A Business Rooted in Passion with Inbal Cohen

 

In this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant podcast, I’m chatting with Inbal, a sleep consultant who truly does this work from the heart. For her, helping families isn’t about making sales—it’s about sharing a gift that changed her own experience as a mom. Inbal Cohen

Inbal opens up about how becoming a mother without her own mom by her side shaped her journey, why sleep consulting feels like a way to give back and heal, and how she’s built a business rooted in passion and purpose. If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like to grow a business that truly aligns with your heart, this episode is for you! Inbal Cohen

Links:

Website: Starry Night Sleep Consulting
Instagram: @starry_night_sleeptraining

 

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.

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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.

In this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast, I’m chatting with Inbal, a sleep consultant who truly does this work from the heart. For her, helping families isn’t about making sales. It’s about sharing a gift that changed her own experience as a mom. Inbal opens up about how becoming a mother without her own mom by her side shaped her journey, why sleep consulting feels like a way to give back and heal, and how she’s built a business rooted in passion and purpose. If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like to grow a business that truly aligns with your heart, this episode is for you.

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

Inbal Cohen: Me, too. Hi, Jayne. I’m excited to be here.

Jayne Havens: Before we get started, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you.

Inbal Cohen: Okay. So I am actually a speech therapist. I have a Master’s in Communication Disorders, and I’ve been practicing for over 12 years. I have two kids. One is, my oldest, Tamia, is seven. My little one is Eli, and he’s turning five in a few weeks, which is also crazy. Time is flying. I’m from Miami, Florida and that’s where I practiced for over 12 years working with families—always with pediatrics, with kids. I moved to Israel three years ago, three and a half years ago now, with my husband and my kids. My husband is Israeli. I’m Israeli as well, but I’m more Americanized since I’ve been in the States since I was five. I was born in Israel, and I grew up in Miami, Florida.

I’ll get into how I went from a full-time speech therapist to becoming a sleep consultant. So when I had my daughter, Mia, seven years ago, I think like any other parent, I would say most parents and most moms, you come home from the hospital and you’re like, “Now what? What do I do here?” I think that’s how I felt, especially when it came to sleep. I’ve always been a person, even before kids, that really loved sleeping. And not only loved sleeping. But if I had something to do in the morning, I’m counting my hours of sleep. I’m that person. I’m like, “Okay. I can’t.” I’m not like, “I’ll wing it tomorrow. This will be worth it. I’ll figure it out.”

Like if I have work at a certain time, I’m counting my hours before I go to bed. And of course, once you have a baby, what the world tells us is to say goodbye to sleep. You’re never going to sleep again. And I was like, this can’t be. It made me really anxious to when I first had a newborn at home to not be getting that sleep in those weeks. Your first week, you’re at a high. Then I think after around two, three weeks, it starts really hitting you. Like, “Okay. When do I actually get sleep?” I remember the sun setting during those first few weeks of becoming a mom, and I would get super anxious. I read so much things now and looking back I’m like, “Oh my God. This is so normal.”

But at the time, I felt very alone and lost. I was also guilty about feeling that because of what society is telling you when you have a newborn. Like, this is it. That you don’t sleep, and this is what it is. I didn’t even know a sleep consultant existed at the time. I think it’s one of those things that we don’t know about until we have to know about them. I never actually got an official sleep consultant. But my best friend had been already on her third child. Thank God—always thanking her—she had sleep trained all three of her kids.

And so her youngest one was six months old. So it was like, she would always reread all the books and whatnot. She was amazing at it. I remember her looking at me and she’s like, “Do you want to do what everybody else is doing and not sleep, or do you want to help yourself?” I get a little emotional when I talk about sleep training I think because, like I said, I felt really alone. I didn’t know what kind of mom I was. I didn’t know what was the right fit for me. I think we learned that today, seven years later, it’s motherhood.

I’m so much more confident in saying like, “This is what works for me. This is the kind of mom I am. This is how I want, how I would like to raise my kids.” But at the time, there are so many question marks. It feels like there’s all eyes on you, and you don’t know all the answers. You’re trying to figure out “what is right.” There are so many decisions to make—a million decisions, it feels like—of how you’re going to run your household and how you’re going to raise your kids and what kind of mother you’re going to be.

