63. Build What the World Needs - Tif Bryant on innovation and risk.
What if the biggest risk isn't failing—but standing still?
In this episode of Psychologically Speaking, psychologist and researcher Leila Ainge is joined by entrepreneur, UK Innovator Founder visa holder and CEO of The Doula Hive, Tif Bryant.
Growing up in poverty, becoming a teenage mum and leaving school early weren't the end of Tif's story. After building a successful birth business in the United States, she made the bold decision to sell everything, move her family across the world and start again. Today she's building The Doula Hive a technology platform designed to transform the birth care industry through better infrastructure, data and community.
Together they explore:
- Why stagnation became the biggest risk in Tif's life
- The psychology of entrepreneurship and innovation
- What motherhood teaches us about leadership and resilience
- Why women underestimate the skills they develop through parenting
- The future of maternity care and birth support
- How data, technology and community could improve outcomes for families
This conversation goes far beyond birth. It's about identity, purpose, entrepreneurial courage and what happens when you stop waiting for someone else to build the future you know is possible.
Transcript
if I build it, I'm going to build it in community for us.
Speaker:Why shouldn't I build it?
Speaker:I know how to build it. I know what we need.
Speaker:I've already led these teams. Why would I let them build it?
Speaker:Why would I wait for them to build it and tell us what should be in there when
Speaker:I know, I know what they need to hear them being the,
Speaker:the, the world, right? Like NHS,
Speaker:medical, we need to grow this industry.
Speaker:Nobody is going to listen to us.
Speaker:They have not historically,
Speaker:Welcome to Psychologically Speaking with me,
Speaker:Leela Ainge. This season, we're exploring imposter phenomenon,
Speaker:but through the lens of risk taking.
Speaker:And we'll be hearing from women who are no stranger to navigating risk through their
Speaker:business activities. The question I love you to sit with this season is this,
Speaker:do imposter experiences make us more aware of risk or less aware of risk?
Speaker:And is that a good or a bad thing?
Speaker:Today, to help us unravel this,
Speaker:am joined by Tiff Bryant, is a two-time founder,
Speaker:UK innovator, visa holder and CEO of the Doula Hive,
Speaker:You
Speaker:where she's building an infrastructure for the birth care industry.
Speaker:Her work orbits the pillars of community,
Speaker:momentum and change. I'm fascinated to talk to Tiff because I set
Speaker:up a maternal mental health service and I'm still connected with Perinatal
Speaker:Connected, charity in Derby.
Speaker:So I'm really interested to understand how that journey into the doula
Speaker:and all the infrastructure around it came about.
Speaker:One thing that I want you to know about Tif is that she grew up poor
Speaker:and was briefly homeless as a child.
Speaker:She became a teen mum and in her own words a high school dropout,
Speaker:but she went on to complete an MSc in entrepreneurship with distinction.
Speaker:That is no mean feat, those masters are really really hard work and she's built
Speaker:up two companies across two continents.
Speaker:She
Speaker:has pioneered this Dula model which is now considered an industry standard.
Speaker:At the point of having a picture perfect American life,
Speaker:whatever that is, she felt stagnation and decided that that was the real risk
Speaker:You
Speaker:in her life. So she sold the house,
Speaker:she moved her whole family to Bali and spent a year getting quiet.
Speaker:So the Dula Hive is what happened after that and...
Speaker:During this whole process, she has traveled to 36 countries with her kids.
Speaker:I'm absolutely amazed by this.
Speaker:I've just come back from camping with one child and a puppy.
Speaker:So I want to understand how on earth you get to 36 countries with kids.
Speaker:She's an avid Crossfitter and she says that is excellent training
Speaker:for a startup life. Now that's a big introduction to,
Speaker:I think there were so many parts of your journey that we could go into
Speaker:you
Speaker:and I don't want to miss any of them.
Speaker:So welcome to Cycle.
Speaker:speaking.
Speaker:Thank you so
Speaker:much and thank you for having me.
Speaker:I'm really excited to have this conversation.
Speaker:It's so exciting.
Speaker:It's amazing to have you here.
Speaker:Do you want to just tell me, who doulas are,
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:and where they kind of sit in the whole kind
Speaker:of maternity kind of ecosystem,
Speaker:Yeah, so yeah, in right now just so it's okay if you don't know what a doula
Speaker:is less than 1 % of UK births involve a doula.
Speaker:So it's an emerging market as we would call it in the entrepreneur world.
Speaker:And what a doula is physical, emotional and informational support.
Speaker:Traditionally, historically, this would be a mommy,
Speaker:a sister, an auntie, somebody who's really supporting.
Speaker:In very layman's terms, it's a birth coach,
Speaker:right? To walk you through the journey of birth,
Speaker:pregnancy, birth, postpartum, various stages.
Speaker:And really what is happening is like as,
Speaker:also the one thing I really want to dispel is that doulas are not,
Speaker:they can be earthy, crunchy, hippie girls who are all women,
Speaker:who are all
Speaker:~
Speaker:home birth and everything, but I like to remind people that one third
Speaker:of the pillars is informational support and where we need informational support
Speaker:is in medicalized birth. So most doulas work in hospitals alongside
Speaker:as a team with their client in a going into a medicalized birth or in a hospital.
Speaker:So that said, there are gaps,
Speaker:gaps in birth. We expect our partners
Speaker:to know everything, but our partners don't know what tampon to buy us.
Speaker:And we're like, cool, tell me about birth physiology.
Speaker:And they're like, what? So it's really great for a partner to be able
Speaker:to be that emotional support, heavy on emotion,
Speaker:to sit back and also become a parent in that moment.
Speaker:So the doula fills that gap right there in a partnership can actually join partners
Speaker:closer together because
Speaker:They feel connected. She feels supported.
Speaker:I'm with Dula. I no longer practice,
Speaker:but Dula's are like, go give her an ice chip.
Speaker:Put this on her head. And you know,
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:when you're in labor for anybody who's been in labor,
Speaker:all of a sudden, like a cold rag on your forehead and you're like,
Speaker:the world is okay. Right?
Speaker:Hahaha
Speaker:So, so that makes your partner look sexier,
Speaker:more attractive, more helpful than them being like,
Speaker:what do I do? There's also a lot of physiology things that are helpful.
Speaker:in labor that if you're not trained you don't know.
Speaker:you're saying, oh my god, my back is killing me and your labor pattern is weird,
Speaker:why would your partner say, oh maybe your baby is OP,
Speaker:let's put you in this position and we'll get you on hands and knees and do some,
Speaker:as we call it, shake the apple tree or booty shaking and help baby move,
Speaker:right? So we're really there to support a couple and we love to
Speaker:come
Speaker:to the house before going to the hospital to help decide when to go.
Speaker:So we're filling that gap, right?
Speaker:We're building that bridge in coupledom,
Speaker:we'll say, in partnership and where they can be more connected and let
Speaker:us just coach and take that backseat and just hold space or guide,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:right? Guide and hold space. And then in the in the birth route in the hospital
Speaker:if ~ or birth center, it depends on where you're having it.
Speaker:We're not clinical.
Speaker:We're not medical. We should never be stepping on the toes of your midwife
Speaker:or your doctor. That would not be within scope of a doula of a doula's work.
