298. The Hardest Part Isn't Doing It; It's Deciding | Jayne Havens

There's a gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it, and most people live in that gap far longer than they need to. Jayne Havens doesn't. Diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, she says her brain just doesn't do the "should I, shouldn't I" loop, she treats her business like a video game she's playing against herself, one level beaten so she can get to the next one. The strategy part was never really the hard part for her. The hard part is making the call in the first place.

Join Anna as she talks with Jayne, a sleep consultant who built a business, then built a second business teaching other people how to become sleep consultants, about what actually separates people who follow through from people who stay stuck. It's not a better plan or more information. It's deciding, outsourcing what isn't your strength, and trusting yourself enough to keep going before you have it all figured out.

This Episode Covers:

• The advice from her father that made spending money on her business feel easy instead of scary.
• Why she still gets burnt out carrying the weight of her clients' anxiety, even when she loves the work.
• The boundaries she puts in place so a trip abroad doesn't put her business at risk.
• Why she believes hiring people who don't show up the way you would can quietly destroy a business.
• The moment she felt embarrassed to tell her own family that she wanted more.
• Her take on the worst advice you can follow: someone else's plan for your life.
• What she wishes more people understood about why entrepreneurs actually do this work.

Connect with Jayne:
Website - https://thesnoozefest.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/snoozefestbyjaynehavens
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/SnoozeFestbyJayneHavens/ 

Until next time, here's to deeper connections and personal growth.
Mad love!

Book a Discovery Call for Coaching/Therapy: https://calendly.com/badassconfidencecoach/coaching

The podcast is now on YouTube! If you prefer to watch, head over to https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw3CabcJueib20U_L3WeaR-lNG_B3zYqu

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Badass Confidence Coach Podcast. This week I'm doing something different. As most of you probably know by now who listen to the podcast or watch it on YouTube. I don't do many guests these days, and it's been usually Tim and I talking together about all things, as you know, well, related to mental health and wellness. But this week I'm having someone on. And so when I do interview somebody, they have to be someone who's pretty special and someone that I'm really interested in and want to know more about. And this week, that person is Jane Haven. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah. And I'm excited to talk to you a lot more about your business. So tell us all a little, tell us who you are and a little bit about your podcast and your business, how you got started, and we'll get into it.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Sure. So again, my name is Jane Havens. I live in Baltimore, Maryland with my husband and two children who are nine and 13 years old. I got into entrepreneurship because, well, the story is that my son, who's now 13, when he was a baby, he was a really great sleeper right out of the gate. And right around four months, he went from sleeping through the night to waking every single hour in the middle of the night. And as a brand new parent, I had no idea what was going on, what to make of that, and how to fix it. He just wanted his passy replaced, but it was sort of killing me slowly. And I took to the internet, I went to Barnes and Noble. I sat on the floor, I flipped through books, and I figured out how to get him sleeping again. And that experience was really transformative for me personally. It helped to improve my marriage. It helped to improve my relationship with my child. All of a sudden I was enjoying motherhood again. And I just really felt like, wow, if more parents knew about this, we'd all be in a better place. And for years, I was sort of just helping friends and friends of friends get their kids to sleep a little bit better. I wasn't making any money. I was just doing it as a hobby. And fast forward four years later, my daughter was born. She was actually really challenging. She was a really fussy baby. And I joke that she drove me back to work. I was like, I got to get a job. This is this is really hard. And so I kept thinking back like, I'm already sort of doing something that's work. I'm just not getting paid for it. Maybe I should turn my hobby and my passion into a business. And that's what I did. I went online. I decided to get officially certified to become a sleep consultant. And I've been supporting parents through the process of establishing healthy and independent sleep hygiene for their children ever since. Not too long after becoming a sleep consultant, I actually decided to create my own sleep consultant certification course because the program that I took was fine from an educational standpoint. It was pretty comprehensive, but it was really missing the human element. There was no mentorship, there was no support, there was no community. There was a Facebook group for students and grads, but nobody was engaging. If anybody was asking questions, it felt like the blind leading the blind. And I really felt that there was an opportunity to do it better and to provide a better experience. And so now I train, mentor, and certify others to do this work, which is so exciting and so meaningful. I really enjoy, you know, like in the beginning, it was like there's nothing that feels better than teaching a child to sleep through the night. And now I feel like there's really nothing better than taking somebody through the process of really becoming an entrepreneur and growing their own successful business. And so I love it all.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

And it's hard. And I want to get into that. And I think that people, you and I spoke about it when I was on your podcast last week. And I talk about it all the time with clients that you know you're going to do something really hard. And I had told you I think that this is harder than me being a triathlete. And I thought being a triathlon triathlete, triathlon training for 20 years, two workouts a day was hard, which is it is this is harder. So for you, in your experience with the people that you have taught and have sort of trained, how much of becoming entrepreneur, in your opinion, is strategy? And how much of it is sort of emotional resilience?

