Son: “Mom, is this check really for $xxx.00?”

Me, glancing up from my laptop: “Yes it is. I get paid to teach childbirth classes.”

Son: “But do you like doing it?”

At this point I stopped and really took a good look at him. I smiled and said, “Yes, I really enjoy it. And I want you to always remember how important it is to love your work.”

And we joked about two of the benefits of doing work you love:

1. You’ll likely pinch yourself every once in a while and say to yourself, “Gee, I can’t believe people are actually PAYING me to do this!”
2. Work will not seem like “work”. The time will fly, and you will enjoy what you’re doing every day.

Sure, there are risks to doing work you love:

1. The income may not be what is necessary to support your expenses.
2. The actual running of a business can put a damper on and take up precious time that you’d rather dedicate to doing the work you love.

It’s funny, though, because I believe and know that with passion, determination and diligence, people become amazingly creative in making things work out. Both my husband and I have done some crazy things in the last ten years to ensure that we get to do the work we love. It’s not always been easy, but so far things have worked out for us, and I also feel our children have received an important education in business ownership, work ethic, and life balance.

Upon thinking about the title “…for Love or Money”, there is abundance that flows from doing work you love, and it can and does include money. So, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Some of my most rewarding moments from doing birth work have come from volunteering. I’ve found, interestingly enough, that when I’ve poured my heart into my volunteer work, I come home to messages and emails inquiring about paid opportunities. Doing work you love attracts more work you love. The key is in the focus and continual attention to it.

I so appreciate my son reminding me about why I do what I do.

What are your thoughts on this?

Related posts:

1. Ask Inspired Birth Pro: Getting Paid for Birth Doula Services
2. 5 Tips for Manifesting Your Business Goals
3. 5 Ways to Maximize Your Time Working At Home

So how do you identify your ideal client? One way to do so is to write a story about your ideal client, answering some or all of these questions:

• How old is she?
• Is she a first-time mom or not?
• Is she in a relationship?
• Is she of a certain heritage/faith/belief system?
• Does she have a high-risk pregnancy?
• What kind of birth does she want?
• Where will she have her baby?
• How informed is she? Will she need a lot of informational support?
• How involved will her partner be during the birth?
• How much is she willing and able to pay?

While you do this exercise, try to really see, hear and feel your ideal client. Once you have this description, it will help you:

• Generate content for your website and other marketing materials.
• Screen people who visit your website. They will see from your website content whether they fit your description or not.
• Create your elevator speech and follow up statements.
• Know whether people who are interviewing with you will be the right fit.
• Remain focused on the type of people you want to work with. This will help you with your marketing efforts in so many ways.

As you gain more experience, you can refer back to your ideal client description and tweak it.

If you’ve developed your ideal client profile, I’d love to hear how it’s helped your business grow. Add a comment below!

Related posts:

1. How To Get More Website Traffic
2. Client Attraction Tip – Light Your Creative Spark
3. 5 Tips For A Great Doula Interview

What should you include in your interview packets? Here are some suggestions:

• A welcome letter on nice stationery or letterhead
• A list of your packages/services with rates
• A copy of your agreement
• A list of references
• An article or two, especially one that you have written about any special services that you provide.

I typically put these forms into a colored manila folder and attach my business card to the outside of the folder with a paper clip. During the interview, when I get to the point where the people I’m interviewing ask about my rates, I simply whip out this folder, open it up my list of services, and show and tell. I end the interview by pointing out the letter of agreement and references.

So today, take a moment to create several interview packets. Not only will you not be rushing around pulling them together when you need to be running out the door to your next interview, but you will impress potential clients by your organization and professional presentation of your materials.

Related posts:

1. How to Organize Birth Doula Client Files
2. Doula Client Attraction Tip #2 – Identify Your Ideal Client
3. 5 Steps To Organizing Your Computer Files For Business

The Big Rocks

Stephen Covey’s “Big Rocks” story is pretty famous. He does an exercise in his presentations where he fills a clear container with big rocks, and then pours in pebbles and sand, which fills up all the spaces. When he tries to do the same thing with those same three materials but starts first with the sand and pebbles, the big rocks cannot fit.

This metaphor represents our time and what we choose to do with it. For those of us who go to work since that’s what we have to do, then fill the rest of our day with little emergencies, errands, housework, and random things on our to-do lists, we often find that we don’t have time to do other activities that really matter, like hobbies we once enjoyed, more time with loved ones, really being present with our children, exercising or meditating, or just doing nothing. Our lives tend to move faster and faster and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Kind of like sand in an hourglass…

So What Are Your Big Rocks?

