SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Midlife Women Entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Lynette Turner, and if you've been thinking about starting something on the side, I want you to listen closely because this is where a lot of women get stuck. You do the work, you post, you serve clients, you squeeze it into evenings and weekends, and you keep calling it a side hustle. But deep down, what you really want is real income and real stability, something that can sort you for the next chapter of your life. Today we're talking about the mindset shift that changes everything, the moment you stop treating your idea like a hobby and start building it like a real business. My guest is Beth Heyer. She built and scaled a childcare business that expanded across multiple cities and now helps other women do the same. Beth, welcome to the show. I cannot wait for you to talk about your story. It's such a good one. Introduce yourself and let's tell everybody what you do, and then we'll get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yeah, so thank you so much for having me. My name is Beth Heyer. I am the owner and founder of Babysitting Connection. We are in five cities. We're in all the major cities in Texas. We are in northern Ohio. We might have another territory or two up our sleeve this year. Several years ago, we added pet sitting to all of our locations. And then about a year and a half ago, I launched Beth Hire Consulting, where I help other women launch their business, whether it's childcare, monthly membership models, subscription-based businesses. And yeah, so I'm here in Austin, Texas. I'm a mom to two kiddos, 11 and 9. And here in two short months, I will be a bonus mom to two more great kiddos, a nine-year-old and a six-year-old. So we're blending our big old family. With our four kiddos.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah, so we're doing great. Well, that's amazing. Let's take a step back. How did it get started? Did you have the entrepreneurial blood in you, or was it just out of necessity that this business was built?

SPEAKER_01 1:56

I think it's both. Um, I look back and I think, am I an entrepreneur or do I just really hate bosses? And I think it's a combination of both. Um I, you know, I'm an Enneagram eight, I'm an eldest daughter. I think it's just I wasn't made to have someone be my boss. So, but babysitting connection, the idea behind it really came out of necessity. I think I knew I always wanted to open a business. I knew it wanted something to do with moms. After I had my kiddos, I got really passionate about moms and their journey and helping them and asking them to give themselves grace. So I had recently moved to Texas. I lost my whole network of mothers and babysitters and friends and family. And I was struggling to find my own reliable child care. Um, I was a stay-at-home mom. I didn't need a daycare, I wanted date nights or to be able to go get my hair done. Um, and I really saw a big gap here in Austin. I wasn't finding what I needed. And about that time, I was ready to get back to work. My kiddos were hitting a point where they could start doing some preschool. And um, I decided to launch a babysitting agency. Um, so that was uh late 2019, and we launched January of 2020, six weeks before COVID.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Perfect timing. So that's interesting because you know, as you were telling the story, two things surfaced for me. One is when you move and you, you know, you're looking for this new community community. And it's hard. I know for a fact it is hard to build communities, and sometimes that's probably why we end up staying where we we lived for so long, is because of that community. So I love that you, you know, kind of you're kind of using this business as to also build your community as well, even though you probably didn't know that at the time. And then the second thing is like how you had to solve a problem for yourself. And I think that a lot of businesses are started that way or should be started that way, because if you can solve the problem for yourself, you've got that 10% edge already. And then growing it is really just around tenacity. And the whole goal of our podcast today is moving away from that side hustle language. So when did you know that this was gonna become like a business for you? Like, how did take us through the journey of like, okay, I needed to find childcare for myself for date nights and you know, to be able to go out and about and do my things to like, wow, I think I could really do this for people.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Day one. I knew from day one that it was gonna be something. I had, you know, I have a real, I have a tattoo right here that says make no small plans. Okay, I love it. And that's just my motto for life. If you're gonna do it, go all in, do it, make it big, you know, make dream big. There was a lot of factors at the time at of launch. I knew I wanted to make income. And I just have really had the mindset from the very beginning. And and luckily, my, you know, my ex at the time had the same exact mindset that I did about it. Like we knew this was going to be, it was gonna work. We knew without a doubt, there was never a doubt that it wasn't gonna work. We knew we were all in. So from the very beginning, I pulled money out of my retirement. I did the LLC, did the trademark, I set up everything properly. I had lawyers involved writing the contracts. I invested, I pulled $40,000 out of my my 401k and dumped it all into this business because I wanted it to be to be real and proper and fully functioning and robust from day one. I could have started a babysitting agency where I networked with a couple babysitters and became this connection. And there are agencies out there that run a spreadsheet and they share names and they connect people via text. I knew I didn't want that. I wanted this to be something big. I knew I wanted this to be something that was going to be my career. I didn't want to go back to the workforce. I was a recruiter and trainer my career, and I loved my job and I loved my company, but I knew I wanted to work for myself. My kids at the time were still three and two, three and four. And I knew I wanted to be able to go to their performances. I knew I wanted to be a room parent. I knew I wanted flexibility. So it was all in from day one. This was never a side hustle. In the beginning, for several years, I had multiple part-time jobs. I was working at my kids' preschool, helping them with fundraising, getting them half off tuition. I was working for a neighborhood publication, which was wonderful because it kept me networking with the community. And I had a variety, I was doing contract recruiting gigs. I had all these different jobs, but it was all to supplement babysitting connection and to get me where I needed to go with that. So day one, I knew. And I think that that is for me, I think that that's the best mindset to go into something with. If you're passionate about it and you want it to make money, there's no you gotta go all in.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah. Yeah, that makes me think like when you hear a woman say, Well, it's just a side hustle, what do you think she's really protecting herself from? Like, did you ever think at first this was just gonna be a little extra income to bring in? Never. No, you never thought that. But I think a lot of women do think, oh, it'd be good to make a thousand dollars extra a month or maybe, you know, two thousand or three thousand or whatever. You know, I I kind of like what you did there, where you just right out of the gate, you were, I'm all in. That's it. I'm gonna grow this thing as a business, and we'll see what comes for revenue. Like I tell talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

