A Hybrid Business Model for Doulas with Darcy Sauers
On this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast, I’m joined by Doula Darcy, who helps birth and postpartum professionals build sustainable, freedom-filled businesses they truly love.
I was inspired to record this conversation with Darcy after I came across a post she shared online that said:“Being a doula is heart-centered work, but it shouldn’t cost you your health, family time, or financial stability.”
That message stopped me in my tracks because I see it all the time — doulas who adore their work but are exhausted by the long hours and the unpredictable on-call lifestyle.
In this conversation, Darcy explains why the traditional, in-person-only model just isn’t sustainable long term, and how her Hybrid Doula Business Model is helping doulas earn more, work less, and find balance again.
We discussed:
✨ Why only taking in-person clients can lead to burnout
✨ How sleep consulting fits perfectly into the hybrid business model for doulas
✨ The mindset shifts needed to create more freedom and stability
✨ Darcy’s best advice for doulas who want to make a change
If you’ve been looking for a way to continue supporting families while creating a bit more balance and freedom in your work, you’ll really enjoy this episode.
Links:
Website: The Doula Darcy
Instagram: @thedouladarcy
The Hybrid Doula Business Masterclass: The Hybrid Doula Business Model
If you would like to learn more about the Becoming a Sleep Consultant, please join our free Facebook Group or check out our CPSM Website.
Book a free discovery call to learn how you can become a Certified Sleep Consultant here.
Transcript:
Intro: Welcome to Becoming a Sleep Consultant! I’m your host Jayne Havens, a certified sleep consultant and founder of both Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens and Center for Pediatric Sleep Management.
On this podcast, I’ll be discussing the business side of sleep consulting. You’ll have an insider’s view on launching, growing, and even scaling a sleep consulting business. This is not a podcast about sleep training. This is a podcast about business building and entrepreneurship.
On this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast, I am joined by Doula Darcy, who helps birth and postpartum professionals build sustainable, freedom-filled businesses that they truly love. I was inspired to record this conversation with Darcy after I came across a post she shared online that said: “Being a doula is heart-centered work, but it shouldn’t cost you your health, family time, or financial stability.” That message stopped me in my tracks because I see it all the time — doulas who adore their work, but they are exhausted by the long hours and the unpredictable on-call lifestyle.
In this conversation, Darcy explains why the traditional in-person-only model just isn’t sustainable long term, and how her Hybrid Doula Business Model is helping doulas earn more, work less, and find balance again.
Jayne Havens: Darcy, welcome back to the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. I’m so excited to chat with you today.
Darcy Sauers: I am too. Thank you so much for having me. This is like my new favorite topic to talk about, so I’m excited.
Jayne Havens: I think me too. You’ve said that the traditional model of working as a doula isn’t sustainable. Can you share what you mean by that?
Darcy Sauers: Yes, I have been saying this for a few months now. What I mean by the traditional model is just, like, the way you take a doula training and they’re like, “Okay, go to as many births as you can.” Or if you’re a postpartum doula, “Go help as many families as you can,” and that’s what being a doula is. It’s just not sustainable because it wears you out pretty quick.
To earn enough money, to earn your living as a birth doula, you have to go to a lot of births a month. It’s fun at first. As you start getting older, or as your kids start needing you to drive them around every day, and as you’re spending years living your life on call—like not being able to leave your town or go 20 minutes out of town—or I talked to so many postpartum doulas and they were like, “I can’t do five overnights a week anymore,” or, “I can’t do two daytime clients per day every day.” So that’s what I mean by the traditional doula model.
Jayne Havens: What would you say are some of the signs that someone’s business model is not working for them? I know you sort of just listed a few things, but I’m thinking more like the mental aspect of it. The burnout, right?
Darcy Sauers: Right. Well, it’s interesting. Because a couple of weeks ago, I just went to the DONA International Doula Conference, the global conference for doulas. That was just the common theme. Some people who I know and I connect with online all year long, some people I’ve known for years in person, that’s the common theme of the conversations. Oh, how are you doing? “Oh, I’m just so exhausted. Oh, my God. I’m so busy. I’m worn out.” There’s a lot of doulas there that have been doing this for a long time. So the signs are that you’re tired.
