Business Birth Story: Nichole Joy from Birth Your Online Business
Are you willing to let your birth business evolve (and even *gasp* pivot!) as your audience’s needs change over time?
In Episode 27 of the Birthworker Podcast, I'm joined by Nichole Joy from Birth Your Online Business, who is sharing her insight and experience from her transition from serving pregnant women into serving doula entrepreneurs.
In this interview with Nichole, we chat about:
Nichole’s story of leaving her multi-six-figure corporate career for her true passion…
Why so many course creators overcomplicate their work process…
How to stay in tune with what your audience needs in every phase of life…
… and a whole lot more!
Kyleigh Banks: I really want to hear your story of how you found birth work, how you started serving moms, how you pivoted into serving doulas, and maybe what it was like investing in yourself to learn some of that stuff. And then definitely bringing in your energetic stuff and finishing with how you actually serve doulas today and what kind of offers you have and how you can help and why you help them. So really your hero's journey, your entire story.
Nichole Joy: I love it. And on my podcast, I call them my business birth stories.
Kyleigh Banks: Yes.
Nichole Joy: So it's like I love interviewing my clients for their business birth story because in a lot of ways, starting a business, becoming an entrepreneur, is like giving birth.
Kyleigh Banks: 100%.
Nichole Joy: This is your new baby. So yes. I love it. So your hero story… if and when we do this on my podcast because of collaboration, I love that you're demonstrating that, not just introducing it and speaking it, but walking the walk, talking the talk because it's true. And I have thoughts on that too. And if you see me looking down sometimes it's because I take notes.
Kyleigh Banks: Okay. For sure.
Nichole Black: It's just something that helps me not lose my train of thought. And I remember certain things I want to mention or ask you.
Kyleigh Banks: Good for you.
Nichole Joy: Yeah, it helps me big time. I do it, all my clients are used to it at this point. So my business birth story, I was actually in corporate real estate finance and that was my career. I had a 10-year, I think I was a rockstar, career in corporate real estate finance. I was 30 years old when I had my son. And I was pregnant when I was working and I was 30 and I had finally reached multiple six figures. I'm just going to be transparent. In my career, I was making $250,000. And for a 30-year-old, I was very proud. I was the first person in my family to go to college and then actually break past certain barriers and generational patterns. So to me, 250 grand a year, it's a lot of money.
And it is a lot of money. It's a lot of money to a lot of people. And this is almost 10 years ago. I'm almost 40, so this is almost 10 years ago before today pricing. I was loving my life. I didn't have kids yet, I was making good money and I was in love. And then we decided to have a baby. And when I had these visions of I'm going to put him in a daycare right next to my job so I can go breastfeed him on my lunch break. And then I had a likely unnecessary C-section. And when they took him out and put him on me, something just clicked and I was like, oh, oh, he's not going in daycare. I can't do that. I was panicky because I get that daycare works really well for a lot of people and no judgment, but for me, they put him on me and I just felt like everything turned on and activated and I just couldn't.
And I was not doing well thinking about putting him in daycare yet. So I started working from home before it was popular. My company was a relatively small company and they were not cool with the whole working from home thing, but I'm like, well I'm not going to put him in daycare so we got to figure something out. And it worked really well for me for a long time. And then I moved. I was living in Florida, I moved to Chicago and had a VBAC with my second. That was the first time I'd heard the word VBAC and I thought it was a vacuum cleaner. I'm like, what are we talking about? You're going to vacuum something out of me? And I went full-on and studied all things VBAC. And at the time, this was six, seven years ago. There wasn't quite as much information and educational options as there are now. But I dug through anything I could get my hands on.
I had a VBAC in the hospital and she was 9lbs, 4oz. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm intact. Everything is intact. And I just pushed that out of me. The whole world needs to know that this is possible. And shortly after she was born, I decided to leave my job. When I was pregnant with her, I lost my little brother too. He was in a motorcycle accident and he was 21. I felt like between him passing when I was seven months pregnant and then a few months later having this life-shaking, incredible birth experience, I was like, I cannot go back to looking at real estate numbers anymore. It just doesn't do anything for me. And so I kind of think of those experiences as catalysts on our journeys.
Because everybody has those catalyst moments, those things that happen. For me, it's that catalyst for something to change. And I left my job a few months after she was born and I had no idea what I was going to do. I have a very entrepreneurial spirit. I come from two entrepreneur parents. And so working in a cubicle always felt like jail to me. It makes me physically not well. But I kind of felt like I had no choice for a long time. So how I got into birthwork was I felt super passionate about the VBAC that I had just had, but I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what to do with that. And then I got pregnant again. We moved back to Florida and I got pregnant with my third. And I realized I wanted to have a natural birth this time and I wanted to do it at home.
