Making Money as a Mom and Homeschooler

I'm Julie Bogart I started the company that I owned in January of 2000 at the time it was called the writing compass it became brave writer by June before I started this company I worked as a freelance writer a freelance magazine editor and a ghostwriter so I've been earning money while homeschooling for most of the time that I was home educating yes you can work part-time in home school I totally did and it is possible take some self-discipline but I also just so you know how crazy I am I went to grad school ran a business and homeschooled five kids at one point in my career now not everybody is as ridiculous as I am to try and tackle so much at once but it is possible and I'm here to tell you that it is and to share with you how if you have dreams whether it's earning money going to grad school starting a business running a blog whatever it is you can do that and still be a faithful homeschooling parent look at you so many of you are doing it already so my whole goal in this scope isn't to tell you things that you don't know I mean I would like to I'd love to take each industry and say okay this is how a blogger makes money this is how a Tupperware sales woman makes money this is how a part-time you know worker at Target makes money that's not my goal what I want to do is share with you some of my experiences as I developed into a work lifestyle while I homeschooled and then just talk about what it feels like to earn money and be a woman and be a home educator these are very important sort of oxymoronic identities from the way many of us think about it there is always this little bit of guilt that I think sneaks in when we start thinking about earning money so the first thing I want to talk about then is this the mindset it's okay to want to earn money it's okay you're not a bad home schooler you're not the wrong kind of housewife it doesn't mean that you are less devoted to your children it also doesn't mean you're a materialistic person or a capitalist it doesn't mean that all you care about is something that is not related to your mission in life some people feel guilty because they don't earn money that is the flip side of this coin right you've got perhaps a spouse fully supporting you and you wish that you were bringing in a little bit of cash it's really okay to want to do that now you get to decide whether you do that but it's okay to want to and it's actually pretty empowering to earn money that isn't a terrible thing to feel it's actually a satisfying thing you've been raised into adulthood and suddenly you realize you have the power to contribute and be compensated for that nothing wrong with that here's the second thing I want to say poverty drives innovation it's a fact not having money drives people to become a part of this adult world that creates the place we all want to inhabit I have a girlfriend who makes the most incredible care packages for her kids in college I mean they're exquisite they're like beautiful funny creative delicious all of us have been nagging her for years please turn this into a business you know why she doesn't her husband's a millionaire I think I don't need any money she has no interest in taking her talents and turning it into cash because she's happy she's satisfied why start a business but you know what I'm so disappointed because my children will never have good care packages in college that's not my gifts that's not my skill set and because she isn't driven by her need for cash she doesn't feel is obligated to share her talents with the world on the other hand every single time I have wanted to pay for something with my kids look Fras Shakespeare camp being a part of a play whatever I've created a new product you can almost trace every product and brave rider back to some need we had in my family at the time because I needed money my brain yes tickets to Italy absolutely Alicia that is really how we got to Italy but my brain was constantly sort of sorting through my skill set and what people said that they needed from me and then I was able to take that information and translate it into a product creation does that make sense so that's what I want us to notice today the mindset is it's okay to want to earn money and the second thing is poverty drives innovation and you'll find that out even looking at some of the biggest companies in the world hold on a minute I forgot to turn on my light and you know how I care about lighting hold on oh oh yeah that's better okay you probably don't even notice the difference but for some reason it bothers me yes so the third fact that I want to share Oh Shelly it's okay this will be on catch so you can watch them the third thing I want to share is that the benefit is that your adult contribution helps the world go round okay that sounds like a little cliche but I'm not kidding there are talents and gifts and skills that you have that by offering them to the world you're enhancing the global community now I know that sounds like a huge statement and you might be thinking well I sell Tupperware how does it do that but you know what people who understand how to organize a kitchen and store food correctly and create order from chaos in a kitchen resource I could use if I flipped this camera around you'd see I need that person if you're a piano teacher aren't you helping people discover the power and joy of music if you sell tea aren't you enhancing poetry tea times and the sense of calm and comfort that comes from tea so it doesn't have to be lofty I'm not saying