Special Note: I started a series called How to Work at Home and Homeschool in April. I somehow thought it was a good idea to take on a big series right as I was going on vacation with my family, then rolling into speaking at the Teach Them Diligently Conventions. My good intentions got the best of me and life overran my series plans. Lord willing I’m going to get back to sharing more about working at home, while homeschooling. Today we have a guest post from my friend Caroline from Deborah & Co on the subject.
I never intended to be a work-at-home homeschooling mama. Growing up, all I wanted to be was a wife and mother. Becoming an entrepreneur on top of that was never a dream of mine.
It was not until I became an adult and started supporting my husband in his own business endeavors that I realized I like entrepreneur businesses. I find the challenge of growing a business and blog exciting, and a blessing to our family.
When I had three children, 6 and under, I asked my husband if I could try to sell some maternity skirts online. He thought it was a great idea so I began to sell on a Christian forum I was part of.
I quickly decided to start a website, and that led to a blog for the business as well. My intention was never for the blog to form its own identity, but it certainly has done that, and I’m excited to see where the Lord is leading it.
Last year we renamed our business Deborah & Co. and continue to work on adding new products to our clothing line.
The Lord has blessed our online endeavors to the point that last year my husband was able to sell his own business and return to college full time to finish his graphic design degree. At this point I’m the sole provider for our family while he completes school. I would never promote doing this long term, as our family is making a lot of sacrifices of family time while he finishes, but we both felt at peace to do this for two years. Thankfully he only has one year left before he graduates!
You never know where the Lord will lead you with your meager beginnings.
Trying to juggle homeschooling and running a business is challenging. I was homeschooled K-12 myself and always planned to use the Charlotte Mason method with my children. In order to be able to both homeschool my children and run businesses online, I use a mixture of Heart of Dakota (Charlotte Mason based curriculum) and Christian Light Education (workbooks). We are not involved in extra-curricular activities. My children have a lot of friends at church that they see every week, and we get together as families once in a while.
I don’t always pull it off perfectly. Some days homeschooling suffers for the business. Other days the business suffers because I shut the computer and forget everything for the day to focus only on homeschooling. It’s a constant juggling act of balancing it all.
If you desire to blog or run a business from home, here are some tips I’ve learned over the years:
1. Don’t try to be the end-all, be-all for your business. When you are just starting out you have to do it all, but as you grow you need to get help. I’m blessed to have a sister who I’ve always bounced ideas off of, and she helped me create my original blog! We recently hired someone to come and ship orders for Deborah & Co. I also have a mother’s helper who comes occasionally for the day.
When my husband graduates and starts working full time again, we plan on hiring more help so I’m not doing as much of the work. If you are running a larger business and don’t get help, it’s almost a certainty that you will burn out.
2. Try to find multiple streams of revenue. That sounds overwhelming, but it isn’t as bad as it seems. If you are only wanting a small income to supplement (maybe earn some extra money to cover homeschool expenses) then definitely stick with one thing and focus on that. If the need is there to earn more than just a side income, then expand to offer a product for sale, or start a blog and promote that product, or find affiliate programs to join.
On top of running Deborah & Co., I blog at The Modest Mom, have affiliate programs I am part of, and I’m also a consultant for Lilla Rose which has been another huge blessing. Without combining all of these things the income would not be enough to support our family full time.
3. Always remember you are under your husband’s authority. Bringing in income can create the temptation to step outside of your husband’s authority. I feel like Proverbs 31 makes it clear that wives can bring in income, but remember that your husband is the head of the home. Even though my husband trusts my decisions on what inventory to purchase, new fabrics to offer, and affiliate programs to join, I still run large decisions by him.
He also is very involved in the blog posts I publish. Many times I have him read them first to make sure everything seems ok to him. This keeps us involved and working together, and keeps me under his authority. Every marriage will display this differently, but it is good to remember that you are your husband’s helpmeet, not the leader–no matter how much income you bring in.
4. Never let earning money take away your conviction to homeschool. If I ever found myself close to giving up on homeschooling just so I could pursue my business more, I would drop my business so fast your head would spin. 🙂 There can be difficult days when trying to balance things, but don’t ever let your business become so important that you give up on homeschooling.
Also, don’t blame the bad attitudes and poor schedules on the fact that you work from home. Every homeschooling mother struggles with issues in homeschooling. You could be having issues because you are spending too much time working instead of homeschooling, but honestly evaluate the situation and ask yourself if those issues would still be present minus the job.
5. Consider homeschooling year round. We are taking a very short summer break this year. It greatly helps when I know we have the whole year to work on schooling instead of just the traditional school year. I did this growing up, as my mother was sick a lot, so it just seems natural to me.
6. Finally, don’t forget to take a day off and go to the park! It can be so freeing to leave everything behind–school books and business work–and leave for the day. This rejuvenates all of us, not just me, and helps us come back home and focus again.
I’d love to answer any questions you might have! Leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to answer it if I can. 🙂 Blessings on your homeschooling and business endeavors!
Caroline Allen is blessed to be a wife to her beloved Sean, and mother to five children. She was home schooled all of her life by her precious godly mother, and now has started the whole adventure over again with her own children! Having been raised with a heart towards modesty, she started Deborah & Co., a clothing company that offers maternity, women, and girl clothes. Caroline is also a consultant for Lilla Rose where you will find beautiful hair clips. She would love to visit with you at her Blog, The Modest Mom and chat with you on Facebook.
