When I was 10 or 11 I announced that I wanted to be a writer or a teacher. In sixth grade, when all the other kids were doing their reading time, my teacher allowed me to write instead. Writing is something that I did, it is part of me.
At home, we didn’t watch tv. We read or played outside. My favorite memory with my dad was when he’d take me to the local bookstore, and we’d both pick out a book. Years later that bookstore went of business, and I mourned. But I can still remember exactly where all the sections were in that store – including where the writing books were.
I got my first writing book as a Christmas gift when I was 11 or 12, and I still have it to this day. It was the beginning of a long line of writing books, magazines, and courses I’ve invested in over the years – dreaming of writing for a living.
So when I was 5 months pregnant with K, I resigned from my job as a software trainer and installation coordinator, with the dream of staying home with my baby and writing. That’s what I wanted to do.
I had done some freelance writing in the past, and at work I had taken on any writing projects I could get my hands on – which amazingly was quite a few. So it all seemed like a natural thing to do.
My job had required 80% travel -which I loved. But the lifestyle wasn’t condusive to raising a family, much less homeschooling. And that is what I wanted.
If I was going to have children, then I wanted to be the one to raise them – and thankfully I had that option – not everyone does unfortunately
So Greg bought into this idea that I would be an at home mom, and bring in some extra money as a writer. But he wanted me to write a book – a fiction book.
Unfortunately writing fiction is not my forte – and to make money at it takes a while. But I spent those four months as at-home soon to be mom – playing housekeeper (something else that I’m not particularly good at) and writing.
But the reality was that money was running short, and our debt was continuing to grow. While we wanted me to be at home, we weren’t mature enough to change the lifestyle we had lived with two incomes.
And it came that just about when K was born, I needed to go back to work – to make up the gap in our spending. Our Mulit-Level marketing/direct selling business wasn’t bringing in the income we needed yet, and I needed to step up and do my part in the mean time. Not what I wanted, but what was necessary.
God is amazing – even in our stupidity. In his perfect timing, he provided an opportunity. The software company I had worked for asked me if I would write a manual for them about the software that I used to install and train.
I had contributed to the software manual before, and wrote many of the training materials. So it was something I knew I could do – and do well.
So I set aside writing fiction, what Greg thought he wanted me to do, and did what he really wanted me to do - make money writing.
And since my background – even at that point – was in business and technology with an emphsis in communication and training, it was a natural fit.
I transformed the spare room in our little rental house into an office, and wrote about how to use the software and how it worked for a couple months. And it worked great – it was writing & teaching (my dream). And it gave me another item to put in my portilio and more experience.
But when that project finished, I had to get to figure out another source. It was before the internet, and while I knew exactly how to pitch and write magazine articles, for whatever reason it wasn’t something I choose to pursue.
Instead, we decided that I need to stay in the technology side of things, rather than pursue more conventional freelance writing opportunities – at least for now.
Now, there’s several things that if I had known or had done differently, I could have made a really good living as a part-time freelance writer – especially as a freelance technical writer in a techie town. But at the time, I didn’t know and I’m not sure I had the confidence in my writing ability to really market myself like I should have.
But it all worked out – and became an important piece to the opportunities that came later.
Next up in My Work-at-Home Mom Story: What I wish I had known about Freelance Writing and Writing for Money
Until then, remember to believe in yourself and know that the right opportunties will come up if you are open to them and willing to do the work.
So, in the last episode of my work-at-home mom story, I shared a little about Greg and I’s experience with multi-level marketing and direct selling. And how even though we chose not to continue that business, we learned a lot – about business, about people, and about ourselves.
So, today, here’s my top 3 business lessons learned from our Multi-Level Marketing & Direct Selling stint.
#1 – The Dream, The Plan, and then the Reality
You dream of starting a business, of earning extra income, of getting out debt, of staying home with your kids and still earning money, of working on your own schedule, in your own way. And that is good.
To dream is necessary. The Dream, the why, will sustain you through the ups and downs of your business. In fact, without the dream, without the why, it’s hard to stay with and in your business.
But to make it happen, you need a plan – and more importantly, and actionable plan.
Dreaming and planning is FUN….
But for any real results to happen you have to get out and work your plan!
I know, crazy.
But the reality is to get any business going, to keep any business going, you have to do the work.
