252 From a Side Hustle to a Thriving Course Business

Jayne Havens never planned to build a business. She just wanted to help her kids sleep.

But after one year of running a sleep consulting practice and feeling maxed out, she made a decision that changed everything. She stopped taking more clients and started teaching other people to do what she did. That was 2019. Today, roughly 75% of her income comes from a single $2,700 certification course, and she's still running it all from her kitchen table.

Dominik sat down with Jayne to dig into exactly how she built this, and honestly, it's one of the more refreshing conversations we've had on the show. No complicated funnels, no big ad spend, no content machine. Just Jayne showing up in Facebook groups, having real conversations, and being, as she puts it, the most helpful person in the room.

She also talks about how she uses her podcast not to attract new leads, but to close them. How she keeps a personal list of warm prospects on her phone. Why her affiliate partners outperform paid ads by a wide margin. And why she thinks copying someone else's funnel is a trap most course creators fall into.

If you're building something in a specific niche and wondering whether you really need ads or a massive audience to make it work, Jayne's answer is pretty clear.

I think you'll find this one genuinely useful.

Check out Jayne's work:
🌐 https://thecpsm.com/
📸 https://www.instagram.com/snoozefestbyjaynehavens/
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@Becomingasleepconsultant

Transcript

Action First And Helpfulness

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm pretty impulsive, so when I get an idea, I just go. I don't overthink things, I don't mull, I don't do, I just take action. I want to be the most helpful person in the room. That's my whole mantra. It's just like be helpful. And when you're helpful, people trust you and they want to be in your circle. I never intended to have such a successful business from the beginning. I was just looking to have a little bit of a bi-hustler or a passion project as a very successful business, and I run it from my kitchen table and from cargo lines. So no regrets. I did things the way that I did them. It's working out for me. I feel very fortunate.

Jane’s Fast Path To A Niche

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We are here to share winning strategies and secret facts from top performance in the online course industry. My name is Dominic Dragon, and today's guest is Jane Haven. Jane is a certified sleep consultant and runs her own sleep consultant practice called. As a new parent, overwhelmed by exhaustion, Jane found herself reading everything she could find in order to get her own son to sleep through the night. She applied what she learned to both of her children, implementing good sleep habits very early on. Friends quickly took notice of the fact that Jane's children were both fabulous sleepers, and they began coming to her for help with their own challenges. Jane has quickly established herself as a leader in the industry, building a strong reputation for taking good care of her clients and always providing top-knop service along with her expertise. In addition to supporting families through the sleep training process, Jane also founded the Center for Pediatric Sleep Management, and she also trains mentors and certifies others to do this incredibly rewarding work. Today we are going to talk about how Jane built a course and certification business in a very specific niche and what actually grows the course business behind the scenes. Jane, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to chat with you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Me too. Jane, tell us the story, please. How did you go from helping your own children sleep to building a course and certification business?

A Certification That Teaches Business

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, so it kind of happened pretty quickly, honestly. Back in 2018, I started my consulting business. I was supporting families through the process of establishing healthy sleep hygiene for their children. And my business took off really quickly. It was intended to be a side hustle or a passion project. I never, I wasn't trying to build an empire. And I am the type of person that's always looking to challenge myself and to grow. And by the end of my first year in business, I felt like I'd sort of hit capacity. I was supporting as many families as I could with the amount of time that I had in the day. And I was sort of making almost as much money as I could without, you know, raise, I could have raised my prices. There's some things I could have put into place, but I felt maxed out and I was looking to scale or just grow. And I at the time I felt like my two choices were to either bring on consultants to work under me and build out a bit of an agency, or I could create my own training program and teach others to do the work that I was doing. And I decided to go the route of creating my own training program because I really felt like there was a gap in the market. The training programs that existed prior to Center for Pediatric Sleep Management were doing a fairly decent job of teaching people how to sleep train babies, how to set boundaries with toddlers. They were teaching the sleep piece. They were not teaching the business side of things. And so people were coming out of these programs feeling really excited to get out there and support families. They were really passionate about healthy sleep hygiene. They were empathetic and nurturing and supportive and kind and wonderful. And they didn't have a business bone in their bodies, you know? And so I noticed a lot of these women were struggling to grow successful sleep consulting businesses. And that side of it always sort of came easily to me. I have a background in sales. In my former life, before I got into this work, I was in catering sales. So I sold parties and events. And I grew up in a household full of entrepreneurs. My father's really entrepreneurial. My two brothers are really entrepreneurial. So I guess I just wasn't scared. I was always willing to put myself out there and just do the thing. And I felt like I was in a position to teach it, honestly. And so I just decided to do it. I'm pretty impulsive. So when I get an idea, I just go. I don't overthink things. I don't mull. I don't stew. I just take action. And so I created my own online course. And that was back in 2019. And here we are today. I'm still, I'm still supporting families. And then I'm training others. Now I'm doing both at the same time.

