Building a Business Your Own Way with Andrea Hurley
Building a Business Your Own Way
with Andrea Hurley
What if the thing holding you back in business isn’t a lack of knowledge, but the fact that you keep waiting until you feel “ready”?
In this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant podcast, I’m talking with CPSM graduate Andrea Hurley about what happened when she stopped overthinking, started to trust herself, and she decided to take action.
Andrea shares how she went from feeling burned out as a nanny to building a growing sleep consulting business in a way that actually fits her life. We talk about the mindset of an entrepreneur, how she gained her confidence, and what she credits with gaining momentum in her business.
This conversation is such a refreshing reminder that there is no perfect formula for success, and that sometimes the biggest shift happens when you stop trying to do business “the right way” and start doing it your way.
Links:
Link to register: The Nurtured Parent Collective
Instagram: @thenurturedparentcollective
TikTok: @thenurturedparentco
If you would 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.
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.
What if the thing holding you back in business isn’t a lack of knowledge, but the fact that you keep waiting until you feel ready? In this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast, I’m talking with CPSM graduate Andrea Hurley about what happened when she stopped overthinking, started to trust herself, and she decided to take action.
Andrea shares how she went from feeling burned out as a nanny to building a growing sleep consulting business in a way that actually fits her life. We talk about the mindset of an entrepreneur, how she gained her confidence, and what she credits with gaining momentum in her business.
This conversation is such a refreshing reminder that there’s no perfect formula for success and that sometimes the biggest shift happens when you stop trying to do business the right way and start doing it your way.
Jayne Havens: Andrea, welcome to the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. I’m so excited to have this conversation with you today.
Andrea Hurley: Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.
Jayne Havens: So before we get started, why don’t you share a little bit about yourself? Tell me who you are and maybe a little bit about what your life looked like before becoming a sleep consultant and why you decided to get certified.
Andrea Hurley: So I’m a mom of two. I have a 12-year-old and a 16-year-old. I’ve been working with children my whole adult life, supporting families and children in different ways. I used to have an in-home daycare. I worked as a school behavioral interventionist, and before becoming a sleep consultant, I was a private nanny for many years.
I just remember feeling a little bit bored or burnt out with being a nanny, and I wanted to elevate that a little bit. So I just remember Googling one day, like, “How can I elevate my nanny career?” and sleep consulting came up. So I just started spending some time researching different programs, and I kept coming back to yours. So, yeah, that’s kind of how I got to be a sleep consultant.
Jayne Havens: When you enrolled in CPSM, really your intention was just to use the training as sort of like a resume builder, right? At the time, you weren’t necessarily thinking about what it might look like to support parents as a sleep consultant. Am I understanding that correctly?
Andrea Hurley: Exactly, yeah. I just wanted to have it just to, like you said, be a resume builder, or maybe be able to charge a little bit more per hour. And also, a lot of my families were always asking me about sleep because I worked with children from newborn all the way up to preschool, and I really could never answer. They’re like, “Why are they taking short naps?” You know, “I can’t get him to stay in his bed for quiet time,” and things like that. So it felt nice to be able to provide that additional help for the families.
Jayne Havens: Did you have any hesitations? Were you nervous about jumping in? I mean, it’s a pretty substantial time commitment. It’s a financial investment. Were you hesitating and nervous, or you just felt like, I’m going to get going?
Andrea Hurley: Honestly, at first I was like, “There’s no way. This is too good to be true. You’re not going to make all this money doing this.” Because I know. I saw that a lot of consultants do this virtually full time, and I couldn’t imagine being able to do that at all. So I was a little hesitant with that. But I also always like to follow my intuition and my gut, and something about it just felt right. So I took the leap there.
Jayne Havens: I love that. I know you enrolled in the program, I think, back in, what was it, like 2023 or something like that?
Andrea Hurley: ’23, yeah.
Jayne Havens: But you really didn’t kick off your sleep consulting business until more recently, I think, in 2025. Is that right?
Andrea Hurley: Yes. I mean, honestly, yeah, 2025. Kind of the end of 2024, I started really trying to pick up some momentum and be consistent. But I feel like it wasn’t really until I made a big shift in my work and personal life just this past few months, I would say June of last year, I think, is where I really started to see some momentum happening.
