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The smart way to create a compassionate and professional lactation private practice, hosted by private practice IBCLCs Annie Frisbie and Leah Jolly.
Leah Jolly is a private practice IBCLC with Bay Area Breastfeeding in Houston, Texas.
Annie Frisbie is a private practice IBCLC serving Queens and Brooklyn in New York City and the creator of the Lactation Consultant Private Practice Toolkit.
Tune in each week to learn all the ins and outs of running a successful private practice lactation business!
Connect with Leah and Annie:
On Instagram: @lactationbusinesscoaching
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lactationbusinesscoaching
On YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv3-4pMgjlzbXD9KWFCIV3-1LipsTbgsj
Annie: Hey there Leah.
Leah: Hey Annie, how are you?
Annie: I am great. And how are you doing?
Leah: Doing well. Looking forward to this episode because I think kind of makes us all quake in our boots a little bit.
Annie: I know that I'm looking forward to it because it is so scary.
Leah: It is so scary, but today we are talking about how to set your fees so that they're fair and compassionate, and I would say also show your value and worth. So I think this is a pretty heated topic for a lot of people because it's really hard to say, okay this is the number that I am worth because we're trying to just reach out there and help.
Annie: Yeah, I mean we're talking about money and money is scary to talk about, and so we're going to take it head on and hopefully get you guys some good ideas based on what we've experienced and seen and get you there. Before we talk about our fees, Leah, I know you've got a marketing motivation for us.
Leah: Yes. This week I want to encourage or kind of talk about reaching out to the local hospitals. In the previous episode we talked about trying to get yourself in front of those that are also working with your ideal clients. We talked about reaching out and connecting with doulas in the birth community, and I think another side of that is really reaching out to the different hospitals and birth centers in your area because so many of them have resource pages and you definitely want to have your name on those. Usually these are produced through either the education department or if they have on-staff lactation consultants, the lactation consultants are pulling these resources together and creating either a handout or some way to present that to the patients. And so first connecting with the hospital-based LCs and then finding out how you can get your name on that resource list, I think is a really powerful way to build your referral base and get more clients.
Annie: I think that's super smart and being proactive about it means they're not going to find some random free Gmail address off the internet from who knows where. I have one hospital that I've actually contacted them and asked them, can we please just change my email address? They have but I don't know how they even got my free Gmail address, but that's where I get these client responses too. But reaching out and making sure they have your correct contact information and talking to them about what they're seeing and what they think that their clients, their patients need out here in the community once they're home can be a great conversation to have. I love it. I love it. Anything that is about connecting across disciplines and really leaning into our role as allied health professionals who are working with other people. So I think it's great. Those hospital lactation consultants just say you guys are amazing. I know you see things that would make my hair turn.
Leah: Yes. And they're on the front lines front lines. They are on the front lines.
Annie: I know, and isn't it great when you see a client at home and they tell you how helpful the hospital lactation consultant was and it just gives you that warm feeling.
Leah: Absolutely. Absolutely. And one more point about this before we move on to our juicy topic for the day is to not forget to continually make contact. Like you were saying, make sure they have their right contact information and maybe even every six months or yearly, make it a note in your calendar that you're going to touch base with them. So you keep in the forefront of their minds. You make sure you're still on their resource list. I mean that happened to me, I didn't know they updated their resource list and I got left off and had I not called back and said, Hey, it wasn't intentional. Some people we took off and I was like, Whoa, I definitely still want to be on your list. I want to make contact with you and everything, and that really is important that we do that continual contact, not just one time and done but have it scheduled and have a plan to make repeated contacts with them.
Annie: That's great. And definitely going to pay off for sure. So speaking of things paying off, why is it so scary to talk about setting your fees?
Leah: I really think it comes down to... I mean we're kind of putting out into the world, this is what I think I'm worth, and when it seems you're in a helper role, I mean I think many of us love our jobs so much that we would help every single mom and hardly want to ask for pay because we just want to be helper, helper, helper, but to run a business, you got to have money and to have a family and live anywhere. It's going to take some money and it's hard to put it out there into the world, like I'm worth X amount of dollars. My skills, my knowledge, what I can provide to you is worth this much and that can be a scary statement to make, especially if it's a little bit outside of your comfort zone. I think if you're new in the practice too, that's probably one of the scariest things. I know it was for me. I was terrified to land on a number. I was just like, I don't know. Is $5 okay? I just did not want to go high. I didn't want to be like, Oh, I know everything and I can fix all your problems so you better pay me this really big amount.
