A lot of us don’t know what we really want in life. But, when you take the time to figure out what you don’t want…you can get a better idea of what you do want. Know what I mean? Well, let me say right now…no part of me thought I’d ever be homeschooling. Then, I started to learn the amazing benefits of it. And while I tried holding down a part-time job, my husband’s ever-changing schedule made it crazy stressful. So, I decided to roll up my sleeves and learn how I could make money from home, set my own hours, be my own boss and still make a killer living. Blogging was the answer.
Set goals for the year
With every new school year, it is so important to set goals for both school and your blog. This helps you keep your focus when you feel like you’re going to totally snap.
These goals can be as simple or as intricate as you’d like. Every person is different just like every family is different. So you have to do what works for you.
The blogging goals
For the year 2019, my goal for myself (and the blog) was “fear.” I wanted to start pushing my comfort zone and doing more things that would force me to grow as a person and as a business owner. Click here to get my 5 strategies for growing an online business.
This allowed me to travel for a long weekend to Washington DC to take part in a financial conference for online influencers. It helped me create my own course, share my personal stories on bigger blogs, and make investments to help me scale my blog.
Goals for homeschool
For this school year, my goal has been to do more hands-on learning outside of the home. This was my original reason for homeschool and yet, I was finding myself constantly making excuses as to why we couldn’t make it happen.
- “We can’t travel right now.”
- “I don’t have enough money.”
- “Maybe when I’m making more money with the blog.”
Instead of more excuses, I decided to start finding free or affordable things that are local and taking advantage of memberships that you pay for once and can use all year long.
Create new goals each day
Yearly goals are great, but every day it is super beneficial to make small daily goals. Then choose between 1 and 3 that you want to accomplish. Yeah, just a few. Because let’s face it, running a business and homeschooling will get a little crazy. Keeping your goals realistic will prevent you from feeling like a failure when you don’t cross off a list of 5 or 10 things.
Daily goals can be simple too:
- Write a blog post
- Schedule Pinterest pins
- Read 3 chapters
- Encourage 20 minutes of solo reading
- Make it through 3 pages of math
- Respond to e-mails
Setting clear, tangible goals for each day is a great way to stay on task. Just make sure you keep the list small and reasonable. Otherwise, you are going to finish the day feeling like a failure if you are unable to check off the items on your list.
Do your work when you are most productive
Every morning I set my alarm for 5 am so I can get work done before the kids wake up. This usually allows me to work for about 3 hours at least.
I choose to wake up early because when my husband Tom comes home, I want to be able to spend some family time together — and he usually wants to talk about his day, so I try to carve out time to listen.
However, some women would do much better sleeping in and working late into the night. That’s their creative hours.
Pick a time that works best for you and your productivity and take full advantage of using this time for yourself. Finding ways to accelerate your success with less time will be one of the biggest lifesavers for you and your business!
Treat blogging like work
Even when I first started the blog and was making absolutely no money, I would directly tell the kids that I was working.
If you kick-start your blog by telling yourself and everyone else that it is your job, you will begin to treat it like a money-making machine! There are some basic ways that you can start treating your blog like a business right away:
- Get training (just like you would any other job) Click here to get my 5 steps to making $1K with a blog
- Register as a business (an LLC is most likely what you’ll be)
- Tell people about it!
- Share your work with friends, family and the internet
- Carve time out of your schedule for work
Invest in blog training
Before I even started my blog, I invested in a blogging course that taught all of the basic lessons I needed to get off the on the right foot with blogging. I did this because I didn’t want to waste my time trying to figure things out. Getting ahead of the curve was always a top priority.
If I hadn’t taken the time to take my blog seriously and invest in training from people who had gone before me, I know there would have been a much longer learning curve and I probably wouldn’t have made money as quickly. Want to get ahead of the curve? Join my free online training for newbie bloggers.
Other helpful posts:
- 10 Steps to Turn Your Blog Into a Business
- How to Make Money While You Homeschool
- The 3 Times Per Year to Declutter with Kids
- Screen-Free Road Trip Ideas for Kids
Make time for yourself every day
I am definitely one of those people who needs alone time. Which means I have to make it happen as often as possible.
Whatever it is that you do for yourself, make sure you are still carving out time to make that happen. So often, as parents, we find ourselves doing everything for everyone else. This goes double when you’re homeschooling! Remember, this can look different for everyone. Some ways you might make time for yourself are:
- Going to the gym
- Taking a walk alone
- Reading for 20 minutes a day
- Having a half-hour phone call with a friend
Take advantage of extracurriculars
Putting homeschooled kids in extracurricular activities is good to help them socialize and can challenge them and help them grow outside the home.
Ours have participated in a monthly book club, weekly “co-op,” volunteering at church, gymnastics, dance, cooking classes, and Lego building camps. Of course, we don’t do all of these at the same time!
Extracurriculars
are beneficial to the kids but can also give working moms a chance to get in some uninterrupted work done.
Every Tuesday my homeschooled kiddos partake in a co-op group and I get to spend all day working at a coffee shop if I want to! Talk about a win/win situation!
Let the other parent help
Another new thing we have started this year is having Tom be more hands-on with schooling. When our oldest daughter was in school, he was so good about making sure to do homework with her and help her study.
Now that we’ve been homeschooling he’s a lot more hands-off oddly enough. This was leading to him feeling kind of “out of the loop” and not really knowing what our kids were doing in school.
When they were in school, he would just assume they were learning, but when they’re home with mom it seems easier to assume that they still don’t know their shapes. ?
Small steps are still steps
It’s so easy to look at all the things we want to accomplish in the next…oh, I don’t know, 30 years and instantly feel like we have to do them all right now…or we’re failing!
That’s why it’s so important to start with a daily list that is small and doable. Keep taking steps in the right direction and I promise, you will get somewhere!
Small steps for blogging
Take advantage of FREE online training— that you can easily get through in one day and instantly start implementing.
Don’t expect to know everything all at once. Running a blog is like running a business. There is a learning curve that comes with it. You just have to keep going!
Small steps for school
Don’t get too hard on yourself if things don’t go as planned. This doesn’t have to be just like public school…that’s why you chose to homeschool in the first place.
If you’re having an off day, just read together. More than anything children benefit from this time…even if they’re not the ones reading!
You got this!
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