Choose Yourself: The Entrepreneur’s Quiet Rebellion

What if the most important career decision you ever make is refusing to play by rules that don’t help people? I share the unvarnished path from a shaky start in college to a high-achieving grad career, then straight into the harsh reality of public mental health—where stabilization trumped healing and paperwork stood in for progress. Leaving that system a few hundred hours short of licensure felt reckless, but it opened the door to a different kind of impact: entrepreneurship with a mission.

A mentor’s blunt truth steered me away from corporate consulting and into pediatric sleep coaching, a nascent niche that blended science, psychology, and coaching. I went all in—certification, hundreds of families, and the unsexy backbone of business growth: a hand-coded website, SEO, and 323 research-driven blog posts. The work was intense and deeply human, meeting parents at the edge of exhaustion and guiding them toward steadier routines and calmer minds. And then a single blog post changed everything.

After writing about a baby named Owen who died due to unsafe daycare practices, I connected with his mother and helped mobilize consultants to push for change. Missouri passed safe sleep legislation the following year. That moment reframed my purpose: yes, sleep matters—but safety, advocacy, and parental regulation matter just as much. Today, I teach as faculty with the Family Sleep Institute and direct safe sleep education, turning updated AAP guidance into practical training for consultants and practical protection for families.

This episode is for anyone who wants to build something real without a safety net. We talk mentorship that tells you the truth, niche selection that actually differentiates you, marketing that compounds over time, and why your nervous system is your most important business tool. If this story resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who’s on the edge of a pivot, and leave a review to help others find it. What rule are you ready to stop following?

You can reach us here:

Katie:

Website:
KatieKovaleski.com

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/coach_katiek/

Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiekovaleski/


Wavier & Release of Liability and Disclaimer: The information provided by the therapist(s) is not intended, nor is implied to be a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. The listener is advised to always seek the advice of their health care practitioner or other qualified health care provider with questions regarding medical conditions, or the mental health and welfare of the listener. I (listener) accept that Kathryn Kovaleski is not liable for any injury, or damages, to person or property, resulting from listening to this podcast.

Chapters

• 0:01 Why Entrepreneurship Felt Inevitable
• 1:09 Childhood Clues: Teaching, Business, Beauty
• 4:18 College Drift To Psychology
• 7:46 Grad School Grind And Internships
• 11:46 Inside A Broken Mental Health System
• 15:22 Leaving The System And Going Solo
• 18:05 Finding A Mentor And A Niche
• 21:24 Becoming A Pediatric Sleep Consultant
• 24:05 Launching The Business And SEO Hustle
• 27:14 The Owen Story And Safe Sleep
• 31:00 From Blog To Legislation In Missouri
• 34:15 Refocusing On Parental Anxiety
• 37:04 Teaching, Faculty Role, Next Chapter
• 40:12 Misconceptions, Money Myths, What’s Next

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome back to Midlife Mayhem. On today's episode, we're really diving into my journey into entrepreneurship, which I saw described on Instagram last night in a post as kind of the hardest relationship you'll ever have. Um and I couldn't agree more. And talking about my journey into owning a business and being and being an entrepreneur is something I don't talk about often. Um and I'm not entirely sure why that is. I think if I really boil it down, to me, there didn't ever seem to be an alternative. I hit a spot in 2011 when I l left, I should say, quote, my last real job, which I also resent when people say. I think there's a lot of like little triggers around being an entrepreneur, but people would refer to starting your own business as not having a real job, right? And I guess real job for a lot of people means being in the trenches, having a nine to five, or something even with worse hours, where someone works you to the bone, you don't have a say on it, and you do it because you have to, because you have to have a paycheck. And so I let's go all the way back if we can, if we can. So I didn't ever really want to or I didn't ever really know what I wanted to do when I grew up. Let's just say that. I had a vivid imagination, I loved playing pretend. When I was little, I would always play business at home. Like I wasn't really playing with Barbies, I wasn't doing stuff like that. I was playing business, and I always loved having a chalkboard and playing teacher outside and things like that, or playing business. I always wanted to cash register, I loved the idea of business and of telling people what to do. Um, my mom was a teacher briefly when I was little, when I was a child, and so there was that element too of teaching that was always present for me. Um, and my dad was the CEO of a title insurance company, um, which growing up and even to this day, like exactly what he did was a bit of a mystery. He's actually gonna be on the podcast in a couple of days to talk about um his life and career and um all things finance and and money. Um but anyway, I digress. So I when I was little, I I liked to play in those arenas. I also really loved animals, um, and I love beauty. Like I loved cutting hair um and doing nails and makeup and things like that. Really loved that. Um my grandmother, my dad's mom was always convinced I was gonna end up having uh my own makeup line, something in the beauty, the beauty field, because I just loved it, and I still do. Um my mom's mom um was super young when she had my mom. She was only 17, and she um was I guess I would call her