April 26, 2025 • 52 mins
Ever wondered if you could pursue your career dreams while homeschooling your children? Natalie Watts proves it's not only possible—it's transformative. As "The Thoughtful Realtor" and mother of seven homeschooled children ranging from 5 to 16 years old, Natalie shares her remarkable journey from traditional expectations to entrepreneurial success.
Despite growing up in public school herself, Natalie embraced homeschooling after marrying into a conservative family with homeschooling roots—her in-laws were pioneers in making homeschooling legal in Minnesota. What makes her story particularly compelling is how she integrates her thriving real estate career with her children's education, creating authentic learning opportunities every day.
Natalie's approach centers on "delight-directed learning," focusing on subjects that genuinely interest each child rather than forcing traditional schoolwork. Her children participate in various aspects of her business based on their natural inclinations—designing marketing materials, learning videography, practicing handwriting through client thank-you cards, and experiencing real-world math, communication, and problem-solving. This practical education has yielded impressive results: her children excel on standardized tests, have become exceptional readers, and are specifically requested as employees by local businesses who recognize their unique capabilities.
Beyond academics, Natalie emphasizes character development through what she calls "grit training"—"doing what you don't want to do to be who you should be." Her family's focus on work ethic, critical thinking, and relationship skills has prepared her children for success in ways traditional education often misses. Meanwhile, her community-focused business approach earned her "Business of the Year" in her first year and recognition as a top 10 realtor in her state.
Want to learn more about integrating entrepreneurship with homeschooling? Connect with Natalie on Instagram @thethoughtfulrealtor where she mentors other parents building businesses while educating their children at home.
✨ This episode is brought to you by Excelsior Classes — live, online courses for homeschoolers taught by passionate, Christian instructors. Whether your student needs support in core subjects or wants to explore exciting electives, Excelsior offers rigorous academics in a nurturing environment. Learn more at excelsiorclasses.com!
The Tuttle Twins - Do you want to help your children learn about true history, personal freedom, responsibility, and individual rights? Then check out The Tuttle Twins books by clicking HERE!
Use code: Cheryl15 for 15% off the age 5-11 series!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool
How-To.
I'm Cheryl and I invite you tojoin me on my quest to find out
why are people homeschooling,how do you do it, how does it
differ from region to region,and should I homeschool my kids?
Stick with me as I interviewhomeschooling families across
the country to unfold theanswers to each of these
(00:26):
questions week by week.
Welcome with us.
Today I have Natalie Watts andNatalie, thank you for being
here.
Thanks for having me.
I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
This is fun.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
This is fun, especially when I've been
talking to someone on Instagramand I really kind of forget how
we even connected in the firstplace, cause sometimes people
reach out to me, but then othertimes, like, I see someone put
in a comment on someone else'spost and I'm like, oh, will you
come on my podcast?
So I never know what I'mgetting into, cause I'm super
disorganized as well.
(00:59):
So, but you are a realtormonths ago.
So yeah, it's been a whileYou're a realtor.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
We talked like three months ago, so yeah, it's been a
while.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
You're a realtor mom that homeschools her seven kids,
and you homeschool through yourbusiness, so this sounds really
cool.
This intrigued me, so let'sjust get back to the very
beginning.
Well, what state are you in?
How many kids do you have?
And you don't have to say alltheir ages, because you probably
don't even know at this pointwhen there's seven.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, so I'm from Minnesota.
I've always lived here and Iwas public school growing up.
I actually really liked it.
I graduated from a charter highschool but my husband
homeschooled and his parentswere actually the pioneers of
making it legal in Minnesota.
So they were among, like, thefamilies who did that.
And you know, it's funnybecause when I was in the eighth
(01:52):
grade, we had to do a debateclass and I never like this was
before I even knew who myhusband was or anything or
anything about homeschooling butwe like drew subjects out of a
hat and we had to do homeschoolversus public school and I let
my partner pick what she wanted.
So then I did homeschool and Ibasically proved why you should
homeschool your kids, eventhough that was never my plan.
So it's kind of funny.
I have an interesting journey,but yeah, so now I have seven
kids that I homeschool and neverthought that would be me, but
(02:15):
here I am.
So what?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
ages, like what's the youngest and the oldest.
We'll just do that.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I have twins that are five, and they were surprise
twins.
They came we were on our wayhome from a camping trip and I
went into labor.
We had home births for all ofour kids, so we were getting
ready to have the baby at home,but the baby wasn't coming.
So then we went to the hospitaland they were like, oh, so you
(02:41):
have twins.
And we went in to see if therewere twins at 20 weeks and they
showed us one baby.
So we were just like, okay,we're wrong.
The dreams my husband washaving, he was wrong.
The way I was feeling.
I was wrong.
And then there were twins andit was great, though it was
completely uncomplicated, I wasable to push that.
They were both head down,facing back.
I was able to push them bothout vacations.
So those are my twins and thenmy oldest will be 16 in just a
(03:04):
couple of weeks.
Oh, fun.
So 11 year gap there.
Did your husband have to talkyou into the homeschooling?
The short answer is no.
You know, it's funny whenyou're like young and in love,
right, you're like do what you.
You know you, you're kind ofdumb.
So I just went along with whatI knew was important to him, um,
and then I'm actually really,really glad that it is what we
(03:27):
did.
So it worked out really well.
Um, I wouldn't have it anyother way, and it's so funny
that now it's kind of like thetrending thing to do when we
were sort of the outcasts whenwe first started.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
So yeah, so you started from the very beginning.
They've never been in publicschool, yep.
And so if your oldest is, yousaid 16?
, yep, okay.
So how?
How do the older kids feelabout it?
Like, are they happy that theyare?
They like, oh, look at all ourfriends are coming onto the
bandwagon of homeschooling, oryou know, have they ever talked
(04:02):
about wanting to go into school?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, my oldest, so he's on the football team.
Heaps, we, our kids, playsports for public school.
Um, and he's on the footballteam and they give him a pretty
hard time about beinghomeschooled.
So last year was our first yearwhere we really struggled with
them Like, oh, I want a home orI want a public school.
And I was like, um, no, becausethere was a lot of bullying,
even on the football team.
And so I was like, like, whywould I put you in school to
(04:25):
make this worse?
Um, and now sports are back inswing again for the spring and
people have actually been a lotnicer to him this year, so
hopefully things get better.
But that's really all we'vestruggled with.
Most other kids don't?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
they don't ask to go to public school, that's hard
and yeah, and they're getting tothat age where, like, they want
to be around the girls and viceversa.
So yeah, I can imagine that isgoing to be the struggle, Like
we have a lot of homeschoolersin our area, but it's just.
You can imagine the kids aregoing to be like, well, what
else is there out there?
But then again we're in a smalldistrict so it's like, well,
(04:59):
there's like five more girls youcould pick from.
Just go down to Stewart's,You'll see one of them there.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Are you guys in a big town or is it kind of small?
We're so we're like a wannabesmall town.
So we're not quite a small townbut we have like 8000 people.
We're growing kind of rapidlythough, but we're not anything
like a normal city, I would say.
Thankfully, my 16 year old hassaid that he's he came to me and
he's like I'm not gonna have agirlfriend until I can support
her, and so now that he'll gethis license next month, he is,
you know, can drive himself to ajob.
(05:32):
I was like you're either gonnahave to take a scooter or you're
gonna have to use you know I'mnot driving you to your dates
and I'm not paying for them.
So, um, yeah, so thankfullyhe's not really interested in
that at this point.
I'm sure his best friend justgot a girlfriend though, so
we'll see.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, I'm not really looking forward to those years
or conversations.
All right, so now you are arealtor, you have your own
business and you kind of likeentrepreneur, mentor people who
want to homeschool and be be arealtor as well.
But so how did you even getinto the idea of like, hey, I
(06:10):
have seven kids, I think I'mgonna start a business, or did
you already?
Had you been doing that fromthe beginning?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
no.
So I married into a veryconservative family that really
believes like the woman shouldstay home and just be with the
kids and you don't work.
And I had gone to.
I raised myself, growing upfrom a very young age, so I
didn't live with like my parents, I just took care of myself.
So I was pretty independent,had my own apartment and married
(06:37):
into a family that believed in.
They don't actually like dodating, they do betrothal, if
you're familiar with that at all.
So it's like, yeah, that's good, just stay out of it, but
anyway, so you basically don'tdate before you're married and
you're just.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
It's just a very conservative approach, but
anyways, that's like all right,you're stretching the word
conservative, because likeconservative here means like we
might have chickens.
We voted for Trump, we mightown a gun.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
He was raised like.
You know.
I'm trying to think of, like,what would be the closest thing
to it, um, amish.
You know, women, I mean they'renot at all amish, but I feel
like that would be.
So you know, the women wearskirts and head coverings and,
um, they don't vote, they don'ttake up arms.
You know, just very, uh, whatdo you call that like?
(07:34):
I guess I could just call itoff, okay, amish with no beards
or hats or no other word.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I don't know um oh, but they use electricity.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Okay, it's totally like not Amish, but I mean I
guess I could see thesimilarities.
But so, anyways, all that tosay, like I was totally not like
that, like where did you twomeet?
That's even weirder.
My sister married, like shedated his older brother and they
weren't there.
You know, he, they're not likethat at all.
(08:05):
So his three older siblingswere not like that and he was
kind of the guinea pig on thisnew way of life and he's one of
nine.
So anyways, basically we metthrough our brother and sister
who dated, and then they weremarried for 20 years and he did
go in the military, despite howhe was raised.
So his brother was a pilot andflew the osprey, um, and did
(08:28):
that until covid and then gotout of that um, due to
requirements, right, yeah, um,and so he just uh, started
flying for delta actually, butanyways.
So that's how we met.
As crazy as it is, um, theywere not weird and we were just
like trying to be weird, I guess.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So his brothers were not raised with the like um,
sort of Mennonite kind of thing.