Speaker:Again, we have a gap there. A midwife,
Speaker:a doctor has to go off and chart,
Speaker:go off and do things with their other patients.
Speaker:We do not consider you a patient.
Speaker:We consider you a client. So because we're not clinical,
Speaker:easy thing is like if you have to put gloves on,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:we shouldn't be doing it. Mind you,
Speaker:I've put some gloves on just to because
Speaker:birth is messy, right? But not because I'm doing anything that needed gloves,
Speaker:right? So, so we're not, so in...
Speaker:in the actual birth room, in the setting,
Speaker:in the hospital, in a birth center,
Speaker:where have you, there's that gap.
Speaker:Now you need support, but your medical provider,
Speaker:your midwife or doctor, have to go and do other things.
Speaker:They also have to sleep if it's the middle of the night,
Speaker:which is when babies love to come because they are responsible for
Speaker:You
Speaker:all of the medical stuff, right?
Speaker:So they actually need to be rested.
Speaker:This is
Speaker:This is it. They're so they're fairly hands-off in the comfort
Speaker:the physical comfort Because they have to be and that's how the system
Speaker:is at this point so dual is in that case bridge that gap right of giving you care
Speaker:throughout the whole labor process.
Speaker:And then postpartum, we'll stay like after baby's born.
Speaker:If you're choosing to nurse, help the baby latch.
Speaker:I know the nurses do that, the midwife will help with that,
Speaker:but we can kind of stand around a little bit more patiently and just make sure
Speaker:things are like cleaned up a little bit,
Speaker:you know, like nice and then sneak out usually a few hours after birth.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:then there's also postpartum doulas who are like who come to your house
Speaker:at night or during the day.
Speaker:stuff. Usually those are two different kinds of women you either like birth
Speaker:or you like postpartum. So yeah that's the overview of what a doula is.
Speaker:Thank you for
Speaker:that. think it's such important work.
Speaker:It's so under-talked about this kind of use the word comfort
Speaker:and care. And my first experience as an adult of feeling like
Speaker:an imposter actually landed as a parent.
Speaker:We had an emergency C-section in the end,
Speaker:it didn't go to my plan, which is quite normal.
Speaker:But the one thing that really rattled me is as a very confident individual,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:somebody who had
Speaker:career and then stepped out of that to become a mum and I just felt completely
Speaker:out of my depth.
Speaker:But the thing that was really a struggle for me was being stuck in
Speaker:the hospital with a child on NICU whilst I was still And there
Speaker:was those little things I remember the day after he was born,
Speaker:I'd been put on a ward with parents who had their babies with them.
Speaker:it wasn't until years later, and I mean years,
Speaker:that everything unraveled for me,
Speaker:that I realized that what I went through was traumatic,
Speaker:that all I needed probably was a coach or a hug or somebody to say,
Speaker:this, or someone to advocate and say,
Speaker:this isn't right, actually what you need right now is this,
Speaker:or let me go and ask somebody to explain this to you.
Speaker:I mean at one point I got told I've got the wrong shape boobs,
Speaker:to breastfeed. How ridiculous is that?
Speaker:And I carried that shame with me.
Speaker:genuinely, the work that anybody does in the
Speaker:the postnatal, perinatal and the maternity stage is just so important.
Speaker:That's why I feel so passionately about this.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:you know what came up first of all,
Speaker:so I have three kids they're 27 13 and almost 12 I still feel like
Speaker:an imposter all the time like I don't know I don't know what to
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:say about parenting like I I struggle with even the term imposter because
Speaker:I feel like if it's all then is it nothing it's very Buddhist of me
Speaker:I'm not a Buddhist but like that like if it's everywhere is it nowhere?
Speaker:~
Speaker:Hahaha
Speaker:Because every day is different and I have no idea how to deal with these humans.
Speaker:I have a sample size of three and they throw a different thing at me,
Speaker:each of them. I just don't know.
Speaker:I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker:you
Speaker:It's such a lovely way of thinking about it.
Speaker:A sample size of three and they're all different.
Speaker:And this is it, isn't it? I think the one thing that then made me very interested
Speaker:in psychology and understanding imposter experiences as an experience
Speaker:and rather than a syndrome was just the acceptance that actually when
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:we change the support around people,
Speaker:when we change the environment and when we put the right things in place,
Speaker:we don't have to feel that way.
Speaker:You know, we can experience not knowing,
Speaker:but without the sheer panic that goes along with
Speaker:it sometimes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You
Speaker:know, even in that, so I had my first kid,
Speaker:was very much planned. As you mentioned,
Speaker:high school dropout and planned teen pregnancy.
Speaker:I'd lived on my own since I was 14.
Speaker:So by the time I was 18 and met my first baby daddy,
Speaker:first ex-husband, ~ we were roommates and it was like,
Speaker:you
Speaker:let's just do this, right? And so the interesting thing when you become
Speaker:a mom that young, and there's a lot of intentionality,
Speaker:another word I kind of struggle with but if you know the whole through thread
Speaker:of my life it makes sense where I was very much strategically lining myself
Speaker:up to understand and learn mothering so that I would be a great mother
Speaker:and I was studying women who were mothers and I have collection of them
Speaker:I like to say and
Speaker:I worked as a nanny, as a teenager to go into households of like the rich kids
Speaker:and understand why those kids are going to succeed and why my
Speaker:kid is statistically not going to.
Speaker:So this is my 16 year old brain mentality,
Speaker:which is a weird thing to look back on at 46 and be like,
Speaker:~ that's wild that I was thinking that.
Speaker:But so my, thing is when you walk into,
Speaker:into parenting at 18 or 19,
Speaker:you're in time, like I've only ever been a mom.
Speaker:as an adult. I've never had a day of being an adult and not a mom.
Speaker:Not one day. So I know like let me breathe.
Speaker:is so fascinating. I'm going put
Speaker:I'm like hold on. Like that's a lot to take in.
Speaker:you on speed dial when I need help,
Speaker:But in that
Speaker:I think.
Speaker:In that sense, this is also the power of becoming a mom in 1998.
Speaker:So Google was born in September of 98.
Speaker:My son was born in November of 98,
Speaker:just to place like technology,
Speaker:Wow. Yeah.
Speaker:right? So there was no, don't even,
Speaker:didn't, like, you just had to go into self.
Speaker:So I'm like, struggle with imposter because I'm like,
Speaker:well, I've always had to just go into self.
Speaker:Like is imposter just an external idea?
Speaker:And that I've never been able to,
Speaker:my journey as a parent, as a mother started.
Speaker:before I could go external, right?
Speaker:Because there was no internet.
Speaker:So our lens is just different.
Speaker:you're just like, I guess I'm gonna figure out how to nurse this baby all night.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't know what to do, but like,
Speaker:I guess I'll just deal with this.
Speaker:And like...
Speaker:If you don't have a deep community to call on a family to do that,
Speaker:you just become self-reliant. So you are always the imposter and
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:yet never the imposter because you had nothing to stand on but digging into self.
Speaker:Tell me a little bit about, you mentioned there,
Speaker:you know you've got a collection of women or mothers that you presumably looked
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:or you were observing. Tell me a little bit behind,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:what was behind that? How did that come about?
