Hey there, birth nerd. You're listening to the Birthworker Podcast. My name is Kyleigh Banks, and I am totally obsessed with birth, and equally obsessed with business. And this is the show where I help women turn their passion for birth into a sustainable, profitable, and most importantly, impactful career. All right, let's get into it.

Welcome back. You are listening to episode 40 of the Birthworker Podcast. My name is Kyleigh Banks and I am coming to straight from Tel Aviv on vacation because I have set up my doula business in a way that I serve people way beyond just supporting moms in person. And if that is something that you want to learn how to do too, you've landed in the right place. Now, these Friday episodes, I take three of your biggest and best questions and I answer them in 15 minutes or less. And if you ever feel like you want to submit your own question, just go to the show notes or go to birthworker.com/ask and you can ask your question right there. So the first question today is how do I capitalize on a social media post going viral or gaining lots of traction? And this is a question that I really love because it means that you are thinking smarter, you're working smarter, not harder necessarily, and so I just love this question.

I don't want you to have a post that goes viral and then just ignore it and just continue acting like normal. No, there are actually things that you can do if you have a post or a reel that's just getting a lot more views, a lot more reach, a lot more interaction than your normal posts. So the very first thing that I would do is make sure that there is a big fat call to action in that post. And if it's a reel, I want you to put that call to action as the very first sentence, because most of the time when people are watching reels, they're actually not clicking to read the caption. And so if I had a reel that was going viral, you can go back in and edit the caption, I would change the caption to if you are interested in X, Y, Z, DM me, the word, whatever, or link in bio for my free guide on X, Y, Z.

And that way if thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people, or even millions of people are seeing this, and if it's a reel, they're going to see that call to action right there. If it's not a reel, you don't necessarily have to put that call to action as the very first line, you could put it at the end of the caption, but definitely go back and change that. And sometimes there are posts that get a lot of traction way down the road, especially reels. There are reels that I've made where it just keeps going and going and going for months. I think the reel that I have with the most likes, I think, or most views for a reel, is almost two million views. And that did not come over a weekend, I can tell you that. That came over several months. And so what I would do is actually go back and continue to update that call to action to something that's relevant to what I'm working on right now, essentially.

And by the way, it should be relevant to the post too. We don't want to just throw in a totally random call to action. Something else that I would do if I had a post that was going viral is respond to literally every single comment, and the people in the comments who I actually think would be great students or clients of mine, I might actually DM them. I might DM them just to open the conversation. And I would never start that with a sales pitch or anything like that. Really, I'm just trying to create a connection, build my community, find friends online, always leading with that. But don't be scared to actually go and DM those people who are leaving comments, especially if they are very thoughtful comments or you think that they would be a fantastic student or client of yours. And the last thing that I would do if I have a post that's currently going viral is I would actually post content in my stories that's related to whatever that viral post is.

Because what's going to happen is someone is going to see that viral post, they're going to click to your Instagram page, or TikTok page, or whatever it is, and I guess this is really more relevant for Instagram because we're talking about stories right now, but they're going to click to your page and they're going to check out your stories. And that's when they're going to decide is this someone that I really actually want to follow or not. Rather than just liking your post and then ghosting you. So if you're posting relevant content to your stories that's related to that viral post, you're going to get a lot more followers out of that viral post. And of course, never be afraid to sell on your Instagram stories.

So take advantage of way more people potentially seeing your Instagram stories or just seeing your page in general, and don't be afraid to sell. Whether that's in your stories, your highlights, in your Instagram bio essentially, do not be afraid to sell because that is why you're here, that is how you actually help moms is getting them inside of your offers, your packages, and your programs. And so I don't want you to ever be a afraid to sell, to showcase your call to action all over the freaking place. All right, question number two is how do I manage a career in birth work as a busy mom? And this question is from Gina, and it is such a good question. And the first thing that I want to say is that if you are a busy mom and if you want to attend births in person, I want you to actually go listen to episode three, one of my very first episodes ever, because that episode is all about my best tips for being a doula when you have your own babies at home.

And so it's going to give you a bunch of different ways that you can actually attend birth in person when potentially childcare is a little bit hard to navigate, or you have your own nursing, co-sleeping baby at home. So Gina, go check out that episode, it's episode three of the Birthworker Podcast. I'm going to link that in the show notes also, so you can just wait until the end of this episode, click on that link in the show notes, but the title of that episode is My Best Tips for Being a Doula When You Have Babies at Home. And so let me answer this question a little bit here on this episode too. So how do I manage a career in birth work as a busy mom?

