CHM143: The Homeschool Mompreneur's Guide to Business Balance (+ my entrepreneur startup story)

Foreign.

Welcome to the Christian Homeschool Moms Podcast.

I am Demetria, your host on this show.

The goal is to encourage the Christian mom to homeschool with joy during this limited season of your life, to stay hopeful on your homeschool journey, and to apply practical homeschool tips that will help you in your everyday life as a mom of faith.

So I am Demetria.

I'm your host.

I'm a veteran homeschool mom of two beautiful daughters, one in college and one in high school.

I'm also a Navy reservist wife, a songwriter, a podcaster, and a child of the King, and I'm very happy to host you on this show.

First off, thank you so much for listening to this episode number 143.

We're going to be talking about business and life balance tips for the Homeschool Mompreneur.

I know some of you listening are are homeschool moms who happen to be running a business as well.

And so you're balancing the art of being a homeschool mom, taking care of your children.

So parenting.

But also you're thinking about business and how to build your business while you're homeschooling your kids.

So I know it's a very popular topic.

I've researched, I've googled and I've seen loads of articles about balancing homeschooling with working.

So back in 2020 I did a video called Homeschooling Mompreneur How I Work While Homeschooling.

And I also did a video several years ago back in 2016 called How Can I Homeschool While Working?

So these are just a few of the resources that I have available for you if you're wanting more after you listen to this podcast and I will leave links to that in the show notes.

And as far as how to watch those videos on my YouTube channel which is called Momzest M O M Z E S T. So if you're interested in watching more homeschool related videos, you can find a lot of my archives there.

My videos are no longer only about homeschooling.

I vlog about faith and about business.

So you'll find a lot of business interviews now more recently.

But if you go back into my archives once again, I have like over 10 years worth of homeschool videos for you to see.

So again, you can find that at Mom Zest.

I also have a couple of other podcasts that I would love to share with you really quickly before we get into our topic.

And those two Podcasts that I want to direct you to are Soul Podcasting.

And this is all about podcasting advice, strategies and support for hard aligned entrepreneurs who want to share their message with purpose, make an impact and grow their network.

So if you're interested in learning how to podcast, how to do this thing that has really changed my life for the better and has really done so much in my world as I've been homeschooling my kids and hosting this podcast over the past 10 years, I would love to share that with you over at Soul Podcasting and you can find that podcast@impact podcastcoach.com again.

I'm going to leave links to all these because I'm dropping so many links at you, but I'd love for you to find that one.

It's also an Apple podcast, so just type in Soul S O U L Podcasting and you'll find that podcast.

And the last podcast that I want to direct you to is called Her Business Elevated.

Now this is one of my favorite ones.

I do love Soul Podcasting, but her business Elevated, has really taken on a life of its own over the past couple of months and I am just really loving every single minute of what I do there because I'm meeting so many fabulous people and it's just so, so exciting to talk with other Kingdom minded Christian women.

And so this is a podcast that's dedicated to helping women of faith on your entrepreneurial business journey.

So I and all of my guests are going to help you discover how to gain Kingdom business clarity and turn your profitable passion into a plan of action.

So that was that's my motto on the show and that's what we do every week.

We bring you advice and tips about business.

So some of the things I'm going to be sharing with you today, you'll find a lot of that type of content over at Her Business Elevated podcast.

And I do want to leave a plug for my Homeschool Boss Mama Goal Planner, which is basically a homeschool course just for the mom who feels like a mom CEO or a mom boss.

And that's why I called it the Boss Mama Goal Planner.

Because in this course I teach you some of the things that have helped me over the years in homeschooling my kids and looking at my homeschooling endeavors almost like I'm running a business.

So in my course I cover information like discovering your family's gifts and talents and how to honor the individuality of your children, recognizing your personal value and what you bring to the homeschool process.

And then we go over creating that family mission statement, creating your academic goals for each of your children, learning how to manage that time.

And so we're going to get into time management a little bit in just a moment when it comes to your actual business endeavors.

But this is all within my course when I'm sharing about how to integrate business concepts with running your homeschool.

And I also talk about how to choose curriculum like teaching styles, learning styles, and creating, creating your routine, choosing a curriculum and using those practical tools to help you plan your homeschooling.

