61: Rachel Mitchell: Certified Pediatric & Maternity Sleep Consultant & Online Course Creator

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Hi there. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask you an important question. Are you wondering why your hard work isn't reflecting in your bank account? If so, I've got something that could change the game for you. With my digital product accelerator one on one coaching program, I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs like you bank consistent revenue without sacrificing your time, time or sanity. Imagine shifting from 90% client facing work to enjoying consistent revenue from your digital products, all while reclaiming your time. You already know that you don't need another course and a one size fits all approach isn't going to cut it. What you need is a strategic long term plan tailored just for you. So if you're ready to build the profitable, freedom giving business you've dreamed of, apply to work with me by going to destinycop.com apply. I cannot wait to learn more about you and your business. Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host Destiny Kopp and in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. Before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is on the AppSumo Marketplace at a special deal and the link for Course in A box on AppSumo is in our show Notes. Today we're in the middle of our Course Creator series where I'm chatting with ordinary course creators just like you. We're talking about their journey in their online course business, how they got started, the challenges they've experienced, and how they overcame them. These are real discussions with real people. And today my guest is Rachel Mitchell and she is the founder and CEO of My Sweet Sleeper. She is a certified pediatric and maternity sleep consultant, former night nanny, and a mom of six. When she's not saving families from seat deprivation, you can find her sipping hot coffee, half decaf, running along the beach, working in the yard, and hanging out with her husband and kiddos. Rachel, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited about our discussion here today.

Me too. Thank you so much for having me.

So I'm going to let you jump in here and tell the audience a little more about your journey and how you got into in launching My Sweet Sleeper.

Yes, so it was sort of many different things that sort of led me to this profession. I for most of my career had worked in marketing and specifically hospitality marketing, which was an awesome part of my life. I really enjoyed that. I was able to travel a lot, be a part of a lot of hotel openings and things like that. But when I had my first son 11 years ago, I definitely knew I did not want to go back to working 65 hours a week. It wasn't sustainable for me to be traveling so much. And so I decided to just take a break and sort of think about what my next move would be, career wise. And in the meantime, I had gone back to just helping some families by nanning and. And it was something I could do while bringing my son. And that led me to working with families as a night nanny. Something that I just realized was a need that was out there. And I didn't have a lot of experience, but I just sort of dove in and thought, I will just see where this goes. And I really enjoyed it. And in that process, I realized, gosh, these families are exhausted and so many of them have no idea how to help their baby sleep. They had no tools and no resources, very little information. And I didn't honestly have that, you know, a lot of training either at that point. My background is in human and child development, so I definitely knew a little bit about sleep, but I wasn't trained necessarily as a sleep consultant. So I continued this work as a night nanny for, you know, a year or so and realized, you know, I think it would be really a good idea if I got trained to give these parents sound advice so that when my time with them is up, because usually I'd work with them for about three months, that I can leave them with some tips that will really help their babies continue to sleep well. And so I got certified in pediatric and maternity sleep consulting. I continued my education in child development. And then I realized that while it was awesome being a night nanny and helping these families overnight, obviously I can only be in one place at a time. And so that is when I decided to start my Sweet Sleeper, where I could help families both in person and virtually with their baby sleep. And I also work with pregnant women as well. And so that is kind of how I got started. And looking back, you know, what we offered then, what we did, I mean, a lot of those things we're still doing, but we've also evolved so much a company since then. So, yeah, that's kind of how I got my start.

So how do you get certified as pediatric and maternity sleep consultant? I've never even heard of that before.

Yeah, well, it's kind of funny because when I first got my certification about 10 years ago, there were I mean, just a handful of programs to choose from. And I just did some research on training programs. And what's interesting about this profession is there isn't a governing board that says every training program has to follow this structure. So, you know, each training program is a little different. My program, you know, that I went through it really, it taught me, you know, some of the science of sleep. It taught me to, you know, developmentally, you know, some of that stuff I already knew from having a background in child development. And it's basically a certification program. So it took about six months to go through. That was a great jumping off point for me. But I definitely still had to continue on with further education just because there's so much involved in pediatric sleep. And I would say my foundation was really having that core background in child development. Now there are so many programs. We actually have a program that certifies sleep consultants through our company, and there's now a lot more organizations that support sleep consultants and support this profession. And it's definitely much more well known than it was back, you know, 10 years ago.

