Mom in Business Vlog | It's So Hard | HOMESCHOOL FAMILY OF FIVE

[Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning I am out here packaging up for in wet packages I love this part it takes me so long to package it really does but I'm trying to work on the in diligence and maintaining a sense of excellence even if it takes me a little longer I've got some Funko kid things going out today while those included folk will get things too but trying to streamline my packaging without these special details that are important to me so hello I wanted to talk to you guys about a business update let me try and catch you up first of all I am feeling super good today because it's my birthday it's my birthday you guys so I have my hair done and I'm feeling so excited about it I love it so much it makes me so happy okay I don't know if it's gonna be like this tomorrow but it's done today and you know how you get like really reflective of around your birthday that's me I'm already an extremely pensive person and I get even more pensive on my birthday okay because I'm trying to think about all the things that I did not accomplish okay it's time I made it to this age I don't know you guys it's been an extremely pensive morning but today I thought I would show you or just try the chips hack my way through what's been going on with business and a bit of an update I kinda have a lot to say so the kids are going to be going with their grandparents today and I have a photo shoot and then after that I am just going to be hanging out with Brian so business I have been extremely overwhelmed and frustrated by it but like on the low I have been trying to pace myself and just say you know what Serena grace grace grace grace grace grace I have mmm do I have three businesses I remember two lot okay I'm a creative being it's a lot and this is hard it's hard because I want to be able to just pick one thing and stick to that one thing and do it really well and I know that that is the advice that seems the most wise so I'm gonna walk you through a little bit of my business story I started off in business let me try to sit the kids of course are playing in the background so if you hear them you know they're always with me so I started off my business journey I mean I've always been a creative I was selling scrapbooks I've always been heavily into photography once I had my oldest who is nine years old I got a big girl camera and once I got that camera it was over you guys I was taking pictures all the time at any time I was staying at home and I thought to myself you know what I'm gonna be staying home with my baby and I could do this whole photography thing and so that was I started trying to build a photography business I want to try to make this a little bit short I'm gonna try so I thought that you know I was going to build this photography business I was gonna be this portrait and wedding photographer it was gonna be amazing but I just had a lot of pitfalls a lot of pitfalls because it was hard it was hard to have an you know a toddler and tried to build a business and have a husband who was traveling a lot because Brian had a traveling job at the time it was just a lot I would see a lot of people start photography businesses along with me and they were growing and I wasn't I had things that I was kind of interested in paying out the way I had it in my mind I continued to take pictures I ended up starting a blog it would it it kind of morphed from photography to being about motherhood it was called mommy me this was back when like blogs were like barely barely a thing and I was very consistent on there but not necessarily consistently posting because it was new and different and I was afraid of what other people thought that's the whole thing we'll get back to that yeah I started this business I mean I started a new blog called mommy me and I was gonna write about my experiences and I did I write up I brought about my experiences being a mother and trying to build a business and just build a home and things like that yes I'm having this whole plan to have a magazine and all this other stuff you just you know I've been through it's been a lot this creative process I had a lot of pushback in photography just trying to find out who you are as a business owner but then still having a spouse a spouse who is the only income in the house it's just a whole thing so I ended up putting it down not really completely but just not going after it like I wanted to and that caused me a lot of frustration and disappointment and things like that things that now I'm grateful for and I'm grateful that I have been able to work through them because I'm becoming better but that's a whole nother thing then I moved on when I still had a blog I still did photography kind of on the side and then I got into the thick of home school once all three kids were had come along and it was you know school age time and I was fully committed to this whole homeschool thing that might be a completely different story but as I was in the thick of home school that's when I started documenting the journey and I started making videos and you know just kind of documenting what we were going through and as I was trying to figure out where to host the videos I didn't want to do YouTube because I'm like at the time YouTube was newer but it was like the whole world though like I don't know about that so but I decided to do it anyway because I thought well you know this would be nice to share the short of it is that I've just been trying to get into a better flow with business I've been trying to get into a better flow with business and it's hard it's really hard because the reality is I'm doing a lot of things and I'm just one person okay so I need help I need help but trying to figure out what to pinpoint what to work on how to reorganize my business it's just a whole thing and it's very hard people reach out to me and ask me about you know does it take you away from home schooling and things like that and you know what it absolutely can if you allow it and I have allowed it before in the past and there's times where I haven't allowed it so I'm at that stage where I'm learning how to not allow it on a consistent basis and how to only accept jobs that that add to my bottom line which is my kids my family and and that has been a challenge trying to figure that out when do you take a job because it'll give you the funds that you need so that you can move forward in your creative endeavors um