The other sign that I saw coming in with myself was resentment. When I first started as a doula, I would have paid to go help a mom. I was just so chomping at the bit to get into someone’s house and just help her.
Then fast forward a couple of years, a hundred clients later—I always talk about the time I would do a shift in the morning, shove a sandwich in my face as I raced across town to do another shift in the afternoon—I just started to feel resentful that I’m helping moms all day and then I would come home to my own house, my own three kids, my own piles of laundry, my own dirty dishes in the sink, my own dinner that needed to be made, and I started to feel resentful at the work, not excited in chomping at the bit to help.
So I think when you’re starting to feel the — some people call it compassion fatigue. It’s a thing. When you start to not have — you could talk about filling up your own cup. If your own cup isn’t filled, you feel some resentment when you’re called in to go provide some pretty in-depth support for someone, whether they’re in labor or they’ve just had a baby. So I think those are signs. When you find yourself going to that place mentally, it’s a signal that you need a day off. Then when it’s happening consistently, it’s a signal that you need to change the way you’re running your business.
Jayne Havens: As somebody who doesn’t do that work myself, I’ve never worked as a birth or a postpartum doula—what I will say as somebody who’s maybe on the parent side who’s hired that type of support, I had help with my babies when they were little—the work that doulas do is so important. It is so crucial. I think moms deserve, parents deserve doulas who are rested, who are healthy, and who are energized about their work. When doulas are sort of working themselves to the bone into the ground, that doesn’t serve them, and it doesn’t serve the parents that they are supporting.
Darcy Sauers: Right. The other level of this is, there’s talk in the doula world of whether you should eat lunch while you’re at a shift with a client or eat a snack. I say yes. We’re supposed to be modeling for these clients what it looks like to take good care of yourself. That’s our whole role as a doula. It’s to help new moms or people in labor to take good care of themselves. Meanwhile, we’re over here living on granola bars, not sleeping, eight cups of coffee a day. It’s not an alignment with what we’re even doing. But it’s like you have to do that to make ends meet, pay the bills.
I realized pretty quickly in my own postpartum doula career that there was an invisible ceiling I was bumping up against. There were only so many hours in the week, and I wasn’t even trying to be on call and go to a birth in the middle of the night. But I had three little kids, and I wanted to be home by 4 PM. So there’s only enough hours in the day to work, and there was a ceiling on what I could charge. There was only a certain amount of money I could earn in a week trading my hours for dollars.
Jayne Havens: And so that led you to sort of create this Hybrid Doula Business Model, right? Can you explain what that looks like and how it works?
Darcy Sauers: Yes, so I’ve been talking incessantly about this because I feel like this is the way for doulas to make this work sustainable. It’s to not step away from doula work to go take another job that’s not physically as demanding, but to stay in doula work but then to add in some additional revenue streams that are bringing you in the money that you need to earn to make this whole thing make sense. Whether that means passive income, whether you’re creating digital courses, digital products, or offering virtual coaching, sleep consulting, starting an agency, there are so many different ways that you can do this. That’s what I love about it.
Especially with the internet, we have so many options in terms of how to create a hybrid doula business model. I think it was Charles Schwab who said, like, “The future of business, we’re moving from brick and mortar to click and mortar.”
Jayne Havens: Oh, I like that.
Darcy Sauers: Yes, most doulas don’t have a brick-and-mortar place. But I look at the click and mortar as, like, you’re doing some in-person work, and then the rest is clicks. The rest is not sucking your time and your energy. I’m just obsessed with it.
Jayne Havens: And so this is where I think—not for all doulas, but for many doulas—sleep consulting can be a really perfect fit for so many reasons. What I’m seeing doulas do in their businesses once they become certified sleep consultants is really transformative for them on several different levels. I mean, the first thing I say to doulas is like, “The second you get certified to be a sleep consultant, start charging more money.”
Darcy Sauers: Oh, absolutely. You’re right.