So I wish I'd known about this when I had my younger kids, but I had no idea that this out there existed. So 11 years ago, you left your. You had your first son, and then you started nanny. And how long was it before you stopped your nannying service and then opened up your business?

I kind of did it simultaneously, so I continued to work with families overnight. And then when it sort of got to the point where it was like, okay, I can't really do both of these things, then I stepped away from being a night nanny. And that was probably about six months after I had started my practice as a sleep consultant.

Okay, so you've been doing this for around 10 years?

Yeah.

Okay, so tell us a little bit more about the services. It sounds like you have several different income streams that are coming into your business. Tell us a little bit more about how you help people and the different type of income streams that you have.

Yeah. So where we start and where I would say is still the primary component of our business is working with families one on one. So this is done either in person or virtually. Primarily virtually these days because of COVID But we're working, you know, we have hourly sessions. We have weekly and monthly packages where we're working individually with families guiding their children to better sleep through various practices and methods. And I would say this is, you know, this is not something that every family is able to invest in or that is needed for every family, but this Continues to be something that I think is the biggest sort of driver for us and was, you know, when we started as well. Because so many parents need that one on one guidance because their children are so unique. Right. And every situation is so different and it's hard to read a book and apply all of those principles to your baby and then just hope that they follow, you know, those steps to a T, which typically doesn't happen. So there's a lot of guesswork in the process. And that's why our one on one services are so helpful. A few years ago we launched our online classes and so that's another service that we offer to our families. We have a newborn 4 to 12 month and toddler class. So we cover from 0 to about 4 with those classes. And those are guided video modules that also has a text booklet included about 50 plus pages and really walks parents visually and through the text on how to deal with some of the most common sleep struggles that babies have. How to manage regressions, how to manage feeding, like just really anything sort of that encompasses sleep or that attributes to sleep. And then in addition to our classes, we also have online guides that are basically like a condensed version of the booklets that are included in the classes. And those are really for like just sort of an overview. Like here's where you can kind of start giving parents like the foundations. That's all through text. And then the final service that we offer, which is not actually to parents, it's to people wanting to become a sleep consultant. So as I mentioned, we have our certification program where parents can, or not parents, where people can become certified to do what I do. And that's something that we launched a couple years ago and has been really awesome as well. So. And I forgot to mention, we do have a group sleep training program that we run a couple times per quarter as well, which is basically like a group of parents that follow a similar structure to our one on one program.

Do you do that just via Zoom or something like that?

Yeah, we do that via Zoom and we have like a Facebook group and it's awesome for a community sort of sleep training.

So you have around sounds like five different income streams. Are the online guides. Is that like a low cost digital product?

Yeah, yep, exactly.

Okay, so can you tell me the differences between the pricing for like your one on one services versus your online courses versus your online guides? How does that break out?

Yeah, so the lowest priced item is our guides. And those like I said, are, you know, they're basically, you download them and they're sort of a condensed version. And those are typically, they run about 20, $25. And then our classes are sort of our next sort of tiered item which runs around. We have some packages so between like 55 and $100. And there's quite a lot included in our classes as well. And then our one on one services are probably the biggest investment for parents that are seeking help. And our packages really range quite a bit from our hourly sessions which are between like 100, 150, and then our packages which can, you know, sometimes be close to $900, like just depending on the length of time and the package that they go with. So we sort of have that tiered system. Our sleep consultant training is the highest investment, but that's again, sort of like a separate entity in itself.

So tell me a little bit more about how people find you. Like I said, I wish I had known about somebody like you. And my kids were little. I have a couple older child and then I have one that's in fifth grade and sixth grade. So it would have been around right the time that you were starting this. And I had no idea people like you existed. How do people find you now? And what are some of your biggest traffic sources?