Speaker:So I have, I come from some strong academic women that probably
Speaker:in a different time wouldn't become,
Speaker:choose to be mothers, right? Very,
Speaker:we're all highly educated and we're all teen moms and I'm the third generation
Speaker:and the only one who's like naturally a caregiver.
Speaker:And...
Speaker:and my mom is brilliant in all her ways and I've learned so much academic freedom
Speaker:from her. Not the best caretaker.
Speaker:I quote my mother, she's in London a year and a half ago when my oldest
Speaker:son was here and in front of all three of my kids said,
Speaker:I bought Tiffy a microwave when she was four so that she could make her own dinner.
Speaker:And I was just like.
Speaker:I'm
Speaker:gonna stop.
Speaker:And my oldest son, who's an adult,
Speaker:was like, he already knows what to expect.
Speaker:And my other kids were like, what?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I was like, y'all are so lucky.
Speaker:Y'all are so lucky. I don't know how you got this mom out of all this.
Speaker:you
Speaker:So the collection of mothers comes from around five.
Speaker:I very distinctly remember I had one other woman in my life at that point
Speaker:who I just...
Speaker:really was paying attention to and studying.
Speaker:And like, what makes her a good mother?
Speaker:Or what qual- even if she's not a mother,
Speaker:like, what is it that, what am I getting from her?
Speaker:And not to mother me, but to learn to how to mother.
Speaker:that make sense? And so there's,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:you know, one woman, and then I did,
Speaker:there's another woman later on who also I have,
Speaker:so I have a collection of five,
Speaker:one of which is my mom, my mom-mom.
Speaker:And there are very different bits and pieces that like one,
Speaker:kind of my other mom, I lived with them for a short while when I was a teenager,
Speaker:which ironically her and my mom have the same birthday,
Speaker:which always messes with my brain.
Speaker:But I really, really learned that like nourishment and nutrition was love.
Speaker:You
Speaker:And that
Speaker:say like that rules were love.
Speaker:I couldn't follow her rules when I was 14 and so I left but I knew as
Speaker:Hahaha
Speaker:I was leaving that her rules you can't just go in a car with any random boy.
Speaker:Crazy. I knew at that moment that that was her saying I love you and
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I care about you.
Speaker:But I couldn't follow that rule at the time.
Speaker:that's fine. I was like, this is too much.
Speaker:I'm from a household without rules.
Speaker:I don't know what that means. So it's stuff like that that I picked up over time
Speaker:by these five different women to create my own lens on.
Speaker:on mothering and what creates this like holistic mother.
Speaker:Biomom or not, I don't really care about that.
Speaker:You know, it's just more of like as the being,
Speaker:as the thing.
Speaker:I love that, I love that so much.
Speaker:So we know quite a bit about you from the bio and the bits I've introduced.
Speaker:One of the things that you'd kind of said to me is that you're here as part
Speaker:of a UK innovator visa holder.
Speaker:That's something I'd never heard of before.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So would you just tell me a little bit about what that is and how it came to be?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I actually moved here to do my master's in entrepreneurship after
Speaker:13 years of being a founder and my midlife crisis blow up life.
Speaker:I was like, let's get, let's get a degree in entrepreneurship.
Speaker:Hahaha!
Speaker:really wanted to understand how to scale and high do high growth.
Speaker:I wanted to know how to make bigger impacts and just explode.
Speaker:Like I just want to be huge. And this is,
Speaker:and I needed to go and like collect that information,
Speaker:translate everything I've done in my life and then just
Speaker:BAM. And so my first year in London,
Speaker:I'm almost two years, was studying and translating what I had learned
Speaker:as a business owner. And just life,
Speaker:honestly, just life. And, you know...
Speaker:And
Speaker:how did you find the study part?
Speaker:So you were a founder first and foremost,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:then you've come into academia to study.
Speaker:And I know the entrepreneurship courses and business courses tend to
Speaker:be better in terms of, they tend to be staffed by people from industry
Speaker:as well as academics, but how did you find that?
Speaker:loved it. mean, my cohort was quite younger than me,
Speaker:like 22 to 25, and had very little experience.
Speaker:And I loved working in that, and there were also international diverse group
Speaker:of people and understanding and learning.
Speaker:And I was like, tell me about AI.
Speaker:So now I'm super up on my AI. But I was like,
Speaker:what are the cool kids? What are the young kids doing on this street?
Speaker:Help me out here. So that was great.
Speaker:And then you're right, it was a mix of academics and industry.
Speaker:You know, the thing is, learning is so reflective.
Speaker:So in the moment, you're like,
Speaker:what does this even mean? But I've...
Speaker:I guess at like the stage in life too,
Speaker:you kind of under, have a lot to reflect on.
Speaker:So I also was like, hold up girl.
Speaker:It's all going to make sense. Right?
Speaker:Like just, just understand these tools are out there.
Speaker:Like go in there, understand these tools are there so that as you need them,
Speaker:you remember I can go back and get that.
Speaker:And so my first moments after that program was like just translating everything
Speaker:I had done, like literally with pen and paper,
Speaker:just translating what does sales look like in my old business?
Speaker:Because in.
Speaker:doula world, we don't want to say sales.
Speaker:I don't want to think of a pregnant woman as a sale.
Speaker:Like, ugh, right? But what does that mean?
Speaker:Because in truth, that is a sale,
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:right? But I'm like, ugh, that's like,
Speaker:that makes me feel gross. So like,
Speaker:I think there are a lot of people who don't like the word
Speaker:how do I train?
Speaker:sale or selling. ~
Speaker:Yeah, you
Speaker:know, I've built a team. I had hired over my time,
Speaker:100 doulas. Our largest team was 25.
Speaker:OK, what does that actually translate to the world of business?
Speaker:Because again, we're told in the doula world,
Speaker:like birth is soft and fluffy and lacy and we should be soft and fluffy
Speaker:and lacy and we shouldn't. We should make sure everything super personalized
Speaker:in all of this. But we're missing metrics and we're missing all of this other stuff
Speaker:that professionalizes us. So the rest
Speaker:of the world can hear what we're saying.
Speaker:And also some of us are like, birth is rock and roll.
Speaker:Like I just want birth to be rock and roll.
Speaker:Like it can be sweet, fluffy, and lacy too,
Speaker:but some of us don't want that in pregnancy.
Speaker:And there's a huge range of that for pregnancy,
Speaker:birth, postpartum, mothering. And I totally went on a sidetrack.
Speaker:But so back to the innovator visa.
Speaker:So how I got there is I...
Speaker:you
Speaker:I think your sidetrack is cool and you're talking about
Speaker:something really important there because you know there's this whole feminization
Speaker:of things where it gets equated to soft and we mustn't talk about money,
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:we mustn't do this and actually we're saying it's like this is a service
Speaker:and it's gonna help and it's worthwhile and it has value and it's I'm gonna sell
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:it and I'm gonna sell it to you because I know it it matters and I know
Speaker:it matters because I've got the metrics and I can say that and that
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:is the point isn't it? It's like we shouldn't
Speaker:feel shame about doing any of those things.
Speaker:No,
Speaker:no. And so, I mean, this actually leads well into that.
Speaker:So I finished my program and I was like,
Speaker:well, I really want me and my kids to,
Speaker:like, I want us to stay in London and I need to figure out my path.
Speaker:And...
