• Helping people start healthy sleeping habits with their babies
• Tips for busy parents and kids sleep
• Creating healthy sleeping patterns
• Caring for the relationship of parents and kids
• Valuing your own needs

About The Sleep Collective

Welcome to Take Control with Nicole, as business owners we experience first hand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Nicole Smith
Hello, hello and welcome back to Take Control with Nicole. Today I am speaking with the fabulous co-founders of The Sleep Collective, Kate and Gerri, all about sleeping is the key to success. With over two decades of combined experience in nursing education and curriculum development, Kate and Gerri created an approachable, non-judgmental space for families to discover what they actually need to achieve well rested and a thriving family unit. After experiencing the challenges of navigating conflicting advice from well meaning family and healthcare professionals in their own journeys, Kate and Gerri knew their must be another way, oh that’s something I always say that is always away, and started out on their adventure to bring us here today. Through a holistic and personalised approach these fabulous human support families to develop tailored solutions to the infant and child sleep issues and are responsive to the needs of both the caregivers and the child. Each sleep journey can be fabulously very different but the one thing we know is your parenting experience can be so much more enjoyable once everyone is getting the rest they need. Yes, yes, yes. 100%. Yes, I have two little humans right on here and a puppy as I just shared before, so sleep is pretty much the key to it all. Hi, welcome thanks for coming on board today.

Kate
Hi, Nicole, thanks for having us.

Gerri
Thanks so much.

Nicole Smith
Oh, so good. Sleep is a thing that can cause a little bit of challenges for us as parental units in the family, when we’ve got all the commitments of work and when you’re a business owner, and you actually just want to human sometimes a little bit more challenging when you’re sleep deprived. So tell us a little bit more about why you started the business and what sort of led you down. We’ve obviously shared a little bit of your journey but what was that like catalyst of going it’s time there’s too many people out there that aren’t sleeping and walking around like zombies like at your hens party.

Kate
There were a couple of catalysts for myself. The first one, I’ve been a nurse for about 16 years now and about 10 years in intensive care, as everyone knows, is a lot of shift work in nursing and the ICU nursing shifts are quite long, 12 hour shifts. So I was finding, I was always coping well with night duty, but towards the end, probably the last two or three years not coping so well, as I’m getting older and just more frequent night duties. I just really reached a breaking point. My sleep health was very poor. Just finding myself, literally for my week of nightshift, just feeling really rundown and feeling hungover really for the whole week really low mood, reduced energy and not being able to focus as much as I wanted to. So I’ve actually gotten out of night duty at the moment and yeah, my main goal was just to get people as much sleep as possible from my own experience of being so sleep deprived. That was my really key goal.

Gerri
It linked really well with me, working in education and seeing the impact of sleep deprivation on children in the learning. Working with teenagers who didn’t sleep very well, had very little sleep and knowing that a lot of those unhealthy sleep patterns start at a young age, and really, a student cannot learn if they’re really tired. So I wanted to be able to kind of undo some of that for kids and help them establish good sleep habits young that they could then carry through and help with their education process.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, it’s so important isn’t it and little humans just mirror our behaviour, right? I hope they’re not really mirroring mine at the moment because we’re going through a shift or growth phase in business and so when that happens, your brain just does all as you know, the thinking and the doing and the 3am-ing and so it’s great to be able to support them to learn what healthy sleep patterns are and how we can actually shape that and but primarily it starts with us as the adults in the guide in the in the way of working way of sleeping way a process

Gerri
When someone in society tells us that you have a baby, you’re not allowed to sleep. It’s a right of passage almost it’s become for us. And we know, through experience and the people we’ve worked with that that doesn’t have to be the case, you don’t have to be sleep deprived because you’re a parent, you can be a parent and get good sleep.

Nicole Smith
There’s so much advice out there, right? Helpful, well, meaning, sometimes judgmental, as a new parent, everyone’s like, well, you must do this, because it’s the only way there’s no other way that you can do it. That goes across all advice doesn’t it, you’ve obviously come across a lot of that when you’re supporting your clients.