I don't know it's just hmm I don't know I don't think I can completely sum it up like I would like to right now but just know that it is not easy but but I love it I love being creative I love finding ways to give and I think I'm at a point in my business journey where I have found things that meet my bottom line which is to be able to give to be able to create to be able to explore and discover our gifts to do it with my family so I've been doing a lot of reorganizing of the businesses and just basically dreaming about it that's a huge part of it it's a huge part of it everything that I have photography our clothing line the kids clothing line our YouTube our homeschool related things fall under the fall Co and it is now an LLC which is exciting and so now we have the Falco we have the Falco family which is us behind the scenes we are journey journalists and I'm still trying to work on the journaling part because I've been blogging but I don't post them which I'm working on I had the Falco the Falco family I have the focal kids which is their division and I have the photo creative that was like the last piece where I changed over our photography business name which was Sarina be creative to the photo creative so now it's all under the umbrella of the fall code which is really exciting and then when I was trying to figure out what to do next I know that one thing I wanted to work on was social media just it has been quite the challenge for me because social media is a lot of work preparing the content and then making you know seeing to it that people actually see what you spent time pulling together it's it's really a challenge and just trying to use wisdom and pray about what to do next and it just so happens that I stumbled across a webinar that I took by a girl named Jenna Kutcher and you probably have come across her but she used to be a photographer she still is a photographer she has a photography business but she does these branding and email marketing and Pinterest and all of this these other courses that she offers and I had been following it for quite some time and my father had shown interest in wanting to pay for the course for me and it's basically of course I took the webinar and she talks about how powerful your email inbox can be as far as communicating to your ideal people like your crew you know communicating to them what you're up to and how they can support you I was really enlightened to five that webinar and I was pretty much sold but as far as spending my coins on it you know you're just always so hesitant cuz you just want to use your money wisely you have so much to pay for you know you have bills I have to purchase product obviously I have to ship product I have to have all the shipping materials I have to you know still handle any um my photography equipment needs to be cleaned and upgraded and all that other stuff so it's just a lot of expenses involved on top of like homeschool resources and things so trying to figure out what to spend your money one is just a whole thing so my dad ended up showing his interest in one in two so into my business which is such a blessing cuz so many people so many family members so many friends have sewn into my businesses and just my whole creative journey and business journey in general and I'm so grateful so he actually purchased the course for me which I was so excited I was so excited so the email course is just gonna take me through all these steps on how to build a good system of communication through email and so the next step that I needed to take was to clean up my emails because they're all over the place you guys so I've got like my personal email then I have from Sarina with love and they're all Gmail's mostly then I have the of the was the only branded email that I have um I had faith and love Academy email to go to the kids so my first step was to streamline my email so that it just made sense and so for me that was getting and setting up all of my Falco female so I own the Falco calm I own the Falco creative calm on the FACA family calm and I need to set up emails for all three of those so if you contact us personally Syrena at the falker family calm and then if you are contacting us creatively for business or video purposes so that would include YouTube brand ale sponsorships that type of thing as well as any photography work or video work that we do then we have you know hello or hi at the Falco creative calm I was really excited about that and then of course anything shop related would be at the Falco calm so that was my first step to do and then to figure out which email I was going to start by working my way through this email course with so I have chosen to do the Falco family comm so I'll have a a newsletter signup for the Farkle family calm and focus on growing that space which I'm really excited about in addition to that I went ahead and started setting up our patron patron to me it's like a God send people contact about business related things homeschool related things personal and family related things and I never want to pick one thing over the other but I want to make myself available in all different areas if they fit I also wasn't a fan of creating like a shop where I had individual things you had to purchase because I just feel like it's a journey you know and there's a bunch of tools along the way that we can use to try and move along in our journeys so I wasn't I wasn't okay with having like a teachers pay teacher's store where you just download one planning page or something like that because what if you do that and then it doesn't work for you and what I found is that a lot of times you know some worksheets are downloadables or things like that will work for a certain period in your is for a certain time and then you may set them down for a little bit and then they may work out perfectly when you move into a different season in life and so I wanted to make those things more available as a whole instead of you know as an individual purpose purchase because then I thought that if they are available as a whole then you could download those things and we could work through this journey together when some things work out well then great when some things don't for a certain season then that's ok too and I just love the tears being able to to sign up at a monthly amount and it's such a small amount that it's not making a huge difference it's in your budget plus I love that it creates a little like space for us to like really