Speaker:the idea of going to work for somebody else.
Speaker:I tried it for a hot minute. I thought about it and I was like,
Speaker:first of all, statistically, no one hires an entrepreneur.
Speaker:And then on top of being an entrepreneur,
Speaker:I had just done my degree in entrepreneurship.
Speaker:So it was like, I can't even hide it.
Speaker:So I'm like,
Speaker:I'll have it your CV at that point.
Speaker:yeah, like I can't hide it. So I...
Speaker:was just like, okay, to the drawing board,
Speaker:what's that next business? Which was the whole plan anyways.
Speaker:And as I sat in it,
Speaker:I did, I mean, I was in overwhelming burnout,
Speaker:which is what Bollie was.
Speaker:I'm going to be super honest because I love honesty and transparency.
Speaker:I was at the point in my old business where I would see a pregnant person
Speaker:or a baby and feel grossed out.
Speaker:And I was like, ooh, that's not healthy.
Speaker:Like, that's not good. And I literally remember being like,
Speaker:can, I know the spot. I was standing on the street in Bali a few months into being
Speaker:in there and I called my sister and I said,
Speaker:I just saw a fat, cute baby. I'm going to be okay.
Speaker:And I just, you know, it's like,
Speaker:it's just like the only answer to overwhelm is nothing,
Speaker:right? Is nothingness. And so I had a little resistance into going back into
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:the pregnancy, birth world.
Speaker:I had thought I'd go, let's go perimenopause.
Speaker:You know, I was like, let's follow my hormonal journey.
Speaker:And then I just woke up and I was like,
Speaker:or just do what you're an expert in.
Speaker:You don't have to study it. You don't have to learn more.
Speaker:You don't have to prove yourself.
Speaker:You've already proven yourself.
Speaker:You're already an expert in this field.
Speaker:Go build what you needed. Go build what you needed.
Speaker:And as I took a moment to research,
Speaker:and I knew the visa options, right?
Speaker:And I was like, actually, this new business idea is innovative.
Speaker:What if I look at this innovator visa route?
Speaker:I just studied this, I had a good,
Speaker:know, it's like we learned about innovation in entrepreneurship.
Speaker:So I came with a very fresh lens on like ideas and case studies and like,
Speaker:oh, innovation. So it was like up in here,
Speaker:twinkling. And the more I looked at it and sat with it and thought about
Speaker:it and talked to a few people,
Speaker:I was like, this actually doesn't exist here.
Speaker:Well, it actually doesn't exist anywhere.
Speaker:And then I had these very real moments of like...
Speaker:you're actually the industry leader.
Speaker:And as I'm doing this application,
Speaker:it revealed itself even more, like so in your frame,
Speaker:like when you're selling yourself to make it so that you and your kids
Speaker:can live somewhere, you're selling yourself and you can't lie.
Speaker:You know, you can't lie. You can't,
Speaker:you can't stretch it. So it's like how far like I have to be brutally honest.
Speaker:So you're just looking in the mirror in brutal honesty saying,
Speaker:yeah, yeah, guess what? I am the leading expert.
Speaker:Okay. And yeah, this doesn't exist.
Speaker:And in the innovator visa, you have to prove that it's an innovative idea,
Speaker:which means it doesn't exist. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist in,
Speaker:mean, innovation can mean many things,
Speaker:right? It can mean it exists in another country,
Speaker:not here, right? Or in another industry,
Speaker:not there. It can mean it doesn't exist anywhere.
Speaker:It can mean there's no market for it.
Speaker:Like it can mean all sorts of things.
Speaker:And then the next layer is you have to show that it's viable.
Speaker:And in that viability is proving that you're the person who can do it.
Speaker:So this is where you're like staring your own CV in the face and you're like,
Speaker:I mean, I can't hide it. just.
Speaker:I have to put all of me out there.
Speaker:It's a really great practice. so,
Speaker:and then the next layer is scalability.
Speaker:So you have to show the UK government that this can go beyond
Speaker:UK borders or.
Speaker:whatever scalability means in that the terms of your business,
Speaker:essentially that you can create UK jobs for UK citizens and a certain revenue.
Speaker:And you have three years to be like,
Speaker:okay, go and you have to.
Speaker:Wow, that's quite quick,
Speaker:three years. Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, monthly updates you have
Speaker:to update and then a 12 month review,
Speaker:a 24 month review and then at 36 months you have different criteria that you've
Speaker:agreed to. So mine is a certain amount of job creation and then feel like it's like
Speaker:500,000 in revenue. So I have three years to be 500,000 revenue and like some form
Speaker:of five UK citizen jobs. Like I'm bringing something to the
Speaker:UK and for that.
Speaker:I can live here and have a lot of freedoms for living here.
Speaker:You know, like I can build business.
Speaker:It's also as an entrepreneur, it's a great flame under your ass,
Speaker:right? Like, excuse my language.
Speaker:I swear a ton. I'm trying to be good,
Speaker:but there's a huge flame.
Speaker:on.
Speaker:And it also means that as you walk into developing the product,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:talk, walk into investors, you already have traction,
Speaker:right? I have the home office behind me.
Speaker:I mean, that's a cocky thing to be like,
Speaker:man, the home office believes in me.
Speaker:But I had to do a lot to prove that.
Speaker:Ha ha ha ha!
Speaker:Right. I did have to, I really,
Speaker:Yeah, I hear that.
Speaker:and, um, and part of that proof is my 15 years in the industry and then getting
Speaker:a master's at 45 with 13 years industry.
Speaker:Like that is, so I'm like proudly like,
Speaker:yeah, I proved it.
Speaker:And so what I do with that now,
Speaker:I love female founders. I love a mother entrepreneur.
Speaker:love a woman. I was thinking about doing my PhD and mother women
Speaker:who become entrepreneurs after mother mothering because the translation
Speaker:is so beautiful. Like entrepreneur,
Speaker:like all of these skills, like what your experience in the hospital,
Speaker:how that translates into business.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like, why aren't we putting that on your CV,
Speaker:right? Like, guess what? I sat in the hospital for two days.
Speaker:My boobs were, I was trying to do,
Speaker:like, that's a skill. Like, that's a real,
Speaker:Yeah, it is. It's humbling for sure.
Speaker:that, you, it's so,
Speaker:it's such a practice in self. And it,
Speaker:it's really an inhumanity. And in,
Speaker:risk or not risk or an imposter and not imposter in skill.
Speaker:It's a skill built like you built a skill.
Speaker:You learn something like so I love that translation.
Speaker:~
Speaker:There were some really
Speaker:interesting...
Speaker:of academics who look at that period of motherhood and that transition into
Speaker:entrepreneurship and the idea of this liminal period and this we're
Speaker:on a threshold it's one of the most kind of interesting kind of aspects
Speaker:of the feminine and feminist psychology that I've come across certainly
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:is this idea that it's very under
Speaker:researched how women find and use and scrape together these additional
Speaker:resources and if you think about entrepreneurship it's all about you know
Speaker:how do you make the most of what I would class as social capital these resources
Speaker:that we have and how do you capitalize on that and do it.
