Building Your Midwifery Business

Transcript

Please note this transcript was generated by AI software and may contain some errors.

[00:00:00] Mel: Hello again, Melanie Jackson here with you. Thank you for being here and we are continuing in our series on becoming a private midwife here in Australia. Everyone is welcome whether or not you're just dipping your toe in and exploring and hanging around to see what you can learn. or if you're absolutely ready to enter into private practice midwifery, I applaud you for being here in the right place, whichever stage of your journey you're on.

[00:00:23] Mel: In the last video, I spoke about how here in Australia, we're just conditioned and raised as midwives to be educated to work in a hospital setting. Our university, our, the whole, Employment pathway is geared to condition us to learn and then move into the hospital and work shift work and tow the line. We are not encouraged to consider other employment possibilities or how broadly we can span our midwifery scope to actually enjoy other ways of working.

[00:00:58] Mel: We've been conditioned not to expect more from our careers and not to expect more than the job that we've been given. But there is more out there and you don't have to keep going down that path that you're on. Midwives have felt the impact. that this way of working has on them. We're morally distressed, burnt out, tired, and some midwives are absolutely done and sick of it.

[00:01:24] Mel: And instead of leaving midwifery, we can just explore our other midwifery options. You don't have to stay there. And, or, you don't have to just leave midwifery if you can't tolerate what's happening in the hospital. There are other options. We've already spoken about the basics of getting started in the last video.

[00:01:42] Mel: We talked about being a registered midwife, the requirements for endorsement with the 5, 000 hours and the pharmacology extra degree that we do at university. and how this leads us into our insurance product that we need to work as privately practicing midwives. Now, by the time you've worked through the process laid out in that first video, you'll already know how to midwife.

[00:02:04] Mel: You know how to clinically midwife. We're all taught midwifery skills. And by the time we've been through our education and those initial steps of becoming an endorsed midwife, I just want to assure you that you do have the basic midwifery skills required to keep women safe in a home setting and in the community.

[00:02:22] Mel: You have the ingredients, the clinical ingredients that you need to work clinically as a, as a privately practicing midwife. There are some things that you will have to unlearn and relearn, but these aren't as big and grand as you think they are. You can absolutely adapt the skills that you already have now.

[00:02:40] Mel: to the private practice midwifery setting. So although we are not specifically prepared to know what to do in every single clinical situation as private midwives, we can very quickly adapt. And if you're well linked in with the right midwifery support around you, You will gradually work out how to do that.

[00:03:01] Mel: And you can't feel that now at this point where you're not actually doing it. But trust me that the process of becoming a private midwife just naturally occurs as you start working clinically as a private midwife. So you just keep learning, committing to learning, and checking in with your peers around that time.

[00:03:19] Mel: And you will very quickly get into a rhythm that feels comfortable and safe for you. Now what I really wanna talk to you about today is, uh, your business prowess , how you can transform your, transform your life of being a midwife who's been conditioned to toe the line and think small about your career options.

[00:03:39] Mel: And actually to set no limits to the span of your career options. There is a very vast, broad range of things that we can do as midwives. So it is time to start, um, broadening our minds to that. Now, the beginning of this new opportunity for you and the key to transforming your career is to understand business.

[00:04:00] Mel: And I've been mentoring midwives into their own private practice. Businesses for years now and the thing that I hear most often from midwives is that they don't feel like business people and they're worried about starting a business because they don't feel like they know how to do business. We know how to midwife, but do we know how to business and I get that it's new and I can understand that it feels scary, but with guidance and advice, you'll actually.

[00:04:25] Mel: And see that it's a simple thing to do. There are only a few basic ingredients that you need to bring together in order to create a successful business. So I do want to bring you some of these today and just sort of give you some examples of how easy it can be. You know, we talk about how there's this big elephant confronting us when we're trying to do something brand new and the easiest way to eat the elephant is one bite at a time.

[00:04:49] Mel: It's exactly the same with business. You know, since the beginning of my working career, I've worked in and on my own businesses. When I was a teenager, my parents had me working in their businesses. And when I worked as a naturopath, before I was even a midwife, I was working as a private practitioner. And on top of that, for the last 15 years, I've refined my business skills and strategies to apply them to make private practice midwifery flow easy for me.

[00:05:16] Mel: These are just basic business ingredients that can be applied to any business in order to set you up for success. Now, at this point in my career, as business has gotten bigger, I've set up systems and processes that make my business work, uh, really, really well. And I'm passionate about passing this experience on because I've had to learn along the way.

[00:05:40] Mel: It would have been so nice if someone just showed me all these basic things that I need to do instead of me having to discover them. for myself. I mean, it wasn't an accidental process that things are working well now. I mean, it was a process of learning and testing and making mistakes and then learning and testing and repeating the process until I found something that worked best.