A Simple Evergreen Revenue Model

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Nice, nice. Uh certification is actually a very powerful module because you're not just selling information as you're doing a course, but you're also selling sort of a career or a business opportunity. And I think that a lot of course creators listening to this podcast could actually benefit from the same idea. So can you explain your business model a bit? So what are the main ways that you make revenue in your business at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Sure. So in my consulting business, I support families one-to-one. I work with most of them for two weeks and I write them a written sleep plan. I get on the phone call with them to go over it all. I answer their questions. And then I provide text message and voice note support over the course of about 14 days. And I charge$750 for that service. I also offer a one-off little, I call it an ask me anything call. It's just a 30-minute, quick troubleshooting call. I charge$145 for that call. And then on the course side of things, I literally only sell one thing. I sell my sleep consultant certification program. It's$2,700 if you pay in full. We have payment plans that allow you to pay over two, four, six, eight, twelve months. But literally they enroll in the program. It's evergreen. People can start whenever they want. It's totally self-guided and self-paced. There's no time limit. So my students have lifetime access to the online course materials, any continuing education. We don't resell to the community. So anybody who enrolls in CPSM, they get to, I say they get to learn with us for life. It's a one-time payment. And anytime we add to the curriculum or we teach something new, they get an email notification, they get a Facebook notification that there's a new curriculum or there's continuing education being offered. We also have a really engaged, supportive community online of everybody who's enrolled in the program. That's a place where they get to ask questions, get support, collaborate with other sleep consultants, and that's really it. I, you know, the course is the course. It's it's one price. You can sign up whenever you want. I don't mess around with mini courses or like add-ons. I'm not, I'm not, none of that. I it's really, really simple.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Makes sense. And how has your business evolved over time? And did the certification change the business a lot? I assume you started with the courses first, and then you added a certification part of the business later on.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yeah. So the consulting I did just for one year and then decided I'm gonna create my own certification course. So that first year was 100% consulting income. And then the online course, I launched out at the end of 2019. And obviously, so it's interesting. I I spend more time with my clients that I'm I'm doing consulting with because it's just more labor intensive. But my income is much higher from the course. It's I would say, you know, maybe 75% of my income at this point comes from online course sales. And then the other 25% is consulting. But I'm still putting a lot of sweat equity into the consulting work. And I actually think that's really important. You know, I could just stop supporting families if I wanted to, but I think it's really important if I'm gonna be training and mentoring other sleep consultants. I think it's important for me to have my own. I I need to stay in the game. I need to be supporting families. I need to come up against those hard moments myself so that I can help my students and my grads. And, you know, I also, you know, when I tell people like, yes, you can make a really successful career for yourself in sleep consulting, I think I have to be doing it in order to say that it's possible. So, you know, one thing that sort of bothers me about other course creators, especially in my industry, some of them they're not even supporting families. They don't have a full client load. And they're sort of selling this dream that, oh, you can make X amount of dollars a month working as a sleep consultant. And like, yes, you can, but I think if you're gonna sell that story, you should be living it. And so I'm committed to doing that.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

That's nice. So you also have like real life examples that you can use with your certification clients in a way.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Yeah, regularly, you know, every single month. I'm still supporting, I would say anywhere from like 10 to 15 families a month in my consulting business. Uh, before I launched CPSM, I was at like 25 to 30 families a month. So I've definitely dialed it back. But but yeah, I think it's really important for me to have all of these case studies and for me to have all of this perspective so that when someone comes to me struggling with one of their clients, I can say, oh, I came up against that recently. Here's what it looked like, here's how we solved the problem.

Organic Audience Growth In Facebook

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Exactly. Exactly. Um, one thing I always say is that content is the engine of the course business. So can you tell us more about how did you grow your audience in the beginning?

