Is Sleep Consulting the Best Work-From-Home Side Hustle? Ep. #96

I earn anywhere from like 8 to $12,000 a month supporting families. When I first started, I think I charged 425, but it's now, by year two, I was making just as much money as I was in my event planning career. I have somebody, he was doing $40,000 a month. If my friends need help, I'm more than happy to help them for free.

I'm sure you hear all the time parents are just like, they just throw their hands up and like, yeah, my kids just don't sleep. And you're like, they could, they could.

Thank you so much for having me. My name is Jane Havens. I am a mom of two kids. I live in Baltimore, Maryland with my husband and my kids. I have a former background in event planning and catering sales and I left a really successful job to stay at home when my son was born 12 years ago. I was raised by a stay at home mom and it was literally my dream to just be first in line in carpool, have the best snacks, care of, take, take them to lacrosse practice and ballet recitals. Like that's all I ever wanted to do. And I did it. I did it for four years. And then my daughter was born. And the second time around with stay at home mom, life was trickier. My daughter was colicky and cranky and just not the most fun baby to be around. And at that point I was ready to get back into the work world in some capacity. And I couldn't figure out what that was going to look like because I was just so used to doing everything for my kids and being the primary caregiver and being so hands on that the idea of like going back to work and hiring a nanny or putting them in daycare just felt really outside of my comfort zone. So I was thinking about, what am I good at? What can I do from home while taking care of my two kids? And the one thing I actually was really good at was getting my kids to sleep. When my son was born 12 years ago, he was originally a really solid sleeper out of the gate. And then he hit what's known as the four month sleep regression at about 16 weeks right when he was four months old. And he went from sleeping through the night to waking up every single hour like on the dot. And as a new parent, I was clueless. I had no idea why this was happening and I. This was before Facebook groups, this was before there was so much information online. So I literally was sitting on the floor of Barnes and Noble trying to figure this out. And long story, Short. I figured it out. What was going on is I had been rocking him to sleep and giving him his pacifier, and then he'd wake up an hour later and his pacifier wasn't in his mouth. He'd want to be rocked back to sleep or to pop the paci back in. And so I needed to teach him how to fall asleep without so much help, so that when he would rouse in the middle of the night, he could get himself back to sleep without so much help. And so that's what I did. I implemented some sleep training, got him sleeping through the night. It was really transformative for me as a mother, for my husband. Like, we were so sleep deprived, and we were wrecked. And, you know, implementing a little bit of sleep training just changed our lives. And it was empowering and amazing. And frankly, all my friends were jealous. They wanted me to help them sleep train their kids. And so, like, for years, I was just helping friends and friends of friends get their kids to sleep. It was sort of. It was a hobby of mine. I wasn't getting paid to do it. I wasn't formally trained. But when it came time to going back to work, that's sort of what came to my mind, was like, I'm gonna be a sleep consultant. So I went online, I took a certification course. I really wanted to make sure that I had the proper training. Even though I felt like I was already really good at it, I wanted to make sure that I. You don't know what you don't know, right? So went online, took a course, got certified. What was intended to be a side hustle turned into a really lucrative and successful career. By year two, I was making just as much money as I was in my event planning career. Being home with my two kids and supporting families virtually through sleep training. And, yeah, that's how I got started.

Wow. Okay. Lots of questions. First of all, how important is it to be certified? Like, did people ask for that, or was it just good to proactively tell them that you were?

So there's no governing body that regulates the field. Sleep consulting is unregulated. You can definitely work as a sleep consultant without having formal training. That being said, there's so much to learn, there's so much to know, and I do believe that being certified will make you far better at your job. So I think it's incredibly valuable, both from a sleep perspective, but also from a business perspective. You know, getting certified will teach you how to properly coach clients successfully, how to write them a written plan, how to communicate effectively. All around. I say, I say it's important.

And how much did it cost and how long did that take you?

So when I enrolled in a certification course, I believe I paid about 22, $2,400 something in there, and I finished in about four or five weeks. It was a pretty quick process.

Okay, and were you in like a community with other people doing it or was it just you?