And so I started digging into research and information again and went a little deeper and I was like, I'm going to study to be a doula and I'm going to learn all about childbirth education and I'm going to take childbirth education certification. And that's kind of how I got into birth work was really preparing my own self. And then I was like, well, I want to share about this because this is possible. And a lot of people in Florida… I feel like southeast Florida is one of the higher C-section rates, and very high repeat cesarean rates. When I moved back to Florida, a lot of my friends and family were like, what? You had a vaginal, a regular birth? I thought you had to have a C-section. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So that's really what started the business. And it kind of naturally and very organically evolved over time.
I was building resources that I needed in the beginning, right? I needed doula training. And for me, because I wanted to know firsthand what they were going to do for me hiring a doula for the first time. Well actually I did have a doula with my second, but I also kind of knew I was going to be at home and I wanted to know everything. And my husband wasn't really on board with a homebirth. So we were planning to go to the hospital with midwives. And then the day that I went into labor, I was 41 weeks pregnant and it was August in Florida. So I was basically dying. And my midwife wanted to induce me and I did not want to be induced, I didn't want to be touched. Baby was healthy, everything was going well. I was very healthy, uncomfortable but healthy.
And I'm like, nope, I'm good. And I went home and within 30 minutes, I ate some lunch and my water broke. So we were waiting at home for the doula, and less than three hours later, Imani came out on the bedroom floor. I gave birth to her and it was just me and my husband. The doula came near the end. She was going to ride with me to the hospital, but I refused to get dressed. I refused to do anything except be in labor land, like la la land. And the ambulance folks came in at the very end and that was interesting. But yeah, I was building in terms of the business resources the whole way for me and then sharing them.
I needed a birth plan. So I built a birth plan. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to share this with people who need it. I needed a birth class. So I made a birth class and curriculum. It was kind of like how I told you I take notes. I was taking notes while I was learning and it turned into a curriculum. So it was very organic in that way. And then the same thing with migrating to helping other birth workers. Because I realized when I made an online course for birth, it wasn't popular yet. It was 2018, 2019 is when my first courses were really coming out. And nobody in the industry was doing that. Not many of us, I should say.
And there were a lot of people that weren't very happy about it and they're like, this is how we do this. And I really was like, well, I don't have a choice because I can't really go teach at the library. I can't do that the way my life is set up. And so many, there were a lot of birthworkers though who were like, hey, how do you do that? I want to do that too. I want to be at home. I don't want to go to class. So I started teaching them how to do it and then it just took off. And that's how that went really in a nutshell.
Kyleigh Banks: Okay, I have some questions. At what point did you start an Instagram and a website and was that geared towards pregnant moms, or it was towards doulas at that point?
Nichole Joy: So funny enough, and I think everybody listening is going to enjoy this, but I actually started my business Instagram before any of this when I first left my job. Because the first thing I started when I left my job was a fashion blog. And the irony is not lost on me considering that most days I'm in sweatpants and yoga pants. But in the moment it felt… I enjoy talking about clothes, I enjoy shopping and I was too afraid in the beginning, in the early days, to talk about birth. I didn't want people to come after me. I didn't think I was allowed to honestly. And it was interesting. It was like I felt like I needed permission. So that's how my Instagram that I have now started as a fashion Instagram. And I would just talk about clothes.
And I think a lot of those posts are still there if anybody wants a good laugh. But the beautiful thing about that was that by starting this fashion blog, I learned how to build a website. I learned how to blog, how to write a blog post, how to write Instagram captions, and how to navigate Instagram for business. So early on, that's what it was. And then I slowly, I wrote a blog post about my C-section and I was so afraid to share it. And then it just naturally eventually got the courage to share a blog post about my birth and I shared it to Instagram. So I started speaking to pregnant people and it just naturally kind of took over and I closed the fashion, the very dead, lame fashion blog.
Kyleigh Banks: I love, in hearing your story, there's this lightness about what it was like to let go of that old and bring in that new. And I just love, I'm sure it wasn't 100% light in the moment, but it's really cool hearing that. Because a lot of people, they cling onto the dream of what could have been, an old idea, an old relationship, an old birth goal. And they have a hard time accepting, just accepting and transitioning and honestly looking for the signs of the universe pointing them in the way that they actually should be going. So I love that lightness about that, the pivot.