a really laid-back grandmother. Um, and she would let me cut her hair with real scissors, and she started letting me do that when I was just five, five years old, um, which was awesome, and I got pretty good at that. And some of those haircuts I definitely butchered, but she just gave me like the the palette to be really creative. Um, I also always love like painting and drawing and and doing art and things like that too, but I never had this predefined idea of like this is what you need to do when you grow up. Um I just kind of was able to have the freedom to do things that I enjoyed and and to see how they progressed. I would say I always uh did love being a leader, like I always preferred being the one telling people what to do versus being told what to do. That was also very clear to me, which is something I think um I get from my dad. He's not somebody who likes to be told what to do either. We'll hear more from him about that. Um, so onward I went like through school, um, and it was always expected that we would go to college. Um, and I think had it been left up to me, I'm not sure that I would have gone, honestly. I don't know. It was always sort of a pre-ordained path, like you're gonna go to college and you'll figure it out. And so that piece of the puzzle was like already in place for me, and so I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do. In fact, when I got to college, like I had no idea. And the first year and a half, two years, I really didn't try that hard. I came from a household that was fairly strict growing up. There was a lot of rules and oversight in place, and it was amazing to me that when I went to college, and I I got to college, I was only 17, that no one cared what you did. No one cared when you got up, they didn't care if you got up, they didn't care if you went to class, like no one was taking attendance. And I definitely danced with like a bit of rebelliousness um for the first year and a half, two years because I was there and I was learning things and I was going to class, and I will say for some of the classes, the education I had in high school did pay off. Some of the classes I had already learned all the material for, and so it wasn't what I would consider to be um difficult, I guess, in in nature. I also was somebody in high school that if I went to class, and I always went to class, I have never skipped a class ever in my entire life in high school, and we couldn't really do that. I went to a small school and they were very aware if you were there or not. Um, and attendance was was mandatory, was not easily or at all overlooked. And so in college, I realized that I had a choice if I wanted to pass my classes, which was I either had to show up for the class, and if I did that and I paid attention, I really didn't have to do much homework. I could digest the material and do fine on the test. Or if I was gonna skip class, I really had to stay on top of studying. And there was some time there, some classes that I didn't do either one. I did not do well. Um, and I really did badly, I think it was my freshman year in biology. Um, because I didn't go to the class and I also didn't study, but I would show up for the tests. Um, and I learned the hard way that that was not the way to go. Um, did not receive a grade grade in biology, and it was the one class, biology and math, were two classes that I like couldn't get away with not studying and not going to class for, which sounds duh, but I I really, really tried. Um, anyway, so fast forward to my sophomore year, and I really started to think about what I wanted to do, what was gonna happen after college. And instead of trying to think about a career I had fantasized about as a child or something my parents had done, I just leaned into the classes that came most naturally to me and that were the easiest, and that just naturally made sense to me, and those were psychology. Psychology and sociology and things in that realm always just came very easily to me, and I was always naturally interested in them. It was not a chore to go to those classes, it was not a chore to study. I really, really enjoyed it. Um, and so I leaned into that and thought, okay, you know, if I want to do something, if I want to do something in this realm and the psychology realm, what would I need to do to pursue that? And it became pretty apparent that I would probably need to pursue a higher level of education post-college. And so once I had that kind of anchoring intention, I was off to the races. I spent the last two years of my college career basically making up for as much as possible the first two years. And I studied, I went to class, I was all about it. I was fully committed. And when I fully commit to something that I'm interested in, like I can work incredibly hard at it. And that's what I did. And I got straight A's for the last two years of college, and that really helped me um get into grad school. That's what allowed me to get into grad school. That and I studied my ass off for the GRE, the graduate um exam you have to take to get into grad school. I hired a tutor to help me with that, and I was able to get really good scores on it. Um, and those two things helped me get into grad school. And I was scared that because I had, you know, dicked around the first two years of college, that I had screwed myself and that I wasn't going to be able to get into any grad schools. I remember feeling so scared that I had completely messed up my future by not trying hard the first two years. And I just remember at that time learning the lesson very sharply in a very harsh way. Like, I don't care where you are and what you're doing, give it your all. Like, you have no idea what you're doing right now, that if what you're doing right now is gonna be a monumental stepping stone to help helping fulfill your dreams in the future, even if you don't know what they are right now. And it just made me get really present to having my mind where my feet were, staying focused and really committing and giving my all to