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Jayne Havens is a certified sleep consultant and the founder of Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens and Center for Pediatric Sleep Management. As a leader in the industry, Jayne advocates for healthy sleep hygiene for children of all ages. Jayne launched her comprehensive sleep consultant certification course so she could train and mentor others to work in this emerging industry.

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Of Course I Won: What Tennis Taught Me About Entrepreneurship

Of Course I Won: What Tennis Taught Me About Entrepreneurship

 

The other night I played a few sets of tennis with my husband… and I won. 6–2, 6–2, 6–0. And while he walked off the court feeling a little defeated, I walked away with a powerful reminder about entrepreneurship.

In this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant podcast, I’m sharing why my win wasn’t surprising — and how it relates to business-building in a big way. We’re diving into the power of practice, why experience matters, and how unrealistic expectations can hold us back when we’re just getting started.

If you’ve been in a season of self-doubt, comparison, or frustration with your growth, this episode is here to remind you: you’re not behind — you’re just practicing.

 

Links:

If you would like to learn more about the Becoming a Sleep Consultant, please join our free Facebook Group or check out our CPSM Website.

Book a free discovery call to learn how you can become a Certified Sleep Consultant here.


 

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.

Jayne Havens: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Becoming a Sleep Consultant podcast. I’m your host, Jayne Havens. Today’s episode is going to be a little different, a bit more personal, and I think much more fun. I wanted to share something that happened last night that kind of got me thinking. And surprisingly, it turned into a bit of a metaphor that I think is perfect for anyone who’s on this journey of building a business, especially in the world of sleep consulting.

Here’s what happened. Last night, I played tennis with my husband, Jonathan. Now, before I tell you how it went, let me give you a little bit of context. I’ve been playing tennis since I was five years old. I played competitively as a kid—junior varsity in middle school, varsity in high school. These days, I take lessons two to sometimes even three days a week. Tennis is just a part of my routine. I love it, I’ve invested in it, and I’ve been honing in my skills for literally decades. My husband, on the other hand, he’s more of a tennis-for-fun kind of guy. He didn’t grow up playing. He’s sporty and athletic for sure, but he’s still learning the nuances of the game.

Anyway, we’re on the court. We’re rallying. We’re warming up, and then we decided to play for real. Let’s skip to the good part — I beat him. 6-2, 6-2, 6-0. Let’s just say it really wasn’t that close. He was a pretty decent sport to some degree, but I could tell he was feeling pretty defeated. Meanwhile, I’m over on the other side of the court feeling pretty great. Who doesn’t love a decisive win? But after the match, I was thinking, “Of course I won. Why wouldn’t I?” I’ve had a lifetime of practice. I’ve taken lessons, I’ve competed, I’ve put in hours and hours and hours — he hasn’t. And that’s when it hit me. This is exactly like building a business.

So often, I see new sleep consultants—or really, new entrepreneurs in general—looking around and wondering why they aren’t winning yet. They see someone on Instagram booking clients left and right, or they hear about someone else launching a group program. Or maybe they watch a peer build a referral pipeline that seems to just shoot out clients on autopilot, and they begin to feel discouraged. They start to question themselves. Why can’t I do that? What am I doing wrong? Is this not for me?

But here’s the thing: those people you’re comparing yourself to, they’ve probably been playing the game longer. They’ve taken lessons. They’ve practiced their skills. They’ve made lots and lots of mistakes. They’ve done the behind-the-scenes work that maybe you haven’t done yet. So, just like me on the tennis court, of course they’re winning right now.

I think one of the biggest traps new entrepreneurs fall into is expecting expert level results without having done much of the beginner level reps. Imagine walking onto a tennis court for the first time and expecting to serve like Serena Williams. It sounds completely ridiculous, right? But that’s exactly what we do in business. We expect to launch a business and immediately have a full client load. We post to Instagram once, and we expect to have 10 leads in the DMs. We email our pediatrician and expect them to refer to us endlessly. And, truthfully, that’s not how it works—not in tennis, not in business, not in anything worth doing.

You have to build the muscle. You have to develop the technique. You have to show up over and over and over again, even when it’s not working yet. Eventually, all of that work compounds.

Now, let me be clear. When I say practice, I don’t mean just doing the same thing over and over and over again. It’s really not just about quantity. It’s about intentionality. I take lessons every week because I want to get better at tennis. I want a coach to tell me what I’m doing wrong, and I want feedback on my technique so I can improve. In business, this looks like reflecting on what’s working and what’s not. It looks like asking for mentorship or coaching when you’re stuck. It looks like studying your outreach, your content, your client calls to see where you can tweak and improve. It’s not about grinding endlessly. It’s about growing deliberately.

So if you’re in the early stages of building your business as a sleep consultant, you’re not supposed to be amazing at everything yet. You’re not supposed to have all the answers or know exactly what to do. This is your practice season. This is where you experiment, where you make mistakes, where you learn your own rhythm. And honestly, the season is invaluable. Because what you’ll build now—the resilience, the strategy, the systems—that’s what sets you up to win later on.

Think about all the athletes we admire. They weren’t born elite. They became elite because they kept showing up through every phase—the awkward learning stages, the plateaus, the frustrating losses. That’s how you grow. I think one of the best things that we can all learn from sports is how to think long-term. When I lose a match—trust me, I do lose plenty—I don’t think to myself, “Oh, I’m terrible at tennis. I should quit.” I think, “Okay. Where did I go wrong? How can I get better?”

Entrepreneurs need to adopt that very same mindset. As they say, practice makes perfect, right? So today, I want to leave you with this. Why are you expecting yourself to win when you haven’t developed your skills yet? Why are you judging yourself so harshly for being brand new to the game? And most importantly, what would it look like to embrace your practice season instead of rushing through it?

What’s your version of getting on the court today? Maybe it’s sending one or two outreach emails. Maybe it’s posting something that feels a little bit uncomfortable, or perhaps it’s asking for feedback from a recent pro-bono client. Whatever it is, do it with a mindset that it’s building your skills, it’s building your confidence and your future success. Because one day, you’re going to look back and say, “Of course I’m winning now. I practiced for this.”

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.

Send a message to Jayne Havens, founder of CPSM.


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