Homeschooling moms are busy educating their children and running a home. Some of them are also entrepreneurs who support their families or provide a significant contribution to the family income. Running a business is challenging and time consuming and so is homeschooling, so why would someone mesh both of these? There are so many good reasons!
In this blog post, we’ll explore four reasons why becoming a homeschool “mompreneur” could be a great step for you.
1. Keep current in your profession
If you had a profession prior to homeschooling your kids, running a business is a great way to stay current in your industry, keep your skills sharp, and eliminate the gap in employment that plagues many moms.
Prior to starting my own business in 2012, I worked for a number of years as an administrative assistant for a real estate broker who was a fellow homeschooling mother. In 2000, I worked for another homeschooling mom who had a bulk mail business. Both of these women were able to maintain and expand their professional skills running businesses from home while homeschooling their children. Their examples inspired me to eventually work for myself as a writer and virtual administrative assistant.
2. Achieve better work-life balance
Working outside your home puts you at the mercy of other people’s schedules, while working for yourself allows you to create a balance between work, school, and life that meets your family’s needs.
I greatly enjoyed the work I did for the two homeschool mom entrepreneurs for whom I worked. But working for others means that you have to arrange your life around your job. Having your own business allows you to decide how to structure your work. As a business owner who is a homeschooling parent, you can decide to take off on Friday so that you and your child can participate in a weekly field trip. You can schedule your work around your life instead of allowing work to be your life.
3. Grow personally
I’ve been a homeschooling mom since 1993. It’s a lifestyle that I love. Homeschooling means you must focus on your students and sometimes that means that our personal development can take a back seat.
One perk of having a business is that it forces us to develop ourselves. Business owners have to set goals, add professional skills, identify our talents, and use them to create income. In the process we grow intellectually, emotionally, and professionally.
The appreciation of our abilities by other adults builds our self-esteem in ways that nothing else does. This self-esteem flows into all aspects of our lives. For this reason, I can’t recommend having a home-based business enough to other homeschool moms.
4. Have stability and flexibility
When my husband suffered a traumatic brain injury and couldn’t work for six months in 2002, we were in a bind. I had been a full-time homeschooling mom and he worked full-time to support our family. With no short-term disability income to rely on, I had to take a part-time evening job outside of our home to help keep us afloat.
Our whole family felt the strain of my husband’s health concerns. Having me gone 20 hours a week only served to increase that stress and reduce the stability of our family during that uncertain time.
We’ve faced other challenges since then, and have found that having a home-based business has helped us to adapt better to those challenging situations. Running one’s own business allows maximum flexibility to earn an income while keeping your children’s lives stable in the face of unexpected circumstances. During this pandemic, homeschooling and working from home has allowed me and my family to keep our lives proceeding fairly close to normal.
Bottom line
If you are a homeschooling mom, I’d encourage you to consider having your own home-based business for all the reasons I listed above. Being a business owner is challenging, but it’s also extremely rewarding for homeschooling moms to keep the professional, creative part of their lives engaged. It’s good for you and it’s good for your kids to see you as an entrepreneur as well as a mom. So, give it a try—you have nothing to lose and much to gain!
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