A Year in Business with Sarah Gritter

 

Sarah is a seasoned healthcare professional, having worked as a registered nurse for 8 years before transitioning to life as a stay-at-home mom and pediatric sleep consultant. Certified by CPSM in 2023, Sarah has been practicing healthy sleep habits with her own children from the start. Her passion for sleep consulting began by informally helping other parents troubleshoot sleep challenges, she loved seeing the transformation! Now a mother to three children with baby number four due this winter—Sarah finds joy in supporting other families as they work to establish healthy sleep habits in their homes. Sarah Gritter

 

 

Links:

Website: Before Dawn Sleep
Instagram: @beforedawnsleep
Facebook: Before Dawn Pediatric Sleep Consulting

 

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Transcript: 

Intro: Welcome to Becoming a Sleep Consultant! I’m your host Jayne Havens, a certified sleep consultant and founder of both Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens and Center for Pediatric Sleep Management.

On this podcast, I’ll be discussing the business side of sleep consulting. You’ll have an insider’s view on launching, growing, and even scaling a sleep consulting business. This is not a podcast about sleep training. This is a podcast about business building and entrepreneurship.

Sarah is a seasoned healthcare professional, having worked as a registered nurse for 8 years before transitioning to life as a stay-at-home mom and pediatric sleep consultant. Certified by CPSM in 2023, Sarah has been practicing healthy sleep habits with her own children from the start. Her passion for sleep consulting began by informally helping other parents troubleshoot sleep challenges. She loved seeing the transformation. Now a mother to three children, with baby number four due this winter, Sarah finds joy in supporting other families as they work to establish healthy sleep habits in their homes.

Jayne Havens: Sarah, welcome to the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. I’m so excited to have this conversation with you today.

Sarah Gritter: Hi. Thanks for having me. I’m super excited to come on here as well.

Jayne Havens: So tell us a little bit about you. I know you used to work as an RN, and then you transitioned to be home with your kids. And now you’re running a sleep consulting business, right? Tell us all how this came today.

Sarah Gritter: Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I was an RN for eight years. I worked in medical for the first two years. I’m in Canada, so we have a year-long maternity leave. So there are some gaps in there between my kids. I have three. So there’s been a few gaps. But yeah, I worked in medical for two or three years. After my first child, I really just couldn’t do the nights anymore, you know. I could sleep great before having my daughter. But after that, it was hard after night shifts to sleep.

So I actually switched to home health. I was there for probably four or five-ish years. I had my first son, and then I had my second son. After my second son, so my third child, I just really didn’t want to go back. The atmosphere was just not supportive. I know the healthcare system in Canada and the US are just a little bit of a mess sometimes. But yeah, there was just not a lot of support.

After having three kids, you change mentally too. So all my mental energy was focused on my kids, and I just didn’t feel like I was doing the best job as a nurse. So I had really not wanted to go back after that maternity leave. I’d always wanted to pursue the sleep consulting thing, honestly, since my daughter was young. Probably like she’s about a year to 18 months. I really got into helping other people. I had practiced healthy, independent sleep habits with her from a young age, and I’d done that with my boys too. So I felt like I had a good, basic handle on things, could help people troubleshoot the skills, the schedules, all that kind of stuff.

I had a good talk with my husband. I also had another thing happening with my license. So in Canada, you can let your license expire when you go on maternity leave, and then you can usually renew it once you want to go back. I had no problems with my other kids doing that. But with my third child, they just were not on the ball. It was six months of back and forth with trying to renew it. It was just another big sign that, like, hey, maybe this is a sign to do something else.

So I had a good chat with my husband, and I decided to pursue sleep consulting and took your course. Certified in about, I think, two months, and then launched my business last summer. And here I am. Now I stay home with my kids and work when I want. And it’s amazing.

Jayne Havens: I love that. I love that. Tell us a little bit about what it looks like for you to juggle three kids at home and then also growing your business. Because I would imagine that’s a lot to handle.

Sarah Gritter: Yeah, so I have three children. My oldest is seven and a half and in grade two. My second is five and just started kindergarten. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old, and I’m also expecting baby number four in December. So needless to say, life is a little bit chaotic and hectic here. But you figure out routines. You figure out things that work. I really think if they weren’t sleep trained, I would not be able to do this. They’ve been great sleepers and had independent sleep skills since they were young. So I know and I can count that I can work during nap times and quiet time when they’re in bed. I would do the course when they were down for naps, quiet time, whatever.

