77 | Lactation Work is Not for the Faint of Heart

Annie: Well, hey there Leah.

Leah: Hey Annie. How are you?

Annie: I'm good. I've been mulling on something. I've met a lot of new people this year because my kids are like, Finally in real school. School and we're meeting the parents and I had somebody ask me recently, so what do you do for work? And you laugh, I see you laughing. I feel like anybody listening to this podcast is already laughing because you know, like what happens when you're like, oh my gosh, and now I have to tell you what I do for a living and I don't know how you're gonna react to that, but also, I don't even know how to explain to you what I do. Right?

Leah: Yeah. Just saying I'm a lactation consultant. They're a hundred percent not gonna know the depth and breadth of what we do in our job. Totally. And you just sit there like hold your breath for a second. Like, okay, are they gonna ask questions? Are they gonna just be like, oh that's interesting, or like what?

Annie: Or are they gonna unload their own like breastfeeding grief on you and trauma? Or tell you some terrible story that they heard? You just have to be. Ah, okay.

Leah: Yeah. Interesting.

Annie: Let's not talk about this anymore. Let's talk about your job now. . Or they'll be like, oh my gosh, that, that must be so fun. Great job you have And and I think like when I hear fun them say that, I'm like, oh, they think my job is easy. Right. In your, especially if they had an easy time with Google it babies and show the mom. how to position and like walk out the door and be like, y'all are golden. Yeah. Yeah. So much more than that. And then the other whole other side of it is like, yeah, we have all this, you know, work that we do like as a lactation consultant, but if you're a private practice owner, you wear this whole other 25 hats on top of them, just being a lactation consultant, which is hard enough. Like that in itself is really challenging.

Annie: I was thinking through. Characters on the office, and I'm like, okay. I think I have a job that corresponds to every single character on the office, except for maybe Ryan the temp, but sometimes I feel like Ryan, the temp. I just wanna like, Run away and party Yes. To not have to think about it.

Leah: Like none of this is actually my responsibility. I'll just go into like, pretend that I don't care about any of this mode for a little bit. Yeah, I could, I could relate to that.

Annie: but like we talk about like we're the CEO of a company. I am the owner of City Lactation. You're the owner of Bay Area breastfeeding. We are the CEO. Like if you were gonna do an org chart, we're at the top, we're the ones making all the decisions and like, but we're not just like sitting in a room making decisions. And we started talking when we were prepping for this episode, and we're just gonna run through all of the different jobs that we are doing and that we know that you're doing. So what's, what's the first job that the CEO is also doing?

Leah: It's probably the thing that I hate the most is what I thought of first, which was being like a bookkeeper because I hate everything. Accounting, bookkeeping, managing money in money out. Like, no, that's not my job. But it is my job.

Annie: Yeah, unfortunately, sadly, it is. I do outsource my bookkeeping and I have now for a couple of years because I am so bad at it, but I still have to put all of the stuff together. Same for our accountant. It's not like I'm not involved hands off at all.

Leah: Yeah, you're never gonna be hands off of any of these jobs. Even if you have somebody helping you, you will never be hands off of any of the jobs. We are about to list. ,

Annie: If you are hands off for any of the jobs we're about to list, please tell us how. And we'll have you in for a deeper dive and you can share all of your wisdom with us, cuz we need to learn from you. Right? I am also not great at being a designer. So I had Hope Lima make my logo for me, for my city lactation. But then I have to like, put it on the website. Like I don't know how big it's supposed to be. Like what font am I supposed to use? Like, does this even go with what I'm trying to do? And then we're. Talking with my independent contractor and my intern like, oh, we should make rack cards. And I'm like, I think I just wanna run away. I open up Canva and my brain just scribbles.

Leah: I know I'm definitely not a visual like designing person I can see and look at it and be like, I don't know. My eyes don't like that. But I don't know if that's because like it's not aesthetically appealing or my eyes just like a certain level of order or something. I definitely do not. And so even though I might have a graphic designer go and make something like a rat card for me, they're like, okay, what do you think? I don't know. My eyes don't hate it, but I don't know if this is like. Good or not good? It's so that part is so hard for me. And then the website stuff, it's like, I might have to go in and change things, but like you, I'm like, should it be this font? Should it be that font? Who would anybody in this whole planet care? Or will they all be like, gee, if she had just made it a different font, I would actually use this practice, but this font is offensive to me. I don't know. That stresses me out so much. And I just like, like you, I'm just like, I just wanna run away like somebody else. Deal with it. But then they ask me,

