A quiet time routine that actually works in a homeschool does not happen by accident, and pediatric sleep consultant Jessie Martin of The Goodnight House joins Erin to show how to build one. They cover nap time tips for kids 3 and under, homeschool quiet time for older kids, and how Jessie is building a sleep app while homeschooling four children.

What you'll learn in this episode

• Nap time tips for little ones, including a by the clock schedule built on age-appropriate wake windows, a dark room, and white noise.
• How to set up homeschool quiet time with a simple "quiet reading time" and how to reset it after a break.
• How a pediatric sleep consultant plans her week so she can work during quiet time and still homeschool.
• What it looks like to build an app one next step at a time.

About Erin

Erin Meinel is a former early childhood educator turned homeschool mom and founder of erinmeinel.com, where she helps homeschool moms build sustainable rhythms and businesses of their own.

Links mentioned

• The Goodnight House: thegoodnighthouse.com
• Jessie on Instagram: @thegoodnighthouse
• Sleep Without Sleep Training guide: https://thegoodnighthouse.com/shop/p/healthy-sleep-without-sleep-training-1
• Free Yoto audiobook list: https://thegoodnighthouse.com/podcast/wheretofindfreeyotocontent
• App waitlist or beta signup: https://summer-sunset-90790.myflodesk.com/rlx4pd2rsc
• Free 2-night workshop, Make Money From Home as a Homeschool Mom (Nov 10 and 12, 7 PM CST): erinmeinel.com/make-money-from-home
• erinmeinel.com

If you want to start a business as a homeschool mom but keep waiting until you feel ready, this episode is for you. Erin shares what the littlest hockey players and her son's first game taught her about planting something small and putting it where people can find it.

What you'll learn in this episode

• Why the best homeschool mom business ideas start as one small thing you can do this week, not a finished brand.
• How to start a business while homeschooling by taking one public step before you feel qualified.
• What it looks like to build a work from home homeschool mom income in the margin you already have.
• Why the first step in your business is usually unpaid, and why that does not mean it is not working.

About Erin

Erin Meinel is a former early childhood educator turned homeschool mom and founder of erinmeinel.com, where she helps homeschool moms build sustainable rhythms and businesses of their own.

Links mentioned

• Free 2-night workshop, Make Money From Home as a Homeschool Mom (Nov 10 and 12, 7 PM Central): erinmeinel.com/make-money-from-home
• erinmeinel.com

Your first year homeschooling will almost never look like what you pictured, and that is not a sign you chose wrong. In this episode, Erin Meinel tells the story of carrying ten years of kindergarten classroom up from her basement and rebuilding school inside her own living room, what she pulled out within weeks, and the one thing she kept that changed the entire shape of their days.

This is the planting season, homeschool side. It is for the first-year mom wondering whether she is doing this wrong, and for the mom in year three who is still running something she inherited rather than chose.

In this episode

• Why everybody plants what she already knows in her first year homeschooling, and why that is completely normal
• What Erin brought up from her basement, and how fast she had to pull it back out
• The one thing she kept, and why letting kids move during read alouds changed everything
• The permission a former teacher had that most homeschool moms do not, and how to give it to yourself
• Why you should plant less curriculum than you think you need

Links mentioned

• erinmeinel.com

About Erin

Erin Meinel is a former early childhood educator, entrepreneur, and homeschool mom to two boys. She is the founder of Erin Meinel LLC and helps homeschool moms build businesses that fit the life they are actually living. Find her at erinmeinel.com.

Resources

• erinmeinel.com
• Eternal Parenting on Substack: https://erinmeinel.substack.com/
• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: https://erinmeinel.myflodesk.com/discover-your-brand

How to know what business to start is the question Erin Meinel gets more than any other, and the usual answers about passion and niche research are not how it actually happened for her. In this episode she tells the story of the 2018 season that turned into her first business, why she never planned to own one at all, and the single question that works better than any niche exercise.

This is the business side of the preparation season. It covers the inward work of prayer and wise counsel, the outward work of noticing what people already come to you for, and the honest line between preparing and stalling.

In this episode

• Why Erin swore she would never be a business owner, and what changed
• How her first business started with a problem she solved for her own family first
• The personal brand association you already have, whether you built it on purpose or not
• The better question to ask instead of what is my passion
• The inward and outward halves of preparation, and why you need both
• How to tell the difference between genuine discernment and stalling

Links mentioned

• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: erinmeinel.com
• Episode 17, on the personal brand you already have

About Erin

Erin Meinel is a former early childhood educator, entrepreneur, and homeschool mom to two boys. She is the founder of Erin Meinel LLC and helps homeschool moms build businesses that fit the life they are actually living. Find her at erinmeinel.com.

Resources

• erinmeinel.com
• Eternal Parenting on Substack: https://erinmeinel.substack.com/
• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: https://erinmeinel.myflodesk.com/discover-your-brand

Building a business that starts as an idea and becomes a calling rarely happens overnight, and in this episode Erin Meinel talks with Carolina Martinez of Cash Flow with Carolina and Greater Financial about the long season of preparation behind hers.

Carolina is a financial planner and a fellow Christian mom entrepreneur, and she shares how prayer, her husband's wisdom, and a few moments of unmistakable timing shaped her businesses. This conversation is for the homeschool mom who feels a stirring and can't name it yet.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE

• How Carolina went from five years as a financial planner to starting Cash Flow with Carolina when her son was 7 weeks old, taking a leap of faith without seeing the whole staircase.
• What discerning this calling looked like when she turned down a part-time six-figure offer, felt no peace about another firm, and went on to open Greater Financial.
• Why a humbling season, like Erin's two years working for someone else after closing her businesses, can be preparation, and what to do when you sense a stirring but can't name it yet.