you have to create the next Apple computer company I'm saying that your personality has a contribution to make as an adult that you can be paid for that enhances the well-being of our global community and you get to do that think about all those years that you were being raised as a child into adulthood and you start to think about well then Who am I going to be I mean right now you're raising children trying to help them figure out who they're going to be now of course homeschooling is its own career I would never devalue that I totally invested and loved it but what I also realized is that in teaching my children I was actually teaching them how to become adults but I was also an adult I had already made that journey I was here what was I going to do with my one gift of adulthood what could I do with it what were my gifts what were my talents what way could I make a contribution as an adult to the functioning of the globe I didn't want a big career like in politics or to be a movie actress I didn't want something that would take me away from my family on the flip side I did want something some small thing that did because sometimes it just feels really good to use your skills to take a little bit of time and invest it in the thing that you grew up to do I mean that's just a great feeling and if we're raising our daughters we're sitting you're trying to groom them for college and beyond are we really just saying that the one thing they should do is go through all that training and preparation and work and then just be a mother also I hate using the word just it makes it sound like a devalue motherhood and you know I don't I was a lot Lecce League leader I had home births I homeschooled I'm all about mothering I just flew to Peru to hang out with my adult daughter I love being a mother I also love being adult Julie having an awesome adulthood I'm into that too and they can co-exist so let's talk about what I think the four keys are to being the kind of person who earns money while homeschooling okay okay first one I'm going to show them one at a time on my very poor artwork I have not had time this week to do a great job with my little fake PowerPoint okay first one you want to determine your skills some of you I know are asking how do I know what I want to do one of the ways to figure that out is this think about what you're already good at I was under this weirdness impression that because I was good at writing that wouldn't be the place to earn money I had this illusion in my mind that I should earn money by doing something hard and that I had to learn to do I don't know where that came from but one day when I figured that out I thought oh that's so silly writing is my thing why wouldn't I earn money writing my own mother has written 85 books taught writing for 40 or 50 years has been earning money doing writing her whole adult life for some reason because it was natural for me I somehow eliminated it from the options and so initially when I was thinking how can I supplement our income we have five children were make thirty thousand a year and trying to live in Southern California what are my options and then one day it sort of dawned on me actually I'm good at writing and so at the time I was married and my husband was teaching writing he was also a writer composition at a local college and he came home one day and said that he saw on the bulletin board a notice that was asking if there were any English professors who would help doctorate students get their dissertations shaped up to turn in to the committee so people who weren't very good writers but were PhD candidates who needed someone to clean up their dissertation before they submitted it to the committee so John came home and he said oh I saw this on the bulletin board they're looking for someone I don't really have time and I don't know if I'm qualified and I literally went I'll do it he's like wait a minute why are you qualified you know my bachelor's was in history I was published but you know when things like the wet set Gazette not exactly lofty publishing and I said I don't know why I know how to do this but I just know I can do it and they won't want me to do it so why don't you tell them you're going to do it and then you can supervise me I'll do the work you can come up behind me and make sure I did a good job and then we'll get paid it took a little courage anytime that you are taking a risk in your development you're not going to feel that you are the most qualified person initially every business podcast I've ever listened to every business meeting I've ever been to every networking group I'm a part of they've all said jump in with both feet learn once you get your first job if you have just enough talent just enough confidence just enough insight into the thing that you want to do jump in that very first as you know paycheck is going to teach you a lot you're suddenly learn in a way that you would never learn if you hadn't taken the risk to say yes to an opportunity don't disqualify yourself see it as you know the big writing in the sky hey the universe wants you for this job that's why you heard about it so sure enough John went to the school took home our first dissertation to look at handed it to me I had a baby I was nursing at the time I still remember nursing Katrin on the bed and holding the paper over her head with a red pen and I'm making notes all the way through it and weirdly I was good at it I knew exactly what to do to make this dissertation work John came in behind me he looked at my work he made