The Carry-On Collective is more than another group chat or a library of content you are left to work through alone. It is an ongoing community where babywearing educators and professionals can ask questions, share experience, follow conversations in the field, and receive thoughtful input on the work in front of them.

An Ongoing Discord Community
Discord is where much of the everyday COC connection happens. Members ask questions, share resources and opportunities, request feedback, and continue conversations between live sessions. Some weeks are lively, some are quieter, and you can join in whenever you have something to ask or contribute.

Weekly Community Roundups
Weekly COC emails gather the conversations, questions, resources, and ideas that have surfaced in the community. They help you find what is most relevant without having to follow every Discord thread in real time. The topics come directly from what members are discussing and encountering in their work.

Weekly Goal Check-Ins
Our weekly check-ins give members a place to name a few realistic goals, share what they are working on, and come back with an update. They are an invitation to stay connected to your work, not another system you are expected to keep up with perfectly.

Biweekly Collab & Connect Sessions
Twice a month, members, Joanna, and the CBWS team come together live to talk through current questions, unfinished ideas, possible collaborations, industry conversations, and challenges arising in education or business. There is no presentation to prepare for and no need to arrive with a perfectly formed topic.

The Content Vault and Podcast Archive
Members have access to the COC Content Vault and the complete Business of Babywearing podcast archive. These resources cover teaching, business, communication, planning, and many of the practical questions that come with building a sustainable place for yourself in this field.

Quarterly Planning and Reflection
Around each quarterly transition, Joanna leads the Collective through a review and planning process. Members look at what worked, acknowledge what changed, decide what is worth continuing, and make a realistic plan for the season ahead. Our year-end reflection and new-year kickoff give us additional time to close one year thoughtfully before charging into the next with seventeen open tabs.

Guest Conversations and Workshops
COC also hosts occasional guest conversations, workshops, and collaborative opportunities shaped by what members are asking about and what is happening in the babywearing field.

CBWS News and Opportunities
Members are often among the first to hear about upcoming CBWS workshops, trainings, courses, events, and opportunities to participate or collaborate.

You are not expected to attend every call, read every thread, or keep up with everything happening inside the Collective. Participate when you have the time, step back when life gets busy, and return when you are ready. The community will still be here.

Ready to Join?
If the Carry-On Collective feels like the community you have been looking for, we would love to welcome you.

Join the Carry-On Collective

The Carry-On Collective may be a good fit if you work in or around babywearing and want people you can think alongside as that work changes.

Do you want peers who understand babywearing work?
It can be difficult to explain this work to people outside the field. COC gives you a place to connect with educators and professionals who understand the teaching, the families, the industry, and the strange combination of practical and business questions that come with it. From confusing carrier guidance and workshop ideas to email campaigns and sick kids, very little is considered off topic.

Do you want somewhere to bring real, current questions?
COC is not built around a fixed curriculum. The conversations come from what members are actually encountering in their work. You can bring an unfinished service idea, a teaching question, a complicated client situation, an industry change, or something you saw online that made you pause.

Would you value perspective from people with different experiences?
Some COC members are newly trained. Others have worked in babywearing education, retail, manufacturing, or community support for many years. Members benefit from that collective experience while also contributing their own knowledge and perspective.

Do you want support without another rigid commitment?
You can join the weekly goal check-ins, attend the biweekly Collab & Connect sessions, follow conversations in Discord, or use the podcast archive and Content Vault at your own pace. You are not expected to attend everything or keep up perfectly.

Are you willing to participate as well as receive?
COC works because members ask questions, share resources, offer feedback, and respond when someone else needs help. You do not need to be the loudest person in the room, but the Collective is most valuable when members are willing to be part of the conversation.

What if you are already experienced?
COC is not only for people who are just beginning. Experience does not eliminate the need for peers, thoughtful conversations, fresh perspectives, and a place to keep learning. Longtime educators bring a great deal to the community and still find value in what others contribute.

COC may not be the right fit if...
You are looking for a certification course, a step-by-step business program, private coaching, or a community where you can download a few resources without engaging with anyone else. Those are all valid things to want, but they are not what the Collective is designed to provide.

If you want an ongoing community that understands this work, gives you room to participate in a way that fits your life, and values what you bring to the conversation, we would love to welcome you.

The podcast is about Delivering Content for Modern Busy Business Owners.

• We launched this episodic podcast in May 2025 to provide flexibility for our busy members - listen wherever you are. Follow our intrepid characters as they navigate work and life.
• Only available to Carry-On Collective members.

• We release bi-weekly on a wide range of content. Marketing. Networking. Financial. And More! But always in a story format, it's just more fun that way!

• We're here for you, and for the community. We tailor our content to our members' needs. The interviews build on our workshops, and our guests are there because you asked for them. 

Yes, you can cancel your Carry-On Collective membership at any time. We’ll be sorry to see you go, but we will not make you schedule a call, explain yourself, or complete a 47-step cancellation escape room.

Just log into your CBWS portal, open your Account Settings, and manage your subscription from there. It really is only a few clicks.

A few not-so-fun but important details before you go:

Once your COC membership access ends, you will also lose access to the COC Discord community, Collab & Connect sessions, the Content Vault, the Business of Babywearing podcast archive, member emails, and other COC resources.

