Kristin Smith was a young mother who did not have a postpartum plan that included family members who show up with casseroles. She had no partner who handled diaper duty at 3 a.m., no nurse checking in on the baby’s weight, none of the support most people assume comes standard with a new baby. She was 19, living in New York City, and working as a nanny when she went into labor. She was back at work three weeks later, carrying her own newborn between nanny shifts, with a partner who would not learn to help her clear snow off the car.
Smith’s story is not really about becoming a mother young. It is about what happens when the support system every new parent needs simply is not there, and what a person does next. Her postpartum experience became the starting point for a career shift that took her from nanny to EMT to postpartum doula to founder of a national newborn care company. Along the way, she made a string of decisions that had less to do with careful planning and more to do with figuring out, in real time, what she and her daughter actually needed.
This episode is for anyone who became a parent before they felt ready, anyone who has felt alone in a crowded city, or anyone wondering whether a hard chapter can become the source of meaningful work. It explores a tension a lot of people recognize: the gap between the support you assume exists and the support that actually shows up.
When the plan you made falls apart before you use it
Smith’s path did not start with babies at all. As a teenager, she planned to join the Army Reserves as a military police officer. She went through the physical screening process, known as MEPS, and got as far as the swearing-in.
“I was sitting outside the office to swear in and I bailed,” Smith said. “I freaked out and bailed.”
Her parents had been against the plan from the start. Shortly after graduation, she scrapped the military idea entirely and moved to New York City to work as a nanny instead, a decision she made, in her words, “by the seat of my pants.” She got pregnant with her daughter not long after arriving.
That kind of abrupt pivot, choosing a path and then walking away from it days before it becomes permanent, turns out to be a pattern in Smith’s story. Plans changed. Decisions got remade. And each remade decision moved her closer to work she actually loved, even though she could not have predicted any of it at 18.
The isolation nobody warns you about, even in a city of millions
Smith stayed in New York for six months after her daughter was born, in a relationship she has since described as unsupportive and borderline emotionally abusive. She returned to nannying when her daughter was three weeks old, taking the baby with her to work.
A few days after coming home from the hospital, during a snowstorm, Smith went outside alone to move her car because her boyfriend could not drive a manual transmission. She slipped and got hurt. Nobody came to help her up.
“There was no empathy around, like, you just had a baby and you just fell and you’re struggling,” Smith said.
What stands out about Smith’s postpartum experience is not just the lack of a partner. It is that she worked in childcare, was surrounded by other parents professionally, and still had no idea what resources existed for new mothers.
“I didn’t know that there might be visiting nurses or postpartum doulas or some kind of support,” Smith said. “I just chugged along and did it alone.”
Smith eventually made a calculated, methodical decision to leave. Over several weeks, she quietly transferred her residency, sent belongings home in small batches, and coordinated with her mother to move her out of the apartment in a single day while her boyfriend was at work. She has called it one of the most thought-out decisions of her life, made largely so her daughter would never wonder whether she had tried hard enough to make the relationship work.
“I felt like I owed it to my daughter to give it a fair shot,” Smith said.
Turning your hardest season into your life’s work
Back home in Massachusetts with her mother’s support, Smith went looking for direction. She trained as an EMT, transporting NICU babies, and kept nannying part time. Every job kept circling back to infants.
“Every time I would get a new nanny job and I’d have these little babies, I’m like, oh, I really just love babies,” Smith said. “I love getting them into schedules. I love teaching parents on how to take care of them and understand them.”
A postpartum doula training course, taught by a home birth midwife, pointed her toward the specific problem she wanted to solve: supporting families through the disorienting first weeks after a baby arrives, the exact stretch of time when she had felt most alone.
Amy Stone asked Smith directly what was behind her willingness to keep believing her daughter’s father would eventually step up, despite months of evidence to the contrary. “What was creating this disconnect that you were like, no, no, he might change?” Stone asked. Smith’s answer traced straight back to the same instinct that shaped her career: a desire to give her daughter, and later her clients, more than what she had received herself.
What happens when you build the thing you needed
Smith started her own postpartum care practice, working overnight shifts while her mother watched her daughter, then napping alongside the toddler during the day for years before a partner could share the load. She has been open about the exhaustion of that stretch and equally open about the fact that she did not do it entirely alone.
When client referrals outpaced what she could handle by herself, Smith made the decision to hire instead of simply turning families away. She had no formal business training and no mentors in that world.
“I don’t know, I’m figuring it out,” Smith recalled telling her first hire, when asked what the job would even look like.
The company, now called Well Supported Family after a rebrand, has grown to more than 200 team members across 14 states. Smith attributes the growth to a simple refusal to keep working around the clock herself.
“I’m not going to be able to be present with my family and enjoy wonderful vacations and time off with them if I am sitting behind a computer screen working 60 hours a week,” Smith said.
The isolation she experienced as a 19-year-old with no idea what postpartum support even looked like became the exact gap her company now fills for other families, in apartments in New York City and homes across California alike.
Smith’s postpartum experience did not follow a straight line to success. It followed a series of decisions made under pressure, without a map, mostly for the benefit of a daughter who was too young to understand any of it at the time. What started as a young mother trying to survive one hard winter became a national business built on the belief that new families deserve better support than she got.
That is the throughline worth holding onto. The chapter that feels the most isolating, the most improvised, the most unlike a plan, can end up being the one that points toward the work a person was meant to do. Smith did not choose postpartum care because it looked like a smart career move. She chose it because she knew exactly what it felt like to go without it, and she decided other families would not have to.