some suggestions we collaborated and conversed which was really good for us at the time and then we returned it to this PhD student candidate daemon candidate I think and he loved it he made all the changes turned it in and the dissertation boards note on the dissertation after it passed it had failed three times we were his fourth attempt and the person who signed off on it wrote you have engineered a remarkable turnaround on this dissertation and that was because I worked on it and John worked on it and we got it done that was my first experience with earning money with writing and I suddenly thought well my gosh if I can turn around a dissertation for somebody there must be some market for my skills so the next thing you knew I was working freelance I got hired to run a quarterly publication for the music industry and I you know worked with all kinds of songwriters and help them create books did their quarterly publication I was editing people whose articles were being submitted to me like I was like a magazine editor I don't have any training in magazines zero remember I was a history major in college I minored basically in French I didn't take English classes they were not my thing I was not a journalism major but I was a good writer and I had great writing instincts and I had always been very successful in my writing efforts in every context so when you're thinking about your career qualifications and when I say career I'm talking about part time I'm not talking about full time qualifications have more to do with what you know you're good at then they do with degrees or certificates and think about that for a minute what does that tell your kids what does it tell them they can be successful without all the degrees isn't this part of what homeschooling is all about homeschooling is about finding that sweet spot figuring out who you are and what contribution you get to make and get paid for and here you are living it right in front of your kids yeah so someone says she struggles with having too many ideas and then can't choose so one of the ways to narrow the scope is to figure out what brings you the greatest satisfaction one of the ways that I thought I was going to earn money at one point I sewed these beautiful flannel baby blankets when my kids were little and I loved how they turned out and I thought oh I could make these and sell these in a store now this is before the Internet so we didn't have ed C if I had had Etsy maybe I would have tried it I am NOT a seamstress that is not my thing I've done quilting but mostly just for fun I'm not great at it but I was under this weird misimpression that I had to have a product or that it had to be hard and I remember running this idea past my stepmom and she said put your sewing machine away you need a factory there's no way you can sew enough blankets to make good money and she was right I hadn't even realized that that this wasn't about me sewing this was like some good idea for blankets and then I suddenly thought is this what I really wanted to be in charge of baby blankets not really that wasn't a good match for my skills or my gifts I'm not a designer I'm not great with colors I had sort of a fortunate moment where I was making these blankets as gifts for friends but it really wasn't my field meanwhile we've got Alexandra I don't know if she's on this scope but she's in our homeschooling community and she has an Etsy shop where she makes bags and quilts and does all kinds of quilting stuff there she is life on island there she has followed her go to her Etsy store she's incredible she is a great example of someone whose very life force comes from the creativity of quilting and her bags are beautiful and so she's got this Etsy store and she's starting to sell and make a little money that way so for her it was perfect for me not so much so you might experiment a little bit you might even make money doing one thing and then find out later yeah that really was a good start but it's not for me I have numerous friends who've done things like Mary Kay Cosmetics or they've done airborne or they've done well steep tea is super popular right now these are like Tupperware right so you sign up with the company and then you resell their products you have little parties and you invite people you know pampered chef all of those those are fabulous if you're social if people like talking to you about the things that you use if you're passionate about jewelry and you decide to be the person who represents those jewelry things you can do that yeah so if you like people and you're comfortable selling then go with a ready-made product that is something that can really dovetail nicely with a home school experience but you have to love the company yes Vanessa that's right you can't just do it to make money you actually have to believe in the thing that you're reselling absolutely now for people who are saying well I don't know what I want to do and I don't like sale let me say this if you don't like sales if you don't like selling then you probably don't want to be in a business that relies on you selling yourself at that point you might want to pick something that is putting you in the position of working for someone for example in brave rider we have several members of our staff who are longtime friends of mine in the homeschooling world they work for me that's where they get their money from they get to participate in a business they believe in using skills they have with their history of homeschooling behind them well I'm not the only homeschool