whatever I was doing, um, no matter if I was really interested in it or not. I just really learned how to harness my attention and my focus and make myself study and make myself do things that I wasn't necessarily naturally interested in because I knew it was gonna get me to a better place. And so I learned that in a bit of a harsh way because, you know, I ended up going to grad school with Barrie University and they're based in Miami, and I had a great experience there, and I believe I got an incredible education. Um, I had a really good time in grad school, like learning. I was a complete nerd in grad school, but I always look back and think if I had really applied myself those first two years of college, I could have gotten a chance to go study with some of the brightest and sharpest minds, like in, you know, in the the field of psychology. Like the sky could have been the limit for me. I don't know if that's true, but um, or how much it would have really changed things or the education that I received, but I never forgot that. Um, and so I went into grad school with like a whole different mindset, and I was going to overachieve. I was like, you know, I want to in grad school experiment with it what it's like to be the overachiever, like the perfect 4.0 plus student who gets all the awards and does all the things and joins all the groups and is president of whatever you can be president of in in grad school. And that's what I did. So I overachieved, I went all in. Um I was president of Buka O, which was like the student association there. I graduated um with all the honors you can graduate with. I never got less than an A on anything. Um, and I loved every second of it. I couldn't get enough of the material, I worked really hard, and I just loved it and I excelled. And simultaneously, um, we're gonna get into a money episode in two days, but I um needed to have money, you know, to support myself through grad school. So um I was a nanny in college, and if we go way, way back, um, my first job was when I was 10 and I started babysitting and I took babysitting courses and CPR and all of that stuff because I always looked a lot older than I was, and I loved kids and I was really good with kids, and so I took a course um at like a local community center, learned CPR and all those things, and I started babysitting when I was 10. Um, and then continued to do that through high school and had some other jobs too. I worked in a coffee shop and I worked at a restaurant, um, and then in college, my last two years of college, I was a nanny. And then in grad school, I took two jobs as a nanny for two different families while going to grad school full full time. Um, I had the energy for it at the time somehow, but my first nannying job um of the day, I had to be at their house at 6 a.m., which was like cringe. Um, and I would get them ready for school, take them to school, come back, do some housework, um, study for a few hours, go to my second nanning job, and then all of my classes were at night. They were from 5 to 10 p.m. in person. Um, and I would drive out to like UCF area, which is where the satellite campus was, and I would go to my classes, and I stayed with both jobs for about a year, and then I'd drop down to nanning for just one family, and I stayed with them for the rest of my my grad school career until I became a registered intern and began working at the hospital. Um, but I I loved it, and so when I was in grad school and we were applying for internships, I wanted to get, you know, kind of the best internship I could, and so I applied for one at the Psych Med unit at Florida Hospital, and I got it, and they only accepted like two interns, I believe, a year. And so it was like, you know, a coveted position, or so I was told. And I worked there and um definitely got a up close view of the mental health system, the public mental health system, and in all of its glory, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly. Um I saw things there that were shocking and terrifying and interesting and um uplifting. And I also realized that our mental health system is a failure in so many ways. Um we weren't really helping people there. We were attempting to stabilize them just to quickly turn them over and send them back out into the world. And that's what we were there to do ultimately. It was a Baker Act unit, so you wouldn't come across my path unless you had been arrested or baker acted um and were sent to the hospital. And it was it was an education, and I was really glad that I did it, but it helped me get really clear that that wasn't an environment that I wanted to stay in, that I I didn't want my career to be in that environment. So after grad school, I felt stuck, I felt lost, I felt confused. I, you know, had just graduated with all the honors you could have, had completed this amazing, brilliant internship. Um, I was a marriage and family and mental health counselor, like in all my glory, and I had no idea what to do. Like we were taught in grad school how to be great therapists. We were not taught how to run a business. And I always wanted and intended to be a life coach. And I actually went to grad school um with the intention of um granting myself some credibility in the life coaching world, right? I was like 24 years old, 25, super young, didn't even have a ton of what other people might regard as life experience. Although looking back, I will say I had some solid life experience. Um, and I thought I had a lot of limiting beliefs around what my career options were based on that. Um, and even prior to that, so I graduated college, I was like 21. Um, and thought, okay, if I want to be a life coach, I need to get some credentials under my belt, like I need some more education, I need to know what I'm doing beyond having a life coaching certification. And so that's again why I ended up going to grad school. So fast forward to the end of grad school, it's like 2009, 2010. Um, and I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what to do. I told myself that the