This article was inspired by an interview with Kristin Smith and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen or https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Postpartum Isolation: Interview Transcript Kristin Smith with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | August 2026
Amy Stone [00:00:00]:
This is The Art of Imperfect Adulting. I’m your host, Amy Stone.
Speaker B [00:00:05]:
I share stories from real people who have already been through some hard stuff. Why? So that you don’t feel alone while you’re busy figuring out your own life.
Amy Stone [00:00:15]:
Let’s do this. Hello, friends. My guest today is Kristen Smith, and we’re going to talk about career decisions. Kristen, are you ready for a fun chat today?
Kristin Smith [00:00:27]:
I’m ready. I’m totally ready.
Amy Stone [00:00:30]:
Yay. I’m so good.
Speaker B [00:00:31]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:00:31]:
I start all of my interviews with this same question because I love it so much. What part of the world do you call home? And there’s a second part, which is share with us something you love about where you live.
Kristin Smith [00:00:41]:
Yeah, so I live in the United States, specifically Massachusetts in Western Mass. And the thing that I love the most is the abundant farms that are in our area. So when I, especially during this time of year driving home, I pass like 5 or 6 farm stands. that I could stop and collect, you know, things for a fresh dinner that night. That’s probably my favorite piece.
Amy Stone [00:01:03]:
I love it. That is a wonderful thing to love about it. We— the episode is gonna go live in mid-August, but we’re recording this like right in the beginning, sort of the official summer. So I hope you’re having wonderful weather where you are, and it’s fun to live in a place where you can get truly fresh produce. That sounds delightful. I love it. All right, next question. This is my sneaky way of getting around the the old-fashioned rule that you’re not allowed to ask people how old they are. Which of these generations describes where you fit? Are you in the Silent Generation? No, no, you’re not. Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, Gen Z?
Kristin Smith [00:01:38]:
Millennial.
Amy Stone [00:01:40]:
Millennial.
Kristin Smith [00:01:40]:
Hard and true Millennial.
Amy Stone [00:01:42]:
There you go.
Speaker B [00:01:43]:
There you go.
Amy Stone [00:01:44]:
All right, a Millennial.
Speaker B [00:01:45]:
Here we go.
Amy Stone [00:01:45]:
All right, so we’re— I mentioned we’re gonna talk about career and the The career path that you chose, if I understand the timeline correctly, which I don’t always get it exactly right, but has a very personal start, I believe. Like a very personal story start. My information is that you became a parent for the first time at age 19, which, you know, is just a number. So, but tell us that that experience changed— you told me that that experience changed everything and I wanted Talk about that. My first question about this is I’m curious whether or not you had career plans and dreams before motherhood. Like when you were 16, 17, did you have a plan of a career? And if so, what was it?
Kristin Smith [00:02:31]:
Yeah, that’s a really great question. I, I did and I didn’t. Um, I had planned on going into the Army Reserves and I went to MEPS and did the whole like preliminary run-through physical piece. And I was sitting outside the office to swear in and I bailed. I freaked out and bailed. I was like, There’s, there’s no way I can do this. And my intention was to go in as an MP, a military police officer.
Amy Stone [00:02:56]:
Okay.
Kristin Smith [00:02:57]:
And then I just—
Amy Stone [00:02:58]:
Can I ask, what’s MEPS? I don’t know that phrase.
Kristin Smith [00:03:01]:
It— oh, it’s where you go to do like the physical requirement piece before you can sign up. So you have to like, you know, run a certain distance, move a certain amount, do certain exercises, a little bit of mental stuff. So it’s like they’re Their preliminary of like, can you handle boot camp and can we swear you in type of thing? Okay.
Amy Stone [00:03:21]:
Sorry for the interruption. I appreciate that. So you go— so you were going to go into military service, be a military police person. That was the dream.
Kristin Smith [00:03:31]:
I wouldn’t say dream.
Amy Stone [00:03:34]:
That was the plan.
Kristin Smith [00:03:34]:
But it was the thought process.
Amy Stone [00:03:36]:
Very. All right. I understand it. Very good. So, and did you find that through, like, did the military come to your school and set up a table and tell you, you know, and show you all the cool things? Or how did— or did you have a family history in the military? Like, how did, how did that idea pop into your head?
Kristin Smith [00:03:54]:
They set up at our school and I was like, oh, that sounds fun. I play sports, I’m athletic, I’m in good shape. I could totally handle this. But I didn’t really think it through. I kind of jumped the gun on the whole thing. My parents were very against it. They’re like, please don’t do this. This isn’t for you. This is not the type of personality you have. And like I said, I got there, I went through the preliminaries, and then I bailed. And then very shortly after graduation, I moved to New York and became a nanny.
Amy Stone [00:04:27]:
Okay. So the nanny part came first.
Speaker B [00:04:30]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:04:30]:
So interesting. I had— I did have the timeline wrong. I have a similar story about falling for the pitch in the high school auditorium and coming home and being like, yeah, I’m gonna do this. And in my fam— my father laughed like he could not even keep a straight face. He was just like— and my dad, did do his military service at the time. So, but he just laughed. He was like, I— yeah, okay, we’ll see how far this goes. And I was really offended by the fact that he laughed at me with that and continued to make fun of me for this part of my decision. But now knowing myself much better, I do see why he thought that that was a very out-of-character thing for me to propose.