Yeah, that's a great question. And it's funny because looking back, it was so different when we first started because it was really before the Instagram era and so social media. So it was kind of back then it was like grassroots marketing, word of mouth. We still do have a lot of clients that come to us via word of mouth, but I would say the majority of our traffic comes from our online presence. So a lot of the way that people find us is good old Google, they search in sleep consultants or help with baby sleep. We have a lot of resources in terms of articles and blogs on our site as well. So someone can hop on Google and search a weak windows and you know, we have several articles that will come up. So a lot of people find us that way. Social media is definitely huge for us. So we're really active on Instagram. We provide a lot of infographics and tips on our social channels on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. And so, you know, a lot of our traffic is finding us through social channels. And then we do quite a bit of brand partnerships as well. So, you know, we'll do Instagram takeovers for brands related to sleep, like Sleep Sachs, brands that support moms both in the postpartum period and sort of after that. And I would say our overall kind of Strategy of where we find our audience has really evolved in the last few years to reach different audiences, but those are sort of our primary, primary channels.

So you've been doing this for 10 years. What have been some of your biggest pain points and how have you addressed them?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean, we've had a lot and everybody has. That's been in business for 10 years.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say definitely our marketing strategy that, like I said, we had to be so creative. I mean, I had to be creative because it was just me when I started, but I had to be so creative and how people found us and how. I mean, I was constantly seeking clients and looking for them and trying to figure out where they were and handing out flyers and like I did sort of pounding the pavement. And that was definitely a hurdle because I got burnt out doing that, you know, and it was hard. I wasn't getting a steady stream of clients in the first few years because sometimes I just got burnt out and had to take a break. But obviously, as time has gone on, we've built up, you know, rapport. We've had a lot of people that have been able to refer us out and things like that. Another hurdle has just been scaling. You know, we obviously I went through these periods of time where I realized, okay, I can only work with so many clients at once. So I was having to turn people away, which is the, you know, you never want to do that necessarily when you have business because you're turning, you're leaving income on the table. You're also. I have a passion for helping families, so I didn't want to have to turn them away. So that's when I actually decided to hire on a team. That was around the same time that I launched our sleep consultant certification program. So thinking about scaling and how do we. How do we reach more families, how are we able to provide support for more families in different areas? And then in the same way with scaling, we knew that not everybody would want to invest in a one on one program, which is why we launched our classes. You know, there a lot of the different things, I think scaling and marketing that have been kind of our biggest hurdles.

Tell me, remind me, when you launched your one on one classes, how many years ago was it? I mean, your online courses?

Our online classes we launched in the beginning of 2019.

Okay. And how long have you been doing your group sleep training program that we've.

Run for a long time. We actually used to have sort of a like mom and Baby center when I lived in Colorado and Denver and we used to do group sleep training classes there. So that's kind of been there since the beginning of time, but it's evolved to be more of an online sort of thing.

Okay, and your certification program that you're doing to train others, do you run that all year round? Do you run it once a quarter? How do you structure that?

So we run one training per quarter and it is all online, but we also have a live component. So one thing that was important to me when we launched that is I didn't want really necessarily a program where people were just enrolling and I never spoke with them. I didn't know who they were. They were going through it without ever meeting us or hearing my voice. And so we, I really wanted to have that live component. So we have about four trainings per year, which ends up being about one per quarter.

Okay, let's delve into your online courses a little bit more. How do you sell them? Do you do live launches? Is it all on Evergreen? What's your traffic strategy for your online courses? And just tell us a little bit more about your marketing for them.

Yeah, so our online courses are pretty evergreen. We, you know, we're constantly talking about them. We have, you know, sometimes we'll do live launches. Like we actually just, I actually just re recorded a lot of videos with some updated and more robust information. And so we'll be, we'll be doing like a launch to sort of promote the, you know, updating of our classes. We do a lot of, you know, we talk about them frequently in our social channels because people are always asking us questions and that's a really great place for us to send them to get those questions answered on our social channels. We definitely constantly talk about them in our emails when again as a resource for parents, depending on the topic that we're discussing. And we do brand partnerships as well. So we're working with a lot of brands where we'll give away classes or we'll run promotions for the classes so we can kind of cross promote to the other audiences as well, which is always really effective. You know, sometimes I'll do like Instagram takeovers and I will offer the audience 15 or 20% off the class or something like that. But they're pretty evergreen. We talk about them quite a bit because it's somewhere we can send parents to get immediate help.

