Tracy Gillett – Raised Good

Episode Summary

Join us as Tracy Gillett shares her co-sleeping experience and the benefits it has for both mother and baby.

Tracy started sharing her knowledge through a blog and realized the interest from others, leading to the growth of her platform, Raised Good.

Episode Timestamps

(00:00) - What Is Natural Parenting

(12:30) - The Impact of Co-sleeping

(19:10) - How Tracy Started Sharing Her Story

(26:20) - Tracy's Approach to Social Media

(29:32) - Membership Info

(33:05) - Upcoming Summit

(37:51) - Learn More about Raised Good

Episode Transcript

Martin 

I guess where I’d love to start is just on natural parenting as a topic itself from an overview perspective. What is it and why is it important?

Tracy 

Well, when I started Raised Good, I needed a term to sort of clarify what I was talking about. And so natural parenting was what I landed on. And the reason for that was that it just sort of symbolized that this is how we would parent if we were just dropped on a deserted island. You know, how would we parent if there were no books and experts and baby stores and society and all of these influences telling us how we should parent.

and sort of really getting back to the basics from an anthropological point of view, evolutionary point of view, and really just how humans were designed to parent. So that’s where the term natural parenting came from. And yeah, it just, it completely changed my world. I remember, you know, we were trying to get pregnant and it took…

longer to get pregnant than we thought. Took us three years. And so we went through the whole infertility journey. And so I’d been reading all about that and finding different things to do. And I was already sort of down that path of digging deeper and looking for natural ways to do things. But then when we were pregnant and I saw my midwife one day and we were talking about where my baby would sleep.

and I had the crib ordered, I researched the crib, I was like, it’s all organic, like it’s non -toxic paint, the mattress is bamboo, it’s all the things. And I remember her saying to me, no, he’s gonna sleep with you. And I was like, what are you talking about? She said, he’s gonna sleep with you in your bed. And I was like, no, he’s not, he’s gonna sleep in the crib. But she got my curiosity, I thought she was a bit mad, but I left the console and I thought,

I got to look this up. I got to read more about this. Really picked my curiosity. And so I started reading and started reading about co -sleeping and bed sharing and all of the benefits of it and how much more sleep you could get as a parent and how that’s how we’re designed to parent our babies through the night. And it just sounded amazing to me. And then I started reading about other things like elimination communication. So like

potty training, you know, from quite early on. And I was just hooked right from the start. So when our son was born, we still had the crib. I still didn’t, I didn’t know anyone in real life who had done it this way. So there’s a certain amount of fear and anxiety that comes with doing something that you haven’t seen somebody else do. But our midwife was very supportive and we brought our baby into bed from night one.

I remember when he was born and I’d waited, you know, it’d been three years of a fertility journey, then I was pregnant for 42 weeks, then finally he was born. And then we’re in the hospital and then you’re supposed to put them into this clear plastic bassinet thing. And I put him in there because there were signs in the hospital saying, you know, bringing them into bed is dangerous. They must sleep here. And…

He was sleeping, but I couldn’t sleep. I was like, this is such an anticlimax. I’ve waited all this time and I finally met this new person, you know? And, I just picked him up and brought him into the bed and it wasn’t a safe, sleeping environment in the hospital beds. They’re not designed for that, but, but I just brought him in and I, and I couldn’t let him go. And it just has brought so much joy to me as a mom and

That kind of then led to not going down the traditional discipline route. You know, we haven’t done timeouts. We don’t do punishments and threats and rewards and all this kind of stuff. And so it really opened my eyes to the world of conscious parenting and doing things in a different way and parenting through connection. And yeah, and so I wanted to share it with the world. I remember a new mom saying to me one time at a mom’s group, she was like, what are you doing? Like, you look so happy.

Why, what are you doing that’s different? Cause we’re all exhausted. You know, we’ve all got six month old babies and, and I was exhausted too, but I was on this oxytocin high from, you know, being connected to my baby day and night. And so I wanted to share it. So I started writing and that’s really where Raised Good started.