Annie: Because what if they pay you that really big amount and then they're not happy?
Leah: They are going to be disappointed and they spent all this money on you, and you are not even worth it.
Annie: And we're not like one of those online clothing retailers that has unlimited returns that they can send back what they gave us
Leah: And there's no guarantees. I cannot give you a money back guarantee.
Annie: If only! I ordered my magic wand a long time ago, the one that I can wave and make all of their troubles go away. No, I'm tracking it. It's not delivered yet. Out for delivery. It's not coming. I am waiting for that to come and then everything will be great. But yeah, I mean it's really uncertain. They are contacting us because they have a problem and they want a solution for that problem, but what we know is that we actually can't solve their problems and a lot of what we do is about managing expectations, and that starts by managing their expectations around what our fees are. I remember when I was very first starting out in my practice, I was visiting with my parents and my dad is a lifelong entrepreneur. He came up in sales and then started his own business that does a lot of consulting for other businesses. So he overheard me on the phone. Somebody called me and I was talking to her. Not a client, so it wasn't like a privacy thing. It was just me saying what my fees are and I said, this is what it costs to come see me, and then I think she never booked with me. But I got off the phone and my dad said, Oh that's great, cause once you get to where they're asking what it costs, then you know you've made the sale. I'm like, not in this business.
Leah: Oh no.
Annie: They all want what we have. Everybody who calls us wants to work with us, but then you tell them how much it costs and they back off or you can just be scared to say what it is. I think one big risk of letting that fear run your fee setting is that you can set your fees too low and you might be thinking, well what's wrong with me having a starter fee? I just started, I just certified. Why shouldn't I set my fees half of what my mentor is charging or that person in my community that I really admire? It is absolutely possible to hurt our profession and even the families that you're working with by setting your fees too low, and the reason is that when you set your fees too low, you might be deterring people from booking with you. They might think, why are her fees that low? She must be not good.
Leah: She must be desperate.
Annie: They also might then not really take what you're telling them seriously because they didn't pay that much for it, so then they're not willing to implement the care plan. They don't have an investment. And then finally, if you're focusing on setting fees low as a strategy for getting clients what's called undercutting your competition, absolutely think strategically when it comes to setting your fees. But if you start setting your fees low so that people will choose you versus someone else, all that is going to happen is you're going to drive the price down. And there is a reason that those established lactation consultants are charging what they're charging. It's not because they figured out a way to get rich quick. It's because they've figured out what they need to charge to earn what they need to earn to keep doing what they're doing. It happens in other professions where you have somebody coming in and saying, I'm just going to make what I can as fast as I can and burn out the business. And all of a sudden you have people who were making a living who can't make a living anymore because the competition destroyed the market and set the fees too low and now you're just in a race for the bottom. Nobody wants to be in that race. There are no winners.
Leah: Right, right. Absolutely. And I think that's a valuable point. We have a responsibility to our profession if we want to continue to be able to provide our services is that almost by undercutting you're going to hurt yourself in the long run. And I definitely know it's hard to say, okay, I am worth as much as some of these people who have taught me to do what I do right now, but I think that we can be strategic and thoughtful about it, but not try to get as low as humanly possible just to have that as your marketing strategy is how you're going to come into the market is dirt cheap and I think a lot of people burn out at that because if nobody's going to value you as much as you value yourself. And if you're saying, yeah, I'm worth the cheapest LC in town, then what does that say? What image are you portraying? What are you bringing as your brand is cheap. I don’t know. That might not be the image you necessarily want to put out there. So I think having this real tougher time, getting yourself in a good price point, but it really does make a difference for both yourself and the profession as a whole.
Annie: So how do you come up with what that number is? Where are some good places to start for people that are thinking about, I don't even know how to pick what that number is?
Leah: Well, I think you have to do market research. I think that's the number one place to start because I could never charge the fees that you charge, or my business would be a lot slower. So you couldn't go off of, okay, I'm going to look at everybody in the United States and see what they're charging and then charge that because your particular market might not be able to hold that number and so we need to look at it, I think multi-factorial. You want to look at again your ideal client, so maybe you are really trying to serve a certain population. Well, that might drive your prices to be in a different range, but if you're thinking of what other people are pricing and maybe even similar professions. What does other allied healthcare providers that are self-pay, what is the market holding for them? What are they able to charge per hour and then translate it over to you, and I think that's a great place to start because again, you don't want to just pull a random number or look outside of your marketplace or your ideal client for the answers. It's really going to be very specific to your marketplace.