Jayne Havens: Because honestly, you have a higher skill set, a higher level of qualification, and you’re getting parents a different result. If you’re spending eight, ten, twelve weeks with a family postpartum, and you have taken a sleep consultant certification course that sets you up for success presumably, then you’re going to be able to go in there and get that baby sleeping largely through the night. I mean, that’s going to be a reality.
Darcy Sauers: Yeah, you’re also going to just get hired at the interview if you can set yourself apart from the other doulas and say, “Oh, I’m also a certified sleep consultant.” Raising your rates, being able to raise your rates, that’s the first way to make the traditional doula business model—
Jayne Havens: Work a little bit better.
Darcy Sauers: —yeah, any business model work better.
Jayne Havens: Also, higher hourly rate, that’s the first thing. Without doing anything different, you’re already making more money. The other thing that I like to tell doulas is: it allows them to have more longevity in their work. Because if the baby is sleeping better, that means you’re resting better on the job, right? Most postpartum doulas are not providing complete and total awake care. I know that some do, but many don’t. The understanding is that the doula sleeps or rests when the baby sleeps or rests. And if you can get that baby comfortable for longer stretches in their bassinet or in their crib overnight, that positions you to be able to work more.
Darcy Sauers: Get paid to sleep.
Jayne Havens: Yeah, exactly. Well, first of all, yes, get paid to sleep, but also to work more nights without losing the love for the work.
Darcy Sauers: Yeah, right, without your own—
Jayne Havens: Because if your work is not that hard and you’re able to largely sleep, then it’s kind of a great gig.
Darcy Sauers: Oh, my God. Yes, absolutely. And you’re absolutely right. I think becoming a sleep consultant is — I don’t want to say the easiest ways, but it’s a low-tech way to add an additional revenue stream into your doula business.
When I first started talking about this whole hybrid doula business model, I was really focusing on digital courses, digital products—like passive income, which is fantastic. But so many doulas, they want their business to be sustainable because they’re getting older, and they just don’t want to do these hours or these long overnights. But they also don’t know how to use Instagram, or they don’t know how to build an email funnel. And so creating a digital course and the marketing that’s involved in that just isn’t appealing to them. But if you become a certified sleep consultant and then simply offer virtual sleep consulting packages—that’s what I mean by it’s easy—it’s a low-tech way to bring another revenue stream into your doula business.
And then you already have the clients. Because if you’ve been a postpartum doula or a birth doula for one year, five years, ten years, that’s the people you email and say, “Hey, I’m doing sleep consulting now.” We’ve talked about this so often—how it’s the perfect thing to do for a doula in between contracts. Like, if you’re a birth doula who’s on call for another birth, you can’t go signup to do another birth. You can’t really go signup for a six-hour postpartum doula shift. But you can be texting and serving a sleep consulting client virtually. If you’re a postpartum doula, in between contracts, you can be working with sleep—
Jayne Havens: Even on contracts, you know?
Darcy Sauers: Right. Yeah.
Jayne Havens: If you’re supporting families virtually, you can be working in home with one family and supporting three others virtually. So that allows you to sort of earn more money while still only being in one place at a time. Then it, I think, positions you to be a little bit choosier about the in-person work that you’re doing. I know we’ve had this conversation before. One thing I hear doulas say all the time is that they take a job because they need it, not because it feels like the right job.
When doulas start to diversify their income streams and they start to feel a little bit more comfortable with supporting families in unique and interesting ways, I do think that that positions them to feel a little bit more confident to turn down the job that maybe has a little bit of red flag vibes, right? It’s not something that you would take if you didn’t have to. It really positions them to do the work they want to be doing rather than doing the work that’s coming to them, which is sometimes two very different things.
Darcy Sauers: Right. Oh, yeah, the freedom that virtual sleep consulting gives you as, again, another reason the traditional model of a doula business isn’t working is you can’t take a vacation. If you want to take a one-week vacation as a doula, you have to take a month off. Because you never know. Babies could come early. The babies could come late. You can’t plan. But if you’re able to take a month off from doula work—because you’re going to take a week vacation but also serve seven virtual sleep clients—then all of a sudden, you can do it. You’re probably going to make more money than you would as a doula.
