Building a Business on Your Own Terms with Jayne Havens

 

Building a Business on Your Own Terms
with Jayne Havens

 

There’s no shortage of advice out there about how to grow a successful business. Post on Instagram, build an email list, create a funnel, develop a content strategy. And while all of these things can be effective, that doesn’t mean they’re the right fit for everyone.

When I started my sleep consulting business in 2018, I knew very little about the world of online entrepreneurship. What I did know was how to connect with people, build relationships, and provide exceptional customer service. I leaned into those strengths, and within my first year, I was supporting more than 25 families a month.

In this episode of Becoming a Sleep Consultant, I’m sharing how I’ve grown my businesses by doing things my own way. I’m talking about why I’ve never relied heavily on social media to attract consulting clients, how taking action rather than overthinking has served me as an entrepreneur, and how my priorities have changed as my businesses and my children have grown.

There are so many different ways to build a successful sleep consulting business. You don’t have to follow somebody else’s playbook. You do, however, have to be willing to put yourself out there, take action, and figure out what works for you.

 

Links:

 

If you’d like to learn more about becoming a Sleep Consultant, please join our Facebook Group: Becoming A Sleep Consultant

CPSM Website: Center for Pediatric Sleep Management

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

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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.

Jayne Havens: Welcome back to the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast.

Today, I want to talk about what it looks like to build a business on your own terms. I think there’s so much information out there about how to grow a successful business, and while a lot of it is super helpful, I also think it can be overwhelming, especially when you’re first getting started.

When it comes to landing clients and growing a successful consulting business, there are so many different strategies being taught. And sometimes, I think we get caught up in what we’re supposed to be doing rather than thinking about what actually makes sense for ourselves. I’ve been running my sleep consulting business since 2018, and over the years, I figured out what works for me and how I want to spend my time and what parts of working in my business I enjoy the most. I think one of the reasons I’ve been so successful is that I’ve always been pretty comfortable doing things my own way.

When I first started my sleep consulting business, Snooze Fest, I had a pretty solid business background. I had had a very successful career, earning six figures in my 20s as an event planner. I understood how to articulate my value, connect on a personal level with prospective clients, and I understood the importance of excellent customer service, relationship building, and all of the things that go into running a successful business.

What I didn’t know anything about was the world of online entrepreneurship. I had no idea what a lead magnet was. I didn’t know anything about email funnels or automations. I honestly didn’t even know that there were business coaches or marketing strategists out there teaching entrepreneurs exactly how to grow their businesses online. I wasn’t listening to business podcasts or following people on Instagram who were telling me what I needed to do to be successful.

Looking back, I actually think that that really worked in my favor because I wasn’t distracted by all of that noise. I wasn’t comparing myself to other sleep consultants, and I wasn’t spending hours trying to figure out which marketing strategy was going to be the most effective. I just started doing what made sense to me based on the experience that I had already had.

I got my business off the ground by talking to people. I told all of my friends and all of my family what I was doing. I wasn’t shy for a single second about asking them to share my business with their friends and their family. I connected with other professionals who were also working with parents, and when I started supporting families, I worked really, really hard to make sure that they had a really exceptional experience. I knew that if I did a great job and those families were really happy with the support that I provided, they would be very likely to tell other people about me. That’s something I understood from my previous career, and it’s something that I believe in very, very strongly still today.

By the end of my first year in business, I was supporting more than 25 families a month. I was getting multiple new inquiries every single day, and I was actually starting to wonder how I was going to manage all of the business that was coming my way. I had built my business without paying any attention to what was going on around me. I was not at all concerned with what other sleep consultants were doing. I was not paying attention to how they were showing up online one single bit. Honestly, I didn’t care. I was showing up authentically as me, and that was working.

The reason I wanted to share my experience with you today is because I think there is so much pressure on entrepreneurs, especially new entrepreneurs, to build their businesses in a very specific way.

