Meredith Brough (00:00:57) - Well. Hello everyone, I am really excited to be here today. Today's episode is about me, about my story, and I know some people have heard why I went into this business, but there's a lot more to my story I like to talk about. It's the why. It's it's the reason that I've pivoted. I have been through so much over the last six and a half years, and I want to make things better and easier for you. I don't want to go through some of the struggles that I did, but I also want to give you tools for. Getting through your own struggles because you will have some. That's normal as an entrepreneur. And, um, I guess I just want to make it less painful for you. Less of a struggle. I want to arm you. Want to help you. Feel prepared or avoid certain trouble or certain anguish. Maybe even. I really want to see. People loving their work, enjoying more of that, simplifying the the business side of things.
Meredith Brough (00:02:09) - So that's why I want to share my story today, is just to help you understand that I can relate to these struggles. And when I talk about what I want to help you avoid, there's reason for that. Okay, let's jump in. Let's dive in. But seven years ago, almost, I helped a friend. A new friend whose babies were. Lethargic. They weren't eating much. They. We're really, really difficult for them to take care of. She had no idea how to take care of two month old twin babies and was completely overwhelmed on her own. And when I saw how the kids acted and how they looked, I definitely noticed they weren't thriving because I found a daycare. For 15 years I worked with children for 30. I raised five babies and so it was noticeable that they weren't doing so great and I wanted to help. So. I took these, this family under my wings, and I helped the mama with her little ones and her home to rest. And my daughters helped me take care of them overnight.
Meredith Brough (00:03:22) - And within four days, just like in my daycare days, I was able to help them get on a schedule and eat regularly. I helped them do the eat play sleep thing. I taught them how to fall asleep on their own in a loving way. There are obviously pretty easygoing kiddos for me to be able to do so much in four days. Sure, God was in it. It's miracles who are with me, but I was able to really, really turn things around and help these babies thrive. You could see, like their faces were filling out. Their coloring was better. They were just shining, happy little souls that were full of energy. But they were also sleeping well. They were taking great naps all day long and then sleeping for eight hours at night. And this took four days. And it was the first time, even though I had done this many times before, for other people in my daycare and even friends and family. It was the first time where it really struck me as.
Meredith Brough (00:04:21) - Being a big deal. You know the outcome was a big deal. And it it changed this mum's life. It gave her hope and it gave her. A sense of I can do this, you know, empowered her and made life reasonable and doable for her. It's pretty big, and it's stuck with me for a while, you know, even just how I felt and when I saw change in her. Stuck with me for a while, and I felt these little whisperings inside which I believe were God saying, hey, you need to think about this. This is not just like, oh, how cool this is. Like, this is important, what you just experience. You need to think about this. So it took me about a month of reflecting and thinking to decide. That I wanted to help more people, and that I honestly had this vision or sense that there's people all the all over the world that I could help. There's people who needed me and what I could do. And I pulled people.
Meredith Brough (00:05:19) - I found out that most of my friends kids struggled with sleep. I only had one friend. Out of all the friends, I asked who it wasn't difficult for. And I was just really eye opening, you know, like, oh my goodness, this is a problem for a lot of people. I can really do a lot of good. There was many, many. Hurdles in starting my business. But, you know, that's that's not really what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about is the fact that I had this experience that was life changing for me, opened my eyes, that gave me vision and got me excited. There was a fire lit under me. And you know what's funny ist about my story is that I didn't know that there was such a thing as sleep consultants. Even though I had a book or two, I didn't know that there was training or that, you know, I would go out into the world and have people ask me what my certification was.
Meredith Brough (00:06:16) - I was like, what do you mean? I've been doing this for 15 years with 15 or 20 kids. Like, why do I need a training? And, um, you know, some people might look down on me for that, but that's a lot of years of work and having my child care background of over 30 years as well, and raising five babies, I felt pretty experienced. And I spent those, you know, once I finally started my business, after a summer of getting that figured out, I spent eight months working in homes with people 40 to 60 hours helping them take care of their babies, seeing what their challenges were, helping them right there at their side. And that's where I developed my first sleep method. It's when I learned so many fundamental things that I needed to know, and I learned about postpartum struggles and anxiety. I learned about mental leaps. I started learning about temperament. I started seeing that. The basic or standard solutions I've been able to use for so many years weren't that effective or weren't fully effective on these children.