Speaker:tell me then the when I talk to you I get this like kind of vision
Speaker:of somebody who had you it feels to me like you have this huge kind of plan
Speaker:And it feels like this plan is quite concrete,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:but it's still going to change if it needs to.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:forgive me if I've got this wrong,
Speaker:but is it that the doula business that you're building is
Speaker:all about the infrastructure of doulas?
Speaker:Is that it? Is that what I'm
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah. So my so.
Speaker:ATX Duelist is my first business.
Speaker:It's in Austin. It's an in-person service based business.
Speaker:It's amazing. It's great. Still operating.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We've served probably about 6,000 women over the years.
Speaker:~ wow.
Speaker:I love it. And right now I'm onto another thing.
Speaker:They're not connected, but obviously there's over...
Speaker:It's like where my expertise comes from,
Speaker:right? So ~ that moment of like build what we needed is exactly that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's the infrastructure.
Speaker:how I'm like playing with how to explain it to the outside world is Think Hinge,
Speaker:which is a dating app, but it's a dating app with video.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:~ Yeah, video back and forth.
Speaker:Bye bye.
Speaker:an async, excuse me, an async video matchmaking tool that meets Google Suite.
Speaker:Okay. But less fragmented because I'm angry that how fragmented all
Speaker:of the Google workspaces, but that's close to what I can say it is.
Speaker:So I am like, let's be.
Speaker:the Google Suite and Hinge for doulas for the birth world.
Speaker:My passion, like through thread as a child that I can reflectively look on
Speaker:is I am so passionate about bringing visibility to invisible things.
Speaker:So this is in the doula world,
Speaker:like taking this invisible industry.
Speaker:and bringing visibility to it.
Speaker:And then my other passion is increasing satisfaction.
Speaker:I love some satisfaction. So in this case,
Speaker:it's increased birth satisfaction.
Speaker:So the doula side, we're getting visibility.
Speaker:The birth side, we're getting increased birth satisfaction.
Speaker:And the way we do that is the data.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So we create
Speaker:an infrastructure because the Dulas and parents deserve this.
Speaker:We create an infrastructure to professionalize the industry so all of them
Speaker:out there can hear us. Because if I go with the little bits of research out there,
Speaker:which we've all been doing for years,
Speaker:if I go to the NHS or to insurances or to this,
Speaker:and we're doing this like grassroots,
Speaker:like one to one,
Speaker:It takes what it took in Austin,
Speaker:you know, 10 years to become
Speaker:and.
Speaker:established. But if I can go in there and we have an industry leader
Speaker:who was practicing doula for 10 years,
Speaker:I've been to almost a hundred births myself.
Speaker:I'm the techie one in a non-techie world.
Speaker:And if I build it, I'm going to build it in community for us.
Speaker:Why shouldn't I build it?
Speaker:I know how to build it. I know what we need.
Speaker:I've already led these teams. Why would I let them build it?
Speaker:Why would I wait for them to build it and tell us what should be in there when
Speaker:I know, I know what they need to hear them being the,
Speaker:the, the world, right? Like NHS,
Speaker:medical, we need to grow this industry.
Speaker:Nobody is going to listen to us.
Speaker:They have not historically,
Speaker:I have no reason.
Speaker:to believe they will in the future.
Speaker:feel like it's a, hey, pat on the head,
Speaker:that's a cute little, birthy, soft thing.
Speaker:Y'all just run off and do this.
Speaker:But I can tell you that in my preliminary research,
Speaker:for every 1 % a C-section rate goes down in the NHS,
Speaker:they save five million pound.
Speaker:1 % c-section. Hey, it turns out we have enough research that shows doulas maybe
Speaker:decrease c-sections by 39%. That's huge.
Speaker:And we also know that in the UK,
Speaker:c-section rates have gone from about 25 % to about 45 % in 10 years.
Speaker:That's infrastructure. That's an industry issue.
Speaker:That's not us. Our bodies didn't just change.
Speaker:I knew it.
Speaker:And it would be remiss for us not to reflect on,
Speaker:you know, the maternity scandals in the UK.
Speaker:we look at the big reviews that have been happening.
Speaker:So I'm in the Midlands, so Nottinghamshire's had a big review.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And the maternal mental health service that I set up in Derbyshire
Speaker:was a direct result of the government attempting to patchwork this postnatal
Speaker:kind of support. The point being,
Speaker:the only reason you need such
Speaker:targeted psychological postnatal support as if people aren't supported
Speaker:in the earlier stages. know, ideally,
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:I mean, don't get me wrong, know,
Speaker:but childbirth is not easy. Childbirth is not all flowers and crocuses and whatever.
Speaker:It can be really tough and different women have different experiences.
Speaker:So we know that there will be women who will have what seems to
Speaker:be a textbook pregnancy, but will need psychological support out the other side.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You can have the most traumatic pregnancy and not need psychological support.
Speaker:It's not a very even kind of equation that that's just that's the human around
Speaker:No.
Speaker:it but the thing that I suppose I've got an awareness of is those attitudes
Speaker:so even when setting up the maternal mental health service even
Speaker:the attitudes between the psychologists and the midwives the midwives
Speaker:and nurses and nurses and GPs it's not an infrastructure that talks to each other
Speaker:in a very compassionate
Speaker:at way and it's really difficult to actually hear what we would have called
Speaker:the service user's voice which is you know the birth person or
Speaker:the birthing people so it feels to me that yeah you know what you're doing
Speaker:is just so incredibly important and I'm just curious then so what's your
Speaker:I mean I know what my experience of that world is from that more
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:NHS clinical side and it's very much from the management
Speaker:side, not on an operational level that's for sure.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But what's your impression of how dealers are treated in the UK and
Speaker:is it different to like Austin in Texas for example?
Speaker:Yeah. So
Speaker:I'm just, so I just also to be very,
Speaker:again, transparent. So this idea was September,
Speaker:October-ish time and really hit the ground running with it.
Speaker:So I'm really six or seven months into it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so my
Speaker:I'm still learning about the birth industry here.
Speaker:I see the stats. That's it. I've started a small founders founding members community
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:so that we can build within because again,
Speaker:like I need those voices as I develop the tools and as I move forward,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I want women who are in the trenches to be like,
Speaker:we don't care. We don't do it that way.
Speaker:Or this matters to us and not that.
Speaker:~ In the meetings that I've had with them,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:it very much reminds me of...
Speaker:the doula world in my early days in the,
Speaker:you know, 2011 to 13, 14, where nobody knew what a doula was.
Speaker:We'd walk into a hospital and a doctor,
Speaker:some doctors like, I don't work with doulas.
Speaker:We have to pretend we're a sister or a friend.
Speaker:And and we, you know, we had to really educate the system and educate doctors
Speaker:and show up and midwives and show up and just a lot of education of being like,
Speaker:but that's not
Speaker:We, you heard about this rogue doula.
Speaker:She did something medical. That's not being a doula.
Speaker:That's out of her scope. Like we don't,
Speaker:we don't want that. And in general,
Speaker:again, we're just, what I'm hearing mirrors what we were feeling back then
Speaker:in my early days, which is like,
Speaker:that's a cute little hobby. Okay.
Speaker:You know, and not being taken.
Speaker:And the feminist in me wants to just scream,
Speaker:this is why we devalue.
Speaker:This is absolutely why we don't value the role of parenting,
Speaker:What?