But they switched midway andwere like nobody, I don't even
know, what they would call it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I guess they were, just like they weren't Amish or
Mennonite or anything.
It was just like very not thekind of conservative that you
and I would think ofconservative, but just like I
guess they call it conservative.
So I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Or like living in 1800s or something.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Basically.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
But not all the siblings grew up that way.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, so he's number four in the lineup of nine, and
so the oldest two you know,nobody really knows what they're
doing with their first andsecond kid, Right.
And then you kind of get theselike weird ideas.
And so then they just decidedthat this was how they thought
it would be really good toprotect your heart before you
got married.
And so they practice this thingcalled betrothal.
(09:45):
And I will say, when theybelieve in betrothal David, my
husband is the only one whoactually ever did betrothal I
think everyone figured out wow,that doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
But it worked for you so far.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, so I mean everyone's out of the house now.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
They're all old and you no one's not everyone's
married, but they're all out ofthe house.
So if you don't, if you didn'tdate him, like what did you guys
, how'd you?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
discover that you might want to get married no,
you have to talk to each otheron the phone or we did talk on
the phone, um, yeah, we did talkon the phone, um, and then he
wasn't supposed to talk to me onthe phone.
He realized.
So I mean the whole thing waskind of dumb because I lived in
my, like I was working at theMall of America at the time, at
(10:32):
Express, and you know he wasdoing construction and like I
mean it was just I don't evenknow.
This is such a weird story.
But so I thought it was normalto talk to people on the phone.
For him it was weird.
So then he stopped talking tome and then he tried to like
everything was kind of, you know, like if you read about
something and then you try toimplement it, like that was what
(10:56):
they were trying to do, butit's so not real, like it's not
the reality.
So, unfortunately for us, itwas like horrible because he was
trying to do things that wouldlike make his parents happy and
it just wasn't working.
Like I lived on my own, myparents were divorced, I didn't
even talk to my mom, my dadlived like far away with my
stepmom, who didn't like me, andthey're like trying to make my
dad be involved, right, and sohe goes and he asked my dad you
(11:20):
know, can I pursue your daughter?
And he's like I don't care, youknow.
So the whole thing was justlike weird, but anyways.
So I don't even know how we gotoff onto that, but that's how
we met was through my brother,or my sister and his brother,
who married for 20 years andthen they got divorced.
In-law the good daughter-in-lawI don't think.
(11:46):
No, they don't like me at all.
I am like I am not thedaughter-in-law.
They like they wish I was, youknow, still at home with the
kids.
Oh, that's how we got on tothis.
So I stayed home and we hadseven kids, my first three, my
oldest was two when my third wasborn, so they were very, very
close in age, um, and I reallyloved it.
Like I loved being a mom.
I love staying home.
We did a lot of gardening, weraised chickens, we did seed
saving, we did all this stuffand it was like kind of a fun
(12:09):
world.
But I went to a charterbusiness high schools downtown
St Paul.
We had to graduate with tons ofhours working for big
corporations.
Like I just loved business andmarketing and so my heart was
always there and my husband hadhis own business, but we didn't
do things the same way and itwas actually worse for me to
help him with his business thanit was for me, so I just stayed
(12:32):
out of it.
And then, okay, so 2020, 2021,somewhere around there we
decided that I should like hecould kind of tell that I like I
loved being with my kids, butthere was still a piece of me
that was missing.
And so he's like why don't youget your realtor's license?
That's something that you cando while you still have kids.
And so I kind of strategizedand I was like how can I do this
(12:53):
?
Because I knew that I didn'twant to be a mom that worked
from home but just ignored mykids.
I was like I have to.
If I'm going to do this, I haveto be able to homeschool my
kids through my business, and wehad already done unschooling or
delight directed learning,where we didn't teach from
textbooks or sit at a table Likewe just thankfully, I had so
(13:13):
many homeschool mom mentors whenyou know from my husband's
parents group where they wouldall get together and the reason
they homeschooled was theydidn't want the traditional
public school experience where,kind of like right now, what
we're facing is people don'twant their kids in public school
, but they also are trying torecreate public school at home
and I'm like that's not good.
So, anyways, we I just kind ofcame up with a blueprint like
(13:37):
how was I going to do this?
The twins were just born, sothey were really young and kind
of came up with a plan of, okay,this is how we'll do implement
math, and like my kids would goto work with my husband doing
construction already.
So we had an idea a little bitof how this would work.
But yeah, we just like it'sjust delight directed learning,
(13:58):
so we really only teach themthings that they're interested
in.
So, like my daughter reallyloves design and she's super
organized type A's, so she doesthings like that in my business
that she enjoys doing.
And then, like my son is reallyinto design, he's learning how
to make videos so for likeflying a drone and doing those
(14:19):
kinds of things.
So we've just figured out, youknow, and my little girls help
write the cards, like to myclients for handwriting.
So that's kind of how we do it.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
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(14:51):
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Speaker 2 (15:07):
That was my plan, and it's worked pretty well.
I'm the busiest I've ever.
Ever been before, though, andso I'm you know you're kind of
constantly reevaluating how do Ido this?
So I just hired an assistantbecause I'm not willing to put
my kids on the back burner forthe business, if that makes
sense.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
I mean, I'm just imagining youlike carting these seven kids
around to oh, we have a houseshowing, let's go, and you all
roll out in the bus and we dohave a 15 passenger van, but
yeah, I haven't taken all ofthem with me for a long time,
but it's nice because my kids.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
My clients, most of them, have kids, so I'll take
whatever age range my otherclients have.
And then they have somebody totalk to, which gives the parents
like an opportunity to walkaround without their kids
hanging on them, that's awesome,that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So I mean, yeah, there's so much that you can get
into just from the marketingaspect to the financials.
I mean just teaching your kidshow it works, you know, to buy a
house and what's like, what'sthe market like and okay, this
can house can be worth this, youknow this year.
But the market could drop, andso I mean that are you like
(16:21):
consciously thinking about thatas you educate them?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, basically everything is constantly
learning.
You know it's we teach.
Making breakfast is homeschool,even you know.
So, like one of my, my kidscook from a very young age.
So even my seven year old sheknows how to.
You know, we talked aboutfractions and we'll add the
amount of cups of flour we need,based on like one third plus
(16:44):
one third plus one third.
Okay, now we got to our one cup.
So it's not even just throughthe business that we homeschool,
but it's just kind of thepractical applications.
And I will say that the bestpart about this is the kids are
really learning like how to bethe change they want to see in
the world, how to learn reallife, like principles and
(17:05):
applications.
Like my two oldest just gotback from New Zealand, from 10
days visiting my sister wholives out there, and you know
like they learned how to dohomeschool while they were in
New Zealand.
But when you say homeschool,it's so you're not sitting down
doing a textbook, right, you'rejust like learning about the
world, like that's yourgeography class and that's, you
know, phi Ed, right, you know,you just figure it out, but so
(17:29):
do you guys have anyrequirements in Minnesota that
you have to report?
Yeah, so we do have.
There is standardized testingthat you have to take every year
In Minnesota.
You're not required to reportit to anybody, but you're
supposed to have it available ifyou, you know, if somebody
asked, but I've never seenanybody ever get asked.
(17:52):
And then they do have likesuggested requirements.
So they have like okay, if yougraduate, you should have this
and this and this.
But the parent is the final sayand so you get to say when your
kids graduate.
So I do know some parents thatgraduate their kids when they're
16.
And it's not because they tooka bunch of extra credits, it's
just they decided they were doneand they graduate them.
(18:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
So all right.
So when you look at like theirfuture I mean I know right now
like I'm not a big one anymoreto push the four year degree
because it's kind of a waste ina lot of instances but sometimes
it's necessary what does that,like long term, look like for
you, since you have a 16 yearold now you know?
And how do you prepare them,like when you do this sort of
(18:35):
unschooling approach, to makesure that if, like, they were to
go into a university, thatthey're going to be okay with
that, as far as even learningfrom a textbook, knowing how to
manage?
I mean they know how to managetime, probably more than any
other kid does.
But, um, you know, or is thateven their goal?
Are they like from the get-go?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
like no, mom, I don't even want that, don't worry so
we've pretty much told themwe'll support them in whatever
they want to do.
Noah next year will be oldenough to do post-secondary,
which is where you get to takecollege credits for free while
you're doing high school.
So it's called dual enrollment,so you can graduate with an
associate's degree.
Pretty much he hasn't wanted toso far, so we haven't had to
(19:24):
face that yet.
I'm not really interested inpushing for college, but if they
wanted to I would support them.
And they are knocking thestandardized tests out of the
park and we're actually focusinga little bit more on
relationship building andconnections and networking,
because I think that that getsyou a lot further than just a
degree.
So that's kind of what weemphasize at this point and how
(19:47):
to have the right.
We do a lot of characterbuilding and character training.
So like work, ethic, grit, youknow, just critical thinking,
those are the kind of the topthree things we actually teach
at our house and that's easy toteach through every day.
Grit is, um, joey, I'll tell youour little family motto of grit
Um, it's doing what you don'twant to do to be who you know,
(20:10):
who you should be.
So immersing yourself indifficult situations, like one
of the things they know is wesigned up for a homeschool co-op
.
We really didn't like, foundout it wasn't a good fit, but
you didn't have the option totry it out, and so we're
finishing out being there andpaying a boatload of money and
fulfilling a bunch of volunteerhours because we committed to it
(20:31):
and seeing it through, you know, and so they see that example,
like the financial cost and howyou should be careful before you
sign up or something, or justyou know the sibling
relationships, right, like, weused to run a homeschool co-op
in our town and that wassomething.
Grit was a class that we madethe kids take and it was putting
all the students in a room andimmersing them in a challenge
(20:54):
that they had to solve togetherbefore they were allowed to
leave the class and go on to thenext one, and so that was their
favorite class and that wasreally, really fun.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Oh, that's cool.
I've never heard anyone talkabout it like that.