Kate
And I think we’ve both had an interesting sleep journey with our own children, we’ve both got two children each, and having my first baby, you know, you go to the hospital, and you have prenatal care and physiotherapy and breastfeeding, but nothing related to sleep. Bringing home my first newborn was an absolute shock to the system, just thinking I could put her down and she’d sleep and she wasn’t having any of that. So, you know, doing reactive, co sleeping and all those kinds of things until I got a bit more education. I just didn’t know anything about baby’s sleep. So yeah, we’re both really passionate about helping other people starting out with healthy sleep habits with their babies.

Nicole Smith
So where can we start? So just say, whatever, wherever you are on your journey, if you’re a brand new mum, first baby, or you’ve got your second one’s arrived, and your toddlers deciding now it’s time to say, hey, don’t forget about me, I’m here. I’m here, Mum, if we’re at that moment, what do we do? How do we start removing the judgement on ourself.

Gerri
It’s definitely never too late to start, we work with newborns up to kids who are five in their sleep journeys. And we have great success across those age ranges. So a lot of people say, well, I think I missed the boat of my child sleep and that’s absolutely not the case, we are trained in all aspects of sleep training from, you know what people will consider the very gentle and no cry approaches more through to the traditional approaches. When we say we’re a non-judgmental space, you know, you’ll never find us in one camp or the other, there’s no right or wrong way to do it. There’s so many paths to settled sleep. And it’s our job to meet parents get a sense of their, you know, parenting style, their baby temperament, and really come up with a plan that is unique to them that will help them to achieve success.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, that’s so important, because we all do things so uniquely, and hybridly as well, like when I remember my mother’s group, we kind of sit in the middle. We’re more I guess, more natural parenting styles but we’re also just like, we go with the flow. But when in my mother’s group, there was my beautiful, really close friends who are full natural parenting, and I was educated so much, I had no idea with Sebby, when I first heard him, I was just like, just tell me some stuff. Like, what do I do. And I think that’s really reassuring because there are some places you go in, again, the masks, the shoulds, we need to just eliminate those words so they can find what’s right for now.

Gerri
No there doesn’t need to be the one way to do it. Or one way it’s going to work or one way is not going to work. It’s really whatever a parent can do in a consistent way is going to get them success with their child’s sleep. So we come up with a plan and say is this when you are comfortable with it is when you can apply really consistently to your child’s sleep situation, then we can make that work. There’s no point in telling parents to do something that just doesn’t sit right with them, because it’s never gonna work.

Kate
And if you want to take a slower approach, it’s going to take longer over sort of three, four or five weeks even and that’s fine too.

Nicole Smith
That consistency word is something that flows across in business and life. Practice, keep on going keep on swimming, just have sort of, like a plan in place that you know, when you’ve had those initial discussions with your clients. Do you set a some way of support? I know this is not child related but dog related but a 12 month old Groodle and he is 100% in teenage phase right now and pushing all the buttons and we’re about to commence retraining now, and it’s that countability on us as busy humans. Is that what you do for your people?

Kate
We have quite a few range of options on our website, but we have like to phone call check ins each week. So that’s a nice way after the initial consult which is around an hour just to nut everything out. We write up an individualised sleep plan so the two check ins during the week really great chance to ask any questions, clarify anything, see how things are going. And the other check in that we have is an app that we use and that’s a daily check in. So the parents and carers can log all the information about sleep unsettling times, and all the information over the day in the night. And then we’ll comment the next day, make any suggestions or any advice we can give. So that’s a really good way to stay connected with our clients throughout the whole process.

Nicole Smith
That’s really cool. Tech and data, you collect the data, kind of like the food thing, you know, you’re like, you need to change the way you’re fooding. Write down what you’ve eaten every moment of every day so that’s great if you’ve got something like that, that you know, we feel as parents we’ve got the support from you, you don’t have to be here all the time. But we we’ve got you. That’s great.