I was. There wasn't a cohort. There was a community. You know, it's open enrollment, so you could sign up whenever you wanted. You got dumped into a Facebook group. You could ask questions inside of the group and just move through the course at your own pace. I think some people move through these trainings really quickly and others take longer.

Okay, so was it hard to transition from, you know, the feel good aspect of helping your friends? I. I'm sure that feels amazing. To help them get more sleep, was it hard to transition from that to, hey, I actually charge for this now? And what did that look like?

Yeah, so I don't charge my friends for help with sleep. If my friends need help, I'm more than happy to help them for free. That being said, as I've gotten busier in my business, I do have to set some boundaries around what it, what it looks like to help friends. But. But you know, any of my friends who are struggling with sleep, I'm happy to get onto a phone, call with them and chat it out for 30 or 40 minutes and give them whatever advice they need. If they want actual coaching and accountability and support, then I will treat them as a real client and charge them for services just like I would anybody else. But I will say that I definitely built my business off the backs of friends of friends. So I spent years supporting my actual friends for free just because I enjoyed it and it made me happy to help them. And then when it came time to launch my business, all those people who I had helped for years were more than happy to share my name with their friends who were people that were not necessarily in my inner circle.

Okay, now let's talk unit economics. What is, what does an average, I don't know what to call it, job or customer look like for you? How long does it last? What do your margins look like? Or is it literally just your time? And what do you charge?

Sure. So I have two options for services. The primary service that I offer is a virtual two week consultation. This consultation includes a written plan which is customized for the family's unique set of circumstances. It includes a 30 minute phone call to onboard Them and answer their questions and make sure they feel confident with everything that I've proposed on paper for them. And then text message support during the daytime. I sleep through the night, but they get daytime communication via text message and voice note for about two weeks. And then we usually do a wrap up call at the end of our time together. I charge $750 for this service. When I first started I think I charged 425. And then I very quickly inched it up. You know, it was 425, then it was 450, then it was 550. You know, I inched it up over the years, but it's now $750. I also offer a one off phone call. It's a quick 30 minute call. I call it an ask me anything. And it's primarily used for repeat clients, people who have been through my two week consultation. But then either something slips or they're going through a nap transition or they just got back from, you know, a vacation and things are hard. They just want to get onto a phone call and either have a pep talk or a quick strategy session. And I charge $145 for that 30 minute phone call. I would say that I earn anywhere from like 8 to $12,000 a month supporting families via these two services. I actually used to earn a lot more monthly than I do now, but now I'm focused. I actually train other people to work as sleep consultants. So I'm more focused on supporting my taking on a bunch of clients. But I'm still earning, I would say between 8 and $12,000 a month in this business. Just like supporting families.

Yeah.

As far as expenses and my margins, it's a little tricky for me to answer that because my business is commingled with my certification program. But to support families is really inexpensive. You know, I pay for web hosting, I pay for Acuity, which is an online scheduling platform. I pay, I have thank you notes that I mail out. So like some beautiful note cards and postage. I send all of my clients pajamas. I send their kids pajamas. At the end of our two week contract I get those PJs wholesale. I spend about 9 or $10 per PJ set. And then the postage to mail them is another, you know, $5, plus the packaging. So, you know, I have some expenses, but really low considering. I mean most of it is just my time.

Okay, and how much time, like if you were to average it out in that during that two week period, how many hours would you say you're spending per client?

So, you know, it's a written sleep plan, which I've gotten really good at writing these plans because I've been doing it for years. I'm not reinventing the wheel. I have templates and I can access old plans and just make small tweaks. If I'm really focused, I can get a plan done in like 20 minutes. So let's call that 20, 30 minutes. My onboarding call is another 30 minutes. The offboarding call is 30 minutes. So like that's an hour and a half right there. And then the text message support really varies based on the age of the child and the childcare situation. So if it's a four month old baby and mom is home on maternity leave and the baby's taking four naps a day, I might hear from that mom four times a day, which is a lot of text message support. Alternatively, if I'm working with a baby that's in daycare, I never hear from mom during the day because the baby is napping outside of the home. And I actually work with a lot of older kids, 3, 4 or 5 year olds who are in school a full day. They don't nap. Or if they do nap, it's happening at school. I prefer to work with kids who are a little bit older and in school so that there's not as much need for real time text message support. But what I will say is like the $750 that I charge, it's most often not an incredible amount of time that I'm putting into it. It's the value is in the transformation that I'm offering to this family.

