Kyleigh Banks:

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. This is Kyleigh and you're listening to episode 48, and this is the last episode that I'll be recording while I'm in Israel. I've been on vacation for almost five weeks now, which is insane. And you might be thinking, wait a second, I thought you were a doula. How can you go on vacation for five weeks? And maybe if you're a doula too, you're thinking, I am very jealous that Kyleigh gets to go away for five weeks, still make an income and still support births. So I just wanted to give you an update of how, essentially, I did it. And this is, essentially, what I teach my students also. And we're going to get into that a little bit more about what that looks like today when I answer the three questions in today's episode. But what I've done essentially is I've set my business up in a way where I don't have to rely on attending births for income.

So the vast majority of my income comes through, essentially, coaching, prerecorded online courses, and mentorship. When I first started as a doula that was mentoring and coaching and selling childbirth education courses to pregnant moms, and now it's coaching and mentoring and selling do-it-yourself programs to doulas and other birth workers. And what that does is it's given me enough income where I can go away for five weeks and not support birth, and I have enough income coming in, but you better believe the second I land back in Florida, I'm on call for a free birth for a wonderful woman. I'm so excited to support her birth, and that's how I've been able to do it. I make enough money through other forms of work and it's all within birth work still, and then I can attend births when, one, I'm in town and I'm not on vacation.

And two, when it's really aligned, when it's really aligned. You better believe I'm not going to Facebook groups saying, hey, I need to support three births this month, who wants discounted birth support? And literally just taking any client that wants me. And I'm not necessarily saying there's something wrong with that because it's part of the process for a lot of people, but I'm only saying yes to clients when it's 100% aligned, when I know that I'm going to be the perfect doula for them and they are the perfect client for me. So if that's something that you're interested in doing, if you're currently a doula and you kind of want to get your life back and take vacations again and not be on call all the time, definitely look into learning online business skills. And something we'll talk about a little bit later is my three-pronged approach.

So learning how to, yes, still support births in person, but also make an income online through live things like childbirth education classes, workshops, private coaching on Zoom. But then the third part is that passive stuff, so eBooks, pre-recorded online courses, actual tangible books, tangible affirmation cards, that's how you're going to make birth work sustainable. So you can be doing this literally for decades to come. All right, I am not going to waste any more of your amazing time. So let's jump into the three questions for today. The first question is, I haven't finished my certification yet, how can I start making money now or how can I at least get my foot in the door? And this question was from Trinity, and I love this question. So thank you, Trinity. So her question again essentially was, I haven't finished my certification, how can I start making money?

So the very first thing I want to say is that you don't have to be certified to make money as a birth worker, and you don't even have to be certified to start attending births. So doula certification is a little bit funny. I've done an entire episode on it and I'll actually link that in the show notes, but it's not a regulated profession, so you don't actually have to be certified before you're attending births. Now, that's not to say that getting training is a bad idea. I mean, I have a doula training program, so I mentor doulas inside my doula training program. It's called Birth worker Academy. So of course, I see that there's value in education for birth workers and for doulas, but the certification itself, that's arguable whether or not that is helpful in any way, shape, or form. So start attending births, Trinity, start attending births before you're certified.

The next thing that I would say is that you can add coaching calls. Like this weekend, you could literally spend a couple of hours and add private one-on-one coaching calls as a service on your website. And so that could be a 45-minute pick my brain session. It could be anywhere from $50 to $200, or even more if you end up getting really popular and you need to raise your prices, it could go above $200 in the end. But that's something that's super easy to add to your website, it doesn't take any prep work. So it's essentially just a coaching call on Zoom, and that's another way that you can start making money right now. So that's the first thing that I have my students add to their website beyond birth support, because like I said, you don't need anything. You don't have to create any videos, you don't have to create any handouts, resources, nothing. Literally just a quick sales page, somehow that they can pay, a couple of emails automated on the backend and, boom, you can start making money through coaching calls.

Regardless, what I want you to do, Trinity, is start thinking about how you're going to use that three-pronged strategy. So start attending births, right? That's your in-person, live, on call part of the three-pronged strategy, attending births. And then there's also live but not on call. So that would be the coaching calls, the live workshops where you are planning them ahead of time, you know exactly when you're going to work, you're not on call. That's actually a really important part of sustainable birth work. I don't want you to have to be on call to make money all the time. And then that third part, like I said before, is that something that's a little bit more passive. It doesn't require you to actually show up at all. You just got to make it once and then you can sell it a million times. So that could be an eBook, that could be a pre-recorded childbirth education class. It could be affirmation cards. It could be audio meditation downloads.