Nichole Joy: You asked about energetics and you also asked about investing, right? And I was thinking about that. That was a note that I wrote and I feel like this would be a good time to speak to the investment piece because I speak to it lightly. But I know a lot of people get stuck on, well, I invested this much on this thing and it's not working. I spent money on my fashion blog. I bought clothes. I paid for photos to post to my fashion blog. And I could have hung onto that and been like, well I'm not going to leave this yet because it hasn't returned me my money. But if you zoom out and think a little bigger, I learned those skills that I needed for the next piece.
It's really difficult in my opinion to directly connect income to a specific investment that you made. And when you make investments, at least what I've learned, is that I look at the long-term return, not if I buy this thing, whatever this thing is, how much are we going to make this month off of it? That's very small, short-term thinking. And if you think bigger, yeah, my fashion blog wasn't successful in that it didn't earn me any money. But the skills I learned in doing that, the money I invested in doing those things, ultimately gave me the tools that I needed for the next steps.
Kyleigh Banks: Did you take any of your childbirth courses that you created and almost pivot that and give those to birth workers or did you also leave those behind?
Nichole Joy: I actually was teaching one-off workshops at first. And example, I was in awe that my body could push out a nine pound baby and I could be intact down there. And because that was one of my biggest concerns was like how am I not going to tear pushing out a watermelon? And I was so confused at first about how this happens. So I dug up every piece of information I could find for my own needs. And I had people in my community who were like, how did you do that? Tell us the things. So I made a workshop teaching them about all things vaginal tearing, like evidence-based information, stuff that was studied. These were the things that they reported, the positions that are less likely to result in a tear, that kind of thing.
I shared what I learned and so initially I had all these small workshops and then near, I want to say it was summer of 2019, I compiled it into a on demand, self-paced birth course. And it's still there. People still buy it. It's still available. I haven't changed it. So that's part of it. Actually my most popular digital course is course creation for birth professionals. And it has a bundle that has a very, very basic, straightforward six-hour teachable curriculum in it. Because I had it, I built it and I'm like, well, am I going to just throw it away or make it available to people who might need it? I realized that not everybody finds it as easy to create a curriculum, but that was something that came really easy to me. So I felt like if I can serve the birth world in ways that maybe some other people struggle and fill in that gap and provide tools for their toolkit that are outside of Ribosos, and that's kind of what I did with the birth classes.
Kyleigh Banks: Such a good idea. That's what we're working on behind the scenes right now. I spent really an entire year, full-time, building an entire course and curriculum. And now that I'm pivoting, really just because I listened to my audience and I love them and we have such a good connection and I asked them what they wanted and it felt energetically aligned with me. So I'm like, that's what you want, I have the capacity to give that to you, so let's pivot. And so that's really cool that that's something that you've done too because to me it just seems like a very clear way to reuse something, repurpose something that you've spent a lot of time on. And that repurposing is actually huge. And if anyone's listening and you're feeling like you're creating so much content all the time, please just know that there is an end date to that if you do it right and if you do it well. You can repurpose literally everything.
Nichole Joy: Yeah, it's true. I'm actually working on something for Q1 of '23 and just this morning I was like, oh, I had something from 2019 that I'm going to pull from the archives. And obviously, I have new evolved understandings of those things, so I'm adjusting it and making changes, but it's repurposed material that's still potent and not a lot of people have seen. My audience was different or smaller at that time, so hoping to get it in front of more people.
Kyleigh Banks: What was the first offer you created for doulas when they started to ask you, Nichole, how are you doing this?
Nichole Joy: Course creation for doulas or birth professionals. Yeah, that was the first one because so many people were asking and I'm like, okay, I'll make a course on how to make a course and I'll teach you how to make digital courses. And that was the first one.
Kyleigh Banks: Does that go into everything, like selling and delivering and all of those awesome details?
Nichole Joy: So the original course creation bundle or course was a three-part self-paced course. And it was on creating your material, your content, your curriculum, what you want to do, your creative process, how to do it, and it can be applied to, it doesn't have to be for childbirth ed. And that's actually something I'm doing. Q1 '23 is a new way, evolved version. But the original version was creating the content, the logistics, the technology, the media, how do you do this? Do you need this? Just really simplifying. And then there was a module on pricing and positioning.