Look at what you’ve done over the last six days:

1. What did your answers reveal to you in your day of Reflection? Compare what went really well with what didn’t go so well. Doing more of what works and changing what doesn’t work so well are examples of big rocks.
2. What are your values? Do you feel that you are living them right now, or do you have some work to do? Doing an activity that represents or ignites a value is a big rock.
3. How are the different areas in your life looking? Are they heavily leaning in a couple of categories, or do you feel really good with your overall life? Activities which encourage positive growth in one of your important areas of life is a big rock.
4. Are most of your fundamental needs being met, allowing you to be operating from your Fire Within most of the time? If not, what do you want to change? The goals that resulted from this visioning exercise should offer you a framework of what you want to change to be living a more fulfilling life by the end of 2009. That which fuels your Fire Within is a big rock.
5. In yesterday’s exercise, you took an even closer look to see what systems in your life are working and not working. The implementation of new systems and structures to make your life run smoother is a big rock.

How do I tell the difference between a big rock and a pebble or sand?

In any moment in time, check in with yourself and ask yourself how you feel. If you feel really good about what you’re doing and it adds meaning, love, abundance, compassion, happiness, joy and other good feelings in your life (and also in others’ lives), chances are you’re doing a big rock activity.

What about the pebbles and sand?

The reality of life is that we cannot only be doing big rock activities. If you pile up a bunch of big rocks in a container, you’ll see empty space in between them. That’s where the pebbles and sand is supposed to go. It’s made up of our responsibilities and obligations, busy work that is just part of our every day experiences. It’s not necessarily good or bad, but it is there. It’s been shown, though, that people who more consciously choose to spend most of their time focusing on the big rocks experience more satisfaction and joy in their lives and don’t feel so overwhelmed by all the little stuff. They are grounded by doing more of what is important to them, that it balances the rest of what life presents them.

So how can you live a life with more big rocks in it?

1. Decide on a handful of big rock activities you want to work on this week, say 4-7.
2. Fill in your calendar for the week with your activities and appointments that you’re already committed to. Include your normal workday, the times you’re schooling your kids or driving them to and from activities, and other events that you have planned.
3. Next, take each of your big rock activities and place each one in your schedule. Try to do them early enough in the day as you can, or at the very least, schedule each one in a time slot when you won’t be rushed or tempted to cancel it because of a fire that needs to be put out.
4. Each day, include at least 15-30 minutes of self-care time, an activity that nurtures your soul. This is a requirement!
5. Make a laundry list of items that need to be done during the week. It’s helpful for some people to break them out either by type of activity (phone calls, check emails, pay bills, etc.) or by the length of time it takes to do the activity. Add more to the list if you must, but know that some may get pushed to the following week.
6. Either the night before or in the morning before your day starts, take a look at the upcoming day. See what items you have on your laundry list and determine which ones you have time for. Don’t attempt to fill in each time slot. This will help you account for fires that need to be put out or items on your list that take longer than you anticipated. Set an intention for the day that you have all you need to be successful, and all that you need to accomplish what you’ve planned is available to you.
7. At the end of each day, celebrate what you’ve done throughout the day, big and small. If you got nothing done on your list, still find something to celebrate and resolve to have a better day tomorrow.

Seems like a lot, doesn’t it, to live a conscious, deliberate life? You need to put forth a different kind of energy to create a life you really want to live. You can no longer let life happen to you. You need to continually remind yourself what you really want, and why you want it. That’s done by writing out or drawing what’s important to you and keeping it forefront in your mind at all times. It takes living life more in appreciation than by complaining and seeing only what’s wrong. It take stopping in moment that you’re mad or upset, and doing any little thing you can do to feel better in the moment.

It takes time, but it does get easier to do. Life feels easier and you find yourself attracting more of what you want to you. More clients, more business, more collaboration. In the case of a life as a birth professional, we may even start to see more positive outcomes in birth, more acceptance of the work we do, as well as more of a demand for what we do.

Just by planning a life with more big rocks in it? It can happen. Start today.

Related posts:

1. 5 Ways to Maximize Your Time Working At Home
2. Where Do You Fall Short and What To Do About It
3. Time Management Strategies for Work-Life Balance, Part I

Stephen Covey, the author of several “7 Habits” books, writes in “First Things First”, writes about how humans have four fundamental needs to feel complete. They are:

1. Physical – our basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, health and economic well-being.
2. Social – our need to relate to others, to love, be loved, and to belong.
3. Mental - our need to continue learning to develop and grow.
4. Spiritual – our need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, contribution and personal congruence or alignment.

In a simple sentence, Covey says the “essence of these needs is captured in the phrase ‘to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy’.”