market was saturated with therapists, that I was super young, like at this point, I didn't have the experience. Who's gonna hire me? So I went ahead and got registered um as a marriage and family therapy intern with the state of Florida, and you need like, I don't know, somewhere between two and three thousand hours of you know clinical experience as a registered intern and kind of just set my sights on figuring out how to do that. Um, at the time, none of these were really paid positions. It was really hard to get your hours in and get paid. You had to have a supervisor. Um, typically they're the ones um getting paid, and then they'll um they're they're there to like basically give you guidance and and supervise you. So I ended up um taking like six months to kind of just be lost. Um, I still had the apartment I was living in from grad school, and I had to figure out how to make money, right? I had nanny jobs and things like that um and save some money, but it was clear like you need to figure this out. So eventually I reconnected with my old supervisor from the hospital, from the Baker Act Unit, and he was now um sort of the head honcho of the therapy department at a charter school that was um really there to help give kids with pretty severe mental health diagnosis a place to go learn, basically. And he brought me um into that environment and I was the group therapist there. Um I lasted like a year and a half there, um, and it was a paid position, which was awesome, and it was really kind of depressing. Um, I was a group therapist for kids in middle and high school, and they were grouped by middle and high school. So I would do group therapy for the middle school girls, middle school boys, high school girls, and high school boys. And it was really difficult because we had no resources, there was like not a lot of funding for the school. These were like the forgotten children. Um, and the kids in these groups range from having issues like severe ADHD all the way down the line to schizophrenia. We even had a DID um kid with us that's um disassociative identity disorder, um, which people refer to in movies as multiple personalities. And so I say that and present that spectrum because providing group therapy for like 30 to 45 minutes for a bunch of kids who have that large of a range of different diagnosis is really fucking hard. It's so fucking hard. And I quickly realized that like we were box checkers, like nothing I was providing them in these environments was really that impactful because it was incredibly difficult to design a program that all of them could do. It was so hard. So I did a lot of art therapy, I took them outside a lot, we would do nature walks, and I think like there was some judgment at the school of like what is she doing with these kids? I decided, since like I really couldn't implement something, I had no resources, and the diagnostic spectrum was way too large to really create an impact, like in group therapy. I decided to present them with things, tools and activities and environments that might just feel good to them, that they might have fun in. And I thought, you know what, like all else fails. I'm gonna like get them some grounding, some fresh air, some laughter, some art, some play, some creativity. And like that is my definition of group therapy in this environment because my hands are fucking tied. And that's what I did. And I was frustrated with the situation and disillusioned by it, and I kept thinking, like, how long like this can't be a career. Like, you can't do this and wake up 20 years from now and be doing this. Like, this is not the end. Stop, it can't be. Um, and I ended up like getting kind of sassy and firing off to my boss, who was also a friend of mine at that point, because I also witnessed the way he was running the program, um, and I just emulated what he was doing, and I guess that wasn't like approved of really. Um, we had to write client notes for every single individual kid in our in my group. I had to do that myself. Um, but there was really not a lot to notate because we were doing like creative, artistic, fun play. Um, and I remember getting behind in my notes and him confronting me about it, and me confronting him right back because he was incredibly far behind on his notes, and I thought it was hypocritical, and I just realized like this is not a place I want to be. Like, again, we're not creating an impact. We have no funding, we have no resources, like this is like kind of a dead zone. There's no point in being at this job, and so I ended up leaving that job because my hours were gonna be cut and it just wasn't worth it to me. And I was probably only a couple hundred hours shy of hitting like the end of my registered intern um term, and I quit. I was like, I don't want to be part of this system. This system is fucked, this system is broken. Like, the only point and purpose of finishing this registered internship is so that I can be an um I have the option of applying for insurance so clients can use insurance when working with me. And I made the decision a couple of hundred hours shy of that, like 3,000 hour goal, whatever it was, just to quit. And I was like, you know what, fuck this. Like fuck this system. I don't want to be part of it. I don't care if it's gonna be harder for me and my career trajectory to find clients because so many people use insurance to find their provider. I don't care. I'm going to figure it out. I know two things now leaving this job. One, I will never work for anyone else. I don't care if I end up in a cardboard box, like I'm not doing it. And the second was like, it might be harder to find clients. I don't know what my private practice will look like, but I'm gonna fucking have one. And I just was determined to make it work, to figure it out. And my next point of determination was all right, what niche do I want to fill? If I know I want a private practice, I know I'm not taking insurance, I know the market is saturated with therapists, like, what am I gonna do? What's gonna set me