put money, if I had a lot of in my account or, you know, more than an extra hundred dollars in my bank account. I would put some in my IRA account. Oh, wait, backtrack. Another actionable tip. If you, not even if you, if you are a. When you are a doula earning money, please, I don't care if you're 20 or 62, start putting some of what you earn into an IR retirement account. Get yourself a financial planner consultant person and start a retirement account and put money in it every week. $20, $100, whatever. Please start planning for your future. And the younger you are, if you are 25 listening to this and think, oh, I don't need to worry about this. Yes, yet. Yes, you do. Because the sooner you start, the sooner that compounds and you'll earn more money faster. And there's a whole module on this in my doula village if you want to learn more. But I can't stress enough to save for your retirement. Do not skip this. Okay, back to the energetics. So I would, when I had money in my account puts, you know, put some More into my retirement account, or I send an extra payment into my car payment. Or I would honestly like invest in a new coach, join a new mastermind. Maybe that's why I do so many business retreats. Actually, I never really thought about this, but when I. Yeah, when I have extra money, I invest it in retail myself, in my business, instead of letting it sit there. So I will argue that's a good thing to do with my money, because it always. I always. You've heard me say I bet on myself. If I'm going to join a mastermind, I'm going to make that investment triple itself. So anyway, I. It's a human part of the human condition when what Rosemary Bredesen says, what's familiar feels like truth. So. So if you. If it's familiar to you, if you spent the first 25, 30 years of your life struggling for money and then all of a sudden you have it, your body, your nervous system is going to be like, well, this is wrong. Get that out of here. Let's go buy a boat. Let's go spend it on some Target runs and stuff that we don't need. So anyway, this book, the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, talks about that and talks about how to overcome that and override that and calm your nervous system down to the point where it's. Seeing $5,000 in your bank account doesn't make you feel like you're being chased by a bear. That's what it comes down to. You have to kind of train your body, train your nervous system to be calm when you have lots of money, because it's. Money is not bad. Money is not evil. I don't care what your parents or people in the world have told you. Money's not evil. It's a bunch of. And at this point, it's not even real. It's a bunch of ones and zeros in your bank account. It's not going to make you a bad person. It's not going to do anything bad for you. It is just some ones and zeros sitting in your bank account. And I was thinking about this the other day. You know, everybody's like, oh, the billionaires, they're so evil and they need to, you know, save the world and all that. Like, it's. Having a lot of money doesn't make you a bad person. Taylor Swift's a billionaire. She's really nice. And every time she tours in a new city, she gives hundreds of thousands of dollars away to charities in that city. She gives big, huge bonuses to the people on her team. When you have more money, you can be more generous. You don't have to be a jerk. Yes, some people are, but not all of them. And you get to choose. You get to decide, and you get to be the boss of your nervous system system as you have more money coming in to you and your doula business and this, you know, I'm talking kind of flippantly about it. I have been working on this, my money mindset hard for years. I have come a long way, baby. And I will tell you, it takes work. But reading this book, the Big Leap, really helped with that. It's also, you know, it's not just money. It's raise your hand if you have the feeling when, like, something good happens. And then you're like, oh, my God, the other shoes gotta drop. Like, what's gonna happen? Something bad's gonna happen. Why do we think that way? Why can't we train our brains to be like, oh, I'm having a great day. This is great. Maybe. How about I have a great day tomorrow too? Oh, I have $5,000 in my bank account today. How about I just keep it there, let it sit there till Friday, let it sit there till next year and not let it affect who you are and how you walk around in the world. So this book talks about how when things are going well in our life, when we start to have more money, when we start to have more success, oftentimes we self sabotage ourselves because our nervous system is threatened, because it doesn't feel familiar, it doesn't feel safe. And if you can start to, like, cut in. And when you feel your brain and your body freaking out about, you know, if you just landed a big $20,000 contract or you, you know, I don't know, you have a new boyfriend, things are just going well, let it be, let it be good. So it comes down to sitting with it. If you start to earn more money as a doula, let it sit there and maybe just. And breathe into it. And even so you guys know Kimberly Ann Johnson, who wrote the Fourth Trimester? I heard her on a podcast a long time ago. And she does, she does so much other stuff now, but she was talking about the first time. Maybe it was after that book. I don't know. The first thing she did the first time, she earned, you know, she was like this struggling entrepreneur single mom, and then she earned $50,000 for something just kind of out of nowhere online. She overnight had $50,000 in her bank account. She was freaking out and at her nervous System went into freeze. She just tucked that money away and kept it in her bank account and just ignored it. Didn't open her statements, didn't open the app, whatever. She just ignored it. And then she said like six months went by and she's like, all right, I have all this money and it hasn't turned me into a jerk. She. Her money story was that like, only you know that rich people are jerks. And now she was rich. So anyway, six months later she was like, okay, that money has just been sitting there and I'm still not a jerk. I'm still the nice person. And I think we could all learn something from that. And the next step of that is, yeah, let's all have a lot of money in our accounts. Look at what Taylor Swift does with her billions. Do you read the articles of like the economic impact of her coming into a city and what she donates to charity and all that? Can you imagine if all of us doulas had more money? What the world would look like we would make? We do make, let's say it that way. We do make really good choices with our money. And I want more of you to have more money and make those choices and make the world a better place. I don't remember who said it, but there's some quote about like, if more women were millionaires, like the world would completely change. And I love that because it is so true. So hope these energetic mindset money mindset tips and physical action tips of what to do with all the new money you have coming in have been helpful. Shoot me a DM and let me know what you thought of this episode. And I want to leave you with if this episode maybe triggered you think about why and maybe journal about that. Look at, you know, why you getting all bajiggity. If I'm talking about you having a lot of money and where does that come from and what. Because a lot of times the thing and also start to pay attention to the stories you tell yourself in your head around money and around you earning money as a doula or sleep consultant, whatever. And remember that they're just stories that you're making up probably from what your parents told you or society tells you and just start to really look at like what's true and what's just a made up story. Because this has really changed my life and made my life better, happier, but also allowed me to have my nervous system feel like it is safe. It's okay if I start earning more money and I want that for all of you too, so hope you enjoyed this. Have a great rest of your day.
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Thank you for tuning in to the Doula Darcy podcast.
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I hope you found this episode valuable
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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.
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If you enjoyed the episode, please take
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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.