Climbing the Birthworker Ladder, Etsy Shops, and Email Lists
Have you ever been curious about using Etsy as a birthworker? Or the logistics of managing your email list?
If you’ve been wondering about the ins and outs of running an online (and in-person) doula business, then get out a pen and paper, this episode is for you.
Things you’ll learn in this episode:
How to earn your way to the top of the doula-ladder…
My best tips for creating passive income as a birthworker…
The one change you need to make to your email list to maximize your sales…
… and a whole lot more!
To submit a question for next week’s podcast, click here.
Question 1: As a newbie, I feel like I have to earn my way to the top by attending as many different kinds of birth as possible, but I would really rather only take home birth clients. Do you have any advice? -Natalie
I love this question because when I was a newbie, I felt like that too. I don't know if I was feeling the pressure from the doula industry or from the birth community, or maybe just from my doula training mentor. My biggest advice for you, Natalie, is to start today. Even though you're a newbie, I want you to only attend the births that are a hell yes for you. I want you to only attend births with your perfect client.
If that means that you only take home births from the very start, 100% do that. Because you cannot serve your clients if that is not a 100%, full-body yes from you. You can't. If you are attending a birth because you feel like you have to, or even if you're attending a birth just because you want to get the experience, you would be bringing that energy into the birth, which is not serving your client, it's not serving moms. Throughout birth work, throughout everything that I do, and throughout every doula I train, I always come back to this question. Is what we are doing truly serving the women who hire us? If a woman was to hire you, Natalie, to go to her hospital birth, and you kind of had this piece of you where you were like, "I don't really want to do that," that is not truly serving that mother.
Me telling you, "Natalie, change yourself, get comfortable with hospital birth, doulas have to attend hospital birth,” would not be in alignment with my values. And I don't think that would be serving anyone. Not you, not your clients, not me, nobody. Even the people who have attended hundreds of births have still never attended this one new client's birth. Every single birth is so different. And so I want to put that into your head too, literally no amount of experience makes you more qualified than you are right now. Even if you attend thousands of births, you have never been to this client's birth. That client's birth only happens once. No one has ever been there. No amount of experience that you have is going to make you more qualified than you are right now to support that client.
You should also never feel like you have to “earn your way to the top.” I might even go as far as to say that there's a doula for everyone. I could look at someone and my bias could be, "Wow, that person is a horrible doula. I would not want them at my birth. I would not want them at my worst enemy's birth." But to be honest, who's to say that that's not the perfect doula for someone on this planet? So I think you never have to earn your way to the top, but I think the way that you do get to the top is by serving women who you are 100% aligned with, serving women in a way that feels 100% authentic to you. That is my advice for you.
Question 2: I kind of want to start an Etsy shop for my doula business. Do you have any tips for what kinds of things I could make or sell? -Lauren
I love talking about selling digital products. My first online offer that made me $10,000 was a digital download. A lot of people would say, "Oh, Etsy, right? You sell digital downloads on Etsy." It is true that Etsy can be awesome in some ways. For instance, it potentially brings a lot of traffic to your offers that are on that platform. But with that comes actually a lot of downfalls. A big one is the commission that they take. So what I do and what I teach my students is to grow an audience on social media. That way you don't have to rely on the algorithm of Etsy to send people to your offer, but you can sell directly to your audience from your social media and on your website. You don't need a third-party thing like Etsy to sell digital downloads. I know that wasn't even really your question, Lauren, but I just wanted to mention that you might be better off without something like Etsy, and you can 100% do just as well if you just sell from your website.
So do I have any tips for things that you can make or sell? Hell yes. First of all, I have a lot of these tips in a free guide that I have on my website. I call it my Make Money Freebie because it's 11 ways to make money as a birthworker when you're not on call. Something I cover in that freebie is selling digital downloads, so go check out that freebie if you haven't gotten it yet! And even honestly, if you've gotten it before, I just revamped it, so go check it out again.
You can sell things like birth plan templates or affirmation cards. And to be honest, Lauren, you could even sell products for doulas, like printable handouts for doulas to give their clients. For example, a handout of the pros and cons of birth interventions. When we're talking about Etsy, I feel like long-form e-books are not going to do as well as quick one-page printouts. But when you actually sell from your website, I think it's much easier to sell the bigger ticket, more expensive e-book type of offer than just a one-page printable.
I just want to mention that getting someone from being a brand-new doula who does not offer any services yet, doesn't have any package, doesn't have any online offers, to someone who attends 1-3 births per month, but also has that recurring passive income, let's say two grand per month, that is my bread and butter. That is exactly the kind of person I help.