Kristin Smith [00:05:09]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:05:09]:
All right. So that was the plan. You moved from Massachusetts to New York to become a nanny. What was— how did you make that decision?
Kristin Smith [00:05:17]:
By the seat of my pants. It just was like, oh, there’s a high need for nannies there. I would love to move there. Packed up my car after graduation, and I remember my mom like chasing my car down the road crying, being like, what are you doing? You’re going to another state. You’re only 18. You’re crazy. And I just was like waving in the rearview mirror, being like, I’m out of here. And it, I think it was a very humbling and eye-opening experience. Um, it also led me down the path where I got pregnant with my daughter very soon after that.
Amy Stone [00:05:56]:
Yeah.
Kristin Smith [00:05:56]:
Um, and it wasn’t planned and wasn’t intentional, but I do say that she’s like the best mistake that ever happened to me in my life. Um, and it then just changed the course of my life, right?
Amy Stone [00:06:07]:
Yeah. So it’s interesting because if you would talk to me when I was much younger, So I’m 52. I definitely grew up with a lot of programming that be careful about choosing the timeframe for having kids. And you would have found people in my life that were like, this can ruin your life, and really, really dramatic things. I am much more fluid with the timelines now because I’ve had the experience to meet people who— I mean, very early on in my 20s, I met a woman whose Mom had had her when she was a teenager and gone on to become a doctor, things that I had been told were really unlikely and they are harder and so on and so forth. So as we talk about this, the reason I’m giving this like really wordy preamble is that I don’t have any sort of values-based knee-jerk decision about the number of the year we have when we have kids, right? I just think that—
Kristin Smith [00:07:07]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:07:07]:
This is a conversation that’s very important to have and the stories are helpful to share, but I don’t have— I don’t have personally a— I would have, I mean, I would have if I was younger, I think, but I don’t anymore because, you know, our bodies do this for a certain time of our life. It’s what they do. It’s what happens. And then there are decisions to be made and opportunities and challenges that come after that. So you’re a young woman in New York City working as a nanny and you get pregnant and you become a mom. Did you stay in New York at this point or did you go— So back to your family when this happened.
Kristin Smith [00:07:48]:
Yeah, I stayed in New York for another 6 months after she was born. And it was also a mix of lack of support. I went back to work when she was 3 weeks old. I took her with me. It was very challenging. I didn’t have a supportive partner who was borderline emotionally abusive. So it wasn’t a great scenario. So I packed up one day and I moved home, and I was like, I need to figure something else out. This isn’t, this is not the life that I want for myself. This is too challenging. So I moved home.
Speaker B [00:08:24]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:08:25]:
So there are a lot of micro decisions in there. And I want to sort of break them down so that we, because you go on to do some big things and I sort of want to talk about these early decisions and decision making to set that up. It’s a big decision when you’re 18 years old To drive away from your family and set up in a new town. So— and you spoke very fondly of that memory, looking in the rearview mirror, all the vim and vigor of an 18-year-old. And then— so you got a job in New York City, which is— congratulations— amazing. You work as a nanny. Talk about the decision to stay in New York. When you as a, as a, to deliver the baby and for the first several months and go back to work with her, do you remember, if you remember, like, do you remember anything about what was driving those decisions? Did you, were you, had you thought about going home? Like, were you aware of the lack of support you had around you? Like, what was, what was the mindset and the decision-making process at that point?
Kristin Smith [00:09:33]:
Yeah, those are great questions. I mean, I definitely was aware of the lack of support. I did in my very naive young mind think that my boyfriend at the time was going to step up and be this amazing dad and help out. And that was a really rude awakening. I didn’t know if he was going to be out at a club when I went into labor, right? It was a very touch and go. Every day was kind of different scenario. He didn’t really help out with the baby at all. He didn’t get up at night. He didn’t help with feedings. He did nothing, essentially nothing. And After 6 months of that, I kept thinking, like, it’s going to change. It’s going to change. It will click. He’ll want to do this. And then I was like, who are you kidding? This is not something he wanted. This is not a life that he wants. He’s not excited about this. And so I slowly started going through my belongings and getting rid of things that I didn’t need or didn’t need to bring with us. And then I would go back and visit home. I was very strategic about this plan. I would go back and visit home, and I would do one thing each time to make it easier for me to make that move. So I started by changing my license over and doing a home address of my parents’ address. And then so once I got my residency changed, that was easy. And then while he was at work one day, my mom drove to New York and helped me pack up the entire apartment. I moved his belongings to his mom’s house and put them outside, like her garage. And when he came home from work that day, my mom and the baby were already on their way to Massachusetts. and I sat in this empty apartment when he got home, and I was like, so we’re moving out. I moved you back to your mom’s. Good luck. And I left. And I felt like I owed him that explanation, even though I really didn’t. And that, I think, was the most thought-out piece of that process that I had done from the moment I conceived her until that time. I put a lot of thought into like, how can I do this where he can’t legally stop me? He can’t, you know, fight me on it and it’s just already done. And it was, looking back at it, it was a pretty ballsy and bold move, um, and could have led to something really awful. Like he could have been, he could have flipped out and could have been far more abusive than he had been.
Speaker B [00:12:02]:
Yeah.
Kristin Smith [00:12:03]:
Um, but I think it was also the best decision I ever made.