My answer is pretty straight up, and I bet if you've been around for a while you could guess, but my answer is that you shouldn't depend on attending births in person as your only source of income. That's how I manage a career in birth work as a busy mom, I have found other ways to make income beyond just supporting births in person, and what that does is it allows me to work from home more, attend fewer births, so only attend births when they're really, really aligned. And I'm actually at a point now where it's like I don't need the money from attending births in person, so when I do attend births in person, yes, I charge, but I'm not considering that as a big source of income for me, which actually takes away the pressure. If I want to say no to a birth, I can with no pressure. If I want to take a vacation, like I'm on right now, I can with no pressure.

I'm on call literally the second I get off the plane when I get back home for an amazing free birth, I'm super, super excited, but setting up your business in a way where you are making an income beyond actually going to a birth in person, that's one of the ways that you're going to be able to manage a career in birth work as a busy mom. You're going to be way more flexible with when you're working. Do you want to work only nap times? Awesome, do it. Do you want to work after your kids go to bed? Do it. That is totally fine. But there are just so many other ways. And one of my biggest tips too is don't feel like you have to make your business look like somebody else's business, don't feel like you have to wake up at 03:00 AM or 05:00 AM and do all these things to have a successful career in birth work, because it's really just simply not true.

I would way rather you create a career that suits your lifestyle rather than you changing your lifestyle to try and mesh with whatever you think a career in birth work should look like. And if you've been around my communities for a while, you've probably heard my story before, but this was one of the reasons that I did build a business beyond just supporting birth in person, because I thought to myself, and it's not the same for everyone, the only way that I'm going to make this work is if my partner can quit his job and stay home with our daughter. And so I just busted my butt to make that happen, and within less than a year, I was able to do that.

So I replaced my income, which was I was the main breadwinner even before we had kids, and I replaced not only my income but his income too. And the way that I did that is that I started incorporating one-on-one coaching, so virtual coaching, and that also includes virtual doula support, but also online childbirth education. So I created an online childbirth education course, I created it once, and I launched it multiple times, I could sell the same thing over and over and over. And not only did that mean that I could impact lives across the world, but I could essentially make money over and over from something that I just created once. And to be honest, it really changed a lot of women's lives. Many, many, many women bought it, I want to say I actually made eight birth and postpartum courses, pregnancy birth and postpartum, and over the course of that first year, I want to say about 1,000 people took those courses.

So not only did it expand my impact, but my income just went up exponentially also. And so that's how I personally manage a career in birth work as a busy mom, I have decided and worked hard to make enough money to be able to afford myself to not be such a busy mom. My partner is a full-time stay-at-home dad now, and I can afford support when I need it. So we have a house cleaner that comes to the house two times per week to literally fold our laundry and do our dishes, and it's the most magical thing in the world. Her name is Sarah. She is literally a blessing. I am obsessed with her. And I am able to call upon this community because of the business that I've built. And so that is definitely one of the reasons that I created the Childbirth Educator program that is launching in 41 days.

Who's counting? Definitely me. But we have a childbirth educator training program that's launching because I really want to help other birth workers. Maybe you're already a doula, maybe you're just stepping into birth work and you can't be on call for six births per month, whatever it is, I want to help birth workers, doulas, whoever, create these online resources for their clients. And so super excited for the Childbirth Educator Training Program. But Gina, I hope that helped answer your question and gave you a little sneak peek behind what it looks like in my life, and then definitely go check out episode three so you can get all of my tips for if you actually do want to attend a million births in person how would you actually do that if you have your own kids, your own co-sleeping, breastfeeding kids at home. So that's episode three.

All right, the last question for today is from Kristen. And she says, "I have two separate halves to my business, I'm a life coach and I'm a birth worker. So should I have just one website for both of those, or should I have two separate websites? Ideally, I want my birth clients to transfer into life coaching clients, so how should I approach the freebies, the website, the mailing lists, everything?" Kristen, I really love this question because it's a big picture question. It means that you are actually envisioning where you want this business to go six months from now, 12 months from now, five years from now, and I don't actually see a lot of people doing that. And that's one of the first things I have my students do when we start talking about these things like websites and freebies and mailing lists, is because it's really important to envision where we want to go and then work backwards to actually then make that happen.