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Yeah, so my audience is really so when you said in the beginning of the podcast that you like to talk to people who have organic audiences, my audience is very organic. I've never been super successful with driving at, you know, ads to drive traffic. It's never been a major part of my process. Uh, the main way that I have connected with people who are interested in both my consulting work and it for my online course is mainly just networking, connecting. Uh, for the online course, it's mostly in Facebook groups. I hang out in Facebook groups for teachers, for nurses, for doulas, for stay-at-home moms who are looking for a side hustle. And, you know, the conversation comes up all the time. You know, I've been working in the classroom for 15 years. I'm burnt out. I want to get out of the school. I want to be doing something else. And so I'll have conversations with those people. I'll share my own experience of shifting careers midlife. And I will invite them into my Facebook group, which is called Becoming a Sleep Consultant. And when they join my Facebook group, they answer a series of questions. The most important one is for their email address so that they can get onto my email list. And the other really important question is, you know, would it be okay if I sent you a message to connect? And they usually say yes. And so if they say yes, I add them into the Facebook group, they get added onto my email list. I send them a message, you know, through Facebook DMs, and hopefully we have a nice conversation. I invite them to a phone call or a Zoom and, you know, answer all of their questions. Everybody wants to know what this is gonna look like for them, right? Like, how am I gonna find clients? How am I gonna grow my business? How am I gonna juggle my day job and my two kids and having a side hustle, right? Everybody has the same questions. And so I sort of talk them through that, show them what it all looks like, hope to hopefully paint somewhat of a realistic picture. And then, you know, hopefully they feel good about it and enroll in my program. But very few of my students are coming to me by way of like completely random channels, you know. Like just yesterday, somebody enrolled in the program and I have a little question on the forum How did you hear about Center for Pediatric Sleep Management? And they said ChatGPT, and that was really exciting. That's happened a handful of times. Uh so like, yes, the internet is working for me to some degree, but a majority of my students come to me because I'm finding them in online conversations or through affiliates. I have anybody who's taken my course, if they refer somebody to me, they get an affiliate commission. So they're incentivized to share CPSM with their communities. So those are those are the two main ways that I'm I'm growing my online course community.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

You also have a podcast. Are you using it for getting leads that way as well?

SPEAKER_00 12:53

So the way that I use my podcast, I don't really think of it as a lead generator. I think of it as the closer. So if somebody is interested in becoming a sleep consultant and they're a teacher and they're trying to figure out like, how am I going to juggle teaching sleep consulting, my two kids at home, and they're sharing this with me, I say, Oh, do you enjoy podcasts? And they say yes. And I say, I have an interview that I did with a teacher who's doing sleep consulting. And so what I'll do is I'll share a very specific interview with them and have them listen to a 20 or 30 minute conversation. And after they listen to that, I think they can hear themselves in those stories. And then a lot of the time they'll circle back around, they'll say, That was great, that was really helpful. So I use my podcast more as a closer than anything else. I don't know that people, I'm sure people are finding me on the podcast apps, but for the most part, I'm using it as really tailored content. You know, if somebody says to me they're a nurse, or if somebody says to me, you know, my husband thinks that this is a scam, I have an interview with my husband where we talk about how he felt when I first told him that I wanted to get into this field. Right. So I have a conversation for anything that anybody asks me, and and that's really how I'm using my podcast.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

That's a that's a very interesting. It's sort of a FIQ, but in a podcast format, which is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Exactly.

Consistency Across Group Podcast Email

SPEAKER_01 14:20

That's exactly what's great here is that uh this just shows that you don't need millions of followers to actually build a course business. You just need the right audience and basically trust which you already have, and you just showed us that it's it's pretty much possible. So um you said something that I'd really, really like that online business is isn't passive, it's flexible, but it requires consistency. So, what would you say? What does consistency look like in your uh particular case in your business?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Yeah, so for my online course, I am committed to posting content inside of my Facebook group, the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Facebook group, five days a week, Monday through Friday. And, you know, sometimes that's like on Tuesdays when my podcast is released, that's the content for Tuesdays. Uh, I literally do this on the fly. I don't have any sort of content schedule. Sometimes I'm sharing screenshots of conversations with clients when, you know, a family texts me in the morning and tells me that their baby slept through the night for the first time ever in their entire life. Uh, sometimes I'm literally just asking a question that generates conversation. Um, you know, I'm just trying to build engagement and make sure that my group is um is active. So I'm committed to posting inside of the Facebook group five times a week. I am committed to a podcast episode every single week. There have been I've been doing it for four years and there are very few reruns. It's almost always uh a new episode. And um those those are like, I would say the two main ways that I am showing up in my business. I do try to email my email list. So every Tuesday when the podcast comes out, I'm emailing the list to check out the latest podcast episode. And then I would say at least one other time a week, I'm trying to send something else out, whether it's, you know, sharing a success story of a student who completed my program, or maybe it's sharing something that happened in my own consulting business. Just I think staying in front of people, having conversations. Uh, I mentioned that I like to connect with people in Facebook messages and I keep a short list of sort of like hot leads in my cell phone, people who I've had really great conversations with who perhaps were not quite ready to just enroll in the course right away. It's a pretty significant investment for most people. And so I keep a short list of names who I think might be interested down the road. And so every once in a while I check that list and go through my old conversations and see if it might be appropriate to start up a fresh conversation with somebody who I maybe spoke with a couple of weeks ago, invite them to schedule a call with me. That's really it. You know, I'm just every single day out there thinking about it and and working on it in some capacity. No, no like major systems in place, but just, you know, computers always open, always thinking, always working on it.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Just showing up every day, basically.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Yeah.