Amy Stone [00:12:06]:
So do you have any personal reflection now? ‘Cause it’s been some time and you’ve got a lot of exposure and a lot of professional professional experience with families. Do you, when you look back at this, do you have any sort of personal reflection about what was— what had you holding on to a vision of a life with him that there was no evidence of happening, right? So you say that he was still a kid. He was going to clubs. He was doing these things. He wasn’t showing up for you as a person who was going to change their mind in real life. And when you look back as an older adult, do you have any reflection about what was What was pushing you? What was creating this disconnect that you were like, no, no, he might, he might change?
Kristin Smith [00:12:51]:
I felt like I owed it to my daughter to give it a fair shot.
Amy Stone [00:12:56]:
Okay.
Kristin Smith [00:12:56]:
Right. Like I felt like if she ever came to me in 10, 15, 20 years and was like, why didn’t you try to stay with him? Or why, you know, what happened? Why this didn’t work? And I wanted her to know that I gave it every piece of effort that I could until I couldn’t anymore. Um, and so that was mostly for her and I put myself and my feelings aside.
Amy Stone [00:13:18]:
That is really interesting. So you have a— even at this young age and with these unpredictable things, you were already dreaming of a certain type of future and modifying your present to try and make that, like forward planning and playing that future movie. Like, I don’t want to have this version of this story to tell in the future.
Kristin Smith [00:13:38]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:13:39]:
That is really interesting. All right.
Kristin Smith [00:13:41]:
Very good.
Amy Stone [00:13:42]:
Tell me about— let’s back up. You do end up— you say the part of your story that I think I know is that the postpartum experience was very isolating and you felt alone. And yet when I hear you recount it, it does sound to me like you had a strong relationship with your mom and you had a pretty good career job. You had people who were paying you. So—
Speaker B [00:14:05]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:14:06]:
Let’s talk about that. This aloneness. in postpartum is a really interesting thing because I feel like it shows up in every— like in some form in almost every story of motherhood, whether you’re reading a book from like 200 years ago of a person who becomes a mom on a farm or talking to your friend in the suburbs in 2026 or listening to a story from 1950. Like there are a lot of stories where people feel alone in this time even though there are— I mean, you were living in New York City. There were 8 million people around you. It’s like you can’t actually be alone in New York City.
Speaker B [00:14:48]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:14:48]:
Right? So I’d love to take you back and have you talk about what was going— what was the aloneness? Talk more about that and why it felt like it was pushing you to make this big change, you know, empty out this apartment, do all these things that I would agree you didn’t actually have to do all those things for him. I honor that you did them. Take us back to that aloneness and talk a little bit more about it.
Kristin Smith [00:15:11]:
Yeah, so I mean, my mom came for the birth and she was there for a couple days after, but she worked full-time and had to go back home and, you know, take care of her responsibilities. And she had younger kids at home, right? Like she had my brother and my stepsister who she was raising. So it’s not like she could just come and move in with us. Um, and then I didn’t, I didn’t have any other family besides that. So like it was me and my daughter’s father, and I remember One of the moments I struggled with the most was a few days after we got home from the hospital, we had a really big snowstorm and my boyfriend didn’t know how to drive a standard or wouldn’t even attempt to drive a standard. And so I had to go out and move my own car in the snowstorm, you know, less than a week after giving birth. And I actually, like, slipped in the snow and got hurt. And there was no— he didn’t try to help me up. He didn’t try to help me back in. There was no, like, empathy around, like, you just had a baby and you just fell and, like, you’re struggling. And so those pieces were really hard. I didn’t have people popping over and bringing a meal. I didn’t have people coming over and being like, this is how a newborn acts. This is normal. I didn’t have that. So, yes, in a city with 8 million people, it was very isolating because, one, I was so young, I didn’t know to look into all these resources. I didn’t know that there might be visiting nurses or postpartum doulas or some kind of support. I just chugged along and did it alone. And then You know, 3 weeks after giving birth where you’re still healing, you’re still emotional, you’re still physically feeling things. I went back to work and I was chasing after toddlers and taking care of my baby and really trying just to do it all. And it was, it was exhausting. It was really exhausting.
Amy Stone [00:16:57]:
I, yeah, no, I can’t imagine how exhausting it was. I do wanna double-click on, I’m not questioning this in any way, I just wanna make sure it gets the emphasis that it deserves. You were in a position where you were working with families, you had at least some contact with other new moms and a staffing— maybe a staffing— I mean, I don’t know if you were individual or you were working for an agency, but you were actually connected to people who were doing child rearing, and you still feel like you did not have the information needed to know about the resources that could have been available to new moms.
Kristin Smith [00:17:33]:
Yeah, exactly.
Amy Stone [00:17:33]:
I just think that that highlights a gap that many of us experience. And no judgment again, because you cannot know what you don’t know. Like, it’s not possible. Like, it doesn’t— it’s like the— no, it’s not. When you don’t know something, you don’t know it. It doesn’t just drop out of thin air for you. All right. So very good. Okay. So this postpartum experience, you move home with your mom and some siblings and half-siblings Um, and this postpartum experience, it changes your career path. So you were a nanny at the time, you moved back to Massachusetts. How does this change your career path? Like what, what happens?