apart? I'm like, at this point, 26 maybe, um, 27. Um, I have some good experience under my belt, but at the same time, like, I uh how do I do this? Um, so I started searching for a mentor. I was looking for somebody who had a background in marketing, but also knew kind of the health and wellness medical community and could tell me, hopefully, see if this sounds like a big ask, what kind of niche was not yet taking off, but soon would in Orlando and Florida that no one else was doing, which sounds insane, right? But that was what I wanted. I wanted someone who knew what they were doing, who was already successful, who had a background in marketing, who could tell me, hey, as someone with your credentials and your experience, here's a niche no one is filling. And, spoiler alert, that's what I got. So I remember going to lunch with my dad and Anne, who has now basically become my um surrogate stepmother. She is my dad's girlfriend now. Um, and they had known each other for decades. And at the time, um he was on the board at Seminole State that ended up hiring her. Um, and so they were business acquaintances and friends for many years. Um, and she's amazing. And I remember going to lunch with her, and my dad said, Katie needs help finding this type of mentor or person. And she said, I have just the person for you. I'm gonna connect you with my friend Andrea. And so I started really thinking about um how I could utilize my skill sets. I didn't want to go into that meeting without something to offer. And I at the time was really interested in industrial organization, organizational psychology, I.O. And that was really about going into companies and organizations and helping maximize their potential and growth and working with people in that type of like corporate setting. And I had maybe a few months prior gone to Gainesville and did the Myers Briggs certification, which was super interesting. We spent a week learning how to become Myers Briggs practitioners and give the test, and we did the advanced one so we could really get into the nitty-gritty of people's like the personality structures and things like that. And so I left that and was like, I think I can apply this in a corporate setting to help people like really move forward. And so I was going to meet Andrea at a Starbucks on Edgewater, and um I went in and like put on something that I thought looked business-y, and I'm standing in line, and I looked up her profile online so I knew what she looked like, so I could spot her, and I had read about her bio and all these things, she was really impressive, and I'm in line at Starbucks, and I like hear the door open, I look over. She walks in, and we're kind of facing each other, we're like eight feet apart, and she gives me the most intense, slow once-over I've ever gotten from anybody, like head to toe, assessing me. And I'm like feeling my palms get sweaty. I'm like, oh fuck, what's about to happen? And she walks up to me and she says, because I had reached out, we've been connected via email, and I let her know what I was hoping to do with um the Myers Briggs and IO psychology, and she says to me, uh, yeah, that's not gonna happen for you. And she says, You look like a 20-year-old surfer. She's like, No one in corporate America is gonna take you seriously. Do you like babies? And I was like, What? And it was the fastest 180 I've ever had. I was a little bit offended. Like, yes, I probably did look like a 20-year-old surfer. I had really long, wavy blonde hair down to the middle of my back, similar to where it is now. I was like tan and young and whatever. And I just remember thinking like partially, like, fuck you, and then also like remembering that my dad and Anne were like, listen to what she has to say to you. And so I put my ideas of IO psychology and helping people in any kind of corporate setting aside and said, I do like babies. In fact, you know, I was have been a nanny for six years and yada yada. I've been babysitting since I was 10, and she was like perfect. There's a new field of coaching developing called pediatric coaching, pediatric sleep coaching. And you're basically gonna help parents with new babies um as they struggle with their child's inability to sleep and what it does to them. And I was like, what? And I said, okay, and she's like, just grab your coffee to go. I live across the street. Um, we're gonna go up to my like, you know, penthouse apartment there. Um, that's not what she called it, but that's what it is, and um, we're gonna figure this out. I just started a philanthropy, it's called um dragon boating. Do you know what that is? And she's like, anyway, I pair at-risk youth with SWAT teams of cops, and they are on the same team and they race dragon boats. And, anyways, it's my new um nonprofit, and here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna help me, and this is how fast I remember her speaking. You're gonna help me um with the kids, like you're gonna volunteer and help me with this um philanthropy, and in exchange, I'm gonna market your business for free, and I have the person to do your website, and it's gonna be great. And I was like, Okay, like what I don't have anything better to do. So I followed her across the street with my coffee, went up to her apartment, um, and my life started to change. I listened to her, I just took a leap of faith and I thought, all right, this lady knows what she's doing. Um, she has an incredible amount of success and experience, and I'm looking for a niche that hasn't been filled, and she's handing me one. And so that day I joined her in getting ready for um her philanthropy to launch and to volunteer. So I spent a lot of time going out to the practices in the afternoons and volunteering and helping support them however they needed. Um, and simultaneously I went back to school. I went to the Family Sleep Institute um and spent time there studying pediatric sleep and became certified as a pediatric sleep consultant. Um, and did I have uh a vast interest in studying the sleep patterns of