A Day in the Life of a Sleep Consultant with Jayne Havens
This is a topic that I have covered before, but since every day as a sleep consultant looks different I decided to tackle it again! The beautiful thing about running your own business is that you get to do it in a way that works for you. Day in the Life of a Sleep Consultant
This example of “A Day in the Life” is a pretty typical of what my day looks like. It felt great to have a handful of calls but also plenty of downtime too. I am sure tomorrow will look entirely different!.
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Transcript: Day in the Life of a Sleep Consultant
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: One question that I am asked most frequently from those who are interested in getting into the field is, what does it look like to work as a sleep consultant day to day? What does the work look like? What does it look like to support families? What does it look like to grow a business? I’ve addressed this on the podcast before, but I like to do it over and over again. Because really truly, every single day looks different. So here I am sharing what my day in the life looks like today.
Today I woke up at, I think, 6:30 this morning. By 7 AM, I was texting all of my clients to see how the night went. I’m currently supporting seven families, and they’re all doing really, really well. Not much to talk about. I shot them off quick text messages; they responded. Most of them just shot me, “She slept through the night,” or, “All was great.” So really not much to talk about. I really only have one family that’s still sort of in the thick of working it all out. That baby actually slept, I think, 10 hours last night and was fed and then was put back down. So he’s really doing great also. Everybody else was slam dunk quick text back and forth, and that was the end of that.
After my morning check ins, I’m sort of racing around to get my kids dressed and fed and out the door. I have them at school by 8 AM. I am at the gym by 8:30. Three times a week, I work out with a trainer. It’s only a 30-minute session, but it’s a really great way for me to start off my day. It gets my energy pumping. It just sets the day off with a really great tone. I don’t know. I really enjoy it. I don’t love to work out. I’m sort of lazy and sedentary. But I do find that showing up at the gym three times a week with somebody who’s holding me accountable, which you know the irony is that that’s what we do as sleep consultants, right?
We hold our clients accountable. We provide them with really great advice, and then we support them to reach their goals. That’s what my trainer does for me at the gym. So even when I’m sort of sick of it or I don’t want to go, I love that I have this accountability. I have to go because I’ve paid for it. I said I was going to be there, so I’d go. And I always end up loving it. So that was 8:30 to 9 — quick workout. By 9:15, I was at the grocery store picking up a few things.
10 AM, I was home and I had an Ask Me Anything call. This call was a great one. I’m smiling. You can’t see that, but maybe you can hear it through my voice. I’m smiling because this is a repeat client. I worked with her when her baby was just four months old. We sleep trained him. He did great. From time to time, she will hop onto my calendar for these quick 30-minute Ask Me Anything calls — whether it’s because he is in need of a schedule change, or maybe he’s going through something separation anxiety-wise. She’s actually hopped onto my calendar for all sorts of things, even somewhat outside of the scope of my expertise.
I think sometimes my clients start to think of me as just a mentor in their life, a parenting coach. And so she’s one of those people who really stays in touch. She will reach out to me with any sort of parenting struggles that she’s up against. That’s what this morning was. She’s struggling. Her son is now two, and he’s really pushing back on boundaries around bedtime but I think also during the day as well. We talked all about setting what I like to call loving limits and respectful boundaries and really helping him to understand where he has choices and where things are optional and then where things are a little bit more non-negotiable. That was a really great call.
10:30. I’m still smiling. Because at 10:30, I had a FaceTime with my little three-year-old client, Sophie, who is sleeping through the night. I’m grinning from ear to ear because she was a tough little cookie when we got started. Now she is sleeping, and she’s proud of herself. As excited as I am for her, I think she is just as excited for herself. She wanted to call me today. Her school was canceled because they had a flood in the building or something like that. She was home with mom and a friend today. She wanted to FaceTime me just to tell me that she slept through the night and that she’s so proud of herself. I had a FaceTime with little Sophie Sleeping Beauty this morning, and that was wonderful.
At 11 AM, I had another Ask Me Anything call. This one’s interesting. This is a mom with a six-month-old baby. She also has a three-and-a-half-year-old. She hopped onto my calendar actually for a discovery call. She said in the notes that she wanted to work with me. Her baby is sleeping through the night, but she’s just waking up early at 6 AM. She wants to troubleshoot that.
So I emailed her and I said, “I don’t think that you need me for two weeks. I think that it sounds like your baby is doing great. I understand that you don’t like 6 AM, but maybe we could just do a quick 30-minute Ask Me Anything call. I really don’t think we need to work together for two weeks.” We switched over from a discovery call to a paid Ask Me Anything call. I spent 30 minutes on the phone with her basically just telling her that 6 AM is acceptable and that her baby is doing amazing. And really, it was one of those conversations where I needed to help her to manage her own expectations.
Now, of course, I did want to help her to solve her problem if she really felt like she had one. I explained to her that in order for your baby to not wake at 6 AM — she was doing everything she should be doing. She was napping three times a day beautifully, going to bed beautifully. I said if you want to have a later wake up, you need to shift everything later. Morning nap needs to be later. Middle-of-the-day nap needs to be later. Third nap and bedtime all need to be later.
