EP 49: How Orly Muscat  Built a Booming Babysitting Brand Parents Can’t Stop Talking About

What does it really take to grow a values-led business that parents rave about?

In this inspiring chat, host Chantal Gerardy sits down with Orly Muscat, founder of Coastal Babysitters, to explore how building a business grounded in trust, connection and care can lead to sustainable growth and over 1,200 glowing reviews.

Whether you’re starting out or scaling up, this episode is packed with motivation and practical wisdom.

Here’s what we cover:

• How Orly turned an overseas idea into a thriving Australian brand
• The role of trust and standards in building a standout service
• Vetting, training and creating consistency with a growing team
• Why systems, values and “doing the yucky stuff” matter for real growth
• The power of word-of-mouth and customer experience in marketing

Connect with Orly Muscat and Coastal Babysitters:
Discover more about Orly’s mission and the trusted team behind Coastal Babysitters:
🌐 Visit coastalbabysitters.com.au
📘 Follow on Facebook: @coastalbabysitters
📸 Join the community on Instagram: @coastal_babysitters

Download our FREE Guide here: https://onlinebusinessmarketing.com.au/free-downloads/  

Listen here: http://themeaningfulmarketingpodcast.com/  

Website: http://onlinebusinessmarketing.com.au/  

 

Transcript:

 

 This podcast is brought to you by PodPro Australia,

 

Social media, Google, email, marketing systems, website traffic, and the endless content creation that comes with marketing. It’s overwhelming, right? Say goodbye to endless stress and hello to Clarity with the Meaningful Marketing podcast. In this podcast, I will share with you fast and free practical methods to help you manage, monetize, and market your business, all infused with a healthy dose of motivation.

 

Let’s do this. Hey, this is Chantal Gerardy from the Meaningful Marketing Podcast, and today I’m here with Gerardy from Coastal Babysitters. I’m so super excited to have her here today ’cause we are going to be talking about some crucial, important factors within a business, and that is customer service.

 

Being values driven and running a successful business and making sure that we really prioritize those key values in a business. So thank you so much for joining us, Orly. 

 

Thanks very Chantal. I’m so excited to be here today. So 

 

I’m sure everyone wants to know how you started your business. How did you start our babysitting business?

 

I’ve seen you in the networking circles for like years. Wow. And both of us. Both of us grew our businesses, which is cool. But I’m curious to know, like how did it actually start? Were you were a babysitter? Was it before your kids? Tell us the story. 

 

Yeah, sure. So I’ve always had, I’ve always known from a young age that I wanted to do something that involved working with kids.

 

So I thought I wanted to be a teacher. Straight from school. I went to uni and I started doing teaching, and then I did my first prac and the teacher handed me a notebook that was so thick and said, that’s a lesson plan you have to do every term. And I was like, that is not for me. And I ran the other way and I decided to travel.

 

So travel was always a big part of me and I didn’t go back to uni at the moment. So then when I had my first daughter. I was like, alright, now I need to do something for me. I don’t just wanna be just, I love being a mom obviously, but I needed to do something for me as well at home. So I thought, you know what, I’m gonna be a swim teacher, because I always liked seeing kids smile and doing things that make them happy.

 

So I went and got my swim teacher. I did the course, and then when Ella, my youngest, my eldest was six months old, we decided to go to Canada, hubby and I and her for a ski season. So when we went over there, there was a babysitting agency over there and I was like, oh, I might just do this to get a bit of extra money.

 

So I started babysitting for them and I was like, oh, this is a good idea. I could do this back in Australia, especially on the Gold Coast because it’s such a tourist place. So I went and approached the owner of the company and said, I’m looking, I might start this when I get back to Australia, can you show me how it all works?

 

And she sat with me and did it. So I was like, yep, that’s what I’m gonna do. And I’m an all or nothing person. So I went back to Australia, Ella was one, and little did I know I was about to be pregnant with a second one. And I just started building my business. Going, yeah, just starting. From nothing.

 

And yeah, it just grew from there nine years later. So 

 

what would you say were some of the biggest learnings or challenges or obstacles that you had when you first started your business? 

 

So I feel like in the last nine years there’s been lots of challenges. Like we’ve had covid, we’ve had the, like the interest rates.