That's really neat, yeah, so.
So, even with your unschoolingapproach, they do really well on
the standardized tests.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, oh yeah.
I mean my kids.
So we taught them how to readat a really, really, really
young age.
So they are all exceptionalreaders.
They check out 27 books at atime from the library.
We have bookshelf uponbookshelf.
I mean we can't even keepenough books around, which is
why it's so hard to spend like25 bucks on a book, because they
just read through them so fast.
(21:33):
And I remember going to ahomeschool convention once and
complaining to one of thespeakers like we can't get our
kids to stop looking at books.
And he was like you're crazy,like I would give anything for
my kid to not want to put a bookdown.
So there is a woman who goesaround I can't remember her name
, but she goes around all overthe country to teach people how.
You don't even need textbooks,you don't need classes, you
(21:55):
don't need anything, just teachyour kids by giving them books
to read.
And they're not even likeeducational books.
I don't even know what they arebecause we didn't use her
approach.
But I was amazed because wewere up north camping and my
daughter was like oh, we'regoing north.
We were like on a hikesomewhere and I was like how do
you know we're going north,she's like, oh, the moss is
growing on this side of therocks.
And I was like, how do you knowthat?
(22:16):
And she was like, oh, it's fromthe underground railroad book I
read.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So I mean like it works my son would be like well,
it's from wild kratts yeah, Imean there's that too, but same
thing, yeah, no kidding, um, butyeah, they just read so much
that they um learn so much justfrom fiction books, non-fiction
books.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
A bunch of them are into history.
Some have asked for history tobe on the standardized testing,
which honestly, I think theworld could use a little history
in their standardized testing,because it's only being
rewritten right now it could usethe right history, not just
what they want to cherry pickand how they want to put the
spin on it.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And they're teaching me so much like I don't even
know.
So we were kind of jokingaround at our house once and one
of the kids said something andI said that we were running like
a dictatorship or something.
We were just joking around.
He goes no, this is a and youprobably know what this term is.
I don't, which is a little bitembarrassing.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
But he's like no, it's a oligarchy or oligarchy.
I don't know what it is and Iwas like yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I wouldn't know the definition.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I only know it Cause uh, I don't know what's that one
guy that was on Fox he used toalways talk about.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I don't know, but if he's, I mean he was joking right
, cause he was upset with,however, we were making the
decisions to do something thathe didn't like.
But there's no, they are sosmart and I think it's because
we just do so much with them, um, where they're constantly at
our sides whatever we're doingin real life, so they're
learning how to have real adultconversations, learning how to
(23:49):
interact.
You know, we make them make thefoot like I have to make a
point that my kids call thedentist or they call the doctor,
whatever whoever it is, to makeappointments.
If we need to get, like, arefrigerator filter, we have to
order for directly from theirfactory.
So we make them do those phonecalls.
We make them do the research ifwe need to fix something, or
you know.
(24:09):
So, when you kind of, it's somuch easier to do it yourself,
but when you make your kids doit, they really learn so much.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
That is so true, like I'm just thinking.
This made me think of my sister.
Her oldest had graduated and hegot like a speeding ticket or
something and they mailed himthe little thing which I think
says like, are you pleadingguilty or not?
And if not, I think you got toshow up at this date.
So I think he put in guilty andthen slipped cash in the
(24:41):
envelope.
And then he said to her how doI fill out the envelope to mail
this back?
And she's like wait what?
Speaker 2 (24:46):
are you?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
mailing and she's like you don't put cash in here.
And we, like he didn't know howto fill out the envelope, but
he had graduated high school andI'm talking like in the last
five years.
It's not like he's a stupid kid, they just never taught him
that.
And then I think, as parents,when you send your kid off to
school all day, I mean they'regone from, it's dark in the
morning when they leave and darkwhen they come back from sports
(25:07):
and stuff Like you don't thinkabout like Hmm, what didn't they
teach you today that I need tofill in the gaps with?
That's why I wrote the, I wrotethe book.
Let's talk emergencies Cause,like I'm, like, kids don't even
know their parents first andlast names.
So you know, they just knowlike mom and dad, but there's
nothing out there saying likeyou've got to train them how to
(25:27):
call 911 if your cell phone'slocked or if grandma collapses
and you know all she has is acell phone.
Like how to call 911 from hercell phone?
But yeah, you're right, wedon't think about that.
That's brilliant to have themcall and make their dentist
appointments.
What age do you start doingthat at?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I mean pretty young.
I mean they all want to be onthe phone and call their my
sister, who lives in a differentcountry, or you know one of
their friends.
So if that's, I think, as soonas they start expressing
interest in using the phone,they're going to have to do the
things they don't like to, andlike my 15 year old.
So my kids have all worked forus.
We're both entrepreneurs, butwe really want them to learn how
(26:04):
to submit and respect otherauthority too, and so my
daughter will be 15 in June.
So in Minnesota, you can workfor people when you're 14.
And this is what you mightactually find interesting.
I had three business owners inNew Prague one for a garden
center, one for the lifeguardposition at the local indoor
(26:24):
pool.
I can't remember what the otherone was, but they all called me
because I used to run thishomeschool co-op in our town and
they said we need morehomeschoolers to work for us,
because there's a difference inthe kids who are homeschooled
than the ones who are not, whichisn't a general statement.
I'm not saying that there's notgood workers in public school or
that all homeschoolers are good, but I do think it's
(26:46):
interesting that they wanthomeschoolers to work for them.
So my daughter is going to be15 and she loves gardening and
doing the kind of homesteadingstuff.
So she had to call her today,this lady who inquired about
homeschoolers working for hercompany, and she was like what
do I say?
I don't know what to do.
She was like terrified.
She didn't even know like howshe should leave a message,
(27:07):
which I understand.
A job is, you know,intimidating, but so that was
kind of a fun experience for herand all my daughter wanted to
do was text her though I'm likeyou are not going to text her,
like you can call, you can leavea message and if she texts you
back.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
That's one thing, but you're not going to have your
first impression be a textmessage, right, and that's so
important.
I mean you just think of thekids today.
I mean they won't even pick upa phone call from a number that
they don't know.
And I get it.
There's so much spam.
But if it's the same area code,chances it's.
You know, yeah, um, you know,and you've applied for a job and
now you're getting a phone call.
(27:43):
Chances are it's the job, sopick it up but yeah, I know
people.
I remember a co-worker of minetelling me that his daughter and
her friends would not pick upthe phone call so they kept
missing these job opportunities.
Um, apparently they didn'tlisten the messages either, but
uh, that's so, so, so, okay.
Oh, I had a question from allright, I'm thinking back to like
(28:04):
you started doing the realtorstuff when your babies were just
born.
How did you juggle that?
Did you wait until they wereall asleep and or until your
husband was home from hisbusiness to watch them so that
you could get your stuff done?
How does it physically work?
Speaker 2 (28:19):
So to get your real estate license, you either have
to go in person to a universityor you can do it online.
I did the online routes and Ijust purposed to do it after the
kids were asleep.
So I did all my education andI'm because I raised myself, I'm
a no excuses, just results,personality, I'm very driven, a
self-starter, all these things.
(28:40):
So like really high standardsfor myself.
And you could only do X amountof hours every day, like the
computer system would shut downif you tried to do more, so I
maxed out my hours.
Anyways, all that to say, I gotall my education done and my
first, so my first 30 hoursthat's when you can take your
state and national exam and Idid that, I think, in three
weeks, which was like recordtime.
(29:02):
I took the test, I passed bothexams on my first try and you
have to like this is kind of thecrazy part when you become a
realtor, you have to get likeyour veins scanned and your eyes
scanned because they want tomake sure you're not a felon, um
, cause they don't want, youknow, felons going in people's
houses.
So I wasn't a huge fan of that,but it's fine, I get it, I
guess.
So I did that.
(29:22):
And then you have to go takeanother 60 hours of tests and
exams that like not exams butlike unit tests and whatnot.
And then when you're done withall that and those are all
proctored, I got my license andthat was six weeks total.
So like record breaking, likemost people have not ever done
that.
So I did that because I knewtime was of the essence if I was
going to make it happen.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Seven kids.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Oh my God, I couldn't even get dinner on the table
before 8pm tonight.
Yeah, yeah, I don't like cookingin general though, so that was
like I hate cooking.
I was never a cook.
That's one of the reasons myin-laws don't like me very much,
but so we probably just didboxed macaroni and cheese.
But I, so I would probablystart around.
We don't go to bed early.
(30:04):
The kids stay up with us tilleveryone goes to bed, so it'd
probably be around like 10 thatI would start, and I don't think
I would go to bed till four inthe morning.
And it was only you know, that'swhy I pushed through so hard
was I didn't want to do thatforever, because that's hard.
So I did that, and then I justyou know I it was important to
me.
I joined a brokerage that Icould do my own thing.
I didn't join a team, I didn'tdo anything.
(30:28):
I just said this is how I wantmy business to be done.
I'm going to be different thaneverybody else and I'm not going
to look at how another, like asingle realtor, did what they
did.
I didn't know how anyone elseran their business, but my
brokerage would also make sure Iwas in compliance and I just
focused on the way I wouldmarket and run my business Like
I wasn't going to show up in asuit right, like I got seven
kids, but I make things happenand I was going to work really
(30:48):
hard.
So usually I'm in jeans and Idon't know what, whatever shoes
I'm wearing, in a, in a top.
But my community voted mebusiness of the year.
First year I was in business andand in a small town you're
probably somewhat familiar withthis like if there's a realtor
in town, everyone knows who theyare, they've been there forever
and that's who people use, andso I knew that I was already in
a flooded market withestablished realtors, but I
(31:10):
wasn't trying to like becompetition to them or anything
like that.
It was just this is I wanted.
I was going to do things adifferent way, and so my
community community also gave methe name the Thoughtful Realtor
.
So that's my name, theThoughtful Realtor, and it's
about growing a community, notjust a paycheck.