Gerri
So we do offer in home consultations, as well as virtual so for in our famous for local to us in Bayside. We love going into your homes and teaching some hands on settling techniques for newborns and things like that, but that that level of support. But you know, the actually majority of our clients, it is a virtual relationship, which I guess one of the blessings from COVID is that everyone’s a bit more comfortable in that space. And it’s a real privilege to be given such a, you know, a view into someone’s world, no sleep can be very vulnerable parenting can be very vulnerable. And we don’t take that lightly, that parents would trust us to come in and work with them, and their most precious things, to try and improve their sleep situation. So the app is actually such a good way to give us that view on a daily basis. Because you can so quickly see patterns emerging or how you could tweak things to and to improve the situation.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, I know, like our four year old, which I think I’ve said to you, if I need you and we really should talk after this, because we really do need you, Charlotte bless her heart. She only likes Simon to put her to bed and like we have to lie there with her to get her to sleep, which you know, yeah. And then in the middle of the night, if gosh, well, everyone’s now hearing my story. Hi, how are you going welcome to my house. In the middle of the night, she doesn’t want me she wants Simon. So that means that he’s doing a lot of the ups and downs and settling and he’s got a job. And he’s got a career that he does as well. And, you know, but those types of things. You’ll speak to your nearest and dearest and like you’re like your parents and they’ll be like, oh, well, you’ll just have to get yourself organised earlier. You know, you’ll just have to get them to bed by this time and this is what we have to do and I’m like, Yeah, but life, like life is happening around me right now. I need practical solutions here, please help.

Gerri
People saying oh, just close the door and like, let her cry it out. Like that’s not by far not the only way of making improvements.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, that’s right. And every child like I know, Charlotte, you know, she has her own personality and you know, we’ve got to accommodate that to find what works for her. So I’m sure mine and this is not a unique story to you. Yeah, like, what do we do with these types of things that are like, you know, your parents are at the wit’s end. And they’re like, I can’t function. I’ve got clients to support. I’ve got a business that’s growing, I’ve got to get to work every day, I’ve got to put food on the table. Like how do we just make it a bit easier for us? Is it the consistency of it, is it the knowing what to do?

Gerri
Little bit of a bit of a mix, to be honest, Nicole, our kids love predictability, kids love routine, because that makes them feel safe. It gives them a sense of safety and security, if they know what’s next and they know what to expect. Kids will often push you and test your boundaries, because they want to see that you’re going to hold them in place, even though it doesn’t look like they’re enjoying that. In fact, they want to know that if you set a limit, you’re going to keep that limit, because it gives them that sense of secure attachment which you know, is such an important thing for a child to have. So sometimes the kindest thing you can do is hold that boundary even though it’s challenging for the child, it doesn’t mean you don’t support them emotionally, all emotions are are acceptable and supported. But it’s about having that boundary coordinate and then supporting them in that maintaining of the boundary.

Nicole Smith
Boundaries are such a thing over in the business world because you’ve probably experienced that as well is you get so passionate about what you do. And all of a sudden you’re doing all the things and you know, that just just evaporates into the timezone.

Gerri
I have a real job to want to help being teacher nurse you know, that’s a big part of our value systems. Your support ended with the client, you know, two weeks later, I’m messaging them or calling, just want to check in has been so on track, you know, 20 minutes later I’m on the phone.

Nicole Smith
It’s really important as a business owner to value our own boundaries and our own time the value exchange, right? So financial is one outcome or one one transaction. But really, it’s about what are we bringing to the party? And where that finishes? And how do we continue? How can we continue if we choose to as well, the benefit of when you run your own business is that you can choose who you choose to work with. It must be a little bit harder when you’ve got those little faces smiling, and I’m perfect until it slipped on. So if we were to sort of just talk about some of those effects or like impacts on healthy sleeping patterns, what you know, as a parent, as a carer, as a child, have you sort of seen repetitive examples of okay, so it seems if this happens at this time before bed, this seems to be the outcome, like I’m thinking red frogs, like 10 minutes before bed, you know, something like that? They’re amazing. It’s probably not.

Gerri
Johnny Mendel did a research in this actually, ran a bedtime routine. And the results of this research, which I can send along in the shownotes, if that’s appropriate.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. 100% Let’s put them in the show notes.

Gerri
Almost like an 80% improvement in nighttime wakings for children if they have a really solid, predictable, bedtime routine and are falling asleep independently at bedtime. So it’s really small changes like that can create a real flow on effect.