 

We’ve had lots of different big challenges. But starting my business just to start with, especially for babysitting, getting the credibility because you have to build trust. No one’s gonna hire you as a babysitter straight away without having trust. So a way to find a way to just be known really fast, to build the trust fast to start your business.

 

’cause you’re like, how do you get trust if you don’t get the clients first? So I basically just did every community event. I could get really well known in the community. Social media was a really good way to get front and it was a lot easier when I started nine years ago as well. So yeah, I think just building the trust was.

 

The heart was probably the biggest challenge to start with. 

 

Yeah. And now you don’t actually do the babysitting. You’ve actually go and you find babysitters to work for your company. Yeah. And then you also have to then find people who need babysitting done so that you can then service the babysitters.

 

So tell us a little bit about how that all works or how you even got into all of that. 

 

Sure. So I actually never did babysitting to start with. I always knew I wanted to manage it it’s about finding, it’s about having the right amount. It’s tricky ’cause it’s a two, it’s a two way street because you need to have the right amount of babysitters and clients to service enough clients for the babysitters to get enough work and enough work for the ba.

 

Yeah. You know what I’m trying to say? Yeah. Enough for both and grow them at the same time. ’cause if you grow one without the other, always letting the other person. Down. So yeah, just when I started off, I just got a small team of babysitters together, and then as my company built, I just got more and more babysitters on board.

 

But it’s so important to have the right babysitters. Like I can’t stress how important it is because that is, that’s basically our product and our service without them. Without them being amazing, we’re not gonna build trust and build a great brand. 

 

Yeah. So I know that it’s very important for you that you know that your business is values driven and it’s very important for you that you offer a good service and that customer service is really important to you.

 

So tell us a little bit about how you go about vetting your babysitters, and then I also know that you’ve. Put together a, like a course or an onboarding course to ensure that you have a standard or an operational standard that the babysitters can follow, so that you can actually give good customer service through your babysitters.

 

Yeah, a hundred percent. What I did is I was like, I’m a mom myself. I feel like I know what a lot of moms want and need, so I created minimum standards for my babysitters. So there’s non-negotiables that have to be done at every single job for them to, so I know that, at a minimum level of service, customers are always gonna get the same quality.

 

So all of our sitters have to have their obviously Blue Card First Aid and cprs, but they also have to be either parents themselves. Or have worked in a, like a child related role for at least three years. That way I know they’ve got a, at least a certain quality and a certain skillset to, to work with kids.

 

So that already puts them at a certain level and then we interview them in person. Because I think a lot of the time just seeing credentials, anyone can write anything on paper and you can see them, but I need to. Get to know their personalities and we’re really big on connection and fun, so I need to know that they’re gonna go and be professional.

 

So I need to see all of those qualities as well when they come in for an interview. And once I know they have that’s when we’re happy to have them. And then they go on and do our training and that’s when we’re happy to send them out to other people’s houses. And I always say if I’m not, if I wouldn’t trust them with my own kids, there’s nev no chance that I’d send them out to other people’s families.

 

’cause that’s really important to me. 

 

I absolutely loved it. There were a few key things there that you already spoke about, and the first one was is that when you were there at the babysitting place in Canada, you spoke about how you asked the babysitter agency to talk to you about what you could do, and I love that ’cause the ASK principle is something that I teach all the time and not enough people.

 

Ask questions. They don’t have the courage to go and actually ask for opportunities, ask for explanations, and I absolutely love that you did that. ’cause that’s a great principle. The other thing that you spoke about is quality assurance and customer service. And I think not enough people place enough emphasis on that, especially if you’re looking for return work all the time.

 

People are constantly going out looking for new leads, rather than looking at. Who they’ve got, like who they’ve already had as a client and how they can better serve them and what they can do better. So I love so many of those key things that you said. Now, the other thing here that you said was that.

 

You weren’t a business owner. You hadn’t even studied being a business owner, and now here you are creating this massive company Now because you’re in Brisbane, you’re in Gold Coast, you’re in Byron Bay. I know you’ve got an app coming out as well, so you’re expanding Australia wide. So you’ve grown this massive business.

