Woman Left Nursing to Be a Professional Baby Namer: A Look Into Her Intensive $300 Consultation (Exclusive)

Colleen Slagen left her job as a nurse practitioner in 2022 to launch her own business working with expecting parents

• Colleen Slagen — virally known as Naming Bebe on social media — left her job as a nurse practitioner in 2022 to pursue her lifelong passion: baby names.
• The mom of three is an expert on naming statistics and emerging moniker trends. She takes on expecting parents as clients for $300 to $400 consultations before offering her suggestions.
• Slagen recently penned her expertise to paper for her new book, Naming Bebe: An Interactive Guide to Choosing the Baby Name You Love, which is set to release on June 10.

Choosing a baby name isn't a decision to be taken lightly. Parents are tasked with giving their children the first piece of an identity, and there are often several factors to consider — family traditions, a desire for a sibling moniker for compatibility or a favorite letter to lead.

Then, with all of that in mind, parents might encounter certain dilemmas. Does that sound right with our last name? Will the baby have a cute nickname? Is there a different spelling we should use? Is that something people can easily pronounce?

Is Elsa too Frozen? Can we really go with Karen in this social climate? And how can I possibly get my partner to agree with me on any of my favorite names?

Suddenly, stress clouds the process. But there's no need to panic. Instead of running up and down an ever-growing list of names, defer to an expert. Enter Colleen Slagen, a professional baby name consultant who has spent her whole life consumed by the name game.

Related: Top 10 Baby Name Trends for 2025 Revealed — and One of Them Is Inspired by Crocs

"Everywhere I look in my house — on a coupon, on my kid's calendar, on a scrap piece of paper — there's just names everywhere," Slagen tells PEOPLE exclusively. "On my computer, I just have all these sticky notes that are just name lists. Next to me, I have a notebook full of name lists, I'm always brainstorming names."

Starting from a young age, she peeled through baby name books and kept journals where she jotted down her favorites. When her friends started having kids, she did some unofficial consultations, and she always joked about taking her passions to the professional stage. However, the idea didn't take full form until 2022, when she took maternity leave from her job as a nurse practitioner.

At first she launched a website and posted it to local mom groups on Facebook. In that first year, she only took on a few clients, but she also started posting about it on TikTok and Instagram. It wasn't long before her videos went viral that she decided to quit her nursing job in favor of becoming a full-time advisor to parents in search of the perfect name.

"It was sort of like I met the moment. It was right place, right time. Baby naming was starting to have a moment," Slagen reflects. "Pretty quickly, that just increased my business a ton."

In addition to launching her professional consulting service, she also authored her book Naming Bebe: An Interactive Guide to Choosing the Baby Name You Love, which is currently available for pre-order ahead of its release on June 10.

Slagen's work is usually conducted on a Zoom call with the family, though she offers a "bite-sized" option if parents just want her to weigh in on a list of already established options. She calls this shorter version "Name 911," and her briefer input is priced at $50.

@namingbebe

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