Speaker:you know, because we don't put value in it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, the other thing is like my feminist lens and my like patriarchy self
Speaker:is like, the problem is that we also have allowed it to be
Speaker:a solo practitioner world.
Speaker:And so this is what we did differently in Austin,
Speaker:which is we built a on-call rotation.
Speaker:well, you're always on that, but like,
Speaker:so two women, two doulas are on call every day.
Speaker:If when you hired us, you hired our team.
Speaker:Tuesday, you go into labor. The Tuesday the doula comes,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:we operate as community. It means that you can have a sick kid and your client,
Speaker:you don't have to struggle because someone's going to cover your shift
Speaker:and your client is going to, they're going to have a baby and be supported.
Speaker:And so.
Speaker:To me it's like, we have also done it as women,
Speaker:allowing this space for solo practitioner,
Speaker:right? And just saying, okay, I'll work within a silo.
Speaker:That one-on-one is more important than a group-on-one.
Speaker:Like, than group care? Community care?
Speaker:And I think that perpetuates some of...
Speaker:this too, because then you're always just showing up as yourself and
Speaker:you can only have been to so many births.
Speaker:You can only have so much bandwidth.
Speaker:You can only, only, only, and you don't have accountability.
Speaker:And when you're working in a group,
Speaker:then you're also just strong. Like we're just stronger together,
Speaker:you know, and you're learning from each other constantly and you're like,
Speaker:Oh, I didn't ever think of it that way.
Speaker:Or I have this experience. And so,
Speaker:I mean, really what I want to
Speaker:do with the doula hive, again with like this infrastructure is really strip that
Speaker:and be like can we all just do this together?
Speaker:I don't know exactly how that looks in some ways,
Speaker:like changing the whole language of this,
Speaker:we don't need to be in isolation.
Speaker:It's actually, mean, I think it's beautiful that the UK market is so small
Speaker:and is growing because then we can shape that tone,
Speaker:right? We can like, it's not established and we don't have to rip ideas away.
Speaker:We can grow forward in a new, we're a profession.
Speaker:We work in,
Speaker:not just shared marketing, not just backup dualists,
Speaker:but actually as a team.
Speaker:because also what I found in my past in Austin was that a lot of the practitioners,
Speaker:the OBs and the midwives, they actually trusted my group because we were
Speaker:a team and because there was accountability.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so they were like,
Speaker:I don't know who to recommend as a doula,
Speaker:so I just send them to ATX Doulas,
Speaker:right? And I know that there's some level of accountability.
Speaker:I know there's some level of trust and professionalism there.
Speaker:And so we need to come together as like doulas and be like,
Speaker:~ let's make this sustainable too.
Speaker:And part of that sustainability is having professional tools.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Do you
Speaker:see then the doula hive setting standards in the future around doulas
Speaker:for the UK? Is that something that you could see yourself moving into?
Speaker:like recently,
Speaker:the BBC did an expose on sleep experts,
Speaker:baby sleeping advice. some people do know what they're talking about
Speaker:and that's okay, you can pay them and get their advice,
Speaker:but it is an unregulated market.
Speaker:And so there is a risk that comes with that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So how do you navigate that as your infrastructure?
Speaker:That's a really
Speaker:great question. mean, ultimately we're a tech company,
Speaker:right? Like we're just tech. don't at this point,
Speaker:don't plan on if I hire doulas,
Speaker:it would be to hire to be like a community person or somebody who does whatever they
Speaker:do. And it's just that they have an expertise in doula work as well.
Speaker:So they can build,
Speaker:insight, like insider experience and expertise.
Speaker:I mean, my gut is like, don't think so.
Speaker:are some, there are other organizations that do not regulation,
Speaker:because it's not regulated. And I think there's a range of feelings about that.
Speaker:And I want us to stay focused as being a tech business,
Speaker:building the tech.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:to support everybody. However,
Speaker:I also am like, if that's what the market ends up needing,
Speaker:like we need to be flexible. you know,
Speaker:when you were like, I see you have this huge,
Speaker:big concrete idea, but it's flexible.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that's it is like it's all about iteration and listening to the market.
Speaker:I'm listening to you, I think...
Speaker:The thing that shines through for me is obviously,
Speaker:you you bring to this venture,
Speaker:this innovation, you know, a tried and tested way of working.
Speaker:You've also got that expertise.
Speaker:And then there are some other incredible women in the UK who have expertise,
Speaker:lived experience, And they have,
Speaker:they've gone on to do some amazing campaigning work.
Speaker:So one woman who, if you're not going
Speaker:who I absolutely think you should be is Laura Rose Thorogood and she is,
Speaker:I think she's actually CEO of Make Birth Better now or joint CEO but she's
Speaker:on a government committee now but she is also a founder of LGBT mummies
Speaker:of a community she's such an incredible person she came and did some training
Speaker:for our midwives
Speaker:and our psychologists when we set up our maternal mental health service because
Speaker:It was little things like just not understanding how to talk about birthing people
Speaker:rather than birthing mom or dad,
Speaker:Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Speaker:know, people because she covered the trans side.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And there was so much I suppose we just didn't get or know when
Speaker:we weren't doing right. And they're probably still not doing right.
Speaker:There's a long way to go. But people like that are doing so much,
Speaker:Right, absolutely.
Speaker:so much work.
Speaker:the report Five more. So women who are black are more likely
Speaker:to die during childbirth and they're more likely to not be offered things like pain
Speaker:relief.
Speaker:So
Speaker:there's all of these systemic issues which are very known.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think nobody knows how to fix all of them,
Speaker:in building an infrastructure,
Speaker:you have a platform to connect with these people and to,
Speaker:you know, what does the future look like if everyone comes together?
Speaker:But also in building an infrastructure,
Speaker:it's not going to work unless it attacks some of these or upends some
Speaker:of these systemic issues.
Speaker:Yeah, I
Speaker:mean, think that's all of this is in the guise of collecting data,
Speaker:right? Like the whole life cycle of how a doula bridges that gap and like
Speaker:all of what she's doing and also how it's affecting like.
Speaker:maternal morbidity. So we have these studies,
Speaker:Now, how are the actual doulas making a difference?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Who's measuring that? Nobody is measuring,
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:or maybe somebody's measuring that.
Speaker:but what if I can create
Speaker:a whole infrastructure that can collect the whole life cycle?
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And
Speaker:then we can say, wait a minute,
Speaker:it's so interesting. Every doula's had this experience.
Speaker:So interesting. You go to your OB,
Speaker:you call your doula crying because all of it was fear based and your baby's going
Speaker:to die. And then you get off your phone with your doula and you're like,
Speaker:~ the world is okay. Now, what if I can capture all of those moments?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What does that say? Or what if we can capture exactly what you're talking about?
Speaker:Like, we actually do see
Speaker:less inclusive areas or non-inclusive So I'm not exactly sure how that's going
Speaker:to unfold, but that's the big picture is that nobody actually cares by
Speaker:my telling a story about my experience this one time off.
Speaker:What I need is to show the story and the through thread of how the whole system,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:of all of the systemic problems and
Speaker:to support those research, those bits of research that are out there.
Speaker:Say, great, this research shows this,
Speaker:and now we know that this woman,
Speaker:these doulas, this industry has better outcomes.
Speaker:And we've tracked it, we just have it,
Speaker:here you go. and just turn.
