Episode 96: Transcript

Hey friends, welcome back. This week is going to be pretty fun, because it's a forecast a virtual doula support forecast, so kind of a assessment and assessment of what's been happening in the virtual doula support world, and what traction, virtual doula support is gaining. And what I think is coming, and how you can set yourself up for that, how you might make adjustments in your birth business, in your doula business to accommodate. Okay, so before we kick off what I want to share with you is a little bit of a personal piece, my doula is approximately 3000 miles away from me. And I very, very casually dropped that line in an Instagram live about a week or two ago as of the time of this recording and I don't know how many people caught that. But here's the thing, I'm not pregnant, let's make it clear, I'm not pregnant right now, nor am I trying to get pregnant right now. I just had been thinking about virtual doula support, and I can tell you that if I ever did decide that I want to have another baby, my Doula, the person that I would hire as my virtual doula is 3000 miles away from me. She lives in Oregon. I live in Florida. She is my person. She is the person that I trust the person that I feel safe with, and someone that I would want on my team. If I were to do all of this again, I don't know if that's happening by the way, I'm just saying that when I was thinking about virtual doula support she is the one who came to mind. Even if she's not going to be here in the room with me squeezing my hips, giving me massages, bringing, bringing me ice chips and cold water wash rags even if she's not that person. I would still have her on my team, hit like, of course. And when I started to really think about what that belief in me, means, I wanted to, that was kind of what birth, this episode is that I realized, that is 100% all in belief in the value of virtual doula support. That's what this looks like. I believe in it to my core, that if I were pregnant again. That's what I would be doing. I know that some people are like, well, but they don't replace your in person to let for me, and with this person. Yes, she would, there's a chance that I would hire another doula I mean dream team might be having an in person doula at my birth. In addition to having her. But that wouldn't be required for me for her and for me and for this situation. She went to that place. Now, if you are like oh I don't know I'm not there or if you're still telling yourself. If you're asking questions like is virtual doula support worth it. Is it valuable. Or if you're telling yourself in your clients

that,

well this is an alternative option, kind of thing and if you are approaching it with your potential clients and in your community, through that lens of it not being an incredible thing. An incredible offer an option for many people that might be this is gonna be a hard pill to swallow. That might be why you're not selling it truthfully. I've heard a lot of talk over you know since March of 2020 when suddenly everybody was doing virtual support which is fantastic, I love it because I just do I love that it's

an option that's available to us and I love options. But I've seen a lot of people in the last,

What is it been 717 months 16 717 months about. I've seen a lot of people questioning is this even worth it does this even work would anybody want to buy this, does anybody, invest in virtual doula support would anyone want to pay for virtual doula services. If you are asking those kinds of questions and if you feel that ounce of doubt in your body, about virtual doula support. It's going to make it very tricky for you to book virtual clients and to sell virtual doula services, I can tell you that if you are not 100% behind your offer, whatever that is. If you don't 100% believe that it can change people's experience change their lives, change their birth, change their postpartum to be able to text and message you anytime that they want and have somebody on the other end of the line to listen to them if you don't believe that that can change people's lives. And you're not 100% behind this.

Again,

it's gonna be hard to sell.

And you might not sell very many, if any, because you are carrying that doubt in you. So that's a little bit of like my experience, where what I've been thinking about for myself, and then the belief that I hold in my body and why I believe it's so it feels very aligned I'm trying to find the correct words here. It feels very aligned for me to sell virtual services, whatever they are, whether that's virtual childbirth education classes, especially for me on demand. I feel completely behind that, and that's why I'm able to sell them, and that's why people buy them from me, not the only reason but that's part of it, if I wasn't behind them if I doubted that people would enjoy the format and what it's you know how my birth courses for example are set up, put nobody would ever buy them. That's why it's aligned for me to sell virtual support services, including to other birth professionals, because I know the potential, I know what's possible. I teach online. Birth business courses, business courses for both professionals. I coach virtually I've hardly met any of my clients in real life. And I believe and I know now I'm seeing the actual results. I know it to be true and valuable. And it makes it very, I hesitate to say easy to sell because that's not what the vibe that's not the feeling, the feeling to me is that it's very aligned. I believe in it to my core, and my clients know that they believe that they trust me, because they know how much I believe in it, they know how passionately, I believe in and they know that I show up. And because I believe so strongly I deliver because I know what the result with the potential results can be, whether they're planning a birth or birthing their business,

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recording in progress.