Selling Through Conversations And Trust

SPEAKER_01 17:30

And um that's also important uh what you just mentioned, um, is that keeping the list engaged. Is it your Facebook group, is it your email list? Most of the people, when they have their own email lists and stuff, and they get people on the email list, they do not send any emails. It doesn't have to be the newsletter, even. Just like staying in touch, and people love that. So they came on your email list due to either a lead magnet or a Facebook group in your case. And it's really important to stay in touch with those people, especially for the future email promotions if you're going to have some, uh, just so people still remember you. And they love to speak to a person behind the brand. Uh, it's just amazing when um we had a client that we suggested that he should engage with people, and when they sent him email uh emails about the question or something, most of the people don't reply to those emails, which he did. So he replied and they were like, Oh my god, like this is the first time I have a person responding to one of these emails, and he was amazed uh by him actually answering to his question in the email. Later on, he bought a course that that person promoted, that client. So it's really amazing what you can do when you actually show up every day and you respond to the emails, to the questions that people have, because this is your business and people are here for you. Um, so what about promoting your products? Are you promoting them only through the Facebook group, or do you also promote them uh to your email list? And how does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Yeah, so for my consulting business, that's really all word of mouth at this point. I I have an email list, I don't really use it, I don't find that I need it. I've been supporting families since 2018. I, you know, I I've helped so many families that every single day I get a text message, an email, a phone call from somebody who got my name from a friend of theirs, you know? And so that side of my business is just sort of it runs itself. I mean, I I have a lot of work to do once I actually need to help these families, but as far as like the marketing piece and and generating business, I'm not really needing to put a lot of effort into that at this point. Um, as far as CPSM is concerned, um, you know, like again, it like, yes, I'm showing up every single day. I am uh like I want, I want to be the most helpful person in the room. Like that's my that's my whole mantra. It's just like be helpful. And when you're helpful, people trust you and they want to be in your circle. And so, you know, day to day, yeah, I mentioned Facebook groups. I'm in a Facebook group with, I think, 19,000 postpartum doulas. And doulas will often talk about how tired they are because they're working overnights and these babies are up all night long. And so I created a training. I didn't even really create it, I just scheduled it and I got on Zoom live with 30 or 40 doulas, and I sort of walked them through the benefits of adding sleep consulting to their doula business. And I explained to them, you know, that number one, when you get the babies sleeping better, then you can rest on the job and have a better night. And number two, you can do some virtual consulting, which means you don't need to be in people's homes every single night. And so I walked them through all the different reasons for why this would help them in their careers. And they're like, oh my gosh, yes, this is exactly what we need. So, you know, I'm being really helpful. I'm explaining to them how to integrate it into their work that they're already doing. And then hopefully they trust me and they enroll in my program and I show them how to actually get it done. So I don't know, it's it's literally just being helpful, being a human, responding to those emails. And I sell every day, you know, like I don't, I don't usually throw like flash sales out. I don't do a whole bunch of that. Like I run a Black Friday sale. A few other times a year I might get a little antsy and just like throw a coupon code out into my universe in the email list, but that's not really a major part of my business strategy. Um, my my major focus is just connecting with people, helping them to understand how this can integrate into their lives and allow them to earn some extra money. Have some more flexible work-life balance and really showing them what it could look like for them.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

So would you say that you push more of your consulting business or the courses? And uh how do you sell the courses then?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah. So the course is literally sold just through conversations for the most part and through my email list. Again, I'm not pushing my consulting. The consulting is just coming to me. Uh, the course is sold by it's just, it's on a website. Like, you know, I've a really beautiful website and people hang out in my Facebook group, they have conversations with me in DMs, they're on my email list, they listen to my podcast. At the end of the day, I think, I think I'm selling the course by giving people lots of opportunities to feel like they know me. Sometimes when people get onto a Zoom with me because they want to ask some questions before enrolling in the program, they'll get on Zoom and they'll say, I feel like I already know you. Like it feels so strange to be on Zoom with you because they've been listening to me on the podcast or they've been reading my emails. They hear, they've heard my voice, they know the way that I communicate. And so when they finally speak to me, it's kind of like they're already sold. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's how I'm doing it.