Speaker:So there are a few studies, I've just had a quick search and there
Speaker:was a scoping review about the effects of doulas on maternal and birth outcomes they
Speaker:did a data study so that wasn't looking at qualitative experience,
Speaker:They've measured things like reduced cesarean sections,
Speaker:as you said, which we know, premature deliveries,
Speaker:Yep. Yep.
Speaker:length of labour reduced,
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:breastfeeding success is a big one,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:isn't it? And quicker lactogenesis,
Speaker:I don't know what lactogenesis is.
Speaker:It's a new word for me, I've not heard that before.
Speaker:That is a new word for me too.
Speaker:actually, I bet that is, let's just guess,
Speaker:for your milk to come down, right?
Speaker:I'm gonna have to look it up. lactogenesis is
Speaker:That's my guess.
Speaker:the biological process by which mammary glands develop the ability
Speaker:to secrete your milk coming in.
Speaker:Yeah, basically. Yeah, you were right,
Speaker:of course.
Speaker:Yay!
Speaker:We're done here, thank you,
Speaker:But this is part of the challenge,
Speaker:isn't it? It
Speaker:takes a whole community of women who are not quite
Speaker:in that clinical space to translate a lot of this into,
Speaker:this is what we mean by this, this is the actual impact and this is the effect.
Speaker:I'm so curious to see how you're going to measure stuff as well,
Speaker:because I think that is going to be key.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And
Speaker:you can actually go and look at some of the existing research This interview
Speaker:is obviously about risk and
Speaker:it makes sense because the innovation idea that you have reduces risk
Speaker:for women and for children. one of the things that this paper that I've just given
Speaker:says is that, know, doulas will mitigate health disparities for women from different
Speaker:socioeconomic levels. you you are actually in the business of being a risk reducer.
Speaker:But what I am interested in is what does risk actually look
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:for you because giving everything up,
Speaker:traveling 36 different countries,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:going to Bali, I mean I think I'm too risk-averse to do stuff like that what would
Speaker:risk have to look like for you to feel risky?
Speaker:You know, one thing that I've said to you is like,
Speaker:yes, stagnation is the biggest risk for me.
Speaker:Like that's far riskier. And, um,
Speaker:actually my mom called me, my mom's maybe in a nursing home.
Speaker:We're kind of moving into that phase right now.
Speaker:She called me right before you,
Speaker:before this. And she was like,
Speaker:what are you doing today? And I was like,
Speaker:Oh, I'm going to be on this podcast.
Speaker:And, um, and told her, you know,
Speaker:for style, like I was like, it's about risk and this and,
Speaker:and it was really sweet because she was just,
Speaker:I'm going to, I might get
Speaker:but she's like, I'm just so proud of you.
Speaker:You went from being a high school dropout to,
Speaker:you went to university after you had Shima's and then onto your masters
Speaker:and you're doing this and I'm just really proud.
Speaker:And my mom came here for my graduation in January,
Speaker:so I was 46 and she's 76. also,
Speaker:side note, my mom went to UC Berkeley while I was a kid,
Speaker:so academics are very important.
Speaker:And she was so proud of me to watch me cross the stage,
Speaker:know, at 46 with my kids here.
Speaker:And so three generations of girl,
Speaker:like I have a daughter and then,
Speaker:and...
Speaker:And it dawned on me that she didn't have,
Speaker:this is, I mean, I'm gonna use the word luxury here,
Speaker:which feels a little bit extreme.
Speaker:She didn't have the luxury in my childhood to just be proud.
Speaker:Like I was like, I think she never got a moment to just kind of sit back
Speaker:and be proud of her kids, right?
Speaker:Again, like moments you learn as a mom.
Speaker:We don't
Speaker:think of Pride
Speaker:I mean one of the things that kind of strikes me is you this big observer
Speaker:of the world and you you've said yourself you know you're big on reflection that
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:is the luxury isn't it you have that luxury of being able to kind
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:of reflect and that is another way of being proud of ourselves or past decisions
Speaker:Yeah, it's
Speaker:Reflection is a gift.
Speaker:it's just the reality is my husband and I were going through some tough times.
Speaker:He was having a big midlife crisis going on and he had a big good career.
Speaker:Like he had the perfect American dream life.
Speaker:I was testing out the white picket fence life.
Speaker:It was new. had, I had my kid and then,
Speaker:um, we had kids when I was in my mid thirties and it was a
Speaker:different lifestyle for me and I was trying it out and it was working-ish,
Speaker:know, question mark. And midlife crisis stuff started coming about
Speaker:and we were spiraling and I had anxiety for the first time in my life and I was,
Speaker:you know, driving from the grocery store and my daughter would scream in
Speaker:the car and I was pulling over on the side of the road.
Speaker:and like being like, I cannot hear anything.
Speaker:I cannot hear. I cannot hear myself.
Speaker:And I was just like, we need to stop this.
Speaker:Like this needs to stop. If we stay here,
Speaker:we get divorced. I hate you. You hate me,
Speaker:but actually you hate me because of your own guilt and shame.
Speaker:I get financially super
Speaker:security
Speaker:because of the situation. I'm good and I have
Speaker:no geographical freedom.
Speaker:and I have what looks like a good life from the outside.
Speaker:I'm not a very quiet person, so I'd be sharing anyways.
Speaker:And I'd probably just get a job and do life and let my kids finish
Speaker:up with growing up. That's it.
Speaker:And I was just like, that doesn't...
Speaker:work for me at all. And I was like,
Speaker:need, we need to go.
Speaker:and get quiet for a year and sell our house.
Speaker:We couldn't afford to keep the house and rent it.
Speaker:I was like, I don't want it. I want to start from scratch.
Speaker:I want us to build whatever we need to build and we'll go work on this marriage.
Speaker:Either we'll neatly package it up to let it end or we'll package it up
Speaker:to keep move it forward. I don't really know.
Speaker:I don't have the answer. I don't know.
Speaker:and just going in this trust of unknowing,
Speaker:right? And had we stayed there,
Speaker:we would have maintained. We would have,
Speaker:we would have, it would be fine.
Speaker:Life would be fine. He would have figured it out.
Speaker:Life would be fine. My kids would have a great life,
Speaker:they think. It would be fine. ~ But,
Speaker:Fine a funny word, isn't it?
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:fine person. And what came of that was,
Speaker:you
Speaker:no, I want to get my masters. I want to move to London.
Speaker:I don't want to raise these two more kids in the US right now.
Speaker:London makes sense because careers for him,
Speaker:English speaking for the kids,
Speaker:they're going...
Speaker:What was
Speaker:it though? What was it about leaving the US and what was it about England?
Speaker:I mean I'm from the UK so I think it's amazing.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I... travel is just like, I'm just doing an explore first and foremost and...
Speaker:again another like I don't know reflectively it's like Tiff was crazy
Speaker:in all the best ways but when I was when my son when I was 19 and my
Speaker:son was seven months old I backpacked through Europe for five weeks with
Speaker:him and stayed in hostels and I like nursed my baby on the bottom bunk
Speaker:and it was just like I needed to go I needed to see the world I needed
Speaker:to understand who I was in the world by seeing the world and on that
Speaker:trip I was like on the Mediterranean obviously and like walked out and
Speaker:was just like I need to go to uni so I went home afterwards
Speaker:and started university from being a high school dropout
Speaker:and I knew as a teenager and along the ways that I didn't want
Speaker:my life to just be in the US like I needed to see bigger and more and hence
Speaker:all the travel.
