How a sleep consultant went from hands-on support to an online, anytime service

I read extensively and researched about the power of sleep and its importance to our well-being. Family and friends would come to me with their kid’s sleep problems, I’d share what I knew. It was only when someone said to me that I should be doing it ‘for a living’, that the penny dropped. So I trained with the Family Sleep Institute in the US in 2017 and became a certified sleep consultant. Business was really busy. I’d be tearing all over the country doing in person home visits, trying to help exhausted and drained parents cope. My business really spread through word of mouth.

I’d start posting video content like 7 steps daily to better sleep. It really grew my social following.

Then things totally blew up when a well-known personality name-dropped me on their social channel - about how I’d changed their lives by getting their babies to sleep! I could barely keep up with demand. By 2018, I was maxed out. The business was at capacity. I was travelling too much. I couldn’t take on any more clients, so it was going to be difficult to grow the business. Not to mention that I wasn’t around for homework or mid term breaks for my own family.

So I approached my Local Enterprise Office to get help with expanding the business online. I had a website, but with an 'Online Trading' voucher, I added an ecommerce function. Essentially I was able to create and produce an online Sleep Series for parents. We launched it in November 2019, with my co-founder Janet.

It means that wherever they are in the world, exhausted parents can get our help - whether through a 1-on-1 real time support from a sleep consultant or by signing up to an online sleep course. Our timing could not have been better, as suddenly the pandemic hit and every parent in the world was at home - and struggling.

Janet and I were able to build a business at the height of the pandemic, without ever seeing each other in person because we’d built the site and were using digital tools.

We have over 4 thousand families now in 35 countries accessing our support. We are really focussed on global expansion, and that’s only possible through digital. Between 25 to 50 percent of all children born globally will present with some sort of sleep problem, so our business needs to be able to access wider markets.