Meredith Brough (00:07:22) - And so when children and I don't know, it's just such an adventure, I love it. One of my favorite things about my story is that there are always people there to help there always people who believed in my mission. Always people who are excited, not as excited me, but pretty excited about what I was doing and how I touched them and changed their lives. I just, I feel like I always had a fan club and it changed. The people changed, but there was always a fan club and there was always people crossing my path. Again, you call it Universe or God, but there was always people who were almost, you know, like a picture running along in a marathon. And there's people standing there reaching out to you with a drink, and they're they're there to cheer you on. I had that, I had those people who were like, oh, you need help with your website? Oh, you need help with your business. You you need to learn how to write a business plan.
Meredith Brough (00:08:21) - I want to help you just constantly. Sometimes they were my clients. Sometimes they were just people I'd meet. Sometimes there are people from church. It was just really beautiful and it helped me. Feel propelled and. It gave me strength and energy and I'm so grateful for that. So I really hope that everybody has that type of support system. And when I say that, guys, it didn't come from my home or my family, like my dad believed in me and he always cheered me on and we would talk business, but he was far away and we need to get to talk very often. My husband wasn't sure about my business and I had to really show him it was a legit thing, and so he really stood back quite a bit. And he's a realist. So a lot of times I don't like to talk to him about things because if things aren't going great, then just brought me down to talk about those those struggles, you know? So I was pretty independent on my own in my day to day, but there was just always people around me to help me.
Meredith Brough (00:09:26) - One of the resources that I love, if you're in the US is score. Score three. The retired executives who like to help small business owners figure out starting a business and get them started. I think about a year into running my business, or maybe just under that I met with them because I had an opportunity to go on Shark Tank, which is such a fun thing. Um, I met with them because I was scurrying to turn in this, like 50 page application. They called me the week the video was due, the video application, and I still had all this, you know, paperwork to fill out. And I was thinking, do I can I do all this? What am I going to do? Like, I didn't get any chance to think about this. And I met with score and they helped me decide not to go on Shark Tank, not just because I wasn't prepared or needed ideas, but because they said, you've worked so hard to build your business and it's it's you.
Meredith Brough (00:10:21) - Like, these are your methods, you're doing things your own way and it's working. And so many people have been there at your side, cheering you on and helping you and supporting you. I don't want you to give any, any bit, any small, tiny pieces, any of it away to Shark Tank. So they just were like, keep it to yourself for now and just keep going. You're doing great. That was kind of fun. So yeah, that was they were awesome. Um, got some free services. I've gone to them a few times for support. But other than that, I did a DIY approach. That's why I'm talking to you today, guys. DIY sucks and if you don't know what that means is do it yourself. Um, I think because my resources were very limited, like my husband not really being sure that this was a legit business, I didn't even have my own business account. Things are different in America. I just I could do things a little differently.
Meredith Brough (00:11:22) - This is a little freer, and I'm not quite as strict doing business as an individual. Um, but I didn't even have a business account open for, like 4 or 5 months. I really needed some help, but what I was saying is that I wasn't able to take out a loan. I wasn't able to invest a lot of money. The income I made was something my family needed. And so. I struggled to advertise and to be discovered and really relied on like a Facebook community group and word of mouth, and that was great. But there was times in between when I didn't have work. So what I did my first year or less in businesses, I subbed as an assistant to teachers, and when I had work I didn't sub and when I needed money, I subbed. So there was an extra. There was an extra for me to be like, oh my gosh, I'm going to sink money into advertising and coaching and I'm going to do this right. It just wasn't an option for me.