Many people will say that you need to be posting on Instagram, you need to have a lead magnet, you need to be building an email list, you have to have a funnel, you need to be creating content daily. I understand why people talk about all of these things. They absolutely can be effective. But I also think it’s really easy to get caught up in what everybody else is doing that you forget to think about what you actually want your business to look like.

I think my experience with social media is a really good example of this. When I first started my sleep consulting business, I was actually fairly active on Instagram. I was sharing client wins, screenshots of text messages from parents whose babies had just slept through the night, and little bits of information here and there about sleep training. I was actually really excited about what I was doing, and I wanted everybody to know about it.

But I think the greatest value of Instagram for me in those early days wasn’t necessarily that it was bringing me a ton of new clients. The value for me was that it was helping me to learn how to talk about my business. I was figuring out how to communicate about what I did, how to explain the value of my services, and how to share results that I was getting for families. Being online helped me to find my voice and gain confidence as a business owner.

Over the years, as my business grew, I started to realize that a majority of my clients weren’t finding me because of something that I posted on Instagram. They were finding me because somebody had told them about me. A former client would share my name with a friend. A pediatrician would recommend me to a family. Or a preschool director would hear about a child who was struggling with bedtime and suggested the parents give me a call.

I was spending more and more time connecting with other professionals who also supported families in some capacity: pediatricians, child psychologists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, preschool directors, doulas, nannies, et cetera. These are all people who are working with parents every single day, and they’re often in a position to recognize when a family is struggling with sleep.

I also always prioritize staying connected with the families that I had supported in the past. Especially in the early days, I would reach out a month or two after we finished working together just to see how things were going. Sometimes, I would send along a resource that I thought might be helpful. Every so often, I would make these little graphics. I actually still do this with random helpful ideas to share with families.

Most recently, I created a graphic that had 10 indoor activities to help toddlers get their energy out before bedtime as the weather cools and the sun is setting earlier. I will shoot my clients a text and share this graphic and encourage them to share it with their friends. Every once in a while, somebody will respond to that text and say, “Oh my gosh. I was just thinking about you. My friend was just asking me who we use to help Benny transition to a bed,” or whatever, right? And that prompts them to remember me and refer me more business.

These interactions are so valuable, and they’re also so easy for me because I genuinely enjoy connecting with people in this way. I never really force myself to do things in my business that don’t feel good to me. I always take action in a way that feels aligned with my values.

At some point, a few years ago, I realized that I wasn’t really posting so much on Instagram anymore. It wasn’t a conscious decision to stop. I think I just got busy, and I wasn’t really getting any joy or satisfaction out of creating content. At some point, I realized that I actually should keep this up. Because if people ask me if you need to be on Instagram to grow your sleep consulting business, I was well positioned to say that, actually, no, you don’t. Because I have not posted on Instagram for an entire year, and my business is doing just fine.

When people express wanting to grow their sleep consulting businesses without social media, I actually love to remind them that consulting existed long before Instagram or any other social media platform. People have been building successful consulting businesses for decades without creating content on social media.

Now, I don’t want anybody listening to this to think that I am 100% anti-Instagram or social media. I’m absolutely not against using social media if you enjoy it or if you can figure out a way to use it that feels good for you. I actually think Instagram can be an incredible tool for growing a business, but I don’t think you should force yourself to build your business around a marketing strategy that you absolutely hate, especially when there are so many options available to you.

For me, relationships have always been at the center of my business, and I’m still actively building those relationships today. What I tend to love most about social media is that it gives you an opportunity to connect with people that you would never have the opportunity to connect with otherwise.

Not too long ago, I received an Instagram message from a physician assistant who works in Great Neck, New York. She told me that one of her patients had been raving about me during an appointment, and she reached out because she wanted to learn more about what I do. So she followed me on Instagram. We exchanged a few DMs and got to know each other a little bit, and now she’s one of my strongest referral sources.

I live in Baltimore, Maryland, and she’s in New York. We probably would have never connected if it were not for that one family sharing their experience with her. Instagram also made it so easy for her to reach out to me in a very casual and informal way. Sometimes, that casual nature of social media allows people to access each other and connect with each other in a way that feels maybe a little bit more complicated otherwise.

