When I began paying attention to my self care and search for “life balance” about seven years ago, I was encouraged by my coaches at the time to consider my life balance wheel. By filling in how satisfied or dissatisfied I was with different areas of my life, I could see how skewed and “off balance” I was and what areas I could focus on to, well, get in balance. If you could imagine rolling that wheel, it would be a really rocky ride.

Many birth professionals wear more than one hat. Part of that comes from the love we have of birth, breastfeeding, early parenting, and other related areas. Sometimes it comes out of the necessity to bring in more income.

Balancing your home life while building your birth business takes practice and experimentation. Many birth professionals are also mothers of young children, and much of the work we do managing our businesses is at home while we’re also mothering and running the household. As business owners, how do we make time for it all?

This week we’ll be taking a look at all the ways you organize your office, paperwork, files and electronic data. Each day I’ll offer you some tips and resources to help you organize your office in some way. Today we will take a look at where you run your birth business.

Do your days run you? Do you feel like you spend a lot of your time reacting to what’s going on around you right now than deliberately planning your day? Are you ready to slow down and take control of your schedule? Are you ready to do more meaningful activities and live more consciously?

Do you feel like you are in control of your calendar and all those things on your to-do list or are they in control of you? If you are driven by everything that has to be done each day, there’s a good chance that the systems you’re using to plan your days and keep yourself organized need to be examined and restructured. By implementing some key structures in the important areas in your life, you will find yourself moving through the day with less stress and more items on your list being crossed off.

Stephen Covey says the “essence of these needs is captured in the phrase ‘to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy’.” Explore a new way of looking at self care and how it helps enable you to serve others in the work you do and the life you live.

In my previous article examining how you can increase your earning potential, we examined the importance of diversifying our product offerings. In this article, we will look at the two different types of product offerings you can add to your doula business to increase profits.

In order to have a successful business, it’s important to consider how successful you are in other areas of your life.

Welcome to the first of a three-part series on increasing your earning potential. In this series, we will look at specific things you can do to improve your bottom line and bring more money into your birth business.