In terms of where the world is at, with virtual doula support, you know, 17 months ago, There weren't many people talking about it, there wasn't much online about it because it wasn't as popular. I mean it was very rare here and there just a few people that were doing things like that. Now, relatively relatively recently we started to see celebrities like Gigi or giggy I'm not sure, Gigi, her dad. One of the her dad's sister's supermodel, you know, person, and other celebrities are starting to talk about homebirth they're starting to talk about virtual doula support that they had virtual doulas news articles are showing up online. And if you don't believe me or even if you do just go look for yourself. This is called evidence you know you're giving yourself evidence to show your brain that actually this is happening, actually this is growing so this is one of the ways that I work through limiting beliefs and what we're talking, effectively what we're talking about here is if you have a limiting belief surrounding whether or not virtual doula support is valuable. One of the things that I will do in my own process is find the evidence to believe that that's not true, because that's not true, and part of the evidence is that celebrities are doing it and spreading the word, the news articles online are talking about it so go to Google search, virtual doula and then click news, so it shows you the news articles that refer to online doula support or virtual doula support they're out there. I actually have and I would recommend doing this for you. I have Google alerts set up so that whenever a news article comes out about online doula or virtual doula or digital doula. I get an email with the article so I am constantly getting evidence in my inbox to remind me that the work that we're doing is working. Sharing to social media, talking about these things on social media, writing blog posts, talking on your Instagram Stories, having conversations in clubhouse rooms, sharing your blog post to Pinterest, you know, sharing videos to YouTube whatever channels that you're doing it on but getting the word out. It is helping to spread the word and change the belief that the collective birthing community has about virtual doula support not just being a viable option, but an incredible option that is available to them, no matter where they're at, you know, they may be stuck in a, in a country that with the borders are closed, you know, and perhaps their person is not in their country with given whatever right this is actually a thing that's happening because now I'm speaking to people, birth professionals that are all over the world. Australia, Germany, you know there are different Canada and there are parts like some borders have reopened. But we're going to talk about like forecast stuff in a minute. But this is actually a thing that the border and the traveling be is becoming a thing, it is becoming a thing so virtual support is an option, an amazing option. Okay, let's talk forecast now. It's my belief that virtual doula support is not going away. As the World Cup begins slash continues to reopen. And sadly, that last part might be on repeat, just depending on what your beliefs are and what variants may be coming, I'm not really sure I don't want to like, you know I'm not dipping my toe into the puddle of fear, with this episode. It's just that I think that it's important to have a pretty solid outlook and perspective on, you know what what possibilities may come, and to be prepared, you know, and so as the world reopens, and there may be closing so then Reopenings again. I think that this is staying virtual doula support is one of the things that we get to keep. It's one of the things that will continue into this new life that we're all creating a new business, a new way of doing business. Because here's the thing. Number one, when you're their person. You're their person. You know what I mean. Like my person in Oregon. She's my person when it would come to pregnancy and birth, period, no matter where she's at. If she's living in a human body at the same time as me, and I'm able to connect with her over a phone or computer it's happening. Number two, there will still be people that aren't comfortable having someone in the room,

whether that's because they just don't want to be around other people in, you know, in terms of, you know, vaccinated unvaccinated get one not wanting to get sick, not wanting to have exposure, whatever it is that's fine, don't judge them or just not wanting to have a lot of people in the room. Talk about an example for that in just a moment. Number three, we talk a lot about people building their dream birth team. It's not just having an in person birth doula. For a lot of people their dream birth team might be virtual doula and an in person birth doula. Some of my clients that are birth business owners have been the virtual doula on a pregnant, fam and expecting families team, where they also had an in person birth doula. Yes, it happens. There is evidence. Now another thing to look forward to is, as you continue to work with families virtually, you can expect your virtual doula referral business to grow. Just like you're in person practice that referral business takes time. You have to start working with people in person to get referrals right well sometimes referrals can come other ways also. But the same thing happens virtually. When you put that out there when you start doing the thing, the referral business will pick up that does happen, as well. Another point in my forecast, more partners are getting involved. They want to be coached on how to doula their partner. They want to learn, they want to be hands on, and some of them want to be that person. And we know that many of you are listening and you know that to be true. This you being able to teach them how to do love their person during labor eliminates some of their family tension about who's allowed in the labor room. For example, mother in law, mother. Cousin, and sister friends. Sometimes feelings get hurt when certain people aren't invited into the bathroom. Correct, yes. If there's just an easy rule that actually nobody's going to be here except me and my partner, then it really eliminates the arguments, and the tension and I have spoken to families that this is their plan. So, in that type of situation, your job, virtually, is to do a heavy dose of educating and coaching partners how to support

their partners, right.