So then my community voted me.
I was the only woman who waseven voted into an award
category that year and that wasreally fun.
(31:33):
And then the next year I wastop 10 realtor in my state with
my brokerage.
So that was even cooler and,yeah, just like lots of cool
things.
So it it's, it's possible, andyou just have to be really
intentional every day.
You almost have to take it oneday at a time, otherwise you'll
get overwhelmed and probablyquit.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
So yeah, I'm just thinking like having kids doing
it yeah, like you're doing allthat till four in the morning.
You got babies, so they'reprobably waking up, needing to
be fed and you're so what youknow?
You're getting interrupted andthen you get back to the desk.
Where was I so?
I can't even imagine like youmade it through that, but
congratulations that is awesomeit was tough.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
But again, like I think I just have a really high
tolerance for stuff too, becausejust how I grew up.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
But yeah, yeah so, okay, how do you manage?
Like the food, then, if you youdon't even like cooking, you
probably utilize the kids,especially now that they're
older.
But, like, how did that evenwork, even in the last five
years?
Do you have the babies?
You know all these kids.
They're eating.
What is what does your mealplan look like?
I wish we had a meal plan we'vetried.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I would love like if any one of your listeners
actually has a meal plan.
That's like easy, like like wewould make meal plans but we
just never made the food.
So where you'd?
Speaker 1 (32:49):
like go grocery shopping?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I don't know, we would just I don't know.
I mean, it's such a goodquestion that should have like
an easy answer.
My husband does like he'll comefrom home from work and cook,
or my oldest son loves homecooked meals, so he would often
do something.
Everyone just kind of pitchesin.
If nobody started cooking andsomebody's hungry, then somebody
will just start making the food.
We try to eat pretty healthy.
(33:10):
We grind our own wheat, we havea Nutramil, we eat healthy.
We just don't have a plan.
We're totally the type B family.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
That's so funny.
I know it's like my biggestthing.
I mean, I love and I've triedto make meal plans too, like,
let's you know, every Thursday Isit down and like, okay, what
are we having every night forthe next week and what do I need
for those ingredients and whatdo we already have in the pantry
.
So I'm not overbiting, butstill it's like just to figure
(33:48):
out what you're doing for sevennights of meals that you didn't
just have the last seven nightsis so hard, especially when
you're getting interrupted andyou're.
So I'm like, okay, I'm justgoing to have like 14 meals and
we're just going to rotatethrough them all.
But still I have yet I've likeput stuff together.
But yeah, it actuallyimplementing it has been hard.
Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
I just don't have there's not nine people in my
house and I find it hard withfour.
Yeah, I don't know.
I can't even tell you what weate yesterday.
I don't know.
We've all we eat every day.
I just don't know how it endsup happening.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Somebody just ends up doing it that is so funny and
are there like always dishes?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, that is so funny, and are there?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
like always dishes?
Yeah, are there always dishesin your sink with nine people in
your house?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Well, my third oldest .
It's his job to do dishes afterevery meal, so he does the
dishes and we rotate that outseasonally.
So currently that's his job,but we don't always make it that
way, like, at one point it wasmy oldest, and then it was my
second oldest, and now it's onmy third oldest oldest and now
we're transitioning to it beingmy fourth oldest job what are
some of the other jobs that theytake on?
Speaker 1 (34:50):
what are some of the other jobs that they take on in
the household?
Speaker 2 (34:52):
um, my oldest has switched to the laundry so his
job is just to keep it running,because he's got the most going
on, so he just makes sureeverything goes through the
washer and the dryer.
Um, my oldest daughter her jobis to unload the dishwasher.
In the morning she's supposedto unload the dishwasher, the
oldest loads it.
But even worse, transitioningnow our twins and our
(35:15):
seven-year-olds so ourfive-year-olds and
seven-year-olds do the unloadingof the dishwasher.
Now they're like learning howto do it and then our
seven-year-old sweeps.
We really should have moreresponsibilities for them.
Like when we first had ourfirst three so my almost 16,
almost 15, and my 13-year-oldthey had so much more
responsibilities than my youngerkids do now.
I think that's just whathappens naturally, right, like
(35:36):
you end up getting more relaxedas time goes on.
So I wish we had more chores,because they had tons of chores
growing up.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
You guys know I am a big fan of the Tuttle Twins.
I had Connor Boyack, the writerof these books, on episode 24.
I reached out to his companyasking to let me be an affiliate
because I strongly believe intheir books and their message.
In the H5 through 11 bookseries, which I read to my son
all the time I mean, he actuallyasks us to read these books
with him.
Book five, road to Serfdom,talks about what happens to a
(36:07):
local town with local businesseswhen corporations start moving
in.
Book six, the Golden Rule, talksall about Ethan and Emily's
experience at summer campthrough a series of cheating and
manipulation on certain racesthat they're required to
complete.
It talks about how the goldenrule of treating others how we
want to be treated ourselves ishow we all should be conducting
(36:29):
our lives.
Education Vacation talks aboutJohn Taylor Gatto and the
creation of the school systemand what it was actually
intended to do, which you get tolearn about by following Ethan
and Emily on a trip to Europe.
And book 11, the Messed UpMarket, takes you through the
journey of kids trying to createsmall businesses as they learn
all the laws and rules thatgovernment has put in place to
(36:52):
actually make it very difficultfor them.
You learn all about interestsavings versus borrowing, low
interest rates versus highinterest rates and supply and
demand, and these are just someof the books in that series.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or at the
homeschoolhowtocom under thelistener discounts page.
I also want to let you knowabout some other books that the
Tuttle Twins have out America'sHistory, volume 1 and 2, which
(37:16):
teaches all about the inspiringideas of America's founding
without the bias and hiddenagendas that's found in other
history books for kids and mostlikely in the schools.
There's also books on how toidentify fallacies, modern day
villains all stuff that we wantto be talking to our kids about.
Whether you homeschool or not,these books bring up important
(37:36):
discussions that we should behaving with our children.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or, like I said, at
thehomeschoolhowtocom underlistener discounts.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
But we also had like homesteading things.
So there was like gathering thechickens and cleaning out the
chicken coop and all of thosethings um doing the gardening.
But we don't do that as muchanymore yeah, our chicken coop.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
It's pretty gross, but I don't even want to send my
son in there.
He wants to clean it out, butit's like there's so much
ammonia from there.
I'm like, no, I feel likeyou're gonna get a disease or
something.
I'll let me get the disease.
So, because he won't even weara mask for that, we've like just
put such a bad like inklingabout masks on him so that he's
just like, no, I'm not wearing amask for that.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I'm like, well, this it might actually work, for
these are particles that can'tget through it's gross in there
is like when we don't have achicken coop at our new house.
But yeah, it does get gross ifyou're not on top of it, for
sure all right.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
So what are?
What are some of the otherthings that you were kind of
thinking about, that you wantedto talk about while we had you
here, as we're running up on 40minutes or so, oh sure, yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
I just like I just kind of wanted to inspire and
encourage the person who feelslike they want to homeschool.
They have a passion for youknow, I think for me,
recognizing that I had a passionfor business and that that
doesn't have to die or go on thewayside, but that there is a
way to do it, like with yourkids and homeschooling.
(39:04):
I just think that it'simportant to learn that you
don't have to and you push thison your Instagram page a lot
Like you don't have to sit at adesk you shouldn't even sit at a
desk bringing the public schoolto your house, um but that
they're like don't underestimatethe power of just like teaching
your kids alongside you andincluding them in what you're
doing, and like how much theylearn through that, and then
(39:28):
being a realtor is a great wayto do it.
If anybody's interested inbeing, you know, doing that like
that's such a great way tolearn all the things in public
school.
So that was just what I wantedto kind of encourage people in.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
I love that.
Oh, you know what I was goingto ask you too.
How did you get your kid?
You said that you got all yourkids reading at early ages, and
so you know, especially withhomeschooling, you hear the
whole like well, wait untilthey're ready and their synapses
are connected and don't push it, because if you push it they're
not gonna like it and then theywon't end up being kids that
love reading.
(39:59):
So what was your approach tothat?
And then how did you get themto actually love reading where
they like?
Do you guys read all the time?
Do you do screens at all?
Or they got nothing else to doother than open a book?
Yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
So it's funny, I don't.
I wish I had it in here.
I don't know where ourhomeschool books are.
We we moved like six months agoand some stuff still in boxes,
but when Noah was little.
So my mother-in-law actuallyhad this great reading program.
I'm so thankful she came acrossit because I feel like all my
friends have overcomplicatedteaching their kids how to read,
(40:33):
like they have these littlemini flashcards and all these
things and their kids struggleand they're so upset they don't
get it and I'm like, oh mygoodness, I just want the world
to know about this program.
So I'll tell you about it.
(41:03):
But the way it started out wasthere's this woman named Char
Lockhart, I think it was.
She was extremely passionateabout teaching kids how to read,
but she did it with like a bigchalkboard and she'd have the
kids first learn how to do it in.
I think she taught does yourconsonants and then one vowel.
So your first week or howeveryou break it up learning is B, d
, f, g, a, and so you'relearning the sounds of those and
look how to write those.
And then, once you have thosedown, then you go to the next
five consonants and vowel, andthen after that you do your
(41:23):
blends but she just breaks itdown in such an easy way.
But it was was like super oldschool.
She typed it up on hertypewriter and it was in this
orange book called um, somethingphonic I can't remember.
I'll send you a picture of itbecause you have to see this or
this thuring binder, and um, ithad an audio cassette tape in it
.
But then this company calledand you might have heard of them
before reading horizons.
(41:44):
There's other horizons programs, but that's not this one
reading horizons and they bought, after char died, they bought
her, her, the rights to herprogram, essentially, and then
they turned it into a digitalprogram online, and the customer
service with this company isbeyond exceptional, so good.
And they basically just tookwhat she did and sort of
(42:05):
modernized it.
