How I Hosted a Doula Holiday Party That Built Community and Saved Me on Taxes

Maine Doula Retreat Recap - And Getting Off the Hamster Wheel of your Doula Business The Doula Business That Got You Here Won't Get You There What happens when you take a group of busy, successful doulas out of their everyday lives, put them in a gorgeous oceanfront house in Maine, and give them permission to do absolutely nothing for a little while? Something pretty magical. I'm back from hosting two back-to-back Maine Doula Retreats for members of My Doula Village, and in this episode, I'm sharing what happened when these incredible women finally had the time and space to think about something they rarely get to prioritize: THEMSELVES. Not their clients. Not their kids. Not their never-ending to-do lists. But what THEY want their lives and businesses to look like in the next five or ten years. Because here's something I've been thinking about a lot lately: The doula business that got you here might not be the business that takes you where you want to go next. Maybe you've built a thriving birth doula business, but you can't imagine continuing to attend five births a month for another decade. Maybe you've spent years doing overnights, but your body is telling you it's time for something different. Maybe you still absolutely LOVE doula work, but you need a way to keep doing it without sacrificing your health, your family, or your sleep. In this episode, I'm talking about: The magic of slowing down and why some of our best business ideas happen when we're NOT working

Do doulas really need liability insurance? What does it actually cover? And do you need professional liability insurance, general liability insurance…or both? These are questions that come up ALL THE TIME in doula groups and instead of relying on what someone heard from another doula who heard it from someone else, I decided to go directly to the source. In this episode of The Doula Darcy Podcast, I'm talking with Miriam Ball and Karissa Norton from Alternative Balance to get answers to some of the biggest questions doulas have about liability insurance. And I asked them some pretty specific questions. We talk about: Why birth and postpartum doulas should consider carrying liability insurance

Why real-life connection might be one of the most underrated ways to build a sustainable doula business. What if one of the best things you could do for your doula business had nothing to do with marketing, strategy, social media or even AI? I recorded this quickie episode in real time as I was getting ready for one of my favorite weeks of the entire year: the Maine Doula Business Retreat. And while thinking about why I love bringing a small group of doulas together in a big house on the coast of Maine for five days, I realized something: There are some things you simply cannot replicate on Zoom. And you definitely can't get them from ChatGPT. Yes, I love a good business strategy. And yes, I think AI can be an incredible tool for your business. But there is something powerful that happens when you spend real, uninterrupted time with people who get it. It's the conversation over coffee in the morning. It's the business idea that comes up while you're walking to the lighthouse. It's sitting on the rocks with another doula and realizing she understands exactly what you're going through. It's laughing around the dinner table, talking around the campfire, and having the kinds of conversations you could never schedule into a 60-minute Zoom call. And I think part of what we're really experiencing in those moments is oxytocin. Doulas give so much of themselves to other people. But we need to intentionally create lives and businesses that replenish us, too. In this quick, unpolished episode, I'm talking about: Why I intentionally make the Maine Doula Business Retreat FIVE days long

What does it actually take to go from doing doula work "on the side" to making it your full-time career? In this episode of The Doula Darcy Podcast, I'm talking with My Doula Village member Rachel Bailey about exactly that. When Rachel joined My Doula Village in June 2025, she was a college professor teaching Public Health while also trying to build her doula business on the side. She loved doula work and knew she wanted to do more of it, but walking away from a steady paycheck, health insurance, and a career she'd spent nearly 20 years building was really scary. And trying to do BOTH was exhausting. Rachel shares how she went from juggling classes, births, clients, and marketing her business to finally leaving her university job and becoming a full-time doula. And the best part? Since making the leap, Rachel has been fully booked every single month. In this conversation, we talk about: How Rachel discovered doula work after a career in public health and academia

As doulas, we already know that words matter. We help clients change the way they think and talk about birth. We use affirmations. We pay attention to the language being used in the birth room. We know that one seemingly innocent comment from a provider can completely change how someone experiences their labor. But have you ever stopped to think about the language (via self-talk) and the deeply held beliefs you're bringing into your business? In this episode, I'm joined by my friend Megan Blacksmith, NLP practitioner, business owner, and host of the Becoming Zesty podcast, for a fascinating conversation about the subconscious beliefs that may be influencing everything from how much you charge to how big you allow your business to become. Because you can put "six-figure doula business" on your vision board and repeat the mantra, "I deserve to make more money." But if somewhere underneath all of that you still believe that helpers & healers shouldn't make a lot of money, successful people are greedy, it isn't safe to be seen, or being bigger means hurting the people you love... Your conscious goals and your subconscious beliefs are fighting each other. Megan explains Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and how experiences from very early in our lives can create beliefs that continue influencing our decisions decades later. We also talk about the other side of this conversation: how incredibly powerful this work can be for the families that doulas support. Megan shares her own birth experience and how a single sentence from a provider changed what she believed about her ability to cope with labor. We talk about why women can carry words spoken during birth for decades, the importance of processing birth experiences afterward, and how those experiences can affect seemingly unrelated areas of our lives. In this episode, we talk about: What NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) actually is