Annie: Definitely.
Leah: How did you come up with your pricing?
Annie: When I first came up with my pricing, I was thinking about what an hourly rate would be, based on each visit being about four hours of labour. So I came up with a number that gave me what I thought it was an appropriate freelancer rate per hour. So I had done a lot of freelancing in my professional life and so I did have kind of a sense of what the market was for that, and I'm a skilled professional who's being hired to do a job so let me look in that range. And I've since shifted my thoughts to something that I think is healthier financially and a great idea for someone just starting out in their business, which is take a really big picture view and start with what your target annual revenue, what you want it to be. So you're not going to make it in your first year. Maybe you will. Actually, let me say this. By all the powers of the Universe, I hope all of you make your target goal in your first year of private practice, so I don't want to set your expectations low. I don't want to say you are doing this. It could happen, but most entrepreneurs do not meet their target annual revenue in the first year, but what you want to say is... for me to feel like I am making a living, I'm making what I need to make either what my contribution to my family is or what I need to do, what you would have to do really if this was the only job that you or your family had. So what's that target? What do you need to make in a year? And then think about how much can you actually work. So how many - and I like to think of it in consult chunks- so for me a consult chunk is three hours because it's a two hour home visit with about 30 minutes of driving on each side. That feels like a comfortable way to think about how many three hour chunks do I have in each week. It also kind of accounts for some of the follow up work I have to do outside of it too, with the scheduling and all of that and then say, okay, how many of those can I fit during the week? If you don't have kids, then you can say, okay, I've got this many hours in the week. I know a lot of people who are starting out, you've got a per diem job in the hospital, so you've got that happening and so then you've got other days when you can work. If you've got kids, you're looking at are they in school and how many consults can I fit in while they're in school? And then take that big number and just start breaking it down and say, okay, how much do I have to charge with the number of consults that I have to get my target annual revenue? And what you might find is saying, okay, don't have enough hours in the week to get there. My number is too high or it's too low, and you start just kind of tweaking and seeing what's going to make it a living for you.
Leah: Yeah, and I think that's so important because if you're coming at it to just - I'm going to pick a random number outside - pick a random number, or I think this is what people are charging and then it doesn't really fit for your family's needs, you're going to be sadly disappointed when now you're going to have to pick up another job because lactation work isn't cutting it for you or having a very realistic view of, okay, I'm going really have to put in 30 hours a week or whatever the number is if you have a big money target that you're trying to hit and looking at the amount per consult your market can hold. Once you get all those numbers together, you might come to some realizations about the limitations or the great parts of being in private practice and what you're going to need to commit to from your side. I think sitting down and doing this tedious math work is actually a really good practice in understanding what is private practice, what is it going to look like for you and your market? And it's a good exercise that even if you have been in practice a long time.
Annie: Yeah. To revisit what our fees are.
Leah: Yeah, and revisit this because I think it's super, super valuable for your perspective too.
Annie: And what it'll do is when you've got that target, that's your goal and goals are motivating. If you think I could make that much money and then it's going to make you have to figure out how to do that. So if you think about what you're going to get for just one consult, that could just be kind of like a, Oh gosh, I did all that work and I only made this much money. But if you're thinking that is towards my bigger picture goal of giving myself this annual salary, I really recommend that entrepreneurs read a book called Profit First. I read it a few weeks ago and it really kind of up-ended a lot of my thinking about how entrepreneurs should - and we are entrepreneurs. You've got a private practice, you're a business owner - how you approach money and to think about it to say what will make you want to work is making a profit. And so they say instead of trying to work to cover your expenses, you're working to make the profit that you want to make, and when you don't make that profit, that motivates you to work harder, and it's a lot more complicated and granular than that. But we'll put the name of the book in the show notes. I recommend picking it up from your library or buying a copy because it really gives you a way to take that big picture view so that you're giving yourself a vision for what your business can achieve that's going to make you want to pour yourself into it. And that's going to keep you going on the days when it's not working so well.