SPEAKER_00 4:43

I personally think it's mostly emotional resilience, to be honest. Yeah. Because if I think about my own success in my own business, I don't even really know what my strategy is, other than to just keep working at it.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

That really is my strategy is just to keep going, keep engaged, remain excited, remain passionate, and don't give up. I always say that, you know, the difference between people who are successful and people who are not successful, the people who are not successful, they quit on themselves before they've gained momentum and traction. That's literally the only difference. And, you know, I don't know. I think strategy, like sure. I guess over the years I've developed strategy and I have a process, I have systems in place, but it's really scrappy. My business is really successful and I'm really scrappy. And every single day I'm like, what should I try today? Let's let's do this, let's do that. It's all over the place. And that's great. I like hearing that. I think I take more chances in a day than most people take in a month. And so I really just think it's largely about resilience, putting yourself out there, not quitting, having some grit, some determination. That'll take you so much further than strategy. Strategy, you know, that's a roadmap. Everybody can find a roadmap, but you really need the grit, the determination, the work ethic, the drive. Yeah. That will take you so much further.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

It's like you make a really good point. So do it, do it messy. You're gonna fail, fail forward. Get your I say all the time, I mean, get back up, dust, dust the dirt off from your knees and keep going. And do you think in your experience there's been a it's more of a personality type of those who are gonna make it? Will you say to yourself, she's gonna make it, she's she's got the goods, like you know, or maybe someone who you're like, I don't know, because I think there's some things that as an entrepreneur you can't teach people. Like I gotta hear from you, and I knew this last week about you. You're a risk taker. You're like, just go, just get it done. And I could tell immediately when I met you. I think that that's a piece of it. What what are you what's your experience with this? It is a huge piece of it.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

I was diagnosed with ADHD, like in my adult life. Yep. And I really feel like it's my superpower because I'm relentless, right? Yes, relentless. And I am not going to give up until I get it done. And I'm not scared, I'm impulsive, I just go. And I think that people who have that mentality tend to have an easier go at it. I when I meet with people who are interested in becoming sleep consultants, I'll get on Zoom with them and I can tell if somebody is going to be good at it or successful in a moment. And usually I think it's it's a combination of their people skills, their ability to make eye contact, their ability to connect, their ability to make you feel. You know, sometimes people get on Zoom with me and they literally haven't thought of any questions. They're not really sure what we're here to talk about. They're looking for me to drive the conversation, which I'm happy to do, but they're the ones that are on a call with me trying to learn about, right? So, like I'm happy to drive the conversation, but you're here to learn from me. What questions do you have? How can I help you see if this is a good fit for you? Right. And and so some of it I think is personality, people, skills, confidence. You know, there is some sort of X factor, and it's really it is hard to pinpoint, but I also think you kind of know it and you see it, if that makes sense. So, where where did you get your confidence? Where does it come from? So I credit a few things. I went to a school, kindergarten through 12th grade, that was very sort of like hands-on learning, immersive education, where we were really encouraged to explore our interests, think critically, think deeply. We weren't sitting at desks memorizing all day. We were like a Montessori type. A Montessori type. I I don't know if I don't know if they would call it Montessori, but maybe they they called it progressive. But, you know, it really was the type of learning environment where I was taught to think critically, to question my own ideas, to mull and to just like really over and over and over again, like dig deep. And so I think that's part of it, is my learning environment as a child. I also was raised by an entrepreneur. My father is very entrepreneurial. He dropped out of college a year and a half in and went to work with his dad and then had several different businesses over the course of his adult years. And so I just watched him. You watched that, yeah. And he really just he was a risk taker, he is a risk taker, and he's not afraid to try something new. And he really instilled in me like, okay, if it doesn't work, all right. So you'll try something different, like it's okay, you know, and and maybe some of that is a little bit of privilege. Like I had a safety net. If I, you know, my my second job out of college was a basically commission-only position where I either made money or I didn't, you know? And when I took that job, I was like, how am I gonna do this? How am I gonna survive? And he was just like, don't worry about it. You're gonna be fine, go, you know? And and so I don't know if it was like the privilege of the safety net or if it was just him instilling in me that I was gonna be successful, like, don't take anything less, just go do it. Right. But I just I've never really been that scared. And I worked a lot in sales before I became an entrepreneur. And I do think that being in sales really prepares you for entrepreneurship working on your own. Because, you know, I used to work in catering. I worked for the most expensive catering company in Washington, D.C. We were never gonna win on price. So we had to win on something else. We had to win on experience, we had to win on customer service, we had to win on quality, right? And so these were all things that I got really good at. I got good at sharing the value of the experience and the quality of the food and the staff and everything. And then I also got really good at hearing no. Like I didn't get hired a lot. You know, if if somebody called me, they were calling two or three other caterers and I didn't win every bid. And I got really used to rejection and it doesn't hurt my feelings. And I know that when somebody doesn't choose what I have to offer, it's oftentimes more about them than it is about me. And so I just carry on.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