Annie: What do you think? I dunno. I dunno. And I feel like for website design, I mean it's something I feel more comfortable with than graphic design, but that's because I use Squarespace and. It's all blocks. Like I don't have to like worry about that. It, it got like not aligned. I built a website for somebody who was using Wix and it allowed me too much flex flexibility and I was like, oh no. Like everything is not lined up. Like the center line is not straight. And then it took me like forever to do it. But like when I was building websites for people, I was the classic example of the cobbler's children have no shoes because my own website was just languishing. At one point I had like a two page website and I was like, uh, it's fine. It's fine. Are people booking? It's fine. Nobody, but like, I do want it to look pretty and then I forget to update it. And so like old, that's my issue is still on there. And, and they, she was like, um, I'm still on your website and I don't work for you anymore. And I was like, oh, I should probably say sorry about that someday.

Leah: I mean that's like another thing that you have to like keep in your brain of like all the times that you need to update it and like nobody else in the whole world is thinking of that, but you like nobody else is gonna be like, oh yeah, I, I should do that. The other thing that I think is really challenging, and I know we've talked about this before on the podcast, is you have to be the supply chain director. Like making sure that the supplies needed for you, like so you don't run outta gloves, you have to coordinate all your supply chains or shipments, arrive at the right time and get actually two your vehicle into your bag. There is no other person other than you directing you. To do those steps. And I apparently am not easy to manage. So, like I'm the manager's nightmare, I think. So directing myself is sometimes really challenging, and making sure I have all those supplies and a system to make sure I have all those supplies.

Annie: I can come up with the system, but can I implement my system? Right. No, I made the. Beautiful spreadsheet for us to keep track of all of our flange inserts. Yeah. And nipple shields and like every side. And where they came from, it's still blank except for, it'll be like, we have seven small cherry dipple shields. That's probably, that's only ever used. But I think it's also not true because I'm not, I'm like probably gave one away and didn't write it down. And then it's crazy. I'm like this would work really well if we actually did it. And I actually also, speaking of gloves, did a home visit last week where I was wearing two different glove. Cause that was all that I had in my home visit bag cuz I had forgotten to restock my gloves. Which if anybody that's been listening to this podcast for any amount of time knows that this is, that the first time.

Leah: This is a chronic issue, I'm gonna talk to your supply chain director and see if they can manage you a little bit better on that one.

Annie: I would like to fire her, but she seems to have some kind of tenure in my company. I don't know.

Leah: She probably has someone in with the HR department.

Annie: She does. My HR department has very poor boundaries and has really bad policies when it comes to things like time off. My HR department seems to be like, no, you don't get any time off. No, what do you mean you wanna only work a certain number of hours today? I don't think so. You don't have any rights. You don't have anyone to complain to.

Leah: It's so true. And like when it comes to HR stuff, Thinking of all the little things like, I don't know, in Texas we have to have this HIPAA compliance course training. You know, you have to like, gotta make sure it's up to date for everybody and gotta like, you know, only you, only you are gonna think of that. And only you, I mean, thank God I have it on my calendar, but you know, it's like nobody else is gonna care about that. And only you, you, the HR department are gonna have to remember that and then take all the stupid steps.I mean, it took. 20, 30 minutes, like check everybody's certificate and look at dates and da da, and get an email out. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, ugh. It's just so crazy how intricate all of the pieces of our jobs are, you know? And then I guess this is the, my second like least favorite job is like accounts receivable. And that might be up there at the top because I hate everything to do with asking anybody for money.

Annie: That one is the worst for me too. It just really strikes and it's entirely about. The insurance companies. So when they mess up or, and then I have to charge the clients and like, I'm like, on the one hand I have my bookkeepers and the accounts receivable department saying, you know, you need to collect all the money, this money. And then I've got my PR director saying, but what about, what about the image that you're putting out there? Do you want people to think you're really just in this for money? Is it really, does $30 really matter to you more? Your perception and how people are viewing you, and it's like, can you two stop fighting and arguing and make this, and then your customer service?

Leah: Yeah. Your customer service team jumps in and tells you how upset the customers are actually going to be and that they are gonna have to spend time sending emails, making phone calls, and sending reminder texts.

Annie: I know my customer service department is a soft touch, by the way.