Kristin Smith [00:18:11]:
Yeah, so I was then in the mindset of like, what, what do I wanna do? What do I wanna do with my life? How do I wanna, you know, make this, make a career out of anything? And what career do I want? Um, so I started first, I took an EMT course in the evenings. It was like 2 nights a week, I think, for 2 semesters. I became an EMT and I worked transporting NICU babies, and that was really exciting and fun and a learning experience. And then while I was doing that, I was also working part-time as a nanny again during the day, like 3 days a week. My family did own a daycare, and my daughter got to go to that daycare those 3 days a week while I was working. And then everything just kept bringing me back to babies. Every time I would get a new nanny job and I’d have these little babies, I’m like, oh, I really just I love babies. I love getting them into schedules. I love teaching parents on how to take care of them and understand them. And that was one thing that I was always a natural with and really good at. So then I took a postpartum doula training, probably a year or two after I had moved back. And during that postpartum doula training, the woman who taught the course was a home birth midwife. And I was like, oh, well, maybe just maybe I want to be a midwife. So then I started taking some midwifery courses and working towards becoming a home birth midwife through, like, an apprenticeship. And every time I would go to a postpartum visit with a fresh baby and family, I would stay a lot longer than I should have. And I always caught myself talking about the family unit and their sleep and how they’re coping and their support system and how can I better set them up for success, right? Like, I want you I want you to thrive. I don’t want you just to focus on surviving. And so with all of that, like, a light bulb went off and I was like, I am supposed to be doing mostly overnight postpartum care with families to help them get through the really hard first 6 to 12 weeks where babies are unpredictable, nursing is unpredictable, schedules are unpredictable, and I can really help them thrive through this time. And that was kind of my turning point where It just— this light bulb and this spark of joy in me. And then I turned that into a career.
Amy Stone [00:20:34]:
Okay, so now this makes a little more sense. How old was— so your baby at this point is about a year and a half, 2 years old at least then?
Speaker B [00:20:44]:
Yeah.
Kristin Smith [00:20:45]:
So she was about 2 when I started.
Amy Stone [00:20:47]:
Okay, very— now the pieces are starting together because I was like, how do we get from a 6-month-old newborn to, to doing this. Because what you do, you train as a doula, and then you, in the steps, and you’re looking at midwifery, and you’re going through this, and you’re working the job, you come to the point where you, um, you, you form a company, um, and you are working with people. Um, so it’s, I think it’s Nightingale Moms. What is it called?
Kristin Smith [00:21:15]:
Nope. So, um, I’m gonna back up for a second. So I started my own. Yep. I started my own private practice.
Amy Stone [00:21:21]:
It was just me working with families, and then my clientele Can I jump in before you get past that, if I can?
Kristin Smith [00:21:28]:
Yep.
Speaker B [00:21:28]:
Sorry to interrupt.
Kristin Smith [00:21:29]:
Okay.
Amy Stone [00:21:30]:
Share with us how, if you can, as much or as little detail as you can, but how as a mom with your own mom responsibilities, did you practically manage the scheduling of being available to support other families overnight and not You know, I mean, you can’t be up 24 hours a day. What were the resources?
Kristin Smith [00:21:55]:
What—
Amy Stone [00:21:56]:
how did— like, I, I know it’s a very specific question, but it was the immediate thing for me. I was like, oh my gosh, how— like, how, how, how, how, how could you do that? And so I think the answer might be helpful to some people out there.
Kristin Smith [00:22:08]:
Yeah. Um, so I, at first, when I first started, I, um, wasn’t living with my current husband at that point yet. I would take my mom— my mom— I would take my daughter to my mom’s house and I’d put her to bed there. And then I would go work a shift and I would get home. I’d usually leave a shift at like 6:00 a.m. and I’d get to her house at like 6:30. I would try to sleep for half an hour or an hour until my daughter woke up. And then we would get up and we would go back to our apartment and we would start our day. And then I would nap every single day when she napped. And that continued on for a couple of years. And then when I met my husband and we moved in together, or he was a boyfriend first, and then we moved in together, then she could stay home and he could be with her, and I would come home and sleep in the morning, and he would deal with the whole morning routine and getting her off to school, and we would kind of tag team it like that. I will say that there were many years I did not get a lot of sleep, right? Like, you can do the math in your head of how much sleep that is. It’s not a lot.
Amy Stone [00:23:16]:
Yeah. But for me, Yeah, there’s 2 things. One, the exhaustion that I’m hearing, which I think is helpful for people to hear. It’s not a fantasy story where you were not working your tail off. You put in a lot of man-hours. The second thing that I think is important to hear is that you were not doing everything yourself.
Speaker B [00:23:40]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:23:42]:
There are some stories out there of people who met, You could have told me the story where you’re like, no, she came with me. That was another way this answer could have gone. But you were able to use some resources that you have in your mom and then a partner. So first of all, I think you’re probably still recovering from your sleep deficits from those years, I can only imagine. Anyway, I interrupted you to call that into attention.
Speaker B [00:24:11]:
It’s okay.
Amy Stone [00:24:11]:
It’s one of those things that I think that— because your story has some very big highlights that we’re going to get to. One of the reasons I focus on decisions and choices is to have an opportunity to talk to people about what were the things that really pushed these moments. So your first experience of doing it by yourself without support clearly heavily drove your decision and your nature to help other people in similar situations and create better conditions for their families at night. You’re obviously a very, very hard worker. So at this point you are a solo practitioner building your clientele doing this, and then how does it grow past that?
Kristin Smith [00:24:56]:
Yeah, so I would say I did that for like 4 or 5 years, um, and I— and when she was in school, I would then also take on daytime clients. I would do overnights, sleep for a little bit, go to a daytime client, work on marketing, work on outreach and all of that. Um, and so 4 to 5 years into that Um, my practice got so big that I couldn’t handle the referrals. I couldn’t handle all of the repeat clients. And then, you know, a client would have a friend in another state that was having a baby or another friend in a different area that needed support. And so I was like, well, maybe I’ll just build a team. Like, maybe I’ll build like a 5 to 10 person team, see how it goes. And, um, so that’s when Nightingale Night Nurses was born. We started off—
Amy Stone [00:25:45]:
And did you know other nurses?