I assume you're a lot more efficient with your time and your customers today than you used to be. How many customers could you or someone like you juggle at any given time if you were only doing the coaching responsibly?

Right. So when I was at like the peak of just supporting families, before I started training others, I was actually supporting 25 ish families per month. So onboarding a new family almost every single day, I think that that's a lot. I don't think most people could handle that volume. Where I am right now, which is more like 10 to 12 or 15 families a month is really comfortable and that feels great for me. I think it really depends on the person's lifestyle. A lot of people who do this work have other full time jobs. Some of them stay home with their kids, but they're homeschooling, so they're busy. So everybody has busy lives. And I would say Most people start this line of work as a side hustle and some of them scale it to be a full time business in time.

Do you measure this like by a success rate at all or is it 100%? Like, I'm, I'm totally. I have four kids, right. Like, we struggled with sleep, we never used a sleep consultant. It would have been really nice. I also have an 8 and a 12 year old. What is your success rate like? Is there ever a time when the parent just fails or are they failing because they're not following your steps? Or sometimes are kids just not fixable?

Yeah. So I make the analogy. It's very similar to the work of a nutritionist or a physical trainer at the gym. Right. You can sign on to work with a trainer and work out with them once or twice a week, but if you don't go to the gym on the other days of the week and you're eating pizza and ice cream all day long, you're not going to get the same results as if you're fully committed to the process. Right. And sleep consulting is very similar. So I am only successful if my clients are committed to the process. Charging my clients a higher rate actually helps me with being successful because the more they invest in the process financially, I think that that sort of holds them accountable. They don't want to waste the money that they've spent with me. So as I inch my pricing up year after year, I find that it's actually easier to hold my clients accountable to make sure that we reach their goals. But I would say that most of my clients are really successful. I mean, nobody bats a thousand. We definitely have situations where families. I have a family who hired me, they paid me several weeks ago, and they never scheduled the onboarding call because they probably read the sleep plan and they feel overwhelmed with making the changes that I proposed. They're not ready to do it. That happens. So I'll follow up with them eventually. But if they're not ready to schedule that first call, they're not ready to do the work. So I don't want to pressure them to get started before they're ready. I'd rather them wait and come to me when they're fully ready to make a change.

Okay. So if they do what you say, there really shouldn't be a reason that the child doesn't, at least for a newborn, start sleeping well.

So for newborns, like, newborns don't really sleep so beautifully, but we're talking like once babies get to like three, four, five months old, yeah, they should be sleeping. There are a few situations that could come up, like from a medical perspective, that would make it more challenging for infants, toddlers, preschoolers to sleep through the night. But most of what I come up against is purely behavioral. So, you know, parents are rocking their babies to sleep, they're feeding their babies to sleep. I work with a lot of older kids, so like 3 year olds have their mom or dad laying in bed with them while they fall asleep, and then they sneak out of the room and then the kids wake up in the middle of the night and they're like, where's my mom? Right. So most of it is behavioral, and if it is behavioral, we can get it fixed. If there's something bigger going on, then usually that becomes more apparent once we've put all of the behavior or modifications into place. And if things are still really hard, then I like to kick it back to the pediatrician and dig a little deeper to see what's going on.

Okay, if you were to to distill like the 8020 of helping your child sleep into one sentence, like the most important, critical thing they could do, what would that be?

Falling asleep independently. It's really that simple. Like when kids can fall asleep without support or accommodations, then they're better positioned to fall back asleep when they rouse overnight. Because all humans wake throughout the night. We're not teaching babies not to wake up. That's not what's going on. We are teaching babies that when they wake up, they don't need to scream and cry and yell for help. They can just, you know, roll around, get themselves comfy, cozy, into a new position and get themselves back to sleep.

