Podcast Episode 98 - Building a stable doula business
Interview with Sami Stewart
I chat with Newborn Mothers graduate, Sami Stewart, from The Hold. Together we discuss the lessons Sami learned in her first year of business as a preconception, pregnancy, loss & postpartum doula. At the core of this conversation, we explore how boundaries and pricing are key to building a stable and secure doula business.
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About Sami
Sami Stewart (she/her/hers) is a mother, doula, public health professional, LGBTQ community member, advocate, change-maker, and activist. Her practice is evidence-based, intuition-driven, and community-centered. Sami believes in community-led and owned responses to social, emotional, economic, and health-based inequities. Her work in public health, including her Master of Science in Medicine degree, focuses on blood-borne viruses and sexual health. Sami is also a Full Spectrum Doula, with a particular passion for Postpartum, working in an online and in-home capacity, where she supports all mothers, birthing people, and family structures. Her work as a Doula focuses on slow, purposeful, parent-driven support - holding the new mother and parent in the way they deserve to be held.
We explore the following questions:
What's been going on in your first year of business? What are the learnings and changes you made?
As a solo business owner, how do you check in with how your business is going and what might need to change?
What have your learnings been around boundaries?
How have your boundaries shaped the packages you offer?
How have you said no to people and had that tricky conversation?
What have you learned about pricing? Particularly in an unpredictable year in the economy.
Additional resources we spoke about:
https://www.theholddoulaco.com/
Podcast Episode 85 - Public health meets postpartum in-home care with Sami Stewart - https://www.newbornmothers.com/blog/public-health-meets-postpartum-in-home-care
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello and welcome to Newborn Mothers Podcast. I'm chatting again with Sami Stewart from The Hold, and we last had Sami on the podcast in episode 85. Sami, at that time, I think you were even pre-launch in your business, but doing really well. You already had a few clients lined up. You were pretty active. You had a good website. You had some social set up. So we wanted to do a check-in a year into your business to see how things have all landed, so how are you?
Sami Stewart:
I'm so good, Julia. Thank you so much for the chance to come and talk to you. I think it's really important, as someone who's working for themselves, what you would have maybe in a full-time job, at end of year check-in. How have things gone, what's worked well, what would you change? So I'm really grateful for the opportunity to chat and hopefully share some, wisdom might be a strong word, but yeah, share some experiences from a year of running my beautiful little business as a postpartum professional.
Julia Jones:
It does feel like hard-earned wisdom, doesn't it? That first year of running a business, it's a lot.
Sami Stewart:
To answer your question, how am I? I am good. My plate is full. I feel like I am on the other side of a bit of a tricky season of life with just the bigness of this work, the bigness of my family, having another job and raising a toddler, but as the year is coming to an end, I'm feeling refreshed and renewed, and very, very grateful, I would say.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, that's good. I'm glad to hear it, because it is definitely a bit of a rollercoaster running your own business, and I know that ride well. I don't think there's a business owner alive who hasn't at some point gone, "Ah. This is too much. I'm just going to give it up." But also the rewards are great as well, and the learning and the personal development is huge too, so I am excited to hear some of that.
What's been going on in your first year of business? What are the learnings and changes you made?
So do you want to give us a little bit of an update, maybe what's been going on in the last year, and then we can dive into a bit more of the actual learnings and changes you made.
Sami Stewart:
So between when I finished your wonderful course and when I launched my business, I think there was about four or five months of backend stuff, setting up my website, setting up my Instagram page, figuring out my packages, all the very important pieces that can often have a bit of crisis of confidence attached to them, but move through that, launched my business, and I still haven't been able to quite pinpoint it, whether I just put myself out there at the right time, whether there was just a real need in Brisbane, again, at the right time, whether it was just dumb luck or whether I had offerings that people really wanted and were really attracted to. I can't quite tell you what, but there was a good swell of energy when I launched my business here in Brisbane in Queensland.
I managed to get my first maybe three or four clients within the first couple of weeks of putting myself out there. From there, the energy continued to pick up. I booked out the rest of my year, my 2023 year, probably about four months, I would say, five months into running my business. I frame that very carefully, because I have a part-time job, so I work three days a week in public health. I do my work as a doula one day a week. So what kind of constitutes me being fully booked would be very different to someone who was doing this work full-time. I don't think if I did this work five days a week, I highly doubt I would be fully booked, but I was able to get myself fully booked very quickly, which was a real blessing, and certainly wasn't something I expected, and it was a really delightful surprise.