Canceling COC will not delete your general CBWS account or affect any other CBWS courses and materials you own. We are not taking the whole portal away with us.

Your current membership rate will not follow you into the future. If you decide to come back, you’ll need to wait until the doors open again and rejoin at the rate available at that time. We don’t want to hide that detail in the fine print.

If something about COC is not clicking for you, we would genuinely like to hear about it. Sometimes there may be something we can help with or improve. Sometimes life, schedules, and budgets simply change, and it is time to step away.

Either way, there are no hard feelings. We’ll miss you in the group, and we’ll keep rooting for you from outside Discord.

The Carry-On Collective is our community membership. It is an ongoing place to stay connected to the babywearing field, bring questions, hear different perspectives, share resources, and learn alongside other educators and professionals.

Inside COC, support happens through the Discord community, biweekly Collab & Connect sessions, weekly community roundups, quarterly planning and reflection, and the resources available in the Content Vault and podcast archive.

It is collaborative by design. You may receive input from Joanna and the CBWS team, but you will also learn from members with different kinds of experience. COC is not a course, certification, or private coaching program.

Our other programs offer different kinds of support:

• CBWS courses and workshops are structured learning experiences. They have specific topics, materials, and learning goals, and some lead to a certificate or professional credential. COC does not replace that formal education.
• The Working Group is a smaller, more intensive group-coaching program for experienced business owners who are actively working through a change, challenge, or period of growth. Members meet weekly with Joanna for more consistent strategic feedback, individual attention, and follow-through.
• Private Coaching is one-on-one work with Joanna. The time is focused entirely on your particular goals, decisions, challenges, and next steps. Availability is limited because, unlike Joanna, the calendar refuses to create additional hours in the week.
• The Working Group and Private Coaching include COC membership because the Collective remains the shared community and home base between those more focused sessions.

One option is not automatically better than another. They simply serve different purposes.

Think of COC as the big table. You can bring a question, hear several perspectives, join an ongoing conversation, and contribute what you know. The Working Group is a smaller weekly work session with greater continuity and coaching. Private Coaching is a one-on-one conversation focused entirely on you.

Not every question requires private coaching. Sometimes what you need is a peer who has encountered something similar, a thoughtful conversation, or a place where you do not have to explain the entire babywearing field before asking the actual question.

That is what the Carry-On Collective is here to provide.

The short answer is that Facebook groups are easy to join, but they are not always easy to use as an ongoing working community.

In a Facebook group, everything lands in one feed. A useful question can quickly disappear beneath newer posts, replies become difficult to find, and Facebook ultimately decides which conversations appear when you log in. If you do not see something when it is first posted, you may never know it happened.

COC conversations cover a lot of ground, including teaching questions, carrier discussions, business ideas, events, opportunities, resources, and requests for feedback. Discord lets us give those conversations separate channels while keeping everything inside one community. It is much easier to return to a discussion, find an older resource, or go directly to the topics that matter to you.

It also creates some separation from your regular social media feed. You can open Discord because you want to check in with COC without first traveling past twelve reels, three advertisements, a distant relative’s vacation photos, and an argument you did not ask to witness.

Is Discord perfect? No. It can feel unfamiliar at first, and the default notification settings may be a little enthusiastic. We’ll help you get settled, show you where everything lives, and help you adjust the notifications so the app is useful without constantly yelling at you.

You also do not need to be in Discord every day or follow every conversation. The channels will still be there when you return, and our weekly COC emails help point you toward the discussions you may want to catch up on.

Once you get used to it, Discord gives COC a more organized, searchable, and intentional home. And yes, it is also free of ads, which certainly does not hurt.

Yes. We are not interested in treating exhaustion as a business strategy.

That does not mean we are against ambition, growth, or working hard when something matters. It means we do not believe you need to be constantly producing, launching, posting, and doing more just to prove that you are serious about your work.

Some seasons are busy. In others, success may look like improving one service, following through on a collaboration, or simply staying connected while the rest of life requires more from you.

COC is here to help members decide what is actually worth their time, make realistic plans, and adjust when those plans meet real life. Accountability should help you move forward, not make you feel guilty for being a person.

We want members to build businesses and programs that grow in ways they can actually maintain. You should not have to lose yourself, neglect the people you care about, or live in a permanent state of urgency to create meaningful work.

Nope! You do not need to be a Foundations graduate to join.

Several COC members are not Foundations graduates, so you will not be the mysterious outsider who missed the secret handshake. Foundations grads may share some familiar language and teaching approaches, but everyone does not need to arrive through the same door.

Maybe you trained with another organization. Maybe your work is in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, doula support, or a community program. Maybe you are still figuring out how babywearing will fit into the work you want to do. All of those perspectives can add something useful to the Collective.

In fact, joining COC while you are building a business, reviving a babywearing group, or creating a new program can give you people to ask before you spend six weeks making a very beautiful plan that does not actually work.

One important note: COC is not a secret back door to certification. It does not replace professional training or teach everything covered in Foundations, Newborn Babywearing, or our other educational programs.

What it does give you is a community to ask questions, explore ideas, understand the field, and apply what you learn through formal training. If you decide to take Foundations later, you will already have people around you who understand what you are trying to build.

And if you trained somewhere else, that is genuinely fine. Bring what you learned with you. A room where everyone followed the exact same path would not make for a very interesting Collective anyway.