It’s easy to get sucked into the dream, and the plan, and the best intentions. But when push comes to shove… even part-time and at-home businesses need to be taken as seriously as a JOB. And while BOSS isn’t going to fire you if you don’t show up and do the work, the results are the same – no income.
The dream will keep you going, the plan will keep you on track, and the reality – doing the work – will keep you moving forward and produce the Results.
#2 – Relationships Matter – But Not in the Way You Think
The phrase “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” always makes me cringe – mostly because it feels a little elitest to me. But the reality is that relationships do matter in business.
Now, in multi-level marketing and some direct selling, newbies often think that they will get their friends and family on board, and life will be all cherries and roses. But it’s just doesn’t work that way. Close friends and family often take a “wait and see” approach, to see if you are going to make the opportunity work.
But relationships do matter – the relationships you build with customers, with prospects, with others in complementary businesses and industries, even competitiors.
You never know where a referral will come from. And quite frankly you want those referrals. And you never know what you’ll learn.
Don’t worry about selling someone who isn’t interested. Help them out, build a relationship with them, send business their way if the opportunity comes up. Over time, that relationship may grow into more business, either directly or through referrals.
And, if nothing else you’ll know another interesting person who enriches your world and adds to your perspective – or even your story
#3-Business is Often Just a Numbers Game
People will refer their friends to you if they know, like, and trust you – and they’ll even buy from you if that relationship is there and they have a need or desire for what you are selling.
But, the bottom line is that not everyone has a need or desire at the same time. To have consistency, it’s often simply a numbers game.
And knowing your industry’s average numbers allows you to step away from that emotional feeling when things are not happening as fast as you’d like, and check to see where you are at numbers wise - with leads, with calls, with follow-ups, with your traffic, whatever it is in your business.
Are you reaching the numbers necessary so that word can spread about you and your product or service?
For whatever reason, making that realization that it wasn’t “me”, it was that I wasn’t doing the work to reach the “number” of people I needed, was freeing.
Knowing that if I do the work, work the plan, build authentic relationships with people, give great customer service, and simply put in the numbers, it will eventually all come together - I like that.
And it’s a concept that I’ve found true in every business opportunity I’ve pursued. Bottomline, if you reach enough people, you’ll find those that are in need of what you are offering or they’ll be referred to you (which is the best thing ever!)
So that’s that. My top 3 business lessons learned from our multilevel marketing experience. There are more, but that’s a book, not a post
While I had done transcription and freelance writing on the side before kids, my first solution to make that transition from a more-than-fulltime job to being an at-home mom was like many other wanna-be work-at-home moms - through multilevel marketing and direct selling.
I was first approached with the idea of building a business with a well-known multilevel marketing company by a co-worker, in the Fall of 1996 when I was first pregnant with K. We were looking for a solution to help deal with our debt so that I could be an at-home mom, and the idea of part-time income was appealing.
Greg and I investigated the opportunity, met the people involved (a very important thing in any business, but especially in MultiLevel Marketing), and after some serious discussions on whether it was a good fit, decided to have a go at it.
Now Greg and I are both introverts – he even more than I. So the idea of approaching people we didn’t know and “selling” was not comfortable and took a lot of energy. And that phone – wow… it’s amazing how scary a little everyday device can be when you are facing your fears and putting yourself out there.
Legitimate, ethical multilevel marketing opportunities and direct selling are very viable ways to earn an income, and there are some wonderful opportunities out there, including the one we were part of.
If you believe in a product, believe in yourself, have a great support system and training, and are willing to put in the work, it is very possible to earn more than a decent living at it. I’ve seen this prove true for multiple people in my life, across a variety of opportunities.
But to build a business, any business, it takes energy and effort. For some - those who truly succeed at it – that energy and effort is fun and enjoyable, and it feeds them.
But for Greg and I, while it had its fun moments, and we learned a LOT about business and about ourselves, multilevel marketing was not a good fit. It took more energy than we had to give it, and it didn’t capture our hearts, our passion, and more importantly, our commitment.
Don’t get me wrong – we loved the products and the people. Greg grew as a leader and as an individual hugely during that period of time because of the business and leadership training, and the association with other like-mind people. In fact, because of that training and personal growth, he nearly doubled his income at work.
But the multilevel marketing business and the direct selling piece of it just wasn’t a good fit for us. We gave it a go for over two years, and then decided to let it go and embrace the other, more comfortable, opportunities that also came up during that time.
