When to Run Ads in Your Sleep Consulting Business with Samantha Fine

Tune in to learn:

• What a funnel actually looks like in your business
• When it is the right time to consider paid ads
• How refining your communication strategy leads to attracting ideal clients
• What mindset supports real business growth

Links:

Website: Samantha Fine Digital
Instagram: @samanthafinedigital
Free training: Free Meta Ads Workshop: The Ads Success System

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.

Today I am joined by Samantha Fine, a digital marketing pro who left corporate to help women grow their businesses with simple ads and funnels. We talk about how funnels work, when ads make sense, and how to keep your strategy focused if you are new to business or on a small budget. Whether you are just getting started or looking to take your sleep consulting business to the next level, this conversation will give you clarity on where to place your focus so you can grow with confidence.

Jayne Havens: Samantha, I’m so excited you’re here today. Welcome to the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast.

Samantha Fine: Thank you so much for having me, Jayne.

Jayne Havens: Sure. So why don’t we get started by you sharing a little bit about yourself, your background, and what led you to start helping other women grow their businesses with ads and funnels?

Samantha Fine: Yes, so I’ve worked in digital marketing my entire career for over 15 years. I spent my career growing up on the media agency side, helping massive brands like Coca-Cola, Whole Foods, Lysol. If you look inside your kitchen or your house, you probably have at least one of the brands that I have supported throughout my career. One challenge I always saw throughout my time in the agency in client-side roles was, I would look at the women above me and think, “How do they do it? How are they a parent and having these jobs?” I just couldn’t figure out how it would work. I always just struggled with envisioning what my life would look like.

Then I became a mom, and I had what was supposed to be my dream job—working client-side. I was working at a large CPG company, in-house on their paid media team, and I hated it. I hated every minute of it. It was just a toxic environment. I had a lot of challenges throughout my pregnancy with the work environment. I came back during the pandemic to find that — I was being told, “Don’t worry if you have to feed your child while we’re on a call. Don’t worry if you have to put him to bed.” I was balancing a new baby and working from home in this new environment, as many, many women were. Then I was told that, “You’re doing great. Keep up what you’re doing.”

No feedback during my annual review. A week later, my male boss was promoted to a role that they didn’t even bother to tell me had been created. When I asked them about it, they said, “Well, we didn’t think you’d come back from maternity leave.” I was like, “Well, that’s it.” It’s clear that this is not going to work for me, and I decided to take my career into my own hands.

I used my expertise to start my own business. I actually found out I could do that from an ad, from someone that was running an ad teaching people how to become ads managers. I took her webinar and was like, “Well, I already have the skills. I know how to run ads for people. I know how to create strategies. I’ve been doing it for a billion-dollar brands for years. Why couldn’t I take that and start my own business?”

And so I did. I started helping female founders—mostly other moms—grow their businesses and learn how to use ads, either by teaching them or taking it off their plate for them. I showed them how the power of ads can help you scale. You can have a system that brings in leads and sales while you are running your business, spending time with your kids, having that “balance.”

They really think about it more as integration these days. But you can do it. There is a way. It doesn’t have to be by going into corporate, climbing the ladder, and dealing with all the chaos that comes with corporate. You can build it yourself. I did. I’ve helped other people do it. I’ve gone back and forth a couple of times, and I’ve been full time in my business for a few years again. I can’t go back. Like, there’s just no way.

Jayne Havens: I love your story because it’s actually so similar to, I think, many people’s stories in the sleep consulting field. I think a lot of the women who ultimately decide to get into this line of work, they’re working nine-to-fives, or they’re in a classroom, or maybe they’re a nurse working in a hospital setting, and trying to figure out: how do I earn money but also be present for my family?

Many of their stories are very similar—whether it was the pandemic that gave them an opportunity to see that they could do both in some capacity, or maybe their story is a little bit different. But I think women are really craving that, really craving an opportunity to still provide for their household, but in a way that doesn’t remove them from central family life. So I love that you figured that out on the ad side. Most of the people who are listening to this podcast, I think, are trying to figure that out from the sleep consulting support, Sarah, parent coaching support side. And so, your story, I think, aligns very much with the audience of this podcast.