I had lost my mom to breast cancer when Mia was born. I think it’s 10 years now, so it was like three years. So it was pretty fresh. I think that when we become moms — again, speaking now, thinking back at it, it’s like the time that you feel like this is when you want to go back to your mom. This is like, well, now you’re a mommy and things are like, “Oh my God. Now I realize how much you’ve done for me, all the sacrifices, the things that we don’t really realize when we’re growing up.” We’re kind of like, this is mom’s job and this is what it is. So it was like the village that everybody talked about, I felt like, where is it? When is it coming?

Like, I need a break here. When am I sleeping again? When am I going to be able to take a shower? When am I going to be able to — when is the day going to end? I never knew when the day was going to end. For me, it made me anxious because I am that kind of person on a schedule, and because I knew always this is when I work. This is when I’m done. This is when I go to the gym. And I felt like I was kind of like almost out of control. I didn’t know when I was going to get that control back. So my friend was like, “I will help you sleep train Mia.”

Mia was at the time probably eight weeks. We started. I guess now knowing more at sleep shaping at that age and getting her on a schedule, and it changed my entire life. I went from feeling lost to feeling like, “Oh my God. I can do this. I can really excel at everything.”

By 12 weeks, Mia was sleeping through the night. I mean, when I say sleeping through the night, from 7 to 7. Then it happened one night and I was like, “This was probably luck.” And it happens another night and we’re like, “No, this can’t be it.” It happened another night and this was the new normal, and I was like, “Okay. Maybe we got lucky.” Like, you feel like you get lucky. I mean, I knew I did something here. I was following all the steps. But still, it felt like too good to be true. Especially, again, with everything that you are told from the outside, this is, yeah, babies don’t sleep. You don’t sleep.

Even when you’re pregnant, that’s all you hear. Sleep now. Sleep when you can. As if you can like pack up sleep and then take it out when you need it. So it was magical, really. So I felt like it saved me in so many ways. I went back to work part-time after three and a half months, after Mia was three and a half months. I was sleeping. I was going to work like a normal person that’s slept, and I was energized. I mean, Mia would wake up like the happiest baby on the block, literally. It was magical to see what sleep does to everyone. Then I say this today all the time.

This is like my line. Sleep is a necessity. It’s not a luxury. Although we really feel like sometimes when moms call me, I feel like they’re apologizing for wanting to sleep. Sometimes they would literally say, “I give up. I’m coming to help because I give up.” I’m like, “This is the opposite of giving up.” We can ask for help in so many areas of motherhood.

When we need to teach our kids to swim, we call the swim expert, right? I don’t know how to teach my kid how to swim. You learn this. You study this. You do this every day. You have experience with this, and I’m going to trust you to teach my kid to swim. If a child needs therapy, we’ll speak to a therapist. We’re like, okay, who does speech therapy? Who does occupational therapy? Who does physical therapy? Whatever we need, that’s our village around us. This is all the experts that studied something more than we studied it.

So when moms call me, I explain we all need sleep. The fact that you’re calling for help is just because I study this a little bit more than you did, and you don’t have time to study this right now. Let me hold your hand through this. I will answer the questions. I will go through the motions. This has nothing to do with giving up. This is the exact same thing as a million other things we’re going to do as parents and support our kids through, through all these milestones.

Same thing with potty training. Sometimes we need help potty training. A book isn’t enough, so we’ll call a potty-training expert. To me, this is exactly the same. We can only go so long. And our babies, too. It’s a huge part of development without sleep. Not letting someone sleep, it actually used to be a form of torture. This needs to be really understood by everyone. We shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting sleep for everybody in our family.

Jayne Havens: I want to know what led you from being so passionate about this to actually deciding that you wanted to do this professionally.

Inbal Cohen: So I always say, actually, Jayne, I don’t know how our paths crossed. I have this thing that when I meet someone this far out in my life, I almost feel like — especially after I lose my mom, I’m like, my mom put this person here. I crossed paths with this person. Whether it’s a boss or somebody that I work with, I feel like I meet people this far in my life for a reason.