And so I didn't use the orangetheory binder with my last three
, my most recent three, whateveryou call them, right, I'm done
having kids, but my youngestthree, that's what I'm trying to
say.
And so if you go into ReadingHorizons, they do the exact same
things.
It is in front of a computer,which I'm not a huge fan of, but
(42:26):
we don't do anything else infront of the computer.
So that's fine, but the bestthing about it is like teaching
my kids to read was like I don'tknow.
It was super easy.
But I also love that with myolder kids, I can focus on them,
and my younger kids can do thiswithout anything.
So they are done with the likebig first part of the program,
and they just brought me booksand they just started sounding
(42:47):
them out and reading them.
So all I had to do was helpguide them through what they
knew, so they'd start soundingout the words, and then I was
just able to refine it a littlebit.
I'm like this is the program.
Nobody.
I think people like to dothings the hard way, though,
because people prefer theflashcards, they prefer the
little tiny, you know whatever,antonio, this program I think
every parent should, and, and itworks really well with dyslexic
(43:09):
kids too.
I have one kid that started outreading backwards and they just
didn't get it for a while, butit was easy for them to fix.
So, anyways, if there'sanything anybody should ever buy
, as a homeschool parent, I amtelling them they should go to
Reading Horizons, because it isbeyond exceptional.
All right.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
I'm going to give that a try because we are, yeah,
my son's six, and we've been,you know, trying, we've been
working on it for, you know, twoyears now and it's, it's not
like he's not making progress,he sure is.
But I just don't want it to bedifficult.
Like, I want him to enjoy itand it just seems like you know,
I keep switching around whatwe're doing, enjoy it.
And it just seems like, youknow, I keep switching around
what we're doing and you know,and I don't want it to look like
(43:50):
school at home either, which,like you know, I, like I really
liked the all about reading whenwe did the pre-reading course,
I liked it.
But that is, it's school athome and that's fine.
But like, yeah, there's I don'tknow I now I would love to have
something where he could be alittle bit more independent with
it, because then it could belike okay, go work on that while
I do this, or something.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
And my kids they wake up, my twins they wake up every
day asking to do it.
They want to do reading all thetime.
They love it so much.
The way the program has beendesigned is remarkable and I
think not enough people knowabout it.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
I've never heard it.
This is the first I've heard ofit and I've talked to a hundred
homeschoolers.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I know.
But people I think people justlike you know there's so many
affiliate programs out therethat people make money off of,
so those are the ones thatpeople hear about.
I'm not aware of any affiliatemarketing with this one.
Maybe there is, I don't know.
Maybe I can be the first know,maybe I can be the first, I'll
be their affiliate marketer forthem.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
It's just so.
Yeah, this is cool, right, andI've asked that too because I
have the curriculum series.
I mean, I literally interviewpeople just on curriculum.
No one's ever talked aboutreading horizons, um, but yeah,
I've said that like, okay, allabout reading and the good and
the beautiful.
Are they really the bestprograms or are they the ones
with the best marketing strategy?
Yeah, I don't know.
I I liked them both, but Idon't know if there isn't
(45:08):
anything better, you know yeah,um, so I will definitely try
this out.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I like that.
We have, like our family hasfamilies that have gone before
us that have homeschooled all oftheir children and graduated
them.
They have successful businessesand they have all like they all
do things Like we learned howwe do what, the way that we do
things.
We learned from those familiesthat went before us and I'm just
so grateful for that, because Iknow there's families that are
(45:34):
just trying to do their hardest.
They want to do what's rightand they are doing all this
research and figuring it out.
I'm like you guys, it's reallyjust so much easier than you're
making it, and Reading Horizonsis definitely one of those
things, so you should try it out.
It's not expensive and theircustomer service is truly
incredible.
Give it a shot.
I would love to hear what yourson thinks of it.
Oh, awesome?
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah, that would be great.
And then so the second part ofthat was how did you get them to
just love reading Like, isthere a secret?
Speaker 2 (46:05):
I hated reading growing up.
I wasn't a reader, I didn'tread, so they certainly didn't
learn it from me, I guess I justI think it's the program that
my mother-in-law taught them,like the Shars program they once
you, I think, because it's nota stressful way to learn how to
read.
They have the desire to read.
(46:26):
When it's being pushed and youfeel like you're not enough or
you're not learning it right, oryou're being told you know
you're dyslexic and so you can'tget it right, you kind of just
lose the excitement for it.
But if it's something thatthey're learning to do in a fun
like the girls waking up beggingto do their stuff and then they
bring me books then they'resounding them out and reading
them to me.
Like I didn't teach them that,I didn't try and push that.
It's just something, I think,because they enjoyed the process
(46:49):
.
That's how it happened.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
I don't know, that's my best guess yeah, I'm sorry,
and it sounds like you.
Let them read the things thatthey want to read.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
So, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, we do
have rules about what they canread.
Um, yeah, they know there'sthings that we don't want them
to read.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
So they'll bring me books and say you would want me
to get this right.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
So like we don't do magic at our house, kind of
stuff like that.
So there's no magic, there's no.
You know, we try to be reallycareful.
And there's books.
There's books like the SugarCreek Gang was revised at one
point.
Those are really fun books forboys and at one point they were
revised.
So we have all the books fromthe series when it was first
(47:30):
made, and so that's reallyimportant too, because people
come in, change it up and thenit's no longer really that good,
because a lot of our booksfocus on character building.
But yeah, we let them pick outwhat they want.
It just has to fall under ourcriteria too.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, well, that makes sense.
That makes sense, but you'renot like here.
Read this book on the aztecs,you know if they're not into it.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
I've never given them any books to read, ever.
They all choose their books.
So the boys tend to pick, soour kids from.
So my 10 year old reads chapterbooks she's really into like
babysitters club, hardy boys,nancy, drew.
And then my older kids, um,like olivia she's, she reads
like books this thick and Idon't even know what they are.
(48:13):
But, um, they check it there,do, they go through them so fast
they can't even keep up.
But then my boys really steerto towards just his real life
history.
Like malachi will readtextbooks for casual reading,
like you know, the big books.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
So there's your knock grass history, you know like,
okay, that's amazing, that'sawesome, all right, uh, where
can people find you?
If they, you do I.
I like your Instagram page.
I was looking at it today andactually you gave me an cause.
I was, you know, you have oneof your pinned posts, kind of
like what you didn't know aboutme, and I'm like, oh, she sounds
so interesting and I was like,geez, I should have this.
I paid, I paid this company tolike help me organize my
(48:52):
Instagram page a couple monthsago, and so they did that for me
.
They like interviewed me and Ididn't know what this was going
to turn out like, but they madelike a post, kind of like that,
and I'm like, oh well, that'swhat you were going to do.
Like I could have done that Meand chat GPT could have like
hooked up and made a nice postfor Canva, but no, but they,
they did some other things toothat that worked out well, but
(49:15):
it's just kind of funny CauseI'm like, oh, I love the way
yours is put together, so nowI'm going to have to copy on
that.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
But I paid.
I pay a coach a lot of money togive me guidance on that kind
of stuff.
I don't focus a lot on growingmy followers when we're just
like nurturing the people who dofind me and that was my best
performing post and my coachtold me it would be because
she's tried it on hers and theneveryone asked for me to do it
again.
So I've been trying to make youknow 12 things.
(49:40):
You don't know me brown too butI haven't had time yet.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
All right, so I'll have to put that and you have it
like pinned up to the top.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
So that's one of the first things people see.
Yeah, it's up there.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Oh yeah, no, I really like that.
So, yeah, where can people findyou?
On Instagram or any socialmedia?
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, I only use Instagram, and they can find me
at thethoughtfulrealtor.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
And so where did they come up with thoughtful?
You said that your communitydubbed you that.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yeah, I well I'm.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I'm very intentional about making other people feel
thought about and um well, yousend thank you cards, so that
might be where it came from.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Thank you cards, we do thoughtful boxes, we just I'm
really big about being thechange that we want to see in
the world and being superauthentic and so just supporting
a lot of local small businesses.
I mean that's just like a wholenother conversation, but just
really, really, really investingin people and making sure
(50:40):
you're taking note of.
Like you know, I know one ofthe one of the girls in town.
She's 21.
She started her own boutique onMain Street and she just
celebrated her two-yearanniversary and so knew her
favorite coffee drink and ranacross the street to the local
Cedar Press Coffee instead ofCaribou.
Right, you get her favoritedrink, you bring it over there.
It's just stuff like that.
But you're doing it all the timeand I actually just hired my
(51:02):
assistant.
I know this sounds a little bitdisingenuine because it's not
me doing it, but there's justwhen you get to the point where
your business is so big you haveto get more people to help you.
So I just hired an assistant toactually help me with all the
people I couldn't get to.
So the notes are still from me,like I text her what I want
them to say, but now she willhand deliver things for me with
(51:22):
a note from me, or she'll mailpackages off that I've picked
out.
So just be.
You know you have to expand tobe able to keep going.
There's just not enough time inthe day for me to get to
everybody personally, but itdoes come from me now.
It's just somebody elsedelivering.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Oh, I love that.
Okay, so I will link yourInstagram and the Reading
Horizons website in the show'sdescription.
Anything else that you want tolet people know about that
you're working on?
Speaker 2 (51:49):
They can DM me.
If you're interested in being arealtor that homeschools their
kids, you can send me a DM atthe thoughtful realtor and we
can chat Awesome.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Awesome, Natalie.
Thank you so much for joiningme today.
This has been so fun.
I'm excited to try the ReadingHorizons.
I'm definitely going to do thatand get on my post about how
crazy my life has been.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Yes, I can't wait All inspired by you, girl, I'm
going to watch for it.
Natalie, thank you for joiningme.
All right, have a good night.
Thank you, you too.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the
Homeschool How-To.
If you've enjoyed what youheard and you'd like to
contribute to the show, pleaseconsider leaving a small tip
using the link in my show'sdescription.
