What If I Don’t Know the Answer to Someone’s Question with Jayne Havens

 

Links:Don’t know the answer

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:Don’t know the answer

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: I haven’t recorded a solo podcast episode in a while. I’ve been itching to do one, but I just couldn’t think of a topic to tackle on my own until yesterday. Yesterday, I was on a Zoom with a recent Center for Pediatric Sleep Management graduate. She asked a question that I thought was so great, and it really made me think this is something that I am sure all new sleep consultants are wondering about and worried about. I bet it’s something that even those who aren’t yet sleep consultants, people who are just considering entering the field, this is something that they’re probably worried about.

She asked me what if she doesn’t know the answer to someone’s question. I get it. That’s really scary. When you’re first starting out in your business and you want to put your best foot forward, when someone asks you a question, of course, you want to have the answer. But this is complicated, because you don’t have a ton of experience. You feel like even if you know the answer, maybe your answer isn’t right. You’re having self-doubt. You’re nervous. You’re anxious that what you’re saying isn’t 100% on point. That’s natural for somebody who’s just getting started in the business.

What I said to her is that — and before I tell you what I said to her, I want to re-ask the question. She said, “What if I don’t know the answer to someone’s question?” So I said to her: instead of feeling like you need to have the right answer, you can give your best possible advice instead. Let me say that one more time. Instead of feeling like you need to have the right answer, you can give your best possible advice instead.

I think this is really important. First of all, there’s no way to know if we have the right answer all the time. Sleep is really nuanced. There are a lot of moving parts. In any situation where we’re supporting families, we’re weighing so many different factors. We’re weighing the emotional well-being of mom and dad. We’re weighing the sleep needs of the baby or the child. We’re trying to manage all of the outside factors that are coming into play. Is the child in daycare? Is the child in preschool? Is the child home with a grandparent or with a nanny?

There are so many moving parts, and every situation has its own nuances and idiosyncrasies. There’s no one right answer in any particular circumstance. There’s only your best possible advice. When you show up with the mindset that you don’t necessarily always need to be right, you just need to give your best possible advice, I think that that positions you to feel more confident in your work. It positions you to give better advice because you’re not questioning yourself.

It just makes it easier to carry on and continue to show up for your clients and gain more experience. Because if you’re so worried that you’re not going to have the right answer, what ends up happening is that you don’t even want to answer the question. You don’t show up for your clients, or you don’t even put yourself out there to have clients because you’re too worried that you’re not going to know how to support them properly.

Of course, you want to make sure that you are properly trained. You’re properly educated, that you know as much as you possibly can. Because as sleep consultants, we, of course, want to show up as experts in the field. This is something that I take very seriously. All of my students who go through the program, Center for Pediatric Sleep Management, they don’t pass the course until I feel that they are confident and that they’re ready to support families.

Just becoming a certified sleep consultant means that you have a certain baseline level of expertise that is worthy. It’s far more than what our clients know, right? We are the experts. But in the same breath, there’s always more to learn. We’re always going to be a little bit unsure of ourselves in certain situations. We might question how we want to answer a question because we want to give our clients the best. We want them to get results. We want to offer them solutions. But there’s not always a single right answer.

There is your best possible advice. So I am going to encourage everybody who is already a sleep consultant, if you’re a newbie and you’re feeling nervous that you don’t always have the answers or even those who are listening to this wondering if they are cut out to become certified sleep consultants, that the most important thing in all of this is that they show up and offer their best possible advice.

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. Don’t know the Answer