You know, that's mindset. So sales, sales taught you a lot about mindset. And I think something I that's been that I've been thinking about this past week when I was, I myself was scrolling through Instagram. So I I'll get the algorithm right that's sending me other coaches. And I'm amazed by how many people are mindset coaches. And I think I talk about mindset every single day. You probably talk about it every single day. And I think to myself, and I'm I'm I'm not I think for everybody out there who who's listening to this conversation, watching it, people are calling themselves that and they're niching and they're specializing in it, but don't think that they have something special that you can't have to. You could also be a mindset coach. I talk about mindset, you talk about mindset. We probably could both say we're mindset coaches. That's a piece of what we do, and it's just not what our brand is. And I think it's really important for people, you know, to get their minds right and to call yourself into to whatever you want and go for it. You know, I mean, you you work for this catering company and learning to hear the no's of get your mind right around it, you know, that you're gonna hear a lot of no's. We, I, I still hear a lot of no's. And for people, it's it's the price. They get caught up on the price. And I never forget my business coaches saying to me, and I'm this, I'm like, okay, that's fine. You know what I mean? My business coaches would always say, Listen, they're they're not your people because if they valued themselves and they valued the work enough, they would find a way. No, some people can't find a way. I understand that. Some people just they cannot. I understand the economy. But there are people who, yeah, and you and I have talked, they can't afford it, they're not going to do it because their mindset is not really aligned right now with what they kind of think they want. They're not sure what they want yet. And for me, especially the work I do, they have to be in some sort of pain. Probably you with the sleep kid, the sleep, your sleep clients. They have to be in some sort of like psychic or maybe in your case, physical pain where they're like, I can't, I can't, I can't do this. You know, and I wish it wasn't that way, though. People would have to be like, you know, redlining it in their lives before they they show up. Oftentimes that's the case because we don't put the time and energy and the money into ourselves. And I do you see that in the entrepreneurial side of your business?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Yeah. So one thing I was thinking about when you're talking is, you know, when people question or they come up against price and they're saying, you know, I can't afford it or it's too expensive. As you said, sometimes that might be true that they really just don't have the money. But a lot of the time, I think it's really that they just don't trust themselves.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

That, you know, people will say to me, like, how do I know that I'm gonna get a return on investment? Like if they enroll in my sleep consultant certification program, I need to be sure that I'm gonna get a return on investment. I need to know. It's like, well, that is not my responsibility. That is your responsibility. And the way that you know that you're gonna get a return on investment is that you don't let it happen any other way. Right. Like when I meet with people, because I've hired business strategists, I've hired people to help me with search engine optimization, I've hired people to help me with Pinterest, whatever it may be. Right. And I still think even when you're hiring somebody to help you in your business, it's your responsibility to make sure that you get that return. You know, it's not the, it's not the person that you're hiring, especially if you're working with a coach or a strategist or if you're enrolling in some sort of program, it's your responsibility to take full advantage of that program and and at a minimum have some serious learning lessons, even if you think it's financial loss, right? And so I think when people say, you know, I can't afford it, or I don't know that this is the right time to spend the money. I think that what they're saying is, I don't know that I trust myself right now to do what I need to do to be successful. And again, that's about them.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

That's not about so true. Yeah. That's so true. Or, you know, and I think to myself, and sometimes I'll ask people at Discovery Calls, what if we don't work together, what's going to be different six weeks from now? They're like, oh, well, nothing. And in a way, I think it's we we get used to sitting in the mire that we're in. You know, sometimes we're we would rather we would we sleep with the devil we know versus challenge us, challenging ourselves with the devil we don't know, which is the upside, the other side. Like, no, the grass is not greener, but I'm gonna, it might be a little it might be a little greener because you're going, but you're gonna have to back go back, go into the work to transform yourself. You know, I mean, I say to a client yesterday, they were talking about dating somebody new. It's about a breakup. It was a more of a romantic relationship. And I said, listen, I've said this for 25 years, 26 years in my office with therapy clients, people going through breakups and divorces. I say all the time, listen, the grass is not greener on the other side. It's not greener. You think you're gonna trade in and trade up in life for a better spouse. That's not true. 50% of first marriages end in divorce, 75% of second marriages end in divorce. It's not true. You, it's you, you have to look at yourself. This is an inside job. I say it to client, I think, okay, Anna, you know, and I'm like, I'm sorry, I have to burst your bubble on this. I mean, okay, I understand you're getting divorced. I don't, no judgment, no, I don't, I'm here to support you in that. But please don't think that it's better over there. It's not. You know, and that's sort of how I think, in a way, as well as being an entrepreneur, like, I'll just pull this person in or I'll hire this coach. Okay. They do have skills. And my my business coaches, my strategist coaches have taught me things that I don't know. But at the end of the day, they're like, Anna, go and do it. It's you, go do it. You have to get on social media. I'm like, I don't want to get on social media. I I'm not 25 years old. They're like, I don't care. Go do it. You have to write this program, do it this week, you know? And so they push me, like push me as a coach to do it. But at the end of the day, it has to be us doing it with our insecurities and getting the crap done. And even though you're like, part of your mind's like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, do it anyway, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Absolutely. And I think sometimes the hardest part is deciding to do it. That's actually harder than doing it.