Or, if you'd rather, please usethe link in the description to
share this podcast with a friendor on your favorite homeschool
group facebook page.
Any effort to help us keep thepodcast going is greatly
(52:41):
appreciated.
Thank you for tuning in and foryour love of the next
generation.
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool
How-To.
I'm Cheryl and I invite you tojoin me on my quest to find out
why are people homeschooling,how do you do it, how does it
differ from region to region,and should I homeschool my kids?
Stick with me as I interviewhomeschooling families across
the country to unfold theanswers to each of these
(00:26):
questions week by week.
Welcome with us.
Today I have Natalie Watts andNatalie, thank you for being
here.
Thanks for having me.
I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
This is fun.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
This is fun, especially when I've been
talking to someone on Instagramand I really kind of forget how
we even connected in the firstplace, cause sometimes people
reach out to me, but then othertimes, like, I see someone put
in a comment on someone else'spost and I'm like, oh, will you
come on my podcast?
So I never know what I'mgetting into, cause I'm super
disorganized as well.
(00:59):
So, but you are a realtormonths ago.
So yeah, it's been a whileYou're a realtor.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
We talked like three months ago, so yeah, it's been a
while.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
You're a realtor mom that homeschools her seven kids,
and you homeschool through yourbusiness, so this sounds really
cool.
This intrigued me, so let'sjust get back to the very
beginning.
Well, what state are you in?
How many kids do you have?
And you don't have to say alltheir ages, because you probably
don't even know at this pointwhen there's seven.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, so I'm from Minnesota.
I've always lived here and Iwas public school growing up.
I actually really liked it.
I graduated from a charter highschool but my husband
homeschooled and his parentswere actually the pioneers of
making it legal in Minnesota.
So they were among, like, thefamilies who did that.
And you know, it's funnybecause when I was in the eighth
(01:52):
grade, we had to do a debateclass and I never like this was
before I even knew who myhusband was or anything or
anything about homeschooling butwe like drew subjects out of a
hat and we had to do homeschoolversus public school and I let
my partner pick what she wanted.
So then I did homeschool and Ibasically proved why you should
homeschool your kids, eventhough that was never my plan.
So it's kind of funny.
I have an interesting journey,but yeah, so now I have seven
kids that I homeschool and neverthought that would be me, but
(02:15):
here I am.
So what?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
ages, like what's the youngest and the oldest.
We'll just do that.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I have twins that are five, and they were surprise
twins.
They came we were on our wayhome from a camping trip and I
went into labor.
We had home births for all ofour kids, so we were getting
ready to have the baby at home,but the baby wasn't coming.
So then we went to the hospitaland they were like, oh, so you
(02:41):
have twins.
And we went in to see if therewere twins at 20 weeks and they
showed us one baby.
So we were just like, okay,we're wrong.
The dreams my husband washaving, he was wrong.
The way I was feeling.
I was wrong.
And then there were twins andit was great, though it was
completely uncomplicated, I wasable to push that.
They were both head down,facing back.
I was able to push them bothout vacations.
So those are my twins and thenmy oldest will be 16 in just a
(03:04):
couple of weeks.
Oh, fun.
So 11 year gap there.
Did your husband have to talkyou into the homeschooling?
The short answer is no.
You know, it's funny whenyou're like young and in love,
right, you're like do what you.
You know you, you're kind ofdumb.
So I just went along with whatI knew was important to him, um,
and then I'm actually really,really glad that it is what we
(03:27):
did.
So it worked out really well.
Um, I wouldn't have it anyother way, and it's so funny
that now it's kind of like thetrending thing to do when we
were sort of the outcasts whenwe first started.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
So yeah, so you started from the very beginning.
They've never been in publicschool, yep.
And so if your oldest is, yousaid 16?
, yep, okay.
So how?
How do the older kids feelabout it?
Like, are they happy that theyare?
They like, oh, look at all ourfriends are coming onto the
bandwagon of homeschooling, oryou know, have they ever talked
(04:02):
about wanting to go into school?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, my oldest, so he's on the football team.
Heaps, we, our kids, playsports for public school.
Um, and he's on the footballteam and they give him a pretty
hard time about beinghomeschooled.
So last year was our first yearwhere we really struggled with
them Like, oh, I want a home orI want a public school.
And I was like, um, no, becausethere was a lot of bullying,
even on the football team.
And so I was like, like, whywould I put you in school to
(04:25):
make this worse?
Um, and now sports are back inswing again for the spring and
people have actually been a lotnicer to him this year, so
hopefully things get better.
But that's really all we'vestruggled with.
Most other kids don't?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
they don't ask to go to public school, that's hard
and yeah, and they're getting tothat age where, like, they want
to be around the girls and viceversa.
So yeah, I can imagine that isgoing to be the struggle, Like
we have a lot of homeschoolersin our area, but it's just.
You can imagine the kids aregoing to be like, well, what
else is there out there?
But then again we're in a smalldistrict so it's like, well,
(04:59):
there's like five more girls youcould pick from.
Just go down to Stewart's,You'll see one of them there.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Are you guys in a big town or is it kind of small?
We're so we're like a wannabesmall town.
So we're not quite a small townbut we have like 8000 people.
We're growing kind of rapidlythough, but we're not anything
like a normal city, I would say.
Thankfully, my 16 year old hassaid that he's he came to me and
he's like I'm not gonna have agirlfriend until I can support
her, and so now that he'll gethis license next month, he is,
you know, can drive himself to ajob.
(05:32):
I was like you're either gonnahave to take a scooter or you're
gonna have to use you know I'mnot driving you to your dates
and I'm not paying for them.
So, um, yeah, so thankfullyhe's not really interested in
that at this point.
I'm sure his best friend justgot a girlfriend though, so
we'll see.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, I'm not really looking forward to those years
or conversations.
All right, so now you are arealtor, you have your own
business and you kind of likeentrepreneur, mentor people who
want to homeschool and be be arealtor as well.
But so how did you even getinto the idea of like, hey, I
(06:10):
have seven kids, I think I'mgonna start a business, or did
you already?
Had you been doing that fromthe beginning?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
no.
So I married into a veryconservative family that really
believes like the woman shouldstay home and just be with the
kids and you don't work.
And I had gone to.
I raised myself, growing upfrom a very young age, so I
didn't live with like my parents, I just took care of myself.
So I was pretty independent,had my own apartment and married
(06:37):
into a family that believed in.
They don't actually like dodating, they do betrothal, if
you're familiar with that at all.
So it's like, yeah, that's good, just stay out of it, but
anyway, so you basically don'tdate before you're married and
you're just.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
It's just a very conservative approach, but
anyways, that's like all right,you're stretching the word
conservative, because likeconservative here means like we
might have chickens.
We voted for Trump, we mightown a gun.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
He was raised like.
You know.
I'm trying to think of, like,what would be the closest thing
to it, um, amish.
You know, women, I mean they'renot at all amish, but I feel
like that would be.
So you know, the women wearskirts and head coverings and,
um, they don't vote, they don'ttake up arms.
You know, just very, uh, whatdo you call that like?
(07:34):
I guess I could just call itoff, okay, amish with no beards
or hats or no other word.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I don't know um oh, but they use electricity.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Okay, it's totally like not Amish, but I mean I
guess I could see thesimilarities.
But so, anyways, all that tosay, like I was totally not like
that, like where did you twomeet?
That's even weirder.
My sister married, like shedated his older brother and they
weren't there.
You know, he, they're not likethat at all.
(08:05):
So his three older siblingswere not like that and he was
kind of the guinea pig on thisnew way of life and he's one of
nine.
So anyways, basically we metthrough our brother and sister
who dated, and then they weremarried for 20 years and he did
go in the military, despite howhe was raised.
So his brother was a pilot andflew the osprey, um, and did
(08:28):
that until covid and then gotout of that um, due to
requirements, right, yeah, um,and so he just uh, started
flying for delta actually, butanyways.
So that's how we met.
As crazy as it is, um, theywere not weird and we were just
like trying to be weird, I guess.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So his brothers were not raised with the like um,
sort of Mennonite kind of thing.
But they switched midway andwere like nobody, I don't even
know, what they would call it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I guess they were, just like they weren't Amish or
Mennonite or anything.
It was just like very not thekind of conservative that you
and I would think ofconservative, but just like I
guess they call it conservative.
So I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Or like living in 1800s or something.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Basically.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
But not all the siblings grew up that way.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, so he's number four in the lineup of nine, and
so the oldest two you know,nobody really knows what they're
doing with their first andsecond kid, Right.
And then you kind of get theselike weird ideas.
And so then they just decidedthat this was how they thought
it would be really good toprotect your heart before you
got married.
And so they practice this thingcalled betrothal.
(09:45):
And I will say, when theybelieve in betrothal David, my
husband is the only one whoactually ever did betrothal I
think everyone figured out wow,that doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
But it worked for you so far.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, so I mean everyone's out of the house now.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
They're all old and you no one's not everyone's
married, but they're all out ofthe house.
So if you don't, if you didn'tdate him, like what did you guys
, how'd you?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
discover that you might want to get married no,
you have to talk to each otheron the phone or we did talk on
the phone, um, yeah, we did talkon the phone, um, and then he
wasn't supposed to talk to me onthe phone.
He realized.
So I mean the whole thing waskind of dumb because I lived in
my, like I was working at theMall of America at the time, at
(10:32):
Express, and you know he wasdoing construction and like I
mean it was just I don't evenknow.
This is such a weird story.
But so I thought it was normalto talk to people on the phone.
For him it was weird.
So then he stopped talking tome and then he tried to like
everything was kind of, you know, like if you read about
something and then you try toimplement it, like that was what
(10:56):
they were trying to do, butit's so not real, like it's not
the reality.
So, unfortunately for us, itwas like horrible because he was
trying to do things that wouldlike make his parents happy and
it just wasn't working.