Leah: Yeah. And to get a little woo-woo maybe, but I think when you set your intention for your business, like I want my business to be a - I'm just pulling random numbers - $100,000 a year business, that's what I want. And I think when you set your intention, your subconscious takes over and whatever woo-woo, however you think of it, I think you put this intention out into the world and the universe and there's another aspect of that that's like kind of deeper down that helps you pull in what would you need to be able to do that and those things start showing up for you. I think it's so powerful to really and truly own it and lay it down on paper and to say, this is my plan for the company and how I'm going to value myself in this company, and I love your idea with the profit book. It's definitely a book I'm going to be picking up because I think there's really something to us as entrepreneurs. You really have to take ownership of like we're entrepreneurs and we got to do things a little differently.
Annie: Exactly. We've got to have a plan and we've got to have energy and motivation and you can take, there's the Woo Woo way you put it, but it's also by saying this is what I'm trying to do. You've made it a challenge to yourself and I would say not everyone loves a challenge, but if you chose private practice as a lactation consultant, there is that part of you that wants a challenge.
Leah: Yeah, absolutely.
Annie: And to tell yourself, I could do this. I just need to be organized. I need to be intentional. When you have it written down and you have it mapped out that this is what you're trying to do, that's going to trickle down to the way you communicate your fees to your clients because now you're not coming from a 'I really hope that you think that what I have to offer is worth this much money' because what you're doing is you're saying, okay, here's what my fee is because I put a lot of work into figuring out what that fee should be. And also you can look around at what other people in your area are charging and kind of stay in that same family. That really can be helpful. I know some people have said, I've seen it out there to say like see what a massage costs and go around that, and then I've also seen the counter argument, which is don't base it off of what a massage is cause we're not beauty treatments or whatever. We're health care providers. So I think it is important not to do too much mental equating of yourself with hairstylists or things like that. And also so that you're never in your messaging telling your clients that this is a luxury because it's not a luxury. It's not a stroller. I know people will say, Oh, well see what they'll spend on a stroller, but they won't spend it on us. Totally different thing. And you know what? People could spend whatever they want on a stroller. It has nothing to do with what they're going to spend on a lactation consultant. They're going to spend money on a lactation consultant because they believe that that person is going to do what they're being hired to do, and they're hiring them for something that they want. It has nothing to do with a stroller.
Leah: And if you're looking ...you know how we were talking about different industries, I like looking at what are private pay therapists charging? What are private pay speech pathologist or occupational therapist or those allied healthcare professionals?
Annie: Chiropractors or acupuncture.
Leah: Yes. I think that's a great place to see what the market would hold. What are people willing to pay in the market and how busy are those places? And there's always going to be that one way off the charts person and if you want that to be you, a very exclusive, very high end pricing, you might say that that's what I want to be. I only want to see three people a week, but I'm going to charge them double what everybody else in the market is charging, and that might be the population you're catering to, that population that looks for the exclusivity of using somebody that's on the higher end of pricing. And similarly, there's always going to be somebody on the lower end. Of course we want to be close in the same family, but I think that person might be gearing towards having a certain population be able to afford the services.
Annie: And that person also might be super organized with their time and be able to fit in more consults and say, you know what? I'm going to charge less per consult because I'm able to fit more in it. Maybe you have an office. So that's different than you know somebody who's saying, I feel like I have access to a population that's going to pay a lot more, but then that person is probably not trying to leave at the 119-minute mark of the visit.
Leah: You're right
Annie: They are going to be spending four hours there, so that does become their service and there's really nothing wrong with doing more and charging more for doing more. At the very basic level, you want to be charging appropriately for what you're doing. You brought up about being able to reach populations. This is a huge question that comes up. I see it all the time in the groups and have had other lactation consultants ask about what about that client? Why should I set my fee high because there are people that can't afford me at all? And here's what I have to say about that, which is don't set your prices low thinking that you're going to get low income clients cause they still can't afford it. You can't go low enough where they can afford it. Charge for the people who can afford it, and also if you're in the US, make sure they know that they should be trying to get insurance to reimburse them and pay for it. But those of us here know how that can often go, but decide. You want to set your policies about how and when you're going to give a discount. So think about, you might say, I will give a WIC discount and I'll say people with WIC get X percent off. That percentage off could be 10%. It could be 75%. It can be whatever you want it to be as long as it's consistently applied and you've got clearly communicated standards, so you're not just deciding case by case. I'm going to charge this person top market rate because I think they can pay it because of what their zip code is, but somebody in this zip code, I don't think they can pay that much. We are not to be making those decisions. You can have one fee, consistently applied and then have standards for how you're going to offer discounts. Absolutely offer discounts to people that need it as you can, but don't look for your fees to solve that very complicated world problem, which is people can't afford lactation services. You are not going to fix that by having low fees.
