Yes, that perfectly edited and scripted chorus with the perfect lighting that I made and the one that had no mistakes, that's the course that led me to my first $10,000 month. But my first $100,000 month came from spending zero time thinking about me, thinking about how I'm going to be perceived by my students. Zero time. And instead, I served and I am serving my hundreds of students with only them and their goals in my mind. And that means that I'm teaching with my toddler on my boob or my toddler screaming in the background and my dog barking. And sometimes I'm laying on my belly to record a video on my couch because I throw out my back and that's the only way that I can do it. But you know what? I do it anyway because I'm not thinking about me anymore. I'm thinking about them.

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 to the Birthworker Podcast. You are listening to episode 41 and I just have to say thank you so much for all of your support this past week. Because after publishing episode 39, where I shared a little bit about my current miscarriage situation, I actually received so much love from you all. And any hesitation that I initially had about sharing my story publicly, it immediately vanished. So you are the best group of humans I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Between my podcast listeners like you, my students, maybe that's you too, and my community on Instagram, we have tens of thousands of women and birth workers cheering each other on. And it never stops blowing my mind that I've built a community so supportive of each other, and especially supportive of each other's autonomy.

When I started my doula journey and my birth worker journey, helping women have an autonomous birth has always been my number one goal since I started. Autonomous birth, autonomous miscarriage, autonomous motherhood. And all of this means is situations and living our own life where we can make all of our own decisions, we can make every single decision for ourselves free from coercion and without feeling ashamed by our choices. So if that's what you're striving for too, you are in the right place. So let's get into today's episode. Today we are talking about the number one mindset shift that doulas must make before creating any new offer. And so what's a new offer? What is a new offer? When I say new offer, what do I mean? So this could be anything from a new doula package, a one-to-one private coaching session, a mothers circle, maybe a printable birth plan, or a mini video series, or even a bundle of mindful birth resources like affirmation cards and meditations. Or even a full on comprehensive online childbirth education course. That's what I mean when I say a new offer.

So if your goal this year is to create any of those offers that I just mentioned or something similar, you definitely want to listen up because I'm about to make your life a whole lot easier. And I wanted to make this episode today, or rather, I needed to make this episode today because our childbirth educator training program opens in just one month, and that means that there's going to be 112 women birthing a new childbirth education offer into the world this summer. And hopefully thousands and thousands more over the next few years, especially once they get their hands on our training program, which includes our childbirth education curriculum, which will make this entire thing a million times easier for you. But I had to make this episode because I needed to help those 112 women who are signed up for our CBE training. And you. I wanted to help you avoid one of the biggest mistakes that I made when I started creating my online childbirth education courses.

Now, if you've heard my story, you know that I have created eight childbirth education offers in the past four years. And I do have to be honest, each of them were wildly successful in my eyes. But now that I'm looking back, I realize all of the different ways that I actually majorly dropped the ball, and I see all the ways that I could have actually impacted more lives and made more money if I had just fixed one tiny little mindset thing first. See, the very first online course that I created, besides my first ebook, we will have to do another podcast episode about that ebook that I created. But the first true online course that I created was a $400, eight module, eight hours of video. Huge comprehensive course. And it actually took me six months of my full-time work to create this thing. I scripted every single word. I bought all the fancy software. When I was recording, I put on all of the makeup, I had all of the fancy lights and the teleprompter and all of these things that I thought that I needed to create a successful program.

When in reality, I was just trying to mimic my business coach, the business coach with 20 staff members and a multi-million dollar production budget. And it feels ridiculous just saying this. This coming out of my mouth just feels ridiculous. Because not only did I not have 20 staff members, I didn't have a single staff member. I was the only one. I was doing it all myself. And on top of that, I was a full-time stay-at-home mom to a baby under one with a full-time working partner, plus a ton of overtime. A lot of times our partners are working overtime because we're not making a salary as a full-time mom most of the time. I didn't have a multimillion dollar budget. I didn't even have a budget. And to be honest, the $10 per month that the teleprompter app was charging me made me want to cringe. But even though I did all of the things that I thought were necessary, so I propped my iPhone up ... that was my camera.