I I don't want to, I don't want to discredit high side hustles. I know that there are a lot of men and women out there who I have a good friend who runs like um an embroidery business out of her home. She has a full-time job, she's an assistant principal. This is like her passion. She loves it. It's her fun thing to do on the weekends, right? Like that's fine and that's wonderful. My thing is, I think there's a lot of women out there who don't want to give themselves permission to go all in. And that's what I want to change. I think she is protecting herself from failure. I think we're all scared that someone will judge us or someone will think less of us, or that we'll disappoint our partner, or that we'll disappoint our children if it's not successful. And I think that's a big weight that women carry. And I have given myself permission over and over and over again to fail. We have tried things with babysitting connection. I've tried things in my life that just haven't worked. And I look at every single one of them as a learning experience. I look at every single one of them as I'm glad I tried that and I learned my lesson. And now I'm a better coach because I can advise someone on what happened to me. And I think that as women just want to always look like we have it together. And I think in an age of social media and mommy influencers, there's a lot of comparison. And I think there's also a lot of we assume people are more successful or making more money than maybe they actually are. And I think we're intimidated by that. Women can be intimidated by that. And I think it's really just about leaning into your own journey and having the courage to be like, I am going to try this and I am going to go all in and I'm going to be successful with it. Um, and if I make mistakes along the way, so be it, I learned from it.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yeah, I know I love that. So, my next question then is okay, so you decided that's it. I'm all in, I'm going for it. This is gonna become something big. How did you know what to do? How did you build momentum? How did you get started? Like, walk us through a little bit of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