Speaker:So it just felt like in this moment of transition,
Speaker:I'm a big believer, especially with kids,
Speaker:like while you're in transition,
Speaker:transition. So like if you're moving houses and you probably should
Speaker:be body training, just potty train while you move houses because they don't know
Speaker:that the new house doesn't allow you to pee in the bed.
Speaker:Only you know that. You're like,
Speaker:this house only lets you pee in the potty and they just believe you,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Hahaha
Speaker:And it's like, so it's like, I actually see like transition.
Speaker:So this is like that momentum and that risk moment is actually a beautiful place
Speaker:to go a little further, to do a little bit more.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And the US was always going to be there.
Speaker:London just made sense as like,
Speaker:this would be good for a few years.
Speaker:And again, what's the worst case?
Speaker:London is always for
Speaker:So for me, like that risk of ripping it all,
Speaker:like literally burning it all to the ground.
Speaker:It's what birthed.
Speaker:like geographical freedom. It's what birthed me,
Speaker:me being able to come back into my own and hearing myself,
Speaker:which makes me a better mother and a better ex-wife.
Speaker:And it...
Speaker:it birthed this like I'm I'm completely like I'm I'm just coming to terms with this
Speaker:but like I'm in a flow state with my business and with life which you
Speaker:do hear about women in their like midlife and like where they're at
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:in that whereas like they start hitting it like they're just like and I've been
Speaker:in enough rooms recently and I'm getting cocky enough to be like yeah every single
Speaker:person is like you're inspiring my god this is amazing you're just like you're
Speaker:beaming you're going for it like like it's it's
Speaker:It
Speaker:actually just keeps happening to me to be like,
Speaker:yeah, that's just what's going on and I own it.
Speaker:I'm going
Speaker:to give you a different phrase to kind of
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, please.
Speaker:sit alongside flow state. And it's this idea of you're in a sublime experience.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Now, I came across this because a sublime experience,
Speaker:Eww.
Speaker:we think, similar probably to flow.
Speaker:But for you, it makes more sense because it kind of sits with that idea
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:of people who have experienced deep histories,
Speaker:which you've
Speaker:a deep history but also have encountered vast landscapes and traveled
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:and they say that people who do that have that sensation of knowing what
Speaker:it likes to feel small. It allows you to sit in yourself,
Speaker:reduces the ego but it gives you that greater sense of connection to the world.
Speaker:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker:I was talking to somebody the other day and explaining the doula hive
Speaker:and like my vision and my traction and all my experience.
Speaker:And I was like, yeah, I mean, I just,
Speaker:so in general, I just, I would rather increase the birth experience for
Speaker:a lot of women than make two women have an amazing experience.
Speaker:And there's a place for both of those.
Speaker:Yeah, I get it.
Speaker:That's totally a place for it,
Speaker:right? Like I'm not knocking any which way.
Speaker:that's my where I'm at and I said to this person I was like I'm gonna
Speaker:I'm gonna affect a million people's lives and then I was like I like literally like
Speaker:looked back at myself and I was like what and then I looked at that person
Speaker:I was like yeah I'm gonna affect a million people's lives with this I've already
Speaker:But it'd be really interesting to look at the
Speaker:data points to work out where does the ripple effect start with that
Speaker:one million lives because two or three actions could ripple down to get
Speaker:you that one million within so many months and you can work that data out.
Speaker:So the geeky science is kind of going,
Speaker:Yeah, I love the geeky. I know you're like.
Speaker:I already want to know which data points are you going to measure?
Speaker:You know, who can help you capture that?
Speaker:What in-
Speaker:When you build that infrastructure,
Speaker:mean,
Speaker:that's the thing is like at my,
Speaker:other business, which is a service we've affected around six,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:we've had around six, six thousand clients,
Speaker:which is birth and postpartum in courses.
Speaker:So I know I've affected all of these lives,
Speaker:right? A hundred percent know that,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:but building tech infrastructure.
Speaker:Yeah. It's just like, so now this woman can have the admin parts of
Speaker:her life easier that make this,
Speaker:make that make this. And it's just like,
Speaker:and then.
Speaker:and where you measure it, like,
Speaker:it just kind of keeps going. I love that you said ripple effect.
Speaker:I was just having lunch with my friend yesterday who has a podcast,
Speaker:The Ripple Effect. so it was like,
Speaker:wow! ~
Speaker:it accidentally came up in our conversation.
Speaker:was like, it's the ripple effect.
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:And then we both giggled because we're like,
Speaker:that's you. Yeah, but it's true.
Speaker:The ripple effects are nice, aren't they?
Speaker:It's so
Speaker:funny. Yeah.
Speaker:But where does that start, right?
Speaker:When you
Speaker:have a life of impact and a life of service and a life that actually
Speaker:you have worked the through thread,
Speaker:my, I'm down to being.
Speaker:My birth, like I did some memoir writing courses some years ago.
Speaker:So, you know, I worked through some story.
Speaker:I love some story also. And my mom had two vaginal births and then me and
Speaker:I was a C-section and it's always been odd to me.
Speaker:And then when I worked in birth for so long,
Speaker:I was like, this doesn't line up.
Speaker:Like it's very rare. Like.
Speaker:it's odd. And then I was like,
Speaker:oh, because she's like, oh, it's just exhausting.
Speaker:I was like, oh, your baby me was probably OP.
Speaker:Like I, you know, I get into my like physiology of it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And and one of the little essays I wrote started with like something
Speaker:I'm not going to say it as eloquently as like.
Speaker:I've been challenging my mom since she gave birth,
Speaker:where she wanted me to go down and under,
Speaker:I like that, yeah.
Speaker:and I decided to come out and like up and out.
Speaker:And that's, it's so indicative of our relationship and like me being
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:in control and power and her looking up to me.
Speaker:And it's very indicative of our relationship.
Speaker:And so to me, it's like, that just,
Speaker:did the ripple effect actually just start then?
Speaker:Like, I don't know.
Speaker:And that moment you've had with your mom today,
Speaker:and
Speaker:you know that she's proud of you.
Speaker:That's so amazing, isn't it? I think what you're doing is so needed,
Speaker:So proud.
Speaker:as I said at the start, what you're doing with the dealer hive
Speaker:and where you're going with this innovation.
Speaker:And we need people, we need entrepreneurs,
Speaker:we need women entrepreneurs, mothers,
Speaker:who have all of these amazing skills in being able to use resources
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:in this most challenging and interesting way.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:liminal period for you. I am describing it,
Speaker:it feels sublime that you're here right now and doing what you're doing.
Speaker:I will be following what you're doing with so much interest.
Speaker:So I can't wait to hear.
Speaker:Thank you. It's really, I'm so excited.
Speaker:I'm like, I'm just, I'm so excited.
Speaker:I have so much energy for it.
Speaker:bit.
Speaker:Thank you so much for being a guest on Psychologically Speaking.
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:I'm going to have a job to edit this one down,
Speaker:that's for sure, but it's been amazing to have you on here.