Martin 

Yeah. And in that early period where, you know, you mentioned the midwife was suggesting to you, you know, to bring your baby into bed with you. And you had obviously a little bit of those doubts and fears of, you know, of doing it and sort of going against the grain by the, by the sounds of it. What did you do to sort of, did you look outside? Did you look into online communities for support? Did you look to speak with other people that have done it? Like, how did you sort of.

go through all you just said, I’m just gonna do this and follow my instinct or yeah, I guess how did you get through that?

Tracy 

Yeah, yeah, there weren’t really online communities talking about this back then. There are now, which is awesome. But yeah, no, I just really, I have a science background. So I used to be a veterinarian. I love diving into science. I love understanding why we do the things that we do. And, there is so much science to back this up. So probably the world’s leading expert, I would say on

You know, Mother Infant Sleeping is Professor James McKenna, and he’s now written two books on co -sleeping specifically. And so I read his first book at the time, Sleeping with Your Baby, and that was just chock full of all of the research and the reasons why doing this was the way to go and also how to do it safely. So.

L ‘Elech League is another international organization that supports women with breastfeeding, but they have what’s called the Safe Sleep Seven. So seven things to check off your list in order to make your sleep environment safe. Because mothers and babies sleeping next to each other is a perfectly natural and normal thing to do. But our modern day bedding with our soft mattresses or soft duvets and

fluffy, you know, comforters and pillows and all the things, they’re not designed with babies in mind. So there’s definitely things that you need to do to make sure that your bed is safe to bring your baby into it. So we did all those things. We ended up getting a new mattress, not straight away, but soon after our son was born, we got a new mattress.

And that wasn’t necessarily for safety. That was more for like when you’re rolling over in the night. So you don’t all waking each other up. We got a latex mattress so that, so that that was easier. But yeah, no, just really dived into understanding how to do it safely because that’s, I mean, that’s the number one thing that all parents want to do, you know, is to keep your baby safe. Nobody wants to put their baby in danger. So yeah, really dived into.

all of the research and science to understand how to do it safely.

Martin

Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. And what is the general timeframe that a baby sleeps with you in bed? Like how long does that timeframe typically last? Does it vary a lot?

Tracy 

yeah, yeah, could be anything. Like it’s, you know, parents might just might bring their baby into bed for six months or for a year or for a couple of years. In Japan, like it’s a, and this is where I love looking cross -culturally at what other cultures do or even at what other species do. You know, all social mammals are social sleepers.

You know, if you think about a, if you’ve got a dog who’s had puppies or a cat who’s had kittens, if you think about a gorilla in the wild, they’re not all separating at nighttime and going to their separate, you know, they’re all sleeping together and staying close and keeping their, keeping their baby safe. And, you know, we, we sleep next to our partners, don’t we? We’re not sleeping, sleeping in another room. And

So yeah, you look at other cultures and there’s this awesome image that I have that a friend of mine, Tracy Castles, who runs evolutionary parenting, she first shared it. And it was a photo that someone had taken that had gone to a bedding store in Japan. And they had pictures of the different sized beds, a single bed, and it just had one, like a stick figure outline of one person in a.

and then a double bed with two people in it. And then a king, a queen size bed with two big people in it, and then a small person in the middle. And then a king with two big people on the outside and two little people in the middle. And so they talk about in cultures that still have their traditions, like Japanese culture, they talk about…

children staying in the parents room really until adolescence. So it’s a big thing for us to shift in our minds and I think it shifts more and more as you do it. But it’s up to each individual family and also each individual child, you know.

Kids will get to the toddler years and they’ll be like, you know, I want my big bed. Like I’m a big girl now and they might want to go and do that. But other little boys might be like, no, like there’s no way. Like why would I be off on my own? So I think that’s where it really lends itself to. It’s kind of the surrender that you need to go into in parenting. You’re not, you don’t know exactly how it’s going to go. There’s no checklist. There’s no timeframe.