unknown 18:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Like once you've decided that you're gonna do something, the actual action piece isn't the difficult part. So if you can get over the mental hurdle, I think the rest is kind of easy. And so that's where I think I thrive is I don't I don't struggle on the mental piece. I don't struggle with the idea of like, should I do this or should I not do it? Should I do it this week? Should I do it next week? Like I my brain just doesn't do that. And I really don't identify with that way of thinking. It's just not the way my brain works. So I get to spend all of my time just taking action.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

That's your superpower of the ADHD is taking action. Yeah. I mean, I have we talked about it last week. I have ADHD too. And I it's funny, I was telling a client and like a 50-some-year-old male client, he has ADHD, and he was telling me how it's kind of plagued him his whole life. And I'm like, Plagued you? I said, and I know him very well. I said, I I have ADHD. He knows that. And I said, You know I have ADHD. He goes, Yeah, I said, It's a superpower. He's like, How is it a superpower? He had his mind was like blown. He's sitting in my office here across from me. He's like, It's not a superpower, yeah. And I'm like, Yes, it is. Think about how it has made you so successful. He's very successful financially. How think look at how it's made you so successful. You don't think your ADHD came in to play in any of this? He's like, Well, well, maybe. I'm like, Yes. I mean, we can be inattentive, but we can all and we can be not focused, but our hyperactive piece really is the part that makes us stay like focused. Like we we can get like afraid that something's not gonna happen if we don't do it. You know, that's that's ADHD. Like, oh, we get like a nervousness that other people don't have. Like, I have to get it done. I have to get it done now. I gotta, you know, but we we can be laser focused when we have a goal. And that's what I think people don't understand about attention deficit.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yeah, yeah. And so my goal, you know, my goals are ever-changing. I mean, I have like micro goals every single day, like, you know, I need to get my list done. And then I have big goals in my business. And I, the way I describe, you know, I often feel like I'm just playing a video game against myself. Like that, that is what my business is. I'm just trying to like beat the next level so I can get to the next level and then beat the next level. And it's not, when I say the next level, I don't necessarily mean financial goals. Some of them are financial, but some of them are just figuring out something that I haven't figured out before. Right. And when I figure out something new, it's like, okay, got to the next level. Now I have this figured out. Now let's figure something else out. And I just want to keep figuring things out. When I first started, I literally knew nothing. I didn't know, you know, I hired a uh person, I don't know what you would even call her, a launch strategist to help me get Center for Pediatric Sleep Management off the ground, you know. And she said to me, All right, well, like Which learning platform do you want to use? And I was like, I don't even know what any of them are. Like I couldn't even, you know. What's a learning platform? It's a learning platform. And she's like, what do you envision your funnel to look like? I'm like, what's a funnel? You know, I literally didn't know anything about anything. I couldn't have named an email marketing platform like a CRM, other than like MailChimp. I literally couldn't have named another one. And so I just had to figure it out. And every single step, I just made decisions. And, you know, some of them were the right decisions. Some of them, in hindsight, maybe I should have made a different decision, but none of them were catastrophic. And you just keep moving along. And I really do believe that that is the key to success, is just not mulling and staying stuck over something that really, frankly, doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

