From Career Nanny to Full Time Sleep Consultant with Kari Mahady

 

From Career Nanny to Full Time Sleep Consultant with Kari Mahady

 

There’s a big difference between wanting a successful sleep consulting business and actually building one.

Kari spent more than 20 years working as a nanny before deciding she wanted something different. She loved working with babies and families, but she wanted more flexibility, and the ability to work entirely from home.

So she got certified as a sleep consultant and got to work.

For Kari, that meant putting herself out there in ways that didn’t always feel natural or comfortable. She reached out to pediatricians and other perinatal professionals, booked meetings that made her nervous, and spent hours making connections and building relationships. She worked tirelessly to market herself before the referrals were coming in and trusted that the effort would eventually pay off.

And it did.

Somewhere along the way, Kari gained confidence in herself and in the value of the experience she already had. Tasks that once felt intimidating became easier simply because she kept doing them over and over again.

In this episode of Becoming a Sleep Consultant, we talk about what it took for Kari to turn the career she imagined into the career she can be proud of. She’s ahead of schedule! 

 

Links:

Website: Kari Poppinz
Instagram: @karipoppinz_babysleepmagic

 

If you would like to learn more about the Becoming a Sleep Consultant, please join our free Facebook Group or check out our CPSM Website.

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

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

Kari Mahady: Me too. I’ve been waiting for this moment.

Jayne Havens: So let’s just dive in, and why don’t you share a little bit about yourself? Tell us about your career as a nanny and why you decided to become a certified sleep consultant.

Kari Mahady: Sure. So I moved from upstate New York in 2003. My ex-husband and I lived right across the street from a daycare. And I right away got a daycare teaching position, and I absolutely loved it. One of the families asked me to leave and become their nanny. They had two two-year-old twin boys and a five-month-old baby boy. And that was my very first nanny job. I think at the time I was making $10 an hour, which is crazy now.

But anyways, it was a really great learning experience. At that time, none of the kiddos were sleeping well, and the parents had high-demand jobs. They were working in the office, and they were just very exhausted. And they asked me, “Can you please help us?” I just did research on Google, and I came across the graduated extinction, Ferber method. And so I used that on the five-month-old, and then the chair method for the twin boys, and it worked like a charm.

And following, I got a position with Kiddie Up Nannies. It’s a popular agency out here in Colorado, and it was with a newborn baby. And same thing, it helped with getting the baby to sleep a lot better. I wasn’t too familiar with sleep shaping quite yet, just kind of sleep training when the baby became about four months old. And since then, I just, you know, each family led into the next. Generally, my families started around three months old when the parents went back to work. I would sleep train them and then stay with them until they pretty much went to daycare, around like the age of two.

And then fast-forward to 22 years of being a nanny, it was just after having a kid of my own and juggling working 40 hours a week outside of my home and dealing with school closings, weather, sickness, it’s just a lot. It’s just a lot to work full-time and have kiddos at the same time. And so I just really envied families that could work from home, parents that could work from home. That’s something I really wanted to do. So I just, you know—

One of my girlfriends, she had started a cleaning business, and she was bringing in awesome passive income. So I got that idea, and I did the same, actually. So for a hot minute, I cleaned and I quickly became the manager of this place, the owner, and just managing employees and making passive income. It was great. I thought I was going to do that, but it wasn’t my passion. I just wasn’t passionate about it. It just wasn’t bringing me joy.

I started putting messages out there in Facebook groups, and Kerri Nachlas, she was the one that suggested pediatric sleep consulting. And so I looked into it, and I was shocked. I was shocked that it’s actually a thing, that people or women are being paid to sleep train babies when I had been sleep training for like 22 years, all these babies. So I instantly became excited. I looked into your school. We had talked back and forth a couple of times, and I was pretty much sold.

Jayne Havens: So when you first decided to enroll in CPSM, was your goal really to do this work full-time? I know you were still nannying at the time, but did you always know that you wanted to leave nannying completely? Or were you sort of thinking, “I’ll sort of scale back my nanny hours. Maybe I’ll do part-time nanny work and do sleep consulting on the side”?

Kari Mahady: Absolutely. I wanted to make this a full-time position from the get-go. It’s just, I didn’t— I’m a single mom, and I didn’t have the luxury of just quitting my day job while starting a new career.