Meredith Brough (00:12:30) - Anyone who has an option is beautiful. It's a beautiful way to go. I have one mastermind client who has that mentality of, this is a legit business. This is my dream. I'm going to take it seriously and I am doing it right. So I'm I'm going to invest in coaching and programs and and I'm going to, you know, really, really approach this professionally. And she's she's amazing. She inspires me. And it makes me want to go back and do things over. I'm actually going to do an episode on what I would do differently. So be listening for that. But I. What I'm just saying is, like, I figured it out, I did it, you know, there was a lot of struggles, at least for the first few years, with marketing and trying to figure everything out when it comes to running a business and having a business strategy and, you know, being confident, figuring out how to believe in myself, how to sell myself. And then there's just so much to learn.
Meredith Brough (00:13:32) - And I know you guys get that. If you're in your program learning, or if you're thinking about becoming a sleep coach or some other type of coach, you may not quite get it yet, but you can probably start to understand a little from what I'm sharing. Those who are already working in this field, you get it. A lot of people actually burn out or quit because they like the work, and it's so rewarding and they love it, but they hate the business side and they hate the marketing side, or they hate social media. And so it doesn't always last. And I hate seeing that. But I get it, I get it, I really do. I don't even want to tell you how many thousands of dollars I invested in three different coaches I've had long term, you know, like two months, six months. One lady I hired for a year. And this was, you know, like every other year, basically, I, I hired a different coach. And what happened with me is.
Meredith Brough (00:14:31) - I would think someone was a certain way, and I'd really connect with them and then turn out. The person just I didn't respect, I didn't really relate to. It was a group coaching program. So it's kind of good because I connected with a lot of other people and I loved a lot of their coaches in the program. But what they taught me. Was very, very focused on one thing. It was, um, advertising to get people to join a group and get all your business from a Facebook group, and I definitely learned some other things. I started my first online program because of that program that I took, which is awesome, really, really helpful. So I found value in it. And, um, that helped me for a year or two. But then what happened is. I started struggling in, some of the things weren't working for me anymore. And so I hired another coach and she helped me. And I loved her like I loved her. I'll share her information happily in my notes.
Meredith Brough (00:15:40) - Grace I love grace. She was just amazing. We connected really well and she gave me great advice. And I really loved having a one on one coach instead of a group only group situation. I like a combination, but I did not like that I didn't have one on one mentoring with the first program. So we met weekly, say like three months and she taught me so much. And this is where you I really started to appreciate that. There's a lot to know. There's a lot to know about business marketing strategies. You know, there's just so much to know. And I loved her. It was a really good experience. But the problem was, again, we totally focused on social media, on my group, on posts, on. Content copywriting. And I know she helped me in other areas, you know, like with my sales calls and more work on my confidence and, um, money mindset and things like that. But when our program was over, I was applying things for a while, and Facebook changed a lot of the way they were doing things.
Meredith Brough (00:16:48) - They changed their algorithms, they changed their, um, the way they were supporting groups that went away. They started focusing more on, hey, you guys need to pay us. We want people to advertise. We're not going to just promote groups like we used to. So actually for six months I was working really hard, super hard on my social media Instagram. I was learning, and I definitely feel like a totally different person from when I was posting back then. I think that I did a good job and I definitely found some clients through Instagram. I spent most of my time and effort on my Facebook group, so for six months, this is how long it took me to figure out it wasn't working for me. I don't know why it took me so long. I think I was just determined and I'd invested so much six months. I would post almost daily and give such great content and write beautiful posts because I had learned how to do it, and about 100 people out of my 6 or 7000 group members would see my posts, and I'd get very little engagement.