I'm listening to you and thinking yes, yes, yes to everything you just said. I didn't know what any of those things were. And I think sometimes as entrepreneurs, we get frustrated when if there's a money scarcity piece, like, you know, in the beginning, many people they don't have like all this back or money. They don't have a lot to start with, and they do have to do a lot of things on their own. They do have to learn, you know, MailChimp or Flow desk, or they have to learn how to do a funnel. And they're on YouTube watching videos, and they do have to sort of like put it together, be very gritty and scrappy and how they put it together. And that can take, I mean, I was just doing it. I posted in our, we're in a dear founder of our women's networking group together. And I posted in there probably six weeks ago that I was trying to redo my website on my own. And I just thought, oh, I can do it. It's just I want to change some words. Oh my God. Oh my God. I was in Squarespace. I massively screwed it up. And then I couldn't fix it. I'm like, oh my God. Oh, like I was freaking out. And I went into our group and I said, Is there anybody in here who can help me? And so I found an amazing person where that's all she does. And she's revamping my website. So fine. I can't do that on my own. It's not my wheelhouse, like you and I talked about last week. I actually have zero interest in it. And I thought making one little change would be no big deal and ended up screwing up the whole thing. You know, but there have been days where three to four hours go by, and I think I have not, I'm not any further along with this funnel and I've had to hire people. And it's usually because I try it first, because I think I'm going to do it myself. And I think that there's something to that because I want to go into burnout with you. And I started to sort of burn out last year in 2025 because I was doing too much on my own. And but at the same time, when I look back now to 2025, I think I because I would be like, this is a waste of time. I can't believe I wasted my time doing this. It wasn't a waste of time. I actually learned a lot about like the inner workings of my business that I never would have known. And I learned about things I just that's not, I'm as a clinical, you know, mental health and personal development coach, those are things that's not my wheelhouse, but I did learn. And and yes, I will continue to pay people to do it because I don't have that much of an interest. But I do think it was valuable for me to learn it. What do you what do you think about that?

unknown 25:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

So there's about I think there's a balance with this stuff. I do think that in order for us to optimize our own potential and our own success, we really need to lean into our own strengths and outsource the things that are not our strengths. Like my time is valuable, time is money, right? And if I spend five hours doing something that I can pay someone 30 minutes to do in 30 minutes, yes, I what I could be doing with that five hours, like that is not productive, right? Right. And so I think that there are circumstances where we do we do need to learn the inner workings of the tech behind our businesses. I do think that that is important, but I don't necessarily think that we need to be the ones to build it from the ground up because you know, I don't know how to build websites. And so it would take me so long. I wouldn't do a great job, I wouldn't feel good about it. Then it would sort of get my confidence down that I have this mediocre website. Okay, I built it myself. I can feel proud of myself that I built a website, but I don't love the way it looks. I don't love the way it works. It's not what I want it to be. Yes. And I could have spent the money to have somebody else do it, feel really good about it, and then taken all that time and channeled it into me doing what I do best. Exactly. Exactly. I I am really good at outsourcing. I'm not afraid to spend money in my business. My business is really profitable. I only spend, you know, my expenses are like 18, 19% of my revenue. So I have room to invest if I need to. And I am not afraid to do so. I just I like to, I also think that in order to enjoy your business and in to enjoy your work, you have to spend most of the time doing the things that you want to be doing, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Okay. So, Jane, how long have you been doing have had this business? Since 2018. So what is that? Eight years? Eight years. So for those who are listening and they're just starting out, what would you like they're not really profitable yet? What would you say to them about starting and about money and mindset? Let's let's let's give some tips to them.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

So everybody's financial situation is different. And it's hard to give blanket advice without knowing people's financial circumstances. But in my situation, when I first started my sleep consulting business, my father gave me the recommendation to put a lump sum of money into my business bank account. He he said, you know, put $5,000 there. And that is your, that is your working capital. Like that is money that you're gonna use to start your business. So if you need to pay someone to make you a website, if you need to pay someone to help you set up your email systems, whatever it is, like decide on an amount of money that you can put there comfortably and use that to like get yourself off the ground. Because I think that I think that it's really hard for people when they're starting a business and they haven't made any money yet, they think, oh, well, I don't even want to spend the $75 to buy Canva Pro, whatever it is. Like they don't want to spend it because they haven't made it yet. But if you have this pot of money that's your working capital that's just like you've decided that you're going to use this money to get yourself on the right foot, I think it feels easier to make those small little decisions in the moment that you really need to make in order to kick yourself off. You know, to give you an example, I'm running right now a 30-day visibility challenge for sleep consultants with a coach, a business coach who primarily coaches other sleep consultants. She's not a sleep consultant herself. She just found herself in this niche. And I'm acting as like a co-coach with her. And it's a 90-day challenge. It is $99. So, like, very, very inexpensive to join. To me, there's like no barrier to entry. It's short term, it's inexpensive, it's intended to kickstart your business. I can't tell you how many people said to me, I really can't spend the money because I'm not making money yet in my business. And I just thought, like, wow, you're not willing to spend $99 to get into this 30-day container where you're going to be every single day offered a prompt for what you should be doing in your business. Like that is the wrong mindset, right? Absolutely. And so if they had done what my father told me to do, put a few thousand dollars into your business bank account. It's your working capital. This is what you're going to use to get started. I don't think they would have batted an eye, but because they didn't have that set up, they didn't have that proper mental framework, they're staying stuck over something that is like, in my opinion, a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Wow, that is great advice for everyone is to, and I would say when you're thinking about starting your business, whatever it might be, when you're going into most people come into the entrepreneurial space after having been in a more conventional job, career, maybe more of a nine to five. Most people that I know don't come right out of college and become entrepreneurs. They, or they don't go, you know, most people, I know some people who didn't go to school and they became entrepreneurs, but they really did try other things first. If you have a thought in your mind that you have an idea or a passion or something you want to do, this is great advice. Start putting money aside. Don't go to dinner, don't buy that six pack of beer, don't buy the Starbucks, like eat at home. Like do start whittling, taking little bits of money and putting it into a business account. That's a great, great tip. Love that.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Yeah. And it just made it made decisions so easy. You know, when it came time to, when it came time to hire someone to build a website for me, and I got a quote. You had it. I got a quote at the time. It was like $1,500. It was like, okay, the money's in the account. That's what this is for. Exactly. I didn't even really think about it much. I was like, okay, this is something I need for my business. The money is here. I'm going to do it.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

