Rachel Mitchell: How Offering Online Courses Was a Game Changer for Her Business
Welcome to the Course Creator Series, where you can learn directly from experienced course creators on how you can monetize and grow your online business.
I’m your host, Dr. Destini Copp and I help entrepreneurs reduce their reliance on 1:1 services or agency type work and scale their digital product revenue. Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rachel Mitchell.
Rachel Mitchell is the founder of My Sweet Sleeper, a certified Pediatric & Maternity Sleep Consultant, former night nanny, and mom/bonus mom of six. My Sweet Sleeper was born shortly after Rachel had her first child, ten years ago.
As a young mother, she struggled to juggle working and taking care of her new baby while running on little sleep. She realized at this time how little information was given about sleep and how valuable this would have been going home with a brand new baby.
This is when she started to become more interested in learning how to help babies sleep better and teaching families how to help their little ones get rest. After she became certified, she launched My Sweet Sleeper in 2012 and has worked with thousands of families all over the world with the rewarding experience of helping their children sleep better.
She feels it truly is one of the most wonderful professions, and she genuinely looks forward to each new family she gets to be a part of.
When she’s not saving families from sleep deprivation, you can find her sipping hot coffee, running along the beach, working in the yard, and hanging out with her husband and kiddos. She lives just outside of Boston and her and her family are pretty much a modern day Brady Bunch with six kids between them!
Please tell us about your business.
I launched My Sweet Sleeper in 2012 and have been practicing for nearly ten years in this field. I always had the passion and gift of entrepreneurship but wasn’t sure the lane I would end up in, and I am so glad I landed here. I got started after my first son was born in 2010 when I realized how little information was provided to new parents about sleep struggles with their babies. After working as a night nanny for 2-3 years, I realized that I would only be able to help one family at a time, and my mission was to reach as many parents as possible, which is when I decided to start my business. At My Sweet Sleeper, we offer resources to tired parents, from helpful blogs and articles, to online classes and one-on-one consultations, and we work with families all over the world.
Start at the beginning of your journey. What were things like for you? How did you feel? What was keeping you up at night?
The beginning of my journey was tough. I would say the hardest part is that this profession wasn’t well known then, and this was before the era of Instagram and using social media to promote your business, so finding clients was difficult. I had to be creative and work long hours to get my name out there and establish myself within the community. It was tough, but it paid off!
At what point did things change for you? What was the pivotal moment?
One pivotal moment is when we decided to offer online classes after realizing that not all families can invest in one-on-one coaching services. This changed the game because I started to get burnt out with so many clients without a break. In my opinion, every business should have an offering that provides residual income and can help you make money in your sleep! Plus, we can reach and help more families this way.
What are the top three mistakes you made in your entrepreneurial journey, and what would you do differently?
One of the biggest initial mistakes I made early on in my practice was trying to do everything on my own and spreading myself too thin. I didn’t create any boundaries and started mixing up my clients. After a few years, I realized that the only way we would be able to grow was by hiring people to help take over some of the duties that were taking up so much of my time.
Another mistake I made was taking every single failure personally, to the point that I let it demotivate me. Rather than learning from them, I just let it eat away at my self-esteem, not realizing that it was just a part of entrepreneurship that every business owner experiences.
Finally, I made the mistake of thinking that if I build it, they will come. I was so shocked when I created our online classes, and people didn’t start immediately buying them. I realized I didn’t have much of a marketing strategy, and I’ve since learned that I have to constantly promote our classes and have an ongoing marketing strategy.
Please tell us about your marketing? What has worked for you? What hasn’t worked for you?
Social media marketing has been great for us because of the type of content that we are delivering. Instagram is the primary channel we use, which gives us the most engagement, and we spend a lot of time working on content and guidance to deliver to our audience on Instagram. We will occasionally run social media ads, which has helped, but we get pretty good organic engagement.
Email marketing is also huge for us. The difference with email marketing is that you own your list, and you have more control over your communication with them. Once we started sending regular emails, we saw a significant increase in our website visitors and purchases.
What is your top traffic source, and why do you think it’s working for you?
Our top traffic source is our website. Thankfully, my husband has a background in IT and SEO, and he has helped drive traffic to our website using SEO and keyword strategies. We have worked hard to build out a clean website that is engaging and helpful for our users, and each month we continue to grow in this area.
What are some of the best ways you’ve found students for your online course(s)?
We have two different types of courses-our sleep consultant training course for individuals interested in becoming a sleep consultant and our courses for parents.
We find most of the students for our sleep consultant training from a google search and SEO optimization on our website.
Most of the parents taking our courses find us through our social channels.
What is your entrepreneurial life like today? What pain points have vanished? How have things improved?
I am the happiest I have been in my entrepreneurial life right now. I have a full team, I have found a good work/family balance, and I can prioritize my time much better. We are also more financially stable than we have been in the past, mainly due to our courses. I can now take days off to spend with my kids without stressing that things won’t get done, and I can put my phone and computer away at 5 pm without worrying that there will be some crisis I have to manage, and that is a good feeling!
Have you pivoted in your business?