Jayne Havens: As you’re saying this, I’m thinking about today we’re recording this on a Tuesday. Thursday of this week, I’m going away to Mexico with my husband and two other couples. Right now, I’m supporting 10 families, which is a lot. It’s slightly more than I would want to be supporting. It’s just a heavy workload. I’m looking at Thursday, I’ll still have eight of those families on my calendar come Thursday while in Mexico. But I can because I can. It’s literally a text.
Darcy Sauers: Because you can send messages while you’re in the Uber, from the airport to the hotel.
Jayne Havens: Yeah, and now that I’m literally looking at my phone to see who’s wrapping up when, all of them are already in their second week with me. I was really purposeful about this. I didn’t take on any new families starting last weekend so that I could have a full week with families before I was away. And so everybody who I’m working with is already in a really good spot. Their kids are doing great. And if I get a text message here and there while I’m away, it’s my pleasure to respond. I will be able to, and I don’t have to sort of shut my entire business down because I’m spending a long weekend in Mexico.
Darcy Sauers: Right. It’s not like you have to go hop on a two-hour conference call.
Jayne Havens: It’s in texting, yeah. Actually, I won’t even have any phone calls. It will just be a morning check-in. “Hey, how did Lucy sleep last night?” I’ll check in at bedtime to make sure that bedtime went smoothly. All of my families that I’m supporting right now, except for one of them, actually have older children—kids ages two and up. So I’m not dealing with nap time stuff and all of that. I have one set of 15-week-old twins that I’m supporting currently. But I was very explicit with that one family that we’re going to take a break while I’m away.
They signed on last week. I gave them four or five days before I leave town, and then we’re going to finish the contract when I return. So I was able to set different boundaries with different families based on what their circumstances are.
Because a three-year-old who’s struggling with sleep, he’s in preschool all day, there’s nothing to talk about. And if his parents send me a text message with a question, there’s not necessarily a sense of urgency to it because it’s just maybe a question that they have about bedtime, which will be several hours later. Whereas the 15-week-old twins, they’re going to be struggling with naps all day. So that is something that I’m not prepared to support while on vacation. So I set different boundaries with that family than I did with the other ones. How cool is it that I get to do that?
Darcy Sauers: I was just going to say, even that, that you have the ability and the freedom to do that. My head always goes back to like being in a cubicle job, where someone else is telling you when you can have lunch. So I want to tell you because I haven’t told you this yet. I did this Maine doula retreat, and we were there last month talking about adding passive income streams. We were talking about — one of the doulas was really passionate just in her career so far. As a postpartum doula, she’s really good at helping families establish good sleep hygiene with their newborns and all this stuff.
She was like, “Could I make a little class? Could I make a packet? What could I do?” We were talking through all of this. Then I was like, “Train with Jayne.” She’s like, “I’ve been looking at it.” I was like, “Become a sleep consultant, and then you don’t have to create a course. You don’t have to even really have an email list.” You know, Jayne, I love your business model because it is so simple.
Jayne Havens: Thank you. I agree. It is. It’s really straightforward. I have people in my program who literally don’t have a website, who use a Hotmail email address. Literally, AOL.com. You don’t need to have this whole really complicated, intricate infrastructure. You just don’t. I mean, consulting was a thing long before the internet, right?
Darcy Sauers: Yes.
Jayne Havens: I always tell people that. People come to me interested in becoming a sleep consultant and they’re like, “I’m not tech savvy. I don’t know how to make a website. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to do that.” I’m like, “Consulting was a thing before TikTok and Instagram. Do it old school. It’s fine.”
Darcy Sauers: Right, especially for sleep. Because I always say: if you can get somebody’s baby sleeping, those parents are so psyched and so happy, they turn into a megaphone for you. They’re so like that. I mean, my kids are in their 20s, but I still remember the first time getting a good chunk of sleep. I wanted to run around town and just tell everybody like, “I slept last night!”
