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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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So recently on my Instagram stories, I asked for ideas on what I should do my next podcast about and one of them was awesome and is turning into a podcast episode. So that suggestion was to talk about about how doulas can schedule a CEO day into their schedule. And I love this topic. First of all, I don't take CEO days. So if you don't even know what a CEO day is, that's Some people talk about like having a day in your week or your month where you do the CEO stuff of your business, the admin stuff, the big idea stuff. I personally just don't like the phrase CEO in terms of myself. The whole reason I started my business is because I didn't want to be a corporate girly anymore. And when someone says CEO, I just instantly picture a guy in a suit who works 80 hours a week, attends a lot of board meetings, and works for a company. And that's just not me. So I don't call myself a CEO. I just don't like it. And if you do, fine, whatever. But what I do is I have what I call. And I didn't make this up. I got it from my coach, Amber Lillistrom, and I don't even think she made it up. So we do another thing called an island day. And for me that means Wednesday is my island day. Island meaning it's in the middle of the week. So I work Monday and Tuesday. I work Thursday and Friday, and Wednesdays on my calendar are blocked off as busy. No one can book a call with me. I don't have any meetings. I don't do coaching calls. I don't have office hours for my doula village. I don't do anything like that. So if I need to, it's like a little buffer. If I need to finish up a project or send out some emails, I'll certainly do things. But I mostly don't. I try not to work at all that day. Because to me, you've heard my story. I worked in corporate marketing and advertising for 10 years. I was in a cubicle commuting to the office every day. And I got one week of vacation a year. Finally worked myself up to two weeks of vacation a year. And I just, I felt so constricted and I was miserable in that corporate lifestyle. As much as I liked my job, I didn't like the 9 to 5 grind that was always 8 to 6, 8 to 7, plus the commuting and just. Anyway, I became a doula because of the fire in my belly to help moms. But also I saw the freedom that it would give me to do something different every day, not have that nine to five grind. That was my whole impetus for creating passive income was the time freedom, the location freedom, the financial freedom that would give me that is the exact opposite of the corporate grind. So I love the idea of an island day to give me that freedom. If I want to work, I'll work. If I don't want to work, I don't. And a lot of times in the winter, Wednesdays are my ski day. I'll work on a Saturday when the slopes are crowded so that I can take a sunny Wednesday. And it's New Hampshire residence day. At Cannon mountain. It's only $45 to ski on Wednesdays. So on Wednesdays in the winter you find me there skiing with a bunch of 80 year old men that don't wear helmets and maybe a girlfriend or two of mine that was able to sneak away as well. And in the summer on Wednesdays I'll go to the beach or sit on my deck all day. One of the ideas behind a CEO day is that it gives you a day to work on your business, not in your business. And so having a day off for me on Wednesdays allows me to do that. Working on my business does not mean that I'm on my laptop. It doesn't mean that I'm necessarily like writing plans or working on a training or anything like that. Sometimes it means means skiing. Sometimes it means taking a five mile walk. Sometimes it means going to the beach so that my brain is free to think. And that's when I get my best ideas that grow my business. The other thing about a CEO day that I don't like is that I want every day to be me working on my business. I devote portions of my day, every day to thinking about my business beyond just what do I need to tackle on my to do list and what Emails do I have to send today and what meetings do I have? I like to work it in to just my everyday. The other thing I like to do is business retreats. So I host my main doula retreat for doulas twice a year and the birth worker retreat in the birth worker retreat in Clearwater, Florida in January. Because I see the immense value in attending retreats as a business owner. I also attend some on my own. I just was in Sedona with James Wedmore and then immediately after that, this is just how they piled up. I did a yoga retreat on Star island that I have done for 15 years or so. It's four days away again for me to just think and relax and have fun. So my best ideas for business come when I'm having fun, when I'm in free flow, creative juices flowing, having a great time. Way more effective than just chaining myself to my desk and pumping out work. Which brings me back to why I hated corporate life. I was an effective worker and so I would sit at my desk, I didn't chit chat with the other people, I would get my work done. But then even if I was done with my work at 3pm, I had to sit there and watch the clock till five. That's when I went and chatted with people. But I just, that drove me crazy, the idea I had to appear like I was at my desk being busy until the clock struck five. Nothing more was going to get done once I was done. What I had to do for my corporate job. So anyway, I think that to answer this person's question of how to work a CEO day into your doula business, maybe one day a week is not attainable for you right now. So try an hour a week or an hour a day or a three hour block of time, one day a week or one business retreat a year. Because the whole point of a CEO day, an island day, whatever you want to call it, is getting you out of your routine again. Because this is when your brain is free to think. When you're in your routine of okay, I got to get up, I got to shower, I got to make breakfast, I got to pack the lunches, I got to get the kids on the bus, I gotta do. And then I go to my client and then I do this and then I have a meeting and then a da da da. Your brain is consumed by your daily tasks and we just get into this rhythm as humans and especially as moms, I'm gonna say the mental load of motherhood. So carving out time for yourself where you can step out of that hamster wheel and take a different vantage point. It's like when you get on an airplane and you're looking down and you have the 30,000 foot view of the people on the ground and you just, you have a different perspective when you take a break, whether it's an hour a day, one day a week, one week a year, and you step out of the rigmarole of your life and your business. That's when you can really brainstorm and have breakthroughs. So it's very important to start to work this in to your schedule as a business owner and just as a person. Like, we're not meant to be cogs in a wheel on the treadmill of just productivity. We need breaks. And maybe you can't swing coming to the birth worker retreat in January. Maybe can't swing joining my Doula village and coming to Maine, but you really should. I'm just gonna say, I'll talk about that later. It's coming up in less than two weeks and I'm so excited. But maybe you can start to swing. I remember when my kids were little, I was going through my yoga teacher