And, even though we decided not to “build” the business side of the opportunity after the second year, we have kept our distributorship active, even after all these years, simply because it makes sense to continue to buy the products at distributor cost.
And hey, maybe one day, we’ll be able to use internet marketing to sell the products online and then I’ll be in my element again.
I didn’t set out to become a work-at-home mom. It wasn’t my dream, it wasn’t even something I had considered before marriage or before kids.
When Greg and I got married, having kids was part of the deal, and so was homeschooling them. (yes, we agreed to homeschool before we had kids, before we were even married, but that’s another story.)
But working and homeschooling, nope. Not part of the deal.
Yet, since July 1997, when K was just 6 weeks old, I’ve been a working mom. And in 2000, when K’s little mind demanded more, I became a working, homeschool mom, and have been ever since.
But what that has looked like has changed over the years.
I didn’t just start off doing what I’m doing now. It’s been a process – a learning process, a growing process, and a process of exploring opportunties I never dreamed existed or would exist.
I grew up in a family business. When I was sick, I went to work with mom and dad. When mom was sick, she brought work home. Dad always brought work home.
I grew up in a house with it’s own computer, before PCs were even available. It was an IBM System 32, took 12 inch disks, and was bigger than my freezer is today. We called it “Igor”. Mom used it when she needed to work from home.
When “portable” computers were available, my dad bought one – and sometimes took it camping with us. I still remember him at the state park’s ranger station, plugged in with this computer (it was bigger than most roll-aboard suitcases are today), working, while my brother and I played.
I bring this up, because now that I think about it, the idea of working from home was long ago planted as something doable. It wasn’t modeled for me, like I model it for my kids, but yet it was.
Living life and working from home were intermingled in my life from the beginning, and so the life I lead now, shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose.
When I was single and working, I’d take on extra jobs transcribing software code or transcribing audio recordings (from cassette tapes). It was before email or the Internet, so everything was sent via snail mail and on paper or disk/cassette.
When we worked at the software company where we met, Greg and I and several of our co-workers would meet for lunch periodically and talk about how one day we’d all be able to work from anywhere in the world, dial into one computer system, and pass through to help our clients anywhere in the world. It was a glimpse of the future.
We were already dialing into our clients computer systems from the office (on really really slow modems), and supporting them with phone calls and faxes. We could see then that around the corner, the next step, working anywhere in the world. And boy, that was the vision.
And one that has been a reality and sustained me for most of K’s life. Who would know that that very dream we discussed so many years ago, would be the very thing that has allowed me to be home with the kids and homeschool them. Certainly not me.
Over the next few weeks, months, I’ll be sharing how it is that I came to be a work-at-home mom, the different work-at-home opportunities I’ve tried, and the resources I’ve found useful – and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Come along if you will, and if you may, maybe sharing this story will help make your journey a little easier or give you some encouragement for your journey.
Is it really possible to make money working from home and homeschool at the same time?
Absolutely! I’ve done it for over 11 years, and so have many other homeschooling parents. In this episode of the Living Life at Home podcast, Teisha Shelby-Houston (aka LadyT) and I share our insights into working from home while homeschooling.
Teisha is a work-at-home, homeschooling mom to 5 kids, four boys and one girl, ages 17 to 3. And she is passionate about helping moms, like you and I, stay at home with their kids.
In today’s podcast, Teisha shares her heart and experience on how it is possible to earn money working from home while homeschooling your kids. Some of the topics we talked about included:
What the first thing is you need to do if you want to make money from home
How your interests, passions, and God’s plan for you factor into how successful you will be
The question you should ask your friends and family that will help you find identify which options are best for you
What prayer can do for your work-family balance
What homeschooling looks like in her household
What it means to set our kids up for success
How to balance kid activities with family needs and work
What your children learn from your example
Teisha and I had such a fun converstion, I wish we had more time than the hour to talk ‘cuz Teisha is really generous with her experience and expertise and so passionate about helping moms like you and I succeed in both our personal and professional endeavors. I hope you enjoy listening in as much as I did recording it for you.
To listen in, simply click the play button below. To download the recording to your computer, right click on download link below and choose ‘Save Target As’.
Insights on How to Make Money Working From Home While Homeschooling Your Kids[ 1:01:50 ]Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
P.S.S. Want a free transcript of this episode? Be sure to subscribe to our email list and I’ll let you know as soon as the transcript is available. Thanks!
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