Let’s get into the ads bit a little bit. That’s why I wanted to have you on the show. Tell me what your bread and butter is. Who are your clients that you’re supporting, and what does it look like to start running ads for a small business?

Samantha Fine: Yeah, I love this question. With my corporate career, I worked so much with CPG companies, but that’s rarely who I work with now in my business. I really love working with online business owners, coaches, course creators, community builders, a lot of people in your orbit. I have helped them figure out, how do you bring in those leads? I love focusing on, how do you get those people into your world and then convert them into buyers?

My framework is called the Buyer Builder Blueprint. So you can do that. You can learn how to bring those people into your world to convert them into buyers. Because that’s ultimately what we all need as business owners, right? We need to drive sales and get people to buy from us. And so that’s what I focus on. It’s teaching you not only how to run the ads, to do that, but making sure you have the right funnel in place so that you are set up for success.

Because at the end of the day, ads are meant to support a well-oiled machine. They are going to pour fuel on the fire that your funnel is already bringing. But they’re not going to work if you don’t have the right funnel in place, the right offers, the right audience, and the right messaging.

Jayne Havens: Okay, so you said two things that I want to touch on. One, that ads sort of fuel the machine that you already have. I agree with that. A lot of brand-new sleep consultants who literally maybe haven’t even landed their first client, if they come to me and they’re asking me, like, “Can I run ads? Should I run ads,” my advice to them is generally no. You need to have your offer really solidified. You need to understand how to sell your services organically before you start throwing traffic at the business. Do you agree with that?

Samantha Fine: Generally, yes. I mean, can you? Sure. You’re just going to spend a lot of money trying to figure it out. And if you don’t have your messaging dialed in — especially, with a sleep consultant, you’re probably getting on calls with people to convert them first, right? It’s not as, you’re probably not sending them to just a sales page. You need to be able to sell to them and make sure you’re getting those clients, and that you have your talk tracked down before you start just bringing in a volume of people. Otherwise, it’s just going to be chaos. So yes, generally, I do agree with that.

Jayne Havens: Yeah, I think that’s really important. I think a lot of the time, when women are trying to grow their own small businesses, they’re trying to figure out how to get to the finish line the fastest, and they’re forgetting all of the important steps in the middle. I’m a firm believer that you really have to refine your messaging, learn how to talk about your offer, learn how to connect with your ideal client, or even just figure out who your ideal client is, right?

Samantha Fine: Yes.

Jayne Havens: My ideal client is actually a working parent. My ideal client is somebody who’s not anxious about sleep training. Sleep consultants say to me all the time, like, “How do you find people that aren’t anxious about sleep training that want to hire a sleep consultant?” I actually have done that. I work with parents who actually aren’t super anxious about the process. They are just type A professionals who are like, they’re Ivy League grads. They’re sort of like A-plus students in every area of their life, and they literally want support just to make sure they’re doing it right. They literally want to optimize the process. That’s why they hire me.

Other sleep consultants can’t understand. Like, “How do you connect with those people?” It’s like, that’s what I’m working towards finding. My messaging aligns with their thought process, right? I don’t use language in my marketing that says I sleep train without cry it out. I don’t talk about that because I’m not trying to market to somebody who wants to avoid cry it out. That’s just not what I’m doing, you know?

Samantha Fine: Right.

Jayne Havens: And so, it takes time, I think, for brand-new coaches and consultants to figure out who they’re talking to, what they’re going to say, and how they articulate their value. Then maybe you can throw money at ads. And so, I’m glad you agree. You used the word funnel. I wanted to stop you there. When I first started working in consulting and then eventually, I launched the Center for Pediatric Sleep Management, a coach I was working with, her business strategist used the word funnel, and I was like, “What’s a funnel?” So tell everybody what is a funnel, and how does that get used in your business?

Samantha Fine: Yeah, absolutely. I’m going to explain that. I want to go back to the messaging after that because that is so important, especially now. There are some recent updates that came out with Meta, where your messaging is going to be more important now than ever.