So all of that is found at my course, which has been on sale for some time now for 9.99.

So 10 bucks, which is, I think, extremely reasonable.

It actually was a $50 course and then I brought the price down to 29 at some point and now we're down at 9.99.

So I'm just doing these sales because I feel that it's important for my listeners, my viewers, anybody who wants to get their hands on this course to at a reasonable price and still feel like you're getting some type of help along the way.

And this is also an audio course.

You don't have to sit down and watch videos.

It's all audio.

You can take it with you on the go and listen and fill out your journal and your workbook.

So I have everything there for you.

And you can find that information@christianhomeschoolmoms.com and there's a link for that.

It says homeschool courses at the very top of the navigation and you'll find that listed on the Homeschool Courses on page.

Again, I'll leave a link for that in the show notes.

So let's hop into our topic for the day, which is business and life balance tips for homeschool mompreneurs.

So I am going to get started by sharing my entrepreneurial journey because I feel like it's important that you understand my journey, where I came from, and why I feel so strongly and passionate about entrepreneurship.

Also, I just think that it gives you a better picture of what's possible for homeschooling moms and homeschool families and maybe give you a little bit of a different perspective of what entrepreneurship could look like because there's different ways to view the entrepreneurial family, right?

Different ways you can express yourself as an entrepreneur and as a homeschool family.

So I thought I would give you my take on things and how it looks for me.

So first off, I'll tell you my story.

I Started my entrepreneurial journey in 2002.

And I started because having my first baby at the time was kind of my.

My jumping point or my starting point.

She is the reason that I was inspired to start my business.

And the type of business I started was making handcrafted soaps and butter.

So homemade soaps and body butters.

And if Etsy were around back then, I think I would have probably stuck with this particular business a little bit longer.

But this is how I got started.

I would bring my body butters and soaps to work, I would load up my trunk with them and sell them to my co workers out of the trunk of my car.

And it was fun.

It was also business though, so it was hard.

And I learned a lot about what it meant to kind of be solo with creating a business based on just a couple of ideas that I had and staying up late at night to design my soaps.

Because I was into the look of the soap as much as I was into selling it.

I was also really involved and interested in what I put into my soaps.

I wanted to make sure that I used the best essential oils and the best base oils.

I wanted my clients to be happy with how they felt after they took a shower with my body butters and soaps.

So it was very important.

I put a lot of energy and time into creating it while I nursed a baby and still worked at my job full time.

But what really got me going with the next phase of my business was the digital side of growing it.

So that means online.

I desired to build and grow my soap making website and that got me interested in website design.

So.

So at first, my husband created my very first website for me and then I needed his help so much that it got to a point where he just couldn't keep up with all of my demands because I wanted things to look a certain way.

And so I kind of took over some of the upkeep and maintenance of my website and found out that I really, really, really liked doing the website design part.

And then I grew into enjoying the process of getting people to see my website.

Like, how do I get my audience to come to my website?

So this is still in 2002, right?

And so when I got into the Internet marketing side of things, I concluded that at this point I liked web design better than I actually like designing the soap.

So I put soap on hold.

And so at this time, I'm also earning my master's degree in interactive technology while I was raising my toddler.

So a couple of Years pass and I'm building a web design business at the same time, part time.

In 2004, by this time, I had already resigned from my job and was full time mommy and part time grad student and building a web design business.

And so I started working to really develop these digital spaces for women creatives because I felt like I was called to something greater than just building websites for my clients.

I wanted also to create spaces where I could collaborate with these precious women who had so much inside of them.

Songwriters, authors, entrepreneurs, artists.

And eventually I started to.

As I was designing sites, I would design for TV personalities.

And these spaces that I started creating for Christian women were basically websites with a blog.

And I would write articles and I blogged to encourage women in their faith and their business building.

And that's also when I really started marketing and visibility work for my clients.

And that's when in 2005, I fell into podcasting.

And I say I fell into it because I started with an Internet radio show.

In 2005, I started helping my clients, who I was designing websites for, to start their own podcasts and just start growing them.

So in 2006, I decided to begin teaching podcasting.

And I developed my first program and it's called the Internet Radio Podcast Bootcamp.

And that was a live teleseminar.

I don't know how many of you remember teleseminars.

Before the webinars were around, we had teleseminars.