Leah: Right. I 100% agree with that and I think it's a really good point to make also that when you're presenting your fees and you have somebody who's like, Oh my gosh, I can't afford that. You want to have resources, number one, compassion. I mean, I'm always like, I'm so sorry. Let me get you some additional resources that are in our community, and we have a free lactation clinic in our community. Isn't that amazing?
Annie: Wow. It is.
Leah: And actually, it's put on by our WIC, but it's got a grant to where they can see anybody. So anybody can go to them.
Annie: That's amazing!
Leah: I know. And so whenever I have someone, we make sure we get them the information for that, the contact information, because of course I want to still help them and be as helpful as I can. Even if I might not be the right fit for their situation, I can still be helpful in getting them connected with other resources that might fit their situation. And yeah, it's hard because we definitely all come from a helper place and we want to be able to help everybody, but there might be other resources that would fit their needs even better than we can. And I think getting them connected with those types of resources is part of what we can do so that you don't go around thinking, Oh, I should have given them a free visit or discount visit when you've already done five that week.
Annie: Right. Exactly.
Leah: Because you feel like, okay, I need to be able to help everybody, so I'm going to give everybody some kind of deal or discount. It's hard to present, I think sometimes. So you're on the phone and they're like, well how much is it? How much does this cost? They're ready to hear the final words, and that can be scary to actually say that out loud. One time we went up higher on prices, like kind of a bigger jump, I could barely get the words out of my mouth. I can't even say it, and then when I said it I wanted to look away like, Oh my gosh, they're going to run away in screeching horror because it was just so uncomfortable. But do you have any ideas of like when you're on the phone or how you could present your fees that might help people feel more comfortable taking ownership of the fee they've come up with?
Annie: Well, I like to think about it as an opportunity for you to share what they're getting. So yes, you have to tell them how much it costs and to frame it in the context of what is coming with that. So what your follow up policies are, what's included, how long you're going to be there. Maybe they don't know that you're willing to stay at their house for two hours. If you have extra skills, may be a little bit outside, like maybe you're really great with baby carriers and you're like, Oh yeah, and I'll show you how to use your baby carrier while I'm there. Things like that. Like adding those little extras, making sure that they know if they're eligible for insurance reimbursement, helping them to access that in advance, maybe even getting their insurance to agree to cover you out of network. That's definitely a real thing here in the US. Talking about your education, your skills and also on your website, having those testimonials from your past clients to say how they felt after they saw you is really valuable to kind of soften the blow of what that fee could be. And then if you're just starting out and you're saying, okay, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm not going to set my feet too low, but I'm scared. I just certified, I just found out I'm a lactation consultant and I'm going to go see my very first client and they're going to pay me this much money. And that's scary. I totally get that. And so what I want you to think about doing is to charge what you're worth, but then you have to make yourself worth it. You don't get to just charge and then go in and say, okay, I was here, I was there, and I did my lactation consultant thing. At the beginning, you might have to do six hours’ worth of labour for what you got paid for two hours. As you get on in your career, there's going to be less that you'll need to do. So you might be offering that unlimited follow up that we talked about in another episode as being not such a great idea, but you might have to be more available.