And we connected somehow on Facebook. I always tell you. And I feel like I’ve known you forever. It’s really weird. I met your mom since then. And I’m like, you’re just, you know. This is a whole conversation. But I’m like your biggest fan. I brag all the time about you, and I learned so much from you. But I think for a long time, I wanted to get certified just so I can officially help people. I didn’t think about it as a business at all.

After Eli was born — I sleep trained him as well, and it was the same thing — I was like, okay. This is not a coincidence. I can help people to get to the same. I felt like I won the Lotto, and I wanted to share the money, because I didn’t need all this money, with everyone. That’s like, hold on. Look, look, look. You can do this. There’s another way. And so, for a long time, I wanted to get certified so that I can have that support. That even though I felt like I knew this because I did it with my own kids, to have that background—

Jayne Havens: The credibility.

Inbal Cohen: Yeah, the credibility. Right. I really am a sleep consultant. I really studied it. I really have a certificate. I really passed on being — I was working full time after I had Eli, and I just didn’t really have a chance/was nervous to take a chance on myself with something new. I was a speech therapist, and that was who I am for so many years. I never thought I was going to add something else to that. It was kind of like, this was enough.

But when I moved to Israel, I took a stop from speech therapy, kind of a pause while we were moving country. The kids were still like four and a year-and-a half. And I was like, I don’t have an excuse right now. I’m not working full time. I’m going to do it. That’s when I think I pulled the trigger, and I finally signed up for the class. I kept giving myself little goals, and then I graduated. Then when I graduated, I was still so nervous. I know I have a business but I don’t think — to me, it’s almost like a hobby that I get to make money from.

It’s hard for me to think about this as a business because I’m like, I get paid to really talk about something and to help moms and dads, families and babies do something that I believe in so deeply and that I’m so passionate about. So I feel like I’m still two years into the business and I’m still kind of like, “Wait a minute. Yes, this is something that I really can grow because it’s coming from a place of true passion.” I think I’m lucky in that sense where I don’t need to be pushy about it. I feel like it comes very, very authentically.

Clients have told me that. Like, “Oh, you’re a good businesswoman.” I’m like, that’s so funny because I feel like I never want to talk about money. I never want to talk about money. That’s the last thing that I’ll talk about. And they’ll say, okay. I guess you can hear the passion in your voice when I’m talking to moms if we’re doing a discovery call or through our time together.

Jayne Havens: One thing that I’ve noticed about you and I’ve watched your journey from, first of all, being scared to even enrolled in the course and then you passed the course, I think your first couple of clients came to you without so much — if I remember correctly, it was just sort of not that they fell in your lap, but you were just like so excited and so, like, “Oh my gosh. This is happening. I have clients. I’m helping people.” You’ve really always sort of showed up for your families that you support and your business in just a way where you feel super fortunate to be able to do it.

Every little negative business that comes your way, it’s always like you seem surprised. You seem surprised that your business is growing and that you have clients and that you have all of these families that want to work with you. And I’m like, well, of course they do. You’re really good at what you do. You show up so authentically and so excited about the work. But it’s just so, I guess, a little bit really sweet to watch. Because every single moment of growth, it’s like you’re totally shocking yourself. Like, you’ve never thought in a million years that you’d be able to do it. I just think it’s adorable.

Inbal Cohen: Yeah, it really has something. I’ll talk about how I did get my first client. I remember that being like, okay, I graduated. Now you’re like, okay, throwing yourself kind of out there. I was like always putting it off. Like, “How am I going to do this? Who’s going to be my first client? Who’s going to want to trust me?” I would say, really, the families, they are trusting me. I tell them this all the time.

With their most-prized possession, there is nothing — as a mother, there’s nothing more important, nothing more sacred than our babies. Really, there’s nothing. Not all the money in the world, not any job in the world. I really, really take that very, very seriously, I guess, you’d say. It’s very sacred to me. It’s really important to me, when I have the discovery call with parents, that they know who I am and that I’m always talking to them first as a mother.