And so I created this teleseminar and a virtual course.

And I taught this to a lot of business owners who went on to create their own podcasts or I would help them to launch their podcast.

So soon after that, my.

I was living in a small town in Alabama and my local news station came to my house for a really quick interview and a chat with me about how I was using this new medium of podcasting to reach other people with my faith.

Because this Internet radio podcast bootcamp really developed into what was my first radio show or podcast.

At that time it was called Christian Ladies Talk Radio.

And so that's where I got started in 2005.

When I started this work, I did not realize how much I would grow to develop a deep passion to help women to elevate their message and release their voice to the world.

So whether through it's a brand design or a website design, or a podcast launch or a content creation strategy, I just found myself at different phases of my own business helping women with all these various aspects of their business.

So I started this journey when my Firstborn was just born.

And so now, nearly 21 years later, throughout my entire homeschooling journey, even, and now at the tail end of that with my youngest child, who's now a high school freshman, I can truthfully say that entrepreneurship, though, it's not easy, and there's a ton of bumps and twists and ups and downs along the way, I have found that there are ways to make entrepreneurship whatever I need it to be.

That works for me, works for my family, works for me in this phase of my life so that it fits in with my goals for today.

My goals five years ago were very different than they are now, because now my kids are older, I have a lot more space and open opportunity in my life to do things that I couldn't do.

And five years ago, and especially 10 years ago and 15 years ago.

So with each phase of my children's lives, I had different opportunities that developed out of my passions and desires.

So that is why I had so many different twists and turns in my entrepreneurial journey as I chose to homeschool and be home with my kids.

So whereas I started off with website design because it was easy for me to do while my babies were sleeping, or from there, I began to coach a little bit more because now I could actually get on a call, run a seminar, or talk because I knew that my kids were older and would understand that.

Mama's on the phone.

Mama's on a seminar.

It's okay, you know, if we stay quiet for a little while while my mom is on a live call.

So those things played a part in my decisions as to what I was able to do at that time in my life based on what my kids were doing and what they needed from me.

So when my kids were really little, there are certain things I just could not do right away.

And that's okay, because I knew in another year, in three years, in five years, in 10 years, there'll be other things I can do.

So some seasons of my life, I was blogging more, because blogging is a very quiet activity.

All I have to do is have a little space to think and write what I need to write.

Build a block.

There were other seasons where podcasting, which has always been a part of my life since my kids were really little.

But podcasting became easier for me as the years went on because I didn't have to only record when my kids were sleeping because that was their nap time.

Now I could record during our lunch break when I wasn't homeschooling or after school, when I wasn't actively educating my kids or cooking dinner or cleaning the house.

So I worked my schedule around not only their phases, but what I needed at that time of my life as well.

So we'll talk a little bit about that when we get into some of the practical business tips.

But the very first thing you want to do before you start anything, I'm going to tell you, you have to start with prayer as a Christian homeschool mom, and you really feel like this is your calling to start a business or to try to balance a business while homeschooling.

Then you start with prayer.

Make sure that everybody's on the same page.

But the only way to do that really is to start by seeking counsel from your creator.

What did your creator create you to do?

Right?

And is this a season of your life where it will be okay for you to do the business activities that you're thinking of starting?

So always start with prayer to get that green light and to make sure that things are good with God.

Concerning what you're planning to do next, you talk to your spouse.

You make sure everything is fine regarding what you're doing.

If you're married and if you're single mama.

Then you'll also want to talk with your kids, right?

Single or married, talk to your kids and make sure they're on the same page as well.

If they're old enough to have these conversations with you, let them know what your plans are, how things are going to look a little different as you start your business.

So prayer is my number one go to.

Before you start anything, make sure you bathe your decisions in prayer.

Next we're going to talk about some practical business tips and then I'm going to come back and wrap it up with some spiritual life balance tips.

On to the practical business tips.

My first tip for you as a homeschool mompreneur is to get control of your time.

This can mean a lot of things.

For most of us though, it means get help with cleaning your house.

So that's household help and taking care of the kids whenever you're working on your business.

So if you have older kids, not so much of an issue.

If you have younger kids or kids that just need a little bit extra tlc, then you'll need the help, all the help you can get to keep your household afloat.

Keep your kids busy and happy while you're working on your business.