I have to mention since we are talking about digital offers, that so many other things need to happen first. You need to get consistent on social media, you need to be growing your email list, and you need to be putting out weekly long-form content. That’s why this topic is my favorite because so many people come to me and say, Kyleigh, I want to create that recurring passive income online as a birth worker. Let me just make something and put it up there. And that's where I say, Whoa, whoa, whoa, awesome. That's a really great goal, but let me help you do all these foundational things first, so it's actually sustainable, but you are also going to make a profit and continue to grow, rather than just creating an offer, putting it on your website and maybe selling one to two per month because you don't have any strategy there.
Question 3: How should I structure my email list and online offers when I coach both pregnant women and postpartum women? They have very different desires, so I feel like I need a way to track who's currently pregnant and who already had their baby. -Erica
Now, this is more of an advanced question, and of course, these kinds of questions are my favorite because I'm a total strategy and online business nerd. It's really cool to answer these kinds of questions here because even if you're just starting out, you need to understand the big-picture strategy so you can get to where you want to go much faster, with a whole lot less stress, and wasting a lot less money than I wasted when I was learning.
Even if you don't have an email list, keep reading because I think this is going to be really helpful for you. What I do and what I teach all my students inside all of my programs is that when we are creating email lists, we want to have a field where people can actually enter their due date. When they sign up to your email list, you're going to be getting their due date so that you can track on your email list who's potentially pregnant still and who's probably not pregnant still. And then you can actually create content for those two different groups of people. Now, I don't want you to feel like you have to have two whole separate businesses. I don't want you to send two weekly newsletters, one to pregnant women, and one to postpartum women.
Find a way to create content that is interesting for both of those people, especially since you have offers that serve both of those people. But I definitely think it's a good idea when you're running promotions, to segment some people out. For instance, if I'm doing a sale of my birth course, Autonomous Birth Academy, let's say I'm sending 10 emails over one week, I'm not going to send all 10 emails to everyone on my list because I have a pretty good idea that half the people on my email list actually aren't even pregnant. Now, does that mean that I'm never sending emails to them because they're not pregnant? No, not at all. Because people get pregnant again very fast after having their babies. And two, maybe they're going to tell their friends. And so, when I'm doing that launch and I'm sending 10 emails over seven days, I'll probably send three of them to my whole list.
Then I'll just send the rest of them to the people who I know are still pregnant, or who I can guess are still pregnant. Because babies always come early, and there are always losses. So we have to take that into account too. Now, another couple of things that are really cool about tracking the due dates of people who get on your email list is that you can actually do promotions based on when people are giving birth. So for instance, if you're tracking someone's due date, and let's say you have an online course that's perfect for breastfeeding the week following birth, you can actually see these people's due dates and you can say, "Okay, if their baby's due on this day, two weeks before that, I'm going to actually automate an email sequence that does a promotion of this course that's going to be perfect for this woman two weeks from now."
That's something I've done in my entire business. I have an offer that's perfect for people in the third trimester, so I do a promotion to them two weeks before their third trimester. Brilliant, right? And the same, I have postpartum courses. I do another promotion one or two weeks before their due date. And so, that's just a really cool way that we can start to segment our audience, give people things that they're actually interested in instead of just sending our emails, for instance to our entire list. So that's something that's really cool. And actually, segmenting by due date is not the only way you can segment. So you might even have people check a box if they're having a home birth. Maybe you have a bunch of courses and one of them is perfect for home births. Have them check that box. Now you only are going to promote that course to the people who've opted in and said they're having a home birth, right? So brilliant.
If you were reading this post and you were thinking, "Oh my God, Kyleigh, I want you to answer my questions every single day so I can do this faster and stop stressing out." Or if you were thinking, "Oh my God, Kyleigh, I so badly want to package up my obsession for birth and find a way to make money even when I'm not on call and impact lives and births of moms all across the world, not just in my local community." If that is you, and if you have been thinking, "I'm ready to build a freaking legacy," then I want you to click here to learn more about the Birthworker Membership.
If you are ready to go from side gig doula to full-time birth worker, and if you're ready to quit your second job, stay home with your kids and impact lives across the world, then this membership is for you. And it is especially for you if you love these 3-in-15 episodes where I am answering your questions because that is exactly the kind of support you get inside the Birthworker Membership. Not only do you get access to my comprehensive business course, and not only do you get a community with 100+ other amazing birthworkers who are also entrepreneurs, but you get my eyes on your work, you can ask me any question you want to ask me live on Zoom or even in our private community.
You won't have to wait for these Friday episodes anymore. You won't have to submit your questions anymore because you can ask me personally inside the Birthworker Membership. So when you're ready for that, when you're ready to start growing online offers in your business that make you money even when you're not on call, click here to check out the membership and see if it's a good fit for you.
thank you for listening
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Meet your host, Kyleigh Banks, a side-gig doula turned CEO of a multi-six-figure birth-focused business. Her passion? Teaching birth nerds, like you, how to build an incredibly successful doula business that allows you to quit your day job, stay home with your kids, and most importantly, make a lasting impact on the world.