So what I did was I was able to drop down to part-time nannying while owning a cleaning business and bringing in income from that. And from there I was able to— actually, when I started the sleep consulting business, I was still working 40 hours as a nanny and the cleaning business. It really was a lot. For the first time in my life, I actually experienced burnout. That was last year at the end of— around the holidays, actually.

That was when I was doing it all, and I came to the realization, like, I absolutely cannot keep doing this the way I am. Like, full-time nanny and the full-time cleaning job, managing, and then the consulting. Because I was just getting inquiries from both the cleaning and sleep consulting while taking care of a child during the day, and it was just too, too much. Too stressful.

So what I did was, I decided to get certified as a Newborn Care Specialist. Because I knew that you could make a little bit more money doing that per hour. Plus, it would allow me to work at nighttime, so I could focus on the consulting business during the day. And so in January, that’s exactly what I did. I think I completed that course in three to four weeks, and I started. So I left the nannying job. I took a leap of faith, and the weeks, the months just started to fill in. I just trusted, and it’s all worked out. So my plan worked out accordingly.

So since January until July, I was doing Newborn Care Specialist, which was two nights a week, and then sleep consulting—basically three days a week because I was tired the other two. But for whatever reason, I did not have any contracts set up for July and August. And instead of freaking out and getting all nervous, I just said, “Maybe this is for a reason. Maybe I am solely supposed to focus on consulting and see how it goes.” Because that’s my dream ultimately. And so far, it’s working out really well, to my surprise. Big surprise.

Jayne Havens: Were there skills that you picked up in your work as a nanny, besides obviously sleep training all of those babies? But were there skills that you picked up along the way that you feel like really helped you in your sleep consulting business? Whether it’s how you deal with parents, how you deal with the kids, what in your nanny work really translated the most to your work as a sleep consultant?

Kari Mahady: Yeah, great question. I would say, in my sleep consulting business, the two things that have helped me the most as a nanny is probably just my day-in and day-out experience working with babies and just feeling like I just— it’s just like riding a bike for me for the most part.

I mean, I still reach out to the group and community with questions. But I would say, for the most part, from the beginning, like, it’s just felt so automatic. Like when the parents ask me random questions about the baby, even outside of sleep, it’s just like boom, boom, boom, boom. So I’ve been really grateful for that.

Then the other thing is communication with parents. That skill has taken a long time. You know, when you are working with new parents especially, it’s very personal, very intimate when you’re in their home. You’re coming to them. Sometimes they’re in their jammies. Sometimes they just got in an argument. It’s just a very intimate position.

Especially during the pandemic, when the parents were working from home, I was in a nanny share and I had two families. There was sickness and just emotions, and it’s a very tricky dynamic to navigate through sometimes. And so because I’ve had all of that experience throughout the years of problem-solving and communication, I think it’s helped tremendously with this job, especially confidence, the confidence that I’m able to give the families.

Jayne Havens: Take me back to the beginning when you first launched your sleep consulting business. Where were you marketing yourself? How were you finding clients?

Kari Mahady: Let’s see. I first started out by just putting posts all over moms’ groups in Facebook. Because I was already familiar with owning the cleaning business and the marketing for that, and how I got a lot of that business was through Facebook moms’ groups. So I really just started putting posts out there. And I think I did offer free sleep consulting packages in trade of a good word or a reference. And so that was my first five clients, I think, and it went really well.

Obviously, because that went really well, I was like, okay, I’m ready to go. Like, I don’t think I need to do this for free anymore. I think I can actually charge money for this. It just gave me confidence to kind of takeoff from there.

Jayne Havens: When do you think the referrals started coming in, not just from you hustling on Facebook but from families who you worked with, them sharing your name with other families? How long did you feel like it took for that to actually happen for you?

Kari Mahady: Yes. So I started in January of 2025. I would say about six months ago, I started to get a lot of previous client referrals. And I was like, “Oh, this feels really good. I don’t have to, like—” It’s a hustle. It’s 40 hours a week to hustle and put yourself out there. It’s a full-time job to get full-time work. And it just felt so nice to get— well, I partner with a couple pediatricians, so I started to get those two and then previous clients. And then I finally started to feel like, okay, the work is starting to finally pay off.