So does cry it out kind of go in line with that then?

Yeah. So I don't love the term cry it out. I think it makes parents feel really bad about themselves and it has a really negative connotation. Parents will often ask me, are we going to have to cry it out? And the way that I answer that question is that most babies and kids who are learning a new skill cry when they're learning something new. Right. Like I taught my 8 year old how to ride a bike last summer, and there were definitely tears during that process. And when I taught my kids how to use the potty for the first time, they both cried about it.

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So learning to fall asleep independently always involves tears. We're not letting babies cry or leaving babies to cry. They just are crying while trying to fall asleep in a new way. And what I do as a sleep consultant is I help parents to understand the difference between their baby's cries. Because there's that like panicked freak out cry when something's totally new and overwhelming. But then there's also what I like to call the trying cry, where the baby is just actually not looking for a parent, not looking for help, just like trying to get themselves to sleep and being vocal about it. And so, you know, not all crying is created equal. And I want parents to understand how to hear their babies and how to understand that communication so that they can provide support when needed, but then sit on their hands when we need to give our kids a little bit of space.

Yeah, I like that. Because I'm sure you hear all the time parents are just like, they just throw their hands up and like, yeah, my kids just don't sleep. And you're like, they could, they could.

Yeah, yeah. So I hear a lot of parents use the word like can't or won't. I just had a call earlier today with a mom and dad of a three and a half year old, and they were using that language. They were saying, you know, Dylan can't fall asleep unless we are X, Y and Z. Right. And that's just not true. Dylan can fall asleep without dad rubbing his back. He just doesn't want to. Right. And so when we get an opportunity, feels amazing. Yeah, right. And you know, as long as it's working, like I always say, like, if what you're doing is working, if you're rubbing your back, your kid's back while they're falling asleep, and that helps them, and then they sleep through the night, no problem. Back rubs are great, but if you're rubbing your kids back while they fall asleep and then they're up an hour and a half later expecting you to rub their back again, then it's a problem. Right. So our kids are capable of learning to fall asleep in new ways. And they're definitely going to Express their opinion about the change that's to be expected. And we need to show up confident and sturdy for them and show them that they're capable of doing something that feels a little hard and challenging. They can do it just like they can learn to zipper their coat, just like they can learn to ride a scooter. This is no different.

How much of your job would you say is like tactical stuff like this, nuts and bolts, versus just holding your customers accountable to actually doing what you say?

I think that my clients really benefit from the mindset shifts that I present for them. You know what I shared with you about cry it out versus like giving your baby an opportunity to try. I think that that's huge for parents. I also think that parents are really overwhelmed with all of the information that exists on the Internet. You know, if you go and Google how to sleep train a six month old baby, you're going to get 10,000 different answers about how to do that. And if you ask your pediatrician, they're just gonna say cry it out. Right. And so what I think parents are looking for is they're looking for an expert that can help them to sift through all of the noise and all of the opinions. You know, moms have their sister in law in one ear, they have their mother in law in the other ear. They have the daycare provider telling them something else, the pediatrician telling them something, and somebody. Sometimes it's just helpful to have one person that you're gonna listen to take their advice, follow their instructions and get it done. And that's what I would say I do for my clients.

Yeah, I like that. So it's like it's neither nuts or bolts. It's neither accountability. It's like getting them to approach it differently is like the best value that you're providing.

I think so. I think so. I mean, it's different for everybody. Like, some people come to me and they're really anxious about the crying, and so they need emotional support and accountability. Other people are not at all worried about the crying. They just want to make sure they're doing it correctly. You know, everybody has a different reason for seeking out support. And I try to meet families where they are and coach them through methods and techniques that most closely align with their parenting style and that feel safe and comfortable for them. Because I want to optimize the process and just make it go smoothly so that they can have positive outcome and share my name with all of their friends.