[00:06:02] Mel: So, I've walked this path myself. I've helped other midwives do the same. And as I became more experienced in my field as a midwife, it just naturally happened that midwives started to reach out to me for guidance on how to move into private practice. And that's really how this video series, this educational series came about.

[00:06:22] Mel: I really wanted to share successful business strategies with you in the hope that you could apply them and start your own successful private practice. And that's the end goal here. There's no point in me gathering all this knowledge and understanding of business and having a successful private practice.

[00:06:41] Mel: If I just keep it to myself. I want to give you things that you can replicate, take away, and do yourself, and also be successful in this line of work. Now at the end of the video, a few days ago, it wasn't yesterday, it was a few days ago, I asked you what the barriers were that you were feeling that was stopping you from entering into private practice, and I can tell you I've read each and every one of those comments, and I remember having all of those feelings and hesitancies myself when I was entering into private practice.

[00:07:10] Mel: And one of the big things that, you know, you guys are all talking about is, um, just this idea of the basic business processes. So I, I mean if I, I still want to try and alleviate your fears on that. There's a, just a secret in business is that no one is a business person. Until they're a business person.

[00:07:29] Mel: So seriously, no one goes into business already knowing exactly how to be in business. We all just embark on a journey and commit to working it out as we go. So, so long as you're committed to just working it out as you go, you will be absolutely fine. The only difference between a business person and an employee...

[00:07:50] Mel: Is that the business person has let go of their fear and went ahead into the unknowed and just committed to making it work. And relearning things that they need to know about business. The employee just never took the risk, but they will also never receive the benefit of this new way of working. So being clinically prepared for your work as a private midwife is only one side of the story.

[00:08:14] Mel: And a couple of days ago I gave you that, that little snippet about the three pillars. You know, there's the clinical midwifery, the business side of things, and the legal side of things. So that's the other side is that you're also running a business. You're not just working clinically as a midwife. And I encourage private midwives to see themselves as business owners whose service is midwifery care.

[00:08:37] Mel: You are your product and you are using your business to market and sell you and your product. You're midwifery care. So, a lot of midwives tell me that they don't want to do business, they don't enjoy it, they just want to be private midwives and give midwifery care. But it's just a recipe for failure if you neglect to manage your business in order to focus just on midwifery care.

[00:09:00] Mel: It's not going to work. You can be the best midwife in the world, but if you're no good at business, you can't work in private practice. So let's get our head around the idea that we're no longer just clinical midwives. We would actually be business owners. All right. So this is, I mean, this can feel risky.

[00:09:17] Mel: You're taking a leap into something new. It feels uncertain. Many midwives don't know how to start. It feels scary. But again, how do you eat an elephant? It's just one bite at a time. I'm here to help you eat the metaphorical elephant. And as I'm thinking about midwives in business, I'm reminded of two midwives who I mentored in 2021.

[00:09:40] Mel: So it was only a few years ago. Both had spent their whole careers working in hospital in mainstream system. Both had worked in MGP programs. They actually worked in models of care that were designed, you know, fairly evidence based that they were reasonably happy in. One of them was a mom with young children who was ready.

[00:10:01] Mel: By the end, after moving out of like a really nice MDP program into a mainstream, into a different hospital that was, you know, this fragmented care with lots of shift work. She was actually ready to give up altogether. She was so burnt out by the system. She was treated disrespectfully. She was ready to just give up.

[00:10:20] Mel: She wanted to study horticulture. She had no pit, she'd no business experience whatsoever. And the other midwife I'm thinking about was getting ready. She was thinking about a retirement. She wanted to spend the last few years of her career working in a model that she felt good about. And so she, um, she joined me on a, on the mentorship, uh, process and she, uh, decided she was going to start in private practice in her late fifties.

[00:10:48] Mel: And so. Years and years later, I've watched both of these women fully engage with the learning process, apply themselves to setting up their businesses, and I'm in contact with them regularly. And the first one, the mum, with the three young children, who was ready to give up and do horticulture, um, she...

[00:11:06] Mel: Like partway through being mentored by me just had a full caseload. She doesn't have a clinic space. She built her business up. You know, she told me she was earning double what she could ever earn in the hospital. And she loves it so much. She can't believe she ever wanted to give up midwifery in the first place.

[00:11:21] Mel: And you know, she just took off. And the second midwife, the one who was kind of thinking that she was near retirement, she is in again now in only a few years later. Full caseload again. She's got a clinic space, a retail space. She runs workshops. She's acquired a second midwifery business. I mean, I don't, now seeing her energy for this work, I don't imagine she's planning on retiring any time soon.