Meredith Brough (00:17:54) - And. It was really hard. It was really hard because I went from getting about 90% of my clients this way through this Facebook group to. A random client every now and then, once a month, maybe a few in a month. Things were really, really bottomed out, I would say. I'm picturing a chart with a the line just dropping. This is not fun. It was not fun. And that's actually one of those things, those times when my husband would be frustrated. He needed me to work and I wasn't bringing in money. So there's pressure. And there was. Well, you paid these two people. Why isn't it working? And oh, man, that felt futile. It felt so depressing. I am such a hard worker. So this is another thing I really want to talk about more later. But during my really hard months when I'd have zero clients, zero activity, I always had a feeling that things were going to be okay. And I always focused on my vision and.
Meredith Brough (00:19:05) - Kept that close. And I would take those opportunities when I had more time to learn. To overhaul my website, to do more research and oh my gosh, guys, I grew so much every time I had one of those zero months or low months or depressing months. It really served to me my business who I am. So if there's one thing you walk away with today, it's that reminder that those months can be super hard. And I think that's another area you have to work on in your mindset, because it can make you feel like giving up can make you feel so discouraged and make you mad. It can make you argue with your spouse, can make you depressed. But if you try to just hold on tight to your vision and take advantage of the opportunity, you have more time to learn. Reinvent yourself. Figure out where you're lacking. Oh my gosh, I've learned so much during those months. I have such great memories of the growth and clarity. You know, there's times when.
Meredith Brough (00:20:16) - I come out of that month a totally new person, like, way better, you know? And I learned some things in that first program about how when there's a hard time, something great is coming, you know, and there's there's friction or there's adversity or there's, you know, maybe you're struggling mentally. Usually it's right before something great happens. So I always I always try to remind myself of that too. You know, I was talking about some of the the great people along my way. And I miss something really beautiful. Um, for a couple of years, I was blessed to be able to work with collaborators on Instagram. And I think that that. Whole scene has changed big time because this is back in like 2018, 1920, somewhere in there. But I had, um, some pretty great breakthroughs. You know, after this first eight months when I worked in home with people. A lady had a video go viral, I mean viral all over the world. I went to her Facebook page and there was all these different.
Meredith Brough (00:21:20) - Posts that she either they'd tagged her or she'd shared on her account. And every single language out there. Asia. Europe. Africa, everywhere. They were talking about her video. It was a video of her being up all night with her kids, with her three kids. It was, you know, obviously. The special type of footage where it was, it was moving pretty quickly through the night, so it only took a minute, but it was in black and white and. It was exciting. As sad as it was, it was exciting for the world to wake up and notice that sleep can be really, really tough on moms and moms are incredible. What they do for their kids is incredible. The other eye opening piece of that video slash awareness or I don't know the word for it, but, um, what happened is that people all over the world saw themselves. I remember seeing it and being very touched and reaching out to my clients and saying, you guys got to see this video.
Meredith Brough (00:22:23) - I think you need to see what you do at night. And you need to see it with fresh eyes. It's like looking from the outside at what you're doing. And I had a lot of people get very emotional. And so I, I actually reached out to the lady and I said to her. I would really love to use this on my Facebook and my Instagram. I would like to share it with my clients. Is that okay? Do I have your permission? And I probably didn't need to do that, but the social media was still new to me back then, and I'm glad I did because she responded and she appreciated what I said. One of my last comments to her in my email was, and you don't have to live this way. Like it breaks my heart to know that this is your norm. Like, I don't want you to go on this way. I really would love to help you, so please just let me know if I can help. And when she responded, she was really excited and wanted to talk to me.
Meredith Brough (00:23:21) - And she was. Just a really, really cool lady. And, um, we set up an appointment to talk. And by the time we talked, I think it's just the next week. I think 4 or 5 sleep consultants had approached her. They wanted to work with her for free, and they wanted to be promoted because this lady is viral now. Right. But so funny because I went to her with this pure heart of like, I just want to help. I wasn't looking for the promotion. So just love again. The universe and God work in these miraculous ways that we would just never predict or be able to arrange ourselves. So when we talked, we, um, just, you know, nice chat. I found out later that she chose me, and she said it was because I was a mom, and I really understood her and her life, and she could just really. Well, to me, that was really cool. Such a compliment. So I helped her. We only worked together for a couple of weeks and her son was sleeping through the night, so she shared with her community, which was about 100,000 people.