Then I think it got a little bit more complicated when there’s a little bit more work to be done with the launching part. So that was interesting, to say the least. The other thing is, in Canada, a lot of things are a little bit different when it comes to launching your business. So I had to kind of find the equivalent of what the American was of like an LLC and all the insurance and all that kind of stuff. It was hard, but I got it figured out. The CPSM group is amazing. There’s other Canadian grads and whatnot, and they were very helpful with answering questions about that part of the launching of the business. And, yeah, we got it figured out.

I launched, and now I support anywhere from two to six clients a month. That’s the thing that’s really nice, is I can just choose how many I want to support. If I’ve got a busier of a month going on, if I just kind of mentally need a little bit of a break, I might only support like one or two. If I’m really wanting to support a lot of clients so that I can have breaks later on, then I’ll do more, which is really nice.

Then my kids just started school again. So I’ve got two in school. So that’s helpful as well. But just really trying to have routines during the day, like, this is when I do this. This is when I do that. I only take calls when they’re down for quiet time or naps. Because I just can’t count on them giving me the space that I need to actually talk to people. Then yeah, I usually just do all my work usually when they’re just doing their own thing — napping, quiet time.

Jayne Havens: That’s great. It’s great. Talk to me about your newborn sleep support. At some point, I don’t know if this was always the case with you and your business. But at some point, you sort of became the person, even inside of our CPSM community, who is known as sort of like the newborn sleep expert. Is that the bulk of your business? Are you supporting largely newborns? Is that just your favorite age to work with? How did that come to be, and what does that look like?

Sarah Gritter: It’s not the bulk of my business. I’ve had maybe a handful of newborn clients. I think a lot of moms are just afraid to start anything early on because of the stigma out there that you can’t sleep train newborns. But in reality, introducing healthy sleep habits, no matter what you call it, you are essentially “sleep training” them. They just call it sleep shape.

But anyways, no, the bulk of my clients, I would say, are like four to six months. When sleep goes downhill around four-month mark, the four-month sleep regression, people can’t handle the sleepless nights anymore. Or, they had a great sleeper, and now they’re waking up every hour. So usually, between four and six months is the bulk of my clientele. But I have had a handful of newborn clients.

Yeah, it is my favorite age just because people have such low expectations for newborns, I think. Then when I show them these tips and tricks to get few hour-long stretches, or sometimes I’ve had newborn clients, and I’ll do 8 to 10 hours like that are, like, eight weeks old, and parents are mind blown. It’s just, I don’t know. It’s my favorite age just because of that, I think.

Also, just, literally, there’s so many things that you can do to implement those healthy sleep habits. People just have no clue. It is all biologically innate and makes sense for the eight-week sleep routines and getting full feeds. That translates to overnight sleep and long stretches. Yeah, it’s really cool to see it all come together. Then by 12-ish weeks, you’re hopefully having a baby that’s going down pretty easily with a night feed or two. And yeah, parents are just amazed. A lot of the times, it is a dumpster fire. But parents say, like, they couldn’t have survived this stage without some kind of support.

Jayne Havens: I think you’re right that expectations for that age are so low, that any sort of progress that you make with a newborn is life-changing for exhausted parents. I also agree with you that they are capable of so much more than most parents are giving their babies credit for. I always say babies want to be sleeping. They’re tired. Their bodies require a lot of sleep in order to grow and thrive. When we set up the environment, we set up the routine and the expectation that it’s time for sleep, usually they do, which is all that parents are looking for. They just don’t think that it’s possible. So 9 times out of 10, I think parents aren’t even trying. Would you agree with that?

Sarah Gritter: Yeah, for sure. I find that between six and eight weeks, a lot of babies really start to wake up to the world. There’s just a bunch of things you’ve kind of got to change in order to get that sleep back. They’re not sleepy, little newborns anymore. And just with a few tweaks, your baby, yeah, like you said, wants to be sleeping.

A lot of the times, there’s not a ton of crying if you’re hands on. There will be some, because there’s always crying when you change things. But at the same time, they just want to be sleeping. So you set up the environment. You follow wake windows. You follow their sleep cues. They got a full tummy. You put them down. Maybe they’re fussing a little, and you do some hands-on soothing. Well, they’re asleep. There you go.

Jayne Havens: Let’s talk about your nursing background. I’m wondering how you leverage your title of being an RN in your sleep consulting business, or do you not mention that at all? Do your clients know that you have a medical background? And if so, how do you talk about that? How do you work that into the conversation? Do you find that your clients have a greater level of trust and confidence in you because you’re a nurse?