[00:11:51] Mel: And actually she's now mentoring other midwives to enter into private practice and we're gonna hear from both of these midwives tomorrow. We're gonna hear their stories actually. They've shared their stories and given some tips, really practical tips for success. And you'll get to hear from them. I'd really encourage you to watch their stories because even as I was listening, I was so inspired because they've taken what I've taught them and just used it to create whole new things in their business.

[00:12:17] Mel: And so this kind of stuff, this can be applied to anything that you're thinking about doing as a privately practicing midwives midwife. And these are women who just listened and learned and applied what they had learned and they launched into private practice. They let go of fear and just went for it because they saw what was waiting for them behind them.

[00:12:36] Mel: If they kept in this career that they were already in, they knew what their trajectory was. Just continued exhaustion, disappointment, dissatisfaction, moral distress day in, day out. And they couldn't, it's not sustainable. And so they just. They cut off that part of their midwifery career and made something completely new for themselves in a relatively small amount of time.

[00:12:58] Mel: So, um, let's get into it. Let's get into How do you start out in business and get things set up? So it can be daunting, but let's start with three small basic steps three bites of the elephant, you know Let's see One of the first things you're going to need is an ABN, Australian Business Number. I would encourage you to come up with a business name and register that business name so that no one else can take it.

[00:13:26] Mel: Uh, and you can find out how to do these things really easily online. These are the first steps of any business, of your business, and they're actually really exciting because it starts this dreaming phase. Now in, underneath this video, there's a little link, a little button there that'll take you to the right place to get your ABN.

[00:13:44] Mel: And all these little business names and register, registering your business. There are little scams out there. If you're on Google and you're looking to get an ABN, people will try and charge you money to get that. Uh, there's all kinds of middlemen companies that are trying to, you know, intercept this process.

[00:14:00] Mel: Getting an ABN is free. So don't be trapped by that little scheme. You can do all that at the bottom below. The second thing that you want to do if you are starting up a business is you need an online presence. And if you're not tech savvy, outsource this stuff. It can be anything, but I encourage you to start with firstly a website.

[00:14:21] Mel: And a social media presence. If you want to, you can move on to a YouTube channel, a podcast, whatever it is you wanna do. Um, some people really focus a lot on social media. The list is endless of how you can be found online. But the, the main point is that you need to be able to be found online and usually a website and social media are the things to do that.

[00:14:45] Mel: The more you do online, the easier it will be to find you. So take some time to think about this part of your business. What do you feel comfortable doing yourself? And if you don't feel comfortable doing this yourself, that's okay. Good business advice is anything that you don't know how to do, you should outsource.

[00:15:01] Mel: You shouldn't just not do it because you don't know how to do it. Invest some money in outsourcing those things so you can keep propelling yourself forward. Okay, you've got to invest your time and money into this journey if it's going to work. So the idea of this online setting up is so that you can be found online.

[00:15:18] Mel: Another really helpful way of working out where you should put your digital presence is. Start searching for your services as if you were your woman, the woman who you want to find your service. So if you're setting yourself up as a home birth midwife, you want to Google, so if I was to do that, home birth midwife Blue Mountains, because that's where I am.

[00:15:41] Mel: So I'd be wanting women who live in the Blue Mountains to be seeking out a home birth midwife. And then you, so you start Googling that. And whatever comes up on the top of that Google page, that's where you know you need to focus your efforts. So if I can see, for example, that home birth, New South Wales, for example, has a really great advertising service for midwives in New South Wales.

[00:16:03] Mel: And I can see that all the other private midwives have got their little. blurb on that website. You know that that's where women find private midwives, especially if it's coming up at the top of your Google search. So you want to get yourself into any advertising service that really comes up at the top of that Google search.

[00:16:21] Mel: Eventually when you have a website and an online presence and people start googling your name specifically, then you will come up the top. But if you're new, you need to be found in places where women are already looking. So do a bit of market research here. Look at what already comes up and get yourself advertised on those pages at the very least so that you'll be considered along with all of the other private midwives in your area and women can find you.

[00:16:49] Mel: And so once you can be found, you've got to start. Focusing and building your brand and authority in the space. So again, this is our dreaming phase of who we want to be in our private practice and what we want to offer. So you've got to define the type of service that you're going to give. And that will start to build what kind of brand you have.

[00:17:11] Mel: And some private midwives will only provide antenatal postnatal care. Some will only provide postnatal care. Some offer themselves to other midwives as second midwives. And so this starts to build your product. What you're going to be offering. So start dreaming about what your ideal private practice scenario is.