So I find a lot of people struggled with how to price the class. And then positioning it in your suite of offers relative to other offers. And so I didn't get into selling necessarily with the original course. That was a separate conversation. First I was like, let's build the course. Because as you said, it took you a year to build out your custom course. It takes time. And I have so many thoughts on selling and marketing that I was like, let's do this first. We'll move into that later.
Kyleigh Banks: Yes, that would definitely be giving them too much when they just need to start essentially. When people come to you and they say that they want to start teaching childbirth education or create an online course or something, what's the number one struggle that you see people coming to you with? Or what's the number one thing that they're missing that if they just knew this one thing, it would help them out a lot in the entire process?
Nichole Joy: That they are making it way too complicated and trying to make it perfect the first time. The biggest piece of advice I find myself telling people over and over again when it comes to making a digital course is simplify to start. Your first course is not going to be your final course. It's not going to be one only forever and ever amen. And the first version is not going to be the final version. So start, put it on the calendar, start tomorrow, teach it live for free if you want. It gets to be so much simpler than what I think people make it sometimes. And I think there's a lot of reasons behind why they do that. And I get it, I totally get it. But these dreams are going to live up here, which I call Candy Land. They're going to live in Candy Land, in Dreamland, which is a beautiful place and it's important, but at some point you have to bring your dreams out of Candy Land and into reality and start taking action. And lack of perfection.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah, okay, I absolutely love that you said that. And I just want to say that that was me. I spent an entire year making the course because I was being a perfectionist. And the courses that I had taken up to that point to teach me how to make a course, I mean, she has a team of 20 people, she's got a full-time video staff, she had a studio, she had transcripts, she had the whole shebang. And I saw that and I had this idea that that's what creating an online course is.
And so I copied that completely, did the whole same clothes every time, same lighting, same makeup, perfect script. And that's why it took so long. But guess what? It was the first iteration. Like Nichole said, everything changes. So because it took me a year to make the first one, I'm like, wow, now I have to redo that when I spent so much time. I actually wish I did three rounds of it, super easy just showing up on Zoom live with no transcript and then nailing down my perfect version after I actually knew that it worked and it sold and people liked it and I enjoyed teaching it rather than spending all that time upfront. So I love that you said that.
Nichole Joy: And you might even find, there have been times, because I've taught so many courses at this point. I was actually thinking this the other day, that I really want to tally up. I've reached the point now where I just get an idea and I'm like, oh, I'm teaching on this. Let's start. What's the date? Okay, let's just show up. And the less stuff that I'm finding that I'm peeling back less and less of the stuff that I need to just get in and do it, I'm hosting a party on December 13th because it felt fun. I was like, oh my gosh, I want to do a planning party. I want to do it for me to plan for next year. So I was just doing it before we hopped on and I'm like, the less things, because you're right, it is a testing thing and I think your confidence grows the more you get in and do.
And so if I would've kept the first version of anything I ever taught, it was probably, I don't know, who knows? Interesting. But there have been things that I nail on the first time and the energy of that, for example, those birth classes. Some people have said, have you rerecorded them? Have you updated them? And I'm like, no, because a lot of stuff in there, the material hasn't changed. Birth is birth is birth. I mean there may be some new findings, but generally what happens in the body doesn't really change.
I look at them as time capsules of energy and the energy I was in when I recorded them. I was in the middle of fire-lioness-mama-bear mode that just had a less than three hour birth on her bedroom floor on a yoga mat, like a goddess beast. And so I'm like, I'm not changing that because the energy is in the recordings. That's what I was in when I was doing it. So when I was speaking in those videos, it was like fire. And I just can't, I keep some stuff like that is a masterpiece that I can't recreate that energy. So I decided, I'm like, no, they're actually fine, they're perfect.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah, good for you for thinking that. There's a video that I need to film for my doula training program. It's self mastery and conscious leadership and acceptance and just awareness of where you are and your triggers. And it's a five part series and I still need to film part five. And my girls are asking, when is it coming? And I'm just like, I hope I have the energy this weekend, because it takes a very specific kind of energy to talk about that kind of stuff. And if I just show up on any given day and just read a script that I wrote, it's not doing them justice. And I've never thought about it like that. So I love how it's true, that the video's capturing the energy of that moment in that room right then.
Nichole Joy: Yeah, it is. And people can feel it. They can feel the difference. Yeah, it's got that superhero birthing person energy in the videos. So I'm like, they're fine. They're actually more than fine. They're exactly what they should be. And if I tried to mess with it, I would ruin it.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah. So what was the offer you created after the course creation for birthworkers?