 

And I also know that in order to grow a massive business like that, you’ve gotta go and do the yucky things that people don’t want to do. So can you talk to me about some of the yucky things, and I know probably systems is probably one of those things. It usually is systems marketing. Yes. Automations, onboarding, all these things.

 

Talk to me about the yucky things that you had to, that you had to do in order to grow a business. 

 

Oh, there’s so many things I’ve had to do that I don’t enjoy, but. I also love learning, so I’ve never thought of it as not enjoying it ’cause it’s for something I love and get to do every day. I’ve never thought of it as yucky.

 

The only things that I find yucky personally is if I have to tell a team member, talk to ’em about something that hasn’t gone right. I don’t like the HR side of things ’cause I, I’m a very people pleaser and I like to make everybody happy, so I do struggle. With having to have hard conversations with my team and clients as well, if something happens.

 

So that’s been a bit of a yucky learning curve that I’ve had to learn, but it’s also comes with a lot of growth. So I’ve really enjoyed the whole journey. I think my team, I. No, that I think I’m an ideas person and quite chaotic. So my whole business from the start was built by chaos. You can imagine when I ran it all by myself.

 

So my team are still fixing things nine years later that I’ve created in chaos from the start, which work for me, which don’t work for a lot of people. So that’s a bit of a, something I’ve had to learn and grow through. Sometimes they’re like, you can stay away, work from home today. ’cause when I come in it’s just like this whirlwind and they’re like, what has just happened?

 

But yeah, we are getting there and like I said, we are learning and growing every day. So even those yucky things that aren’t fun, I do enjoy them because I get to learn and. Learn and I do love 

 

to learn. Oh, so many good things there as well. So I dunno if you can tell, but Orly is ADHD, like I am probably like blah blah blah, blah, blah.

 

All over the place. And we are ideas things. But I think, I always say I know the beast I am. And if you know who you are as a business. Owner and you know the qualities that you bring, but you also know the potential disruptions that you can bring to your business. You can work around them, yeah. So for example, if you come in and you give a thousand ideas, you also know then to step away and allow the team to go pick those things up. And you also know then to make sure that you have the right team in place, who firstly can work with that type of person. And secondly, have the capabilities to go and actually clean up after you.

 

’cause my team does the same. Yeah. Definitely they love it when I go away and I present whenever I’m presenting, they’re like, yes, 

 

we’ve got a week of calm, we’ve got a week 

 

of calm. We can actually go and put everything into structure and in a place or whatever. And I come back and it’s all nice, but it is important that you, the right team around you can work with that personality type.

 

That is fundamental. ’cause not everyone can. Absolutely. And then they also enjoy that. That’s one of their skills. They enjoy picking up the stuff as well. So yeah, definitely. 

 

I think it’s important as well that you. Open with your team and they, ’cause they know you’re like that, but if they know that you laugh about it and can have a laugh about it, they’re not sitting there going, oh, I’m it’s all open and we can, it’s, yeah.

 

It’s all a laugh together. 

 

Yeah. So one of the things also that I know about you is when it comes to your marketing and with your customer service, everything for you is really authentic. It’s really values driven, and you’re all into that connection, and that’s how you ensure you get those word of mouth referrals and repeat customers.

 

Yeah. So how do you, what are your values? How do you ensure that they stay within the business? 

 

Yeah, so our biggest values are trust, obviously support. So just having that human connection and I never wanna lose that to the digital world. Yes, it’s great to be able to book online and do all those things, but I think having.

 

The human connection and having someone to talk to if you’re feeling a bit nervous or if something happens, always having, and it’s, I don’t know. It’s also, I find it’s a way you keep customers. They wanna come back to you because they feel like they get to know you. When it just goes all onto the digital world for something like dealing with children and you wanna know that you’re talking with a real human.

 

So support, connection, fun. We’re all about bringing the fun. So we don’t, you don’t. When you have a babysitter, you don’t wanna just them to turn up and sit there on the phone and put the kids in front of the tv. That’s not what it’s about. You want them to bring, we always bring activities and make sure that they’re, have just as much fun as you are having out on your date night.

 

We want you to get back and they tell you all about this amazing night you’ve had, and also say mom, can you go out again? So that might, we can have the babysitter back because how much easier is that then, for you as well, to be like, oh yeah, sure. I’ll do that. And then everyone’s happy. So yeah, just excellence, like a high standard excellence and freedom.

