• You feel you were called to support women in birth, but not to run a business.
• You attended a birth doula training but don’t feel prepared you to start your practice.
• You are eager to begin your practice and want step-by-step guidance to setting up your business and home office.
• In addition to learning how to support women in birth and run a business, you are wondering how you can best support women objectively when their beliefs about birth differ from yours.
• You were surprised to learn that supporting women in birth has much more to do with preserving their emotional well-being as well as your own, and you want a mentor with whom you can process the first few births you attend.

My goal is to help aspiring birth professionals develop their practices in a deep, authentic way, and to empower them to get their businesses set up effectively and efficiently so they can dedicate more of their time acquiring and supporting their clients.

The key to coaching is that the client is in charge. The client brings to the relationship their issues that they would like help with. The Coach asks powerful questions to bring out the client’s own wisdom. Clients often have “aha” moments, those times when they click into a moment of clarity where confusion once stood. Mentoring comes into play at times when I as a coach offer wisdom and resources based on my experience as a doula and a business owner. Ultimately, though, it is up to the client to take that information and do something with it.

Here are some ways I have supported previous clients:

• Help them discover their niche, the group of people who they really want to help and can work well with
• Help them discover what matters most to them in their lives and show them how to build that into their business plan
• Work with them to create structures to organize their business and other areas of their lives, so they can work more effectively and efficiently
• Provide resources for running their business
• Brainstorm with them as they create systems for their business, ways to market or ways for them to gather more information
• Talk them through blocks they may have that are preventing them from moving forward
• Discuss ways to get more nourishment for themselves in different areas of life, to prevent burnout.

I recognize that for women who have never started a business before, it is easy to get overwhelmed and not know what direction to take. Information is available in the form of many resources, but the first step is figuring out where to start. As a mentor, I provide birth professionals with business resources based on an assessment of their personal needs. My clients are ultimately responsible for making the decisions for their business, and I partner with them as they create the roadmap for building their practices.

I feel that there are two aspects of building a business — that there is Inner Work and Outer Work. The inner work has to do with reflection and going within in order to access one’s wisdom and deep desires. The outer work involves making an action plan and carrying out the actual process of building the business that the world sees. When a person can meld both aspects, there is less struggle and more ease, not only in creating your practice, but with other areas of your life too.

If you are eager to learn more about my services, read on to find out how Business Coaching works.

Tags: become a doula, business coaching, business tips, doula, doula business, doula marketing, how to be a doula