Nichole Joy: It was interesting. After I did course creation, now my people had a course. We built a course in like, I don't know how many weeks, I can't remember, but I helped them build their course. So I was like, okay, now we have a course. Now we need people to sell it to and to offer it to and to help with this course. So we need more people, we're going to grow our audiences. So then I did audience expansion. And I did that in early 2020. We moved into audience expansion. So I taught a course on how to build, how to grow your audience online. And some stuff applied in person, but it was more so online like creating freebies and opt-ins and email marketing and creating, starting a newsletter and a list, that kind of thing. Also getting public, not public speaking, but PR. Being featured, how to get featured on online journals or on the news and things like that.
So we did audience expansion, which was a really fun course and bundle. And then we moved into selling. So we're like, okay, now we have a thing, now we have people to offer it too. And we have warmed them up and worked with them and developed a relationship via some kind of free offering. Now we have a connected audience, an engaged audience. Now can we offer our thing that we built? So I taught selling courses after that. I taught that in the summer of 2020, which was a wild time because Florida wasn't locked down very long, but we were still locked down and the kids were home and it was hoohoo. And I was just like, whatever.
In some of my courses, the kids will pop in during a filming. And I'm like, the beauty of working with birth workers is they get it. This is real life. And it's actually how many of them want to build their businesses is where their children are present. So not only do they not care, but I think they really appreciate it because I'm like, it's not perfect. It's not supposed to be perfect. We're not perfect. The kids barge in and I'm like, hold please, and I'll pause, go tend to them and come back.
Kyleigh Banks: Yup. The amount of times I've whipped out my boob live on Zoom coaching my students and I actually hear a lot of new birthworkers say that they can't teach the live workshops because they're on call or they have kids. And I just tell them, not only is it not a negative thing, but actually it's a positive thing. Because the first time I whipped out my boob and breastfed live on Zoom, the amount of DMs that I got, like thank you for doing that, changed my world. And now it's like, yeah, she's at every Zoom call with us now whenever she wants to be. People want authentic.
Nichole Joy: You're giving them permission too because I think we're so afraid of needing to be perfect and then they're like, oh, well if she can do it, I can do it. And it's like, you get this permission to just be normal.
Kyleigh Banks: 100%. Anyone listening, I want you to go back and re-listen to the story Nichole just said because she very organically created new offers that her past students would now be interested in. And I love that. And I know we're talking about business, but it doesn't have to relate to business. So you could create a pregnancy offer that leads to a birth offer that leads to a postpartum offer that leads to a homeschooling offer. And you can literally just teach people as you are going through your own life journey. What an awesome way.
Nichole Joy: I mean, that's exactly what I've been doing and it's so aligned with my design because even now I do it, even now I learn something. Are you into human design? I'm jumping in.
Kyleigh Banks: A little bit.
Nichole Joy: Okay. I will learn. I have a one line in my profile and so information is, I need information, I'm the investigator, so I dig into new content, new topics and I really go deep and I learn and then I master it and then I experience it because I have a three line. So I go and I try things and I learn and I experience and then I go back to my community. I'm like, hey, okay, here's what I did, here's what I learned. Here's all the things. Let me help you.
So I often find that I'm just like a few steps, I hate to say ahead in terms of a hierarchical better or worse, it's not better or worse, it's just I'm a few steps ahead on my journey and most of my people are right one step behind. And so I'm like, okay, here's the next step. And we just keep moving together. And I've actually had people, at this point in my career, in my business, I've had people who were working with me during their pregnancy that are now my clients that have taken my doula courses for birthworkers. So that's really cool to see that too.
Kyleigh Banks: That is so cool. That's the power of birth honestly. That really is the power of birth. And I actually credit that journey of women going through a birth experience, either empowering or disempowering or something in between then becoming doulas. That journey is, I think, what led me to essentially find my niche today is that I just grew my audience with pregnant women, and all of them, or not all of them of course, but a lot of them had really empowering autonomous birth experiences that lights the fire if I want to be a doula. And then absolutely they follow you into the doula programs.
Nichole Joy: It's true. And there was an offer that I was going to tell you something about too. A lot of your community might even have it because it was one of my more popular things. So when you were asking about creating offers organically and just naturally moving into something, what year was it? 2020, had to have been '20, yes. I believe it was 2020. Yeah, it was Black Friday 2020. I was preparing for Black Friday. I had created a content gold list for myself. When I built things for myself, and then I feel like, well people might need something like this. And then I just create a version for them. I call it my content gold list. And I had a huge list of potential topics of stuff I could speak about for pregnant people on my social medias.