A funnel is essentially how you are bringing people into your world and bringing them down the journey. It’s the customer journey, essentially. A traditional marketing funnel looks like an upside-down triangle. It’s your big awareness.

People at the top, people who don’t know about you at all. They may not even know about your offer. Then there’s the people who are considering you. They’re aware of you. They’re aware of their problem. They’re aware that they might know what a solution is. They might know they have a problem. Their child isn’t sleeping. They might know there are people who do sleep consulting, but they don’t know anything about it. Then there’s the people who are thinking about you. They might know that you do it; they just don’t know what it looks like. Then you’ve got your customers.

The pieces of the funnel—awareness, consideration, converters—that has not changed, but the breakdown of it I feel like has evolved over the years, especially now with how much they’re online—how many people there are online and how many different types of sales funnels, which is a complement to the traditional marketing funnel. So, without overcomplicating it, it’s essentially that you have to think about the funnel as your customer journey. What are you doing to bring strangers into your world, getting them to consider you, and then ultimately getting them to purchase from you?

Jayne Havens: Okay. So for everybody listening, my funnel is basically connecting with people somewhere. I like organic networking and connecting. I’m not personally using a ton of ads—none, actually. I’m not using any ads in my consulting business. And so what I do is I like other people about me, rather than me talking about myself. I like to connect with therapists, preschool directors, daycare owners, family photographers, occupational therapists. Maybe sometimes I connect with moms in Facebook groups.

Actually, one thing that I really love to do is, I love to tell my clients, who are really happy with me and my services, I literally tell them to tell their friends. I’m like, “Please share my cell phone number with your friends who are struggling.” I make that ask, right? So my top of funnel is just people who are getting my name from other people. My funnel is super simple.

As soon as they reach out to me—it could be through my website. It could be them sending me a text or an email—I send them a link to my calendar. They book a call, and hopefully, they convert. And if they don’t, then they’re on my email list, and from time to time, I send emails. It’s not a major part of my strategy, but it’s there. So that’s my funnel. It’s probably maybe like a beginner funnel, even though I’m several years into my business. It works for me. It doesn’t need to be so complicated.

Can you walk us through maybe what a more involved funnel might look like that involves other things, like a freebie?

Samantha Fine: Absolutely. Yeah.

Jayne Havens: Walk us through that, even though I’m not doing any of that.

Samantha Fine: Yes, absolutely. So think about a way to get people — you mentioned your email list, right? That is one of the most common funnels I help people with. We have something that gets them in. It might be like a free lead magnet. It could be a workshop. I host a lot of workshops in my business. It could be a low-cost offer. So you might have a mini course that teaches people about one aspect of sleep training, and then, if they want more help, you upsell them into other ways to work with you. So there are a number of different ways that you could bring people in.

You could do a video series — anything that would bring people in where you would be able to capture that information from them, that email, name. Then they get on your email list, and you’re nurturing them.

You’re consistently sending them emails, sharing value, and giving them opportunities to get to know you and why they should care about what you have to share, things like that. Also, feeding into that, how they could work with you. That brings them into those opportunities, those conversion events.

It could all be within a bigger funnel. I work with clients who have that low-ticket offer, like I mentioned. They might have that mini course with a few upsell opportunities, and then, via an email sequence, they’re talking all about their consulting offer and then selling them in through that way. So there are so many different ways you can craft a funnel based on the offers that you currently have, the way you like to connect with people and communicate with people, and then what assets you already have available.

It’s not always about reinventing the wheel. But having that funnel nailed down is so important. It’s something that I do with clients, especially before if they come to me and they don’t have a funnel nailed done, I always tell them, “Let’s do a funnel strategy session first. We’re not running ads before you know what this looks like, because you could spend a lot of money trying to figure out if the funnel you’re putting in place even works.” And so, going back to our conversation at the beginning of this, you need to have it tested. You need to see that it’s working before you start pouring money into it.

Jayne Havens: Yeah, I really want brand-new sleep consultants to hear this loud and clear, that running ads, spending money before you have systems in place — the systems can be super simple. The systems can be what I described. I’m not really using a freebie, an opt-in, email list; I’m not doing any of that. But I have a tried-and-true system that works. And so, I think it’s really important, and I feel like I’m hearing you validate my thoughts, that until you have a proven system for bringing in leads and converting them, it’s not really the right time to throw money at ads.