Leah: They're like, oh, okay, well that's fine. Everything's fine. Oh my goodness. I definitely feel like the customer service piece of it. Uh, I am in the, just make everybody happy. Department of Customer Service and yeah, so my team is definitely just like whatever will keep everyone happy is what we'll be doing moving forward, which is maybe not the best. My team is really like boundaryless.

Annie: Mine is also, and then the CEO side of me kicks in and the CEO side of me is like, why are you letting all of these people get away with all of these shenanigans that are like dragging you down? When I'm a CEO, I should be floating. on a floaty in a pool with a pina colada in my hand, like with a Bluetooth speaker in my ear, like headphone being like rolling calls, like, get me this person on the line. Actually, I want a magazine, like that's what a C e O should be living like. I should be flying first class around the world, not having to manage this team of chuckleheads. That seems out to destroy me.

Leah: Totally and, and it's like me and my IT department really have a thing going because the only skill that my IT department has is to turn it off and back on. That's the only thing when you call help desk, literally the only thing they will tell you to do, turn it off, turn it back on. I got nothing else for you, and then I'm drowning after that.

Annie: My IT department gave me the wrong cord for my microphone for this podcast episode that we were recording today. It took my IT department five minutes, like five minutes to realize that that the one I was holding two different cords, the one that was plugged into my microphone, the other one that was plugged into my computer and they weren't actually touching each other. Yeah, my IT department is like a fail most of the time fail. Right.

Leah: But HR’s not gonna do a dang thing about it. Right.

Annie: I just complain and complain and complain and they. File it away, and I think the office manager, I think the office manager is getting mail and just letting it sit, unopened. Uns scanned and unresponded to, I'm pretty sure. That's what's happening in my, my office manager's department.

Leah: Yeah, I think my office manager just gave up. She found a folder that said, look at this later, and literally just puts every single thing that comes in the mail into the, look at this later file, which is not helpful. When you never open or look at this later, five mill seems to be the important part of that system actually playing out in a positive way.

Annie: What is my office manager even doing all day is my office manager, like out getting Starbucks. I don't know. Maybe not for me. certainly, certainly not responding to these very important incoming correspondences that don't ever stop coming by mail. I don't want any mail. Maybe she doesn't wanna open the envelopes cuz she doesn't wanna get a paper cut and have to deal with that. I don't know, it's nuts. HR department, I mean, really? Yes. They could really be solving this all for me.

Leah: I mean, at least our sales are doing pretty good. The sales team seems to be able to get the consults in and rolling. So I mean, I gotta give 'em some props for that. But they're pushing really hard on social media department and I feel like the social media department is definitely not up to par when it comes to the new algorithms. All the things because apparently we're all supposed to be making reels and stories. Super fun, exciting things. And the social media, they're just stagnant. Post stagnant post friends. That's all you get?

Annie: Yeah, my social media department doesn't seem to have a lot of time. This is my social, I will say this is my social media department for city lactation, not for paperless lactation. Yes, you have. Because I have an amazing person that does that social media and it, she's, her name is Allie Reynolds and she's awesome. And I literally do nothing. That's my kind of social media department. That's not what's happening at City lactation. City lactation. There's no social media happening for city lactation. I think if you go on there, it'll be something like pre-pandemic maybe. No, I think, I think it might have been like announcing that we moved into our office, which was almost a year ago.

Leah: I definitely have to say for my social media department, we got a really great upgrade because my intern took over and she's that age group that's like super savvy on social media. So I actually started to have stories now, which is really super fun. I'm like, oh my gosh, I feel like I'm my social media department. Definitely got a boost and that's definitely helping in a lot of ways. But if it's up to me, It's not gonna happen because I always forget, I always get home and I'm like, dang it, I was gonna take a picture today. I was gonna do that well cause that I could never remember.

Annie: That’s the fun part. I want to only have the fun jobs and Right. The jobs that I'm actually passionate about, like. Working with the families, like if I could just be a lactation consultant working for city lactation, that would be amazing. Like I know, I feel like cuz I, I will do everything for my independent contractors that I will not do for myself. Like I will make sure crazy, I won't support their boundaries. I will make sure they have, they get paid. I will make sure they get time off. I will make sure they have the supplies that they need. Exactly. I'm not, I'm not actually like checking to make sure like she just tells me I need these and I get them for her. I'm not actually checking, like, do we have any in the back? I don't. I mean, I don't know what's in the back. I have this box at our office Yes. In the back that I'm just like, I don't even wanna look in there. It's full of, full of nipple shields, I'm sure. Yeah. But like the dumb things and they're not dumb. They're so important, but they feel dumb because they're like, I, you know, we were saying before we got on, I was like, I feel like I. Like two or three hours today just on administrative work for my private practice. And it's all things that like can't be outsourced or like it can, but then it can't because there's just too many touchpoints. I don't know. For me, it's like maybe I'm just a terrible boss to work for, but, but like I just really want things to be a certain way.