Yeah, yeah. Like, our oldest was one of those outliers. Where he would just cry through the night and we, we didn't know how to fix it. And then we learned like, oh, he's allergic to milk. So my wife was breastfeeding him. She couldn't drink any dairy, have any dairy products. And once she switched that, he slept through the night. And then our last, our next three kids, she just didn't have any dairy products while she breastfed them. And they slept great, you know.

Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that. My own daughter had a dairy allergy as well as an infant. And that was, I think, part of the reason for why she was so miserable. And it took us months to figure it out as well. My daughter was formula fed, but really she didn't get better until we got her on this hypoallergenic formula. And what I will say is that sleep consultants, especially sleep consultants with some level of experience, we can sort of flag these things a lot of the time before parents can, because parents will just say, like, oh, she cries all the time. She's so fussy. And, you know, I'll say, can you send me a video of the crying? I want to see the baby's body language. I want to see what they're doing. Are they arching their back? Are they pulling away from the breast or the nipple? And all of that intel is really helpful to me, and I can diagnose it from afar more often than not. I've diagnosed many an ear infection without even being there. You know, I can call it before the baby even has a fever. I can tell the parents if the child has an ear infection.

Yeah, it's like before two months, probably colic. After two months, probably an ear infection. There's like four things, and it's like 80% of the time it's one of those four things. How are you finding customers on both of your businesses today?

Yeah, so for my sleep consulting business, I would say that most of my business comes to me by way of referral from past clients. So the family that I spoke to today that has that little three and a half year old little boy, I helped his preschool friend a few months ago. And you know, the mom had a great experience. We totally resolved her child's sleep challenges. And now she shared my name with a friend of her kids who's in the same preschool class, I would say that that's most of my business right now is just word of mouth, happy clients sharing my name with their friends. Everybody has a friend who has a kid who doesn't sleep. So, you know, When I help one family, they know 25 other families that are in a similar predicament. And my name gets spread around.

So do you ask for referrals?

I should probably be better about it. But yeah, at the end of like when I do a wrap up phone call, I often will end the call by telling people that my favorite thing to do is to work myself out of a job and I should hope that I never need to hear from them again. That being said, if they need me, email me, they know where to find me. But if they never need me again, the best thing they can do for me is share my name with a friend. I do try to wrap up my phone calls that way when we're tying up loose ends at the end of a contract. But I think people are more than happy to share my name without me even asking just because they have such a transformative experience. A lot of the families that I work with, they go weeks or months and sometimes years without a full night of sleep. And usually in 14 days or less, I can get it resolved for them. So it's life changing. I don't need to ask for the referral. They're more than happy to share. And then as far as my, as far as my, my online course to train people to become sleep consultants, that's a little bit more complicated. It's a combination of good search engine optimization, Instagram. Actually, I'm, I'm not really on Instagram so much. I don't like to use social media. I'm more of a people person, so I like to connect with people in real life. I prefer Facebook for social media because I feel like you can actually make a connection with another person in a Facebook group. So, you know, I'll be in a Facebook group with a bunch of moms who are looking for a side hustle and I'll just tell them about what I do and they want more information. I'll hop on a phone or zoom, call with them and share a little bit about what, what I do. I have my own Facebook group called Becoming a Sleep Consultant. So anybody who's interested in getting into the field, they can join my Facebook group, learn more there. A few years ago, I launched a podcast with the same name so people can listen to my podcast and hear the stories of other people who have gone through my course and started successful sleep consulting businesses. And my hope is that they'll listen to those stories, connect with them, identify with them, and then start to feel like they could do it too.

Yeah, thank you. It's so Interesting. The referral side of it because I always counsel people like ask for referrals because people, they want to, but they don't think to. And you're reminding them. But like you said, like this is a life changing event. Right. Like they're going to talk about it naturally and you happen to be the person that helped enable that. So what. What a cool framework to build businesses around that where it's like you're selling a painkiller and not a vitamin. People talk about it.

Yeah, that's an interesting way of putting it. Absolutely.

Are there any men in this field?

A few. Not many. Give me a few.

Give me a percentage.