Nicole Smith
Does that work for adults too?

Gerri
Sleep hygiene is so important. No screens an hour before bed. Absolutely important.

Nicole Smith
Do you work with the parents to work on their sleep routines?

Kate
Yeah, I’m always so passionate about the parents sleep too, because all these poor deprived parents, and often they’re like, I’m just at my wit’s end. And like, I feeling like my frustration and my irritability, my babies, or my child’s picking up on that and it just affects the whole relationship in the course of the day. And it’s just, I mean, we’re obviously working on the child and baby sleep, but I am so passionate, almost as much for the parents to be well rested and getting their sleep too.

Gerri
So if we have two people who are co parenting so much time, it’s like, oh, my God, I sat down tonight and watched a movie with my partner after the kids went to bed. And you know, that 3am, when two parents are trying to deal with, you know, a fragment, lighter, asleep, disruption, so easy to be testing yelling, you don’t have a clear plan. So one doesn’t agree with all the other things. And it can be so challenging. And that’s such a benefit of working with sleep consultant, because we say, this is the plan, and everyone’s on the same page. So at 3am, you know, what your response is going to be because we’ve planned for it, and we have a plan of attack. So it’s been lovely to see, you know, parents giving that feedback as well about the improvement of their relationship between each other, because they have a plan, because they’re getting more rest, and enjoying that parenting journey, much more.

Nicole Smith
Smiling ear to ear because you’re talking about creating foundational practices, that, again, to support you long term, to be better humans to have more connected relationships to be able to support the most important humans in your world to be the best little and big humans that they can be. I know that in our house, I mentioned Emmett our dog a few times but he’s a great example of when our energy is heightened inside our home, everything just, it’s a whirlwind, everyone gets louder and more and more and more. I’m just like let’s bring it down because Emmett’s going to jump out the roof soon.

Gerri
Family wellness is a massive focus and pillar of what we do here at The Sleep Collective and it’s what really lights us up when it comes to because doing your own businesses hard like, you know, it would have been the easier route to go work for a different company or work for a different consultant, but we know where our values are and it was so important to us to be able to embed that in our practice.

Nicole Smith
Just interrupting this episode for one little message if you have been listening and love what you hear and want to come in connect. We have a Take Control with Nicole Facebook community, right over there on Facebook that I would love to invite you to come and join us. We are a supportive community, we are looking to really take action in our businesses and change the way or evolve the way we’re working right now. So I invite you to get home on over and join our community and connect with us all. Community is the essence of everything, your business, being able to really build those relationships that you can nurture, and grow and support and celebrate each other. Oh, how fabulous, I hope to see you over there, pop on over to Facebook, Take Control with Nicole, see you soon.

Nicole Smith
You hit the nail on the head there like it is much easier, you’ve got less responsibilities ,may not be as an enjoyable environment, if you’re working for someone else, but you do your nine to five or sure what a lot of people don’t do the nine to five, they’re over committed and they deliver. I remember when before I started my business, a very close girlfriend of mine said to me, imagine if you invested the energy and time into something that you can create for yourself that has endless possibilities from financial to freedom to, you know, working with people you actually want to work with. Imagine if you did that, like yeah. And finally when it clicked in I’m like, yeah, hang on, hang on, this is a thing I’m gonna do that.

Kate
I think we both felt that especially during COVID in nursing and teaching it was quite a time to be alive for us to help people in a different space.

Gerri
But still use their skills and education and nursing and listening and understanding research and we’re very evidence based science based approach to sleep and settle. So you know, when Kate and I met what the meaning of the bonds and the skills and how we folded into each other I suppose it just couldn’t have been more more perfect the way it all fell together.

Nicole Smith
I don’t think I know this story. How did you meet?

Kate
We met on a Kinder committee.

Nicole Smith
Of course you did.

Kate
We were volunteering at a community. So it was my youngest and Gerri’s oldest. So we just met at a dinner for the executive committee and then we did two years on the Kinder together I’m finished up now and Gerri’s got a gap between kids.