Jayne Havens: Okay. So we’re coming up on a year of having some real momentum in your sleep consulting business. You said that you made some shifts personally and in your career. Are you willing to share a little bit about what that looked like?
Andrea Hurley: So, for me, I know I needed to really make some shifts in my personal life, maybe start kind of eliminating certain relationships that I felt were draining me, honestly, setting some really good strong boundaries with that. And then also, I knew for me I needed more time during the day to focus on my business. I feel like forced creativity is hard for me. I would try to create a nanny schedule where, okay, I’ll have Mondays off, but then I’ll work Tuesdays during the school hours. But then only having that one day per week to work was just hard for me. I just would find myself just feeling more stressed out.
So I was thinking, what could I do to get my days back but also make income, right? Like consistent income. So I decided to get trained as a newborn care specialist. I already knew how to work with newborns, but you’d need that kind of title. So I took a course, became a newborn care specialist, and I started working overnights. So I work three nights a week as a newborn care specialist, and it just brought me so much more freedom to my days to just be able to focus on my business.
Having endless amounts of time, it’s just been a life changer for me. Just like, I’ll be on a walk or at the grocery store or just sitting around and laying in bed, and I’m just like, “Oh, let me do this. Let me write this.”
Jayne Havens: You really sort of took the bull by the horns—if that’s the right saying, right—and really made a pretty substantial shift in the way that you support yourself so that you have legitimate time to build this arm of your business, which I think is so smart.
I think so many people, they get stuck in, like, they have another full-time job, and it’s really hard. When you have a full-time job, it’s really hard to grow a full-time business, right? It’s really hard to have two full-time jobs at the same time. And I love that you were able to be creative and be resourceful and figure out a way to work a few overnights a week and really free up your entire schedule during the day to grow your sleep consulting business. That’s fantastic.
Andrea Hurley: I know. It’s just been such a blessing, honestly. I really love it, and I love being a newborn care specialist. I love spending time with the babies and helping families and letting the mom and dad get rest. It’s just all great overall.
Jayne Havens: I know that you’re newer to newborn care support. But I wonder, if it’s not already happening, if in time, some of those families that you’re supporting overnight will become either clients in your sleep consulting business or referral sources for you for virtual sleep consulting.
Andrea Hurley: Yeah, that’s actually happened, and a couple of families have extended. And then recently, I worked with twins. So we did three months of overnight care, and then they asked me to stay on for an extra month to do some in-person sleep training, and then we switched over to virtual support. And she’s referring me to all her friends, so it’s been really great.
Jayne Havens: Where, besides your existing newborn care specialist clients, where are you getting referrals? How are you building your sleep consulting business? What does that look like for you?
Andrea Hurley: So I know when I got my very first clients, they were pro bono just to get my footing. And then from there, I started teaching these online Zoom classes, like Newborn Sleep 101. I would do very specific classes, like from arms to crib naps to talking about ending contact naps. I always give a little raffle off. I would give, like, 50% off a package to one person that came and then give a little discount to everybody that attended. I would get clients out of that. And then sometimes I would get clients that saw the class and contacted me a few weeks later.
And then from there, I know being in mom Facebook groups is really helpful. I’m getting tagged a lot. I have one mom who’s referring me all the time. She’s always tagging me in all these groups. She’s always sending me her friends—it’s just great—her neighbors. I’m always getting people from her. I’m always just giving her a lot of support. She always texts me like, “Hey, what about the schedule today? It didn’t work out.” And I’m like, just helping her out.
Jayne Havens: I call those former clients, I call them super spreaders. You could literally have one or two families that you support that could keep you in business for months or years. One of my very, very first families that I ever supported, her kids are big. She has big kids now, and she refers me all the time. And so sometimes it literally just takes one or two or three or four really great referral sources to build your business. And I love that you’ve experienced that.
When I’m listening to you talk about your journey and how you’ve built your business, I keep thinking about all the people who just stay a little bit stuck. I feel like that is not you, right? It’s so easy to have an idea but be scared to implement, or know how to implement but just be a little slow or lazy to take action, drag your feet, say, “I’ll do it tomorrow.” I just feel like that is not your personality at all, it seems, right? It seems like when you have an idea, you just figure it out and go.