This is another facet of looking at the whole picture of our lives. Yesterday you got to see how balanced you were in specific areas of your life. The model that I’m now presenting melds those areas into these four facets of our basic needs. Stephen Covey goes on to explain in his book that when we are able to view these needs in a way that overlaps, as demonstrated here, we can see how they interrelate. In order to feel fulfilled and joyful in our lives, we must take care of ourselves in all areas of our lives. When one area suffers, it affects the whole.

Do you see the section in the middle that is red? This is called “The Fire Within“. Covey explains, “Fulfilling the four needs in an integrated way is like combining elements in chemistry. When we reach a ‘critical mass’ of integration, we experience spontaneous combustion–an explosion of inner synergy that ignites the fire within and gives vision, passion, and a spirit of adventure to life.

The key to the fire within is our spiritual need to leave a legacy. It transforms other needs into capacities for contribution. Food, money, health, education, and love become resources to reach out and help fill the unmet needs of others.”

Exercise:

Think about a time in your life when you felt really alive. Answer these questions:

• What was going on in your life at that time?
• Who were the people in your life?
• Were your basic needs being met?
• Were you mentally stimulated?
• Were you doing something meaningful?
• Would you say that all your four fundamental needs were met in that moment, and that what you felt was a Fire Within?

I want to sit with this memory for a while, and when you’re ready, answer the following questions. You may want to do this with a friend or partner.

• How would it feel if you could live your life from day-to-day, feeling this Fire Within?
• Picture yourself at the end of 2009, and you are living life with this Fire Within. Close your eyes with you feet flat on the ground, and really feel this Fire. Where are you? What are you doing? Who are you with? How do you look? Where is your family? What does your business look like? How much money is flowing directly to you? Who have you become?

Now, I’d like to think about what you need to do to get from where you right now, today, to where you are at the end of 2009:

• What do you need to take care of your physical needs of food, clothing, shelter, health and economic well-being?
• What do you need to take care with your relationships? Are you willing to let go of relationships that are draining your energy? What can you do to actively nurture the relationships that mean the most to you? Are there people in particular or a group of people with whom you’d like to create relationships with? How will you do that?
• What do you need to learn in the next year to become more effective in your work and your life? What new skills do you want to learn, and what skills do you want to improve? Do you have certifications to complete? Workshops that you’d like to take? Do you want to learn more about business, or becoming a better parent, or something as fun as art, music or gardening classes?
• What activities inspire you? What centers and grounds you? What actions can you take on a regular basis that calm you, give you joy, and allows you to lose track of time?

Working on your doula practice means working on your life. When you feel mostly joyful in your life (let’s be realisitic — we all have bad days now and again!), your work will flow more easily for you. Your life will flow more easily for you. When all your fundamental needs are cared for, you have the energy, or the Fire Within, to serve others more fully. You will feel less like you’re beating against a wall and more like everything is falling into place.

The exercise you’ve just completed are the goals you will take to live your best life in 2009. What do you think about that? Send me an email, make a comment below.

Join me tomorrow and we’ll explore more deeply into ways to accomplish the goals you’ve just set for 2009. Have a great day!

Related posts:

1. Incorporating the Big Rocks Into Your Life
2. How Balanced are the Various Areas of Your Life?
3. 5 Ways to Maximize Your Time Working At Home

Who should you send thanks to?

• Past clients
• Current clients
• Those who refer business to you
• Doctors, midwives and nurses you have worked with
• Those who are part of your Team 100

If you have other ideas, by all means, go for it! If you don’t already have an ongoing list of contacts, start one now, using a contact manager, spreadsheet, database program, your Quickbooks lists, Outlook, or even something low-tech like index cards or an address book. Go through business cards you’ve collected and your past client records to help you create your list.

The cards you send can be as simple as nice-quality cardstock or as fancy as cards personalized with your logo and business information. Write a short note as opposed to running cards through your printer. This adds a nice touch of personalization and lets the recipient know you really took the time to do this.

What do you say?

• Tell them you appreciate their business or support.
• If you’ve helped them with a birth, acknowledge the family and baby.
• If this is a note to a care provider you worked with, mention whose birth you attended and thank them for the great work they did.
• Let them know that you’d love to work with them in the future and to think of you if people they know could benefit from your services.
• Consider making a coupon for some savings off future services with you.
• Include a few business cards and seal them up!
• Buy some pretty stamps and send them off. For doctors offices and L&D departments, consider hand delivering the note along with a basket or tin of sweet goodies like chocolate or cookies.

What are some benefits to sending a nice handwritten note of thanks?