Like I lived on my own, myparents were divorced, I didn't
even talk to my mom, my dadlived like far away with my
stepmom, who didn't like me, andthey're like trying to make my
dad be involved, right, and sohe goes and he asked my dad you
(11:20):
know, can I pursue your daughter?
And he's like I don't care, youknow.
So the whole thing was justlike weird, but anyways.
So I don't even know how we gotoff onto that, but that's how
we met was through my brother,or my sister and his brother,
who married for 20 years andthen they got divorced.
In-law the good daughter-in-lawI don't think.
(11:46):
No, they don't like me at all.
I am like I am not thedaughter-in-law.
They like they wish I was, youknow, still at home with the
kids.
Oh, that's how we got on tothis.
So I stayed home and we hadseven kids, my first three, my
oldest was two when my third wasborn, so they were very, very
close in age, um, and I reallyloved it.
Like I loved being a mom.
I love staying home.
We did a lot of gardening, weraised chickens, we did seed
saving, we did all this stuffand it was like kind of a fun
(12:09):
world.
But I went to a charterbusiness high schools downtown
St Paul.
We had to graduate with tons ofhours working for big
corporations.
Like I just loved business andmarketing and so my heart was
always there and my husband hadhis own business, but we didn't
do things the same way and itwas actually worse for me to
help him with his business thanit was for me, so I just stayed
(12:32):
out of it.
And then, okay, so 2020, 2021,somewhere around there we
decided that I should like hecould kind of tell that I like I
loved being with my kids, butthere was still a piece of me
that was missing.
And so he's like why don't youget your realtor's license?
That's something that you cando while you still have kids.
And so I kind of strategizedand I was like how can I do this
(12:53):
?
Because I knew that I didn'twant to be a mom that worked
from home but just ignored mykids.
I was like I have to.
If I'm going to do this, I haveto be able to homeschool my
kids through my business, and wehad already done unschooling or
delight directed learning,where we didn't teach from
textbooks or sit at a table Likewe just thankfully, I had so
(13:13):
many homeschool mom mentors whenyou know from my husband's
parents group where they wouldall get together and the reason
they homeschooled was theydidn't want the traditional
public school experience where,kind of like right now, what
we're facing is people don'twant their kids in public school
, but they also are trying torecreate public school at home
and I'm like that's not good.
So, anyways, we I just kind ofcame up with a blueprint like
(13:37):
how was I going to do this?
The twins were just born, sothey were really young and kind
of came up with a plan of, okay,this is how we'll do implement
math, and like my kids would goto work with my husband doing
construction already.
So we had an idea a little bitof how this would work.
But yeah, we just like it'sjust delight directed learning,
(13:58):
so we really only teach themthings that they're interested
in.
So, like my daughter reallyloves design and she's super
organized type A's, so she doesthings like that in my business
that she enjoys doing.
And then, like my son is reallyinto design, he's learning how
to make videos so for likeflying a drone and doing those
(14:19):
kinds of things.
So we've just figured out, youknow, and my little girls help
write the cards, like to myclients for handwriting.
So that's kind of how we do it.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Is your child interested in aviation,
chemistry, maybe even podcasting, but you have no time or desire
to teach it yourself.
I've talked to over 100homeschooling families on the
Homeschool How-To Podcast andone name keeps coming up
Excelsior Classes.
They're a fully accreditedonline program for 5th through
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everything from filmmaking toeconomics to architecture.
(14:51):
It's flexible, affordable youonly pay for what you need and
it gives your kids valuableonline learning experience.
Check out their course catalogby clicking in the link in the
show's description ExcelsiorClasses live online learning for
homeschooling families.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
That was my plan, and it's worked pretty well.
I'm the busiest I've ever.
Ever been before, though, andso I'm you know you're kind of
constantly reevaluating how do Ido this?
So I just hired an assistantbecause I'm not willing to put
my kids on the back burner forthe business, if that makes
sense.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
I mean, I'm just imagining youlike carting these seven kids
around to oh, we have a houseshowing, let's go, and you all
roll out in the bus and we dohave a 15 passenger van, but
yeah, I haven't taken all ofthem with me for a long time,
but it's nice because my kids.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
My clients, most of them, have kids, so I'll take
whatever age range my otherclients have.
And then they have somebody totalk to, which gives the parents
like an opportunity to walkaround without their kids
hanging on them, that's awesome,that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So I mean, yeah, there's so much that you can get
into just from the marketingaspect to the financials.
I mean just teaching your kidshow it works, you know, to buy a
house and what's like, what'sthe market like and okay, this
can house can be worth this, youknow this year.
But the market could drop, andso I mean that are you like
(16:21):
consciously thinking about thatas you educate them?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, basically everything is constantly
learning.
You know it's we teach.
Making breakfast is homeschool,even you know.
So, like one of my, my kidscook from a very young age.
So even my seven year old sheknows how to.
You know, we talked aboutfractions and we'll add the
amount of cups of flour we need,based on like one third plus
(16:44):
one third plus one third.
Okay, now we got to our one cup.
So it's not even just throughthe business that we homeschool,
but it's just kind of thepractical applications.
And I will say that the bestpart about this is the kids are
really learning like how to bethe change they want to see in
the world, how to learn reallife, like principles and
(17:05):
applications.
Like my two oldest just gotback from New Zealand, from 10
days visiting my sister wholives out there, and you know
like they learned how to dohomeschool while they were in
New Zealand.
But when you say homeschool,it's so you're not sitting down
doing a textbook, right, you'rejust like learning about the
world, like that's yourgeography class and that's, you
know, phi Ed, right, you know,you just figure it out, but so
(17:29):
do you guys have anyrequirements in Minnesota that
you have to report?
Yeah, so we do have.
There is standardized testingthat you have to take every year
In Minnesota.
You're not required to reportit to anybody, but you're
supposed to have it available ifyou, you know, if somebody
asked, but I've never seenanybody ever get asked.
(17:52):
And then they do have likesuggested requirements.
So they have like okay, if yougraduate, you should have this
and this and this.
But the parent is the final sayand so you get to say when your
kids graduate.
So I do know some parents thatgraduate their kids when they're
16.
And it's not because they tooka bunch of extra credits, it's
just they decided they were doneand they graduate them.
(18:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
So all right.
So when you look at like theirfuture I mean I know right now
like I'm not a big one anymoreto push the four year degree
because it's kind of a waste ina lot of instances but sometimes
it's necessary what does that,like long term, look like for
you, since you have a 16 yearold now you know?
And how do you prepare them,like when you do this sort of
(18:35):
unschooling approach, to makesure that if, like, they were to
go into a university, thatthey're going to be okay with
that, as far as even learningfrom a textbook, knowing how to
manage?
I mean they know how to managetime, probably more than any
other kid does.
But, um, you know, or is thateven their goal?
Are they like from the get-go?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
like no, mom, I don't even want that, don't worry so
we've pretty much told themwe'll support them in whatever
they want to do.
Noah next year will be oldenough to do post-secondary,
which is where you get to takecollege credits for free while
you're doing high school.
So it's called dual enrollment,so you can graduate with an
associate's degree.
Pretty much he hasn't wanted toso far, so we haven't had to
(19:24):
face that yet.
I'm not really interested inpushing for college, but if they
wanted to I would support them.
And they are knocking thestandardized tests out of the
park and we're actually focusinga little bit more on
relationship building andconnections and networking,
because I think that that getsyou a lot further than just a
degree.
So that's kind of what weemphasize at this point and how
(19:47):
to have the right.
We do a lot of characterbuilding and character training.
So like work, ethic, grit, youknow, just critical thinking,
those are the kind of the topthree things we actually teach
at our house and that's easy toteach through every day.
Grit is, um, joey, I'll tell youour little family motto of grit
Um, it's doing what you don'twant to do to be who you know,
(20:10):
who you should be.
So immersing yourself indifficult situations, like one
of the things they know is wesigned up for a homeschool co-op
.
We really didn't like, foundout it wasn't a good fit, but
you didn't have the option totry it out, and so we're
finishing out being there andpaying a boatload of money and
fulfilling a bunch of volunteerhours because we committed to it
(20:31):
and seeing it through, you know, and so they see that example,
like the financial cost and howyou should be careful before you
sign up or something, or justyou know the sibling
relationships, right, like, weused to run a homeschool co-op
in our town and that wassomething.
Grit was a class that we madethe kids take and it was putting
all the students in a room andimmersing them in a challenge
(20:54):
that they had to solve togetherbefore they were allowed to
leave the class and go on to thenext one, and so that was their
favorite class and that wasreally, really fun.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Oh, that's cool.
I've never heard anyone talkabout it like that.
That's really neat, yeah, so.
So, even with your unschoolingapproach, they do really well on
the standardized tests.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, oh yeah.
I mean my kids.
So we taught them how to readat a really, really, really
young age.
So they are all exceptionalreaders.
They check out 27 books at atime from the library.
We have bookshelf uponbookshelf.
I mean we can't even keepenough books around, which is
why it's so hard to spend like25 bucks on a book, because they
just read through them so fast.
(21:33):
And I remember going to ahomeschool convention once and
complaining to one of thespeakers like we can't get our
kids to stop looking at books.
And he was like you're crazy,like I would give anything for
my kid to not want to put a bookdown.
So there is a woman who goesaround I can't remember her name
, but she goes around all overthe country to teach people how.
You don't even need textbooks,you don't need classes, you
(21:55):
don't need anything, just teachyour kids by giving them books
to read.
And they're not even likeeducational books.
I don't even know what they arebecause we didn't use her
approach.
But I was amazed because wewere up north camping and my
daughter was like oh, we'regoing north.
We were like on a hikesomewhere and I was like how do
you know we're going north,she's like, oh, the moss is
growing on this side of therocks.
And I was like, how do you knowthat?
(22:16):
And she was like, oh, it's fromthe underground railroad book I
read.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So I mean like it works my son would be like well,
it's from wild kratts yeah, Imean there's that too, but same
thing, yeah, no kidding, um, butyeah, they just read so much
that they um learn so much justfrom fiction books, non-fiction
books.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
A bunch of them are into history.