This story, I think, is a perfect example of why it’s so important to do a really good job for the families that you’re actually supporting. When you make a meaningful difference in somebody’s life, they’re often really excited to share that experience with others. But also, I think you have to be willing to make the ask sometimes.

At the end of my time working with a family, I always tell them that if they ever need me again, they’re welcome to reach out. I always want to be a resource for them, and I always want to remain a valued member of their circle of care. All I ask is that if they ever have a question down the road, that they email me rather than text because, as you can imagine, I get like 40,000 text messages a day. But I do want them to feel comfortable to reach out if they have a question down the road because this is how their relationship is maintained.

I also tell them that the only thing that I would ever ask of them in return is that if they know somebody who’s struggling with sleep—whether it’s a friend, a family member, a coworker—I would love for them to share my name. The same is true when I’m connecting with other professionals. I’m not reaching out to a pediatrician and expecting them to immediately start sending me clients. I’m interested in getting to know them, learning about their work, and figuring out whether there’s an opportunity for us to support each other in some capacity.

These relationships often take time to develop, and I think this is something that sometimes people underestimate. You can’t reach out to five pediatricians and not get any referrals and decide that networking doesn’t work. You have to keep showing up, keep making new connections, fostering the relationships you’ve already made, and continue to give people opportunities to get to know you and what you do.

If there’s one thing that you take away from this podcast episode, let it be this: whether you’re spending time on Instagram or trying to foster connections in real life, whatever strategy you choose, you actually have to do it. I think this is where some newer sleep consultants sometimes miss the mark. They spend so much time working on their businesses behind the scenes. They’re busy making changes to their website, or they’re creating graphics in Canva, rewriting their service descriptions, and tweaking their branding or pricing.

And listen, I get it. Those things are comfortable. You can sit at home in your pajamas and work on your website all day long, and at the end of the day, you can say you worked really hard on your business. But did you actually do anything to bring new clients into your business today? Did you introduce yourself to anybody new? Did you follow up with any of the professionals that you had connected with a few weeks ago? Did you reach out to any former clients today? Did you do anything that will move the needle in your business?

I think sometimes people avoid these tasks because they can feel uncomfortable, especially in the beginning. Nobody wants to put themselves out there and risk being rejected. It’s way easier to spend another three hours tweaking your website than it is to send an email to a pediatrician who might never respond. But if you want to grow a business, you have to be willing to do things that make you a little bit uncomfortable some of the time. And the more you practice, the easier it all starts to feel.

I can tell you that when I first started posting on Instagram, some of my content was likely a little bit cringey. I was figuring out how to communicate. I was figuring out how to talk about my business and how to position myself as somebody who actually knew what she was doing. But the more I practiced, the more confident I became.

I’ve had the exact same experience with this podcast, actually. I’ve been recording the Becoming a Sleep Consultant podcast since February of 2022. Every once in a while, I’ll go back and I’ll listen to one of my earliest episodes because I’m looking for an episode to re-release. I can hear such a difference in the way that I communicated then versus the way that I communicate now. I’m so much more confident, and I’m so much more thoughtful with my questions when I’m interviewing a guest. And I’m just more comfortable in front of the microphone than I was four years ago.

That confidence didn’t come from reading a book about podcasting or taking a course about interviewing people. It came from actually doing it over and over again. I think that’s true for so many aspects of running a business. You’re not going to become more comfortable with discovery calls by avoiding them. You’re not going to become more confident in talking about your services by sitting at home and rewriting your website. You have to practice, and you have to give yourself permission to be a beginner.

Another thing that served me really well as an entrepreneur is that I’m somebody that takes action very quickly. I am not an overthinker. I get an idea in my head, and I generally want to implement it right away. Sometimes that’s a really wonderful quality, and I’m sure there are times when it drives some people around me crazy. But I do think it’s been a huge part of my success.