And that can be scary, not knowing what to do. And I think so many of us go into parenthood. We might’ve been in corporate jobs. We might’ve, you know, we’re very success driven society. We have the checklist of what to do, what to expect. But if we can surrender to the unknown, kind of, I imagine it is kind of like you kind of, you kind of walking into the darkness, but you’ve got a little.

flashlight, a little torch that you can, and you can see just in front of you, but you can’t see right into the future. You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. And to many people that can be scary and it might make you feel a bit anxious. But for me, I’m like, that’s so exciting that I don’t know what’s going to happen. I get to write it and figure it out. It’d be like going to a movie and knowing the end of the story. Like you want to go and be surprised by life. And I think that’s where.

life can get really exciting and parenting can get exciting because you can figure out what it’s going to be for yourself. So yeah, that’s kind of a long answer. But the answer is that there is no right or wrong. Certainly from a safety perspective, even now, the American Academy of Pediatrics and most medical organizations around the world are at least that they don’t support

bed sharing, but they recommend at least for babies to be in the same room as the parents for at least the first year of life to reduce the risk of SIDS. So yeah, at least room sharing. So even if you’re co -sleeping, but the baby might be on a separate surface in your room can make a big difference to safety.

Martin 

Yep. Yeah, super interesting. And on the research out there of, you know, co sleeping, how, how have they measured some of the studies and stuff that they’ve done? Like how have they sort of measured the impact of co sleeping versus not? And I guess what’s a little bit of the data or scientific findings that have come out of that sort of high level if you if you have them.

Tracy 

Yeah, well, Professor James McKenna, who I mentioned already, so he’s based in the States and Professor Helen Ball is in the UK and they’d be the two leading researchers. And like James McKenna has literally spent hours and hours and hours of night times bringing mothers and babies into his, he has a co -sleeping laboratory watching mothers and babies sleep.

And so some things that he’s noticed are like, he will measure, you know, when babies, so the mothers and infants sleep cycles will synchronize, will come together. And he’s measured within seconds who wakes up first, the mother or the infant through the night, because we know that babies wake up through the night, that that’s normal. And they will rouse,

within like three seconds of each other. And about 40 % of the time, it’s the mother waking up first and then the baby following. But the great thing that I found about co -sleeping and that is reported in the research is that if you have a baby sleeping next year, if you’re a breastfeeding mother and your baby wakes up through the night, the mother’s…

will wake up and will nurse their baby and then go back to sleep. But you’re waking up from a stage of your sleep cycle where you were ready to, you were ready to wake up. You’re in a light stage of sleep and you kind of wake up, but you’re not fully awake. You’re not turning the lights on and walking down the corridor and you’re trying to get a screaming baby back to sleep. You kind of wake up, nurse the baby and then just drift back off into sleep. And so this is one of the reasons why mothers who co -sleep and breastfeed are a lot more rested.

than mothers who are sleeping separately. So the closer you sleep as well to your baby, the more it supports breastfeeding. So if you have breastfeeding goals to get to a certain point, you’re much more likely to get there the closer you keep your baby. So Professor Helen Ball found that in her research, they measured literally the distance apart that mothers and babies were at nighttime. And the closer they were, the more

breastfeeding events happen through the night and the longer that mothers were likely to continue breastfeeding. His research also goes into, you know, like we synchronize our heart rates, baby’s temperatures through the night, their body temperature stays higher if they’re next to mom so they don’t lose as much heat as when they’re separate. If you put a baby on

if a mother or father puts a baby on their chest, if the baby’s too cold, it’s like within five minutes or less than that, the mother’s breasts can increase or decrease in temperature by plus two degrees Celsius or minus two degrees Celsius to warm up or cool down the baby. Like, it’s just incredible. And one of the reasons why they think

that sleeping next to your baby can actually help to keep them safe is that babies are still learning how to breathe and that they’re born early compared to other mammals. So they say that the nine months after a baby being born is a period of extra gestation. So it’s development outside the womb. So babies are only born with 25 % of their brain development.

And within the first three years of life, they get to 80%. So the experience and the wiring of their brains is 50 % dependent on genetics and 50 % dependent on the experiences that they have. So if we can give them really healthy experiences, really positive experiences, they’re going to develop a brain that goes out into the world and believes that the world is a safe place.