Leah: Yeah. Well, and you know, like what helps you run your business best and it, it makes sense to have standards of like, if, if I'm gonna run my business, The best way that I know how this is how I need it to be run. And so that's hard to outsource that because you're the one who kind of gets your whole brain around why we need to do it the way you want it to do it. And it's hard sometimes to explain that to other people and have them understand in a way that like gets buy-in and motivation to do it in certain ways. And I think it's so true about. How well we can, you know, kind of take care of our business or run our business when it comes to everybody else. Because like my customer's experience with my business, I would say is really great. My contractors, I hope, experience with my business is really great, but then all these other pieces really feel so challenging to keep up with or manage or just like keep my brain around them all, you know. I love putting things in my calendar like I'm gonna check on this on this day and that on that day. But like inevitably, 4,000 other things, fires come up that day and you know, my plan, my best laid plans don't get set in stone. And so we came to this episode wanting to really talk about just like how the idea of doing lactation private practice feels really like that's gonna be so much fun and like we'll get to help families. We'll have a social media, you know, whatever excites you about it. But below all of that is all this other stuff that like maybe isn't so exciting, but you also have to like figure out how to do it all or find the money to pay somebody else to do it all, which is definitely challenging. So we were just really laughing in the title of this podcast is like, it's just not for the faint of heart. And I think a lot of people coming into private practice, you know, maybe don't see the whole scope of every little tiny, intricate detail that you have to stay on top of, which is not to sway anybody, to not do this work, right? But it's to make sure that you have all the information to make an informed decision.

Annie: The thing is with all this mess, all of these things that can go wrong that are really just my fault and I can't even blame them on anybody else cuz it's really just me. To me, it's still worth it because, yeah, I love the families and I love the babies and I do love the work that I do. I love staying up to date, I really want to stay up to date. Like I'm passionate about that and I'm passionate about like showing up as the best lactation consultant I possibly can for my families. And I guess like if I take like a macro view of all of this, I'm like, like you said, what's working? I think the offer delivery is working, = I think my clients are getting what they hoped for and I think when they're not satisfied, I think my customer service, me, is really great at talking them through it and you know, getting to some better place with it and then it's like, okay, so everything else is a little messy, is that where I really want to be aiming for perfection? No. Right. At the end of the day, it's just not as important as the other stuff. That's not to say you can just let it slide and not do it. But I guess like if you're listening to this and you're like, well that sounds terrible. I don't want that job. I would say it is terrible. And it's also like more wonderful and more like soul fulfilling as work, doing lactation work than anything else I could really think of. If you love that. If you love working with families, like you will find that in private practice. You will. Even if you're a hot mess.

Leah: Yeah. Even if you're a hot mess. Or even if you're on the steep, steep, steep, steep, steep learning curve of figuring all these intricate pieces out and knowing like how you're gonna address all these different, you know, quote-unquote departments in your business and who's gonna take care of them. I really feel. It can get overwhelming, but when we come back to like, what's our motivation? Our motivation is to have a foundational company that supports us in being able to reach these families. That doesn't mean you have to have a perfect company. Certainly, we wanna make sure we're, you know, doing our due diligence to be legal and ethical and those kinds of things. But knowing that allows you the freedom to serve families in the way you want. And that's something that Every time I think, gosh, why am I even doing this to myself? This feels so stressful. And I'm like, why did I choose to run a business? This is crazy. I have those moments and then I'll think because it lets me serve in the way I wanna serve cuz nobody else is gonna tell me. I can't spend more time or I can't offer more, or I can't schedule the way I wanna schedule or, follow up the way I wanna set up. Nobody else gets to say that except for me. And I feel like it really helps me show up to lactation work as my authentic self working the way that I feel gives me the chance to give the best service that I can give. And I think if I was in the constraints of somebody else's idea of what lactation work should be. Then I might not be able to give my best self. I would probably have to mold it into something. Might not be as authentic and feel as good, you know, so, so we keep trudging on, right? We just keep choosing year after year. This is my 12th year. Is that crazy? Yeah, mine too. Um, yeah, and it's like we keep trudging forward knowing that this is, a choice that we're making through all the hard parts of it so that we can show up in this place of service as best we can cause. Lactation isn't for the faint of heart.