It's the same thing I do. It's the exact same thing I do. So two people, and I have, I always have money in there. And so I need to pay for something. I do it. I think it's really important. Like, don't do what I did and just try to like, I'm going to figure this out on my own. Don't, don't do that if it's going to because I wanted to ask you, I want to ask you some Rat for Fire questions, but I did want to touch upon the two of us, your viewpoint of burnout. Because I think when you're an entrepreneur and you're you're getting your business started and where you are today, I have a sense that you have figured it out. Have you ever been burned out? Have you ever gotten have you ever been near it? And if not, just talk about your experience with burnout. Have you experienced it? Have you not? And if you haven't, how did you stay away from it?

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Yeah. So I don't think that I experience burnout in the sense of like burned out in working on my business. I really try to enjoy my business. And I really try to just do the things that I like to do in my business and the things that I don't like to do, I outsource. And I do think that that helps me to avoid burnout. Like 90% of what I do for my business is what I want to be doing. And then 10% is stuff that I have to do. And so if you can really just focus on doing your business the way that you want to be doing it, I think that it's it's easier to avoid burnout. I will say that I do get burnt out if I'm supporting too many clients at a time. You know, before I launched Center for Pediatric Sleep Management, I was supporting 25, 30 families a month. I was onboarding a new family almost every single day. And what I will say is, you know, supporting parents through the process of sleep training their kids, establishing healthy boundaries for toddlers and preschoolers, it is a mental load. You know, families are anxious about this. You know, if if we're trying to teach an eight-month-old baby how to fall asleep in their crib all by themselves without any help and they've been nursed and rocked and bounced and all the things to sleep for eight months, like that baby's going to be upset and mom's going to be upset and dad's going to be overwhelmed. And, you know, when you're doing a lot of that at the same time, you start to carry the weight of their stress. Like I was really feeling it in my shoulders and in my neck. And, you know, I really was carrying their stress. As I've gotten more experienced, I really don't let their anxiety transfer to me quite as easily anymore. I've really understood that. But in the beginning, I was really feeling it. Like when they were anxious, I was anxious. And so I needed to detach a little bit emotionally from their feelings and really just be there to support them as a confident and secure coach that was there for them. But I do get burnt out if I have too many families that I'm working with at once. And the way that I overcome that is, and again, like I think this comes from my own confidence that my business is not going to crash and burn if I take a break. But I just I slow down, you know, like if I'm looking at my calendar for Memorial Day weekend, we're going away. My calendar is going to be closed. And a lot of my clients will be away too. So they're not going to want to work over that holiday weekend anyway. But then, you know, mid-June, I'm going on a trip to Europe with my mom and my son. And I'm already thinking about like, I don't really want to be working while I'm there. I just don't. I could if I wanted to. I could be working. My work is all remote, it's all virtual. I don't want to. So then that means in the starting in the beginning of June, I'm not taking any clients because I need to be wrapped up. You know, like I work with families for two weeks. So if I'm going away June 14th, I think is the date, I really have to stop taking clients. June 19th. Yeah. Right. Then I don't have time to support that. You know, I need to give them the full two weeks. So I really just slow it down and I have enough confidence in myself that when I'm back in town and I'm ready to start working again, I'll ramp it up again. And I, you know, I think a lot of people get really anxious about that. They don't want to ever slow down. But I think it's important to take a break. And when I feel that my clients are really impacting me, like my mental, if if my mental health is being impacted, I've gotten really good at slowing down. I'll refer out. I have some colleagues that I really trust. I'll say, you know what? I'm take they'll they'll text me or call me and I'll say, I'm taking a break. If you really want to work with me, I can start with you starting whatever such and such date. If you're anxious to get started ASAP, let me connect you with a colleague. And I've just gotten good at that.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

You've gotten really good at setting limits and putting boundaries around yourself and your business. Business is.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Yeah. And it's not to say that I don't ever mess up. Like, you know, sometimes I'm really slow in my business. And I'll get an email or a call from a mom that I immediately can identify as just not a great fit for me. I don't even want to call it a red flag, but just right. Not like we're just not a great fit. But maybe I'm feeling slow in my business and I'll take it anyway, knowing that it's not going to be a good fit. And every single time I say to myself, Jane, like you you've seen you knew that this was not going to be a good fit. Like, and so I'm really trying to be better about even in the slow moments, not taking on business that doesn't serve me. Because that comes back to lightly later.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Yeah. Well, that's the wisdom that you've gained through the years because you're running two businesses simultaneously. My gosh. Okay. All right. I want to ask you some rapid fire questions. Okay. What business hill will you die on?