I have pivoted in so many ways over the years. I continue to adjust our offerings and services based on client feedback and changing trends in the industry. We’ve had to up our social media game, learn new things, and try and understand the algorithms.
I have let go of things that weren’t working or weren’t getting any traction, and that has been freeing.
We are now about to focus on the avenues that are most profitable and beneficial for our business and our community.
I have also pivoted in my role and put my CEO hat on, instead of doing the small admin tasks that take up so much of my time. I have learned where the best use of my time is and how to optimize my time by having others do things that can free up my calendar.
What are your best tips for growing your online course business organically?
Be present and active on social media every day! You have to go where people are, and people are on social media, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. You also have to talk about your courses all the time. You can’t just put it out there once and expect that everybody will know about it. You need to continually promote and talk about your classes to create excitement around them!
I also encourage business owners to do re-launches every so often with a special promotion or discount and partner with like-minded brands to help get the word out.
What’s your favorite launch strategy? Webinars, Challenges, Video Series, etc. Why do you like this approach?
I tend to lean towards contests/giveaways and videos because it brings the most engagement and awareness. It also feels organic and seems to be received well by our audience.
What is working in your evergreen sales funnel? How do you have it set up?
Our website freebies and our automated emails have been the most successful funnels for us. Upon visiting our website, one of the first things that pop up is a free guide that captures the user's email address and then enrolls them into a sequence of emails (they agree to this, of course).
There are then a series of emails that are sent out, one including a free quiz that is taken which gives the user the recommendation for the resource we suggest based on the characteristics of their child.
If you had $1,000 to spend on marketing next month, what would you spend it on?
Good question! I would likely spend it on social ads and working with an expert to help optimize these. While I have learned a lot in the past few years when it comes to marketing and advertising, I still have a lot to learn, and I've discovered the best way to do this is to hire experts to teach you when I don’t have the time to go through a course myself or watch YouTube videos!
How do you stay focused and productive in your business? What advice do you have for new entrepreneurs?
I am SO protective of my calendar. Everything goes in my calendar, and I mean everything! Being a mom of six, there is no way I’d be productive if I didn’t block out certain periods of time to work and stick to it. I have also learned that I am most productive in the morning. I usually get the bulk of my work done between 9 am-2 pm, and then I schedule the rest of my afternoon to be light. Because I am more creative in the morning, I am also very protective of bedtime to ensure I am well rested and ready to start the day!
My advice for new entrepreneurs is to find a scheduling system that works for you and be diligent about it. As an entrepreneur, it can be tempting to overbook yourself OR the opposite-not book enough time to work. You should think of your business as you would going to a job, rather than just a side gig. If you take it seriously and invest the time it needs, you will be successful.
Let’s talk numbers: anything you’re willing to share here. You can talk about numbers from a recent launch, monthly revenue numbers, expenses, etc.
It wasn’t too long ago that I left my full-time job to focus full-time on my business (just a little over 1 year), and the reason it took so long is because I never thought I’d be able to replace my six-figure income. But in just one year after focusing full time on my business, I reached that goal and then some! It has taken a lot of work to get to that point, and we still have a long way to go, but our revenue is now at a steady point only fluctuating about 20-25% month over month (with some exceptions). With that also comes additional expenses, which have also increased as we’ve grown our team and expanded our offerings. Still, we generally can keep our expenses below 7k each month.
What do you see as the next steps for your online course business?
We are continuing to build out new courses as we see the need and revamping our existing ones to stay fresh and relevant.
We are also working on a new website launch which will help accelerate the sleep consultant course we have. Hopefully, we will be launching a podcast in the Fall of 2021 to help with our marketing strategy and overall awareness!
What is your favorite quote or business book?
I am a huge John Maxwell fan and enjoyed the “21 irrefutable laws of leadership” and “The Five Levels of Leadership”. I generally enjoy business books that have a faith aspect incorporated as that is something that is a driving factor for me and the intersection of those two things is something I am constantly exploring and figuring out.
What are the top three tools you use in your online course business that you can’t live without and why?
Well, for starters, Teachable because this is where we host all of our classes, so it is a must-have! While it isn’t a perfect system, it has worked well for us, and the model is pretty user-friendly and conducive to the types of course we sell.
I also could not live without Trello. This is our internal organization system and helps keep my team and me on task and meet deadlines.
Finally, I could not live without Slack! While this isn’t directly related to our course, it is one of the most effective ways that our team communicates being a remote company.
What advice do you have for other online course creators/entrepreneurs out there?
Committing to creating your course is always the most challenging step, do it anyway! Your course does not have to be perfect, even at launch! It just needs to be something that your audience needs or wants. Once you establish an idea for your course, just make sure it is something they are asking for and are interested in, and then go for it! It might seem scary, but anything new is going to be scary, and just like having a baby, there might never be a perfect time, other than now!
Rachel, how can people find you to learn more?
People can find us on our website at www.mysweetsleeper.com and @mysweetsleeper for all of our social channels. They can also send me an email personally at rachel@mysweetsleeper.com.
Thanks for sharing your experience with us!