Annie: It's really not.

Leah: So I think this is why we choose year after year to, you know, be in private practice. But I think Annie and I, you and I came together many, many moons back after we started the podcast, recognizing that like the only way you can do this job because you know, there aren't like tons and tons of resources out there for like telling you what to do when it comes to running a lactation practice. Annie. A lot of them, but again, there's such limited information about doing this work of running a practice, but also being a provider. And we really felt like community was the only way that we were going to move through this. And keep moving forward, but also help the people that are coming, starting out behind us. You know, like, let us help show you the way. And that's where we really created those deeper dives. Cuz we knew that running a private practice just can't be done in a silo. And there's so many people who have figured things out. and like when you hear like, we've had so many amazing people on our deeper dives that have figured things out and that's like my favorite thing. I'm like, tell me what you've figured out. I'm gonna learn from you so that I don't have to try to figure this out. Cuz I've figured a lot out on my own and I'm, I'm happy to tap into all the wealth of knowledge that's out there. So I feel like it's this beautiful place where, asking people to share what they've figured out, and then we are able to build our businesses off the amazing knowledge that they've figured out. At least that's what I envision. These deeper dives are really all about for me.

Annie: That's really what they've been having these experts on, on all different kinds of topic and really trying to open up what we're looking at for these deeper dives. So our next one in at the end of March is a deeper dive into private practice and ADHD with Genny Stiller. So Genny is gonna talk to us about ADHD, not about ADHD and our clients, but if you are a lactation consultant and you have ADHD, she's gonna be talking about different strategies that you can use. What she knows about ADHD and I'm even struggling a little bit with the words because I'm like, well I need her to come cuz I don't even know how to talk about it in the right way or what those challenges are. But she's done so much work in that area and we're really excited that she's gonna come and join us at the end of March. We love it when people show up live. We also record them and you can buy the recordings after the fact. I mean, I would recommend going back, we did some great ones about social media and marketing last year That you should really, if you want more info on that stuff like there's these people really sharing from their expert experience on all these places where, you know, Leah and I know what we know, but we also know that it's, it's really great to hear what somebody else think.

Leah: Yeah, definitely. And just to hear, you know, a perspective from other people lets you open your mind and your eyes up to like all the possibilities. And then you can choose like, oh, this seems like. Direction is gonna be a good fit for my company. And again, that's like the beautiful thing about being the CEO is that you get to choose that. So I think the more you get to hear different perspectives, different options, different life hacks, like everything that we get to talk about on the deeper dives, I think really allows you to build a business that fills like really authentic to you and then also helps you keep changing and building. Cuz over time you just learn. I mean, I feel like. Always learning and growing and changing, and every time we have a deeper dive, I feel like I'm going back in and being like, okay, I'm changing this. I'm gonna rework the way we're doing this. Because I just learned so much from them. I selfishly just like, I'm just gonna keep, we're gonna keep having them forever because I need them.

Annie: I do too. We've been doing them since January of 2020 when we came up with this idea. That's so awesome. We had no idea. Things would be going virtual. I was just marveling at that because I was doing the math. I was like, that was three years ago. And that's a really long time. And we've been doing this podcast for a really long time and even we always can come up with something to talk about. There's always something more to discuss. And I know there are people listening to this podcast that have ideas that are, that are experts in things. And so if you are an expert in so. , reach out to us. You can go through the contact for at paperlesslactation.com/contact and tell us. That's how we got Genny. She sent us a cold unsolicited email and was like, I know all about this. And we were like, that sounds great. So really don't be shy. If you know something, we wanna hear from you and we wanna feature you and we want to learn from you.

Leah: Definitely. And don't feel like you have to have been in business for a super long time. Like I said, everybody's figuring out different things at different stages and like working through different perspectives. So we definitely wanna hear from you and what you figured out when it comes to running a lactation business. Well, it's been great talking to you today, Annie. This was a really fun talk and I laughed as much as we talked because it was just really funny to kind of think through all the pieces of our business and all these terrible workers we have for us that aren't getting their jobs done.

Annie: They really aren't, but I love them anyway.

Leah: Yes, we love them and we appreciate what they do have, and we'll see you next time, Annie.

Annie: See you next time, Leah. Bye.