It's going to take a good bit of dedication and organization to do this, but that's the first thing to do.

Is get control of your time.

If you get help and if you get some things out of the way ahead of time, such as meal planning, this can really help you to feel like you have more of your time back into your hands.

So I know what it feels like as a homeschool mama to have all the plates in the air.

You're cleaning your house, you're doing the laundry, you're doing the dishes, you're thinking about the meal that you're going to cook for dinner that evening, right?

And whether or not you took out the meat to thaw the night before or what veggies you need to have prepped before you can actually make that nice recipe that you're planning on.

Or will you even make a nice recipe tonight?

Will it be leftovers?

What's going to happen with dinner?

And then there's all these things that are added to our everyday lives just because we homeschool, right?

There's taking our kids to their lessons, taking our kids to their co ops, taking them to park day.

So it's basically being a chauffeur as well.

So we're getting in and out of the house.

It's not just that we have our housework, but we have the getting out of the house in order to make sure our kids are receiving the exposure they need and to get their energy out, right?

To, to play, to run, to meet with other friends.

So there's a lot to think about.

And if you're thinking about adding a business on top of your homeschooling lifestyle, it's imperative that you think about your time and how you're going to manage that time.

So working your business around your family, activities around your goals, around your objectives.

So what you're trying to do that school year is going to be imperative.

You'll need to sit down with your planner and really think about how you're going to incorporate your business building activities around your family.

So get a hold of your time.

The second practical business tip I have for you is to create a dedicated workspace.

So if you are coaching or blogging or doing something that requires you're at your computer a lot, like me, for example, I need my computer, I need my microphone and I need my desk.

So there's a couple of things that are important for me to have and I can take them on the go, I can take them to coffee shops.

But for the most part, I do have a dedicated workspace.

It's my little office I have tucked away in the corner of the house.

And if you have an extra room or some closet space or just something you can use where it's quiet and you can get away and have your space there for your desk and chair and maybe a couple of business books, maybe a bookshelf, just something that is your own, away from the family, so that you can work.

And that's important.

So just have your dedicated workspace.

And sometimes you may not have that space.

And so you just take your laptop wherever you need to, right?

You just take it wherever you need to go.

But if you can have a dedicated workspace, it helps you to get into the mindset of working.

So you're putting on your business hat and you're working on your business activities when you're in your office or at your workspace.

Thirdly, and this is in no particular order, but it's a good idea to create a budget before you launch your business.

And this is a budget for both launching and maintaining your business.

It's going to cost you some money to keep your business running, and you kind of have to know how much that is, what it's going to look like from month to month just to keep your basic expenses paid.

It could mean hosting for your website or blog.

If you run a podcast.

It can mean hosting for your podcast.

If you're using search engine optimization tools that you're paying for on a monthly basis to help you with SEO optimization for your blog, then you're looking at something like that.

If you have a business that you need to have inventory, then you need to figure out how much that is going to cost you every month to keep inventory on hand, all of that.

And then don't forget about your overhead costs as well, just to kind of stay in operation.

So document all of that.

That's my fourth thing, is to remember to document everything.

So write down your numbers.

How much are you spending and how much are you making?

You need your expenses, ingoing your outgoing monies on probably a spreadsheet, but just whatever way it works for you, just to make sure that you're documenting these things.

So besides your financials, though, you also want to document your workflow.

What does it look like?

What does your everyday activity look like?

In order to run your business, you want to document it, because there will be people in your life at some point that could help you to run your business so that you can step away and do other things.

Or there are going to be specific tasks that you're not maybe well versed on, that you want to hire or outsource someone else to Do.

So make sure that you understand your workflow so that you can pass that off to maybe a virtual assistant or someone that can help you, a designer, or just someone on your team that can help you.

So those are some of the things I've been working on over the years, because I've mainly been solo, and as a solopreneur, I've worn all the hats and done all the things just to save money.

And so you can do that for as long as you need to, but it can wear you out, right?

And so at some point, you want to be able to hire professionals that are experts in specifically the things that they do, and you can hire them.

So I like to use platforms like Fiverr to help me find someone to design a cover art for my podcast.

I've had Fiverr design lots of things for me and ebook covers, all kinds of stuff, so you don't have to do all the designing yourself.