It could look so many different ways. But really start thinking about that three-pronged approach. What are you doing to make this a sustainable career for you? Doing in-person services when you're on call, virtual services when you are still live but not on call, and then something that's more passive. So that three-pronged approach is kind of like my special skill set. That's what I teach everybody inside, essentially, all of my programs. So if you join Birthworker Academy, which is my doula training program, or the Birthworker Membership, which is 100% business focused, we don't really talk about birth at all in the Birthworker Membership. Either way, if you join either of those, you're going to learn about this three-pronged strategy and it's really going to help you not burn out in the process.

So question number two is what are your thoughts on on being a brand ambassador or doing affiliate marketing for products that you love? I don't want to unethically cross wires, says Jocelyn. Jocelyn was actually a student in the Birthworker Academy this past winter, and I pulled this question from there because it was actually a really good question and people DM it to me on Instagram all the time. So I am glad Jocelyn asked it, and I'm going to answer it right here for you now. So let's chat about sponsorships first, like sponsored posts, and then let's chat a little bit about affiliate marketing because in some ways it's a little bit different. So sponsored posts, let me explain the two, sponsored posts would be like you're getting $500 for a company to make a couple of reels and a couple of grid posts or a podcast episode about their product.

You're not actually getting any commission, they're just paying you to create content for them. I mean, $500 is definitely the low end. I'd like to see that get up closer to thousands of dollars for posts. And then affiliate marketing is where you are actually, you have a little bit, most of the time, you have a little bit more free range to promote whatever you're promoting. And then if someone does end up purchasing that offer, you're getting a commission on the backend. So they're going to write you a check if you refer people to their products. So for sponsored posts, I think it can be a great source of a little bit of extra income, but to be honest, for the vast majority of people, it's actually not going to bring in life-changing income. And when most doulas start out, I see them radically undercharging for sponsored posts.

So I mean, I've even seen doulas do sponsored posts for free, which at that point, that's not even a sponsored post. Where they're sharing a, let's just say, a business reach out to you and says, hey, I'm going to send you something for free. Can you make a post about it? I see so many doulas saying, yes, let me make a post about it. You don't have to pay me any money, just send it to me for free and I'll make a post about it. That's radically undercharging for your worth. I'm sorry, it is. Another issue can be, and by the way, this happened to me and this still happens to me sometimes, but another issue can be that you're going to come off as inauthentic when you're promoting somebody else's thing, right? Maybe the sponsor for the sponsored post, they want you to say certain things or come off a certain way or use a certain filter or whatever, and it's not going to be authentic.

Your followers are going to be able to tell that it's not coming across like the human that they love, like the human that they followed. And so to be honest, they might even unfollow you if you're doing too many of these inauthentic sponsorship posts. And so I just want you to be careful to integrate these sponsored posts into your content really smoothly and really authentically, and so you don't seem too salesy. That's really important. And I just want you to know too, that I'm all about multiple streams of income. This three-pronged approach that I have, it's all about multiple streams of income, but I also want you to be really mindful of the limited time that you have and the impact that you want to have in the birth community. So what I mean by that, essentially, too is, okay, let me take my business for example, if someone comes to me and they say, Kyleigh, we want you to promote our jewelry brand, we'll give you $2,000 to make a post about our jewelry brand.

That's not helpful to my business, to Kyleigh's business, at all. That's not growing birthworker.com. That's not reaching more doulas and getting them into Birthworker Academy at all. And so I don't want to be money hungry for that $2,000 at a detriment to actually my big business vision or my goals for where my business is going. Does that make sense? Now, on the other hand, affiliate marketing, I love affiliate marketing. I've made tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars doing affiliate marketing. I love it. I love it, especially when you're starting. And so this could look like, and what it looks like for the most part, is you promoting somebody else's offer and then you getting a commission if somebody purchases. So this could be a tangible thing, so maybe you get a discount, a coupon code for birth affirmations, and you give that coupon code to your followers, and then when someone uses that code, you get 10, 15, 25%.