SPEAKER_00 37:47

Ooh. I don't know. I guess customer service always comes first.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

Okay. I love that. So funny you say that. I was at the store yesterday and I'm, you know, a pretty confident person. I'm in a retail store. I'm asking the retail girl. She's like folding clothes, and I asked if they had this shirt a different size. And I said, she had this body language that was like so shut down. And I picked up on it, but I'm like, there's no one else in the store. I need to know. Because sometimes they have extra sizes in the back. It's so funny you said that. I said, I said, excuse me. I'm like, hearing, this is crazy. I'm like, in my 50s. This girl's like 18 years old, and I'd be like nervous. I think it's because of her body language. I'm like, excuse me, do you have would you maybe have a shirt another size in the back? She gave me the like this dead stare. They called it the Jen Zoo stare. She gave me the stare, like no. I was like, oh, okay, okay. And I walked out of that store going, that is the that customer service. My husband's all about customer service. Like, to your point, I'm like, that was awful. I'm like, why am I nervous? It was weird. Because she was telling me, like, I don't want to be here.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

Don't talk to me, lady. I'm like, okay, okay, okay. So what my father would say to that, he says, your help can kill you, right? Like when you bring in other people to work for your business and they don't show up the way that you would show up, that right there can kill your business, right? Totally. Totally. I'm a bit of a control freak in my business. I want to do all the client-facing work myself. I don't outsource any of that.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Yeah. Well, there you go. This is a major corporation. They need to do some better training. Okay. What business, what what's the best business decision that you have ever made?

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Hiring somebody to help me create Center for Pediatric Sleep Management. I had it in my mind when I decided that I wanted to do this, I had it in my mind, I was going to reach out to a couple course creators. This is a thing. There are people that create online curriculum.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

And I had it in my mind that if it was under a certain amount of money, if I got a bid, that I was going to do it. And it came in $200 under that amount in my mind. And so I was like, all right, I'm done. Like that was it. That was my decision. Like I didn't, I didn't think much. It was like it was within my budget. I said if it fit in my budget, I was going to do it. And I did it. And I never would have been able to create the course without help. I've never created curriculum before. I needed a professional to guide me through that. And it was the best investment I ever made. It was the best decision I ever made. And no regrets. Good. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

What's the worst advice you've ever received? To follow somebody else's plan. Ah, I love that. Don't follow anybody else's plan.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Yeah, like do your own thing. You know, when somebody tells you you have to do A, B, C, D, E, F, G to be successful, I would run in the other direction. I just do not subscribe to that. You know, when somebody tells you you have to, you know, you said your coach or strategist was telling you you have to get on Instagram. I disagree. I disagree. You don't. Now, if if you want to be on Instagram and you're just scared to do it, then yes, you have to get on Instagram. But there are so many ways to grow a successful business and you get to do it the way that you want to do it. Now, visibility is important and the internet is great for visibility, but you can be visible in lots of ways. And you know, so I just I don't love when people tell you that you have to do a certain thing to be successful. I don't believe in that.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

I love that. What's one thing that you'd never do again?

SPEAKER_00 41:27

I'm trying to think what I've done that was so so stinking horrible. Um never doing that again. Yeah, I I I really it's okay if you don't have one. I really don't. Like good, good. Anything that I don't want to do, I just ask somebody else to help me to do it.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Well, I know one thing I can say, well, I can add to this. I wonder if you and great if you haven't had this experience. The one thing I'd never do again is I've hired coaches way back when I was first starting out that I'd never hire again because I didn't vet them well enough and I didn't know I didn't know what I didn't know. And I hired people who were very, very expensive, and I've talked about this so many times because I think that this is really see, this is really big in the coaching space. They're very, very expensive and they don't have all the goods. I have did that twice and I tens of thousands of dollars actually. Like I won't even tell people how much I spent. I would never do that again.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

I've never really done that. I've hired people to help me with very specific tasks, right? Or like to help me do things in a very specific way that I wasn't, you know, like I I wasn't looking to them for the secret sauce. Like I've never bought into any of that. Like, oh, if I just hire this really expensive coach, they're gonna tell me all the things that I don't know, and then I do that and be. I I've never had that mentality. So I've definitely hired people that maybe weren't great investments, but I did feel like they were learning lessons and I did I got something out of it. I it's not like I would say, Oh, I would never do that again.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

Good. Okay. Are you a morning person or a night owl?