What do you think it is? I don’t know if it’s like a personality trait or just who you are as a person that allows you to do that. Because I think probably so many people are listening to this thinking, “Wow! She just had these ideas. She took action and she’s doing it,” you know. How do you avoid being stuck? I feel like you’re just not the type of person to be stuck. I’m not either, but I think we’re a little bit of a rare breed. And so I’m asking you, how do we do it?
Andrea Hurley: I just, I feel like I have all of this inside of me that just wants to pour out. I just chase the dream or chase what feels right, like what excites me. And if it doesn’t excite me, I don’t do it, you know? Because there’s a lot of things, there’s a lot of advice out there like, “Oh, you should do this or this.” And I’m like, well, I don’t want to do that because it feels icky. And you can feel when you’re trying to do it and it doesn’t resonate with you, it just doesn’t feel good.
So I just try to chase the happy or just chase what is pulling me. And even if I do that and it doesn’t work out, it’s okay. Recently, I wanted to do the Baby Boot Camp. I had this really cool idea to do a Baby Boot Camp, do a group coaching program for four-month-old babies. I was so excited, and I felt like this is going to be it. Nobody signed up. But that’s okay because it was still practice for me, and I still learned something, you know?
Jayne Havens: Yeah, I personally am a firm believer that there are 1,000,001 ways to grow a successful sleep consulting business. And when you put your energy in a direction that feels good and serves you, that usually works out the best.
I also listen to other podcasts of business coaches and consultants and strategists, and they’ll say, “You have to be on Instagram,” or, “You have to have an email list,” or, “You have to do this,” or, “You have to do that.” I’m really a firm believer that you actually don’t have to do much of anything that you don’t want to be doing, you know?
Andrea Hurley: You don’t.
Jayne Havens: You get to build your business the way that you want to build it. And I really do see people inside of my community—those who are most successful are doing it in a way that serves them, and they build it around their existing life. They build it around their existing families, their hobbies, what brings them joy. And that doesn’t mean that everything in our business is fun, right? I don’t love writing sleep plans. It’s sort of my least favorite part of the work that we do, but I have to do it because it’s part of what I offer, right?
So you eat the frog first, you write the plan, and then you get to the fun stuff of the emotional support and the coaching. I think what I’m hearing from you, and I resonate with it so much, is that the best thing about entrepreneurship is that you get to do it your own way. I really firmly believe that. And when somebody asks me, “How many Instagram followers do you have,” it’s like, well, it wouldn’t really matter because I don’t post on Instagram. So it doesn’t matter how many followers I have. It’s irrelevant.
Andrea Hurley: Right.
Jayne Havens: And I love that about my business. To see people doing it their own way, on their own timeline, it makes me so happy. Because I think there’s a little bit of a stereotype. There’s this stereotype that you have to do it a certain way, right? You have to be dancing on TikTok, or you have to have a huge online presence, or you have to have a beautiful website. Some of our most successful grads literally don’t have websites. I love that. And really, when you sort of lead with passion and joy and excitement, the good stuff comes.
Andrea Hurley: Yeah, exactly. I don’t have an email funnel. That’s one of those things I just, I don’t like doing this. So I’m just not doing that, and that’s fine.
Jayne Havens: What are the things that you love to do in your business as far as growing your business is concerned? What sort of makes you feel good about finding new families to support?
Andrea Hurley: I actually really like creating Instagram reels.
Jayne Havens: You do? Okay.
Andrea Hurley: I do it on TikTok. I do. I’ve always been an educator at heart, so I really enjoy the community I’ve built on social media. I get on and I just talk about a topic. I’ll just be sitting like this and just get on and record, like, how to extend your baby’s naps today, or maybe frequently asked questions, or how to ditch the pacifier. Just anything that I can help the community with a little tip, that brings me a lot of joy. I love teaching. Teaching classes really brings me joy. I love answering questions. If a mom gets on a Facebook group and says, “Help me with this,” I don’t mind giving a little bit of help.
Jayne Havens: I think that’s really the secret sauce right there. I don’t even think you realized it when you said it, but people say to me all the time that they really want to grow their own business, but they hate sales. That’s what they say all the time.
“I hate sales. Sales feels icky. I don’t want to be selling something.” I really feel like the people who are successful in consulting, they’re not selling. They’re serving or they’re supporting. And what you’re doing is you’re getting out there and you’re just — you’re serving your community. You’re supporting them. You’re answering questions. You’re educating them. And that is where the trust is built, and that is where the clients come from. And I see that over and over and over again.