business out there help one of your friends who wants to start a business be a part of it use your homeschooling skills use theirs Jeanette Clifton wings that's Jeanette she's one of our awesome staff members and so is Cindy I don't know if she's on here but that's how it works I always hire the people I love and know well and trust who have homeschooling experience there are ways to get jobs around homeschool that use your skills yeah virtual assistant fabulous one of my community's early on that we started online was called the trapdoor Society was a group of homeschooling moms mostly and we would talk about you know music and art and books and theology and homeschooling and babies and parenting and all that stuff and one of the things that we discovered is that we could grow through community projects so one of the projects we did was this take a picture a day and post it on a blog it was basically Instagram before there was Instagram we called it project 365 from that year several of the women in that group have gone on to do professional photography like they fell in love with photography they got really good at it because they were obsessed with it for a year and at the end they started marketing themselves now do they earn a full living on their photography well not all of them do but they can do it part-time and they can make some money so some of this can come from even a skill you don't know you even have yet a worm composting business oh my god that is so freakin cool you see I work in the world of the virtual so anytime somebody does something that seems real I'm deeply impressed you know raising chickens and selling the eggs we had a gal at our co-op who did that and I mean I just thought she was the bomb because I would never do but I bought her eggs and they were amazing do you see what I'm saying hey Sarah welcome glad you're new to our scopes alright so the first one is determine skills the second one is ready get really good at them oh thanks Laura I'm glad get good at them what does I mean what do I mean by that so once I realized that I wanted to do writing I got really interested in it I started reading books I'd go to the library and read about writing and I took about three hours a week at one point working on my writing my husband at the time would watch the kids and I would go to the library for three hours alone I have famously shared that I would check out one of their private soundproof rooms and I would go in and lock the door many weeks I worked on writing some weeks I fell asleep in a corner on the floor because I was exhausted and other weeks I sobbed my poor little heart out my kids were under ten I had five kids under ten I would just lay in there and cry my heart out because I was going through something either a hard time in my marriage or a frustration with a child or exhaustion and overwhelm this little three-hour soundproof booth was my place to either grow as a writer sleep or bawl my heart out I needed it it was amazing yeah the silent floor of the library exactly but that is where I got my writing skills that's where I worked on them that's what I did to grow so consider the a dream come true yes we all need that space someone said what about your husband and kids feeling like you're taking time away from them you're taking time away from them you deserve that you deserve time away from your family to be the human being you were born to be with or without them you need it you deserve it all you need to do is take it now will it throw a wrench in your family life if your family is used to you doing everything with them and they're the kind of people that sort of bully you you betcha if your family is in a system like this and everybody's used to it and it's going in this nice circle and then you do an about-face and start going the other direction they are all gonna smash right into you they're gonna crash right into you they'll be like what are you doing going this way turn around go back the other way and you get to say this to your family love you care about you but now I'm leaving you and you go get your purse and you get your keys and you trust that they'll be okay and then you go it's gonna be the hardest thing you've done you're gonna walk out that door and feel so much guilt you're gonna wonder if the nursing baby is gonna cry you're gonna wonder if you're gonna be punished for it by your spouse when you get home and you're just gonna need to face it and you know obviously if it's serious if if you're being abused or controlled then go get help because that's never okay you never want to accommodate that but everything else you just create a new normal that's exactly right crystal perfect language and you let them know I love you I'm giving you a hundred percent when I'm here and sometimes I need to go so that I can be that fully present person when I am here and not be distracted by my own thoughts so you decide how you want to do that yeah and dads are gonna parent differently but thank goodness but he brings a different gift to the family all right so you determine your skills you get good at them and then the first thing you do is you give them away you charge nothing for your skills so the first writing I did llh a league magazine wet set Gazette church newsletter you know anything that would publish me I was letting them publish me for free I didn't charge anybody one of the first editing jobs I did I didn't charge anybody but once I had a job where I got paid then I started to see the possibilities so I started working in this