Of course, I helped her to realize that there is a solution if she really does feel a problem. But we also spent the better part of our 30-minute call just with me helping her to get to a place where she realized that really her entire family was thriving, and she didn’t necessarily have a problem to fix.
My clientele, they’re typically really successful type A moms who are used to being in control in their jobs and at home. They really thrive on routine and predictability. And sometimes when you throw a baby into the mix, they start to feel really unsure of themselves. All of a sudden, they’re not doing everything right.
This mom was doing everything right. Her baby was sleeping perfectly. And really, I just spent the better part of 30 minutes helping her to realize that she was doing great. I think she was grateful for that. I think in her heart, she knew that that was true. I think she knew that that’s what I was going to say to her. But it was validating and reassuring. I think that, really, it was a productive call. That was my 11 AM.
From 11:30 to 2:30, I actually have a break in my calendar, which is unusual. Usually, my calendar books up. I have phone calls, or Zoom calls, or something going on all day, usually. But weirdly, I don’t know what it is, if we’re headed into the season where people are traveling so maybe they’re not booking discovery calls. Because they don’t want to start sleep training right now if they’re going away next week. I don’t know what’s going on.
But I have three hours right now where I have time to myself. So, first of all, that’s why I’m here recording this podcast. It’s because I figured I got to fill the time. So I’m recording this podcast. I am going to take the time to respond to emails. I have an inbox full of stuff from the weekend and from early this morning that I just haven’t gotten to yet. So I’m going to clear out my inbox. I am going to hang out on social media for a bit. Maybe scroll Facebook, figure out who I should be connecting with, who I should be talking to.
I would say that I tend to spend way more time in my business actually networking and connecting and talking to people and working to grow my business than I actually do supporting my clients. I find that if I do a really good job of front loading my clients with information — both by way of writing a really thoughtful sleep plan and getting on to a phone call with them and answering all of their questions and making sure they feel confident and supported — there’s not a whole lot to do during the day to support families.
Especially, right now, all of my clients, I’ve been working with them for, all of them, at least a week at this point. So they are in a really good place. There’s not a whole lot to talk about. Out of the seven families that I’m supporting, only three of them actually have infants. The other four are toddlers and preschoolers, so those kids are in school all day. There’s no naps. There’s nothing really to talk about during the day. The infants that I’m working with, they’re all doing great. So really, only one of them is — I’m only hearing from one of them during the day.
At the time that I’m recording this podcast, other than the morning check in, I actually haven’t heard from them at all. So it’s not a whole lot of communication during the day, I find. If I do my job right on the front end, it’s not a whole lot of conversation and communication during the day.
Of course, every now and then, I am hired by a family that really does crave that communication, those touch points. They want to be texting with me for the better part of the day. That definitely happens, but I would say that that’s more rare than the norm. And when it happens, it’s my pleasure to do it. That’s my job. I’m more than happy to provide that high level of support. That’s what I’m here for.
I find that most of my clients really don’t need that. For a day or so, they’re super in touch. Then once things get easier, and they start to gain their confidence, really, I’m checking in in the morning. If I have a slow moment during the day, I might say at four or five o’clock, I might say like, “Hey, how did the naps go today?” But really, I’m not hearing from most of them all day long.
I’m hanging out on social media. I am reaching out to people in my network. Actually, I just saw on Facebook today somebody who has a kid in school with one of my children posted on Facebook that he is interested in connecting with people who want to learn more about marketing for their small businesses. I saw this, and I reached out to him. I said, “Hey, I’d love to connect. I have a whole bunch of people in my network who are working to grow their sleep consulting businesses. Maybe you could come and teach them how to market, whether we do that on the podcast or inside of CPSM.”
That’s what I’m doing right now. It’s just networking with people who would be either good referral partners for me or just help me to be better in my own business or to grow my business, whatever that looks like.
At 2:30, I have another discovery call. That call is with a mom who has both a three-year-old and a 19-month-old, both who are struggling with sleep. I’m going to talk to her for 15 or 20 minutes and figure out what her biggest challenges are and hopefully do a really great job of articulating how I can help her. Then assuming she signs on to work with me this afternoon, I would spend tonight working on her written sleep plan. So my last call today is at 2:30.
Typically, I pick my kids up from school at 3:45. But on Mondays and Wednesdays — today is Monday. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I have until five o’clock. So once I’m finished with this 2:30 call, I guess I’m going to have some more free time. I will either cut around online, find some more people to talk to, or maybe I will fold laundry, prep dinner if I can get my act together to do those things. Really, that’s my day.
And as I said, if this family if this mom decides to hire me, I will write her sleep plan tonight after my kids are in bed. That’s typically when I write sleep plans. Once my kids are home from school, I really do try to put the computer away. I still have my phone close by because if my clients are texting me, I want to be able to support them as much as possible. But I really do try to take that time between school and bedtime to be really present with my children. And if I need to power backup online after they’re in bed, then I absolutely will do so.
That’s what a day in the life as a sleep consultant looks like for me today. Every day is very, very different. So this is today. And if I were to record another podcast episode about a day in the life tomorrow, it would be nothing like this. That’s the beauty of the work that we do.
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. Day in the Life of a Sleep Consultant
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.