Jayne Havens: I’m really happy to hear you say out loud—I love that you just said—in order to earn a full-time income, you have to put in full-time work.

I think that this is something that people don’t understand when they are running their own businesses. That just because it’s your own business, just because it’s all yours and you’re not working for the man, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to work, right? It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to hustle. I see this from people who get into, whether it’s sleep consulting, parent coaching, any sort of online service-based business, where their minds are a little bit like, “Okay, I’m a sleep consultant. Why isn’t anybody hiring me?”

In the beginning, I agree with you. It’s a little bit of a hustle. It takes hard work. I love that it took you about six months. I think that that sounds about right—that it takes about six months for you to really gain momentum, gain traction, feel like all of that hard work is paying off. And now families are sharing your name with others. But you have to plant those seeds. You have to lay the groundwork. I think that that’s one of the reasons for why you are as successful as you are. You treated your business as a full-time business so that you could generate a full-time income.

Kari Mahady: Yeah, and I’m still far from the point of just coasting along. I still am putting in a ton of time, but I will say that the time that I put in is paying off. Such as, like, I did a ton of networking. So I reached out to my clients’ doctors. I reached out to a ton of perinatal professionals. I spent hours and hours a week on my computer talking with other perinatal professionals.

Nowadays, I get to go to the gym. I wake up when I want. I don’t have to set my alarm. I get to go to the gym, and I really don’t start working until 11. And I would say half of my workday is working with clients, and then the other half is still doing more marketing and more things. I could be rewriting my sleep plan. I could be designing stuff on Canva. I could be emailing potential partners. It’s always something. I always have a huge list of something.

Jayne Havens: I love that you have a list. I also always have a list. I think that’s something else for people who are listening. Sometimes there’s a lot of overwhelm in our brains where we have so many things that we want to be doing in our businesses that we just do none of them, right? We’re all guilty of that from time to time. And I think that having a list in front of you that sits either on your desktop, or if you’re a pen-and-paper type of gal, then it sits right beside you. And you have this running to-do list so that if you have a beat in the day, that you actually take the time and get it done.

Kari Mahady: Yeah, I mean, my list is really an overall list with life, mommy-ing, and work. But it’s like 40 items long at least, always. But the bottom ones are the most important. I definitely have the list so I don’t forget. Like, in this business, in the middle of something, I think of a great idea, and I put it down in my phone right away. I just, like, don’t want to lose anything.

Jayne Havens: When you are speaking with families who are interested in working with a sleep consultant, do you talk about your 20+ years in nannying? Is that something that you bring to the table as an advantage in your work?

Kari Mahady: Yeah, definitely. I’ve actually had families say, “It was because of all of that long-time experience that we decided to go with you and not somebody else.”

Jayne Havens: What percentage of your work is virtual versus in person? I think you’re doing mostly virtual, but you’re doing some in-person sleep training as well. Is that right?

Kari Mahady: Yeah. So I would say probably 90% is virtual and then maybe 10% in-home. I probably do in-home at least once every two months, which isn’t a lot. That’s not my goal. My goal is ultimately virtual.

Although the in-home, it’s great pay. It’s a really nice plus, a really nice perk for, you know, not a lot of in-person days. But my goal is really full-time virtual. I’ve been 20-something years in other people’s homes, so it will be nice to just be in my own space and not do that.

Jayne Havens: I want to go back to the marketing piece for a bit. We sort of glossed over you mentioning that you’ve spent a lot of time connecting with pediatricians and perinatal professionals.

Would you be willing to share what it looks like for you to make those connections? How are you reaching out? Are you meeting them in person? Are you having conversations on Zoom? What’s the follow-up? How many of these people are you maintaining contact with at any given time?

Kari Mahady: So one of my biggest referrals is a popular pediatrician in Highlands in Denver. How I connected with him is, actually, there’s a few doctors there in the office. I had emailed— which doctors’ emails? Pediatrician emails are not easy to find, if you’ve ever tried this. Try the search. They’re not easy to find. So I was really surprised to see this one on there. But I emailed him, and I just basically said, “I’ve worked with one of your clients.” Actually, it was two of his clients by the time I emailed him. And to my surprise, he responded back. He said, “I’d love to meet you.”

