Sydney mum’s celebrity nannying business SleepBaker takes off

One Australian woman has managed to turn being a nanny into a lucrative business, as clients line up for her help.

One Australian woman has managed to turn being a nanny into a lucrative business making hundreds of thousands a year.

It’s a job usually associated with minimum wage but one Australian woman has managed to turn being a nanny into a lucrative business.

Anna Baker, 35, makes up to $1450 a day as an “elite nanny” and specialises in sleep training for infants. Since the Sydney mum-of-two launched her business, SleepBaker, 18 months ago, she has trained a pool of 22 staff members and set up her own sleep clinic.

“There was this need in the market,” Ms Baker told news.com.au. She said the business idea was born when people would approach her asking for help to get their children to sleep better.

“I can take pride [in the fact] I have saved many marriages along the way.”

Want to stream your news? Flash lets you stream 25+ news channels in 1 place. New to Flash? Try 1 month free. Offer available for a limited time only >

Anna Baker has a lot of celebrity clients.

She reckons she’s saved marriages with her job.

Many of Ms Baker’s clients are celebrities. She started to make a name for herself among A-listers years before launching her business, when she worked as a nanny for actor Russell Crowe in 2008.

From there, other celebrities enlisted her services.

She’s travelled the world as a nanny as she accompanied her clients on their holidays, staying in hotels ranging from $5000 to $14,000 a day.

“I’ve done many trips to Europe, and Thailand and Singapore,” she said. “When you’re travelling as an elite nanny, those people want the best.”

And as fears of Covid-19 set in, one set of parents flew Ms Baker by private plane to their residence in Adelaide to minimise the risks of getting sick.

She launched Sleep Baker last year.

She now has a staff of 22.

In fact, Ms Baker thinks the pandemic is one of the big reasons her business has flourished.

“During Covid a lot of people were finding it challenging to get people to come and help. I decided it was the best time for me to launch,” she said.

“The uncertainty of Covid made a lot of bad habits with babies – parents started co-sleeping with their child. Now that everybody is back to work, they want their lives back.”

With a background in medical science, and working alongside nurses and doctors, Ms Baker attempts to train problem sleepers so that the babies can learn to go back to sleep when they wake up to make it easier for parents.

“Babies want to sleep but when they wake up after a sleep cycle they don’t know how to get back to sleep. Our goal is to get them back to sleep.”

Parents can either pay her to look after their child for the night or come to her clinic for a consultation.

Anna Baker and her two children.

A single mum herself, Ms Baker understands the importance of a parent getting a good night’s sleep.

“An elite nanny can walk into a house and know what to expect,” she said. “You can look in the fridge, you can see it’s clean and cluttered, you can realise what their [the clients’] expectations are.

“If you’re making the school lunches, or even doing the groceries, if you see something that needs to be done, do it.”

Her business is now booked out until the middle of next year and several other staff will also be travelling overseas with clients in that time.

Ms Baker says training other staff how to be elite nannies has been a game-changer for her to spend more time with her own children.