I spent this year figuring it all out, learning all the things, learning where my strengths lie, learning where I think I would do things a little bit differently, a few tweaks to pricing, packages, my schedule. Learning when to say no, that's been a really big part of the journey, is knowing when I'm not the right provider for someone, when I don't have capacity. Leaning into my referral networks, leaning into my doula community, my doula sisters and siblings in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. It's been super-duper special and super-duper necessary, and just figuring out how you show up for people in these big moments of their lives, whilst not losing sight of what you need, and the resilience, strength, support, and boundaries you need to be able to do this work in a way that feels really aligned and authentic. That's how my year's been, I'd say.
Julia Jones:
Just a little thing.
Sami Stewart:
Yeah.
Julia Jones:
I think a lot of what you talk about is really, probably not just the first year of running a business lessons, but really any stage of business lessons, is that learning boundaries and learning not to burn out, which probably is just boundaries and pricing, isn't it? I mean, ultimately, that's probably what it comes down to. It's why I talk about boundaries and pricing all the time, because burnout in caring professions is so high, and so many good people end up shifting to other industries because of that.
So it's so important that we know that upfront, and that we don't think that pricing and boundaries are not greedy, selfish discussions. These are essential and life giving if you plan to be here for a while.
So let's dive into that, because I think the other thing I want to mention is you often learn so much from just taking action and getting clients. So many people, at the start of their business, they're like, "I want to know everything before I get the client." I'm like, "You cannot. There's no way." You have to get the client. You learn, you change. You adjust your boundaries. You adjust your contract. You change your pricing, and then you get another client and you do it all again forever, and ever, and ever. So I love that you did that. You just dived into having all of these clients, even though you're kind of still like, "I'm still learning."
Sami Stewart:
Much like parenting, right? It's always in flux, it's always in flux. There is no end point, unless you decide to step into a new career. It is always flowing, adjusting, and you're resetting and resettling into the present moment. So it's been a good lesson, especially for someone who potentially identifies as a bit of a perfectionist, to just be like, "It's okay. It's okay to need to change, adapt, reevaluate, and carve out the time in my week to have the space to reevaluate," because it's really hard to do it on the run when you are chock-a-block with clients, and you end up spending Saturdays and Sundays seeing clients and actually having that be the time to do those big picture thinking, brainstorming sessions. Yeah, it doesn't work.
As a solo business owner, how do you check in with how your business is going and what might need to change?
Julia Jones:
So let's jump into that first, because it is one of the hardest things about being a solo business owner, is you don't have any kind of check-ins with a boss or anyone who says, "How's it going?" or "What might need to change?" How do you keep yourself accountable to that?
Sami Stewart:
Great question. I was probably a few months into starting my business, and again, just like divine timing, Naomi Chrisoulakis has just started her mentoring program, so first run of it, and it just came at that exact time that I needed an ear, someone to talk to. So her support was about three months. Three months of mentoring support was just so useful to have someone to talk to and brainstorm, and whenever I talked to new and emerging doulas and postpartum professionals, I just always angle there’s support out there, find your person, find someone to talk to.
In terms of the accountability stuff, on an emotional level, I was really lucky that my personal counselor, who I've been seeing since preconception, she just so happens to be an ex-doula herself, and she sees doulas in a supervision capacity as part of her work. So this amazing woman, who I've linked in with, so she could help me be there as my support through my preconception, conception, pregnancy, and postpartum, she is now there for me in a professional capacity as well. So having her there to debrief with is really important, and I'll always say it's great to have doula friends, it's great to have postpartum professional friends, but for real debriefing, pay a professional and have the funds in your work account to be able to have that professional support. I found it incredibly valuable.
In terms of keeping myself accountable, I think it's just setting small and realistic goals, and knowing that I get to decide when they happen, and if I put something in the calendar for a month and it doesn't happen, that's totally okay.
Again, much like parenting, you need to be flexible. You need to flex. I had things on my list for seven or eight months at a time, a course I wanted to do, an offering I wanted to launch, and I'd say I'm probably maybe just a quarter of the way through that list, and that's okay. It'll always be there. There will always be time, but a big lesson for me has been carving out space in my schedule and in my week for that thinking and that time to kind of reflect and hold myself accountable, because if you're just rushing from one client to another, it's kind of up to you, really, to make that space available.