And when you get into this mindset of, like, “I have to sell, I have to sell. I have to share my offer, I have to share my offer,” it’s really, I think, exhausting. I actually never do that. I do what you do. I literally just answer people’s questions all day and get myself as helpful as possible. I try my best to position myself as highly skilled and knowledgeable. I like to try and be one of the smartest ones in the room, and then people start to pay attention. They trust me, and then they ask more questions. And then they hop onto my calendar, and then we help them. We actually solve their problems, you know? That part to me never feels like work.
Andrea Hurley: And I love the discovery call part. That’s one of my favorites. That’s when you’re not really — they already really know about you from all of the advice you’ve given and knowledge you’ve given and maybe a little sidebar conversation. So when they get on, they kind of already have a sense of who you are. But that’s when I feel like you can really shine and sell it because you’re selling an experience. What is it going to be like to work with me? And I always feel like right when I get to that part of the sale, it’s like everything’s quiet, and I just feel like I’m floating.
Jayne Havens: Are you willing to share, like, what is it that you are sharing on that call that really gives the families that are on the other end of the line an understanding of the experience?
Andrea Hurley: Well, I always start—and I just started doing this recently—I really try to manage expectations on the call. I always talk about crying.
Jayne Havens: Me, too.
Andrea Hurley: Because I want to make sure they understand that. And I really talk about what it is that we’re doing. Sleep training is a skill. You’re teaching your baby something, and with that, there’s going to be crying.
And I always talk about how I really am such an encouraging coach. I really encourage you to be confident and to know that you’re the leader, and that when you’re consistent and you communicate with me and you create connection with your baby, that this is when this whole process is going to work. And it’s such a short amount of time to work together to see these results, and you have your life back. You get time back with your husband. You get time for yourself. Sleep training isn’t even about sleep. It’s just about your whole life transforming.
Jayne Havens: I have the chills a little bit. Part of that might be because I’m sweaty from tennis, but part of it, I think, is because of what you just said. I really think that when we can articulate and illustrate the transformation that will come from the experience of working together, it’s really hard for parents to say no.
I’m working right now with a family, two parents with a 14-month-old who has never slept through the night, in the entire night, until we started working together. I wouldn’t say he’s fully sleeping through the night. We’re only three or four nights in, but we are in an amazing place compared to where we were before we started. One of the questions the dad asked during our discovery call was, like, realistically, if we’re super coachable and if we follow your instructions, how long is this going to take? How hard is this going to be?
What I love saying to parents in those moments, especially when I’m on calls with parents of older babies—we’re not talking about a four-month-old baby. We’re talking about a 14-month-old. So these parents haven’t slept in over a year. I love that I’m able to say to them, “Look, I don’t think it’s going to take the full 14 days, but even if it does, give me 14 days. Your baby is 14 months. You’ve been having a hard time for 14 months. Stick with me for 14 days, and I am entirely certain that you will be in a much better place. In the grand scheme of things, it is such a short period of time compared to what you’ve already been experiencing.”
And being able to say that to them and give them that reassurance is just the best feeling in the world. And I know it’s true because I’ve seen it over and over and over again. I wasn’t questioning anything. I’m entirely confident that if they put into place the strategies that I would recommend, that even if we took a really gradual approach, you’re going to be in a much better place in 14 days. Parents just kind of can’t believe it until they see it with their own eyes.
Andrea Hurley: Yeah, I had a client recently that was so skeptical, even after she booked. I sent the plan, and I hadn’t heard from her in a while. I’m like, is everything okay? And then we got on a call, and she’s like, “I just don’t think this is going to work. I just really don’t think this is going to work.”
We stopped on the phone for about an hour. It’s all about mindset and how you’re the mom. It was a toddler, and she was saying things like, “Well, he doesn’t like this idea, and he’s not going to like this.” I just had to kind of help her reframe the way she was thinking, and she was just blown away. After three days, he was sleeping in his crib through the night.
Jayne Havens: Do you enjoy working with older kids as much as you do babies? I mean, look, now that you’re a newborn care specialist, you’re cuddling with babies three nights a week. Do you really get the same amount of joy working with families of older kids?
Andrea Hurley: I do. I love working with all ages. I just love the transformation. It’s different, too, with the older kids. I haven’t really worked with many babies past, I’d say, 12 months old. But I would imagine, with a preschooler or toddler, it’s more about parent coaching at that point.