So I actually went in the office. I think I brought Crumbl Cookies and just kind of gave him my spiel, which is very nerve-wracking for me. The whole meeting professionals and being professional, like, it’s just so outside of my norm because I’ve just been with parents and babies my whole life. That was really scary and intimidating. But the more that I do it, the more comfortable I do it. And now I’m doing workshops and just getting more comfortable in this role.

Jayne Havens: You touched on something that I think other nannies who are maybe listening to this interview might really identify with or connect with, and that is that your entire professional work experience has just been being with families rather than connecting in a more professional space—whether that be in an office or in a Zoom room, right? But it’s been more sort of like in people’s living rooms.

How are you able to get over that overwhelm? Was it just being willing to do it and then realizing it wasn’t that scary?

Kari Mahady: Well, I feel like I want to speak to this as far as me being successful in this business. It’s kind of like I didn’t have any other choice.

I’ve been working really hard since I was 15. I’m a single mom, and I knew that I just really, really wanted something different. I couldn’t continue doing what I was doing, and so I just really didn’t have any other options. So that’s really the fire that’s under me that makes me go outside of my shell and do the things that I do. It’s that I just don’t really have another option. I don’t have other things to, like, fall back on. So it’s really just me, and that’s how it’s kind of been. It’s a lot here, especially in Colorado. It’s expensive, especially as a single parent. So yeah, I just don’t really have any choice, and I just do it. I just push myself.

But also, too, something that gave me confidence is, in any of my nanny interviews, I would always basically get the job right on the spot. They would pretty much hire me and say, “Don’t go to other interviews. We want you,” even if they would hire me like three months out. And so the good luck, or I don’t know, whatever you want to call it, from my nanny interviews just really gave me the confidence. Like, you must have something. You have a great nanny career. So I just kind of use that as my backbone.

Jayne Havens: I think the fact that you have felt that, financially, you didn’t have any other choice is definitely a strong motivator. When you have to get out there and earn a living and you don’t have a backup plan, obviously you’re going to fight hard for that. But I also think you’re selling yourself a little bit short because I think it’s more than just that.

When I have seen you out there working your business, I feel like you do so from such a place of heart and passion, and you actually really want to help families. It’s not just, “How am I going to land another client?” But it’s like, “How can I help this family?”

Sometimes you’re asking questions, deep-dive questions in our community about families that haven’t hired you yet because you just want to help them. It might not even be your client yet. You’re just thinking it’s going to be, and you’re already passionate and ready to figure it out and get it done. I see the way that you communicate about the work that you do and the way that you support families. And I think that it’s important for people to hear that, like, yes, work ethic and drive are important. But also, when you truly love the work and when you really prioritize wanting to help families, and you sort of lead with, “I’m here to help you,” I think that that goes a long way.

Kari Mahady: Yes, thank you so much for saying that, and thanks for bringing this point up. You’re totally right. I absolutely love doing what I do.

I’m sure you get it. You started this. You understand. It really is such a rewarding position to especially have mamas, especially if they’re breastfeeding through the night. They’re just exhausted. I’ve had so many moms cry to me. I’ve had so many moms admit to breakdowns.

Parents typically don’t come to you and they’re not willing to pay the money unless they’re in a desperate position. And that is the position that I meet the families at. It’s hard. It’s sad. I get it. I’m a single mom, and I also nursed through the night. I also was exhausted. I also had dreads growing in my hair and didn’t feed myself because my baby came first. I get it. So when these parents come to me, I genuinely want to restore their sleep because I know sleep restores their health in so many ways.

So when a few days, I start getting messages from mom saying, “Oh, my God, I slept 10 hours last night. I haven’t done that in like over a year,” it feels amazing. It feels so good.” I get chills just saying it right now, you know. It makes me light up.

Jayne Havens: I was literally just about to ask you, like, what are you most proud of in your work? And I’m wondering if it’s that. Is it just literally the transformation that you’re able to get the families that you serve?

Kari Mahady: Yeah, so I have a really strong morning practice with meditation and prayer and affirmations. I’m pretty intentional about it. In my morning prayer, I ask the universe or God, whatever, to bring me more families to help. I want to help more moms. I want to help more babies. And it’s not like, “Can you bring me more clients so I can pay this bill?” I genuinely want more families. More, more, more. I love it. So maybe that’s a part of the process.

