We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tabitha Morrison. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tabitha below.

Hi Tabitha , thanks for joining us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

I had hired a new mom relationship coach, but the coaching relationship turned into new mom relationship plus business and life in general. Working with her inspired me to quit my job and start working with my passion, to help other parents but the idea of finding clients was daunting. I finished my doula training and basically had to fend for myself. People from my prior job knew I was a doula and then I advertised all over my social media. One day, I got an inquiry from someone on Instagram. Someone who found me organically. We scheduled to meet at Starbucks. I arrived early to get my documents in order and feel like I had it all together, but then she was late….like really late. I thought I was going to get ghosted on my first organic interview. She finally made it and we laughed and bonded over astrology. I believe Mercury was in retrograde at the time, so the lateness was appropriate. She hired me and I remember supporting her at her birth and having a very vivid moment of deja vu. That was exactly where I was supposed to be in that moment in time, I’d had the “vision” months earlier and it all tied together. She actually got pregnant around the time I was pregnant with my second, our due dates were just a few days apart so unfortunately I couldn’t support her again but we still chat to this day.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’m a lifetime student. I feel like that sums me up pretty well. I joined the Air Force Reserves when I was 17 and worked my way through college from 2014 to 2017. I have 2 associate degrees (4 if you include the degrees I earned in the USAF) and a bachelors. Oddly enough, my associates are in psychology and education and my bachelor’s is in human resource management so they actually tie into what I do now pretty well. I was working for the Department of Defense for 4 years when I decided to jump into birth work head first. It was the biggest risk I had ever taken in my entire life. I didn’t even tell my close family until I had already put my notice in at work. I didn’t want to hear any negativity or doubt, my mind had to be made up.

Like most people who get into the birth world, it started with my own pregnancy, birth and postpartum journey. It’s morphed into something so extraordinary special today that I honestly couldn’t have dreamed it when I took the leap in 2019. It started off with birth support and today, I have a business partner and we offer childbirth education, various workshops, lactation support, and photography. In September, we turned into a doula agency and brought a contractor on to help us support more families.

Our team really focuses on education. We believe that being educated on your journey in pregnancy, birth and postpartum helps combat traumatic experiences. As doulas, our job is to provide physical, mental, and emotional support but also informational support and advocacy. We cannot sit back and watch trauma unfold, it’s not fair to our clients. We would love to see more collaborative care in the birth space and beyond. Not all doulas operate like we do, we enter the birth space and aren’t afraid to talk with the provider, nurses and other hospital staff. We want our clients voice to be heard and we want doulas to be viewed as a valuable part of the team because that is what the statistics tell us. We are an integral part of the birth team.

We focus on education for our clients but also for ourselves. This year, I’ve attended 2 conferences put on by GOLD lactation. The one I’m just finishing up is all about Tongue Ties. Our team saw that we were running into this over and over again, so we knew we had to beef up our knowledge to better support our clients and help them navigate this is a new parent. My business partner, Bria, is finishing up a Lamaze conference this week. We are constantly reviewing the evidence and doing research for clients to provide quality information and resources.

This year, we also added photography as a service both birth and lifestyle. It’s been a fun way to keep up with clients after we attend their births and finish our postpartum support with them. I’m excited to see what 2023 brings for growth and offerings.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

The Instagram algorithm brought Bria and I together in 2019. We found each other in our DM’s often and we were always talking about birth or cheering each other on. It was the Spring or Summer of 202o when we finally met in person. I told my husband we were off to meet my friend Bria…who I met on Instagram. Needless to say, he was a bit taken aback by our dinner plans at their house. It went really well and our relationship continued to grow. We were both pregnant at the same time, me with my second child and her with her third baby. We decided since we were already backing up for one another and constantly chatting about birth and business we should make it official! We started building Bright Earth Doulas while we were “on maternity leave” and 2022 has been amazing!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

In 2020, when we knew we were going to announce our partnership I immediately started creating content. The goal as to create a brand and give really good education to our audience. Today, I try to plan content out at the beginning of each week. It’s fun and educational for the most part but sometimes a bit more serious just due to the nature of our work. If you go to our Instagram @brightearthdoulas you will quickly realize I do not take myself too seriously. What we really wanted people to take away from our social media is that they have choices in birth and to get educated on it before they are in a vulnerable space.

For those starting out I would say not to get caught up on follower numbers. Create quality consistent content and the followers will come. Also, become rooted in what you are doing and why you are doing. What is your goal? My goal has always been that if I can just help one person then my efforts have been successful. Celebrate everything.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brightearthdoulas.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightearthdoulas/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightearthdoulas

Image Credits
Tabitha Morrison