Leah: Yeah. And that can be really powerful in your learning. Having that longer term contact helps you see if what you're advising them to do is working or not and I think it's really valuable. In the beginning, you might not necessarily put it out there like, Oh, talk to you for the next year, but still having your follow up policies, but knowing that you're going to be more in contact. You're going to be maybe doing a little bit more, and then that helps you kind of own that pricing that you've laid out. And when I'm talking to a family about my services and I'm about to talk about, okay, the fee is this, I always start with our visits include..... This are the things that we're going to assess. These are the things that we're going to do in the visit. This is how long it takes. These are the things that I bring with me. I bring a scale, I bring equipment so that we can do assessments and these kinds of things so they know I'm not just going to be walking in with a legal notepad and you're going to pay me a lot of money for that. I want to help them see the value from this conversation. And then I definitely always talk about the insurance reimbursement and how I recommend right away that they go ahead and give a call to their insurance, find out if there's any pre authorization or things that they might want to do ahead of time and then we'll give them the superbill and the resources to get it reimbursed. So I feel like I equip them from very early on with both expectations and stating that you really helps you take ownership of the value. I do all this and I'm worth it. And for all the newbies out there, it's scary in the beginning, but let me just assure you it gets easier and easier. And when you're thinking, I don't know, am I really worth that? Look at your client testimonials. I hope that you're collecting them and putting them on your website, putting them out there. But that's something that's always helped me is if I'm starting to think like, I don't know, maybe we're charging too much. It seems like a lot. Or if we're trying to go up in prices and we're trying to consider it, I'll read all those and I'm like, you know what? I help those people and made an astronomical impact. If you think about the huge scope of what breastfeeding does in a human's life and how you're impacting today, tomorrow, 50 years from now for another human being, that's worth a lot of money. People pay millions of dollars for that kind of stuff, so sometimes I just sit down and think about with my help, this human's trajectory in life has changed. It can be really powerful to say 'I'm worth that dollar amount because that's a really small price to pay to know that 50 years down the line, your risk for Type II diabetes is less.
Annie: Totally.
Leah: I mean, if you just think about it like that. You didn't just like, oh, your latch feels better. No, you changed the trajectory of another human being's life.
Annie: Oh my gosh.
Leah: Then you're like, okay, maybe I shouldn't be charging like a million at least. I'm just kidding, but if you think about it like that, and I've always gone back and read my testimonials or like if a client has sent me a card or something about their journey or that kind of thing, and I think about it in that really bigger picture of what you have actually accomplished by helping this mother and baby breastfeed, it's like whoa, okay we're worth a lot. We are really undervalued right now.
Annie: I want everybody who's listening, cause if you're listening to this podcast, I'm pretty certain you are a lactation consultant or want to be a lactation consultant, and I really want you to hear what Leah's saying is that you can get bogged down in the business side of things and really feeling worried. Am I doing it right? And how is this all happening? And when you are feeling bogged down, definitely remind yourself why you're doing this. You're doing this because you are literally changing the world. Every time you talk to a family, every time you see a baby you have actually changed the world. You have made it a better place. And I just want to thank you for doing what you're doing because it is hard and it is scary and you're not always going to make the money that you want to make, but I want you to try to make the money you can make, because we should be making money because we are worth it.
Leah: We're super, super valuable players in this game called life and if we can't own our worth, nobody else in the world will. So we're all going to join together and we're going to take a stand, not a crazy stand but we're going to take a stand to really be paid what we're worth and what we're bringing to the table for the whole human race.
Annie: Yes, humanity!
Leah: Yes, absolutely.
Annie: I love it.
Leah: Okay, well we're going to have to end on that note because that was super powerful. I almost teared up a little bit because...
Annie: I might have teared up a little because I love lactation.
Leah: 100%. Oh my gosh, I love us all so much. So Annie, before we wrap up today, I know you're going to have another super awesome... your value is astronomical, Annie. So tell us your super awesome tip today.
Annie: So my tech tip today is about the accounts you're using to pay for different services you might be using for your business. So you probably, if you have lived on this planet for any amount of time, you probably have a PayPal account if you have bought anything.
Leah: If you don't, get one.
Annie: Do not use that personal PayPal account to pay your business expenses. Set up a brand new PayPal account with your business email address. Hopefully you have separate bank accounts.
Leah: I was just about to say that. Make sure you have a separate bank account too.
Annie: Link them to the separate bank account. Don't make it possible for any of that cross pollination to happen between PayPal accounts. Keep them separate. You will be happy because when you get to the point where you are making your target annual revenue, you're going to have a bookkeeper and an accountant who are going to want to download all those reports and they're going to say to you, I am so glad that you have separate bank accounts.
Leah: This isn't all muddied with your purchases from Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Annie: And I say this because this is something that it's a mistake I have learned from real world experience, not being so smart with my PayPal accounts and being taken to task by people who know better. And then once I changed I was like, ah, why did I do this years ago? Because I was lazy and because I didn't feel like going through the extra work. And I thought, well what's the big deal? Well, is it a big deal? No. It's not the fulcrum on which the universe rests, but in your life you should be doing things to keep your practice organized and keep your business separate from your personal. This is a really easy way to do that. That is worth the five extra minutes that takes to set it up.