When I first started my sleep consulting business, somebody told me that I should use ActiveCampaign for my email marketing, so I listened. I signed up for ActiveCampaign. I didn’t spend three months researching every single email marketing platform that existed. I had heard of Mailchimp, but I really didn’t know much about any of the other options. And so, when somebody recommended ActiveCampaign, I said, “Okay, that’s good enough.” Is ActiveCampaign the best email marketing platform for my business? Honestly, I have no idea. It’s expensive, it’s a little clunky, and it has way more features than I ever could have possibly needed. But it works, and I’ve been using it forever.

Starting Center for Pediatric Sleep Management actually looked pretty similar. I had been working as a sleep consultant, and my business had grown to the point where I was supporting more than 25 families a month. It was crazy. I was beyond capacity, and I was trying to figure out how I could continue to grow. I knew that I could raise my prices, and I had already done that several times. I could hire other sleep consultants to work under me, but I wasn’t particularly excited about that idea.

For those of you who know me, you know I’m a little bit of a control freak, and I knew that it would be hard for me to hand off my clients to somebody else and trust that they would communicate and support those families in the exact way that I would have wanted. So I started thinking about creating a training program. I had taken a sleep consultant certification course myself, and while the education on sleep was fine, I felt like there was a lot of room for improvement. I knew that I could do it better. Once I decided that I was going to do it, that was the end of it. I made my decision, and I sprang into action.

I think sometimes brand-new entrepreneurs are their own worst enemy. They really can hold themselves back. People often want to know exactly how everything is going to work before they take action. They want to have every detail figured out, and they spend so much time researching and planning that they never actually get started. I am by no means suggesting that you should make reckless decisions when starting your business, but I do think there’s something to be said for just jumping in, trusting yourself, and being willing to learn along the way.

I make big decisions, and I make big changes in my business pretty regularly. If something isn’t working, I just try something else. If I have an idea that I think could be beneficial, I look into it, I see whether it’s something I want to pursue, and I just go. I don’t need to know with absolute certainty that every decision is going to be the right one. I think that willingness to move forward without having every answer has opened up so many opportunities for me over the years.

And when I think about what building a business on my own terms has meant to me personally, I always come back to the reason that I started my sleep consulting business in the first place. I wanted to work, but I also wanted to be home with my children. I wanted to be able to contribute financially to our household income without giving up the flexibility that had been so important to me when I decided to leave my previous career.

Back in 2012, I walked away from a six-figure career to stay home with my first baby. I really loved being a stay-at-home mom. I was home with my son for four years before my daughter was born. And when she came along, things got a little bit more challenging. She had a milk-soy protein intolerance. She was colicky. Honestly, she was just a really cranky baby.

My son was in school all day, and I was home with this baby who seemed to cry no matter what I did. I remember starting to think that I needed something else in my life. I wanted to work again. I wanted to use my brain. I wanted to be creative, and I wanted to contribute financially to our household income.

But I didn’t want to go back to the career that I had left. I didn’t want to be in an office from 9 to 5. I didn’t want to put my kids in full-time childcare so that I could go back to work. I wanted to find something that would allow me to work while still being really present for my children. And sleep consulting seemed like a really natural fit. I had been helping friends with their baby sleep for years, and it was something that I truly enjoyed. So I got certified, I started my business, and I figured I’ll see where it went.

Of course, the business grew much more quickly than I ever could have anticipated, and figuring out how to manage that growth while still being the kind of mom that I wanted to be was not always so easy or simple. I actually have this very specific memory of being on vacation with my family at the beach, and I would excuse myself from whatever we were doing to walk up to the boardwalk and take a phone call with a prospective client. In those early days, I wanted every single piece of business that came my way. I was excited. I was motivated. And I was also a little afraid that if I didn’t take the call right then, I might lose the opportunity to support that family.

But as my business grew, I became so much more comfortable with setting boundaries in my business. I realized that if somebody really wanted to work with me, they were probably going to be willing to wait a few days for a phone call. I didn’t need to be available every minute of every single day to have a successful business.