Ads Versus Affiliates Plus Lessons Learned

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Nice, nice. And that's the main reason why growing organically is also very important because you get that connection uh early on with your audience and not just like cold leads from the ads and stuff. Uh which gets me back to something that you mentioned, uh, that it's easier to grow organically than with ads. Uh, why do you think that? I think a lot of people listening to this will find this interesting.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Yeah, so I I don't know. I would love for it to be easier to grow with ads. Like I'm not afraid of spending money on ads. I've just always found that you get the right people into your sphere, into your funnel, if you find them yourself. Um, you know, when I whenever I've tried to leave it up to ads, I find that I'm not necessarily getting the right people in my universe. I'm just I'm better at finding them myself. I would love for it to not be that way. You know, I would love to figure out the machine that allows me to just take a step back and not have conversations all day long. But I I find I find that just people want to buy from somebody that they know, like, and trust. And even if somebody, you know, comes to me by way of an ad and then they hang out on my email list, they listen to my podcast. I don't know. I've like best case scenario, I've sort of always broken even with that type of stuff. It's just never really been the answer. I've had much greater success with affiliate partnerships. Um, I have relationships with a couple of YouTubers and bloggers who talk about side hustles for moms or, you know, how to make money working from home, that type of thing. That's been way more successful for me than throwing ad spend out into the universe. I don't know why that is, but it it just, you know, for me, that's been my experience. I would I would love for it. I would love for it to work. I just haven't really seen that happen yet.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Okay. Okay, that makes sense. Uh and lastly, is there anything that you would do differently if you were starting again today?

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Um I don't know. I really knew nothing when I was first starting. So I I think I would be being really hard on myself if I said that I should have been doing things differently. I had to learn as I grew. And I think that that's actually a major piece of the puzzle. I think sometimes when people start their own businesses, online courses, or whatever else, if you're just trying to copy somebody else's funnel, you're just taking their advice, you know, their advice works for them and it works for their business model. And your advice is going to work for you and for your business model. And so, you know, I definitely along the way did some things that didn't work out so great, but I wouldn't say that I would change anything because I really needed to figure out what worked and what didn't. I also think that growing a successful business takes grit and determination. And you have to be willing to fail and get back up and try again. And if you're not willing to do that, then you're not gonna have a successful business, most likely. No, I don't think I would change anything. I just know so much more now. Uh, you know, literally, when I started my online course, when uh people were telling me, oh, you should be on Kajabi or oh, you should be on ThinkIfic, I literally had never even heard of any of these platforms. Or, you know, someone was telling me, you should use Convert Kit or you should use Active Campaign or Flow Desk. I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about. So, you know, I just had to figure it out as I went along. And it all worked out. It's working for me. You know, my my my course is on ThinkIphic. Would I be better off if it was on Kajabi? Maybe, but like it's working for me on Thinkific and I'm not changing it. And so it is what it is. So no regrets. I did things the way that I did them. It's working out for me. I feel very fortunate. I have a very successful business and I run it from my kitchen table and from carpool line. And, you know, I never intended to have such a successful business. Again, from the beginning, I was just looking to have a little bit of a side hustle or a passion project. And so, no, like I'm grateful things worked out, and and I'm still trying to figure it out, you know, several years in.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Of course, of course. And I think that's the case that most people um have in their course businesses and stuff. It's just starting out. So um most of them want to find the perfect platform first or a perfect CRM and stuff. But as you just said, you just have to start and go with it. You have your expertise, it will everything will be fine. And later on, it doesn't matter if you're on kajabi or teachable or anything else, as long as you're expert in your field and people are satisfied with what you have to offer to them, I think everything will be fine. And you just proved it to us.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Yeah, I think that's right.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Jane, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your strategy and your business with us. Uh, where can people find you if they want to learn more from you?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Yeah, so I guess the two best places for you to learn more about me would be my podcast, which is called Becoming a Sleep Consultant, or my Facebook group, same name, Becoming a Sleep Consultant. And if you're listening and you have a little baby or toddler or preschooler at home who doesn't sleep at all and you'd like some help with that, uh, my consulting business is called Snooze Fest by Jane Habins.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of The Art of Selling Online Courses. I'll see you in the next episode.