Samantha Fine: Correct. And even with your system—like, you post on social—you could be running something to amplify that and reach more people, reach more of your target audience specifically. Going back to the messaging piece of it, if you’re using that right language in your posts and you’re attracting them, you can amplify that by targeting moms with kids of certain ages. Then have your copy, your messaging, in the content be what really speaks to who within that group you want to attract.

Get them to view those videos, and then do a follow-up campaign that’s dedicated to booking a consult. There are so many. It doesn’t have to be a complicated funnel. There are so many different ways that you can use ads and have the right funnel to support it.

Jayne Havens: One thing that I do to test my copy, to test the stuff that I’m putting out into the universe, is I often — I have a Facebook group for people who are interested in becoming a sleep consultant. It’s literally called Becoming a Sleep Consultant. Inside that Facebook group, I’ll just post meaningful stuff. I share stories about work-life balance. I share about client wins. I share about sort of the trials and tribulations of growing a sleep consulting business. I always sort of post there first. And if it does well—by “does well,” I mean it gets engagement, people comment, it resonates with them, it starts conversation—then I’ll say, “Okay, this really resonated with people.”

But Facebook is only showing my content to, what, like 10% or 20% of the people in my group. Literally, the other 80% to 90% of people in the community don’t even see it.” But most of those people are also on my email list. So if I see that content is resonating with people, I’ll repurpose it and I’ll blast it out via email. That’s all free; I’m not paying for that action. But if I were to take it to the next step, I think I would take my best-performing posts and turn that into ads that are then blasted out to a way bigger audience.

Samantha Fine: Yeah, absolutely. You could even use ads to grow that community, your free Facebook group. That is a freebie in a sense. But yes, that’s exactly a great way to test that messaging.

Jayne Havens: What would you say is the moment in somebody’s small business where it makes sense to convert their strategy from being 100% organic to shifting some of the energy towards paid ads?

Samantha Fine: Oh, I get this question all the time. I wish there was a magic pill to say, like, “Oh, now it’s time.” But there isn’t, unfortunately. What I usually say, though, is first and foremost, you do have to have it validated—have gotten some sales organically and know that what you’re doing is working. Then think about where you’re spending your time and where you want to free time up.

One of the great things about ads is that not only does it help you get your message to the right people—whereas organically, you don’t have control. So you rely not only so much on your messaging, but it’s still very much up to the algorithms to show it to the right people. So if you’re struggling to get that volume in front of the right people, that’s the time to start considering ads.

Ads can run that funnel in the background for you—they support that. So if you need to free up time, and you’re spending a lot of time trying to get those leads, trying to convert those people, you can set up a funnel and an ad system that can take a lot of that off your plate, so that you can focus your time on your clients, with your family, on the things that you need to spend your time on.

That’s one of the things I love helping people with, because it is such a time suck for so many to be manually going after people and seeing who engaged with me. “Okay, now I’m going to go message them. I’m going to go do this.” It all depends on the strategy you’re using, but that’s one of the things that I recommend thinking about. Are you struggling to reach the right people, but your message is resonating with the people that you are reaching? You can scale that. Have you capped out on time? Are you struggling with time? Do you need to have a system that takes some of that off your plate? Ads can do that.

Then do you have the funds? At the end of the day, it does cost money. While you can have a really solid strategy and not have to spend a million dollars — I’ve worked with clients who spend $15 to $20 a day on lead generation and then let their emails do the selling part of it. You don’t have to have a massive budget. You can, but you do need to be willing to spend the money.

Jayne Havens: So let’s talk about the mindset required. I think we should—

Sarah Fine: Oh, boy.

Jayne Havens: Right? Should we get into mindset a little bit?

Sarah Fine: Yes, let’s do it.

Jayne Havens: Especially because you work with a lot of female founders, what mindset shifts do you see necessary for women to confidently set themselves up for true business growth?