So my very first thought is that life coaching and birth work actually have a lot of overlap, so I think they actually work really nice together. So if it were me, I would keep them on the same website, 1000%, no hesitations about that, but I would create separate freebies since they are different audiences, they have different goals, they have different pain points, and to be honest, goals and pain points, those are the two things that I look at when I consider what kind of funnel, or freebie, or offer I'm creating for someone. And if the goals and the pain points are incredibly different, that's when I would create two separate freebies, two separate funnels. Now, as far as the email list goes, you could host it all in the same email list, so I recommend MailerLite. I absolutely love MailerLite.

If you actually want to get a list of all of the different tech and software that I recommend, just head to the show notes or check out birthworker.com/tools, and that's where you can enter your name and your email, I'm going to send you a list of my 13 favorite tools, and MailerLite is in there, so you can find the link in there. And so when you are creating your email list, I just want you to be really careful of how you're sorting the different people. So you need to have groups or segments or tags, every email provider calls them something different, but in MailerLite it's different groups. And so create different groups so you can keep track of who's who, who's downloaded which freebie, who's currently pregnant right now, who is interested in your life coaching content, who's interested in your birth coaching content. And so I would have essentially as many groups as I needed to really keep track on the backend of who came in through which freebie and who's interested in what.

Because a really quick way to have people unsubscribe from your email list is if you're sending all of those birth emails to everybody, because there's going to be people who get on your email list or just into your world through your life coaching, and if you start sending them emails about birth, they're going to be like, "What? I did not sign up for this. I'm not even pregnant. This is so strange." And potentially vice versa, maybe not so much the other way, because if someone is pregnant and signs up for a freebie relating to pregnancy, they're probably still going to be interested in your life coaching stuff. They're probably looking to better themselves in ways because that's what happens when we get pregnant, we want to do everything we can to better our lives.

And the other thing that I want to say is that there are going to be some emails or there's going to be some content that's actually really related to both of these people, the life coaching clients and then the pregnant women or your clients that you're serving as a doula, and so if there's content that relates to both of those groups, email them to both. And that's actually what I would do with my social media channels and my weekly emails, my newsletters, and potentially my blog, or my podcast, or whatever your long form weekly content is, I would make that actually in a way that both of these different types of women, the life coaching clients and then the doula clients, are going to be really interested in what you have to say. And it's not going to be easy to create so much content like that, but you're going to have to be a little bit strategic, and I absolutely think that it's possible.

And again, the last thing I'll say, Kristen, is I love your big picture vision, so good job zooming out and really figuring out how you're going to serve both of these different groups of clientele, and then also how you're going to transfer them from one to the next. So I don't want you to look at them like two totally separate audiences. Maybe they start as doula clients and then they funnel into life coaching clients, or maybe they start as life coaching clients and when they get pregnant they funnel into doula clients or childbirth education students. And so always look for the ways that you can bring people from one of those communities to the next. And it's the same with me through everything that I have at birthworker.com, so I serve everyone from aspiring doulas who've never taken a training before, all the way to doulas who are totally booked out, totally burnt out, and totally nailing the doula stuff, but they just need to figure out what to do because they're feeling like they want to quit birth work because they're totally burnt out. So I help both of those people.

Do I send them different emails? Sometimes. Do I try to make the content on this podcast content that would be great for both of those people? Yes, absolutely. And when someone enters my world, when they enter my email list or whatever, as one of those people do I say you're stuck there? For instance, the person who comes in as an aspiring doula, do I keep them stuck there with that newbie content, or do I find ways throughout their time with me to bring them over and potentially bring them into the content that's made for more of an advanced doula? Hell, yeah. So I've built my funnels in ways that definitely bring people from step to step to step because I've created the offers in my business that can serve aspiring birth workers or experienced birth workers at every step of their business no matter where they're at. So kudos to you, Kristen, I already can tell that you're doing a really good job figuring this big picture vision out.

And if you're listening to this right now and you are thinking that you want to also be able to figure out where you want your business to go in the next 12 months, 24 months, five years, 10 years, and if you're thinking, Kyleigh, I want to ask you my questions all the time, I don't want to have to wait until the next Friday to ask you my question or to get my questions answered, and if you are thinking I am ready to just package up my obsession for birth and impact lives across the entire world, then you are completely ready for the Birthworker membership. And so I want you to go to the show notes and click to the Birthworker membership, or you can just go to birthworker.com/membership and you can learn all about it there.

So if you are ready to go from side gig doula to a full-time birth worker with a full-time salary, if you are ready to quit your job and stay home with your kids and impact lives all across the world, then this membership in this community is absolutely for you. So I will see you over in the Birth Worker membership, and thank you so much for listening. I hope today was super helpful for you. And I will see you right back here next week.