I say this all the time. I will never ask you to do something, A, that you’re not comfortable with — so you always tell me if you’re not comfortable. We’ll figure some other way to get to our goal — and that I wouldn’t have done or do with my own babies, or with my nieces, or nephews, or somebody to me that is loved. I will never expect you. I think that’s also branching from me as a speech therapist and working with kids with disabilities for years and with families. Before I even had kids, those were like my babies. But I think that when you become a mom, you are like reborn all over again. And so I really connect with moms on that level.

Jayne Havens: So where did your first client come from? Do you remember?

Inbal Cohen: Yes, I was in Israel when I started playing business. Today I work with clients in Israel and in the States. Those are most of my clients. I speak fluent Hebrew. But I didn’t feel comfortable. As a new sleep consultant, everything I learned was in English. So I was like, I wanted to target the Americans in Israel or the Americans in the States. Basically, working in English for now.

And I am in a huge Facebook group, a parent support group. It’s called the Parents of Tel Aviv. It has like 7,000 members. People are there very, very active with anything and everything that you can think of — there’s schools, if it’s medicines, whatever it is, it’s there. And I was like, okay, I’m going to make a post. I remember saying this to my husband: “If I just make my money back from the investments that I put into the course, I will be happy.” That’s it. That was my main goal.

Today, I’m like, I cannot believe how I — I felt like I was selling myself short, like you said. I believed in myself but not enough. And today, it feels silly to me because I’m really something that you’re coming with, with so much passion. I really believe that that’s the key. There’s something that you want to do that you feel passionate about. It’s like what the world needs so much of.

Jayne Havens: So what did you post?

Inbal Cohen: I posted that I was a speech therapist, and I’m a new sleep consultant. I said a little bit about myself, and I’m taking a few families on for a very — I didn’t want to say free, even though it was not about the money. I wanted the experience. I wanted someone to commit to me, to trust me. But I wanted them to take it seriously. So I said it was a very low fee. I was like, I don’t know if anybody is going to write back. My inbox was like flooded. And I was like, oh my God.

People really need help, and moms are writing me all these struggles with sleep. I was like, okay, there’s a huge need, first of all. And of course, there is. Because sleep is sleep. It’s like saying I’m having trouble eating. It’s a basic necessity. Of course, people need help with that and people want it. It’s a huge part of everybody’s lives. It doesn’t matter what house or culture or country. And so, from there, I had a few families. I have to say that, from then on, everything opens up. My clients are amazing because they do the work for me all the time. I think it’s like the best return they can give to me besides the money.

Because as moms, like I said, I think when we’re — I know this as a mom. If I need something from my kids, that I’m asking another mom, “Oh, do you know this person? Do you trust this person? Do you know this person? Have you worked with this person?” You want to get somebody that’s like a little bit of a background on them. And if it’s a babysitter, let’s say, “Oh, she’s worked with our family for these many years,” you’re like, “Okay. Great. You’re my friend. I trust you. You’re my family. She’s in.” So it’s amazing.

They really have been doing the work for me. I must say that I haven’t put too much investment as far as social media and things like that, which I’d love to. That’s I think my next goal, as much as I thought I would need because the referrals that my clients have put in since then.

Jayne Havens: And I think that that has happened for you because of your passion for your work and how good you are at your work. I always say this to people. Because people ask me all the time, like, how much am I going to have to hustle? How much marketing am I going to have to do? And I do think it varies person to person. But I always say that when you do a really good job and when you change people’s lives for the better, that speaks for itself. Right? You clearly had an impact on these first few families that you supported and that carried you through, which I think is a beautiful thing.

Inbal Cohen: Absolutely. And it never gets old. When we do a wrap-up call, it’s my favorite part of this whole journey. So I work with families for two weeks. We have a Zoom call. And before we get started, we lay out the plan. Then at the end, we have a wrap-up call once baby is sleeping and all good. It’s my favorite part because, first, I mean, we did the work. We committed to it. We’re at the end of the two weeks.

