How to Build a Business While Homeschooling: A Realistic 5-Step Guide for Moms

I’ve been writing about my homeschool mom life since the very beginning—not because I had any grand plan to build a business, but because writing brought clarity to my days. What I learned became this: a realistic 5-step guide for how to build a business while homeschooling.

When I sat in the café with my pen and journal, I could finally see what was actually happening in my home, rather than my perception of what education should look like based on what I’d seen before, what I’d imagined, or what I’d read in someone else’s home education book.

The writing helped me connect the dots between my reality and my understanding, between my lived experience and what I thought I knew about learning and education.

I’d been writing since I was eight years old. But writing about homeschooling? That was different. It helped me clarify my ideas about what learning really looked like with my very specific children. It helped me navigate my own complicated relationship with education and translate it into something alive and real in my own home.

For years, people left comments on my blog posts. Random strangers saying, “You should write a book.” The feedback kept coming. Personal letters, emails, and eventually, social media messages telling me they felt seen by the work I’d shared.

One summer—summer of 2018, to be exact—I sat in my fruit orchard with chickens pecking at my red toenails, and I wrote a book. I learned how to edit, connect with publishers, manage a book release, and utilize email marketing and automation. I also gained an understanding of SEO and eventually discovered podcasting, just in time for March 2020, when I suddenly found myself spending a whole lot more time in my closet.

How did I build a business while homeschooling? Here are the five steps that worked for me.

Before we dive in, grab my free Working Homeschool Mom Blueprint—it’s the quick-start companion to everything I’m about to share.

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How to Build a Business While Homeschooling: A Realistic 5-Step Guide for Moms

Step 1: Establish Your Foundation First (You Can’t Rush This)

Here’s what I want you to know: I didn’t do any of this in the first few years of homeschooling.

I was all in, 100% devoted to home education, solidly, for at least the first 12 to 15 years.

However, I always had a writing practice. And the more I wrote, the more I wanted to write.

But I always wanted to home educate, and I never wanted to stop home educating just because I was building a business.

What this step looks like:

Before you try to monetize anything, establish your creative practice. For me, it was writing in cafés, journaling about our homeschool days, and clarifying my thoughts.

One of the reasons I homeschooled? I wanted to experience childhood again, to enjoy all the different rabbit trails and curiosities we could explore together, as well as all the things I’d always wanted to learn about. And I definitely wanted to do that with my kids! The writing ideas came from those experiences, not from a business plan.

Your foundation might be:

• A creative practice you do for yourself (writing, photography, art, crafting)
• Informal mentoring or coaching you’re already doing with friends
• Skills you’re developing alongside your children
• Curiosity you’re exploring in the margins

Don’t skip this step. The foundation you build here—before there’s any pressure to monetize—becomes the authentic core of whatever business you eventually create. I’d been informally coaching and mentoring other women for years, not just about homeschooling, but about life, about family life, about finding their purpose beyond their mother role. When the business came, it grew naturally from work I was already doing.

Permit yourself to be all-in on homeschooling first. The business can wait. The creative practice can’t.

Step 2: Conduct a Ruthlessly Honest Time Audit

This step was revolutionary for me, and honestly, it shook me.

I didn’t realize how much time I was spending in certain spaces. And that was before we had iPods and phones (side note: I didn’t even GET a phone until three years ago, kid you not!).

Here’s how to do it:

For one full week, track everything: every activity, every time block, every transition. Don’t try to have a “good” week—track a real week.

You can access a free time audit tool here.

Then ask yourself these questions about each activity:

• Is this part of my purposeful life, the life I’m choosing?
• Is this activity aligned with what I actually want?
• If I could redesign this week, would I keep this in?

When you get clear on where you’re actually spending your time, you can allot that time to something you truly desire.

What you’ll discover:

You might find you’re spending hours on activities you don’t actually value. You might discover that you need to build more margin into your days, so you can actually do those activities with calm and presence. And you might realize you have more time than you thought—or far less than you’d assumed (like I discovered).

The point isn’t to make yourself feel bad. The point is to see clearly. Because you can’t make intentional choices about building a business while homeschooling until you know what’s actually true about your time right now.

Step 3: Get Clear on Your Energy, Rhythms, and Capacity

Now comes the decision: how much time do you want to spend on business-related activities, writing activities, and/or home education activities?

We get to decide how much time we invest in each of those things.

Sometimes we’re limited creatively when our family income requires us to make income and make it fast. But when we get a choice to include or incorporate various elements of our life—home education and business building—we need to get clear on a few things:

Ask yourself:

• How much energy do I actually have? (Not how much I wish I had, but what’s real)
• What are my rhythms? When am I most creative? Most patient? Most depleted?
• What are my children’s rhythms? When do they need me most? When are they most independent?
• How much margin do I need to feel human?
• How much support do I already have? (Partner, family, community, older kids)

Then decide how to block out your time to commit to various activities.

The truth about your business building timeline:

Business building while you homeschool takes a little longer than if you were to have full-time hours. If you want peace, accept this now. You’re not necessarily going to launch in 90 days. You’re not going to scale like someone with childcare and a 40-hour work week.

But here’s what is also true: the opportunity to build a business is very fueling and energetic and fun and creative. And that energy is something you can incorporate into the time you have with your children. It feeds the other parts of your life.