 

’cause it’s important. So important for parents to have their own freedom to do things and find the time that they love, whether it is a date night and reconnect with hubby, or just go to the beach and reading a book. So many things, but you definitely need your own time to be able to be a better mom and a better husband and wife and person for other, for everyone in your family.

 

So business owners, if you haven’t already done this, I highly encourage you to go and work out what your values are in your business, whether or not they’re your values for yourself, for your team, for your customers, or for your business. Make sure that you have them so that you can at least have a standard that you can look at.

 

The other thing here that I really love is the fact you constantly look at. Yourself and you go, what would I want as a mother? And what would I want to see as a mother and as a parent? And then you really pay attention to your customer and look at what their pain points are and how they’re feeling.

 

And I think that’s really important when coming up with your business model that you completely understand your customer well. So I think you’ve done that really well. 

 

Yeah, I think it really helps because I am a mom and I can put myself in the shoes of water, mom. Would like. And also I off, I do use my own babysitters and when I come home and the babysitter has completed all of my minimum standards that I’ve put together, I’m just like, I often say to my husband, wow, that’s such an amazing service ’cause you just feel so good.

 

The kids are so happy and I’m really proud of what I’ve put together and what I’ve created. So it’s a really good way that I can always, it’s quality assure and test out my own service as well. So yeah, it’s. 

 

So don’t have any more children. 

 

No enough, freeze enough. Love my three kids. But it definitely keeps me busy.

 

So talk to us a little bit about what you think your points of difference are in the marketplace. Because like my daughters, I’ve got. Three daughters and my daughters have all studied childcare. They’ve all got their blue cards and whatever, and they do babysit and they nanny, they’ve done a lot of work within the church and helping out with babysitting and nannying and that.

 

Yeah. But for you need to basically try and convert those babysitters and get those babysitters to come over to you so that they get guaranteed work and all of that. Yeah. And then of course, work. What would you say your points of difference is in the marketplace? 

 

Yep. So for families, I know that it’s two pronged.

 

It’s two sides. Yeah. So for families it’s definitely, we set the standard of almost regulating babysitter babysitters. So you know that. Any of our sitters are gonna have all the qualifications because you don’t actually, when you could just jump on Facebook, but you don’t know who or what you’re gonna get.

 

And I, I can assure you sometimes who you think you’re going to get. And then when they, somebody turns up, could be two different things. From when you’re going through us that, they’ve got their a bubbly, fun personality. They know what to do in any situation because they’ve had at least three years experience, and that’s a big one from getting, say a 15-year-old is what if something goes wrong?

 

You don’t know if there’s, or your kid gets sick or they have an accident or things can happen. It’s kids we’re talking with. So they they can, they know how to deal with things. It different things that come up at any time. So yeah, so I’d say just the experience, and the level of profession that you get.

 

And for the babysitters, all you have to do is basically. Once you go through the process, you can just accept the jobs that suit you, so you have lots of jobs that are available. You don’t have to put yourself out there, you don’t have to do your own marketing. We do all of that for you. You just have to make sure that you concentrate on doing the best job that you can and.

 

You get to work one-on-one with kids. A lot of kids, a lot of babysitters that work in the childcare industry, they come to us and say, look, we just wanna do babysitting now because there’s just so much paperwork involved. We just wanna get back to the roots and really just do one-on-one care with the kids so we can give babysitters that opportunity to have that.

 

I think it’s such a great initiative. And the funny thing is that so many people when they’re looking in Facebook groups and that for babysitters, they go, I’m looking for somebody cheap that will look after my child. Yeah. And I’m like, ready? Yeah. Yeah. It’s I know you could.

 

Stand how you could maybe get a cheap cleaner, but you don’t wanna get a cheap babysitter. That’s right. 

 

It’s your children and it’s your pride and joy. And I know it’s always human nature to wanna try and save money where you can, but it’s, you are almost paying, it’s like insurance. You’re always almost paying for if.

 

Something, the worst situation or something does come up that’s unexpected. You’ve got somebody there that can handle the situation at any time. 