SPEAKER_00 43:05

I'm a morning person. I spring out of bed. Like I was up at 5:30 this morning. Like, why is my husband not awake? He's an early riser. He usually goes to the gym, but on Fridays, he like dawdles. And I was up at 5 30 and he was still asleep. And I'm like, get up so that I can be up and like I wanted to like get dressed and start my day. And I could go to sleep at like 9 30 every night.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

That's me too. I'm becoming boring. All right. What's one thing people assume about entrepreneurs that's not true? That's false.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

That we're greedy.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I would not have thought that. Really?

SPEAKER_00 43:38

I don't know. I think sometimes, especially in the online entrepreneurial space, I think that there's this idea. I think that there's this idea that we're out to make the sale, get your money, lure you in. And I find that to be absurd. I am in the business of helping people and transforming. Their lives or giving them the tools to do so. And when I see people with that type of mindset, I just think, wow, you're gonna have trouble. Like you're gonna have a really hard time.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

Absolutely. Okay. What's one thing you wish more women understood about making money?

SPEAKER_00 44:16

That it's not a bad thing. We shouldn't be embarrassed. We shouldn't be ashamed to want to have our own businesses to be successful. This is something that I was actually, if I think back to eight years ago, the one mental hurdle that I remember so vividly that I really needed to overcome was sharing with my friends and my family that I was gonna start this business. It felt almost embarrassing for some reason. Really? Yeah. I think because I was a stay-at-home mom at the time. I had left my job in events to have when my son was born and I was home with him for a few years. And I think that there was this level of shame that I felt that I wanted more. Like I had this, I was pretty so privileged to be a stay-at-home mom and to just be able to prioritize caring for my children and to say out loud that that felt like it wasn't serving me anymore. How dare you for wanting more, Jane? I felt really I felt really embarrassed that I was so lucky to be able to stay home with my kids and yet I wanted to work. And so I needed to overcome that in my own mind in order to. We want to be the best moms, but we also want to have successful careers and the whole like work-life balance thing. It's it's a lot mentally.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

We wanna, we, we wanna be the engaged, emotionally available mother, wife, partner, right? We want to do all the things, be don't be late for pickup, you know, but at the same time, you got a call that you're on and you got to get in, you should have been the car five minutes ago. You know, it it's it, yeah. We could just that's a whole other conversation, right? Yeah. Okay. And then finally, what does success mean to you today?

SPEAKER_00 46:10

I think at this point, success is just continued growth. And that is a lot of things. It's it's professional growth, it's personal growth. I never want to feel like I'm just coasting. Coasting feels very uncomfortable for me. So I feel successful when I'm doing new and interesting things and when I'm challenging myself. I feel most successful when I'm in those periods of discomfort. Right. Like I don't feel successful when I'm just sort of coasting along. When I'm coasting along, I feel like I'm wasting time. I'm not being as productive as I could be. I really thrive in that feeling of discomfort. So get comfortable being uncomfortable is easy for you. It's really, I it's I prefer to be there for some reason. I prefer to be there. Yeah. And so success feels like doing the new big thing is like even just like working through it. I feel really proud of myself for doing things that eight years ago I literally wouldn't have even had the language to talk about what I'm doing now.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Um, that's amazing. So, Jane, that's really kudos to you and congratulations on your success with being a sleep consultant and then starting a business teaching other people how to be certified sleep consultants. So you've got two things that you're doing. It's it's really unbelievable with the family, with all the things. So, you all so this is a great segue into telling us where can we find you? Where can people follow you if they're interested in working with you? Maybe their kids have got sleep issues, or maybe they're they want to go into some sort of business around sleep consultancy.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

Where can they find you? Sure. So if you have a child who's struggling with sleep and you would like help with that, my business is called SnoozeFest by Jane Havens. I am on Instagram, I'm not super active, but it's Snoozefest by Jane Havens, and my website's thesnoozefest.com. If you're actually interested in exploring becoming a sleep consultant, I would say the best places to connect with me are I have a Facebook group. It's called Becoming a Sleep Consultant, and I have a podcast also called Becoming a Sleep Consultant. The podcast is actually really about business building and entrepreneurship through the lens of sleep consulting. So I have people tell me, like, I'm a photographer or I'm an occupational therapist, but I love your podcast because I still have takeaways, you know, because it's really just about business building. But that's a great place to learn more about the field and the work that we do. And my website for the course is thecpsm.com.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Thecps.com. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. This is a great conversation. I could have talked to you for another hour. It's this easy one speaking with you, but all these things related to business. And uh, thanks so much for coming on. And uh, you guys check her out. Okay, she's around. Check out her podcast, it's a well ranked podcast. I was on it last week, and you have some good people on there talking about business. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming. Okay, take care of