Sarah Gritter: Yeah, so, technically, I have to use the title ‘former RN’ because I’m not actually licensed anymore. But I feel like it does help just because, one, I went to school for a number of years. You have a logical process of assessing things and then figuring out the root cause of problems. I like to get to the base of a problem of why this is happening. So you start from square one, and then you work up to different interventions and stuff like that.

I do think that it helps parents feel more secure and a little bit more trust in myself just because I have that medical background. I also have a little bit more knowledge with the feeding and medications, if you’ve got refluxy babies, tongue ties and all that kind of stuff. And with my own kids too, from anecdotal experience, I’ve seen a lot of that too. We’ve had issues with allergies, tongue ties, reflux, all that kind of stuff. So I do like to mention it there. It’s just another point of connection if parents are struggling on other areas, which do impacts sleep as well.

Jayne Havens: Tell me about a client experience. Can you share maybe a memorable success story with a client that really solidified your passion for this work?

Sarah Gritter: Yeah, so the one that always comes back to me is my very first client. It was a newborn. They came to me at around six weeks, and baby was sleeping like 10 minutes at a time, all night. Within a few days, we were getting like one to two-hour stretches. And even that for them was just amazing. We started at six weeks, and we went until about 12 or 13 weeks. And by the end of our time together, just implementing a bunch of changes, he was sleeping 12 hours without a feed.

That just, yeah, it was for your very first client out of the gate, that’s paid. I remember posting in CPSM saying, like, “How did you find that first client?” And literally, like, the next day, somebody messaged me asking for help with a newborn. I didn’t officially have a newborn plan at that point. I had thought about offering one, but you come out of the gate and you’re like, let’s just focus on the older populations. You do the two to three weeks of straight support.

But yeah, this mom messaged me, and she was desperate. I said, “Okay. Yeah, I can do it.” And within 24 hours, I came up with the plan, with all that I knew, and we started. And yeah, it went great. We talked so much during that time, like every day, every nap. It was great to be able to focus and put that much support into her. They were very thankful. They still messaged me the state. It’s been over a year.

Jayne Havens: Love it. You mentioned the CPSM community a few times. As somebody who came to our program with a pretty solid foundation of, I think, both knowledge and experience — you were very well-read in the area of infant sleep. You also had some experience with your own kids and I think helping some friends before you actually got certified — what would you say where do the value in certification lie? How did the program set you up for success as a sleep consultant and as a business owner?

Sarah Gritter: My experience with sleep shaping, sleep training, my own kids really ended at like a Ferber check in type method. So the other methods, I’d heard of, but I’d never actually implemented them with my own kids and with other people. So that was really, really beneficial just because not everyone wants to do a check in type method or a Ferber type method. So just having that other repertoire of knowledge and skills in my own toolbox is really helpful. I’ve implemented them a few times, and it’s worked. You got to adapt and change a few things, and just realize that the process can take a little bit longer. But it works. So that was really helpful.

Then the group itself is just amazing. Everyone is so supportive. You can have all the experience and be well-read. But you’ll come across a client that shakes you a little bit and you’re like, “I don’t know what to do next,” or, like, I’m doing everything that I know how, and someone comes with another set of eyes. It’s just always helpful to have someone else look over the case and just they might see something that you’re missing.

Every baby is different. There are guidelines that most of them follow. You have experience with most four-month-olds need this amount of sleep, this whatever. Then sometimes what’s happening is telling you that maybe they are a little different, and they need a little bit less wait time. Or, maybe they’re hungry and you’re not seeing that.

Jayne Havens: I think you are exuding a certain level of confidence that I’m wondering if that existed in the beginning. Like, you’re a year into your business. It’s very clear that you feel confident that you can properly support your clients, that you can run a successful business, juggle your clients and your family life load, right? When you were first starting, do you feel like you had that same level of confidence, or is this something that really sort of grew over time?

Sarah Gritter: I think it was there to some degree. But yeah, I was definitely nervous the first few clients that I had, just because that imposter syndrome is always there a little bit. You’re like, “Wow! Really? People are choosing me? Like me, out of all the sleep consultants that are out there? I wonder what made them choose me.” So you’re always a little bit little bit nervous about how things are going to go and if you’re going to meet their expectations.

But I think having, yeah, I’ve really realized that having open communication about their goals and how they’re feeling about things, and just checking in on that front too, just has helped me realize what questions I need to be asking and become a little bit more confident. But after those first few clients and seeing how successful they were, I was like, I can do this. And yeah, you just get better and better the more that you practice a skill, as we say, right?