• Think about how you feel when you open your mailbox and see a pretty envelope hand addressed to you. Pretty good, right? In this age of email and micro-blogging, receiving correspondence in the mail just makes a person feel special!
• Everyone likes to be acknowledged. It feels good!
• You are on their radar again, and hopefully they will think of you when they or someone they know could use their services.
• If you’ve given them a coupon, you may get some repeat business sooner than later!

Getting into the mind space of appreciation is a wonderful exercise for you. The more time we spend appreciating the people in our lives, the better we will feel. And when we feel good about those we’ve helped in our business, we often find more business coming our way.

Related posts:

1. Should You Include Your Prices On Your Marketing Materials and Website?
2. What Do You Say After Your Elevator Speech?
3. Ask Inspired Birth Pro: Getting Paid for Birth Doula Services

For the past three years, my son’s team has won the championship, due in part to my son’s role on the pitcher’s mound and as shortstop. He’s at his best under pressure, and he works well with his team to get the job done.

His focus, skills, leadership and teamwork certainly impress, but what was great about this year in particular was that at the beginning of summer, he wrote a list of goals he wanted to accomplish. At the top of the list was to win the District 11 Championship.

When asked how he does so well pitching during a game, he always starts with the end in mind and pictures the ball flying through the strike zone, with the catcher’s mitt (or a bat) always his end goal.

To perfect his pitching, his catching, and being wherever the ball is, I acknowledge him for taking consistent action during practices and having supportive coaches and team members who offer him feedback and hold him accountable.

And finally, what really drives my son is his love and passion for the game of baseball. He loves the strategy, the structure and rules of the game, and improving his skills.

So did you get the 5 tips for manifesting your business goals?

1. Write your goals down.
2. Work toward your goals by starting with the end in mind.
3. Take consistent action toward your goals.
4. Create a support team who will offer feedback, validation, and hold you accountable for your working towards and meeting your goals.
5. Let your love and passion for your work drive you.

I’ll need to share this with my son to let him know that he’s got this manifestation stuff down!

Related posts:

1. Be SMARTER with your goals
2. Teaching Moment – Working, For Love or Money?
3. The Outer Work of Building Your Birth Business – Part 4

The Mental Aspect of Business

Once you have done some of the Inner Work of building your business, you are now ready to move into the mental aspect of the Outer Work. Here, you synthesize your values, beliefs and emotions and begin to create goals. When you begin setting your business goals, use the acronym SMARTER:

Specific, and the more specific they are the better.
Measurable. That which you measure will be treasured, so think about what will be the measurement of your achievement of your goal.
Accountability. Who or what are you accountable to for the goal? Being accountable to something or someone other than yourself will tend to encourage you to keep your promise to complete the goal.
Realistic. It’s good to think big, but setting unrealistic goals will lead to discouragement. Start with smaller goals that are easily within your reach, then begin to challenge yourself more.
Time based. Decide your time-table for completion, and stick to it. Make sure whoever is holding you accountable knows your deadline.
Exciting. Exciting goals will be met far sooner than boring, bland goals.
Recorded. Write down your goal and post it in a place where you can look at it every day.

In addition to creating your goals, you will determine the areas that need your attention and mentally work through how you will achieve results. Resources may include:

• Books
• Web sites
• Seeking advice from experts in the birth business
• Enrolling in workshops to learn more about business topics
• Consulting professionals such as attorneys and accountants for business guidance

It is likely that since you have done some Inner Work, as you work on the mental aspect of your business, you will find it easier to identify goals, prioritize your tasks, and organize yourself, your schedule, and your space.

The Physical Aspect of Business

The physical aspect is the culmination of all you have worked towards in the first three aspects of building your business. By starting with the Inner Work, you were able to clearly determine the necessary steps so you are able to take action in your business. You will find that this process is continual. As your business grows, you will find yourself going back to the Inner Work aspects of your Spirit and emotions. These serve as an internal compass for you to recharge and redirect yourself so you can return to the mental and physical aspects with more clarity, intention and inspiration.

Many people find that when they have done their Inner Work, they spend less time spinning their wheels in the mental confusion that often occurs when starting a new venture. By really defining who they are and what they want in their lives and business, they set a vision, or a mission of what they are about.

If you’ve read anything about the Law of Attraction, it is said that that which is focused upon is drawn. When you allow yourself to dream and visualize your unique and authentic doula practice and keep those pictures forefront in your mind, you will find that the resources you need will appear when you need them, your ideal clients show up in your lives, and the people who help you move towards success are around just about every corner.

I encourage you to take the time to reflect and get clear about what you want for your business, and explore some of the questions that were asked in the previous articles. I’d love to hear about your successes as a result of implementing the Inner and Outer Work into your birth business.