field and I got paid for it then Along Came my friend who said well I know that you're a freelance writer and a ghostwriter I need help teaching my kids how to write I homeschool you homeschool and I started a 7li class happened to be in church at the time so we did it during the Sunday school hour and for seven weeks I taught parents and educators about how to teach kids to write for free then I was asked to speak at a charter school in California for free then I was on all the early homeschool discussion boards and there were only that it's unlike was the main one and then there were all these different email lists I gave writing advice and support for free I did that for years brave writers started in 2000 I did all that free stuff starting in like 96 or 97 so I didn't get paid for anything related to home school in writing for years and I was happy to do it in fact when I wrote the writers jungle I convened a group and we were together for six months and there were like 35 or 40 families and in exchange for reading the writers jungle and giving me feedback I helped them teach their kids to write for free this took real time out of my life and there was not an economic return now I happen to also be working in writing at the time so I was getting paid for the work I was doing but I could easily see where this was going and I still remember when I ran my very first online writing class it was through a yahoo group and I charged $25 a person for an eight-week class I saw the picture of my very first check it came in 1999 for 25 bucks and I think that first class made like 250 or 300 dollars and here's what my thinking was this I'll show you how broke I was at the time I thought oh my gosh if I could just add 250 or 300 dollars to our income every eight weeks I would feel so good about what I'm doing that's what it's like when you start and it was thrilling a thrill ride because what any dollar we added to our family budget felt like a big dollar those you know what they say like if you go from 30 or 40 thousand dollars a year up to about 80 or 90 that's when you feel the most dramatic change or increase in your well-being economically once you get over a hundred thousand it's not really it doesn't have the same sort of impact on how it feels so if you're in that range you know under a hundred thousand you're trying to get up to that that's where you're going to feel this huge surge of well-being as you help your family increase their income and literally you can try and earn money just to pay for piano lessons and lacrosse like that's a great feeling yeah 200 every eight weeks would help you a ton I remember that feeling it was awesome to me awesome yes okay so you start by giving it away and then finally you charge money you charge money and when you charge you just take a risk take a guess now obviously if you're in a system like steep tea there's a set amount you get based on how you sell but when you are doing your own products if you're selling your own stuff pricing is always a challenge my brother is pretty big in Internet Marketing and he was a big help to me at the start of brave writer if you can talk with people who understand numbers and pricing that'll be helpful to you each industry is different but one thing I know as a principle women undervalue what they sell and they typically price too low so start with the number that sounds right to you and then double it and start there that's my advice to you because here's the truth people value when they pay for and if you charge for something too low they will automatically devalue it they will say it really wasn't that good simply because they didn't pay very much for it so you want to think about that okay you want to think about that yeah raising davinci says she's the most expensive photographer in her area one of the benefits of being more expensive you don't have to sell as much so I'll give you an example I have a friend who is an artist she teaches the best art classes she's a home schooler we all put our kids in her classes she would do like a week camp in the summer that was three or four hours a day and charge each of us like eighty dollars and thought that was too much I said do you realize what your hourly is if it's twenty weeks of class and you only charge us eighty dollars per child but she couldn't fathom charging more than a hundred dollars because they were so broke your customers are not you you're broke your customers aren't going to be so you want to make sure you charge what your customers will pay not what you and your brokeness can barely afford do you understand that's the psychology of pricing just as a theoretical concept for you to think about and then the other thing you're gonna find out is that as you grow your company your business whatever at the beginning there are very minimal expenses the more you get into it the more expenses come so you have to have a foundational sort of pricing strategy that makes it possible for you to grow and afford those incremental advances in expenses if you price too low it'll feel like a big jump for your customers when you raise your prices so for instance brave rider has had basically the same prices now on our classes for five or six maybe it's even seven years because we priced them right when we started you know we slowly inched up and then when we got to the right price point we held and brave riders able to do both have a good price point and support the business that's what you want so that's for business of course not everybody here is talking about