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I just wanted to thank you for blogging about this! I run a photography business, help my Mom with her sewing business (a never ending battle of trying to get stuff on her online store and make it easier since she is not good with the web), have 3 little girls and a baby on the way and am somewhere in the midst of kindergarten/1st grade mix with my daughter. I am overwhelmed most of the time. God is my source of strength. I needed to hear what you wrote and remember to keep my husband in the loop of things. He works full time too so it’s hard to keep everything in ballance. I am very scared for the school year coming up because I don’t know how I will focus on my 1st grader AND all my other kids AND keep house AND run a business. I was homeschooled K-12 too and my Mom hardly ever gave us much of a summer break (which I hated). But that was a good idea and I appreciated hearing that from you.
If you blog more on this I would be very appreciative. How you make all your schedules mesh. I also have the problem of meeting clients, appointments etc and only using one calender, as more than one tends to miss something here or there. I have to chase the calender when I have a call, because I keep it up on the fridge… and my office is in the basement. Sounds silly, but that’s just one thing I run into. And I do have the google calender on my phone, but I would have to take the time to copy EVERYTHING onto it and change it daily. It’s just one more step to add to my life that I don’t feel I have time for.
My husband and my family are the most important things in my life aside from my Lord. I don’t want to forget that in the midst of this crazy time and I dont’ want to miss an opportunity to train them in Christ.
May God bless your business and family!
~Deborah
I didn’t realize that Caroline was the sole supporter for her family at this point in time. That’s amazing that her business has grown, and God has blessed her to be able to do that. I, too, work from home and homeschool, and it is a constant juggling act. But I am thankful 🙂 I can’t imagine not being busy, lol.
I agree Melinda! It is a juggling act, but totally worth it. 🙂
Such great advice! I know there are so many people who feel like they can’t work and homeschool, and while it does take balance and planning, it CAN be done. So encouraging to know there are so many of us ‘working homeschoolers’ out there! 🙂
Do you have any tips for keeping the kiddos “busy” while you’re working? I help with our family business here at home and my husband works two jobs. Some days are busier than others. Unfortunately, computer games or iPads have become a habit when Mommy gets busy. I have a six year old boy and 4 year girl. We just started homeschooling last year. I’d love to break this electronic device habit quickly so I would love to hear what works for others! Thank you!
Hi! This article is amazing and totally reminded me where my priorities are! Thank you! I do have a question tho…now that it is summer…I want to push my business further. So far we have done well, but I am ready for that next step..and well, I figure now that kids are on Summer break…I have more time to open the business wings! So, how did you go about widening the areas of your business?
I make hand stamped faith based and personalized jewelry and would love to reach more people in all areas! Anyways, any advice would be greatly appreciated!
XO~Kristin
http://www.blessedlittlebird.com
http://www.facebook.com/blessedlittlebird
I have the same problem when we get busy. I have found that saving some ‘special toys’ (ones I’ve weeded out from the rest and stuck there so that they become ‘special’) in the attic and pulling them out on such occasions tends to help. I also try a ‘quiet time’ and have them each pick a spot to sit – far away from each other – maybe even different rooms – and then let them look at library books so that it is not the books they’ve seen a hundred times. My Mom owns a business and when I was growing up she sometimes just stopped everything and took us outside on the swing set when it got crazy. We all recovered quickly that way and then she could get a lot more done…. especially if we were too tired after that and fell asleep!
This is SO very helpful! Thank you for your insight. I have been considering beginning a home business, and putting more time and effort into my art and writing. Right now, I also battle health issues on tip of homeschooling, so I am taking things slow, and praying for insight on the health challenges I am dealing with, that so far, the doctors have not been helpful in diagnosing. We don’t have health insurance either, so I’ve been left to figure things out on my own.
But I am still holding out that if/when things improve, I can move forward!
Blessing to you as you continue to home school and work at home for His glory!
Kristin, I checked out your website and your jewelry is very pretty. Just wanted to let you know that the link for your etsy store and other store does not go anywhere. It just reopens the same window again. You may also want to check out bludomain.com. Their sites are really, really nice and very reasonably priced. Also very easy to customize. They have a shopping cart with most of them that links to paypal. When you design You want as little writing as possible. The more people have to read, the less they will look and the more chance they will leave. Photos must do a lot of the ‘speaking.’ That’s just a little advice from someone who’s been doing business for over 10 years. Hope that helps.
Thank you Deborah! I have no idea what happened to my links…but I will say that Go Daddy is a terrible site builder to work with. I appreciate all your advice and I am looking at BluDomain right now!
Blu domain is used primarily as a photographers website place, but I recently purchased one for my Mom’s Doll Clothes biz and you can tweak it to whatever you want. I think I chose AVERY and then I already pay another webhost – hostmonster, so I paid the $100 to take it to my host instead of paying them to host. I just used pix in the slideshow and then tweaked everything else to be what I wanted. It was the cheapest place that I found and I LOVE their websites. I’ve had my photography website from them since 2010 and I love it! I checked into many places and they all want mega money to have a shopping cart etc. This way, you put whatever you want in it and link it to your paypal. Enjoy!
So perfect! I love all their layouts. I just send them a message tho to make sure I could get a shopping cart on any site..I am not super savvy on website stuff 🙂
The only thing that I didn’t like was that the shopping cart is sometimes hard to see – like where the button is to click on it to purchase something. So I put the first few items that I had in the gallery (where you put the pix and then put the shopping cart option on each one with each ones prices) and put a little arrow on the bottom that pointed down and I think I wrote – click here to order. That way the customer gets the idea to look down and there is the shopping cart option. There was just no way to make the actual button more bold or a different color… so thats how i fixed that problem. Still SO much cheaper and nicer than other sites.