Gerri
We were talking about the issues that we spoke about, and teaching and nursing and we love the principles and our work, but the actual day to day doing that work and the marking and the shift work and that, you know, teenagers, babies is cute. What I’m used to working with, and I’d already started my training, I already kind of found my path through my own children and my experience in education and sleep. And, you know, then Kate was talking about how she’s been looking for the same thing, a new spark a new something to light her up. And I just told her what I was doing, you know, and then I thought that this her skills personally would really suit the industry, not thinking that this would be the end goal, but more just trying to have a buddy to do it. That’d be really nice. So she got started on the course and then yeah, I kind of was like do you want to go in together because I always thought I would go work for somebody else. You know, I never had that entrepreneurial plan in my brain. And she said, well, do you want to go into business together? And I was like, yeah.

Nicole Smith
Let’s try it. Yeah.

Gerri
Yeah, that was two years ago. And here we are feeling like we’ve come a long way and in two years and learned a lot.

Nicole Smith
100% And let’s not diminish the fact that this will happen during lockdown, right? Like because I started my business startup 2020 like January 2020, I started and I was like this new kid off the block like super excited, like the world is endless with possibilities. And you know, and then I got my first client and we were doing things and we’re just about to like have a 12 month agreement together. COVID. Okay, this is a thing this is a thing. Before we got on the call we’re talking about the communities right that we I’m involved in. And so what I did is I just invested my energy and my time in connecting creating really solid foundation like friendships and connections that I still have today. And getting really involved in practising my craft and refining, refining and refining. Mining. And we’ve arrived here now. And I’m now in a place where I knew I was always going got a little bit diverted there. But all of those evidences I’ve collected have brought me around here. So it’s, it’s amazing that what you can do, especially when you’ve got a little bit of constrictions, like the online, you’re saying, probably in the past, you may not have thought that this type of business would be online.

Gerri
Absolutely not especially as a service based industry, but you find lots of creative ways to work with clients virtually. And I think having those multiple levels of support, you know, it’s a video consults that we do the app, the phone consults, plus the written document, the plan gives people that, that for me to support you, I had, I believe the other day of our first lockdown in 2020, March 2020. So I guess, in a lot of ways, because I was studying at the same time, I was able to really practice what I what I was learning on my own my own little one at home, so but I think, you know, COVID, I don’t think Kate and I would have had this happen if it wasn’t for COVID, because all we were allowed to do was walk with someone who lives in our 5k. You know and Kate and I were friends, I was kind of new to the area. So she was a big support for me in doing that, and going on those walks, and kind of how this came out of that we kind of I don’t underestimate the positive impacts those things had. Honestly.

Nicole Smith
I 100% agree, the last few years, there have been some pivotal changes, and pivot I’ve had transformational changes, experiences that, you know, I look back on connections like, you know, my closest human, my business wifey, as we call each other, Kathy Rast, I met her on the line on the zoom in a Zoom Room, and she lives in Adelaide, and we still haven’t met by the time this episode comes out, I might be on a plane to Adelaide, for the first time. So excited can’t even tell you. So you know instrumental in my business journey and our conversations on the line, even though not in person. So it’s so wonderful that you found someone at that committee meeting, you know, chatting about the things, you know, it’s amazing.

Gerri
And I think what you’re looking at now, or what you’re speaking to, is at the core of The Sleep Collective, the collective process is all about the village, whether you’re in business, parenting, no matter what you do, you need a village a network support. And there’s so many different aspects that impact on sleep, and you know, relationships and food and health and everything. So the collective for us is meant to be we want to be part of your collective to have to improve your sleep, be part of your support network, your cheerleader. And that’s I said in business as well as every aspect of life, it just we know will flourish and do so much better. If we have that support in place.

Nicole Smith
We’re always talking about the village. Village with the girlfriend just the other night over and I’ll say bottle, we had two glasses of champagne and she lives someone just down the street that I never knew is there all through lockdown. Kids are now at kinder together now I’ve got a friend in the neighbourhood. So like it’s but we’re talking about that missing village that, you know, in days gone by used to just be the norm, we’ve now got to curate that and collect the people that are aligned with how we want to be and live our lives. What a fabulous opportunity. Is there anything else that’s really important for us to know about what you do? How you do it? All the things.