Like, like. No, there's like no percentage. There's like, you know, there, there's no percentage. There are a few. You know, I have I think 860 people enrolled in my sleep consultant certification course. I probably have six men enrolled in the program. Those six men are not necessarily all working as sleep consultants the way that I do. A couple of them I think are sleep techs. So they deal with sleep apnea and they just came to me for continuing education and just wanted to learn the behavioral side of sleep. And I have two dads who are doing this work, one alongside his wife. It's a husband and wife duo and they work together. He's more tech savvy, she's more client facing. But they're in business together. And then I have another who's a stay at home dad and just you know, he was a good dad, Mr. Mom and he's an amazing dad. And he wanted, he actually hired a sleep consultant, had a really amazing experience being coached through the process of resolving sleep in his own home. And now he wants to help other parents.

How well is like your best student doing? How big is their business?

Yeah, so I have somebody, the last time I spoke to her, which was admittedly a long time ago, like it could have been a year since we've checked in. She was doing $40,000 a month with coach. I know, right? $40,000 a month, one to one coaching. And then also online course sales. She has course that she offers that's totally passive and people can enroll in her program and sort of DIY the process. And I have somebody else who is doing 15 to $20,000 a month. She has two or three sleep consultants working under her, sort of as independent contractors. So she's running a pretty successful business. I have. It really runs the gamut. Like everybody's vision for success looks different. I have people who are earning 15 to $20,000 a month. I also have people who are earning 1 to $2,000 a month.

And that's life changing.

Yeah, it's life changing. I mean, the person who I'm thinking of, she's a homeschooling mom. She has two kids of her own, she's about to foster two more kids and she, her first priority is to be a present mother and she's earning, you know, 1500, $2,000 a month. And that is totally transformative for her household. So, you know, success is relative and people's goals are varying and you know, it's not all about the money. Some people really, this is very heart centered work. People do this work because they love it. They want to support families, they care for moms. And you know, like I would, I did this work for free for a really long time. Like I literally would do it for free. It's amazing that I get paid to do it, but I would do it whether I was getting paid or not.

That's incredible. Are there any like nationwide franchises doing this or do you see an opportunity there?

If not, there aren't any nationwide franchises that I know of. There are some larger companies I don't know if you're familiar with Huckleberry for example, which is an app. It's an app that basically helps parents to understand when to put their baby down for the next nap. I shouldn't even speak to this because I'm not entirely sure if it's AI based or if it's just data driven, what that looks like. But they have in house sleep consultants so you can like pay to upgrade on the app and actual actually work with a coach. So there are situations like that where you can work for a bigger company as a sleep consultant. But I don't know that there are any nationwide franchises. Most of the people who work in this field are doing so part time. You know, they have other things going on in their lives.

I mean, I'm thinking of other franchises. Like there's a franchise that it's nationwide, it's in all 50 states and it's like, it's like consulting. But you help business owners save money on like there's like six pillars, there's payroll, credit card processing, office supplies, and they charge by taking a percentage of everything they save their business owner clients. So there's precedent for there being a franchise for like a consulting type service. Right? Like I, I bet you anything with, you know, within the next five or ten years there will be someone doing this nationwide on like a very systematized franchise scale, taking 8 to 10% of the revenue from everyone that they train.

Yeah. So I will say there are. Okay, so there are training programs that you go through. Okay. When you said a franchise, I was sort of thinking of it differently. But, like, there are a few training programs that train you and then put you to work and take a percentage of your intake. Right. That. That is happening. I will say I don't think that model is super successful because really, what sells this business is our personalities. Like, people come to me because they know me. They've heard that I'm the best. They've heard X, Y and Z. When you try to just sell it with, like, a brand name, I don't think it has the same effect because it's really such a personal service and a personal relationship that fuels growth in this business that I don't think those companies are. I don't think they're rocking and rolling. Let's just say that. Okay.

All right, Jane. Well, thank you. This is great. I learned a lot. I'm sure everyone else will as well.

Thank you so much.

All right. Thanks. All right. What'd you think? Please share it with a friend, and we'll see you next time on the Kerner Office.