Julia Jones:
It's one of the hardest shifts to being a business owner, isn't it? That you're the boss as well as the employee. So you have to be good to yourself. What would you want from a boss, or how would you, as a boss, treat someone else? We often don't do that for ourselves. Often we won't pay ourselves super, we don't give ourselves enough holidays, or we work ourselves too hard, and you think, "What a horrible boss. I wouldn't do that to anyone else, so why would I do that to myself?"
Sami Stewart:
You're the boss. You've got to look in the mirror. Again, what you were saying about the self-development aspect of this work, it's such a blessing, even when it's really confronting. It's like, you are the one making the call. You are the one who deals with the outcomes and the consequences, good, bad, everything in between. There's many opportunities to be doing that in a work and reflecting on your values and your practice amongst actually doing the work, which is confronting, but I'm incredibly grateful for it.
What have your learnings been around boundaries?
Julia Jones:
So let's look at what some of those learnings are. I know some of them were around boundaries.
Sami Stewart:
Big time. I think, in connecting with clients at the start of their pregnancy, I learned a really important lesson around expectation of communication throughout their pregnancy if I'm going to support them in postpartum, and it's something I hadn't considered in my pricing. It's something I hadn't considered in my framing. My usual base-level package would be meeting with someone for a few hours in pregnancy, and then starting, supporting them in postpartum.
If you have a client who wants lots of conversation and lots of support throughout the pregnancy, of course, the connection and bonding is such an important part of the work, but I never considered being really upfront around my framing of, "Great. This is going to be a journey together. I look forward to checking in every couple of months in the lead up to your third trimester maybe, and then potentially that's when we'll start having more rigorous conversation, but of course, reach out at any time."
It's been a big lesson that sometimes people want to talk all the time, and connect and send messages all the time throughout their pregnancy, which is fab, but if you're not building it into your pricing, that's when it can start to feel unequal or uneven. It was a good point of reflection to be like, "I need to be clear, and I also need to be comfortable to say, 'Hey, I'm going to need to take a pause here. Come back to you at the end of your pregnancy.'"
Julia Jones:
Yeah. It's so variable with each client. Because some of them might have a birth doula, who they're doing all of that with anyway, and some of them don't, and they're leaning on you a lot. Do you have two separate packages, like including more pregnancy support or not, or do you just have the same boundaries for everyone?
How have your boundaries shaped the packages you offer?
Sami Stewart:
Yeah. I've got pregnancy sessions that can be added onto postpartum support, and it was a big lesson that I wasn't clear enough in my framing, around what our relationship looks like in pregnancy, so there was certainly opportunities where I could have said, "Hey, I feel like some pregnancy sessions are what you are after. Can we sit and have a conversation around what that looks like?" Which took me, goodness, probably took me about eight months before I was really ready to have a conversation with a client around my boundaries being pushed a little. Of course, it was totally fine. It was a completely comfortable conversation. It was a very reasonable person, but it was just all the stories I told myself along the way of like, "Oh, gosh. Imagine if you get a bad review. Imagine if she feels hurt. Imagine if she feels like you've let her down," but of course those stories are just stories. They weren't the reality.
Julia Jones:
I went on a retreat last year with, actually, the person who is now my accountant, and I've also recently transitioned to a company, so I'm a director rather than a sole trader. I kept emailing my accountant all these questions just recently, and she's like, "Hey, Julia. I think it's time for you to book in a chat with me, and it's a paid chat." Then, I was like, "Oh, yeah. Okay," and we did that, and it was great. I have so much more clarity, and she's kept her boundaries.
Then, we were having this discussion about, why is it that when you're in a caring industry, you feel like you can't do that? When she's selling accounting services, there's no question that that is her profession, that is her billable time, and I wouldn't expect that I could just text or email her or call her at any time of day or night as many times as I want to. Of course not, so why, when we're in a caring profession, do we think that's any different? It's a really difficult story to unpack though when it's you trying to find the courage to open that conversation.
Sami Stewart:
It's such a big learning for me as well, is that those conversations are what are good for me as a provider, and they're really good for the client, especially if you're talking about boundaries that they want to set in their postpartum around family and friends. It can be that really helpful reframing, I guess, of the relationship where it's like, "I am friendly, but I'm not your friend. I'm here as a professional," and conversations like that can just be that gentle reminder that this is a working relationship with beautiful threads of friendship and emotion weaved through it, but it's a professional relationship that will end at a point in time.
I truly believe that a good doula makes themselves redundant by spending that time developing community and wrapping that client in support if that's something that they're after, so that you can end your time very clearly, which is also something I'm still learning how to do, because I also would just want to stay in contact with people. I love watching the kids grow. I've got clients who are maybe four or five weeks away from their bubbas being one. You can still stay in contact in a gentle way, but that kind of constant check-in, it's just not going to work when you've got other clients that you need to go and be with.