Gerri
We’ve covered most, I mean, in terms of thinking that you’ve got a sense of really how The Sleep Collective can help everybody or how you know, not even us but just valuing your own well being we all deserve sleep. Everyone it’s not it’s a human right, you know, you can actually live longer without food then you can without sleep. So it’s such a pivotal point of health. And without it it’s going to impact every aspect of your life. So it’s not selfish of you to want to get more sleep into looking for support to make that better as you would for other areas of your health and well being.

Kate
And I think we’re just a complete non judgmental space. You could come to us with anything and there’s lots of avenues you can go down there’s not just one one size fits all we’ve got lots of options. So yeah, reach out to us anytime we’d love to help.

Nicole Smith
Okay, that just jumped out at me is that you can live longer without food then without sleep. That’s gotta be our social tile for this post because if people knew that they would prioritise it a lot more. Because I like eating, and yet my sleep is not so great. So thank you, this has been, I say, whenever I have these conversations, they come at the exactly perfect moment for me. This has just done it again. So I really appreciate you both being here today. Now, every episode, we wrap it up with three questions that we ask our fabulous guests. So you both can have your own individual answers if you’d like unless you have a selective collective response. I’ll leave it over to you. Are you ready to wrap it up? Okay, what is your go to app that creates ease in your day?

Kate
I would say the rest of the app that we’re using for our business, it’s called Rested and it’s specifically designed for sleep consultants. So it’s our one stop shop, got everything we need. And we use it every day. Yeah, to check in with our clients. So that’s definitely my most used.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. That’s cool, Rested. Awesome. Sounds like perfect answer.

Gerri
It’s free to use for clients as well. People can download it and track if you’re just interested in tracking your own child’s sleeps and you can see the patterns that are emerging in the same way that you can get feeding apps and things like that. And there’s a cost on our end. But we we pay that cost to have a monthly subscription to the app which hopefully we’re maybe launching our own app one day.

Nicole Smith
Amazing. That’ll be so cool. So much fun. Awesome. So does that mean it anyone can download it? Like just say you’re really interested? And would that be something if you’re sitting here listening and you’re thinking, Oh, I feel like I need these fabulous humans in my world I just don’t know when could they download it and start collecting that data now?

Gerri
Absolutely. It’s rested family, I think, is how you find it on the App Store. Because it can be a bit tricky to find.

Nicole Smith
We’ll put the link in the show notes as well. So it’s really easy for people to find we make it easy here really easy.

Gerri
From a business point of view, that’s what we use, the most common asleep point of view cannot find better sleep. It’s a noise app where you can create white noise sounds. So we love a bit of white noise for our babies. But I don’t like that traditional static noise. So I can kind of do your own mix. I like an ocean wave rain on the roof, wind combination, you can layer the different sounds at different levels to create your own soundscape for sleep, which is like yeah, I use it every night to deal with my own children, and myself. And it’s just a nice white noise versus having kind of those machines.

Nicole Smith
Amazing. We’ll pop that in as well. What I’ve just started when I was 2am on Tuesday night, not being able to sleep, and I’m on Spotify, I’ve created a Nicole Sleep folder playlist. And I had like a sleep meditation for 20 minutes, and then it goes into my eight hours of plain noise because I get on an aeroplane. I’m like out to it and asleep. Now what I’m doing, it’s amazing. It’s great, but it’s funny, isn’t it? Because it’s really sometimes that doesn’t work. Other times I have Shits Creek playing on Netflix. But it depends on my brains to all night connect with the story and then I’m like, we’re gonna have to go. Anyway, there we go. Again, insight to Nicole’s world, right? Yeah. Hello, everyone. Transparency today. Okay, next question. Are you a paper, online or hybrid to do lists lover?

Kate
Definitely paper.

Gerri
I’m probably a hybrid. I’ve got lots of paper notes. But I like using I’m using Trello experimenting with ClickUps because some should do that. So I’m playing in that space. Very comfortable with tech and stuff. So I’m happy to kind of experiment with a few things but I also being teachable. I’ve got my whiteboard with my colour coded textures in my list. So definitely a hybrid for me, I love I love a hard planner. But I also see the value, especially when you’re working with a co founder of having an electronic space to share information.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, having that central location for all the details. So yeah, but there’s something to be said about paper. I think we like I said it’s every episode because we have lots of high everyone’s hybrids, you know, they’ve got variety. We’re all unique, but I’d also had paper on my desk, literally in front of me and a blue marker for some reason. It’s my moment. Feels nice to write. So I love stationery a whole lot Episode. All right, okay. What would you do if you created more space in your world?