Meredith Brough (00:24:26) - She talked to me, to them about me, promoted me. And all of a sudden, overnight, I had clients from all over the world. I had 30 clients in just a few days, and that continued for months. And it was it was pretty overwhelming. And I actually didn't know what to do because I hadn't worked on FaceTime. I hadn't worked on zoom, I hadn't. Then hands off. You know, I'd I'd been interacting. I'd been in homes. And now I had to teach people. Over zoom, you know, just face to face and in writing and. Yeah, so I've been I've been through a lot of different phases in my business where I tried different things for different reasons. So this was new and it was exciting. I figured things out. But what, what this experience brought me besides success and. Connections that later panned out to be more clients and more promoters, I learned. That there was really challenging babies out there, and then I didn't have all the answers.
Meredith Brough (00:25:27) - And this is what started my journey in researching temperament and finding out as much as I could about different temperaments and different needs and different struggles, connecting with people who could tell me firsthand what it was like, what their struggles were, and getting really, really creative on my sleep solutions. It's when I learned that a lot of kids need to avoid crying to be able to sleep well, that we need to actually cut out any of the crying. That can be okay with easier temperaments. And it helped me create new methods and solutions. So I really love the way things evolve, and I just wanted to point that out because I was sharing. About my journey and my struggles, and I forgot to point out something so beautiful that happened. And and it's it's really shaped the people I work with, my specialty, my passion, who I love to help. And. That's pretty cool, you know? I didn't share what happened yet. I want to talk about the end of that six months, when I had been posting every single day on Instagram and Facebook in my group.
Meredith Brough (00:26:39) - Somebody told me that things had changed. Like I said, that Facebook wasn't really interested in free promotion anymore. They wanted us to pay for ads, and so Facebook groups were just being ignored and it wasn't my imagination. There really was nothing wrong with my group. I hired someone to analyze it and to let me know. It was just that they didn't really care if people saw my posts and weren't sharing them. Where before I'd have 2000 people looking at a post, I'd have just amazing engagement and of course a lot more clients. Well, towards the end of that six months, I reinvented myself because I had plenty of time. So I moved all my my courses over to a new platform. I revamped, overhauled my website, I took, I had a membership site, and I taught weekly. So I had like 40 videos, and I had guest experts weekly too, for at least eight months. And so I took all these workshops and I added them to this platform, and I started trying to sell them and I, I like made a shorter online program.
Meredith Brough (00:27:46) - I tried to sell that. I made a newborn online program. I did so many things trying to reinvent myself and find clients. It was months after that that I thought, oh, you know what, I need to try advertising on Google. I need to have someone advertising on social media. And I had another six months of trying different things and struggling. That was a really rough year. I, I think it was after the pandemic. There were times after the pandemic when I kept really busy. So this led me to hire this lady that I worked with for a year and I, I love her with this Christine, I love her, she's great. We really vibed well. She knew my vision. She boosted my confidence. She helped me think outside the box. She did some great things. And I don't want to talk about each of my coaches forever. Okay? This is not meant to be boring. But again, I invest a lot of money. That was my highest investment to work with someone for a year.
Meredith Brough (00:28:43) - And what I loved about Christine's program was that she believed in soft business, you know, so not not being super salesy or aggressive, and she offered me training on every single way I could market myself and my business. Instead of it being all focused on social media, I learned about long form content, and I actually, regrettably spent most of my time working with her, focused on Instagram because it was working for me, and around the time we stopped working together, it stopped working for me, and I pivoted my business to be an instructor and a mentor and a business coach for sleep consultants. So that was interesting. This is on my own again. So, guys, I've been through so much. When I worked with Christine, I felt like my world exploded with knowledge and I was listening to lots of other podcasts and applying what I was learning, and it was amazing. Like I finally just knew exactly. I mean, it wasn't just Christine's program. It wasn't just that year. It was like everything coming together and becoming a complete whole.