being an independent contractor or a business owner but so many of you are and I just want you to think about those ideas so that's the content that I had what are we doing for time Oh perfect we've got about 10 minutes for questions and I wanted to leave time because I know you'll all have different ideas about how to incorporate some part-time work into your lives oh we didn't talk about how it fits with homeschooling beyond taking time away one thing that I did have to realize and this was something I learned in the doing there's a temptation when you're excited about your business to lose heart for homeschooling during that immediate excitement period like you'll just suddenly notice that your mind and attention keeps going back to the fun you're having over in this new venture and homeschool will start to feel like old clothes like not so interesting and one of the dangers there is that you do not want your children's education to suffer just because you're having more fun doing your business so one of the things you have to do is create a structure for yourself and I definitely had to do this I went through all of the experiences right so one of the things I did and I did a scope on this recently maybe last fall sometime I created a running routine that was inviolable so when we were in our mourning period I did not get on the computer my phone was turned off I focused on home school and gave a full commitment to that morning time because then if something came up in the afternoon and we didn't get to our afternoon stuff I at least knew securely that the morning had really happened and I had given my full attention to it did I sometimes screw it up oh yeah oh yeah especially if I was having some stupid conversation on the internet that demanded my great you know reaction I mean those things happened as well sometimes the work was fine the homeschool is fine and I was just distracted by some dumb conversation on a homeschooling board that happens - the key is this be self-aware just be self-aware when you notice yourself getting sucked into that vortex of displacing home school realign your priorities remind yourself that your kids will be gone someday I do have one child who is jealous of my work time you know what it's very important for you to think about that I had a conversation with another business owner a couple years ago and she mentioned something similar to me the danger here is this your kids still deserve you as a homeschooling parent now not everybody works it out the same way but I'll share with you what my priorities were and then you can look at them and see if they work for you so as I was building brave writer I deliberately did not ramp up until my kids were in late high school my youngest kids and I had five so I didn't do the conference circuit I didn't take speaking gigs I didn't try to get my name sort of international we had a discussion board at one point I'm brave writer and I got rid of it it was too time-consuming I kept my focus on what I could sustain while being a good homeschooling parent and I chose to delay the growth of brave rider until I was through that very intense season of home education now there are a lot of business owners especially men who aren't doing the home educating who can go you know conference to conference to conference I remember talking to one guy who owns one of the writing companies he did something like 30 conferences in a year out of 52 weeks he's gone every weekend I mean he's just not home I wanted to be at lacrosse I wanted to go to plays I wanted to have book clubs with my kids in my house I wanted to feel like when I looked back I had home schooling memories I didn't just have work memories so it was challenging I did do some speaking locally I had this thing where it was within a 50-mile radius I would do it I did a couple of workshops maybe one or two a year I tried really hard to limit and to make sure it didn't conflict with something that my kids really expected me to be a part of that is the biggest challenge so if you notice yourself ramping up you've got decisions to make do I follow sort of the lead of my business or do I prioritize my homeschool and everyone works that out differently I'm not here to judge other women who run businesses and how they've worked that out but if your child is resenting you that's the time to ask is this just a little you know developmental phase of my child or is there some truth in this I remember my ex has been saying to me that there were periods where the kids had to double-click on me to wake me up right because I was so connected to the computer there were all kinds of ways to solve that I had to solve it I had to solve it repeatedly when I was writing the writers jungle wit there was a period where it needed to be and I just couldn't get it done so we set aside two weeks where five hours a day I worked in an office and I got that thing done and my husband at the time took care of the kids so these are the kinds of things you have to consider you're gonna have deadlines you're gonna have objectives and sometimes they need a significant push but figure out if you can live that pushed lifestyle right that's not the only way to live for a short season you can almost do anything but if it's an ongoing thing where you're gone all the time oh yeah and that was the other thing I didn't believe in my kids participating in the business when they were children and I never wanted to drag them to a conference and have them be poster children for home school that for me was just