Sarah Fine: Yes, I love this. Okay. So spending money is really hard. And I think sometimes as women, too, it’s so much easier for us to spend money on our families than it is to spend it on ourselves or even our business. When it comes to running ads, it takes time. It takes time to get things working. I always tell clients: think about month one as you’re testing ground. Month two is about optimizing. Month three is where we start to scale.

Set your budget. Figure out what are you committing to spending, and be okay letting go of that money even if you don’t get anything in return. Obviously, the goal is to get a return, but be okay with that. You have to have that mindset. Because if you go in afraid every time you’re going to spend $15 a day or whatever it is, you’re going to be playing with things. Every time you touch something, you reset the learning phase. You have to be ready to just set it live and hands off. That’s not to say like you’re never going to touch anything.

One of the rules that I follow and tell my clients to follow is always: when you set your campaign live, day one, you’re just checking to make sure that things are running. Day three, same thing. Any red flags? Day five, is there anything standing out? I’m not touching anything, but is there anything standing out that I might want to check in on? Day seven, that’s when we could maybe start to move things around if we’re not getting the numbers we want to see. So you have to go in with that mindset—that you are going to be okay letting go.

That is the number one thing I say to people. Be okay. This is a test. You don’t know what’s working. You don’t know what’s going to work until you start trying. You have to be okay with testing. You have to be okay with, “I’m going to spend this money and let go, and we’re going to see what happens.” It’s really, really hard, especially for newer business owners to do that, and you have to be ready.

Jayne Havens: Yeah, I see this a lot in women who are just interested in getting into the field. There is a cost associated with getting trained to do this work. Now, I am a firm believer that the beautiful thing about that is that it’s actually totally within your control as far as, are you going to grow a successful business, or are you not? If things aren’t going well, you have the power to continue your education, make changes, start to communicate more effectively.

It’s in your hands. You get to decide, right? So when people say to me, “I so badly want to jump in. I want to do this work, but it makes me really nervous to invest in your course,” or, “I’m scared to spend the money,” for me, I’m not one that has these fears. I actually never did. I’ve always seen a return on investment in everything that I do in business, even if it’s not a financial return. It’s always a learning lesson.

Sarah Fine: 100%.

Jayne Havens: I’ve hired support people to help me in my business who were not great support people. Yes, I spent money, and it didn’t work out great—but I learned amazing lessons in the process. So I don’t view that as a loss. I view it as: I learned something, and now I can move forward.

I think that same mindset can be applied to spending money on ads. The money you spend in the beginning is not a loss. You might not be getting a financial return on investment right away, but the money that you’re spending is not a loss. Because what if you learn during running ads that the breakdown is actually not with the people that it’s bringing in, but the breakdown is with your messaging in your webinar or your messaging in your emails? That’s valuable information, right?

Sarah Fine: 100%. I had a client where, the first three months together, we didn’t get any return on investment. Our ads were getting solid leads—really amazing amounts of leads. Super low-cost per leads. Then after about three months, we started to see them upgrade into her bigger programs.

We realized that this particular audience, they were slightly older; they needed more time. She thought we could turn them from stranger to buyer within that 30-day time period, but they really needed 40 to 60 days. That was a massive learning. It helped us figure out, okay, how do we optimize the funnel to make sure that we are creating that space? How do we adjust our mindset, our budget, and all of these things to accommodate that? Learning is such an important part of not just ads, but running a business in general. It’s crucial.

Jayne Havens: I love that story. Maybe share another one. Share a story, if you have, of somebody that jumped into ads—small business, maybe not in the beginning stages of their business but really decided to jump into this at the right time—and it really served her.

Sarah Fine: Yeah, so I worked with a client. She’s a course creator. She had a really strong service-based offering, one-on-one offering. She was ready to start scaling it into a course. She was taking that same framework that worked for her one-on-one services, same messaging, and transitioning it into a done-with-you course. And so, in a way, it was a little bit — it was a newer offer. But the messaging, she’d already nailed in with her one-on-one clients. The audience, she knew who she was trying to reach.

She launched it with really zero expectation. She was like, “I know that I don’t have a massive audience.” Because she’d been focusing on her services, not on growing her organic audience or her email list. She wanted to get it out to more people, so she invested in ads. She came in knowing she was going to be testing something new-ish and spending money to do it.