And I was like, it would be really cool to give this to create something like this. So I created a virtual doula's content toolkit and it was like 365 days worth of content prompts because I had a lot. And then I just dug up some more, a bunch of affirmations, a content calendar because I needed one for myself. What happens in January? What happens in March? Each month, what are we talking about if I run out of things to talk about? So I needed one and I had seen some out on the internet, but I wanted something that incorporated a few more things that were missing, I felt, for my needs. And so I was like, well I'm going to make mine. And I put this thing together and then it came with all these ways you can repurpose your content. Because I was like, well, I don't know if they know about repurposing.
So I made a list. Really simple. It didn't take me long at all. I threw it together and I shared it with my community for Black Friday. I opened it at $11. It was normally $21. I opened it for 11 bucks. And I haven't done the math in some time, but I will say last time I checked, I want to say there was between 800 and 900 people who have purchased it at this point. And it's a digital product. It is an asset in my business that I created one time that I get to sell forever. And it happened to be, the key of why I want to share this is because it happened to be one that did really well when there were a lot of others in between that just didn't land quite the same. And I'm sharing it because we often hear these success stories of like, oh my god, I took 15 minutes to make this thing and it sold, I sold $13,000 worth of it or whatever.
But what we don't always talk about is all the other things you made in between that just didn't sell. And that happens and that's normal. So when people start, if you make something that you're like, well, nobody bought it, then make something else or change it, change something about it. Change the title, change the format, change the delivery, change how you talk about it. I've tried, I've built up this ability to learn. They say trial and error. I say trial and lesson. I try and I extract the lesson and then I try again. And so yes, that's something I felt like would be really helpful to people listening. Especially even when you're working with pregnant people. I tried things that didn't land well when I was doing it that way either. I built all these freebies into a free resource library for pregnant people. One of them? Huge download that loads of people were downloading. A couple others? Zippo. And in my head I'm like, guys, these things are amazing. You're missing out on the gold. But it just wasn't landing with them. And that's okay, it happens that way.
Kyleigh Banks: I love that you mentioned that too because I get stuck in talking about my success and the products that have had success. And for me, I never created something completely new. I just changed and changed and changed until it worked. But I think I started making my very first ebook, digital download where no coaching, nothing like that, just an ebook. I want to say October of 2020 and I want to say I made my first sale in January, so three months without a sale. And then I want to say that May, I sold 100 copies, so like $3,000 in one month, and then it was $3,000 every month.
And when you think about it, when you think about six months of really just making $300, that sucks. A lot of people would stop after six months and only making $300. But you just have to look, like when it actually catches on and when it actually picks up, your learning is also exponential at that point. And I mean you could only be a couple weeks away from a very successful product launch or podcast interview or guest blog post or whatever it is that's going to take you across the line.
Nichole Joy: Yeah, it's true. And it's one of the saddest things for me in any industry, but watching business owners when they throw in the towel too soon. And because emotionally it's hard to navigate when someone's not buying or people aren't joining or nobody's signing up for my free thing. And you take it so personally and I get that because I've done that. But if you give in too soon and give up too soon, you could be missing, like you've missed the moment.
And there's a mentor that I follow on social media and she calls that pineapple season because pineapples take, they grow underground. And you don't see much on top of the ground when it's growing. You just see this little bush deal. And it takes I think 18, 19 months to grow a pineapple and they grow one at a time. So if you're looking at a plant, well, nothing's happening. It's been six months. Nothing's happening, it's been 10 months, nothing's happening, it's been 13 months. And you wait and wait and wait and if you pull the plug too soon, you miss the harvest, you miss the pineapple. Underground, there's this full entire pineapple growing. And so I thought that was a really cool example to help anchor in the concept of don't throw in the towel too soon. Something is coming. It's inevitable. Your success is truly inevitable.
Kyleigh Banks: Yeah. Okay. One of my clients, one of my students in my membership asked me a question recently, and I feel like this question is such a perfect question for you. So I'm bringing it back to the surface. And that question is, how do you find the balance between looking outside of yourself for validation and hiring a business coach or business mentor to help you on the way? Is hiring a coach and asking questions week after week and group coaching, is that a need for validation or is that a good thing?