Jayne Havens: That is literally, I can say with experience that that is exactly what’s happening. Once you support a family and you do so well, they literally tell everybody about you. I do a two-week virtual consultation with my clients. We do a phone call to kick it off. I write them a sleep plan.
Well, we have a call just to learn about each other, to start. Then I write them a plan and then we do a phone call to kick it off and then some virtual, texting voice notes, for about two weeks. I always love to offer them a call at the end just to wrap up, get lasting questions answered, and just leave on a good note. Every single time on these phone calls, they say to me, “I already told so and so about you,” or, “My friend might be calling you. I gave her your number.” It happens every single time.
Honestly, even if it doesn’t happen, what I say to them is: “If you were happy with the support that I provided and you felt like our time was valuable, all that I could ever ask of you is if you’d be willing to share my name with a friend, or a family member, or somebody in your circle who’s struggling.” I make the ask. Then they say, “It would be my pleasure. It would be my absolute pleasure.” And so then the business comes back.
My goal is to work myself out of a job. I don’t want to be working with families forever, but I think that that’s actually a better business model as far as getting business over and over and over again. Because when you literally change somebody’s life—when you take them from rock bottom, total brink of exhaustion, feeling 10 out of 10 desperate, and then all of a sudden, their child is getting 11 to 12 hours of sleep overnight—they want to tell the entire universe about you.
Darcy Sauers: Yes, that’s what I mean by ‘your business is simple.’ You don’t have a complicated marketing plan. You don’t really do any marketing.
Jayne Havens: I don’t. I mean, when I first started, I did. When I first started, I definitely did. I don’t like to pretend, especially for people who are listening to this podcast who are thinking about getting into this line of work. I’m not one of those people that sells them this dream that like, “Oh, you’ll become a sleep consultant. You’ll have 30 families banging down your door.” I think that there is a startup period where you have to build a reputation, you have to gain some momentum—
Darcy Sauers: Absolutely.
Jayne Havens: —you have to gain your confidence; you have to build a little bit of authority in the space. But truthfully, if you do a good job, it really snowballs from there. It shouldn’t take years and years and years. Because if you can just land those first six to ten families, I say, at least two or three of them will turn into speedy referral sources. It just snowballs.
So, is it work to grow a business? 100%. There’s no business that isn’t. But if you’re out there on the regular changing lives, then at a certain point, it does start to run itself. I mean, I—every single day—get an email, a text message, a phone call, a message through my website from somebody who got my name from usually somebody that I just wrapped up with, or somebody that I worked with five years ago. I mean, I have this one mom who I think I worked with her six or seven years ago, and I still get referrals from her pretty regularly. To me, that’s incredible.
Darcy Sauers: That is incredible. Two years in, three years in, five years in, whatever, you’re not dancing on Instagram every day.
Jayne Havens: No, I actually never was, for what it’s worth.
Darcy Sauers: I know you weren’t, but I mean whatever you do to build your business and get those first clients as a sleep consultant. I think I have to say, like, it’s not the same in the doula world. I mean, there’s something about sleep. I think it’s the physical change.
Jayne Havens: I think it’s the transformation, right?
Darcy Sauers: Yeah.
Jayne Havens: It’s the transformation. Because I will tell you, I’ve actually dabbled — recently, I’ve been getting into some parent coaching, which is just sort of the newest offshoot for me because I’m working with a lot of three, four, or five-year-olds. What I’ve noticed is that a lot of the time, parents think they have a sleep struggle, but really, they have a more bigger-picture limit-setting struggle in their home. So I’ve taken some continuing education to learn more about how to coach parents through the daytime power struggles so that they can show up with purpose and intention—not just at bedtime, but during the day too.
What I will say is: with parent coaching, it’s really fun. I’m really enjoying it. My clients are happy with me, and they’re getting results. But there’s not the same clear transformation there is with sleep. With sleep, you go from being up every hour to sleeping through the night. It is a very clear transformation. It is life changing. It’s transformative. The feeling that people have afterwards, I think, is different than having an amazing postpartum doula or having a wonderful parent coach. It’s not the same thing.