I also really love it for online courses. So you can be an affiliate for somebody's online course, and if someone buys that course, you could potentially get a commission from, essentially, selling that course, and that could be a really awesome way to start the online portion of your business. And so that's something that I did when I very first started. So as I was making my first birth course online, it was called Autonomous Birth Academy. I knew it was going to take a while to make that. So what did I do in the meantime? I was an affiliate for another birth course, and so I was essentially selling another birth course to my followers, to my students, to my in-person clients also, before I had my own birth course to sell. So definitely a way that you could almost start getting used to writing emails, creating sales pages, promoting offers before you have something of your own to create.

And then I also love affiliate marketing because we can't be everything to everyone. We can't and we shouldn't be everything to everyone. And so there's going to be pieces that your clients and followers are interested in about birth, pregnancy, postpartum, whatever, trauma, breastfeeding, that it's just not your area of specialty. So for instance, if people come to me and they want to learn more about breastfeeding, I can be really honest that, look, when I do my birth courses, when I teach moms, when I'm a doula, my specialty is honestly mindset and autonomy. And I could help you nail the mindset part and really give you the foundation to avoid a traumatic birth experience. But when it comes to having an amazing breastfeeding experience, and when we're going beyond the mindset part and we're going into the evidence, I'm going to refer you to someone else.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm the best at everything in the world and my clients deserve the best. So you better believe that I'm going to refer my clients to somebody else. And what a great way to make a little bit of extra income too, is to become an affiliate for these programs. So if you are a birth doula, you could become an affiliate for a postpartum course, a breastfeeding course, a preconception course. And maybe, like I said, if you are thinking of creating your own childbirth education course in the future, maybe you're even signed up for the childbirth educator training program that we are launching very soon. Maybe you already joined that, but maybe it's going to take you six months to a year to actually produce the course you want to produce. So maybe you're a birth doula and you're actually going to promote somebody else's birth course.

Whatever it is, I think it can be a phenomenal idea as long as it feels authentic for you, that's the most important thing. All right, this last question is from Darnesia and she asked, how can I involve my seven-year-old daughter in my birth doula business? She's been listening to all of the videos and the podcasts and she is totally hooked. I love this question, Darnesia. I love when I hear that kids are listening to the podcast too, or even from my students that they're listening to the videos inside the programs. It's just, I love it. That's hilarious. So her daughter is seven years old, so I actually want to say that one of the most impactful things that a seven-year-old can do to help their mom be a doula is to actually start normalizing birth with their peers. So if she can just start normalizing birth with her peers in school, that is going to have a ripple effect that can literally change millions of lives. Millions. I'm not kidding.

And so that's absolutely where I would start. A seven-year-old could, I'm guessing, they're like, mom, I want to attend births with you. I want to hold the babies with you. And as fun as that sounds, I don't necessarily think that that's the best thing a seven-year-old can do for the birth community as a whole. So if it's really a passion, start by normalizing birth with your peers. Now, there are a couple of other things that kids can help us do, and that could be food prep for our clients, if we're attending births or if we're a postpartum doula and we bring food or do meal prep for our clients. Helping with the food prep, that would be so cool. Even putting together like client welcome baskets, if you do little gifts for your clients, maybe you do a couple of little postpartum goodies or a little goodie bag or a little onesie or whatever.

That could be a really fun thing for a seven-year-old to help out with. And then just packaging everything up, maybe putting together flyers or stuffing envelopes or putting stamps on papers, little things like that I think are actually going to go a really long way. I would personally hold off on having them come to birth with me for a while, because to be honest, birth is such a sacred space, and it's not my space. It's not my space to invite my own kid into somebody else's birth. But there are so many ways that my children, or Darnesia's seven-year-old, can help impact, really, the global birth community without actually attending births and holding babies and witnessing birth in real life. And of course, that's going to come. I think we already have a doula in the making, but let's start by normalizing birth with her peers. That's what I would love to see.

All right, everyone, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for hanging with me through this really long vacation and the ups and the downs with my ectopic pregnancy and my rupture and, man, it's been a wild ride, but I am grateful for every single piece of it, and I'm grateful for you being here, listening, being willing to hear my story in all its authenticity and still supporting me through all of this. Thank you for being an amazing podcast listener. If you have not hit subscribe, please hit subscribe and leave a rating and review for the show, that is, hands down, the best way that you can support the show. All right, I will see you right back here on Wednesday with another amazing episode. I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you right back here next week.