Nichole Joy: I enjoy having a coach or mentor. I enjoy having that because, for me personally, I don't know about the validation piece, I like to soundboard. Part of my human design that I've learned is that I find my truth. The way that I know if something's right for me or not in business is to talk it out. And I love my husband too much to make him sit and listen to me talk everything out because I don't know that he would ever want to talk to me again if he had to hear me all the time. So for me, it's been a blessing to be able to hire somebody to hear me and listen to me soundboard and just hold space for me sometimes.
I don't necessarily have a business coach right now actually, but I do have a mentor and she helps me with soundboarding. She holds the space for me. And I love it, I love it. But it's taken a while for me to learn myself enough to learn that that's my strategy. Because I will say, earlier on in business, or if you don't know yourself as much as you think you do, yet it's easy to be influenced by other people, including business coaches, how they're doing things. Oh, the industry's doing two prenatals, one birth and then you stay for an hour. That's the standard. I'm going to do it that way, right? That's an example. Or this coach is doing three modules, six months or 12 weeks, I need to do it their way. And it's this much? Okay, I need to price that much because that's what they charge.
And it's really easy to take on other people's frameworks and structures because people, it's their success and they're like, this is the way and it is. It's their way, it's the way that worked for them. It was the key to their success, but it doesn't apply to everybody. And I think that the more, I guess the more mature you get in your entrepreneurial journey, and that's not to say you're immature. But the more you really know you on a deeper level. And for me, human design has been one of the pieces that's been really helpful for that, for me and learning of my clients, is it helps me to tune in to how do I want to do this? What's the way that would work best for me? And I actually have been revamping, restructuring a lot of my business to be even more aligned for me and with me. More time off, more flex time. My intention for 2023 is to take August all the way off. I'm going to take the whole month of August off.
Kyleigh Banks: Amazing.
Nichole Joy: Several years ago I would've been like no flipping away. I'm not going to miss a dollar. But it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice missing a dollar. This is the example of what I need in my life to make me happy. And so there's been a lot less of taking on other coach's stuff and just tuning into how I want to do it.
Kyleigh Banks: Tell me how your offers evolve to what they are today? And maybe if you want to give little hints about what's coming in 2023, we would love to hear it.
Nichole Joy: Yeah. So okay, high level. I told you about my three courses that I initially taught to birth workers. And then I reached a point where I was like, well, what would be, I had these passive courses, this is actually something I shared on my podcast last week or this week maybe, was like, okay, you have a passive course. Let's say you built a passive course. Beautiful. Now, how can you bring it to life? What can you do for people to really, I don't live for people just buying my courses. It doesn't light me up if I'm like, yay money. Yes, I love money. Yes, I love what money will help me do in my life, but I want more than that. I want you to do things, I want you to build your courses or I want you to market or whatever it is. And if people just stock up on digital courses and they're sitting in their inboxes, that doesn't light me up.
Get in and do stuff. So I started to think, well, what can I do with these courses to really give people another layer of support? And so I started building different additional support packages and options. So you buy the courses, you get all the courses and you get this kind of coaching, that kind of coaching. I started playing with boxer, which I love walkie-talkie with my clients. So I do different things of walkie-talkie or digital courses and there's bonus pop-up Q&As from time to time. So if you've bought a digital course for me, you get to come to these strategy sessions and you can ask questions. So hopefully it gets some fire moving in their belly. They're like, oh, I don't have to pay extra for this. It's just a bonus. Lots of fun little things like that. I recently did a audiobook. I created an audiobook.
Kyleigh Banks: I saw that.
Nichole Joy: And that was fun. I did that in three weeks and it's super awesome because again, I need audiobooks because of my lifestyle. So I'm like, I'm going to make it into an audiobook and maybe it'll help people if they can't sit down and watch videos. And so that's kind of how I've been incorporating different pieces, but trying to tune into what I enjoy doing the most. This year actually, 2022, I built an entire new body of work. So I was talking to someone the other day, I'm like, I have 16 hours of brand new current evolved body of work, all online business stuff. Way evolved from when I was first teaching in 2019. So it incorporates a lot more energetics and healing. Healing with the business logistics and the structure and strategy. So I'm looking at how I can bring that body of work into 2023 in different ways. Ways that it's like, yes, there's these self-paced options, but we're going to bring them to life. And then ways that I can hold your hand and support you through it.
Kyleigh Banks: Amazing. Tell us a little bit about your podcast, because I want everyone to go check out your podcast.