training and they were like, you need to be meditating for two hours a day. And I was like, I have three kids under the age of five. I can't meditate for 10 minutes. I open my eyes and they need me and I put them to bed and then I go to bed. So I remember trying to work with my teacher of like, where could I carve out five minutes? And it was like walking down the hall was when I was supposed to meditate. No matter how busy you are, you can carve out five minutes, you can carve out an hour, you can carve out a week as you start to do this more. And whether you're just relaxing and letting your brain freeform think or you're actually writing out your business goals, your business plans, like what ideas you have on the next things you want to do in your business. It's incredibly valuable to do this. And one thing I love about the my Doula Village office hours that I tend to focus more on the hive mind aspect of it. It's a chance to be on zoom with doulas from all over the world and talk about everything from clauses in our contracts to how we handle backup doulas to how we're promoting our next childbirth ed class. That's all great. The other thing is, it is like carving out a CEO day or a CEO hour because we're in those office hours, we're working on our businesses, not in our businesses. And you sitting there listening to other doulas. At first, as a doula, one doula raises a question or an issue. You might think, oh, this has nothing to do with me or my business, but. But as you listen, it starts to spark things in your brain. Ooh, maybe I could do something like that. Or ooh, maybe I could apply that to this other package I have over here. Or ooh, maybe this has never even crossed my radar. So that's another example of working on your business. So yes, join my doula village or find some doulas in your town that you get together with and you just chat business stuff with. Or you maybe go to. I have a friend who gets herself a hotel room for two days a month, every single month. And she goes to the fanciest hotel in her town because she thinks and believes and this is true. Like surrounding yourself in a fancy lobby and they have a deck with a beautiful view. She says just being there like elevates her mindset about her business and abundance and all that. But my point is this is something she does where. And you could do too, go to a hotel in your town. It could be 10 minutes down the road from your house, but just get away. Step out of the routine of your life and work on your business and just see what comes up. So that is my answer to why I don't have a CEO day, why I do island days instead. Why I think actually business retreats are even more effective because they do. They get you away. Usually retreat is in a beautiful location. You might have to get on a plane and just those aspects of it, there's growth in that. You're pushing your edge, you're getting out of your comfort zone, you're stepping onto a plane, you're meeting new people, you're going to a new city, you're seeing new things. All these things grow your business, grow you as a person. And that's so important. How do you do this? You do it one hour at a time. I have a couple of my one on one coaching clients. We talk about the of building your hybrid doula business model. Meaning like whether you're adding on independent contractors, becoming an agency, adding passive income streams or whatever you're doing, it takes. There's the first stage of it where you're just building the foundation and it doesn't look so pretty. And it's not instant gratification, it's not instant money. So a couple of us with them I call it your. This is your time. You're building your empire that is going to pay you back later. So you have to carve out one person. Actually, it's on her calendar. On Mondays she has a 90 minute slot, I think, and it's called her empire building session. It's blocked on her calendar. No one can book a meeting with her. She locks herself in her office, doesn't let her kids in, and she works on her business. And it's just more fun to say that she's working on building her empire. So that's one way you can do it. But everyone can carve out an hour a week, an hour a day, one day a week. Again, one week a year, two weeks a year. Maybe you're like me. And now at this point, I think in 2025, including the retreats I run 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Six business retreats I went on this year. Yeah. And the main is coming up. I'm recording this on September 23rd. So we are about 13 days away, I think. And we talked about this before with Caitlin from Be Her Village. The anticipation of a vacation, it's been shown in studies, is like half the benefit of a vacation. So it's the same with a business retreat that you're looking forward to. The anticipation of it is just so juicy and fun. I have a private Facebook messenger chat for everybody that's coming to Maine and we're all just so excited in there. We're making plans and we're talking about the food that we're gonna eat and what we're gonna work on and who's more excited than. And we just can't wait to all be together in this gorgeous seaside mansion in York, Maine. We're already making plans of when we're going to take a walk right down the street to the lighthouse on the Nubble Point. And just the anticipation of all the breakthroughs that are going to come from the doulas that are coming to the main retreats. I'll be doing it again in May, so if you want to get in on this, you can join my doula village now. Get to know everybody. That is the power. That is why I love these main retreats is that like for instance, when I just went to Sedona, I flew to attend someone else's retreat. I flew there. I didn't know anybody. I knew the James Wedmore who was leading it and I knew he would bring in people that were amazing, but I didn't know the other 11 or 12 attendees. So we had to meet them and the first day was spent like getting to know them, getting to know their businesses and which is fine. But in Maine, for my Doula Village, they're all in my Doula Village, we all already know each other. We have a and we're all doulas and so we already know each other's businesses. Some of them at this point have been coming to Maine for years now and they've seen each other at other things like they're friends and buddies. So when we step into that house in Maine, like we it's like a rocket ship. We just go. Because everybody knows each other. We don't have to spend time doing icebreakers. So anyway, I can't wait and I hope that you all will. Here's another thing that I'll say about taking time to work on your business, because working on your business ultimately is working on yourself. Entrepreneurship is the biggest self discovery, self work journey you can go on. So working on your business is really working on yourself and it's really so important. And you finding the time to do that comes down to you valuing yourself enough to say I am worth it. And I am blocking this time out on my calendar today or this week, every week, this year, whatever. Because I am worth it. My business is worth it. I am doing important work and this needs to happen. I would love to know what you thought about this episode. Find me on Instagram Hedula Darcy. Shoot me a dm. Let me know what you think. Let me know how it goes with scheduling your own island time empire, building time into your schedule.