connect and a space for me to be able to give specifically to my group of people instead of the whole internet if that makes any sense so I've been setting that up I got my tears all set up I got my goals all set up and now I'm working on just drawing some pictures in there and I'd like to do a video and then once that is ready then I'll just kind of do an announcement and just try to grow that space grow our little family so I'm really excited about the patreon page and through the email signups I'll be able to communicate everything that is going on with us so I'm really hype about that you guys cuz just organizing yourself in business is like one of the hardest parts if not the hardest part I feel like for me right now because my business is creative and there's so many different streams so I know this is getting really chatty we haven't had many orders lately and that I has been somewhat intentional I do know that when I post more about it that's when my order is put in so when I don't post as much about it my orders kind of stop and slow down a little bit which is really good for me because I'm if I'm in a place where it's a little bit harder for me to to keep up with everything because I am one person then that helps me to slow things down so that I can regroup and not be overwhelmed because I do not want that I want to build a business with purpose and to be able to really document the journey portion of it so I haven't been doing so good with that I think the last business like I did was several months ago yes I think I only have like two business mugs or two business videos up and I wanted to do more so yeah just kind of getting out of my head about it and just choosing to pick up the camera when I'm having challenges or when I get exciting packages or when I use a new printer for the first time and things like that I wanted to be able to do that more and demystify what it means to start creative business and just try to build a life that you actually enjoy I feel like this is a process this is the journey you know what I mean so anyway I did get a few things for business that I wanted to show you guys I think I've been slowly going this way with my camera but I wanted to do like a little business haul because I was really excited like this is exciting for me I think sometimes I get a little bit overwhelmed at the beginning of owning a shop and all that I'm sure that it entails that sometimes I go too slow and because I don't want to make those mistakes but I'm gonna I'm gonna make mistakes I told my kids the other day when they were doing something I think they have a similar I don't know they're very much so like their mama and so whenever they're doing something new in math or something like that they get really hesitant to move forward a lot of times because they don't want to make the mistake and I always say to them you know mistakes are good that's where you learn and I said it the other day to them and I was thinking to myself Serena do you need to take your own advice right now you know don't stop moving forward in business because you're afraid of making the mistakes like just change your attitude towards the mistakes and just know that when you make them you can learn from them and learn from them and then move forward so I think to me being more open and is really helpful because when I do make mistakes I can be really honest and open about what's going on and why a certain mistake happened or why there's a delay in shipment or whatever the case may be if I'm open about it then you know we can all learn from it I can learn from it mostly and then hopefully somebody else by sharing it so I'm going to show you what I've gotten so far you guys my hair it's giving me like all types of all types of vibes I'm very excited because my hair's been a mess lately okay alright so let me show you what I got going on oh and you guys this is coming up my book your video is coming up with a book haul of all these goodies don't they look just scrumptious anyway that is coming up you guys what am I waiting for with the book gear book I just want to have all the information cuz I know that I'm gonna have lots of questions about it and I want to be able to answer most of the questions in the video so that I don't have to answer you know so that I don't have a load of questions that I haven't answered that now I have to try to make time to answer and I always just feel bad not that I'm I don't know I don't obviously I don't mind answering their questions but I don't always have time and I I don't like putting things out there where people have lots of questions I feel like I left them hanging so anyway that is why my book your video has taken a little bit of time plus I was waiting for one last delivery of the books and I kind of sort of wanted to have my patron up and running so I could put the printables on there and you could be you know you could go ahead and download it if you wanted to give it a try but I don't know I'm trying not to wait for perfect conditions so I don't know if I should just put the patron up there even though it's not completely finished like I'd like it to and then just work on it over time but it leaves it's there I don't know I can't figure that out yet so I'm working on it but is a book haul that I'm gonna be sharing okay did you guys know that we have lights if you follow my vlog channel then you would know that I have a light out in the garage now so I don't have to which is our studio space so I don't have to open the actual garage because now that it's getting colder and stuff I don't have to open it if I want to be in here to work it's one of those but it does the trick so it's a little like caste but it's okay cuz I'm good than that it would be super dark in here so let me just show you I think I can put this up here and kind of show you what I've gotten okay so the biggest thing I got which I got a little bit ago and you've probably seen it but I never like mentioned it that I got in here was the cabinet for holding the t's I got the I can't remember the name but I'll include the name somewhere on the video or in the description box but I got this wardrobe for holding the t's I definitely needed that so I needed something for the t's to be able to be stacked and safe inside plus I just needed some storage for some storage boxes and things like that so I got that wardrobe I got this super cute little file folder a hanging system I picked this up in the clearance rack from Target