Because she already had her messaging nailed in, we knew who to target, we had the right messaging, we got a twelve-times return on her investment. She sold out her first launch. It was incredible. We did another launch a few months later. Return, overall, was less. It’s a six-times return. But she more than doubled the revenue because she normally sold more of them, but she didn’t increase the price.

She took the learnings, evolved it, scaled it, and is continuing to do so. I’ve seen this happen with so many clients when you know your messaging. I’ve worked with clients, where they were doing ads on their own they weren’t doing before. We made some optimizations, and we launched something. We got a solid return on investment, but then we really spent time refining and testing before their next launch—exceeded expectations with the next launch.

Knowing your messaging is so crucial. Knowing who you’re trying to target is so crucial. When you do that and when you have the right offers that align with who your audience is—what they need, a message that speaks to them, their challenges, their desires, their goals, all of that—you can convert, and you can convert at scale. But you need to have that dialed in.

Jayne Havens: I’m so excited that the example you shared is somebody that was working one to one with clients and then wanted to take that framework and put it into a course. It’s actually a conversation that we have inside of our CPSM community fairly regularly.

Actually, I think just yesterday or the day before, somebody posted in our Facebook community for students and grads that she wants to create an online course. Her reason for that was because she’s finding it really hard to be present at bedtime for families because she has her own young kids. But the truth of the matter is, she’s really in the very beginning stages of her business. She’s only supported, I think, one or two families—maybe a couple of more. But she’s in the very sort of infant stages of her business. My advice to her was that, really, you have to have a proven track record before you go and try and sell a course.

Because I’m a firm believer that there’s a lot of information out there on the internet, especially about sleep training and parent coaching. There are so many free resources. And so I actually think, in our situation, the one-to-one support is really what’s way easier to convert. Because I’m not competing. In my business, I’m literally competing with nothing because I’m me. You can’t even really compare. I mean, I guess you can compare me to another sleep consultant. But at the end of the day, someone is getting on a call with me and either connecting with me or not connecting with me. That’s the choice, right?

Sarah Fine: Oh, yeah.

Jayne Havens: And so I am not in competition with, like, Taking Cara Babies and Dr. Becky’s Instagram or whatever. I’m not up against any of that, because what I’m presenting is: I’m going to help you personally, right?

Sarah Fine: Yes.

Jayne Havens: When you take away the personal hand-holding, accountability, and support, then you’re really just more information—that’s everywhere and anywhere on the internet. That’s not to say that you can’t sell it; I’ve seen people do it. But it’s because their personality, their verbiage, their coaching style is already so well developed that it’s able to shine through in a way that wouldn’t be possible, I think, if you’re just getting started.

Sarah Fine: Yeah, I’ll share a brief story. When I started my first business, I thought I wanted to do a course. I didn’t think I actually wanted to serve people one-on-one. I got my first handful of clients and, meanwhile, I was trying to figure out how to build this course. I got so burned out. I found myself in this situation where—okay, I needed more clients, because the course was not connecting. I didn’t have the audience. You have to have an audience built up to sell a course. If you don’t have a list of buyers, if you don’t have an audience of buyers ready, there’s nobody to buy the course.

My coach at the time kept saying, “Focus on the services. You could do the course later. Focus on the services if that’s where you need the income right now.” And I wasn’t listening. Then, all of a sudden, I found myself, “I need clients. This course is not connecting. Oh, we’re moving. Oh, I’m pregnant. I can’t do all of this.” I had to go back to corporate. I had to make the difficult decision to go back to corporate. Then during maternity leave, I was like, “Okay, I’m going to rebuild this business.” That time, I was like, “I am not.” I thought about focusing on a course. I had a mini course ready to go. I spent about a year, while I was still in corporate, trying to do it. It did not land.

Services. Nail down your services. Get that into a well-oiled machine. Then, when you have the bandwidth and the reserves and all of that, then you can start to test if it makes sense. Doing a course makes sense for some. It’s not going to make sense for all. But you have to have the messaging really, really nailed in for a course. You have to have the audience already ready to go. Without it, it’s just going to be an uphill battle. Trust me, I have been there. It’s a lot.