Kristin Smith [00:25:46]:
I mean, not really. I mean, yes and no. I knew them through networking events and through certain doula groups, but not enough that I would be like, come work for me. So I took a lot of time to go out and meet people, and then I put together a website and things just started flooding in. I just all of a sudden started getting people applying to work for me. It kind of just magically took off in a way where the word was getting out of who we were and what I had done with families and my abilities to help babies get into routines and sleep throughout the night. I mean, literally sleeping 12 hours by 12 weeks was what I was kind of dubbed to be able to do. So that spread pretty fast, and then we just organically grew. really fast. We, you know, now have a team of over 200. We’re in 14 states. We have a huge national travel team. So it just was a lot of hard work and endless, countless hours of building the team and marketing. And I was still also working with clients up until 3 years ago. So I actively was doing overnights or live-in jobs or doing like true 24/7 care. And then working on the company when I had time. Um, so it’s— I, I look back at our beginning 11 years ago and I just, I cannot believe we are where we are now. Like, it doesn’t— I still pinch myself because it doesn’t fully make sense in my mind.
Amy Stone [00:27:31]:
All right, so let’s— I want to break it down and give you a chance to talk about a couple of pieces in there that I’m just curious about because is, um, you know, obviously, uh, you’ve experienced tremendous growth. You had a pretty much thriving, um, solo practice and you were getting requests that you couldn’t handle.
Kristin Smith [00:27:51]:
Mm-hmm.
Amy Stone [00:27:51]:
But there’s a choice there, right? You, you could have just declined those requests or referred them out, um, to other people. You didn’t, you know, you didn’t, there wasn’t, it wasn’t like, you know, the only option. was to build a business. If you remember, take us back there and share with me a couple things. What was the first— how did you bring on the first person to work with you, if you remember what that conversation was like? But also, how were you feeling in the moment? Like, why did it feel like something, if you remember, that you could do? It’s like, well, I could build a team. Like, where did that come from?
Kristin Smith [00:28:29]:
Yeah. Um, so I remember meeting this woman at a networking event, and I really just loved her. I thought she was an absolute gem of a human. And I remember texting her and being like, hey, I have a pretty big client overflow. Are you looking for work? And she was like, yeah, I’d love extra work. And I was like, great, do you want to come work for me? And she was like, sure, what does that look like? I’m like, I don’t know, I’m figuring Oh, okay.
Amy Stone [00:28:58]:
That is, I, okay. So that is very cool. I love that you were honest about that story, that you didn’t know what it looked like. What did the learning curve, it’s actually a huge learning curve to go from being a person of one to having an employee. What, what did that feel like to you as you were like doing that, like doing the research of like, oh, I need these forms and I need these rates and these bank accounts?
Kristin Smith [00:29:20]:
It was, it was overwhelming. I was like, oh, margins. I need to figure out margins. I need to figure out what I can realistically pay pay somebody and what I can charge a client without being in the red, right? Like, how much time and energy is it going to take to land these jobs, do all the negotiating, and still make money for my time? Um, that was probably the hardest piece where I would say the first like 3 or 4 years I didn’t even pull a paycheck from the agency. I still worked with clients, like I said, and was making money that way, but I— every penny that the agency would bring in, I would toss back into it.
Amy Stone [00:29:58]:
Right. Because so, and this is something that I’ve seen in my just lifetime. I’m not a business coach or a business advisor or anything like that, but I’ve seen people as they start to build things and there’s, there’s the opportunity where you just sort of clone yourself. You’re running the agency just like with repeats because you haven’t quite figured out what the, the actual business structure looks like. I think a lot of people do that. Did you, um, Like I said, I’m not a business coach or teacher, but did you have any mentors or business advisors or friends? Your mom, your family has a business, a daycare that you said. Were there other people around you that you could talk about the business side of this with that would support you, even if it’s just like not telling you that you’re bananas if you were talking about it at dinner?
Kristin Smith [00:30:46]:
No. No, there wasn’t anyone. I didn’t have a business coach until about 3 years ago when I was like, I really could use the extra push here. No, I’m an entrepreneur by my heart and soul. And I have a very business-minded brain. And there’s things that I have done and decisions that I’ve made that I’ve talked to my business coach now about. He was like, where did you learn that? And I was like, I don’t know. I just thought it would work. And they’re like, but people go to business school for that. And I’m like, well, I just figured out a way to make it work. And then I’d be like, well, let’s try this tactic. Or, you know, if we had a client who was unhappy about something, I’d be like, oh, how do we turn that into a lesson of like making us better and doing better? So that’s, that’s just how this grew, right? It’s like every experience I took and I turned it into something positive of how we could do better, how we communicate better, how we have our process better, and, and how we build our structures and our systems. system, then it just, you know, I, I can’t say that there was any person who ever taught me anything. I mean, I definitely read some books and I couldn’t even tell you the titles of those books now because it was so long ago. Um, and I, I literally, when I started this company, I started with paper calendars for every team member.
Amy Stone [00:32:09]:
Well, and then, I mean, I still, yeah, there are still salons out there that run on paper and you know what? They run just fine. Um, you know, so like technology is great, but actually I had a, it’s like, it’s a nail salon. There’s a nail salon that I I have gone to in, uh, like, and you have to call them on the phone and they still have a paper calendar and they are booked still, you know. And it is a little annoying sometimes. You’re like, you’re like, listen, could you please just upgrade to an app? And they’re like, no, you know.