Sure, I love Canva.

Canva is wonderful.

But when at the end of the day, if you want something to look super professional, it's nice to have a designer on hand that can do that for you.

The next practical business tip I have for you is networking and collaborating.

So make sure that you're getting out there.

Okay, that you are getting out there on the socials to let people know what you do.

So I find Instagram to be a great place where people can find out who I am, what I represent, what I stand for, and they can follow me if they appreciate the work I do.

And I also like Facebook just for the interaction that I'm having in those groups.

So I love Facebook groups.

It helps me to grow my business and to just attract the kind of audience that I want in my business.

So Facebook and Instagram have been good for me, and Instagram has been great.

TikTok not so much, but it just depends on what you need.

Pinterest is a really great one, especially for this particular blog at Christian Homeschool Moms.

Pinterest has been a wonderful source of web traffic.

So that gives me lots of organic traffic that I don't have to pay for.

So I'm not paying for Facebook ads on.

I'm just receiving that organic traffic from optimizing my blog posts for the search engines and pinning my post on Pinterest.

So there's things you can do to make sure that you're able to keep a steady flow of readers and listeners to your blog, to your podcast, or viewers, to your YouTube channel, or whatever you're using to showcase your Work and talk about your topic of interest and your business.

So networking with the people that reach out to you and want to develop a relationship with you is a great way to also grow.

So now you have people that maybe reply to your email if you're sending out a newsletter, or someone who just lands in your inbox because they're really interested in what you're doing and they want to be a part of your work and your project.

And so these are people that you can connect with and perhaps create a collaboration.

Now let's talk about spiritual life, balance, and three tips I have for you.

And the first one is to keep family first.

I think it's so important because on the days I'm swamped in my business goals or I'm creating a course, or I'm interviewing more than my typical amount of guests, you know, these are times when things get a little bit wonky and overwhelming.

So I remind myself that all of this is for my family.

And it's for them.

It's for them.

That's why I do it.

I do it for me, of course, but I do it for my family because I have daughters that need to see the different options that we have that we have.

Entrepreneurship as well as working at a company.

Right.

There's different ways to accrue income.

So they've watched their father work in corporate, work in higher education, they've watched their mother work in higher education and also work part time in schools and become an entrepreneur.

So they've seen me do it all.

But I've mainly been an entrepreneur for most of their childhood.

So I want them to see the different options for how we can generate income in our families.

And I also do it for them because when they were younger, I was dedicated to staying home with them.

And the only way that would feel comfortable for my husband and I to have me be home and have him be the sole breadwinner for so many years is for me to have an additional income stream that would be helpful to me so that we could do the extra perks and things that we wanted to do for our kids.

And also not to mention as a homeschooler, it really brought a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment to me as a stay at home, work at home mom.

My identity was really in raising my children and homeschooling them for so many years.

And so to have this outlet, just be there for me, waiting for me to grow it and kind of make it what I want it to be was just so fulfilling.

So I wasn't feeling as though I was being pushed by my business or that my business was growing so quickly that I couldn't keep up with the business, or that it was in any way overwhelming because I paced myself over the years.

I didn't want to grow my business really big because I just wanted to have a little bit of extra income while I was raising my kids.

What happened was though, that after my kids got older, I started to pour more of my energy into the business and so that way I had more income earning potential as they got older.

So I've been a mom blogger for all these years, a homeschool mom blogger.

I've been a podcaster.

All these different things, right?

A web designer.

And I believe that I do everything for a purpose and it has to ultimately align with my values and my core beliefs or I just don't want to spend time on it if it doesn't.

So since family is important to me, I saw my blogging and my podcasting as an outlet to help support my family in some way.

It's not always about monetary value, okay?

There's a bigger picture involved.

What example do my daughters see in entrepreneurship and motherhood?

And can they possibly foresee themselves with choices one day when they're married with their own kids?

Or choices to work a 9 to 5 or to start their own company?

I want them to see that a freedom lifestyle is possible, but that it comes with sacrifice and also ultimately choices that affect family.

Next, I want to encourage you to give yourself grace.

You don't have to get it just right, right?

We're not perfect and we're going to fail at a few things, and that's part of life.

But failure really is just the other side of the coin because it's really all how you look at your circumstances and it really.