I'm pretty sure it was less than ten dollars for sure and it's so cute it has like this gold finish and these black like oh so pretty there so like Falco is right so I got this for kind of sorting sorting and separating or documents properly so I have a little file folder system that I picked up from my kid that's hanging on the wall it's my wife one you guys have seen that in my tour of our studio space but I used that for like order fulfillment but I wanted to use this for when I needed to keep you know just certain documents oh I got that Luke 30 this was a big one you and again I can't remember the name of it and I will leave it below some but I needed something to be able to hold all of our shipping supplies these are labels I just printed out with my diamond labor to go on the shelves to help me better organize the tees that I have these are all the different designs I have right there so I'm gonna get the kids to put that on in their next office day these are all my inserts that I have here but this is just my tissue paper I put little labels over here just to see what's inside because I thought that would be really helpful for the kids this one is all of our stickers right now I am printing out all of my packaging stickers and that was definitely on purpose because I just want to make sure that whatever I'm designing I actually like and want to stick to before I start ordering them in bulk so this has been a really good fit for me because when I want to change things up a bit I can do that by just printing a new sticker without having stickers that I'm not using and I find it are not working out very well so I'm still in a stage of figuring out what I like so having these Avery printable stickers it's really good for me next is my poly bag so I have two size poly bags I just started talked stocking two sizes because I'm starting to get orders with like more than two shirts I can fit two shirts nicely in here but when I need a little bit more space I needed to get the bigger bag so I went ahead and got the bigger bags and this drawer is just kind of like a catch off right now and these are shipping label blanks very happy about that this is my cabinet and I really really like it I need shelves to go in here because this only came with a rack up here and there's a shelf up here which right now just holding my GoPro stuff but I'm able to put stuff up here but I want to put more shelves like this all the way down that's what I would like to do this is more poly baggies these are small ones small clear ones here I have my shipping boxes these are for packages that packages that are going to hold a little bit more so if I have to send out mugs or hats along with tees and sometimes my giveaways include books as well so I just like the way they look packaged nicely in these corrugated white boxes so I got those ok and this is the other side here as you can see I stacked my teas up here and then I've been trying to put the labels on the front so the kids it makes it very easy for them to know where the tea that they need to ship is right now it's a little bit messy you need to clean it up a little bit because I was going through inventory and trying to figure out what I needed to order next I'm actually really excited because I'm going to be adding hats to the shop and mugs to the shop I wanted to add I wanted to add them anyway but I think that they're more of a priority right now because I wanted to add mug you can use everyday and it's a slightly smaller price point hats because it's something you can wear all the time just in case you're not like a tea girl but on business side of it I wanted to add things where I could just kind of do one off so I don't have to worry about having a specific size and stock or a specific color I can just ship off a hat without having to be concerned with this or color well not really color because I am going to offer them in different colors but as far as um as far as printing them I don't have to be limited to my color choices as opposed to a t-shirt you are kind of limited it because once I sell out of a certain color I have to repurchase at least 12 to 24 more of those tees in order to get those back in stock so as with a hat I don't have to do that I can have one printed at a time and I don't have to be constrained to buying in bulk for specific color we need to get that done to would like to get it done very soon so that I can get that order off to my printer so he can get those back in and I can start photographing them and putting them up in the shop so that is one thing that is definitely on my list of to dues but I don't know if that'll be today because it's my birthday and I want to go out with my husband and hang out and not be stressed out but things I have to do because the goal is not to be stressed the goal is to have a lot of fun creating and being able to give to the people that you want to help and encourage and I guess and that's what I want to do here at the Falco I'm just in case you don't know the Falco stands for the faith and love life and so you know I am just my whole life embodies that belief that you know we should be doing everything by faith and with love by faith and with love and so I want to do everything in my business by faith and with love and I want to encourage other people to do the same by like us just doing it together um I think that's like the best way I don't want to have empty encouragement where I'm telling you something but I'm not doing it myself I feel that way with my kids I don't want to tell them to do something that I'm not doing myself so that's why I homeschool is life around here and that is kind of what I'm trying to go for as far as sharing these and just you know creating a little space for us to just do this life thing together so anyway let me get out of here because it's chilly let me see what the kids are doing turn my light off in my office space [Music] [Music]

Channel: TheFallCoFamily

Views: 1,404

Rating: 4.9459457 out of 5

Keywords: homeschooling, homeschooling mom, homeschool room tour, homeschool classroom tour, homeschool curriculum, homeschool curriculum choices, homeschool haul, homeschool library haul, Charlotte Mason method, Abeka curriculum, homeschool vs public school, homeschool morning routine, homeschool coop, homeschool tips, SAHM, stay at home mom, clean with me, marriage and motherhood, family vlog

Id: 9TRRwKwtwXI

Length: 30min 31sec (1831 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2018