Jayne Havens: It’s so true. It’s so true. If I think back to a few years ago, I was supporting mainly families with babies, as you said, sort of like four to six months old where they got past that newborn phase, and they realized they needed to work on sleep. I would support families through pretty traditional sleep training all day long, and was pretty good at it. Then somewhere out of the blue, three- and four-year-olds started coming into my world.

At first, that felt really outside of my comfort zone. Just like with anything else, practice makes, if not perfect, closer to it. And now I prefer that. Now I would rather work with a three-, four- or five-year-old than a three-month, four-month, five-month-old any day. It just goes to show you that with experience and with practice, I think it all gets easier and it becomes second nature. The things that used to rock me just don’t rock me anymore.

I’m actually about to start with a 21-month-old in a bed. I don’t really like that. I want a 21-month-old in a crib. But what I know for sure is that I know how to coach parents to properly support their children, and I know how to give them the verbiage and the power to really sort of take control of what bedtime looks like in their household.

And yes, 21-month-olds lack impulse control to some degree, but I’m really confident that I’m going to be able to give parents the confidence and empower them to make choices that are in the best interest of their child and lead to a full night of sleep. I think that that’s something that even a few years ago would have had me shaking in my boots a little bit, you know. The more cases that we have under our belt, the more we realize we can do this. We’re in control of the situation. We can get our clients to the finish line. And when that happens, it’s like the greatest feeling in the world.

Sarah Gritter: And just realizing that every scenario may not be perfect by book standards. Like, you’ve got a 21-month-old in a bed, and you’d rather have them in a crib. Yeah, that’s nerve wracking. But, I mean, it’s doable. It’s just, you got to tweak some things. And if that’s the family’s goals and it’s not a safety issue, you just have to re-adjust your own expectations too. Yeah, there are certain ways that you would do things. But at the end of the day, as long as it’s safe and as long as the baby is getting and the kid is getting what they need sleep-wise, it doesn’t really matter. You’re teaching them and giving them the tools that they need to succeed.

Jayne Havens: For sure. Let’s talk about business growth and sort of look into the future a little bit. You mentioned you’re supporting anywhere from two to six families a month, which sounds great to me, while also juggling three kids and one on the way. What do you imagine for your business down the road? Do you want your business to grow? Does this feel like a comfortable landing spot for you? What do you envision for the future?

Sarah Gritter: So right now, it’s plenty with three young kids, plus another one on the way. And yeah, I’ll be taking some time off once baby comes and just more focusing on social media and stuff like that. I think I won’t actually be supporting any clients for the first few months. But as my kids are young, this feels like a good amount of clients. I’m busy enough.

But I think one of my goals in the future, once my kids are all in school, maybe would be to do like in-home sleep training. I think that would be really cool just to actually be in the moment with the parents and teaching them what to listen for and how to actually implement these methods. Yeah, I think that would be really cool to do in the future eventually.

Jayne Havens: I love that. I can’t wait to see that happen for you. I think in a handful of years, when your youngest that’s not even here yet is off in school for a full day, so like five or six years from now, I think that the world is your oyster. Maybe your business looks entirely different then, which is amazing. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Sarah Gritter: Mm-hmm. That’s the really cool thing about becoming a sleep consultant and working from home. It’s like you can do whatever you want. Yeah, exactly like you said, the world is your oyster. Everything is changeable, if you wanted to.

Jayne Havens: Absolutely. Absolutely. Before we wrap up, where can everybody find you? Do you want to share your social media, your website? What do you want to share?

Sarah Gritter: Yeah, for sure. So my website is www.beforedawnsleep.ca and then I am active on Facebook and Instagram. So on Facebook, it’s www.facebook.com/beforedawnsleep. Then Instagram is www.instagram.com/beforedawnsleep as well. So I’m active on those two platforms. Then, yeah, there’s my website that outlines all my packages, a little bit about me and all that good information.

Jayne Havens: Perfect. It’s so great, Sarah, thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. Congrats on your success in the first year of your business. I can’t wait to see where the next year or so takes you.

Sarah Gritter: Yeah, totally. Thanks.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, it would mean so much to me if you would rate, review, and subscribe. When you rate, review, and subscribe, this helps the podcast reach a greater audience. I am so grateful for your support.

If you would like to learn more about how you can become a certified sleep consultant, head over to my Facebook Group, Becoming a Sleep Consultant or to my website thecpsm.com. Thanks so much, and I hope you will tune in for the next episode.