Julia Jones:
Absolutely, and the joy of working locally is you will keep bumping into people. I bumped into a little girl who was a baby when I was looking after her family. She is now probably like nine, and I bumped into the family, just at a local community event, and it was just so lovely to catch up and see how they're going, but also I feel no obligation to keep checking in on them. It's a different relationship now. So you've had to say no to a few people as well. That must've been another tricky conversation to have.
How have you said no to people and had that tricky conversation?
Sami Stewart:
Especially the last couple of months, because my books are closed until June 2024, so I've got all my clients sorted from end of 2023 until mid-June. In my first few months of doing this work, I was very, very bad at saying no, kind of that middle ground between, "These women, these people are so amazing. I really want to be there for them," and "I'm starting my business. Who am I to turn down people? Even if I only have one day a week, I can do this work. Just say yes. Just say yes. You'll work it out." Of course, that led to, what I'm now reflecting as pretty big burnout, towards the middle of the year when I had four or five clients at once, all with their big stories and their big lives. Now that I've gone through that, I feel really confident in my no.
It's been a great opportunity to connect in with all of the other Brisbane providers, and actually use that as a really great tool to connect. I would say I am a gold star referrer, because I refer on way more clients than I take on. So it's great to feel like I'm serving my doula community by being able to connect people, and also doing that important inner work of saying, "I hear that you are looking for postpartum support. I'm booked. My books are closed, and I'd love to connect you in with providers who are going to be the right fit for you."
What I also learned along that journey is, for me, at least with my personality, when I have a strong emotional connection, it's a little bit harder for me to be rational around the kind of more business logistics side of things. So moving forward, questions like, "Where do you live? What days of the week do you think you'll want care? What are your dietaries?" for example. They’re now questions that I ask before I start talking to someone because I'll meet someone on Zoom or for a coffee, and just be like, "Oh. It's the perfect fit. I can't wait to take care of you." "You live 45 minutes away, and you have an organic dairy-free, gluten-free diet, and you can only take a visit on a Friday, and that's the one day of the week where I'm a mum, and I don't want to budge on that?"
There's been a lot of lessons. Sometimes you have got to have the bones of the conversation before you move to the heart of a conversation, which makes it much easier to say, "Oh. You live 25Ks away. I'm not going to be able to service you. Here are the providers in your area who have availability and are ready to be there for you."
Julia Jones:
Which is kinder to the client as well, because if you do have that heart connection, and then you say "Oh, no. Sorry. You live too far away," that's sad for them too. You're much better off connecting with other people first.
Sami Stewart:
Yeah, and just don't assume that everyone's going to read your website in great detail, because of course, all that information is there, but if people find you on Instagram, for example, they're going to reach out before they read the detail. So being clear in some of more the points that you can't really budge on before you connect, I found important.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, yeah. It's exactly the same in my business too. I mean, that doesn't really change, but we have some programs where you have to apply, because even though it says everything on the website, we find so many people try to enroll, and we're just like, "Oh. This is the wrong program for you. You're not in the right place." So they have to actually fill in an application form, and then we decide, "Okay, yeah. This is right," or "No. We think you should..." Same, we've built up quite a good referral network to be able to say, "Look, there's these other people who can help you better."
Sami Stewart:
There's nothing like it. I love getting messages when I've connected a client with another doula, and I get a message four or five months down the track being like, "Oh. She was the perfect fit. We loved having her. Her food was so good," it feels amazing. A ‘no’ is actually a really kind thing to do for many reasons.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. Everyone involved. It's kind for you. It's kind for the client, and it's kind for the other doula who gets the referral. So it's just win, win, win.
What have you learned about pricing? Particularly in an unpredictable year in the economy.
So tell us a little bit about what you've learned about pricing. It's been a really, particularly strange and unpredictable year in terms of the economy, a very difficult year to start a business. I know I started my business during the global economic crisis many years ago. That would've been like 2011, was it? Same, it was just like I started my business, and then the rug was pulled out from under me, and I was just like, "Oh. What have I done?"
Sami Stewart:
Now what? Yeah.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, so I imagine it's been a similar year for you.