Links mentioned

• Made for Mothers networking group (join for $1): https://made-for-mothers.mykajabi.com/a/2148135155/Nr25VQoJ
• https://cashflowwithcarolina.com/
• https://greaterfinancial.co/
• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: https://erinmeinel.myflodesk.com/discover-your-brand

About Erin

Erin Meinel is a former early childhood educator, entrepreneur, and homeschool mom to two boys. She is the founder of Erin Meinel LLC and helps homeschool moms build businesses that fit the life they are actually living. Find her at erinmeinel.com.

Resources

• erinmeinel.com
• Eternal Parenting on Substack: https://substack.com/@erinmeinel
• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: https://erinmeinel.myflodesk.com/discover-your-brand

Homeschool Moms Make Money is published twice weekly on Podbean and all major podcast directories.

How to prepare to homeschool is usually answered with a curriculum list and a supply run, and that is not what this episode is about. Erin Meinel walks through her own twenty-year preparation, from deciding at age seven to become a teacher, through a decade in early childhood classrooms, to the parent-teacher conference and the book that finally made the decision undeniable.

Preparation is almost always retroactive. You cannot see it while you are in it. This episode is for the mom who thinks she is starting from scratch, and for the mom who has been sitting in preparation so long it has quietly turned into waiting.

In this episode

• Why preparation is the first season and the one almost nobody believes they are in
• Erin's full preparation story, including the teaching degree, the classroom decade, and the parent-teacher conference that changed everything
• How Hold On to Your Kids gave language to what she was already watching in her children
• Why everything you have already lived counts as homeschool preparation, even the parts that had nothing to do with children
• The two active things preparation asks of you, and how to keep this season from turning into indefinite waiting
• Why preparation comes back around every single year

Links mentioned

• Hold On to Your Kids, by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate
• erinmeinel.com

About Erin

Erin Meinel is a former early childhood educator, entrepreneur, and homeschool mom to two boys. She is the founder of Erin Meinel LLC and helps homeschool moms build businesses that fit the life they are actually living. Find her at erinmeinel.com.

Resources

• erinmeinel.com
• Eternal Parenting on Substack: https://erinmeinel.substack.com/
• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: https://erinmeinel.myflodesk.com/discover-your-brand

Starting a business after homeschooling is one honest answer to the question of when to build, not the only one, and Kristen Brink has the hindsight to walk us through her reasoning. She homeschooled her three sons from 2011 to 2021, and they are now independent adults in their 20s who, as she puts it, are not ruined. In this conversation she answers the questions every new homeschool mom asks, including "Am I going to ruin my children if I homeschool them?" and, when it comes to building something alongside your homeschool, how to tell "not right now because I know myself" from "not right now because I am scared." Tune in for her wisdom!

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why Kristen's three sons, now 21, 28, and 29, turned out fine, and the stereotype they still hear about homeschoolers
• Why homeschooling does not have to look like public school to get your kids where they want to go
• Skills to teach and nurture beyond a four-year degree plan, from selling to cooking to running a food business
• Why Kristen chose not to build a business while homeschooling, and how she knew her all-or-nothing personality made that the right call
• How to know if it is the right season to start a business, and Kristen's test for telling self-knowledge from fear
• What the homeschool years were quietly preparing: continuing education, productivity books, and curriculum she first built for her own boys
• Why everyone needs multiple income streams, even your teenage and twenty-something kids
• How a homeschool mom business can grow out of what you are already doing, one semester-long curriculum at a time

LINKS MENTIONED

• Shaping Minds Co., Kristen's Socratic homeschool curriculum shop on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ShapingMindsCo
• The Portfolio Parent, Kristen's Substack on building multiple income streams while you stay home with your kids: https://portfolioparent.substack.com/
• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: erinmeinel.com

YOUR NEXT STEP

Whether or not this is your season to build, the free Personal Brand Identity Quiz at erinmeinel.com takes five minutes and will tell you something about the kind of builder you already are.

ABOUT ERIN

Erin Meinel is a former early childhood educator, entrepreneur, and homeschool mom to two boys. She is the founder of Erin Meinel LLC and helps homeschool moms build businesses that fit the life they are actually living. Find her at erinmeinel.com.

RESOURCES

• erinmeinel.com
• Eternal Parenting on Substack: https://erinmeinel.substack.com/
• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: https://erinmeinel.myflodesk.com/discover-your-brand

Homeschool Moms Make Money is published twice weekly on all major podcast directories.

The seasons of homeschooling are not the same as the seasons of building a business, and most homeschool moms are living in both at once without realizing it. In this episode, Erin Meinel introduces the seven-season framework that will carry the rest of the fall: preparation, planting, watering, weeding, pruning, harvesting, and rest.

This is the framing episode for the series. It is not a diagnostic and there is nothing to fill out. It is a list, and the point is to hear yourself in it.

In this episode

• Why your homeschool year feels harder in October than it did in August, and why that is a season rather than a failure
• The seven seasons named, with what each one actually feels like from the inside
• Why watering is the longest season and the one most women quit in
• The difference between weeding and pruning, and why pruning is harder
• Why you are almost always in two different seasons at once, and what Erin's own homeschool and business look like right now
• What is coming in the rest of the series, including the question of which season gets to set the pace

Links mentioned

• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: erinmeinel.com

About Erin

Erin Meinel is a former early childhood educator, entrepreneur, and homeschool mom to two boys. She is the founder of Erin Meinel LLC and helps homeschool moms build businesses that fit the life they are actually living. Find her at erinmeinel.com.

Resources

• erinmeinel.com
• Eternal Parenting on Substack: https://erinmeinel.substack.com/
• Personal Brand Identity Quiz: https://erinmeinel.myflodesk.com/discover-your-brand