My favorite things: My Shining Year
For 2020, I am writing a series of all of my favorite things! This will include my favorites for supporting people in childbirth, doula life and recovery, small business owner hacks, books and resources, and more. With just a few exceptions, you will NOT find links to purchase these products in this blog series. I trust that you can search for these and like items if you would like to purchase them on your own.
I do not want this series to give anyone FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) though! You do not need all of these things to be a great doula, or have a satisfying birth! However, as with everything humans do, tools can be helpful and help you to work smarter, not harder, especially when you find yourself doing the same things over and over in professional birth work, or you find something particularly helpful for increasing your own comfort in pregnancy, birth, and general life.
Today is all about the My Shining Year Business Goals Workbook by Leonie Dawson!
I first learned about these workbooks from Rebecca Dekker at Evidence Based Birth, and Cristen Pascucci at Birth Monopoly. I used it in 2018 for the first time, and it was illuminating and so helpful!
The workbooks take you through your previous business year finances, services, systems, and more, helps you to quickly identify areas where you need to make changes, and then helps you lay out your goals for the year ahead.
Because of the questions this workbook asks, I have made several changes over the years to how I do business (I needed so much help in accounting!) and I’ve been able to set, and achieve, goals in my business that fit with my vision and are appropriate for my current season of life. I’ve also been able to better identify my strengths and work on the areas where I needed to grow.
Leonie also has a My Shining Life Goals Workbook for personal goal setting which looks amazing, but I have not used personally.
Why is this one of my favorite things? A few years ago I looked around and realized I am a small business owner by mistake, and if I wanted to really do doula work for the long term I had better get myself organized and intentional about what I want to accomplish in this work! When I first started 10 years ago, I wasn’t sure if motherhood and doula were compatible, I didn’t know if anyone would find my services helpful, and I was very aware that living life constantly on-call, ready to drop everything when a client goes into labor, was going to be really hard. Now that it’s clear this is my thing for the forseeable future, I needed to play catch-up and implement healthy business practices ASAP. This Goals Workbook asked me questions that really made me think about the client experience, contract signing, payments, questionnaires, scheduling, everything, and helped me make it a smoother experience. It also showed me just how much I needed to learn about running a small business!
I hope this was helpful for Parents and for Birth Professionals alike, and that you enjoyed learning about why this Business Workbook is one of my favorite things to use in my doula work!