infants? Um, no, I didn't. But I believed in it. I believed it was gonna be like the next big thing. Um, and I already knew from college that like it doesn't matter if you're naturally interested in this, you can learn it. I did have the ability to harness my focus and to make myself study and learn fairly easily, even topics that I wasn't naturally interested in. I knew I could do that. I really had the ability to sit down and focus and learn pretty quickly. And so I went all in. I committed, I read all the books, I did all of the assignments. I was, again, like straight A student, turning stuff in, like going above and beyond. Um, and I really got into it. I was like, okay, I'm gonna fall in love with this. I don't have a choice. Like, this is what we're gonna do. And it was staying in the coaching realm. You know, a lot of it um was about the biology and the science behind um pediatric sleep, but a lot of it was also just about supporting these parents and coaching these parents and showing up for them at a time when they feel so helpless and tired and defeated and confused and scared. And I knew how to do that. I was a therapist and I really knew how to hold space for that. And so I spent however many months, I think it was like six to eight months in this certification, and then went through my final project of working with real families and the FSI was incredibly supportive. Like it is such an amazing environment. Um, and I really loved that. I love the camaraderie, I love the community, I love the ability to, after you graduate, to have all these different forums and ways to ask questions and get support and continue developing your business and your growth. I hadn't experienced that after grad school. After grad school, like you walk across that stage and you are on your own, like figure it out, best of luck. And that wasn't the case with the with the Family Sleep Institute. I really felt very, very supported, and that helped me feel a lot more confidence in what I was doing. However, there were also some rock star sleep consultants that were already um whose businesses were already skyrocketing and booming within the Family Sleep Institute field um and within their community. And so I reached out to one of them that I really admired. Um, I was following along with her business and her website and um her social media, which was relatively like newer at the time. And I was like, I want to be her. I want to be like her. And so I reached out to her um and I hired her to be my business coach. Um, she was doing taking a couple people as a consultant, as a business coach, and I was one of the people she took, and she I wanted to be coached by someone who was already really successful doing what I wanted to do and what I was starting to do. I didn't want to hire somebody, um, a generic business coach or someone who's gonna help me like, you know, with general business acumen or like overcoming my beliefs or energetics. I wanted someone who was already doing it and like living it, and like I wanted them. So I hired her, and that was one of the best decisions I had ever made. She She um gave me basically a spreadsheet and a breakdown, and I had a lot of homework every week. And it was like, you need to do all of these things each week to effectively start and run your business and really get your name out there. And no one in Orlando, I think there's only other two other consultants in Florida at the time that did sleep pediatric sleep consulting, and no one in Orlando. And she was like, you have to market yourself and you have to do all of these things. And I did them. I followed all her instructions, um, worked my tail off. Um, part of that was um getting my I guess it was my second website I ever had. My first website I built myself in 2008. It was for my life coaching company um that I built while I was in grad school. It was called Integration Life Coaching 2008. Um, I built the website, like by today's standards, I would say it was like horrible, but like it wasn't at the time. And it was the only person my age I knew that was building a website um on their own, which in hindsight, I'm like, I'm really proud of that girl for putting herself out there and doing this like 17 years ago before people were doing this. For my second website, my mentor, in exchange for volunteering for her, had her website designer help me with a website. I don't know if he was her designer or somebody she knew. It was a referral. Um, I worked that off. I paid for part of it and then paid off part of it in volunteering. And he taught me enough code. He it this was a fully coded website, right? This was not WordPress, it was code. And he taught me enough code, and then I researched and learned enough of it so that I could maintain and update the website um and change like some of the aesthetics on it via code myself. And I ran and updated that website for many years on my own. Um, and part of the website was you know, boosting the algorithm, getting your SEO up, and a huge part of it at that time, and still today, was writing really great blog posts with like keywords and all the things, all the SEO things. And that was a really big part of the business at the time to do proof of concept to show people that you knew what you were talking about. And so in those first two years, I wrote 323 blog posts about pediatric sleep, complete with resources and the science-backed data. 323, you guys. I was all in, and my business was growing, you know. And I remember getting my first couple of clients and always thinking, like, I wonder if I'll have another one. Is that all it's gonna be? Like the fear of is this it? You know, and that went on for a while. Um, I don't know that that ever fully leaves you as an entrepreneur. Like, um, I would say that that still comes up today. Like, what am I gonna do next? You have to continually be growing and attracting clients. Um, entrepreneurship is is primarily not about doing your craft, it's about building your business. Um, and I spent a lot of years figuring that