Jayne Havens: Where do you see your business—? I mean, you’ve only been in business— what did we say, like a year and a half? Right?

Kari Mahady: A little over a year and a half, yeah.

Jayne Havens: A little over a year and a half.

Where do you see yourself another year and a half from now?

Kari Mahady: Well, honestly, I’m exceeding my expectations, my timeline already. I honestly gave myself three years to be full-time consulting. And I’m only a year and a half in full-time consulting, so that’s huge. So in a year and a half, I don’t know. I would say maybe just full-time virtual. Maybe doing at least five clients a week, 20 clients a month is a goal. I’m not too sure. Maybe eventually I have sleep consultants working under me. As you know, I already own a cleaning business. I hire, manage employees, and make passive income from that, so maybe that is a thing too.

Jayne Havens: I love that you are dreaming big and that you’re also willing to say the big goals out loud, right? Like, if you’re currently supporting—I think you told me about eight families a month, which is incredible, by the way. If in three years from now, you want to be at 20, I see no reason for why you can’t. But that’s a big goal. And to say that out loud, I think it takes a lot of courage.

I think a lot of people aren’t even really willing to set big goals because they’re too afraid that they’re not going to meet them, and so then they set tiny goals. Which is fine. Setting small goals and meeting small goals is also a great way to grow. But I love seeing people who aren’t afraid to say the big thing and go after it. And if there’s anybody that’s going to do it, it’s going to be you 100%.

Kari Mahady: Thanks.

Yeah, actually, I feel like I did kind of sell myself short in the beginning with the three-year goal. Because I actually know of some other consultants that I’m friends with, and they just came out of the gates and they’re like, “I’m full-time.” They went to full-time. But also, some of them have that luxury. But yeah, I was pretty excited to meet that goal halfway through.

Jayne Havens: What would you say to other, let’s say, nannies? I’m so interested in the idea of professional nannies going from being super hands-on in the home, working sort of like elbow-deep in young kids, to transitioning to virtual support.

What would you say to those women who are listening, thinking like, “I don’t know how I ever could do that”?

Kari Mahady: Well, so to the nannies out there, if you’ve been a nannying for a long time, I know you guys know that things really changed during the pandemic, where parents are working from home. That really kind of changed things a lot for me personally.

Like I said, my first nanny job was three little kiddos under two years old. We were going to the zoo. We were going out and about. But when the pandemic happened, it really created a lot of fear in the world, especially in parents. Parenting kind of shifted to more attachment-style parenting. Being a nanny in a work-from-home environment changed. There wasn’t a lot of freedom like there was before. There’s helicoptering kind of going on.

And so it really, it’s just so freeing to be in this position, this role that I am, to be able to work with babies in the capacity that I can, but not even be in the home. And to be able to guide parents and do it through the parents and kind of take on the manager role, it feels really empowering.

Jayne Havens: It sounds like you’re doing incredible work. You’re supporting families at such a high level, which just makes me really proud. I’m so excited that you were able to turn this from idea to actual reality and that you are supporting yourself financially, living the life that you want to live, and doing work that’s really meaningful.

Because as you said before, you probably could have achieved, and maybe you were already achieving, similar income in your house cleaning business. But it wasn’t lighting you up. It wasn’t making you feel like that was the type of work that you wanted to be doing. And I just think it’s really impressive that you said, you know what? It’s not just about how much money I make, but I want to be doing work that I love. You should be really proud of yourself.

Kari Mahady: Thank you so much for saying that. I am year-to-year smiling, like, all day. I wake up in the morning and I think, “Wow. I don’t have to use an alarm clock anymore.” I can go to the gym, and I don’t start my workday till 11. Every day, I count my blessings. Super, super grateful.

Jayne Havens: Before we wrap up, do you want to share your website, social media, anything like that?

Kari Mahady: Sure. My website is www.karipoppinz.com. My social media is @karipoppinz_babysleepmagic. And if you’re listening to this podcast, I will offer $100 off my sleep packages if you mention “PODCAST” in my discovery call.

Jayne Havens: Perfect. Kari, it was so great connecting with you here today. I wish you much continued success. Great job, and keep up the good work.

Kari Mahady: Thanks, Jayne.

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.