When you’re engaged in creative work, when you’re building something meaningful, that vitality doesn’t stay compartmentalized. Your children see it. They feel it. They benefit from a mother who is fully alive, not just going through the motions.

Step 4: Choose Presence Over Balance (This Changes Everything)

I had a conversation with Sarah from Read Aloud Revival podcast that clarified my perspective on the “balance” discussion many working homeschool moms have.

To address her feelings of imbalance and guilt around working as a homeschool mom, she decided—or she accepted—that balance was always going to be a challenge. That she would never be in full balance.

And so instead of focusing on balance, she would focus on being present.

Wherever she was, she would be there.

I think that is the advice we have to accept.

Here’s why balance is a myth:

We will always feel like we are out of balance because we will always want to be in the other place. Either with our kids, home educating them, or enjoying life and doing life with them, or various activities with them. Or we will want to be building our business.

But we cannot actually do it all.

So we simply have to decide where we want to be, and when we are there, be there now.

What this looks like practically:

When you’re with your children, be with your children. Put your phone in another room. Close the laptop. Don’t mentally compose your next email while you’re reading aloud. Don’t half-listen to their stories while drafting a blog post in your head.

When you’re working on your business, work on your business. Don’t let guilt creep in. Don’t apologize to your children for taking focused work time. And don’t undermine your own boundaries by constantly checking in or allowing interruptions unless it’s truly urgent.

Not half-heartedly in either place, wishing you were somewhere else, but fully present where you are.

Did I feel guilty sometimes? Occasionally. Did I wish I could clone myself? Absolutely. Did I sometimes resent the pull in both directions? Of course.

But recognizing the value of what I was doing, homeschooling and business building–that was satisfying. Also, it kept me sane.

Step 5: Let the Creative Energy Feed Both Worlds

This is the step most people miss.

The creative work you do for your business doesn’t deplete your family life—when done with clear boundaries and presence, it actually enriches it.

Here’s what I mean:

I wrote a book about homeschool mom life. I wrote about all the different dynamics and challenges. What it was like to feel overwhelmed and how to overcome it. Overcoming my shame around feeling angry at times and learning how to navigate that. Understanding how to address slump month, the winter blues, and feeling under the weather while also homeschooling. Learning how to let go of unrealistic expectations. Remembering what it was like to homeschool in that first year and trying very hard to reframe my approach by the third or fourth year when I hit my wall of overwhelm.

The response was always the same: “I feel seen.”

That work—helping other women feel seen—didn’t take away from my children. It made me a better mother. It helped me process my own experiences with more clarity. And it connected me to a community of women on the same journey. It modeled for my children that growth doesn’t stop when you become a mother, that purpose extends beyond any single role, and that you can be devoted to them and still be fully yourself.

The integration you’re looking for:

The business I built wasn’t separate from my life as a homeschool mom. It was an extension of it. It came from the same place: a deep curiosity about learning, about growth, about becoming who we’re meant to be.

When you choose work that aligns with who you already are, when you build a business from the foundation you’ve already established (Step 1), the energy flows both ways. Your homeschool life informs your business. Your business insights enrich your homeschool life.

The Core Acceptance We All Need to Make

We simply have to accept that we can’t actually do all the things all the time for every element of our lives.

We just have to decide to be here now.

I didn’t have a perfect system, and I still don’t. (However, I no longer have young kids at home. In fact, my youngest is about to graduate and head to college–so this is a whole different mothering experience than you’re likely experiencing).

But I had clarity about what mattered. I had a writing practice that sustained me. I had specific blocks of time when I wrote, when I learned about publishing and marketing and podcasting. And I had the rest of my time devoted to my children and our home education.

Your Turn: Where to Start

If you’re feeling the pull to build something, to create something, to step into work that lights you up while you’re also devoted to home education, I want you to know: it’s totally possible.

Not simple. Definitely not perfectly “balanced”. But possible.

Start here:

1. Give yourself permission to establish a creative practice before monetizing anything
2. Download the time audit and get ruthlessly honest about where your time actually goes
3. Identify your real energy and rhythms—not what you wish they were
4. Commit to presence over balance in both your business and your homeschool
5. Choose work that feeds both worlds

And remember: the energy you bring to your creative work feeds your family life. The curiosity you model, the persistence, the willingness to learn new things, to fail and try again—your children are watching. They’re learning that you can be devoted to them and still be fully yourself.

You can homeschool your children and build a business. It will take longer. You’ll have to make choices. You’ll have to let go of the myth of balance.

But you can do it. Be here now. Wherever you are, be there.

And when you’re ready, take the next small step.

Want Support on This Journey?

If you need help getting clear on what’s realistic for your life right now, I’d love to support you.

I offer a free Aligned Homeschool Reset session where we’ll look at your unique rhythms, your energy, and your season of life—then create clarity around what’s actually possible. Not in some imagined future, but right now.

This isn’t just homeschool coaching or business coaching. It’s life coaching that honors the whole of who you are: the mother, the educator, the entrepreneur, the woman who wants to build something meaningful without losing herself.

Book your free Aligned Homeschool Reset session here

Let’s figure out together how to build the life and business you actually want.

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