If you believe that the world is a safe place, then you can take for granted that relationships are healthy, that you can lean on people for support, that you can play and just focus on doing positive things in your life. If you grew up with negative experiences in that timeframe, and this is from an evolutionary perspective to keep us safe, like if you grew up in a war zone,

then you’re going to develop a brain that’s hypervigilant and anxious and looking for threats and you know, and you will have that brain for the rest of your life. And so the experiences that our babies have when they’re really young are super important. And so if we can give our babies that closeness and connection at nighttime, rather than doing things like sleep training,

leaving babies to cry alone, then we can really help them develop brains that are balanced and that have good mental health. So yeah, they’re just a few of the things. But one of the reasons that it can help to keep babies safe is that because our babies have brains that are so underdeveloped and their breathing systems aren’t fully developed yet, when a mother, so the…

the stimulus to breathe is carbon dioxide. And so when the mother is breathing out next to the infant, breathing carbon dioxide, it’s helping the infant know to breathe. So yeah, Professor James McKenna has measured this kind of stuff too. Yeah, like a trigger. So yeah, there’s so much, there’s so much in it. And it’s really amazing when you see science just kind of validating what you feel is right anyway.

Martin 

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, super interesting. No, it’s great to hear that there’s all these different studies that are happening around it. I was just curious to hear, yeah, which ways that we’re measuring it. So it’s really, really cool. Such a nice, yeah, way to bridge exactly, as you said, something that feels really natural to then see it’s, you know, in, let’s say the way that we like to measure things in the real world sometimes of, you know, getting the validation that we’re sort of seeking. So that’s really cool.

I guess as you’ve started to, when you started to gather all this knowledge and the experience yourself as a mother, like how did you start sharing? Like how did you start sharing this story? Like were you creating a blog and sort of, or just sharing with peers and stuff? Like how did this start to come out and you start to share all of this information that you had?

Tracy 

Yeah, it definitely started as a blog. So I just started writing and sharing my work as a blog. You know, probably like most people, you had a website that you just stuck together and looking back on it now, it’s like amazing where it came from. And yeah, I had a science background, so I didn’t really pay much attention in English class and just kind of tried to get through. And so I never really had.

much idea that I was creative or that I could write. And so I took some blogging, some courses on how to write blog posts and stuff like that. And I went in some blogging competitions and won a couple of them and just started to figure out that actually I could write even though I didn’t think I could. And it just became a bit of a passion. I did it initially just to…

just to share my experience and just to say to other moms who might be interested that there was another way to do things. So yeah, so it started out as a blog and it’s just growing from there. Well, when was I as a baby? So yeah, like 10 years ago. Yeah.

Martin 

Okay, okay. And then at what point was it where you started to go, hang on, a lot of people are interested in this. And what was the next iteration after that, after you sort of realized, wow, a lot of people are showing interest, where did it start to, what was the journey from there?

Tracy 

Yeah, I had a post that went back then when the Huffington Post was still a big deal. Not saying that it’s not now, but it was a real big deal back then. And I was guest posting on there and I had a post go viral on my site and I’d cross posted it to them and it went viral. And then they interviewed me and it suddenly got much bigger very quickly.

And that post was about simplifying childhood. And so pretty quickly after that, I kind of felt like I had to learn how to run before I learned how to walk. And so I wrote, I ended up writing an ebook that was sort of my first digital product and put that out there and started selling that. And yeah, and then started with some guides after that. And it just, once I’d done

Once I’d done those things, then we sort of invested in a better website and just slowly started building. With building on social media, back then it was more Facebook than Instagram. And then Instagram came along and yeah, started a community, like a Facebook community so that people could come and ask questions within a group. And yeah, it just started growing from there.

Martin 

Yeah, and what’s the current infrastructure at the moment as we see it today? What’s all the infrastructure that’s set up?

Tracy 

Yeah, I now do an annual summit. So I interview, I’m lucky enough to be able to interview parenting experts from around the world, people like Professor James McKenna and Helen Ball that I’ve talked about. And so I’m up to my fifth one this year. So that’ll be live in September. And I have digital courses now. So selling, I have a digital course about sleep and I also have a digital course about attachment.

And I have a membership community, a paid membership community that I started probably about 18 months ago. And that’s been fantastic. That’s something that I really enjoy. And then other sort of smaller digital products and guides, but really the biggest part of it are the courses and the annual summit and the membership. And then, yeah, continuing to grow on social media and…

Yeah. Getting people off social media onto my email and all that good stuff. And, yeah, yeah. So that’s kind of, that’s kind of where it’s at. Yeah, I am. I am. And, and I want to do that more again. I used to blog weekly when I first started, that was all I was doing, at the time. And so now it’s, it’s hard, isn’t it? It’s trying to create products and courses and

Martin 

And you’re still blogging? Still blogging as well? Yeah.