Kristin Smith [00:32:35]:
Yeah, yeah. All right. Yeah. And, um, and that’s— that was a huge learning curve. I remember the, the first moment where I realized I couldn’t do that anymore is when myself and another team member showed up at the same house for the same And I was like, ooh, I need to come up with a better system, right? So like every, every piece of making this company function better came from a learning mistake, right? And came from figuring out how to be smoother and better. And like the systems we have now are, are just phenomenal. They are light years ahead of where we started off.
Amy Stone [00:33:12]:
I’m really thankful for that example you gave because one of the One of the things that I think is hilarious in an entertaining way is you listen to people and they talk about the mistakes they make in building things. The mistakes that they talk about, they’re so far ahead in the process. The mistakes they talk about are champagne problems with VC founders and stuff like that. It’s like, no, tell me about the beginning. You’re like, we showed up at the same client’s house at the same time. That’s a thing I can really actually identify with. the double booking or the misbooking. All right, so very good. So this starts with you solo. You’ve never been to business school. It starts with you adding people in Massachusetts. And this goes national at some point, and there’s a rebrand. I do wanna ask sort of a very, you know, like sort of, you know, heart of hearts inside you, is there anything that you can look back on to Like, I mean, that’s an enormous project. Where do you think the confidence came from that you were able to move this forward in these big jumps?
Kristin Smith [00:34:19]:
That’s a great question. I just always had the mentality of like, go big or go home, right? Like, I’m, I’m not gonna be able to be present with my family and enjoy wonderful vacations and time off with them if I am sitting behind a computer screen working 60 hours a week, right? So I was like, I have to build a bigger team. I have to have more admin. I have to have, um, the ability to kind of sit back within my own company and hand off all the tasks that I don’t want to do so that I can enjoy life. Because I’ve worked so hard and so long and put so many blood, sweat, and tears into this that I just— I was like, I gotta, I gotta make this bigger than it is. And then I just got this like push to grow it and grow it and grow it. And that’s where we really I think that year we grew 50%, which was huge. That doesn’t happen very often with a company. And yeah, I just had a drive to make it, to be able to support more families, to be able to support more women who want to, you know, work at night and be present for their children during the day and be able to go on field trips with them. And it just, that was my push. My desire was to help my family, help everyone else’s family and give parents and caregivers the support they needed.
Amy Stone [00:35:38]:
Listen, a cause beyond— like, I believe in, you know, families do not have enough support and in lots of different times. So that is a really, really good thing. All right. So in almost every story I share, I ask this question. I think this is a good one. What is it that you hope— because you, you could build this business, which I love that it’s not like a tech business or a thing like that. This is a very human-based problem and a human-based solution. You could have just built the business and been successful and sat back and done that. What is the reason you choose to share this story on shows like mine, and what do you hope that the people in the audience, or one person in the audience that needs this story today, what do you hope they take away That, you know, I mean, I think there’s 2 pieces to that.
Kristin Smith [00:36:34]:
I think one is that just because you’re young and you’re having a baby and that’s not how your life planned out, it doesn’t mean you can’t be something, right? It doesn’t mean that hard work can’t shine through. And then the other is probably, you know, a lot of people usually tell you that You know, taking something that is so joyful and brings you so much love and peace in your life isn’t sustainable for a job. And I can tell you that it is. It is something that if you have the ability and the bandwidth to do it and fight through all of the hard pieces, you can actually have a joy that— a job that you love and brings you joy every day. All right.
Amy Stone [00:37:14]:
I love that. I do. And I think that that’s a very important thing. The first one that you point out, pointed to, um, one of the other ways that I see that said that I think is very, very nice is that, you know, within the human experience, one of the things that does not feel true all the time but tends to be true in the rearview mirror is that we have opportunities to redefine ourselves, you know, every day.
Speaker B [00:37:38]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:37:38]:
And, you know, that’s not 100% true. Some things are that way. But things feel like they are really cataclysmic decisions And then it turns out that it’s like, oh, if you just get up and you’re like, oh, what am I gonna do now? Sometimes we have more options. And that’s a mindset that I think is easy to get lost.
Speaker B [00:37:58]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:37:59]:
So tell us— in a minute we’re gonna wrap this up with some final fun questions, but tell us about the business because we’ve talked about it, we’ve talked around it, we’ve talked about how you built it and how you decided to get there. But do go ahead and tell the audience what the business is called today, what it does, who it serves, and how you want people to follow up with you if they are potential clients or even helpers.
Kristin Smith [00:38:22]:
Yeah, so we are Well Supported Family. We recently rebranded. We wanted to take the focus off of who we were or who we are to who we support. And we really wanted families to feel like they were fully supported in this process. We offer postpartum and newborn care. So we do overnights, daytime postpartum care, 24/7 7 care, travel care, nanny placements, and we also do sleep training for babies that are 5 months old and older. You can find us on our website, www.wellsupportedfamily.com. It’s the best way to get in touch with us. And we work with families with all sorts of backgrounds— single parents, parents that are going through adoption or surrogacy, or maybe this is their 5th baby or their first baby. We work with families in the tiniest of apartments in New York City and the biggest of homes in California. So we are able to support you wherever you are at and where you want to go within your journey.