I think I was super passionate about this in particular, which I think really helped. Um, I wanted safe, reliable, vetted childcare for myself. As a mother, I knew what I wanted out of an agency. What if I were to hire an agency, what would it look like? I did tons of research, finding all the agencies I could across the country, seeing how they were priced, seeing what their voice was, seeing what their model was, and then really sitting down and thinking about what I wanted my business to look like. And one of the things I'm really proud of about Babysitting Connection is that we do a really good job of walking the line between being a good place for families to be a part of and a good place for babysitters to want to work. And we have some policies that that lean a little more one way and policies that lean a little more the other way. Um, I have surely learned over the years to kind of walk that line and know when and how to address situations and issues and concerns and that sort of thing. Tons of research. I really did tons of research and not only research on my industry, but I reached out to a lawyer really early and was like, what do I need to do to have this be legal? Obviously, childcare is a uh insurance, needed insurance. And I really made sure with my lawyer, I think of my $40,000, I pulled, I think five grand of it from the start went to lawyers and contracts and making sure that I was set up properly. And then I love networking. And I had only been in Austin for maybe a year or two, but I was well connected with our mom's group. And I made a big effort to network with other women entrepreneurs that owned similar businesses or just mom entrepreneurs in general. I had an accounting company from day one. I wanted to know exactly where my money was going. I um one was one maybe mistake I made that I that I share too is I joined a lot of paid networking groups. And I don't think those panned out as much as I did. I remember I did hire like a marketing coach. Um, and then I'm sure we're gonna get into this here shortly too, but I hired my first employee two months in because I social media is not my thing, and it it's a big thing to have for your business. I did not want to do social media. I didn't want to learn how to be an expert in social media. So my first hire two months in before we were making any money was one to help manage that.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Yeah, actually, and that's that does actually I'll skip ahead to a couple of questions. Sorry, you know, hiring does scare a lot of women, right? And so And I I think it's scary because oh, it's an outlay of cash, and maybe that cash isn't, you know, you got to think, oh, well, what's the opportunity cost? If you know, there's only so long you can bootstrap your business and draw withdraw from your RSPs to the point where you got to start making some money. And so, you know, the mindset for me is if I hire somebody, there has to be an R attached to it, right? And so I think that scares a lot of women, but when you think about somebody hiring and now going back in hindsight, what should your first hire actually be? And how do you kind of avoid hiring the wrong person?

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Yeah. Um, I think your first hire should be the thing that you hate doing, right? Or that you're the worst at, either the which is typically the same thing, right? I remember I worked so many hours at the beginning, sitting on Canva, trying to make posts on social media and then remembering to post them and nothing was happening. And I dreaded it. I dreaded doing it. It was one of those things I knew I needed. I had probably 20 babysitters at the time. I reached, I sent an email to my team and said, Hey, I'm looking for someone five hours a week to help me with social media. And I think only one sitter applied, Nikki, and she goes, Hey, I run social media for this local gymnastics company. I'd love to work for you. Done. Yeah. I said, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. You seem ambitious. She's six years later, she's still with me today. She now has her own social media marketing company. Now I hire her to do my social media for my personal and my business and the whole thing. And she still works for Babysitting Connection. And she was just the perfect hire. She really was. Not only did she do the social media at the beginning, but as I grew, she grew with me. And you know, it started as five hours and it was 10, and then it was 20. And then for probably two years, it was just her and I running the business. We got along great. And she really excelled where I didn't. She's a data and numbers and tracking. And I love to see that stuff, but I I'm not gonna put it together. I think my biggest tip would be I think early on, don't hire your friend. Don't hire your friend.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

I think that's usually like who you think your first hire should be, like your neighbor who you have coffee with a couple days a week. And she's like, Oh, I'd love to help. Don't do it. Especially if you're just kind of trying out being a boss. If you're new to being a boss, being a boss to your friend isn't doesn't always, it's not easy. It's not easy for anybody. Now, six years later, one of my oldest, dearest friends is now running Northern Ohio. But I feel like I've I've figured out how to be a boss at this point. And our relationship has lasted, you know, 35 years. I think we're good. But uh I, you know, I I posted ads and still now I have a team of six. Um, posted ads in in the mommy pages, on in the Facebook pages about what I'm looking for and conducting interviews and keep searching until you find the fit. Um, and and you know, ask ask difficult questions. One of my favorite questions to ask as a boss is um like what type of boss are you looking for? I know that I'm a boss who wants someone an ask for forgiveness person. I want to, you know, instead of an ask for permission person. So if you're someone who really wants someone to supervise and be hands-on and work with you, you know, one-on-one every day and give you guidance every day, that's not gonna be me. There's a boss out there for you, but it's not me. So really just finding someone um that I'm not only can do the job, but just is like compatible with me personality-wise. And I've built um, I'm really proud of of the team I've built. Everybody's been with us for a long time at this point, and we haven't had any turnover. It's been really great.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Oh, that that's good. And I like that question. What how do you want to work? Like it's more about that, right? So yeah, no, that's really good. And when you think about, you know, you you said that you also help women just start businesses outside of the big babysitting industry as well. How do you help someone move from I'd be happy with a thousand dollars a month to like really getting serious? Well, if you're gonna put in the work for a thousand dollars a month, you might as well put the work in for a hundred thousand dollars a year, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