Kate
Can it be giving more time to a hobby? Because my biggest hobby at the moment, which I picked up during COVID During the lock downs because I live quite close to the bay, the ocean, open water swimming, which I did during COVID. I did it all through winter, like I had the wetsuit, gloves, everything. And then my friend and I that I dealt with were founded called swim. Well, it’s like a they do classes and squads and stroke correction. So I love it. But finding the time to do it, like they’ve got a four day camp coming up in Sorento. And I’m really gonna try and get to that. If I’ve got more time. Yeah, it’s nice long swims.

Nicole Smith
Join the icebergers down at Mentone lifesaving club down there.

Kate
Yeah, absolutely. It’s very popular. Lots of people out swimming.

Nicole Smith
There’s another group. So our mutual connection, the fabulous Jess Roberts, if you need any photos done, you need to go and google her right now. Jessica Roberts, amazing photography. She was in a group I think down in Mordialloc. Somewhere. And I’ve met some other fabulous humans that are in that group. One of them does silent discos. As soon as it’s on again, I’m there. Because Oh, have fun. Yeah. What about you, Gerri? What’s yours?

Gerri
I think too many things that I’d like to do. I think that’s always my issue. Like I want to watch on Netflix. So it’s hard to watch TV ever. But that’s not a good answer. I struggle with mindfulness, like I struggle to find ways of being mindful. And I find I can get there really well when I do sewing, and really a bit of a, because I feel like I’m still being productive. I have such a drive to always be being productive in my time. So find someone’s a way that I can satisfy that need. I haven’t been productive. But I also find it really, really mindful as well. I don’t think about the 1000 things and tabs that have opened in my head at the same time. So I’m gonna go with sewing.

Nicole Smith
That’s amazing. My mum started sewing during lockdown. My kids have benefited from that. She made us all actually dressing gowns for Christmas. She’s taking that next level. The things that she makes us so beautiful. But she doesn’t think they’re up to scratch. And we’re like Mum, you could literally start a business to make children’s clothes selling them for like $65 $70 a pop. She makes her own dresses and everything. So what a joy, a thing that will create a space for you my fondness for you. And your family and friends benefit from it like we

Gerri
Having those special pieces to hold on to from your mum.

Nicole Smith
She’s made a couple of outfits for me as well, some skirts and dress combinations. And it’s really, really nice. And the rain has just started here. Okay. All right. Where can we find you? So if people are listening and be like, Yes, I need you in my world, where are you hanging about? What’s your website, all the stuff.

Gerri
So we’re thesleepcollective.com. So that’s an easy one to find. If you put it in Google. We have an Instagram, which pretty active lots of so much free information and tips and advice. And we do a q&a every Thursday. But the question box how people can submit their sleepy questions to me on there or to Kate. And we give as much kind of general free advice as we can to help people. We’ve started the blog. So you see the blog website as well. And we’re on facebook as well.

Nicole Smith
I’m going to pull those in the show notes as well. So people can go and click the buttons and come and connect and say hi. And please do because I do follow you on the socials and some of the content you’re sharing is really like yeah, that’s 100% relevant to us right now. So really good. Appreciate you coming on on the line today. Ladies, this has been a fabulous conversation. And Kate and I have known each other for a number of years, we went to the School of the high together High School. So it’s lovely when the universe brings people back in in circles. And yeah, it’s amazing to celebrate your fabulous business.

Kate
Thank you for having us. First podcast. Yay!

Nicole Smith
Wonderful. Well, thank you everyone out there who’s listening. I hope you have have a wonderful rest of your day and enjoy creating space and time freedom. Bye now.
Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social jazz? If not, please come on over. Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solutions. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course, share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, that everyone have a fabulous rest of the week and until next time, see you then.