Is it failure or is it just a lesson learned?

Right?

So I've learned to accept the fact that my days will never be perfect in the sense that everything works out exactly as I want it to.

So embracing the times where things don't work out so evenly, that's all a part of the journey.

Sometimes I get a lot of work done.

Sometimes there are days when I am so accomplished and so productive, and then there are days when I get nothing done, right?

My business is on hold for a week because maybe I have a cold and I have to get better, right?

As.

As in these past couple of weeks, I've been overcoming a head cold.

And so you probably can hear it in my voice right now, it's raspy and I'M just not really completely 100% myself.

And as I've been healing, I've had to rest more.

So I've done a little bit less work over the past few weeks.

And that's just kind of doing business holistically.

As a homeschooler, you have to take care of yourself.

You never want to build a business that feels like it's running you.

You need to run the business.

So it's going to give you a lot of flexibility and freedom when you take control of your business as an entity outside of you that you're in control of, you're in charge of, and you don't have to let it run your world because you run it.

So you get to decide the pacing, how much you want to put into it, how much you don't.

If you're ready for more, you put a little bit more gas, right?

You just push a little harder.

But if you're not ready, because maybe you're.

You have babies, maybe you just had a baby and you're nursing and you're.

You're in another stage of life where it's just not possible for you to put 110% in or even 100% right?

So you want to scale back a little bit, and that's just fine.

When it comes to homeschooling, sometimes my children would learn what I wanted them to.

Sometimes they didn't.

Sometimes I was prepared to teach a certain subject.

Other times I felt like I hit a massive fail button that morning before I even got out of bed.

So I've learned to give myself grace in those times, however often that happens to be.

But more often than not, God strengthens me to get through yet another day.

And his grace has proven sufficient for me over and over again.

And the last thing I want to encourage you to do is not to compare yourself either in your homeschooling endeavors or in the blogging world or in your business world as an entrepreneur, because we're all so very different.

Every homeschool entrepreneur will have her own unique way of bringing value to her audience.

I always wondered, back in the days, why it took my blog so long to grow.

This particular blog took a long time, whereas it seemed other blogs were light years ahead of me.

So I would look around and say, wow, my blog is just.

It's barely getting there, right?

But when I came to terms with it being okay to grow more slowly and the fact that I needed to be in the moment with my little kiddos 10 years ago, and I couldn't pump as much energy into my blog, then I was okay with that.

I was okay with that.

And I figured it'll be here, this blog will be here, and it will grow and it will continue to grow and I'll continue to add to it as I have time.

And it's the same with my podcasting.

So I just take my time with it.

I don't necessarily feel like I have to be, you know, number one on any charts for anything.

I just work on my podcast at my pacing.

Some months I have something awesome to share.

Other months I don't really feel like I have anything.

So I may take a break.

But what you've seen from me, if you've been listening to me for a while, is that I try to stay consistent.

So over the past year, I've tried to show up at least once a month.

There have been a couple of months last summer where I had a podcast twice a month, but we're just doing once a month episodes on this show.

Because I have two other shows that I'm running, actually three others that I'm running as well.

So I'm taking my time on those, and those are a little bit more regular than this one.

So I just take my time.

Also, I'm in another season of my life where my children, like I said, are older.

I have one in college and I'm old, only I've only got one kid at home.

And it's just a whole different way of looking at life.

And so I'm just really in a different place.

And when your kids get older, you start to reevaluate your life, Your goals, your mission, what you're doing that all the time that you have available to you that you didn't have before, or how you might end up having to use that time differently in order to maybe help a with aging parents or invest your time in a different way now that you are in a different stage.

Just remember that God's grace is sufficient for you for your particular season of life.

I really hope that this episode has been helpful and encouraging to you as a businesswoman, entrepreneur, homeschool mom.

Okay?

These are some tips that I want you to really just think about and bask in it for a little bit.

See if it hits you.

And if it hits you, I'm happy.

Because it just means that everything that I do when I show up on this podcast is to support you and that you're being supported.

And that's just kind of my goal here.

You know, I always talk about just kind of taking our time in entrepreneurship and also talk about taking our time in homeschooling.

But in life, that is one of the major lessons I'm learning as I've gotten a little older and I've watched, you know, my kids just kind of sprout in front of me.