out. Um, but I love my craft enough, and I again don't have an alternative because I'm not working for anyone else. So I was like well on my way in the sleep consulting field and um had a really um amazing experience in that realm. Um, the community again was so supportive. The work was hard in in regards to the incredibly heightened levels of parental anxiety. So you're dealing with people who are very anxious, you're working with with them for about two weeks max, um, and they want results. And so many of my clients um were amazing families that I enjoyed working with. A couple of them were were more difficult, um, but the majority of them were awesome, and I worked with hundreds of families. Um, and it was a really great experience. And in that experience, um, I would set Google alerts to get um any articles, news stories that had anything to do with babies sent to me via email each day, and then I would go through them, comb them, pick something out, um, especially if it had a study related to it, and I would blog about it. And that's how I got my um ideas for blogging. At the time, Instagram was really not a big thing either, so you kind of had to look for information. Um, obviously, chat GPT was also not a thing, so I was just doing a lot of um really authentic, genuine writing. So, one of the stories that crossed my path in 2014 was about a baby named Owen who had died in a daycare that was practicing unssafe sleep practices, basically. Um, they had put Owen under a weighted blanket to take a nap, and he had died, and they had blamed it on SIDS, and I didn't think it was Sid's. Um, I thought this is gross negligence on behalf of the daycare, and this is outrageous. This death, in my opinion, has had was completely preventable. Um, he was outside of like the danger zone for SIDS um and age range. He'd already aged out of that. He was super healthy, baby. Like, they put him under a weighted blanket that was not meant for sleep. He should never have been sleeping under it, and he suffocated, he died. Um, and so I wrote this blog article. I was incensed. I like it's a really good article. I will link it here. Um, I wrote it in 2014 and I was enraged by this. And I cited safe sleep studies. I I like made a case for why this was complete bullshit and that the daycare was at fault for this and that this baby should not have died. And I posted it and like went about my day, and then probably a couple weeks later, I get a phone call and I answer the phone. I'll never forget this. I was in a hotel in Fort Myers visiting my grandparents with my mom, and this woman says, like, is this Katie? And I say, Yes, and she said, Um, this is Owen's mom. And I'm like, Oh my god, and she's like, This the baby died in Missouri. Um, and I was like, Oh my god, uh how are you? And she said, I saw your blog and I reached out to the Family Sleep Institute because I saw your name and they gave me your phone number, and she was like, I don't, I need help, I don't know what to do. And I was like, Oh god, okay, uh, how can I support you? You know, the therapist and me came out and she was distraught. She had just lost her baby, no one was taking it seriously, she had no support, she knew the daycare was negligent, but there was also no safe sleep laws in Missouri at the time. So she hadn't she didn't have a leg to stand on. And she was like, I I don't know what to do, and I need help. Like, this was wrong. I don't want this to ever happen to another baby again. They need to take this seriously. Legislation needs to be passed. Like, what do I do? And I was like, uh, oh, I don't know. So I told her I was gonna help her because that's what I'm paid to do. I'm made to help people, and so I said, I'm going to help you. I don't know what we're gonna do, but we're gonna do something. And so I contacted Family Sleep Institute, and I was like, Owen's mom reached out, I wrote this blog, she needs help. And so we got organized, and we had hundreds of consultants write letters to the Missouri State Legislature begging them to create safe sleep standards for daycares because there wasn't any, and it's because of that that baby Owen died. Which makes me emotional thinking about um because I spent a year, about a year, you know, talking back and forth with Owen's mom and like listening to like the deep pain that she had from losing her son, you know, and I just I was so far out of my element in that, but I knew I knew that like I could help her fight that fight, and so I did. And we stayed on it, and I'm happy to say that Missouri passed legislation that following year in 2015 um that was directly related to baby Owen. Baby Owen's death was the catalyst for legislation being introduced and accepted in Missouri for safe sleep law. And like what an amazing experience, you know? And I don't I've never really shared that, I don't talk about that a lot, but like it was such an amazing experience um to be able to be a part of that and to honor his legacy. And I doubt that she's listening, but baby Owen's mom, if you're listening, just know that I still think about you, and that was like that was a turning point in my career. I knew that like the sleep stuff was really important for families, but I recognized two things. One was that I wanted to help the parents with their anxiety more than I wanted to help them with the sleep. The sleep would come and I could teach them that, but I really wanted to teach them about their emotional scale and their anxiety and getting more regulated. And the second part was just like wanting to fight a bigger fight. I wanted to be involved in helping people and women and moms like fight for things that matter to them and being heard and give them a voice, even if it's in their own home, in their own lives, or on a bigger, bigger scale or bigger picture. I wanted to help free them and help fight for their voices. And so, again, the Family Sleep Institute being like the amazing entity that it was, um, I told them that. I I this is important. Safe sleep is important. Not enough people know