Sami Stewart:
Yeah. It's been a really interesting year, and I can almost kind of map when people contact me with the kind of way that the economy flows. On a personal level, keeping my part-time job is a real benefit for me. As I'm talking to you now, I've got my list of goals for the year written up on the wall, and one of my goals was to do this work as my sole source of income. Now, with a year under my belt, I feel really comfortable with doing this work one day a week and having my other job three days a week. I know every practitioner, every professional is going to have a different take, but for me, annual leave, sick leave with a toddler in daycare, having that little bit of framing and structure to my week has worked really well.
Pricing, very interesting thing I did not consider. I mean, who can predict a cost of living prices? I'm sure very intelligent futurists and economists can do it, but certainly not I. It's a very interesting thing to be starting payment plans, if you're including food, somewhere nine to ten months ahead of when you are going to be purchasing the food and cooking it. It was a big lesson to me, that the prices I set in December 2022 or January 2023, nine months down the track, to be cooking that food, the small profit margin that I could possibly make, being one doula cooking for one family a week, which I think is tough anyway, I think it's when you kind of play into the economies of scale where you could make some money off food.
What I'd budgeted for, I don't know, a few packets of herbs, some good quality meat, organic produce, some good pantry stock items. I was off by about 30 to 40%, and it was a bit of a wake-up call, maybe about a month or so ago now, when I started cooking for a client. I was like, "Oh, goodness. I'm off by a bit. Am I going to talk to the client about it and ask for more money? Am I going to reduce my package? Am I just going to wear it?" I had to spend a lot of time sitting with it and trying to figure out what I felt comfortable with. I ended up landing on reducing the food package, which again, it was a story, a big story I told myself about letting them down. Food had been the way that this client and I had deeply, deeply connected. She let me into her culture. I was so excited to cook for her, and thought it was going to be potentially a tough conversation, but of course, everyone's in the same boat.
If they aren't in the same boat, chances are they aren't going to be clients that I work with or connect with, just because most of my clients are in a similar financial situation to me, which helps, I think. It's not necessary, but it really helps. Of course, the conversation was totally fine. She said, "I completely understand. We can give you more money if you want, or you can reduce the food. The choice is yours." So I don't quite know what the answer is, but I think for other doulas and other postpartum professionals, if you're doing long-term payment plans for services and food that you're potentially not delivering on for nine to ten months, it could be good thinking about that middle ground between flexibility and wanting to give people long payment plans if that's what they need for their family, and making sure you're setting prices that you can comfortably deliver within that timeframe.
Because that was a big learning. And the drip feeding of payment plans; all but one of my clients has been on a payment plan. I've only had one client that's paid upfront. Everyone else has done either fortnightly or monthly installments, which works really beautifully for me and my own budgeting, but when you need to do a big bulk order of food or something, and you don't have the funds yet for the work you're about to do, yeah, it can just be a bit of a dance, I guess, between what you're buying, money coming in and how you pay yourself, pay for utilities, or pay for the family groceries, whatever you do with the money that the business makes.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. There's just so much to learn, isn't there, when you become a business owner, about one of my kind of early lessons was someone asked for a refund for a very good reason. She actually had her house burned down. So I was like, "Obviously, I'm not going to argue about this," but again, so often when you get that first refund, like so many other doulas, I'd already spent the money, so I was like, "Oh. How do you actually do this?"
Then, from that day on, I always keep the money aside until I've delivered the work, because you just never know when something like that's going to happen. I've had a few people pull out of contracts for also really good reasons, like baby and that kind of thing. It's not something that you can predict, but you definitely want to be generous when people are going through hard times, and you don't want to say, "No." If you do have a refund policy, then you need to honor it as well. So you need to keep that money aside.
Then there's all those things too, like making sure that you're putting aside money for your own taxes, superannuation, and stuff that your employer usually does, but now you are the employer, as well as the employee.
Sami Stewart:
Get a great tax agent. Get a great accountant. It is money I do not regret investing for a single second, is having those people on board, quite early in the game, to help frame. It's been a bit of a journey to feel confident and comfortable running my own finances. I would look at even a couple of hundred dollars in my account, and just be like, "Ah," terrified, terrified of what would happen with it. So it's been a journey to feel very comfortable, very confident, and have that buffer.