Darcy Sauers: Right. You could give the best support ever, but it’s harder to describe. I feel like you’re giddy after you start getting sleep, and you just want to tell everybody.
Also, back to like you have to put in the hustle to get your business going, I wanted to also say that one of my favorite things about the whole hybrid business model for doulas is that—as much as I love sleep consulting and think it’s a great option—that’s not for everybody. The great thing about this is: you can build any kind of hybrid business model, as long as you’re passionate about it.
Becoming a sleep consultant is not going to work for you and be some magical money maker if you aren’t obsessed with helping parents get more sleep. If you don’t love it and if you’re not really passionate about it, if you’re just doing it because Darcy and Jayne were like, “Oh, you’re going to make a lot of money and save your doula career,” it’s not going to work.
Jayne Havens: I agree. Wholeheartedly, I agree.
Darcy Sauers: But on the other hand, if it’s not, let’s figure out the model for the area of perinatal, whatever, that you are obsessed with. I mean, that’s a whole other podcast. We all like to bash the internet and complain about social media, but it is a tool for us to use to build a business around our passions that helps people.
Jayne Havens: Yeah. I mean, look. As much as I’m sort of somewhat borderline anti-social media, it’s brought me together with people like you. We never would have met had it not been social media and the internet.
Darcy Sauers: Right. I know.
Jayne Havens: The amount of collaboration, the amount of continuing education, the amount of resources that are at your fingertips—because of not only the internet but also social media platforms, where you have the opportunity to connect with like-minded professionals—I think is really, really special. So anybody who’s listening, we have to say: don’t be scared, right?
Darcy Sauers: Right. Exactly. And go for it. I think it’s a helpful mindset switch to go from hating social media and the internet to thinking, like, “How can I use this?” Our grandmothers didn’t have this. I’ve been watching a lot of older World War II era movies. Those women, they had to take in sewing. They had to go cook. They had barely any options to earn extra money for their family. Meanwhile, we can be like, “Hmm, what if I just hop on Zoom and start helping people with their sleep?” What?
Jayne Havens: It really is very cool if you think about it.
Darcy Sauers: Yes, and you and I met on Facebook. Most of my best friends now, I made on the internet. We joked on our Maine doula retreat. Like, yeah, I just told my husband like, “Yeah, I’m going to go spend a week in a house with some people I met on the internet and have the best time.”
Jayne Havens: Right. The opportunities that are available to you when you really accept that this is here to help you, not to hurt you, are limitless.
Darcy Sauers: Yes, it is true. We’re lucky to be alive right now and be able to take advantage of it.
Jayne Havens: Before we wrap up, tell everybody how they can learn more from you, specifically if they want to dive into really developing some sort of hybrid business model for themselves.
Darcy Sauers: Well, an easy way is to connect with me on social media. Find me on Instagram @thedouladarcy. You can head to my website, thedouladarcy.com. I just did a Masterclass on Building a Hybrid Doula Business Model. You can get the replay if you go to the douladarcy.com/masterclass. Enter your email, and you’ll get an email with the replay, where I walk through all the options and lots of different ideas. Then I do one-on-one coaching with doulas and sleep consultants, lactation counselors, anyone who wants to build whether it’s 100% virtual business, hybrid, one-on-one coaching, or in my membership community, My Doula Village, we’re always talking about this too.
Jayne Havens: My Doula Village is one of my favorite places to hang out online. So for anybody listening who’s a birth or a postpartum professional, it’s a really, really special space. However you can get into Darcy’s corner, I highly, highly recommend. Darcy, thank you so much for having this conversation with me today. I always enjoy spending time with you.
Darcy Sauers: Oh, thank you for having me. It’s always a good conversation when we get together.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, it would mean so much to me if you would rate, review, and subscribe. When you rate, review, and subscribe, this helps the podcast reach a greater audience. I am so grateful for your support.
If you would like to learn more about how you can become a certified sleep consultant, head over to my Facebook Group, Becoming a Sleep Consultant or to my website thecpsm.com. Thanks so much, and I hope you will tune in for the next episode