And I can't even imagine, like, three years from now what life is going to look like when we're empty nesters.

So the me that was here on this microphone 10 years ago is not the same me.

I'm evolving and I'm learning so much about those transitions that are happening in life.

What's important to me, what's not so important, why it's okay to give ourselves grace, why it's okay to be able to say, I'm done with this phase of my life and I'm done with this project because of that.

Right?

And so it's okay to put an end to something, even if it's a good thing.

And so I've often questioned myself, like, how long will I continue the Christian Homeschool Moms Podcast?

And when I came back last year, I was so happy to be back to just encourage my listeners, encourage you guys, because I know that I still have a lot of homeschool encouragement left inside of me and it's there and it has to get out and I have to help somebody.

And so I will continue to do this work for as long as the Lord allows me this opportunity, I'll keep doing it.

And when he says that time is up, then I'll say goodbye to the podcast.

But until that day, I'm still showing up.

Even if I don't homeschool next year or the year after or my daughter's senior year for the next couple years.

So whatever we decide to do with our education, with our daughter, I just feel like I will still be plugged into this community and to helping you guys because I know what it feels like.

I've been in your shoes.

I'm in your shoes now for some of you, and for others of you, I've been in your shoes five years ago or 10 years ago or 15 years ago or 17 years ago.

So I've been there and I understand.

And so I want to kind of just be that voice that says I'm still here, planning to be here for the long haul to help you out.

But you'll notice that some of the topics will just kind of shift according to where I am in my life today.

So it may not always just be about homeschooling.

Sometimes I will come and share about just parenting, just being a mama, right?

Or sometimes I'll share about business because that's what I do, that's what I share.

That's what I love encouraging moms about.

So I'll talk about being a mompreneur.

Sometimes there will be different topics that I'll sprinkle in here and there that have nothing to do so much with the idea of being a homeschooler, but that are everything to do with being a mom, right?

So I may add some things in like that from time to time.

And I may even just talk about faith, talk about a verse I read in the Bible that really helped me.

So my plan is to continue to be of encouragement to you and I would love your feedback, would absolutely love for you to reach out to me.

The best way right now that you could really support this podcast, the very best way is number one, to leave a review in Apple Podcasts.

I will leave a link in the show Notes for you, but find this podcast in Apple Podcasts.

And if you're on your phone, which seems to be the best way to leave a review, scroll all the way down until you see the words write a review and go ahead and hit the five stars and then go ahead and write a review.

It's so awesome to be able to see how people have been helped by this show.

So I would love that.

The second way you could support this podcast is to head on over to buymeacoffee.com demetriazinga and you can support me financially that way if you so choose.

And I would greatly appreciate that.

The third way you can support me is if you have children that are five years or younger and would love to attend a Pre K circle time.

I'm offering a circle time every single Monday.

I've been doing this for three years, so Mondays and I've got several time slots that were open, but right now there's just the 10 o' clock Pacific Standard Time opening.

So 10 Pacific, 11 Mountain, 12 Central and 1 Eastern.

If on Mondays at any of those times you have a kid 5 years or younger that would love to attend my Pre K circle time, I'd love to have them join me over on Outschool for that fun time we have together.

25 minutes.

Jam packed with music, puppets, Alphabet numbers, months of the year, days of the week.

We do it all and we read books and I do have my favorite puppet that comes to visit that comes for a surprise appearance and visit just about every week.

We also color together.

We do arts and crafts, we dance.

It's a lot of fun.

So I'd love to have you there.

And you can find that link as well in my show notes.

Those are the ways you can support my podcast.

And once again, if you are interested in receiving coaching on how to start your podcast or coaching basically on business strategies for your website, your blog, your keywords for your search engine optimization, I have programs that can help you.

I have workshops that I'm starting.

I have a lot of things going on that can help you with those things.

So podcast coaching, business coaching.

Visit me@HerbusineSselevated.com for more information.

And of course, it's going to direct you to all the different outlets that allow you to get the coaching, specific coaching that you need.

And that's all I have for now.

So next time I'll have a guest.

We'll talk more about homeschooling and health and how homeschool mamas can be healthier versions of ourselves.

And we'll talk about that on the next show.

Until then, I'll talk to you guys soon.

And thanks for listening.

Happy homeschooling.