Tracy

Yeah, I record summits and stuff in the background and then to be able to keep doing that. But yeah, that’s what I really love is writing. Like that’s kind of playing for me rather than work, which some of the rest of it feels like. So yeah, I would love to free up space and to be able to blog more.

Martin 

So you got to start blocking on your calendar, pure writing space for the blog. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s super nice. It’s, I mean, a lot of the people that I’ve had on the podcast, so far, and a lot of the clients and stuff that we work with, generally they start from a YouTube or Instagram or Facebook page. So it’s cool to hear from your story of starting with a blog and…

Tracy

Yeah, I do. I do. I’ll put you in charge of my calendar.

Martin 

Just the medium, you know, that, that I guess works. Yeah, it’s a bit, well, do you still see, I don’t know. I guess are you still sort of active within the blogging world? Do you see, you know, new blogs, you know, coming up? Is it still quite a popular medium for a lot of people? I’m not super up to speed with it, but yeah, what’s, what’s happening in the world of blogging?

Tracy 

Yeah, this old school. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it’s, I don’t know, I kind of want to stick with it because I’m, I don’t, I think long form content is still, I, there’s nothing like sitting down and reading a book and, and I think sitting down and reading a 2000 word blog that someone has spent, you know, four or six weeks researching and writing holds so much more value than consuming.

a 15 second reel on or whatever, I’m not on TikTok, I refuse to get on there. On TikTok, I think human, I have much higher expectations for us. I don’t think that that’s a healthy way to go shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter form content. So.

Yeah, from that perspective, I think our attention is really worth protecting and preserving and the more that we fragmented with shorter and shorter form content, which you can’t get to the root of that. I don’t think you can really get the answers that you’re looking for in that. And I think if you’ve really got a problem that you want to solve, if you really want to understand

something then then I think it takes longer form content to be able to do that so I’m still hopeful that we will come back to that.

Martin 

How do you find the balance? Because, you know, like from, I guess, from your Instagram perspective, I guess, how have you found a balance between like, you know, tailoring a little bit more of that shorter form content to get people back over to your newsletter and blog and stuff like how have you, what’s been your strategy on Instagram then?

Tracy 

Yeah. Yeah, it’s really hard. It’s really hard. But I and yeah, so I mean, I still do longer. I do as long as I can on Instagram. You know, you can get quite a bit into a into a 10 slide carousel and and then with a post. But I try to direct people back to reading the blog post. And I had I had a post on Instagram.

blow up over the weekend and that’s exactly what it was. It was a blog post that I wrote probably seven years ago and I shared it as a carousel and directed said, you know, comment the word blog and I will send you a link to the blog. And it’s like been my biggest post on Instagram so far and it’s got like 80 ,000 likes and you know, 3000 comments.

Tracy 

And so to me, I’m like, yeah, I think that the algorithm that Meta constantly makes us play with if we want to. And I kind of, I have a love hate relationship with social media. I think it’s incredible for connecting people and for growing an audience and for, yeah, for, you know, I wouldn’t have the platform that I do without social media.

And so to an extent, I understand it’s, you know, they’re rules, but I think there’s ways around it too. so yeah, I just, I just try to stay true to what feels good to me. And I think, I think one of the things with social media is if you’re constantly changing to play with the algorithm and constantly trying to play by somebody else’s rules, I think that gets really tiring. And I’ve been on it long enough.

to have seen things change and come back and change and come back. So yeah, I think the biggest thing on social media is to do something that definitely, you know, you’ve got to play with the algorithm to an extent, but you’ve got to do something that feels sustainable to you. Because if you’re doing something that just feels exhausting, then you’re going to give up. So yeah, if you want to be on it for the long term, then you’ve got to figure out a way that.

that feels aligned with your values and what feels good to you.