I propped up my iPhone on a stack of books on my desk, and I attached my $80 microphone from Amazon, and I read my word for word script robotically. And after every video recording, I stayed up until the middle of the night editing out every single mistake, every hiccup, every time you could hear my daughter in the background or my dog bark, or if I said the wrong word and corrected myself, I edited that out. I thought that I had to make this course the highest quality thing that the birth community has ever seen, because I thought that that was what was necessary for success. And six months later, I had this comprehensive course. And the course itself, it had A+ content. Really, the content itself would completely transform anybody's birth. 100%, I can swear by that. The content of the course was life changing and birth changing. It was phenomenal.

But the course, the presentation of the material, it just felt inauthentic. Inauthentic at best. And now, looking back, I realize what happened. And so here's what I need you to promise me that you are going to avoid. So what happened is I spent so much energy, time, and effort trying to produce this A+ quality course because I felt like an imposter. I thought that if the lighting looks perfect, if I have a perfect script, if I edit out all of the mistakes, then maybe they won't know that I'm new at this. Maybe they won't know that I've only been a doula for a few years, and that this is my first time ever teaching childbirth education at all. Maybe they won't know. And what I was doing is I was trying to compensate for an internal feeling of lack. A feeling of I'm not good enough as I am. And at that point in time, I would have never dared to admit this ever, absolutely not.

And in the end, after I created this course, I realize now that I spent countless hours of my time on things that just simply didn't freaking matter at all. The course material itself, like I said, I will be proud of that until the day I die. And it's actually honestly so good that it's a huge part of the curriculum that we're giving to our childbirth educator training students. We're giving them curriculum that they can teach their own clients. They can change it, put their own spin on it, whatever they want to do, but we're giving them that curriculum so they don't have to start from scratch. And a big part of that curriculum is from this very first childbirth education course that I created because it's that good. But the course production, whenever I watch those videos, it will always remind me of the time that I focused way too much on how people are going to perceive me. And honestly, that's just time with my daughter that I will never get back.

And so yes, I learned a million lessons from creating that course. I really did. It was my stepping point into what this business has become. That course was the course that made me my first $10,000 month and my first $100,000 year. It's the course that took my impact worldwide because I supported students from across the entire globe and all with the goal of helping them have their dream autonomous birth. So there were so many amazing, amazing, amazing things that came through this. But if I could go back, I would do it completely differently, completely differently. I would have started with a much smaller course, so not eight hours of video, maybe one hour of video. And the reason I would do that is so I could work out the kinks. I could learn how to read from a script and not sound like I'm reading from a script. And I wish I started with a smaller course in general.

So instead of spending six months planning and scripting and recording and editing all of these video lessons, I could have actually just created something smaller and then created several different things, several different mini courses, over those six months. And then improved between every single one. I also look back and I wish I didn't edit the videos. I would've saved so much time, and it honestly just would've felt so much more authentic and relatable. And I know what you might be thinking because this was me too. I know you might be thinking, "Kyleigh, but I want a high quality course. And so let me ask you, is that what you really want? Really? And if you had to choose, would you rather have a high quality course or a course that helps your students achieve life-changing transformations? And do you think that life-changing transformation isn't possible for your students if you fumble on a few words, if you don't have makeup on in some videos, if the lighting is dark, if you can hear your baby crying in the background in the other room while their father plays with them?

Because I've now done this enough times to know that women are looking for real mentors, real humans with all of their rawness. Women are tired of the 100% perfectly curated videos, the perfect lighting, the word for word scripts. It's not relatable. Women want to learn from mentors with flaws because that is relatable. And the good news here is that it's a lot easier to be authentic with all of your beautiful imperfections than to spend your entire day scripting out every last word for your new offer and every night all into the night editing out every single last mistake that you made while you were filming. So let me be very clear. Spending all of your time trying to create a perfectly produced course or a perfectly mapped out offer on day one is a waste of your time. And it's only going to delay your launch date. So not only are you going to miss out on serving women because they're going to have their baby. Pregnancy is a limited amount of time. But you're also going to miss out on potentially a lot of income too, life changing income.