It's just really digging into goals. Um, and sometimes you got to be a little bit of an accountability coach. I have a client who's building uh an agency right now, and she works full time, her husband works full-time. And and right now it's kind of a side hustle and she wants it to be long term. And, you know, she was just like, I'm just overwhelmed. And when I sit down to do stuff, it's like there's so much happening and I don't know where to start. And I remember that feeling. So we sat down on a call yesterday and I said, These are the three things you're gonna do. These are the three things I'm gonna do for you. These are the three things you're gonna do for yourself, and we're gonna get together on Friday and we're gonna talk about what we did. And I just saw it this morning and I'm like, I'm gonna send her a text message and be like, what are you tackling today? Sometimes you just need that cheerleader to be like, you got this, and we're gonna break it down. And, you know, right foot, left foot, right foot, like we're gonna take it one step at a time, and just helping them break it down because it is overwhelming. There's so, you know, there's marketing, there's like social media, there's everything, and just breaking it down really one step at a time and just digging in. And then also really just focusing on setting achievable goals. You know, what does not a year goal, not a five-year goal? What do you want to do this month? How many clients do you want to bring in this month? And then how are we gonna get them? Let's look at your last 10 clients. How did you get them? Okay, Facebook, great. So, what we're gonna do this month is we're gonna post on Facebook and we're gonna lean into Facebook and maybe we're gonna invest in some Facebook ads because that's where your clients are coming from. So, really just you know, setting goals and then not only that, just cheering on their wins. I so I think it's really just it's so hard for me to sometimes to sit down and be like, I have so much to do. How do I start just breaking it into smaller chunks?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Yeah, no, that that's great. You mentioned that, you know, you have this big team and it's a remote team as well. So it's a it's a large network. And the first thing I think about is like, how do you keep yourself organized? You know, you you've got obviously you've had to put some systems in place. What systems do you have in place? And the second question is is how are you taking advantage of AI now to help you systematize even better? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

First part, I have a really great team. And I think the biggest part for me that I recommend for a team, especially for a smaller business, is although my team has their own specialized tasks, right? One of them is our director of sitters and manages all the sitters, one of them is our director of members, one of them is social media marketing. Everybody can do everything. And we have a giant training document where if Patty is out for a week and something comes up that Patty does, we go to the training document, we click on it, and we can all manage it. So that has been really great for me to know that anyone on my team can handle anything if they need to. So for me, it's cross-training and also hiring a team that's willing to step up and do those sort of things. In terms of AI, I'm probably not utilizing it as good as I should. So I'm I I use Gemini. Gemini talk a lot. I use Gemini a lot for more. I I will write something and say make it better. And then Gemini's gotten to know my voice a lot. So they've really helped me a lot with um drafting things. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

But I mean, there's so many things that you can do, but it gets overwhelming too. Like you think, oh, there's that tool, and then there's that tool, and then there's that tool, and then there's agents, and there's GPTs, and then there's projects. It's like, holy cow, how does somebody get organized? Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

One is if I don't know how to do it already, I'm not gonna have AI do it for me because I want to learn how to do it, right? Right. So that's part of it. And then another part of it is, you know, I keep seeing these like chat bots and all that. The reason babysitting connection is who we are is because we are so there are moms that answer your text 24-7, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Yeah, the human text.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

I don't, yes. And and I think that I, you know, like I said, I use chat. I'm building out a program this summer for um a summer camp for 13 to 17 year olds to to learn to be better babysitters. And you know, I have the structure, so I'm I'm working with Gemini. Help me expand this section. What are some things I talk about? Like help me build, okay, this is what I built, help me build a worksheet for it, that sort of thing. But I I guess I, you know, we just bought a new car, we did a bunch of research on the car. But I am not going to have it where you go to my website and a chat bop pops up and and and asks your questions. Obviously, we have all the you know automations. If someone it sends us an Instagram, you know, we how can we help you today? Blah, blah, blah. But we have a phone number and the texts have been coming in, my team members working, where our members or our sitters can text us literally all day, any day with questions. You know, if a sitter is sick and can't make a sit, I don't, I don't need a chat bot to deal with that. Like that's something that I need to handle and I need to get covered. So I probably haven't leaned into it as much as I should. I do have really great software that is very automates the booking process and the login. So we're not doing a lot of um manual we don't manually book or anything like that. But in terms of customer service stuff, I really want that to continue to be handled by human in the loop kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