Leah: Yeah, I think this is super valuable and I think with all accounts, everything that has a password and an account name, you should have a separate one for everything for your business, versus your personal life. Everything that you have a username and password should have its own account for your business. And I can attest to that really, really helps when accounting time comes along and things aren't all muddied together and you're trying to figure out was what was this purchase for? Was that business-related? I don't know.
Annie: And I think it's an example of the actual, practical aspect of the manifesting that you're talking about. That is literally saying, I have a business. Yeah, it has its own account. It's got its own PayPal address. It's a business. It doesn't have anything in it right now, but it's a thing. It's real.
Leah: You're never going to manifest what you wouldn't say out in the world. You're never going to make it happen unless you put it out there and make it a real, true-life, living, breathing thing.
Annie: This has been more fun than I thought it would be when we started.
Leah: I know. I'm so scared. I don't want to talk about this. I don't know.
Annie: Yes. I get excited by the idea that people are going to take their businesses seriously and not see it as a hobby. So I want to know what are you manifesting this week?
Leah: Ooh, that is a juicy topic. Oh my goodness. Well, definitely every time we talk, it really just always brings different things to the forefront of my mind, how can I be truly taking everything that I'm doing for my business as seriously as I want everybody else in the world to take me? And I need to be taking that as seriously, and I'm always striving for ways to be more organized or more business-like in my daily business work, because I think that's how for me personally, I get more motivated when I feel like I'm running a real business. So I think I've been really seeking out resources and everything down to apps and organizational things. I'm really trying to figure out different ways that I kind of make my business more businessy, I guess, in a way. Because I think that's a really important thing for me. And for what I'm manifesting and how I want to grow my business. So I think that is how I ... how about you? What do you have going on this week?
Annie: I am manifesting, I just see one more client to book a visit with me this week and then my week will be set. It's mostly follow-ups this week that I set even before Thanksgiving, which was last week when we're recording this. It was Thanksgiving last weekend. And I'm at the point where I'm like, it's a couple of days away and why hasn't anybody filled that spot, and I get a little desperate where I would drive twice as far. Sure, that would work out. And then I have to stop and say no, because then I will never get back to pick up my kids on time, and then they'll give me that 'you're a bad mom 'face. You work too hard and then I'll feel guilty and then I'll buy them sugary treats to make up for it.
Leah: Because that's what happens with us lactation consultants. Oh my gosh, and I am certain there's hundreds of others out there nodding their head with us and like, Oh so have felt that way but I'm going to join you in your putting it out there. I know that you are an amazing lactation consultant and the perfect client is going to reach out to you this week and you're going to change that family's trajectory in breastfeeding, I'm going to declare it too.
Annie: And if anybody is still listening, if you haven't skipped ahead to your next podcast in your queue cause we're talking about woo-woo crazy stuff, I want you all to go to Leah's website which is Bayareabreastfeeding.net and it's linked in the show notes and I want you to read their blog. You've got to get it right, and I want you to read their blog because they have some great articles in there. They have this one that is the amazing reasons your new-born wants to be held, and I can barely even say that title without getting goose bumps and shivers, and I sent it to all my clients and I sometimes send it to them more than once when they're like, every time I set my baby dad, my baby falls asleep. And they don't need to hear that's biologically normal... I mean they do. I mean it was biologically normal. They're in the fourth trimester, but I just love that framework of your baby's amazing. Anything where I can tell parents how amazing their babies are.
Leah: Have a positive spin on infant behavior because I think infant behavior gets such a negative spin and I worked tirelessly to create a positive spin on normal infant behavior because...
Annie: It really comes out in that article so beautifully.
Leah: That's awesome!
Annie: Babies are the best.
Leah: And they are just so, so pure, so biologically pure. I always talk about that with feeding cues. I'm like, your baby is the purest form of feeding cues on the planet. If we could only just take cue from them, we wouldn't have no weight issues on our planet. All right. Well we could go on for hours, but we're going to save that for the next podcast, so hang in there and we will be with you guys again very soon. It was great talking to you, Annie.
Annie: You too, Leah. Talk to you soon. Bye.
Leah: Bye.