Meredith Brough (00:30:01) - I felt like, I've got this, I can get clients. This is a piece of cake. And I had so much success and it was really, really fun. So it's kind of funny that it was, you know, at the end of that year when I decided my passion is kind of changed and less about working with families and more about working with the people who are doing the work, which is also cool, because it's like having a whole bunch of little soldiers who go out and and help share my beautiful baby centered sleep method and bring relief to so many families who are just done with the traditional sleep training and some of the. Solutions that aren't well suited to their kids temperaments, you know, that sort of thing. So it's just been such a fun journey, and I'm really grateful that I have learned so much. It's it's neat that all of the the investments I made in all of the training and the experiences and the ups and downs and the tough things have gotten me to this point where I'm at right now, where I can help other people, and my hope is to be able to save you time, to help you be successful, to help you love, love, love your work.
Meredith Brough (00:31:09) - Maybe enjoy some of the marketing, but more than anything, simplify marketing. Make it work well for you so that it's not a headache, and help you have this thriving business that you know you can depend on. You have your consistent income, you can grow it if you want to. You can meet your family's needs, or you can pay for vacations. Or in my case, like, let's pay for the wedding that's coming up. That's an announcement. My daughter just got engaged this week. Uh, or pay for the the college. I'm going to have three kids in college soon. It's going to be crazy. So, you know, it's really wonderful that I can contribute and take the burden off my husband and some of you. You know, this is your this is how you support your own family. This is the income. Maybe it's all of the income. So. What you're doing is really important and you need to succeed. I don't want to see people giving up on their dreams, giving up on their hopes, being too discouraged, letting the tough, tough times overcome you and drag you down.
Meredith Brough (00:32:12) - So I really hope that you'll continue to join me on this podcast, and that I'll be able to give you the value that you want. I want you to know that I've been through it and I know how you feel. I know a lot of your struggles and what you worry about and what matters to you. And our field is different. You know, this is going to be probably my last point here, but one of the things that was hard for me when I hired business coaches was that they. They lived. The business coach. Life like this is everything that they knew and everything that they experienced. And so it's really hard for them to to see my side of things. What was different about my business and. What our struggles are. Most of us struggle with the same exact things in the consulting world or in the the mama world. You know, we struggle with a lot of the same things that people who are solely business coaches don't experience. Maybe they experience some of it, but there's just some unique struggles that we have.
Meredith Brough (00:33:20) - And that was hard for me to hire business coaches who didn't understand that. I mean, sometimes it was so bad that I was taking their material that they would give me the resources that they would give me that were all focused on. I can promise you that you're going to make back your investment in the next three months. And I'm thinking, how am I supposed to change this marketing material for my clients? I can't, like, give them back their money in three months. I can promise ideas. I can promise all these great outcomes and benefits, you know, like better health and better, um, relationships and stuff like that were so much money. But it's just not that same exact trade off like they had. So it's easier for them to get people to invest, you know, or like when they would pressure me to charge thousands of dollars for a program because that's their goal, the high ticket programs. I'm like, but there's no one in my field doing that. And so it's really hard to get clients.
Meredith Brough (00:34:19) - That sort of thing is unique to to our field. So we're going to talk about this stuff. We're going to talk about what I've learned and how I've overcome a lot of those obstacles. And, you know, I'm going to keep on interviewing experts the way I did for the mamas. I'll keep bringing in specialists because it's pretty amazing to to be able to hear from people who work in specific niches. I have lots and lots of people for you coming up, and I'm going to keep on sharing the wonderful mama resources too. I've interviewed several great experts who can help you, or your family or your friends with mama struggles or mama needs. So it's all coming. It's it's not changing completely. Just rewatching for different titles. I'm super happy to be here with you, to be able to support you as we move forward. So thank you so much for being here. Until next time, I'll see you soon. Thanks for listening to the Sweet Slumber podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's show. Before you go, please leave a review and hit subscribe and have a great day!