not okay I had seen it done and I didn't like the results I wanted my kids to have a normal childhood they could decide whatever they wanted about home school they didn't have to prove to anyone that they were better writers or better kids and I didn't want dragging them away from their home life just to prop up my business that made no sense I didn't want them licking envelopes putting on stamps delivering books none of it was my business not theirs now interestingly now that they're adults two of them do things for great writer and get paid but that was their decision as adults not as children where I'm pretending that I'm teaching them about home business I didn't want that if they didn't ask for it then they weren't gonna have to be involved and that was kind of a big deal to me but of course I was raising kids during the era where everybody was home business home birth home school home home home home home and then I was watching and I didn't like the results in some of the leaders of the movement so that's what formed me it may be different today and the Internet has changed a lot of things and maybe your family will work out these principles differently and then you'll do scopes that will help all of your peers but this is what I did okay yes and you can yes you can get started small if you do thing that is like on a commission basis like one of my my friend Dottie one of my best homeschooling friends you've all heard me talk about her she took a photography when her daughter was in college getting a photography degree now she does weddings and she does senior pictures and all that kind of stuff but she decides which jobs to take and then she decides like if there's six months when she doesn't want to work that's kind of how she does her gig now and it's kind of the perfect balance so some of this may also come towards the end of your home education career it doesn't have to be smack dab when you've got eight children under 13 okay that would be really hard and I didn't do any paid work until I had all five of my kids I didn't do paid work while I was nursing and pregnant you're into writing but your husband's company requires so much time yeah so that just requires maybe some conversation maybe put it on the calendar you know like well in 2018 I want to start feathering in my own work and then you start working towards that and you see it coming down the pike my fear is that if I don't keep a toe and I will be Oh become obsolete Alicia thank you for bringing that up that was the last point I wanted to make here's another reason to earn money while you are homeschooling or to keep your quote toe in your career field you don't know the future you don't know the future your spouse could die or you could wind up divorced both of those are possible your spouse could be laid off or lose his career or become disabled you might be on your own at some point it is so important for women to remember that they have a right to be self-supporting that's why I picked Destiny's Child independent woman you know she was on my feet I got him like I'm paying my way I remember when I paid for my van and it was the first time I had ever taken money I earned to buy a car it was deeply gratifying like oh I'm a grown-up now it felt good I'm not gonna lie so there is value I've watched a bunch of my peer group get divorces or lose spouses to disease like cancer and then they don't know what to do to earn money or to take care of themselves so it's important and we're raising daughters with aspirations that they'll have an amazing career or future so let's work together to live that out and role model it and be those kinds of people I obviously love motherhood this is not an anti motherhood or stay-at-home mom thing I did both but I do think it's really important that women know that they can be self-reliant or at least meaningful contributors to the bottom line of the family it's a nice thing it is empowering to realize you can take care of yourself absolutely oh thanks Vanessa I'm glad yeah you just never know you don't know what's coming when I look at my group of friends that I homeschooled with that were friends online they're all my age now there's just a surprising number who are divorced and none of us thought we would be in that category and some of them had completely lost touch with any meaningful relationship to earning money couple of them have gone back to grad school they've done different things to solve it and it's very important they all feel now that we tell our daughters keep a toe in whatever that is yeah that's great you don't know what's coming that's the thing and I hope for your sake that all good is coming that there isn't anything destabilizing like that but you know life is life it comes at you it's relentless you can't control it I mean a tornado took out people's entire livelihoods just yesterday in the south we watched your ripped through communities that has nothing to with your marriage right yes yes yeah right so somebody just said she grew up home schooled and many of those couples are divorced I'm not kidding you divorce happens I never expected it yeah chronic illness okay so if you have a chronic illness that is your part-time job right I mean seriously if you have the good fortune to have somebody to take care of you and you have a chronic illness leaned into that can somebody repost that question about home school gifts I missed it I really wanted to answer it but I only saw the end of it yes Michelle right if you've got a chronic illness it's a whole other level