It also empowers families, and empowers partners, you're giving them so much knowledge so much information so much support and

can all

be done virtually. You don't have to be sitting in their house, to teach them how to support someone in labor. Okay, another part of my virtual doula support forecasts. I spoke about this in episode, I want to say 57. It's important to recognize that virtual doula support covers three of the four planes of the body, spiritual body, emotional, and mental. The fourth that it obviously doesn't cover is the physical body. So if you're questioning the value of virtual dual support remember that we're so covering three of the four planes. And going forward, that's how a lot of our life is has been during the last 17 ish months, and part of it will continue to be like that going forward. So, How do you move forward for yourself and in your birth business. My suggestion is to sit with the question, what do I believe to be true about the value of virtual doula support. And if there's any part of you that's questioning or uncertain about the value, the process I go through is to say, Well, is it true, is it a hard truth that the value is not there. No. Is that a, it's not a truth written in stone or written in the sky. No, it's not because I'm telling you I believe it so now we've proven that that's not a hard fact right because now I'm telling you that there's, we have evidence. The next thing I'll start to do is look for evidence. I look for evidence that it's happening and that people are enjoying it and appreciating it and finding value in

virtual doula support.

Here's evidence number one, me talking about it. You need more evidence, go to testimonials on my website, go to my Instagram story highlights, check out some of those testimonials of people who have taken my virtual childbirth education class. There are also people I've worked within the virtual support virtual doula support manner that have left reviews and testimonials, go there, ask. Many of my clients go into doulas going digital, and scroll through, I know you aren't able to see the premier coaching center but this conversations coming up that people are, it's happening. People are starting to reach out, people are booking virtual services. Of course it is. And look at what in you might be still holding on to that doubt and go there, what's behind that. And then something you can do is open up to evolving. Open up to evolving in your business, just like many other industries, this is what, this is what happens. Right. one of the examples that I was thinking about telephone I mean there's so many examples right but look at the telephone industry. My husband and I were driving recently and we passed an old telephone booth in a gas station near our house, and he's like, I

wonder if that thing still works and I thought, hmm,

I don't know, I had forgotten about telephones, and several years ago we, my son was in the airport, I mean, he's seven so it wasn't that long ago but he was probably too. And we were in an airport and they still had telephone booths payphone. I'm saying telephone but picked on this I should be specific payphone booths, and my son was like what's that, what's that like he didn't know what a payphone was. And I was thinking back to my childhood like payphones were absolutely a part of my life, you know I mean dating myself here and then 80s baby but payphones were a thing, and there is still a payphone one that I have recognized recently in our, in our town, in my area. And I don't know if it functions anymore but look at how far phones have come. Your phone that you might be listening to this podcast on is like a computer, it's way more I mean back then, I mean to communicate with each other. It took a while until we had pagers and then you could page somebody with your phone number, your landline phone number so they could call you back. Now, and then when texting first came right when you first got cell phones, my first cell phone was huge. And all it had was the ability for me to call emergency contacts I could call 911 I could call my dad and my grandmother, that was it. Otherwise the phone just like was dead to me it just sat there like it didn't do anything. And then eventually I got a minutes package and if anybody remembers those you. If you're younger, or young ish. You might not know this but when you bought cell phones. The first like cell phone, cell phones, you had to buy packages of minutes that you could use every month and sometimes your package would run out of minutes. Or, if you had a great package which I think T Mobile did doesn't it back in the day, you'd rollover your minutes to the next month. Yeah, seriously, and landline calls internationally used to be incredibly expensive like for us to call Israel. You know I have uncles, aunts, cousins in Israel and as a kid, to make a phone call to Israel was like a very big deal. And it had to be scheduled, you had to sit down and watch the clock and speak very quickly to get out, you know, you couldn't just kind of hang on a phone call to Israel there was no WhatsApp, to talk to people internationally without incurring extra cost like that wasn't a thing. I'm rambling about about this because I want to really show you how. An example of how much something like a telephone has evolved connection communication, what how it's evolved, Facebook, when Facebook first came out, it was only open to college students, I was in college so I had a Facebook account connected to through USF University of South Florida is where I went to college, and that was the first iteration of Facebook, and it was all college students and then people's moms and grandmas started getting on and the n anybody could get an account and then businesses started getting on and it was, yeah, it's just really interesting So, point being, be open to evolving evolving with the times. Then get curious. And so what I mean by this is, instead of asking the question, Will this even work. Try asking yourself, I wonder how this will happen. Just try that one shift for me and tell me how that goes. And then my last suggestion for how to move forward for yourself, for your business in this virtual doula support world is continue to set yourself up online. It doesn't happen all at once. It's okay. It might take a little time but continue working at it, even as the world reopens. You can continue to build this into your schedule, so that your online presence supports whatever it is you're doing. And by the way, this is not exclusive to virtual doula support. We'll talk separately about how your online presence, helps you bring in, in person, birth or postpartum or whatever kind of in person birth services you're offering clients as well, and join me next month in August for online business school for birth pros. It's a free event that I'm hosting at the end of August application only, so this is not open to anybody you can anybody can apply. I will share a link in the show notes to the application. I will let everybody know, in August, whether if you can hear that noise it's my dog, you'll find out for me. In August, if you've been accepted into the online business school for birth pros, and we'll talk more about it in coming episodes and as the month of August goes on, but if you want to get a jump start the first iteration of my form for you to fill out the application is available at the link in the show notes.