Jayne Havens: I think that working with preschool-aged children is so much fun. Because, I mean, look, sleep training an infant is great. You’ve got a great transformation, and the parents can’t believe it. And it’s really the first time ever that the parents have sort of taken control in their household as parents and sort of made a decision that was a parent-led decision rather than a child-led decision, right? It’s a big deal.
But with three- and four-year-olds, I’ve noticed a lot of parents have just sort of resigned themselves to being ruled and controlled by their preschool-aged children. And as you said, they literally do not believe that it’s possible to shift the dynamic. I think it’s maybe even more fun than the transformation that you get with an infant just because it all bleeds over to the daytime too. These kids who are pushing boundaries at 8 o’clock at night are also fighting getting their shoes on, getting into their car seats, cleaning up their toys.
And so giving parents the language and the confidence to set expectations and follow through with the boundaries that they hold, not just at bedtime but during the day as well, I just think is really fun.
Andrea Hurley: Yeah, it’s all collective for sure.
Jayne Havens: Do you have a favorite family or a story that sticks out as being most memorable?
Andrea Hurley: I have one client. She’s actually the one that refers me to everybody. I loved her because she was so type A. She wanted me to write out everything exactly, like when to lay the baby down, what are we doing between awake time and play, and when exactly do we stop playing. She needed that, and I loved it. I was like, great, because I like that too. I like the structure. So I was typing it all out, and she followed the plan just to the tee. She checked in with me all day, every day. I mean, she just wanted it to go well, and she was just so consistent. I just loved her.
Jayne Havens: I love that you’re maintaining that relationship, and she sounds like the type of person that really just benefits from some hand holding and support. And so it’s really incredible that she’s found you.
Andrea Hurley: I love it. Yeah, she’ll still text me and ask me little questions. Sometimes I’ll tell her, and she’s like, “Okay, thanks. I just needed a little reassurance.” And I love that.
Jayne Havens: Where do you see your business a year from now? Do you want it to grow? Are you content with the client load that you’re supporting currently?
Andrea Hurley: I would love to double it. That’s my goal. I would really like to support at least 10 clients per month and transition out of the newborn care specialist role. So that’s my goal. I’m really excited.
Jayne Havens: You’re doing all the good things. I’ve just really enjoyed watching you step into your confidence over the past year. I think if we look back a year ago, you were so much more — you were always really good at supporting families and kids. That was really always your thing. But I think in the past year, what I’ve noticed about you is that you’ve really sort of strengthened or toned that entrepreneurial muscle of yours, and you’re just so much more confident in the way that you show up in your business. And that makes me really excited because I think that once you have that, you really can gain some serious momentum and rock and roll.
And I think you are going to meet your goal in the next year. I think if we were to have this conversation a year from now, 100%, I think you’re going to be supporting 10 families a month. I can’t wait to see you get there in your business.
Andrea Hurley: I think coaching definitely helps you grow as a person. I think you learn a lot about yourself as you coach families. You find your coaching voice. When you first start out, you kind of don’t know what you’re doing. You have the support from your group, which has been so helpful. That’s invaluable, having the CPSM Facebook group. I don’t know what I would do without that. But as you get more comfortable, just recently, I found I don’t really ask as much as I used to. Like, I started to ask, then I’m like, “I don’t need to ask. I got this.”
Jayne Havens: You gained some confidence.
Andrea Hurley: Yeah.
Jayne Havens: And you know that even if you are not entirely sure, you’re going to trust yourself to give your best possible advice, and it’s most likely going to work out just fine.
Andrea Hurley: Yeah.
Jayne Havens: Before we wrap up, where can everybody find you if they want to follow you on social media? If you want to share your website, any offers you’d love to share, please do.
Andrea Hurley: Sure. So my Instagram is a good place to find me. It’s @thenurturedparentcollective. TikTok is another good one, and that’s @thenurturedparentco. And then my website is nurturedparentcollective.com.
Jayne Havens: It was so great having this conversation with you today. I am cheering you on every step of the way. Congrats on your success so far.
Andrea Hurley: Thank you.
Jayne Havens: And onward and upward from here.
Andrea Hurley: Awesome. Thank you so much, Jayne. It was great being here today.
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.