Education and Guidance You Can Trust

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Kristin Smith, Co-Founder of Baby Care Classes, located in Bernardston, MA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Nightingale Night Nurses offers in-home postpartum support to families with newborns. We offer overnight newborn care, virtual parent support, and live-in 24/7 care. We are a local in-home support team based in New England, but we can help families all over the US find the support they need. Our woman-owned and led company set out with the goal to give parents everything I lacked when I had my daughter. The goal is to allow a space for parents to not only be supported but be heard and seen and find what works for their family.

Baby Care Classes is an online newborn care class with over 50 videos that offers expert guidance and information on preparing for a baby, feeding, newborn care, soothing, baby development, sleep, and more. Baby Care Classes is inclusive to all - if you become a parent through surrogacy or adoption, if you are a single parent - either by choice or by circumstance, if you identify as LGBTQ+, or if you don’t identify as a parent at all - we have tried to use language that is inclusive to anyone who chooses to watch these videos. Our online newborn care class provides the education and guidance you can trust.

Tell us about yourself

I’ve been around newborns my entire life. I am one of 20 cousins, and my family ran a daycare center. I would spend school vacations caring for younger cousins and working in the family daycare. Babies are drawn to me, I will be in a grocery store, and a fussy baby will look at me and stop crying. I’ve always had this magical touch in getting babies to settle and sleep. When I was 16, I moved to Long Island for the summer and nannied for a family of 4; the youngest was 5 days old. From that moment, I knew I wanted to work with newborns in some capacity. I trained as a birth and postpartum doula and apprenticed to become a homebirth midwife, but I kept being drawn to work with families overnight and help them get their babies into a routine and sleep through the night.

My solo postpartum doula practice was booming, so I launched an agency - Nightingale Night Nurses. My goal was to support new and growing families and help other women have rewarding and successful careers so they could support their families and still be around for their own children. After several years my heart broke when families would tell us that in-home support was not financially possible for them. So the idea of a virtual class that teaches parents everything that we do in-home was born. We started with a 75-page ebook called the Essential Guide, then slowly built it into a 50+ video series with over 6 hours of content to help guide and educate parents and caregivers.

My motivation is to support parents throughout their parenting journey, no matter how they got there or what their goals are. To support women who want to work full time to help support their own families and be there for their own children, and support new and growing families with in-home support so they can be successful in their parenting journey.

Through my own parenting journey, I recognized the lack of education that was offered to new parents. In the hospital, nurses were so supportive, but when the parents left that sanctuary, they didn’t have the tools they needed. As an in-home birth midwife, we leave four hours after the delivery. My goal was to create this forum that gives parents the ability to learn and start their journey off feeling knowledgeable and supported.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Breaking the stereotype. I was a teenage mom with no college education who built a multimillion-dollar company from the ground up. I had so many people [mostly family members] tell me I wouldn’t accomplish much having my daughter so young, and I was determined to prove them all wrong.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Do what you need to do to build your business but in a kind and humble way. Build your road/highway without burning bridges. It’s more time efficient to go over a bridge that already exists than figure out another way around the river. This didn’t come easy for me. I am known for saying it how it is and giving out some tough love, but over the years, I’ve worked on my delivery. It is imperative to lead with kindness and grace. That was something that I had to learn was more important than the bottom line.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

It costs money to make money. Starting and growing a business takes blood, sweat, tears, and MONEY! You need to spend some to make some. Plan on putting at least 50% of what you make back into your business. Pay for a logo from a graphic designer, pay an experienced web designer to build your website[one that understands your industry], and have someone help you with copyright. Investing money in the right places will pay off in the long run.
WORKFLOWS. Create workflows for running your business day to day. Start by keeping a running list of each task/responsibility that needs to be done to keep your business running. Break it down to daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. Then break it down by what you enjoy doing and what you don’t. How do you expect each task to be completed from start to finish. There will come a day when you need to hire an employee[s], and this will help you to create a position that will be beneficial to your business. This will make onboarding new employees pretty seamless. Turn everyday email responses into email templates that you can use to respond in the future. This will save you several hours a week. I wish I had done this seven years ago.
Find your why. My “why” was to break the stereotype that was ingrained in me as a teenage mother. I wanted to prove that I could be anything and to prove that I had it in me, for myself, to give my daughter the future she deserved, for my family, and for every other teenage mom who was told they couldn’t do something. I found my joy, and I made a career out of it. In doing so, I was able to create a space for families to thrive while allowing my own to prosper because of it and to give myself the freedom and life I was told I could never have.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://babycareclasses.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/babycareclasses
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/babycareclasses/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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