All because you have this fear of judgment, this fear of not being enough, this fear of someone purchasing your program and saying, "This video quality isn't worth the money I paid." But guess who doesn't say stuff like that? Someone whose life you legitimately transformed through your teachings. They don't care about the video quality. They care about the transformation that you just gave them. So the one thing that I need you to leave here knowing is that messy action is one million percent more valuable than creating an A+ offer. And an A+ transformation is the only thing our clients and students actually care about. If you can help your students and clients achieve their dream birth, their dream postpartum, and hit all of their goals while your baby is crying in the background, while your dark circles are in full force with B- lighting and a few mistakes here and there.

If you can do that and help your clients have their dream transformation while all of that's happening, those clients will still continue to come back to you and they're going to send all of their friends because of the transformation, not because the way your course looked. And I know this from experience because yes, that perfectly edited and scripted course with the perfect lighting that I made and the one that had no mistakes, that's the course that led me to my first $10,000 month. But my first $100,000 month came from spending zero time thinking about me, thinking about how I'm going to be perceived by my students. Zero time. And instead, I served and I am serving my hundreds of students with only them and their goals in my mind. And that means that I'm teaching with my toddler on my boob or my toddler screaming in the background and my dog barking. And sometimes I'm laying on my belly to record a video on my couch because I throw out my back and that's the only way that I can do it.

But you know what? I do it anyway because I'm not thinking about me anymore. I'm thinking about them. And that means that my videos inside my programs that cost as much as $4,000 are loaded with mistakes and mistakes and mistakes. And sometimes they have bad lighting and I am wearing zero makeup in most of them. And you know what? My students still come back and purchase every other course that I've ever created. 60% of the women who joined our CBE training program are past students. That would not have happened if I did not help them get the transformation. Those 60% of women who joined our CBE training program are not thinking, "I'm going to buy Kyleigh's next course because she was wearing beautiful makeup and her lighting was perfect and she made no mistakes." Of course not. That sounds ridiculous just saying, right? And my students, they still send all of their friends. Even with the mistakes, even with the bad lighting, even with my toddler on my boob, they still refer their friends. 80% of our current doula students came from a direct referral from a past client of ours. That's amazing.

And through this all, they still leave reviews like, "Kyleigh, you could have charged $10,000 for this course." Or, "Kyleigh, I've paid so much more money for courses that didn't help me nearly as much as yours and I just joined your program last week." We get reviews like that because we help our students achieve their goals. So let's stop making it about us and let's start spending our time focusing on what we can do for other people, not what they think of us.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you've been thinking about making your own childbirth education offer, whether that's an ebook, workshop, mini course, or full on comprehensive program, you should check out our childbirth educator training program. It's launching on April 10th, 2023. Right now you can join at the early bird rate and save $500, but just for a few more weeks. The very best part of our CBE program is that the entire thing is rooted in autonomy. So there's none of that blindly trust your doctor BS that runs rampant in the mainstream birth education communities. When you join, you're going to get total access to use our entire curriculum inside your own programs, you can take our templates, scripts, PDF handouts and presentation slides. You can use them exactly as they are or completely customize them to make them your own. And just like everything else I do, you are going to be getting all of my best business tips all along the way. You'll learn how to record a high quality course on a budget without pretending that you have 20 staff members or a multimillion dollar production budget.

I promise. You're going to learn how to name, price, and sell the course that you create. And you're going to get a ton of other lessons straight from me, not some huge corporation that's out of touch with the reality of growing a birth business. But a real human who's doing the dang thing right alongside of you. I am just a few steps ahead of you, and so I want to show you exactly what to do, what to do to take your impact worldwide, and what to do to create an income bigger than you ever dreamed possible when you originally chose to go into birth work. And I could go on all day, but instead, I'm just going to ask that you go to birthworker.com/cbe or click the link in the show notes to learn all about this amazing, first of its kind, childbirth educator training program. And save your spot today and save over $500 before the program launches on April 10th at full price. You are so amazing. Thank you so much for being here and I will see you right back here on Friday.