 

Yeah. I think people will pay whatever, if there is that, there’s that trust and if there’s, that credibility and there’s that assurance and professionalism behind it, hundred percent, they will pay for anything.

 

So I think that’s great. So you said you get a lot of word of mouth referrals. We do. And your business originally started, so talk to us about, how that. How that happens. Generally, 

 

I’ve grown my business, I’d say 80% by word of mouth referrals, just parents, just having such a good experience and then sharing it to their friends.

 

’cause you know what moms are like, moms like to talk and moms like to recommend. And you trust other moms when they’ve used services yourself. I know. I do it for a lot of things. So yeah, just by providing a good service and having amazing babysitters that the parents trust and have experienced, they just share it.

 

And then we, that’s how we’ve grown our business. 

 

And what about reviews? ’cause I know that you’ve got an yes in a huge amount of reviews as well. 

 

We do. We’ve got over 1,200 five star reviews from Happy Families, so that’s really exciting. Every time we get a five star review, our whole office gets so excited.

 

So yeah, we really appreciate and we look, we always look at all the feedback and we’re always improving. It’s great to know how many families there are out there that love us and use our service means a lot. 

 

So I think that all, like those word of mouth referrals and the reviews that you have, I think all of that can be attributed towards the fact that you offer such great customer service.

 

Yeah, for sure. And we just generally passionately care. Myself and my whole team we really love what we do. 

 

Yeah. So bringing the care factor back into it, I think, which is so good. So you’ve got an app on the way. So tell us a little bit about the app and what the app’s going to do for you. Yeah, 

 

so the app is going to give parents the functionality to actually jump on, make a booking themselves, and track where it’s at.

 

So if the job’s been filled, ’cause at the moment. We’re still using a system that if you’ve booked a babysitter, we let you know that you’ve, it’s been filled, but if you miss the email or something, it’s so easy just to miss it. So you’re gonna be able to jump on there. You’re gonna be able to book your babysitter, you’re gonna be able to request your favorite sitters back.

 

But we are always gonna be there in the office as well. We can, we’re still gonna be able to take the bookings, ’cause like I said, that’s so important, but it’s just gonna give us the capability to handle way more bookings and potentially start expanding into other cities as well. 

 

Okay. So tell us some of the yucky things about developing an app.

 

Oh my god. I think I’ve been doing it for six years now. The app. Oh, but not this app. Yeah. I’ve started, I think I’ve gone through, I’ve started and stopped about four times with different people. Yeah. And I finally found an amazing developer. We’ve probably a year and a half to two years now in the making for this one.

 

And we’re at the testing stage just trying to get out, it’s all, everything that’s in your head to run smoothly and work and. Because it takes so long to build. By the time you actually get to the testing stage, you’re like, oh, we don’t do that anymore. So it’s like just never ending. It just takes way longer than expected.

 

And everyone always said the budget blows out too. Yeah, that’s, yeah. I can’t, don’t wanna go down there, but it’s gonna be so fulfilling and so worth it and I can just see how much it’s gonna help everybody once it’s there. It’s more exciting. It’s actually, it’s a bit of a scare fear factor as well when it’s actually ready.

 

’cause then you’ve gotta get it out there and know that it’s gonna work. Yeah. Yeah, it’s exciting. 

 

So if you had to leave some inspiration for aspiring business owners right now, so business owners right now might be out there struggling away at the moment. What sort of motivational, meaningful something could you offer them right now?

 

Keep going and don’t doubt yourself because they’re probably the only person that. Is blocking you. Moving forward is yourself. If you tell yourself you can do it pro any progress is better than no pre progress. Just keep going. You’ll get there, and consistency is key. Just keep showing up, keep going and believe in yourself.

 

Yeah. Excellent. And what I know from you as well, you’ve always invested in good coaches. 

 

Yes, definitely I have. 

 

Awesome. Thanks so much. So where can people connect with you 

 

so they can jump onto Facebook? They can find us at coastal babysitters or on Instagram, coastal babysitters, or also under myself at Orly Muscat.

 

Yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. This is the Meaningful Marketing Podcast, and if you haven’t already, please subscribe and leave a comment below and give us a rating. Thanks for listening in. Meaningful marketing is all about you, making your marketing meaningful.

 

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