We’re there. And it’s like okay, the paycheck is great and all. But it’s really changing, like you’re saying, like changing somebody’s whole life. I mean, I know. It changed mine for real. I really became a better friend, a better wife, a better worker, and absolutely a better mom. I feel like I was able to enjoy motherhood because of sleep training. I was able to have a second child. I always say if there was no sleep training, I don’t know if I would have another. And if I ever think about a third, I’m like it would only be because that I know how to help a baby fall asleep and have a schedule.

So no matter how hard our days are, and there are hard days in motherhood, I feel like I know there’s going to be an end to our day, and tomorrow will be a new day. I think when we don’t have that structure, it gets hard. Because you feel like you don’t know when you’re able to kind of almost energize your battery, like recharge. For me, that stop and that time to really, that’s what it feels like. Like I’m really recharging.

Even if I’m sitting there looking at my kids’ pictures while they’re sleeping, I’m like, “Oh, no. I miss them.” I’m like, this is my recharge. Literally, I always say this. Sleep training was my village. I felt like I didn’t need a night nurse. I didn’t need a nanny. I really was able to depend on myself and on sleep training and on my kid. And what we had, I really was able to do it on my own. And not that getting help is, there’s anything wrong with that. But sometimes, I think when we help ourselves, it’s the best gift we can give to ourselves with everything in life, especially when we’re mothers, to kind of depend on ourselves.

Jayne Havens: What advice would you share with brand new sleep consultants who are just breaking into the field, trying to find their footing?

Inbal Cohen: It sounds so cliche. But I’m like, lead with passion. If you study this, if you sign up for this course, and if it found you, it’s for a reason. You’re at the most amazing place to really jump into the water, nervous and all. Believe in yourself. We have such a beautiful Facebook community. We help each other all the time. That’s, I think, the beauty of this really, is that we have each other. Even though sometimes I feel like, most of the time, we know the answers to the questions that we ask, we want a second opinion. So I think that we have such an amazing opportunity to believe in ourselves here.

Even if we have a doubt, we have a backup. So you’re jumping into the water but you also have life support on all the time. And to do it. Really, to do it. I think that the rest will absolutely follow. If you’re going into this, which I think there’s most — I don’t know how you can go into something this personal, working with families and with babies, with anything in this profession without passion. I think that we’re all there for a reason.

My personal experience drove me to want to help. I feel like every family I help, it hasn’t got old and I don’t think it’s going to get old. That I feel like I’m healing this part of me when I was in trenches. It’s always going to be my passion. I will not convince anybody to sleep train their child. That’s not my thing. Because I don’t think that it’s for everyone. But for the people that it is for and they find me, I’m going to be there for you from start to finish. My goal is for you to feel exactly what I felt when my babies were sleeping.

Jayne Havens: Well, that is the most beautiful thing ever. So we’re going to end on that note. Before we wrap up, where can people connect with you? Where can they find you? Do you have a website, social media, that you’d like to share?

Inbal Cohen: Yes, I finally got super professional now that I built a website and invested in my business. It’s amazing because now people will book on Starry Night Sleep Training. I also have an Instagram. I haven’t been as active as I would like to on there. But that is definitely my goal this year, to invest in that too.

I’d like my Instagram to be a place where parents can find a little bit about who I am, and also for it to be a light and fun place and not take it too seriously, not where it’s going to scare anybody off, to really kind of get a feel for who I am. Because I think moms just ended up becoming my friends at the end, really. I’ve made so many friends along the way too, which is amazing.

Jayne Havens: Perfect. It was so great chatting with you. And, you know, this podcast is audio, so people won’t be able to see our facial expressions. But we were both smiling ear to ear during this conversation. I just am beaming with pride because I know how far you’ve come, and I know that you started from a place where you were much more timid and nervous about putting yourself out there. And it’s very clear that you’ve gained your confidence, and you’ve found the language that you use to speak about the work that you do.

You’re really, as you said, showing up from a place that’s very, I think, sort of like heart-centered and passion-driven. And that’s definitely the reason for your success. So I’ll say, all the muscles in the world, right?

Inbal Cohen: Thank you, Jayne. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

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.