Again, I haven't quite got the answer for it, but taking some time to reflect on how I allow flexibility, a long amount of time for people to pay things off in installments, if that's what they need, and set myself up really well for being able to deliver them a service that I feel really confident in, really comfortable in, and is viable for me and my family and paying for my son's daycare, all the things.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, and I think just releasing any sort of shame and guilt around the mistakes you make too, because it's really inevitable that you will make these mistakes as you're learning. I've been in business for a long time now, and I'm happy to say I pay myself great super, great holidays. I've got employees. I get good conditions. I always have all my taxes put aside. That was not me in year one. It's okay that that takes time to have that kind of stability and security, and that's not something that anyone would ever expect you to know in the first year or even three, or even five, to be honest. I'd say really it takes probably three to five years to really get the hang of running a business and to be able to really have consistent profit, reliable income, and that sort of thing, so I love that you're talking so openly about this.
Sami Stewart:
Framing for me as well, thinking that three to five years, things might start to feel a little bit more comfortable.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, and then knowing that you're in it for the long haul as well, because I think that's when you can invest those few years, because you know that in the long run, now my business pays my home. I also have employees, and it pays for their rent, bills, and mortgages as well, so that's a really good feeling, but it's taken me a long time to get here. So those early years, I always used to think it's going to university. You'd spend tens of thousands of dollars, and years and years of time. So treat the first three years of your business like that, and I don't think anyone should go into debt necessarily. It's more that, if you are learning and you haven't got the hang of it yet, you just treat it like that, if I was doing any other job, I'd probably go to uni for three years first, and instead, this is how I'm learning how to do it.
Sami Stewart:
That's great framing. Totally, totally agree. Again, for me, personally, that's great to sit with it. A couple of years down the track, things will feel even more secure and even more solid with my finances. I remember, it's probably maybe about four months into starting my business, where I was able to make a $20 contribution to our household utilities, and it actually felt amazing. It felt so good. At the time, it felt like this sweet, little business that I just poured my heart into, and even just $20 a week, being like, "I am paying to keep the internet on, to keep the lights on, to pay for our gas," it just felt really, really good. That's certainly not something I was expecting. Even when I get my big shipment from Honest to Goodness with all my food for clients, like when that arrives at my doorstep, it actually feels really good being like, "This is money that I earn, and this is important money from my clients, and here, I can do the work. I can do the work." Yeah, it's a good feeling.
Julia Jones:
Oh. It gives me goosebumps. I love it. It's so, so great to hear these reflections, and I think it's really useful for people to hear as well, because there are so many other people out there, probably looking at your business and people like you, going, "Oh. Sami's got it all sorted. It's easy for her."
Sami Stewart:
It's a work in progress, always, and I talk to a lot of emerging doulas and a lot of new postpartum professionals on Instagram. It's kind of great to be excited about what's possible, but also not be afraid about having the more important or the real conversations around what it actually looks like. Because much like postpartum, it's beautiful, full of love and excitement, and there can be real challenges that need to be contended with, some of which you can plan for beforehand, and other things you need to work through in the moment and figure out how you're going to step up for your clients, how you're going to step up for yourself. Yeah, it's big, it's beautiful, and wrapped up in self-development, which I'm always grateful for.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, definitely. I feel like I'm definitely a better person, because I've had to face all of those fears that I've had and the stories that I've had. I often have this kind of reflection that women use money as a bit of a shield for not having to deal with self-esteem, confidence, sense of value, and self-worth, will just say, "Oh. Money's greedy and dirty," and then that way we never have to really deal with a bigger story that is what it's really about, but dealing with the money means that you have to unpack all of that, and that's such a gift.
Sami Stewart:
Yeah. We live in the era of the Barbie movie, Beyonce, and Taylor Swift. There are so many amazing business-minded women. Women are on top. It's a great time to address those stories before you step into running your own business and, certainly throughout the process, think about those stories. Where do they belong? Whose voice is it? Yeah, how do you want to show up for yourself, moving forward? Big, important, very powerful conversations.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, and really global conversations, world-changing conversations. So it's not just about me and you, is it? It's about how women have lived and been treated for generations. What an amazing conversation. Thank you so much, Sami. People can find you at www.theholddoulaco.com. You're the same, @theholddoulaco, on socials. Is there anything else you want to wrap up with?
Sami Stewart:
Just a thanks. Thanks for starting the journey. This all started on my phone when I was breastfeeding my bub, when I found your course, so I totally stand on the shoulders of people like you, Naomi, and all the other do that I've been able to connect with. Thank you for showing up and creating space for conversations like this in the course and beyond, because it really matters. As a sole trader, I felt supported and held by a bigger community. Endless gratitude. Thank you.
Julia Jones:
Oh. I'm so glad to hear that, Sami. Thank you so much, and thank you for doing your beautiful work in the world, and we'll share all your links in the show notes. We'll see you next time.