Yeah, and I love that, I love that because you're getting all these questions and this is a great resource for them to, you know, go through your programs and get their questions answered. Can you talk a little bit more about or talk a little bit about your revenue streams? What percentages are your one on one services? Is that the majority of your income versus the online classes versus the certification program and the group sleep training program?

Yeah, that's a great question. So our certification program sort of started out as a much smaller part of our business because obviously you know, as you launch something that's typically how it goes and then has quickly grown to be the majority of our income because it's a higher priced item. So it is basically the highest investment of anything that we have when it comes to our business, which makes sense because there's, it's a 10 week program, there's a lot that's included in that. But on sort of a steady basis, when it comes to our services that we offer to parents, our one on one services continue to be the bulk of our income. And the way that we, you know, our secondary revenue stream that I would say for our practice and then our classes are great because obviously you make money in your sleep with classes. You put them out there, you don't necessarily. We tweak them and we update them, but you don't have to do a lot for that. So I would say that's kind of our next step down for our revenue source. So we have a pretty good mix of really from lower investment items to higher investment items. And our goal is for our classes to be up there with our one on one which just takes a lot more marketing and awareness of those as well.

Hey there Destiny here and I'm the host of the Creators MBA podcast and this episode is brought to you by HelloContent Shop your Go to destination for content creation in your online digital product business. I understand how busy you are as an online business owner. I am right there with you and that is why I have filled our hello Content Shopify store with low cost digital products that you can use as a lead magnet or part of your paid programs like your online courses or memberships. We also have marketing templates like email swipe files and social media templates designed to save you time and money. So whether you're looking to streamline your content strategy, enhance your digital products or just save some precious time, I've got you covered my friend. Now visit thehellocontent shop today and take the first step towards effortless content creation. So tell me a little bit about. Obviously you've been in business for 10 years, so you've learned a lot during that time, what do you see as the next steps for you for the remainder of 2021? Are there pain points that you're still trying to work through challenges? What do you have on your roadmap?

Oh, goodness. Things that we are really excited about for this year, but it's also like, oh my gosh, we're in April. It's been really exciting to see our certification program growing. We, you know, we started with classes of about seven or eight, and now our classes are up to 21, 22, 25 people, which is amazing. And a lot of them are international. So it's really cool to see how we're reaching our students, you know, all over the world. So we definitely are going to continue to grow that program. We are shooting a. This is sort of the first time.

I've talked about this.

We're shooting maternity sleep class next week. And so we're really excited about that because so much of our practice is pediatric sleep. But we also work with pregnant women as well. So it's going to be really exciting to be able to release, tap into that audience a bit more. And then we definitely have a goal of at least starting to get the wheels in motion to launch a podcast. That's something that I've wanted to do for a long time and. But it's just been time, my time that has held me back from doing that and having to have, you know, make sure that we can do that correctly and that we have all the things in place. And so that's kind of like the next thing on our radar that we're trying to get figured out and launched as well as our maternity class. And it's all just bandwidth. I think those are our biggest struggles is bandwidth time. We've grown a lot. We've hired a lot of people this year, which is awesome. But in order to keep growing, it's like we have to keep doing that. So it takes a lot of. It takes a lot of time.

I love how you're moving into that new niche with the maternity audience. How did you, how did that come up? What kind of led you down that path?

So when I got my certification, it was for both maternity and pediatric sleep consulting, but I think I naturally just followed more of the route of pediatric sleep consulting because it seemed like the need was much higher there. And, you know, I think one thing we're trying to change within the culturally is that women, and specifically moms, they really lack that self care. And sleep is so important for moms, even when, especially when they're Pregnant. And a lot of women just think, like, okay, well, this is just something I have to deal with. But we really want to be able to reach more women in pregnancy, to be able to help them get the sleep they need, because there are so many challenges with sleep during pregnancy. And so that's something that's been on my heart for a while, is, you know, we just have focused so much on pediatric, and I'm like, hey, I'm certified. And I do work with maternity clients all the time. It's just not something we talk about as much. And so the class, I think, is really going to help sort of catapult that.

