Midwifery Relationships are Rewarded

As midwives, we know so many people from caring for so many clients over the years. Your referral and relationship power really accelerates the success of your business. Success is a matter of being in the right place at the right time and saying the right things to the right people. Building your relationships and networking opportunities will create more opportunities for you and your business. Take the time to invest in marketing campaigns and actual time in meeting with people. Take doctors out for lunch. Have coffee with your midwifery colleagues to see how life is going. Send an email to past clients on how their families are doing. Take the time to invest in people and your bond. The exponential effects of building your community relationships will make your practice and personal brand strong.

Every day offers evidence of this thesis. Every day, I hear of someone being promoted because he was recommended by a powerful friend of the boss, or, most recently, that an unqualified man was promoted to a managerial position because he was the lover (secretly) of the man who ran the company. I know of a secretary who married her boss, then divorced him to marry her boss’s boss and then was thinking of divorcing and marrying again to one of the top three officers of this major company. Her business responsibilities rose in tandem.

I like to think that skills and value are the most important determinant of professional success; but if it is, it is only over the long run. Anyone who is expert in a particular field can point to someone preeminent in that field who does not know enough to justify his or her lofty position and reputation.

Some people become “famous for being famous.” Usually, their relative incompetence is more or less a private matter, attested to only by workers in the same field; but there are those who fail publicly without loss of reputation. Midwives that have spouses, family members, and friends that are Obstetricians tend to have a better time getting respect from the medical community and building collaborating relationships. When you have a warm market that really knows who you are, your integrity, your skills, and your mission for the practice really promote your care and goals.

When meeting someone new for the first time, you are more likely to be liked by that person from strong reputation created by your warm market to that person. If you have positive compliments growing across the community, each consultation visit will get easier and easier to convert them into a new client for your practice. Building a brand, reputation, and image takes time and having more relationships builds that faster. Make an effort each week to connect with past clients and professional relationships. Put on your schedule to attend new networking events like city commerce and birth worker meet ups. Invest in yourself and business with increasing the value in relationships.