about it, parents don't know enough about it, daycares don't know enough about it. Like, we should never let another baby like Owen have to die to get legislation passed. So I said, this education um is vastly underrated and and vastly undertalked about. And then in 2015, as a result of that fight, um they appointed me the head of safe sleep, the director of safe sleep for the Family Institute, Family Sleep Institute, and I I still hold that role. And every few years when updates come out to the safe sleep guidelines that are published by the AAP, the American Academy of Pediatrics, I teach classes on that to keep all of the consultants in the community abreast of what these changes are and how important they are to follow. And so that's one of my my sideline passions um that I don't speak enough to, but that's how that came to pass. And that was a really important um, it was a really important like tick in my timeline um benchmark, if you will, um, because it taught me how like the work that I was doing really mattered, and that even when you don't know the impact of of what you're doing, at some point it becomes full full circle, right? Like I just set my Google alerts, I just kept going about writing my 323 blogs, and someone happened to see one. And that happened to help pass legislature like in Missouri, many states away. Um, so you just don't know the impact that you're having all the time, which is why you kind of have to, when you choose this life, this entrepreneur life, you have to keep your head down and just keep going. You have to um find a mentor, find somebody who's done what you want to do, ask them for help and guidance, um, trade with them, barter with them, volunteer with them, do what you can if you don't have the financial resources, but learn. Learn from somebody who's walking the life that you want to walk in, and then implement what they tell you. And do it even if there's no validation or gratification, keep doing it. I guarantee you like you will get somewhere. And so I took, you know, kind of more of that like faculty position there, continue to work with sleep clients, um, and then started to veer into like the next big phase of my life, which ended up really being about my nervous system and regulation and self-care. And so that's gonna be the part two of this episode where I'm really gonna get into what happened what else happened at the end of 2015 that stopped me in my tracks. Um, and that basically caused me to stop everything I was doing for about six months and focus on me um and my mental health and my emotional health. And it was basically um, you know, uh it felt like an awakening. Um, and it changed the rest of the course of my life along with my career trajectory. Um, and it led me full circle in 2020 back to the Family Sleep Institute, where I now teach and I'm on faculty there in a different role. Um, so stay tuned for that. But I first just wanted to kind of share the first part of my career and how I got to where I am and how meaningful the time that I was a pediatric sleep consultant is to me and has been to me. Um, and how amazing it is, you know, going on 14 years later. Um, I'm on faculty there and get to teach their amazing consultants and I get to teach them the information that I wanted myself at the time, which is really about how do we support the parents and their levels of anxiety in addition to the sleep piece. And so I can't thank um Deb enough. She was my mentor and teacher there, and she's still the head of the Family Sleep Institute. She's an amazing woman, and she's a fighter, and she gives people a voice, and she created an incredible business um before anyone else was doing it. Um she believed in it, she knew the value in it, and she really saw it through. So I can't thank her enough either. Um, because fuck, I don't know where I would be without you, Deb. But that really started and launched my career. Um, and so I'm excited to take you guys on the second half of that journey next week um from 2015 up until today. Um, how I got to where I am. Thank you for listening. Stay tuned too, because the next episode that's gonna drop is with my dad. Um, and his episode really kind of came up in an impromptu way when I did an Instagram story talking about um entrepreneurship, and this is my you know 14th anniversary of being a full-time solo entrepreneur this year, and um how many people over the years have assumed that I'm a trust fund baby and that I have a big giant you know million millions of dollars trust fund at my disposal, and that's how I appear so like kind of calm and chill about my life and my work. And I will say that's one of the biggest misconceptions about me. Um, and I called my dad and told him, like, dad, I don't know if you were aware of this, but you have no idea over the years, and today, because I got that response after I posted my Instagram story, other people were messaging me saying I assumed you had a trust fund too. And I was like, um, and that was triggering for me, I'm not gonna lie. And um, I called him and said, Do you know how many people falsely assume I have a trust fund? And he just started belting out laughing, like laughing. And he was like, What? And I'm like, Yeah, and he was like, you know, well, I'm not gonna tell you what he said. He'll be on the podcast to discuss it, but um we're gonna tie in a lot of of facets into this, including being a woman, being an entrepreneur, being a female entrepreneur, um, carrying yourself in a certain way, um, and the assumptions that people make about you based on that, and because of it. Um, and how in years past I've fed into some of that um based on how I grew up um and the environments that I found myself in. Um, so if this was interesting to you and you want to hear about my um non trust fun life story, tune in for the next one too. You'll get to meet my dad, he's amazing. Um, and if you liked listening, please um drop me a comment on today's episode and uh follow along and subscribe so you can stay on top of all of our current episodes.