Jayne Havens: If someone is listening to this and is sort of hesitating on either starting a business or taking their existing business more seriously, what would you want them to hear from you?

Sarah Fine: Oh, I love this question. I think I just wrote an email about this too. Okay, so here’s the thing. When I first was launching my business again, my father-in-law said to me, “Well, running a business is hard. Well, so is working a nine-to-five job.” They’re different hards.

Working a nine to five, you have no control over your time, the work you’re doing. Whether or not you have the flexibility you need, having your own business, you get to have control. You have a lot more control. You can control who you work with, when you work, how you work. You have that ability to say, “No, I’m not taking this on,” or, “Okay, I’m in a season where I can take on more so that during the summer when everybody’s home, I can be more flexible,” or whatever it is.

Choose your hard. Especially after this latest round — my oldest is in kindergarten, and I shut down at three o’clock. I pick him up from school every day. I take him to his appointments and to his practices. I can’t imagine how I would manage all of that if I was working a traditional nine-to-five job. Choose your hard. I wouldn’t trade this hard for anything.

Jayne Havens: I totally agree. I also think that when you’re working for somebody else, you’re at their mercy, right?

Sarah Fine: Exactly.

Jayne Havens: You’re 100 % at their mercy. They could lay you off at any time. They could reduce your hours. They could tell you, “Oh, you were working remote for the past three years. Now you have to come into the office full time.” A lot of people are hearing that. A lot of people are hearing that. When you work for yourself, you don’t have to deal with any of that. None of it.

Sarah Fine: No. Even raises. My husband just went through something. He just started a new job but at his old company. He asked them for a raise to meet the salary he had originally asked for. I had the same situation. We’re not asking for massive amounts. Like, “Please, can you give me the $2,000 to get me to my goal.” He was denied it; I was denied it. If I want $2,000 more, I’m just going to take on another client for one of my services. You figure it out. You have that control. You don’t need to rely on somebody else saying whether or not you can have the extra money or not. You get to choose.

Jayne Havens: 100%. I feel it’s a safer bet. It sounds counterintuitive. I feel like it’s a safer bet because it’s within your control rather than somebody else’s. I personally like to be in control of my own time, my own schedule, my own caseload, my own finances. I want to be in control of all of that. It doesn’t mean that it’s not hard. It is. I still have months in my business that are so busy, I can’t even catch my breath, and then other months where I feel like, “Is anybody alive? What’s going on?” Right?

Sarah Fine: Yes, 100%.

Jayne Havens: There are ebbs and flows. That, I think, can weigh on people emotionally. But I would take it any day. Because when things are slow, I get time to sort of rebuild my systems. It’s like, “Okay, I actually have time this week. Maybe I should schedule a Zoom with a preschool community and teach them all about toddler and preschooler bedtime routines and how to sort of eliminate the shenanigans.” I have time for that because I’m supporting fewer families. Then that allows me to sort of have more clients coming in the next month, right?

Sarah Fine: Exactly.

Jayne Havens: I don’t know. I would take it any day. But I understand, for some, it feels scary and hard. I love that. Choose your hard. It’s hard either way, so choose your way.

Sarah Fine: It’s hard either way, yeah.

Jayne Havens: If somebody is listening and wants to learn more from you, tell us how they can find you. Do you have a funnel?

Sarah Fine: I do.

Jayne Havens: Tell us. How can we enter your funnel? Tell us how we can learn more about you, your business, and potentially working with you.

Sarah Fine: Yeah, so best place to connect with me, either on Instagram or my website. I do have a funnel. I have a free training called The Successful Ads System that you can go through. It just focuses on how to have success with ads. So I’ll make sure that you have the link to that and put it in the show notes. Reach out. I would love to connect. It’s Samantha Fine Digital on Instagram and the website.

Jayne Havens: Perfect. Samantha, it was so great chatting with you. I’m so glad we connected.

Sarah Fine: Glad to be chatting with you.

Jayne Havens: I think this is going to be a really valuable audio training for our community. I love it.

Sarah Fine: Love it. Thank you so much for having me.

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