And it's an online class, correct?

Yeah, it's an online class. Yep.

Well, again, I wish I'd known about that when I. When I had, you know, when I was going through my maternity. So you're launching. You're having on your schedule to launch a podcast. I love that. Tell us a little bit more. You talked about your bandwidth and your time, and I think everybody listening here can struggle, you know, struggles with this. Right. We're trying to grow our business, but that's one of the things that we're lacking in because it's just us and maybe our team members. What are some ways that you're, you know, making it. So you do have the bandwidth and the time to launch a new online course, to launch a podcast. What have you done?

So, yeah, and I mean, I think this is something that has taken me a very long time to figure out, but especially with. I mean, we have. Between my husband and I, we have six kids. We have one. We have another one on the way.

Oh, congratulations.

Thank you.

That's wonderful.

So we're forced, you know, to really figure out, okay, how do we prioritize time and actually just talked about this in an interview that I did that for me, I don't believe it's as much about balance. I mean, balance is obviously important, but I think it's more so how you prioritize your time. So there are going to be periods of your life when one area needs more of your attention than another area. So there are times when my family needs me more than the business needs me. And so that's when I lean on my team and. And say, hey, I've got to step away from xyz. I need other people to sort of take this on. And then there are times when it feels like things with our family are really pretty steady. We're in a good routine, and I can devote more to the business. So I've really focused a lot on prioritizing my day and making sure that the most urgent things get done and then being fine with leaving things until tomorrow and knowing that even if I stayed up until midnight every night, which I definitely wouldn't do, I'm not going to get everything done. And there are going to be unanswered emails and there are going to be tasks that go uncompleted because that's the reality of being a business owner. And so figuring out how to prioritize my time as well as balance it, but really prioritizing has been sort of the key for me.

So what does a day look like in your business with you being a mom of six, going to be a mom of seven soon? What does the day look like? Like what? How do you structure your day? And at what point do you say, you know what, I'm done and I'm going to go focus on my family?

Yeah. Well, first of all, I have to say thank goodness for my husband because he is like dad of the year. He really, he is in seminary, so he's also, I mean, he's in grad school, so he has a very intense program, but he helps a lot with the kids. And you know, sort of a typical day is we all get up, we all get ready, one of us does drop off for school, we kind of switch off. And then I usually start my day, my work day, at 9 o' clock and I usually try to sign off around 4:30 and that's when I close my computer, I put my phone away. Sometimes there are things that take more time. So sometimes I have to say, hey, you know, to my husband, I need until 6 tonight because I'm up against the deadline or, you know, I need to work on for a chunk of Saturday because I really need to get something done. But for them, for the majority of the time, my workday is about 9 to 4:30. Now. There are also times I get up early before anyone else in our household is awake so that I can get things done. So there are times I have like an hour in the morning. I am most productive in the morning. So I do try to get a good chunk of time in the morning. But our kids are in sports, they have a lot going on. And so I really chose like 4:30 as the time when I feel like that's when our sort of family time starts because there's a lot of stuff going on. There's practices and there's kids that have to be driven here and there. And I want to be a part of that. I don't necessarily want to be like locked in my office working while all of that is going on. And it's a lot on my husband to shuffle them all around on his own too.

Well, and that's the other reason why you have your own business. So you have the flexibility to do something.

Exactly.

What are the ages of your children?

So our oldest, which are my husband's children from a previous marriage, are 22 and 19 and they don't, they're not in the house, so they're kind of their own. But in our house we have almost 11 year old, a 9 year old, 4 year old, 2 year old.

Okay. Yeah, you definitely have your hands full there. Oh my goodness. So over the years it sounds like you have brought on team members to help you with this and to give you more bandwidth to do things like launching a new online course. Can you tell us a little bit about that process and what your team looks like today?