[00:17:32] Mel: And also start, you know, when you're thinking about brand. Branding is what you want. It sort of represents you and gives people a chance to understand who you are and what your service is. So your brand is what you become known for or what you want to be known for. It's kind of your representation or your reputation, what you will be known for.

[00:17:57] Mel: And so spend time really curating and coming up with the brand of your business. Make sure it doesn't land too far from who you already are in your current skill set. Capitalize on what you already know and then you can start to build your brand around that. You don't want to create something completely fake and false, okay?

[00:18:17] Mel: People will see through that. But don't apply limitations to your ideas. Sit down, brainstorm, make a dream board. What do they call it? A dream board, whatever that, you know, when you're designing a house and you kind of mood board. You want to So, do that for your business. Start dreaming and branding and getting online.

[00:18:38] Mel: Now, the third thing that you'll need to start doing when you're getting into business is just find a great accountant. Okay, depending on how much money you already make or how much you intend to make. It's depending on how much involvement your accountant's going to have, but you do need an accountant.

[00:18:55] Mel: Spend this time now before you might actually need one, searching around, ask people, who do you use, do a bit of a Google, see who's in the area. You know, we started, I started with my accountant years and years and years ago, and as business grew, he was able to give me advice on how to upscale. And then also now, even as business continues to upscale, I'm finding new and different people to guide me at different stages of my business.

[00:19:19] Mel: But at the very least, you'll need an accountant as you get started in your business to give you some guidance and advice on how to set yourself up for, um, things like GST and do your bars and tax at the end of the year and how to keep track of your accounting records. Okay. So. Again, this is about hiring somebody.

[00:19:38] Mel: It shouldn't cost you too much when you're just getting started. The costs start to get bigger as business gets bigger. Okay, this is just the tip of the iceberg. These three steps, although I know I just rattled them off, there's a lot that you could be doing right now, even before you're ready to go into business.

[00:19:53] Mel: Even if business is years ahead, this is, you can still be doing this. ABNs, business names, online presence, finding an accountant, all these things are the basic ground level of private practice. And again, you've got the three things to work on in the first video if you're not completely through that part of your journey.

[00:20:12] Mel: Now, you won't feel ready or prepared for this kind of work until you're actually doing it. And even, you know, if those feelings of not being sure will always creep in, you know, I was recording these very videos, just feeling a bit nervous and unsure about them, but you know, you got to do some things, you just got to do it scared.

[00:20:31] Mel: You can't let your emotions control your actions in this area. Do it scared, or if you don't do it scared, you just won't do it at all. If you let the fear control you. Let the fear take over. So whoever enters into a new thing fully confident, prepared, you know, none of us do that. When I was 24 and walking into home births as a private midwife with no experience, I mean if I'd let my fear stop me then, I wouldn't be here where I am now.

[00:21:01] Mel: I wouldn't be contributing what I am now. So we just got to do it scared. Hey, that's Bernie calling. Great Birth Rebellion Bernie. I'll call it back in a minute. So, there's a reason you're watching this video. It's either because you are absolutely ready to launch yourself into private practice and start working in the way you've always wanted to, in a way that feels right.

[00:21:25] Mel: Or if you're just interested in seeing what might be involved, that's great too. But you know, you've made it this far through this video and you've made it here. So I know you are seriously considering your options. And I just want to remind you that there has never been a better time to launch into private practice midwifery here in Australia.

[00:21:44] Mel: Australia desperately needs more private midwives. I could fill my caseload four times over. All right. So in the coming days, I'll be sharing more information and I have one top, absolute essential one thing that you cannot do without if you want to start working in private practice. It's the one thing that I guarantee if you do not have, you will fail.

[00:22:09] Mel: If you don't have this one... Right thing you can say goodbye to your plans for being a privately practicing midwife I know that sounds very dire, but I am serious about this. It's one thing I want to talk to you I'm going to talk to you about it later. I've just given you a teaser It's honestly this one thing is the key to your success or not, and I'll be sharing all of that shortly But for now keep watch on your email because tomorrow we'll midwives who only a few years ago were in the same spot as you are in the Same journey as you're thinking about going on.

[00:22:44] Mel: And these midwives were considering leaving midwifery or were feeling frustrated by the system. But they took action and they're now private midwives making a living, making it work, showing up and successfully building their businesses. I'm so excited to show you and prove to you that this is not a might happen option.

[00:23:04] Mel: This is not like, Oh, I hope I can get into private practice. This is something that could absolutely and totally happen for you if you follow the path to private practice. Now we're going to stop thinking about this as an impossible pipe dream or something that maybe you could do later. Start talking about it.

[00:23:22] Mel: Start thinking about it now and this could happen for you. So we'll be doing more on that tomorrow and I will see you then.