Nichole Joy: So the podcast started in, it's been three years. It was started as Doula's Going Digital, and then I wanted to zoom out a little bit. And then it became Birth Your Online Business. So right now it's Birth Your Online Business. I feel like I should just stop there because 2023, I have a little bit, I'm also kind of a chameleon, so I give myself permission to switch things up when I feel like it. And I love my podcast, but I feel like sometimes I want to talk about more than business and my community loves when I talk about things that are outside of business. So what you might see next year is just more business. But yeah, there's the podcast, it's Birth Your Online Business. There's a collection of business birth stories, also very practical tips in business. And then I incorporate some energetics into the conversation like spirituality or metaphysical conversation.
Kyleigh Banks: Human design, probably?
Nichole Joy: Human design, inspiration, all of that. All the above.
Kyleigh Banks: Okay. My very last question for you is, how did it feel when you surpassed your corporate income with your own business?
Nichole Joy: Oh my God. I was like cloud nine. So the one piece I didn't tell you about that, right? So interesting. And this is good for anybody who's in the corporate world and feels safe in a nice, comfortable, safe corporate job. I reached my peak income when I was making the $250,000 that I told you about. When I got pregnant, my bosses wrote me out of all of my bonuses. They completely stripped away all of the extras legally. Legally. They didn't do anything wrong. Although morally you could question that because they asked me questions. It was a small company with no real HR. And they're like, so are you going to be a mom and a wife or are you going to be a corporate woman? That's what they asked me. And I'm like, corporate woman? I'm going to say whatever you need to hear to keep my bonuses.
So when I left my job, they had stripped me down to my base pay. My base pay was $80,000. And I was like, this is a third of what I had grown accustomed to earning. And so I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. Because even though they all had wives and children, it was run by old white men. And they wanted you to be married to the job. And so I think they realized, okay, she's going to go have babies and we are not. So they, I'm just making assumptions here, but what I knew to be true is they wrote me out of my bonuses and I was like, yeah, not doing that anymore. So I'll say, when I first passed my base salary in my business, it was this moment of thank you gratitude and also I'm ready for the next step. Because it wasn't just passing the income level, it was also, I didn't even have to put pants on to do it.
And what not a lot of people know is I don't even work that many hours. I really don't. And to know that that's possible, I just felt like, well, if that's possible, I could do so much more. I can help so many more people and maybe never have to wear real pants again. Or hardly ever. Yeah. And I hardly ever have to leave the house unless it's for kids. We have days go by where my husband's like, you think you're going to leave the house today? And I'm like, I don't know. The verdict's still out.
Kyleigh Banks: When I started birth work, I was a hair stylist and I drove over 50 miles to work, an hour to work. And it's really fascinating. I remember at one point, thinking how are we going to afford two cars? How are we going to pay for this? And now obviously paying for the cars is not a big deal, but also my car's lucky if I use it once a week. And I'm like, that is not the life I wanted to sign up for. An hour each way to work, plus a kid at home with a babysitter. That was not success to me, even though I was making a lot of money as a hair stylist. Success looks like I have four international vacations booked in the next six months with my family. Success to me is my partner is playing with our kid right now so I can record a podcast because he stays home.
Success to me is helping other women find the freedom that I've found too, financial freedom, time freedom, freedom to be whoever you want without caring what kind of troll is going to say whatever on TikTok. That is success to me. And so yeah, it is really, really cool to connect with someone else like you who's just right there in the thick of it too and thriving and just your mindset too is really, really cool. Like I said, when we first started talking, I hadn't ever heard your story before.
And I've listened to a few episodes of your podcast, but definitely not every single one. But I love, you give me the energy that everything happens for a reason. And if you can just zoom out a little bit and stop judging your situation and ask yourself, what can I learn from this? How can I grow through this? That's the kind of vibe that you give me just from being in this virtual room with you. That's the kind of energy I'm downloading. So I really appreciate that. And how cool that we're out here really, really changing lives in a really big way. Feels very humbling and awesome.
Nichole Joy: It does. Thank you. And I think that would be something helpful to leave people with also is, how can you redefine success in your own life and in your own business? Because it's not about chasing the dollars anymore. Yes, we need money to eat and pay bills and all that, but if you really could redefine what success means to you. It's not Chanel. I mean, I like fancy stuff, but it's not success. Success is I get to go to all three of my kid's winter concerts this year. Success in 2023 is going to be taking August completely off. Success is I get to pick them up from school every day, even if they drive me bonkers on the car ride home because they're yelling at each other and they're hungry.
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.