Yes. So what really the first employee that we ever hired was when we had our daughter in January of 2019. And I realized, okay, I need to prepare and have someone help me so that I can take some time, you know, to spend with, with our new baby. And so that was the first team member we hired and she just really focused on some of the social media aspects and helped edit some articles and she was sort of did a lot of random things. And then our next team member was hired on a few months after that. And then we just. As we continued to grow, we continued to realize the need for different roles. So having someone help us design our social media posts, having someone help us plan those out, having someone help with writing more content, making videos, things like that. And then now we have a team of six. And you know, we have the. There's so many different aspects of our business. Like we have two team members that help with our trainings since those have grown to be so large. And we just continue to identify different positions within our company that need to be filled. And sometimes it's scary because we're like, oh, just like another person to add to payroll. But we've seen that the more we sort of fill our team, the more growth we have. And again, I think it's so needed to be able to have a team to say, I need to push this off my plate right now so I can focus over here. And that's really the only way, in my opinion, that growth can happen.

So with a new baby along the way, do you feel like you'll be able to take a true maternity leave because now you have these team members.

Yeah, I actually do. I do. We have people in place, place where we need them. There are some things I need to button up so that I'm not still, you know, doing some of the day to day tasks that, you know, that I am still obviously responsible for. But yeah, I do. I don't know that I will take, you know, several months, but I'll definitely be able to take at least you know, a good chunk of time where I'm not hardly working. But the awesome thing about my job is I also get to use my kids sleep as examples. So when I have a newborn, I will be able to walk our community through the journey of having a newborn again. And some of the things that I'm doing and some of the ways that I'm help, you know, I'm helping their sleep and stuff. So that's kind of cool too.

And you have a new model for all of your online classes.

Exactly.

Yeah. There you go. Rachel, I have one last question question for you. You've been doing this for 10 years. You have a ton of experience here. What advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?

So I think there's two major things, major pieces of advice I would have for course creators. So number one, I really encourage people to have a really solid marketing strategy. When we first launched our courses, we thought, okay, we're going to create these courses and they're gonna be so awesome and then we're gonna put them out there and people are just gonna start buying them. That's not what happened. So really, even if you did, even if you already launched your classes and you didn't have a great marketing strategy like us, what's awesome is, like I said, it's evergreen. You can keep promoting your classes, but that's something you have to keep doing all the time. And I've learned from my mentors and other people in this space is that you have to continue to talk about it. Like, people need to be motivated. They need to hear, this is an option for you. I have this for you. And to not be afraid to sell that because you're giving people something that you believe in is going to help them. So I would just say have an overall evergreen marketing strategy that you just never let your foot off the gas. And you keep, you keep promoting it and you keep talking about it, obviously in a way that's not overbearing. But. And then the other thing I would say is just not to feel discouraged if you go through those peaks and valleys, which I think we all do, you know, sharing with you before we started recording that sometimes we sell, you know, 10, 15 classes a day, and sometimes we sell zero. Sometimes we go, you know, a week where it feeling it feels really kind of light. And the next week I'm like, wow, what's going on? You know, we have so many purchases this week. And that's sort of just the nature of running your own business, is you're going to have those hills and valleys. And if you get discouraged every time you reach a lower point, it's really going to be demotivating. So just sort of expecting that. And that's why you kind of have to constantly promote your courses. And I guess just a last piece of advice I would have is continue to refine them. I mean, we launched our classes two years ago and I've already done a complete update of 2, 2 of our classes because I rewatched them and I listened to the feedback that people were giving me and that's super important to say, okay, this is what people are asking for. I need to maybe go back and reshoot some of these or maybe go back and sort of tweak things a little bit so that it's an even better experience for our audience. And I think that's something that all course creators should sort of expect as well.

Rachel, that's some great advice. Can you let people know where they can find you?

Yes. So we can be found on all social media channels with the handle mysweet sleeper. And our website is mysweetsleeper.com and you can also reach out to me personally, which is just Rachel R A C H E l@mysweetsleeper.com and I will make.

Sure that those links are in the show notes so people know that they can find you. Especially I know we have a lot of young moms who listen to this and they might be, you know, going through that period in their life where they need your help.

Yeah, absolutely. That would be great.

Thanks so much for joining us today. If you have any questions about course in a box which is offered on AppSumo, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or DM me on Instagram. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Rachel. Would love for you to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.