I guess the term is human in the loop. Okay, so how do you think your business translates into something more for midlife women? You and I talked about this on our pre-call. It changes a little bit in midlife when you start to, okay, now I don't have to look after my kids, but now I have aging parents. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity out there for some midlife women to maybe start a very similar parallel business, but it's not babysitting, it's elder care.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

So how would you have a ton of need right now? For elder care. I have some really great connections in that industry. There's this huge gap between, you know, needing just someone to hang out with your mom and help her do the dishes and do the laundry, and she's able to live at home, but you just can't be there all the time. Literally taking the exact same business model that I have, but switching it to elder care is huge. I also think that I have a friend who has a subscription business that's just home assistance and someone to come help you organize your garage and put away your laundry and put away your clothes.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Um, I think there's and then there's just this whole need also for virtual assistants that aren't AI. You know, moms, moms with my age kiddos, you know, it comes to booking summer camps and scheduling camps and scheduling doctors' appointments and just having someone to be that kind of virtual assistant that has the what'd you say, inhuman touch. Yeah. I think there's just so many different opportunities out there. I think there's such a need, and I think it's really just finding a sticking point. And a lot of times it's what's your own sticking point, right? But I think it's just finding something that you're really passionate about and then just really leaning into it and saying, you know, I'm gonna give this my all. And I might fail and I might make mistakes, but ultimately, like this is where I wanna I wanna own this business still in 10 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

All right, I got one last question for you. So we're gonna leave some action items for a woman listening today. She's either a goddess side hustle and she's like, all right, I'm done calling this a side hustle, or you know what? I'm actually going to take and take that passion thing that I'm doing. Maybe it is that care, elder care situation, and I'm gonna start to flesh it out. So, what would be the first three things you would tell her to do over this next week to get started?

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Research, tons of research, find the need, find the, you know, make sure that whatever you're trying to build is in demand, that there's a need for it, that your market's not saturated. You know, research what it looks like, research software, research programs, research pricing, shifting your mindset is really just such a big thing. Having, I love the word audacity, having the audacity to be like, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna not keep it a secret. I'm gonna tell my friends, I'm gonna tell everybody, I'm gonna tell my family that this is it. And think about your goals, not your five-year goals. Think about your one-month goals, your six-month goals, and your one-year goals. Maybe it's in a year you want to quit your job. Okay, how do we get there? How much money do you need to make this month? How much money do you need to make next month? And I think in this world of social media, people forget that people want to interact with people. I I know there's a lot of uh agencies that I've been working with where they're struggling to grow, and they're like, well, I'm posting on social media. But like, have they met you? Have you when's the last time you talked to a mother in person? Right. So it is doing hard things. I know it's a hard, it's hard. I'm an extrovert and it's hard for me sometimes to go to a networking thing or go to an event and talk to people and put myself out there. But getting out from behind your desk and talking to people and meeting people and sharing what you're doing, connecting with other entrepreneurs in your area. Female entrepreneurs are just nobody loves connecting people more than female entrepreneurs. And I've got developed such great connections. So I think shifting your mindset, doing your research, and then setting goals and small bytes, setting goals and small bytes. Make a to-do list a hundred checkboxes long, even if one is, you know, setting up an email address, cross it all, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Exactly. All right, Beth. Well, you've been wonderful. Thank you. How do people find you? Give me the place that they should.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yes. So Beth Hire.com. That's B-E-T-H-E-Y-E-R dot com. Babysitting Connection.com. Uh, you could check out our pet sitting arm at petsittingconnection.com. And then you can catch me at Beth at Beth Hire.com. And then I'm on social.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

I'm sure you'll share all these. Yeah, yeah, I'll be sharing all of that too. So well, great. Well, thanks, Beth, for sharing your journey and your story. It's a great story. I love it. So, and I love the tenacity and audacity as you called it. So, yeah. So, thank you for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me.