Related posts:

1. Building a Business Based on Values – Part 1
2. The Inner Work of Building Your Doula Business – The Emotional Aspect – Part 3
3. The Inner Work of Building Your Doula Business – The Spiritual Aspect – Part 2

Years ago I learned about “morning pages” – writing 3 pages every morning, kind of a mind dump, if you will. In my marketing mastermind with Ronnie Noize, she suggested doing morning pages each day about my business. What a great idea!

What do you write about? Here are some questions to get you started:

• What is my vision for my birth business?
• What three things can I do today to get my business organized?
• What is eating up my time and energy (people, commitments, habits)?
• Who can I connect with today/this week to expand my Team 100?
• What new marketing action can I take today?
• Who is my ideal client?
• What are five ways I can connect with my ideal client?
• Who can I collaborate with  and attract clients for both of us?
• What marketing strategies are not working for me?
• What marketing strategies are working for me and how can I do more of that?
• What can I do today to build my business skills?
• How is my business affecting my family life, and what can I do more of to create more balance this week?

Something that wasn’t working for me was calling this practice my “morning pages”. I wasn’t getting up early enough to do my pages and I didn’t always do three pages, nor did I do them daily!

A woman in my local coaches mastermind group inspired me to create what I call my “Creative Spark Journal.” If you haven’t already noticed, writing is a favorite form of expression and creativity for me. By calling it my Creative Spark Journal, I no longer feel pressured to do this in the morning. I’ve dedicated a simple spiral-bound notebook and wrote “Creative Spark Journal” on it with a Sharpie. I carry this journal wherever I go and write whenever I’m inspired, at any time of day. It’s a way for me to download ideas I have at any time. It’s also where I do free-form writing of random thoughts, ideas, workshop outlines, frustrations, and self-coaching.

What’s equally valuable is that I often get ideas for blog posts, workshops, information products and articles. I can store these ideas somewhere and revisit my journals in the future when I’m ready to bring these ideas to life.

So what if writing is not your thing? There are many moments of inspiration while I’m driving (and as a mom I drive A LOT). I discovered it’s not so safe writing while driving, so I began recording my ideas on my iPhone as I drove to record my thoughts. I know others who use a portable digital recorder. At home, of course, you can come up with a number of recording devices.

If you’re more visual and don’t like to write, how about expressing yourself through art or create vision boards with pictorial representations of what you want in your business? Some people like to do mind mapping as a way to see how words ideas relate visually.

By finding ways to express your thoughts and ideas about your business, you may begin to see opportunites present themselves, power partners who appear at the right time and place, more peace, more focus, and ultimately, more clients.

If you already have a practice like a Creative Spark Journal, I’d love to hear about it. If you feel inspired to start a new practice, I’m excited to learn about your experience with this.

My challenge to you is to find a way today to light your creative spark.

Related posts:

1. Doula Client Attraction Tip #2 – Identify Your Ideal Client
2. Doula Client Attraction Tip #1 – Have Those Interview Packets Ready and Waiting
3. 5 Steps For Filing Business Paperwork

Why should you do a forecast? First of all, it’s an element of a good business plan. Here are some other benefits:

1. Forecasting your income and expenses can help you determine how much you want to make, as well as help you see what you can reasonably expect to spend without going beyond your means or dipping into your line of credit or credit card.
2. Once you see your forecast, if you don’t like the bottom line you see, you can decide if it’s time to raise your rates, cut your spending, or increase your marketing and networking efforts in order to attract more clients.
3. If you are considering taking on a new area of study, planning a budget for your continuing education credits, or attending an upcoming convention, you can plug those estimates into the forecast to see how that will affect your expenses.
4. When you are able to see numbers, you know what you are working towards. You’ll be able to set specific goals, and you’ll be inspired to stay on track in order to meet them.
5. Writing out your forecast and your plan is the first step to setting a clear intention for your business and ultimately attracting what you want to come into your life.

The forecasting tool I am offering is to be used with Excel 97 or higher. There are two documents. The first is to be used by practitioners who only sell services. The second document is for those practitioners who sell services as well as products. Click here for access to these documents.

Although I am not going to discuss them here, I highly recommend that you learn about financial statements to get a clearer picture of your business finances. The three primary reports are a Profit and Loss Statement, a Statement of Cash Flow, and a Balance Sheet. Understanding these three reports will benefit you and your business immensely. Check with your local SBA office, community college or Small Business Development Office to find classes near you.

Please email me with any questions about doing a forecast for your business. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about your strengths, weaknesses, and outsourcing.

Related posts:

1. Getting Your Books Straight
2. Business Expenses and Taxable Deductions
3. The Tax Man Cometh