and I wouldn't expect anyone with chronic illness to work and home school and do a hundred things yeah one school people are not immune from life that's exactly true hey post home school years you just might sleep and run that sounds wonderful to me with love a scope on how to market your home school gifts and skills oh yeah I like that concept let me see the time here we did run over my 45-minute limit okay well listen I promise this scope would be 45 minutes so if you want to hop off go ahead I'm gonna take a moment we'll just address that question briefly and then we will plan a scope around it so here's the thing about home schooling you have so many gifts you have so many gifts you're cultivating right now you have the capacity to teach like a lot of my friends teaching these paid coops they do biology and Latin and math and French and all the things they're good at that they learned how to do they're the perfect people to do that part-time work and to do it for kids that aren't their own now that their kids are grown because you've been teaching so there's that one you're also amazing at organizing and systematizing you can certainly market yourself as an administrative assistant to people who are working in homeschool businesses or other kinds of businesses you can also look at where your interests were drawn while you are doing that homeschool part of your life may it's gonna drive you back to grad school so you can become an adjunct professor maybe you discovered a passion for art history and you can offer our history lessons or join the staff at a local museum but try and take a look at how what happened during your home school years has drawn your fascinations and enhanced your skill sets you'll be amazed you'll be amazed some of the jobs of people in my life are a Latin tutor biology instructor um we have someone who taught sewing lessons to my daughter math tutoring who runs a massive business she's incredible people who are certified teachers who do the narrative validations for home schoolers in the state of Ohio and you can do that in other states people have gone back to school and have become full-time nurses now that their kids are grown I know people who also do part-time nursing I know someone else who became an anesthesiologist gosh I'm just going through oh another one of my friends went to grad school and is in student services in a college in Furman so there are lots of ways to take like your passion for education and then translate it into a meaningful career in fact my friend who went into student services for her master's degree she even was a study abroad student in England in her late 40s how awesomely cool is that so if you haven't figured it out yet you could certainly go to grad school and figure it out that way and have this totally awesome educational experience because let me just tell you homeschool parents love grad school it is like crack cocaine after all these years of tailoring everything to children suddenly you're in grad school and you're like oh kaboom this is fun I know how to do this this is geared toward me it feels so freakin good you'll love grad school you'll love nursing school you'll love whatever it is I know someone who went into library science and she's a librarian and does search I mean there are lots of ways homeschooling leads you to the next thing well I am going to finish this off then for those of you who don't know or jumped in late my name is Julie Bogart I run the company brave writer I started it in January of 2002 sixteen years old we've had hundreds of thousands of you know visitors to the website wealth if I it's got to be over a million if I count all 16 years multiplied we've taught more than 20,000 families in our online classes and all of it just came from doing the next thing yeah throwing it against the wall and seeing what sticks doing the next thing tune in to people's needs pay attention to their needs and then think about creative ways that you might be able to supply what they need whether that is helping somebody with their dissertation writing an article ghost writing their book or writing your own curriculum that's how I did it it's great that you all joined me today I will owe more scopes on adulthood you know what I'd love to do that yes that was this is our little theme awesome adulthood or awesome adulting we have a hashtag awesome adulting 2016 oh I can hold up my four points yep here you go they're really simple today determine skills get good at them give them away and then charge cash money here's our money maybe we need to go out on Beyonce don't you think she's so awesome let's listen to her sing to us [Music] [Music] okay get ready sing with me Oh shoes on my feet I got clothes I'm wearing hot-dogging rocks my Rockets I cut it what you're wearing I'll buy the house I live it I've got it cart I'm driving I bought I depend on me oh bugger and dependent throw your jab desperate all the honey make money throw your hands up let me also my mom's whose profits on lines from your tents oppressed all the babies to troub excuse me throw your hands up Douglas make that paper we're gonna dance with the retreat for sure you guys I'm already working on it all right love you all right bravely live on asleep make that money see you guys [Music]

Channel: Brave Writer

Views: 5,304

Rating: 4.9714284 out of 5

Keywords: Periscope, Brave Writer, Homeschooling, Home Education, Making Money, Income From Home

Id: JkCUKCLN3Og

Length: 53min 27sec (3207 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2017