Amy Stone [00:39:25]:
I love it. All right. And one of the other things that I think is really interesting about this is you’re running a nationwide company, whereas when I had kids looking for support, I was really, I was really like, you know, hitting people up in the doctor’s offices and at like, you know, classes. Like it felt like it was a very secretive, It’s a very exclusive, localized network, like, you know, kind of like babysitters. You know, it’s like people don’t always refer. It’s like you have to know somebody who will slip you the information in the side parking lot that trusts you. So thank you very much.
Speaker B [00:39:59]:
You’re welcome.
Amy Stone [00:40:00]:
That web address will be in the show notes. It will be wherever you’re watching or listening to the episode. It’s also in the email newsletter that I send out every single week, and that is the easiest way to get the links because then you just click on it. You don’t have to run for a piece of paper. I always say that. All right, let’s wrap this up. I’ve got 2 wrap-up questions, Kristin. All right, so information is at our fingertips. You can go online and ask any question. How do I build a skyscraper? And the internet will tell you. That weirdly turns personal recommendations for fun things into such a much more helpful thing. Share with us— I know that right now you are a very busy person who may not be doing a lot of leisure stuff, but share with us something that is entertaining, a good podcast like this one, a book, a movie, a TV show, anything that you’ve enjoyed recently that is a good recommendation for folks in the audience they might enjoy?
Kristin Smith [00:40:48]:
Yeah, so I didn’t really watch a lot of TV before I had this little guy at home. But when I’m sitting there feeding him or nursing him, I tend to put on a show. And the one that’s really caught my attention recently was The Mind of a Serial Killer. It just was really— have you seen it? It It was just really, really good. Um, so I don’t know if you’re into that kind of stuff. It is kind of gruesome in some parts, but, um, it was just so interesting, the storyline.
Amy Stone [00:41:21]:
Very cool. I’m not sure if I’ve seen that, but I am a sucker for a good serial killer sort of series. Um, I also am a big fan of like sort of the culty type things. I do think it’s so entertaining that you’re like on the couch with a brand new little kid could be watching like, you know, Baby Mozart or like, you know, something truly uplifting and you’re like, no, serial killers. Here we go. All right.
Kristin Smith [00:41:46]:
He’s not watching it. I’m watching it and I have subtitles on, right? So there’s, um, a huge difference.
Amy Stone [00:41:52]:
You’re like, don’t watch, no absorption. Here we go. All right. Very good. Unsupervised. I call this section unsupervised online shopping inspired by the fact that we all do And, you know, it’s a big shopping place. It’s an open marketplace. What’s something you’ve purchased online? Can be big, can be little, can be related to the baby, could be related to anything that you recommend for people they should know about it and put it on their shopping list.
Kristin Smith [00:42:19]:
Bamboo sleepers are like my number one thing I’m ordering right now. He has way more than he needs, but I’m like, oh, there’s a Harry Potter one. Oh no, there’s a Disney one.
Amy Stone [00:42:32]:
Bamboo sleepers for the baby.
Speaker B [00:42:36]:
I love it.
Kristin Smith [00:42:37]:
It’s really bad. Packages just keep showing up and I’m like, I don’t even remember ordering that.
Amy Stone [00:42:41]:
That’s the— that there’s a story like that from somebody I know that inspired this section. It’s like, don’t shop in, you know, so on and so forth.
Speaker B [00:42:51]:
All right, very good.
Kristin Smith [00:42:52]:
That’s it.
Amy Stone [00:42:53]:
Kristen Smith, I wanna thank you very much for being a guest on the show today and sharing this story about your Thank you for having me, Amy.
Speaker B [00:43:04]:
Thank you for joining me today.
Amy Stone [00:43:06]:
I hope you enjoyed the show.
Speaker B [00:43:08]:
Before I go, I want to encourage you to become a bigger part of the conversation. Please subscribe wherever you’re listening or watching the show. That helps my stats. A request from the bottom of my indie creator heart is to please tell your friends about the show. That is the real way new people discover it. If you feel motivated, I would love it if you rated the show or wrote a review on whatever platform you are using. Please be sure to head over to imperfectadulting.com and sign up for the email community. I call this the village. You’ll get some free stuff right away, and you’ll begin to get the weekly emails that I send. This includes the links for special offers from any guests on the show and cool stuff I put together for the community. There’s a lot more going on than just this show, and the only way to find out is to get the emails. Plus, you’re busy. You don’t have time or desire to follow every single tidbit on social media, and you don’t have to because I’m happy to send it to you. If you have a story you’d like to share with the audience, I have an open application for guests. Guess where you’ll find it? That’s right, on the website and in the email. And that’s a wrap for this episode. Until next time, remember that the journey is the destination. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, not me. Well, until just now, I did just say it. But what I want you to hear today is that if your adulting journey isn’t going the way you expected, that just may not mean you’re lost. It may mean that you’re just on your way. And now the fine print. The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast and streaming video show This podcast is a copyrighted work created and produced by Amy Stone and Amy Says So. The music was written and produced by Todd Thompson at Dharma Bomb Studios. All rights are reserved. Anything expressed on this show is offered as entertainment, and the views of the guests may not always represent the ideas and viewpoints of the host. That’s me. Amy Stone does not intend to hold myself— herself out to provide professional advice or recommendations of any kind. In the end, you and you alone need to make those kinds of decisions based on your personal and individual situation, needs, circumstances, and comfort level. Yeah, it’s a little weird for me to talk about myself in the third person, but you get the idea. This is Amy Stone, signing off.