Martin 

Yeah, no, I like that approach of you finding the medium that works well for you that’s sustainable for you in terms of blog writing. And then you’ve taken that and transformed it, tailored it to, you know, to Instagram. And that’s, you know, those two together have worked really, really well. Instead of you chasing the algorithm to get reach and, you know, trying to go viral was just more or less let’s take this really valuable blog post I have and, you know, put it into a carousel format and

you know, add the engagement on there of posting for the full blog posts, you know, get, get the algorithm going a bit that way. But yeah, it was, it’s starting from a very authentic value driven place. And I think that’s, that’s great to hear that it’s, you know, it’s working for you. So yeah, that’s, that’s, yeah.

Tracy 

Yeah, yeah, I try to. It’s not easy. You get like, like, why can’t I don’t want to do it this way? How do I do it? Try to figure it out. And I’m still, you know, I’m pivoting and trying to try to figure out ways to make it work. But yeah, yeah.

Martin 

Yeah. Well, sounds like you’re, it sounds like you’re on the right path at the moment. So that’s, that’s really good. I’m really curious to hear about, about the, the membership, how, how that structure is working. Cause you said that’s only 18 months old. Like tell us a bit, a bit about that. What’s happening inside the membership. we’d love to hear.

Tracy 

Yeah, yeah, fingers crossed, eh?

Yeah, well, I’d had things like courses and the summit is obviously once a year. And so I’d had these launches, you know, that you get income coming in, but then it drops down again. You’re waiting for the next launch and up and down, up and down. And so that was one of the reasons strategically why I wanted to bring a membership into it was for that more consistent monthly income.

And I also obviously wanted to be able to support my community in a more, in an ongoing way, in real time and sort of meet their needs where they needed it. So it started as a founding members launch, which was basically like not a whole lot inside the membership. And, you know, people come into it at the lowest possible rate and then really trying to build the membership that people needed. You know, what, what

members were saying they needed. So we do inside the membership, we do things like, we obviously have the community where members are supporting one another and I’m in there as well. Then I do things like we might have like short courses that are inside the membership. We have guest experts come in and give workshops.

I give workshops. We have a foundation series. So I’m leaning more and more into private podcasts, just because people are wanting to get off their devices. So delivering, delivering content for like the last four or five months, a lot of the content that I’ve been delivering has been through private podcast so people can listen to it on the go, just like they would any other podcast. And yeah, what else? Like cheat sheets, PDFs, like

things that people are showing that they have a need for. But we generally focus on a different topic each month. So like this month, we’re focusing on play. Last month, we were talking all about screens. The month before, we were talking about homeschooling. So there’s all different topics that we try to cover within the membership just to support parents with what they’re after.

Martin

Yeah, super cool. And what’s like the engagement like of the members? Are they sort of also getting information from each other sort of sharing? Or is there a lot of discussion and stuff happening in there? Yeah.

Tracy

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And that’s, and that’s where the real magic happens, right? It’s, when you can get members within a community leaning on each other. And, you know, I have a Facebook group and I think there’s like 24 ,000 people or something in there where you can’t possibly in these huge Facebook groups, you can’t get to know each other, but, but in a smaller community, you know, they know each other’s names. They know where they live. I know.

You know, we know when the next baby’s due. We know that, you know, someone’s daughter is really into, you know, into whatever she, like it’s, you get to know each other a lot more intimately. And so members get invested in each other and someone has a concern about something and other people dive in and say, yeah, you’re not alone, me too. And then you see members checking in on each other a week later.

So yeah, that’s where the real magic happens.

Martin 

Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah, that must be super nice for, you know, for parents at every stage, you know, if they’ve got doubts and stuff, just being able to go to a community. Of course, everyone’s, you know, got friends, family, well, hopefully, you know, friends and family around, but of course, being able to go to an online community for, you know, support on some of these really, you know, tougher topics or doubts or whatever it is. Yes, that must be so good for parents to have that, you know, just as a

as a supporting piece on their journey. So that’s really, really nice to hear. And what’s ahead for the next summit? You’ve got a summit coming up. Tell us a little bit more about that. Like how is that structured? What’s involved with the summit? We’d love to hear more about that as well.

Tracy 

Yeah, that’s coming up in September. So it’s a five day summit and there’s meant to be five speakers every day, but I kept interviewing too many people. So it’s probably going to be six speakers a day. There’s too many amazing people to talk to. And yeah, so it’s a free event. So people can come and listen to all of these different parenting experts free.