And as my workload increased, I also had to make some adjustments at home. For years, my husband and I had a pretty traditional division of responsibilities. He worked, and I took care of the kids and the house. But now I was working too, and at some point, I had to say to him, “Hey, listen. I know you work really hard, but so do I. I need you to help me.” If the laundry needed to be folded and I was busy, I needed him to fold it. If he noticed that the dishwasher needed to be emptied, I needed him to just empty it. Sometimes I needed him to take the kids for a few hours on a Saturday so that I could get some work done.

We figured it out together, and we continue to figure it out because our lives and our schedules are always changing, especially as the kids are getting older. But I think that it’s worth talking about because so many of us get into entrepreneurship because we want this flexibility, and then we find ourselves working all of the time. At the end of the day, you have to be willing to make decisions that actually give you the flexibility that you were looking for in the first place. And those decisions are going to look different for everybody.

Now that I’m eight-plus years into my business, I make these decisions through a very different lens.

In year one, I was absolutely leaving my family on the beach to take a call. In year eight, I’m almost always closing my calendar while on vacation because I know that the families who want my help will be there when I get back. If I do take calls while I’m away, I know that my husband will cover for me. Because over the years, we’ve developed systems that allow both of us to be successful in our careers while remaining present for our kids.

I think it’s also important to give yourself permission to change your mind about what you want your business to look like.

The business that you want to run today might not be the business that you want to run five years from now. Your children will grow older, your financial goals might change, or you might discover that you really love working with, let’s say, a very specific type of client.

When I first started sleep consulting, I actually worked almost exclusively with infants because that’s where I felt most comfortable. I had taught my own children to sleep independently when they were really young, and I understood that process very well. I was actually really intimidated by the idea of working with older kiddos because I hadn’t personally experienced a lot of those challenges that the parents of toddlers and preschoolers were experiencing. My kids were not climbing out of their cribs or getting out of bed 100 times a night, so it felt a little out of my wheelhouse when I was first getting started.

But, you know, I’m also the type of person to take on a new challenge, especially if it meant another client on my roster. So I took those toddler cases, even if I was nervous. Over the years, as I gained experience, I realized that I actually prefer working with preschool-aged children. In many ways, I find it so much easier to support a three-year-old than a four-month-old. When you’re working with a four-month-old, there’s so much happening throughout the day. They’re napping multiple times. Parents are worried about short naps and wake windows, and there’s often a lot of communication happening from morning until night.

When I’m working with a three-year-old, we might check in first thing in the morning. The child goes to preschool for the day, and then we’re focused on bedtime in the evening. It’s a very different type of support, and it’s something that I’ve actually come to really enjoy. I never would have known this when I first started my business. I had to gain the experience. I had to try these new things and figure out that the cases that I was most intimidated by to start are now my absolute favorites.

This is the real takeaway: You need to try so many different things before you land on what feels best for you. Tune out the noise, forget what everyone else is doing, hold your head up high, and just get to work.

I do think there is a lot to be learned from other entrepreneurs, but I also think it’s important to remember that just because somebody else is doing something successfully, that doesn’t mean that you need to do it the same way.

Maybe you want to build a business that allows you to work while your children are in school, or maybe you’re hoping to replace a full-time income. Maybe you’re a doula or a newborn care specialist who wants to expand the services you offer, or maybe you’re dreaming of eventually leaving your current career to become a full-time sleep consultant. Those are all very different goals, and they’re going to require very different decisions.

The way you market your business, the number of clients you take on, the services you offer, and the hours you’re willing to work should all be informed by what you’re actually trying to accomplish. You don’t have to have your entire entrepreneurial journey mapped out before you get started. I certainly did not. I’ve built my business by taking action, building relationships, doing my best to serve the people who trust me, and making adjustments along the way. Some of the decisions that I’ve made have worked out beautifully, and others require me to change course. That’s all a part of it. Honestly, I can’t think of a single true regret.

I hope that as you’re building your own sleep consulting business, you’re thinking not just about how to grow, but about what you want that growth to look like and how you want your business to fit into your life.

That’s it. Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you next time.

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