when it feels like people are doing us a favor by hiring us

Written by Meg Kant

when it feels like people are doing us a favor by hiring us

When I first started as a birth worker, one of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome was getting comfortable talking about and asking for payment. It felt vulnerable to put myself out there, offer my services and hope that people would find them valuable enough to pay me. This is true for a lot of people who do heart-centered work.  Many think of money as an uncomfortable step of the process. 

However, being paid for our services is integral to continuing the work we do. It is how we can continue supporting ourselves and our families as well as preventing burnout. If we are not charging a living wage we would have to take on more clients resulting in more work. By doing this we can become drained more quickly, we want to prevent this as much as possible.

I know that requesting payment causes a significant amount of stress for SO many birth workers. In every single cohort of our Maternal Support Practitioner training someone says, “I HATE TALKING ABOUT MONEY, it makes me so uncomfortable.”  

So as someone who used to stress about talking about money at consultations, I thought it would be helpful to share the things that helped me in my consultations, especially related to payment.

Try your best to remember people are not doing you a favor by hiring you, you are providing a valuable service. 

I shared this insight a couple of weeks ago in our Birth Worker Business course and it must have struck a cord because I have received MANY emails from students saying that this is exactly how they feel when they are doing their consultation. 

They feel like they are trying to convince their clients (and themselves) that their services are worth the financial investment and I totally get it. It feels so uncomfortable to put oneself out there and be vulnerable; to put one’s offerings out into world.  So it can feel safer to buffer the investment amount, so as to add a bit of cushion in the event that someone declines to work with us.

Your service are an exciting purchase for them

The idea of having to “sell” ourselves can feel terrible. Nobody likes the feeling of being “sold,” to let alone doing the selling. So rather than think about things from the perspective of a person offering services, let’s flip it and think about the experience of the person buying. 

Think about the feeling after buying something online and waiting for it to arrive.  There is the excitement of checking email to see if there are updates and watching the door or going to the mailbox to see if it’s arrived.  As a “buyer” we feel happy that something we want is coming to us and it is a wonderful feeling. 

That is how our clients feel about our services.

Tips for the consultation

Below are my top 3 tips for feeling at east and comfortable at consultations. I do want to note that not everything is going to work for everyone, feel free to pivot and experiment to find out what works best for you.

1. Listen to a pump up anthem on the way to a consultation appointment.  I personally like Get Your Freak On by Missy Elliott) 
2. Go into the consultation with the belief that the individual is already a client so there is no worry about any selling. Simply focus on problem solving and how to support them (which you are incredible at).
3. Listen to the client 80% of the time, and only talk 20% of the time. A consultation is not about selling yourself or your services, it is all about understanding the needs of the clients and providing them with support to solve their problems. They don’t need to know every credential, number of births, etc. They want to be understood, to have their needs met, to be cared about.

The bebo mia team has created an awesome freebie about elevating your consultations, which you can find here if you want even more information, it is about 7 pages long!

Do you stress out about asking for payment at consultations? Is money your least favourite topic at a consult?  Feel free to share in the comments.

when it feels like people are doing us a favor by hiring us

Xoxo,