And then if they want to keep the summit afterwards, then they can upgrade and buy a pass. And then it comes with all these other goodies and bonuses and it comes with a private podcast so that they can listen to it that way as well. So yeah, so that’s in September.

Martin 

Cool, how did you come up with the summit idea? Where did that come from?

Tracy 

I think, I think summits are pretty common now, but well, when I started that they were still, there was still, there was still summits around then, but I’d just been interested in seeing other people doing them. And I guess the idea of a podcast back then felt a little bit more out of reach. And so I wanted a way to be able to speak to some of these people that were sitting on my bookshelves. And, and I just thought that that would be amazing to be able to talk to them and.

And then COVID happened and a lot of these speakers who were going to live events and stuff were suddenly, we were all stuck at home and Zoom, I think was just getting off the ground then. COVID made Zoom, didn’t it? And so, yeah, getting onto a summer was much easier to do then.

And I started to learn about Summit, so I took a course on how to run a Summit. And really the magic that can happen inside a Summit, if you’ve got a platform like this, is that it can give you credibility, because you’re kind of borrowing credibility from the people that you’re speaking with. So it elevates you within the industry. You can amplify your message so much faster, because if you’ve got

speakers also sharing the summit because they’re excited to be in it, then the message is getting out so much further. And you know, for 95 % of people that come along and watch it, it’s a free event. So it’s a lead magnet in itself. It’s a freebie. So you can grow your email list through doing that. And, and it’s just a yeah, it’s a fun way to give back.

And then obviously also it’s a product to generate income. So yeah, that’s sort of all the bonuses and things that come with running a summit. And now I would love to have a podcast, but yeah, try to figure out how that would transition. But yeah, that’s sort of how it came about.

Martin 

Yeah. How did the first one go? Cause that’s like quite a lot to set up for the first time. How was the first summit that you did a lot of learnings? Okay. Great.

Tracy 

Yeah, it went really well. Yeah, yeah, I was surprised. Like, I was lucky I already had a platform, like I already built a platform myself. Like I already had, you know, a bit of a social media following. And I already I had an email list and, and that kind of stuff. But yeah, it was definitely

It was a bit like that surrender piece that I was talking about in parenting. Like you’re in this dark room with a tiny torch and you’re like, I don’t know how this is going to go. It’s not like you’ve just done one episode and you’re putting it out and seeing how it’s going. Like you’ve done 25 or 30 interviews and yeah, investing in the background to make it happen and then closing your eyes and hoping that it’ll do well. So yeah, no, it went really well, the first one. So then I’ve kept doing them since then.

Martin 

Of course, of course. It’s super nice. And what platform do you use to host the summit out of Kiryoside?

Tracy 

we use Kujabi for, for the daily pages and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So we use.

Yeah, so like five videos for that day. Yeah, it just comes live at like 6 a my time. And yeah, and they’re just there for 24 hours. And so, yeah, so wherever people are in the world, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just 24 hour period. And yeah, and then that page gets taken down and then day two goes up and so on. Yeah.

Martin 

Got you. That’s a nice format. Yeah, really cool. Like, I mean, typically, you know, we’re always working with clients that have, you know, generally like an evergreen course or a membership or they do like a sort of one -off workshop or event and stuff, but never, we’ve never done a promotion for a summer, but it’s, yeah, it’s a really nice, that’s it. Yeah, just have not come across it yet.

I’m obviously seeing them and everything, but yeah, I was curious to hear the logistics of it, but it’s really, really cool. So if people want to learn about or register for the summit, where should they go?

Tracy 

Straight to my website. So just raisedgood.com. The registration page isn’t up yet. It’ll come up in August. But yeah, they can just go straight to my website and it’ll be on the homepage. People can navigate to it from there. Yeah, yeah, free to register and you can tune in, check it out, see if you like it. And yeah, and if people enjoy it, then they can upgrade.

It’s there for a week for everyone to go and listen to.

Martin 

Awesome. Awesome. Well, look, best of luck with the promotion for that one and the next one when you roll it out in September. But yeah, super nice to have you on. Thanks for for sharing all of your knowledge and information. Hopefully we’ve, yeah, inspired a few parents to go over and check out a lot of your content. And yeah, thanks. Thanks for having you. Thanks for being on the show.

Tracy 

pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Marty.