Some have asked for history tobe on the standardized testing,
which honestly, I think theworld could use a little history
in their standardized testing,because it's only being
rewritten right now it could usethe right history, not just
what they want to cherry pickand how they want to put the
spin on it.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And they're teaching me so much like I don't even
know.
So we were kind of jokingaround at our house once and one
of the kids said something andI said that we were running like
a dictatorship or something.
We were just joking around.
He goes no, this is a and youprobably know what this term is.
I don't, which is a little bitembarrassing.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
But he's like no, it's a oligarchy or oligarchy.
I don't know what it is and Iwas like yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I wouldn't know the definition.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I only know it Cause uh, I don't know what's that one
guy that was on Fox he used toalways talk about.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I don't know, but if he's, I mean he was joking right
, cause he was upset with,however, we were making the
decisions to do something thathe didn't like.
But there's no, they are sosmart and I think it's because
we just do so much with them, um, where they're constantly at
our sides whatever we're doingin real life, so they're
learning how to have real adultconversations, learning how to
(23:49):
interact.
You know, we make them make thefoot like I have to make a
point that my kids call thedentist or they call the doctor,
whatever whoever it is, to makeappointments.
If we need to get, like, arefrigerator filter, we have to
order for directly from theirfactory.
So we make them do those phonecalls.
We make them do the research ifwe need to fix something, or
you know.
(24:09):
So, when you kind of, it's somuch easier to do it yourself,
but when you make your kids doit, they really learn so much.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
That is so true, like I'm just thinking.
This made me think of my sister.
Her oldest had graduated and hegot like a speeding ticket or
something and they mailed himthe little thing which I think
says like, are you pleadingguilty or not?
And if not, I think you got toshow up at this date.
So I think he put in guilty andthen slipped cash in the
(24:41):
envelope.
And then he said to her how doI fill out the envelope to mail
this back?
And she's like wait what?
Speaker 2 (24:46):
are you?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
mailing and she's like you don't put cash in here.
And we, like he didn't know howto fill out the envelope, but
he had graduated high school andI'm talking like in the last
five years.
It's not like he's a stupid kid, they just never taught him
that.
And then I think, as parents,when you send your kid off to
school all day, I mean they'regone from, it's dark in the
morning when they leave and darkwhen they come back from sports
(25:07):
and stuff Like you don't thinkabout like Hmm, what didn't they
teach you today that I need tofill in the gaps with?
That's why I wrote the, I wrotethe book.
Let's talk emergencies Cause,like I'm, like, kids don't even
know their parents first andlast names.
So you know, they just knowlike mom and dad, but there's
nothing out there saying likeyou've got to train them how to
(25:27):
call 911 if your cell phone'slocked or if grandma collapses
and you know all she has is acell phone.
Like how to call 911 from hercell phone?
But yeah, you're right, wedon't think about that.
That's brilliant to have themcall and make their dentist
appointments.
What age do you start doingthat at?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I mean pretty young.
I mean they all want to be onthe phone and call their my
sister, who lives in a differentcountry, or you know one of
their friends.
So if that's, I think, as soonas they start expressing
interest in using the phone,they're going to have to do the
things they don't like to, andlike my 15 year old.
So my kids have all worked forus.
We're both entrepreneurs, butwe really want them to learn how
(26:04):
to submit and respect otherauthority too, and so my
daughter will be 15 in June.
So in Minnesota, you can workfor people when you're 14.
And this is what you mightactually find interesting.
I had three business owners inNew Prague one for a garden
center, one for the lifeguardposition at the local indoor
(26:24):
pool.
I can't remember what the otherone was, but they all called me
because I used to run thishomeschool co-op in our town and
they said we need morehomeschoolers to work for us,
because there's a difference inthe kids who are homeschooled
than the ones who are not, whichisn't a general statement.
I'm not saying that there's notgood workers in public school or
that all homeschoolers are good, but I do think it's
(26:46):
interesting that they wanthomeschoolers to work for them.
So my daughter is going to be15 and she loves gardening and
doing the kind of homesteadingstuff.
So she had to call her today,this lady who inquired about
homeschoolers working for hercompany, and she was like what
do I say?
I don't know what to do.
She was like terrified.
She didn't even know like howshe should leave a message,
(27:07):
which I understand.
A job is, you know,intimidating, but so that was
kind of a fun experience for herand all my daughter wanted to
do was text her though I'm likeyou are not going to text her,
like you can call, you can leavea message and if she texts you
back.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
That's one thing, but you're not going to have your
first impression be a textmessage, right, and that's so
important.
I mean you just think of thekids today.
I mean they won't even pick upa phone call from a number that
they don't know.
And I get it.
There's so much spam.
But if it's the same area code,chances it's.
You know, yeah, um, you know,and you've applied for a job and
now you're getting a phone call.
(27:43):
Chances are it's the job, sopick it up but yeah, I know
people.
I remember a co-worker of minetelling me that his daughter and
her friends would not pick upthe phone call so they kept
missing these job opportunities.
Um, apparently they didn'tlisten the messages either, but
uh, that's so, so, so, okay.
Oh, I had a question from allright, I'm thinking back to like
(28:04):
you started doing the realtorstuff when your babies were just
born.
How did you juggle that?
Did you wait until they wereall asleep and or until your
husband was home from hisbusiness to watch them so that
you could get your stuff done?
How does it physically work?
Speaker 2 (28:19):
So to get your real estate license, you either have
to go in person to a universityor you can do it online.
I did the online routes and Ijust purposed to do it after the
kids were asleep.
So I did all my education andI'm because I raised myself, I'm
a no excuses, just results,personality, I'm very driven, a
self-starter, all these things.
(28:40):
So like really high standardsfor myself.
And you could only do X amountof hours every day, like the
computer system would shut downif you tried to do more, so I
maxed out my hours.
Anyways, all that to say, I gotall my education done and my
first, so my first 30 hoursthat's when you can take your
state and national exam and Idid that, I think, in three
weeks, which was like recordtime.
(29:02):
I took the test, I passed bothexams on my first try and you
have to like this is kind of thecrazy part when you become a
realtor, you have to get likeyour veins scanned and your eyes
scanned because they want tomake sure you're not a felon, um
, cause they don't want, youknow, felons going in people's
houses.
So I wasn't a huge fan of that,but it's fine, I get it, I
guess.
So I did that.
(29:22):
And then you have to go takeanother 60 hours of tests and
exams that like not exams butlike unit tests and whatnot.
And then when you're done withall that and those are all
proctored, I got my license andthat was six weeks total.
So like record breaking, likemost people have not ever done
that.
So I did that because I knewtime was of the essence if I was
going to make it happen.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Seven kids.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Oh my God, I couldn't even get dinner on the table
before 8pm tonight.
Yeah, yeah, I don't like cookingin general though, so that was
like I hate cooking.
I was never a cook.
That's one of the reasons myin-laws don't like me very much,
but so we probably just didboxed macaroni and cheese.
But I, so I would probablystart around.
We don't go to bed early.
(30:04):
The kids stay up with us tilleveryone goes to bed, so it'd
probably be around like 10 thatI would start, and I don't think
I would go to bed till four inthe morning.
And it was only you know, that'swhy I pushed through so hard
was I didn't want to do thatforever, because that's hard.
So I did that, and then I justyou know I it was important to
me.
I joined a brokerage that Icould do my own thing.
I didn't join a team, I didn'tdo anything.
(30:28):
I just said this is how I wantmy business to be done.
I'm going to be different thaneverybody else and I'm not going
to look at how another, like asingle realtor, did what they
did.
I didn't know how anyone elseran their business, but my
brokerage would also make sure Iwas in compliance and I just
focused on the way I wouldmarket and run my business Like
I wasn't going to show up in asuit right, like I got seven
kids, but I make things happenand I was going to work really
(30:48):
hard.
So usually I'm in jeans and Idon't know what, whatever shoes
I'm wearing, in a, in a top.
But my community voted mebusiness of the year.
First year I was in business andand in a small town you're
probably somewhat familiar withthis like if there's a realtor
in town, everyone knows who theyare, they've been there forever
and that's who people use, andso I knew that I was already in
a flooded market withestablished realtors, but I
(31:10):
wasn't trying to like becompetition to them or anything
like that.
It was just this is I wanted.
I was going to do things adifferent way, and so my
community community also gave methe name the Thoughtful Realtor
.
So that's my name, theThoughtful Realtor, and it's
about growing a community, notjust a paycheck.
So then my community voted me.
I was the only woman who waseven voted into an award
category that year and that wasreally fun.
(31:33):
And then the next year I wastop 10 realtor in my state with
my brokerage.
So that was even cooler and,yeah, just like lots of cool
things.
So it it's, it's possible, andyou just have to be really
intentional every day.
You almost have to take it oneday at a time, otherwise you'll
get overwhelmed and probablyquit.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
So yeah, I'm just thinking like having kids doing
it yeah, like you're doing allthat till four in the morning.
You got babies, so they'reprobably waking up, needing to
be fed and you're so what youknow?
You're getting interrupted andthen you get back to the desk.
Where was I so?
I can't even imagine like youmade it through that, but
congratulations that is awesomeit was tough.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
But again, like I think I just have a really high
tolerance for stuff too, becausejust how I grew up.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
But yeah, yeah so, okay, how do you manage?
Like the food, then, if you youdon't even like cooking, you
probably utilize the kids,especially now that they're
older.
But, like, how did that evenwork, even in the last five
years?
Do you have the babies?
You know all these kids.
They're eating.
What is what does your mealplan look like?
I wish we had a meal plan we'vetried.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I would love like if any one of your listeners
actually has a meal plan.
That's like easy, like like wewould make meal plans but we
just never made the food.
So where you'd?
Speaker 1 (32:49):
like go grocery shopping?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I don't know, we would just I don't know.
I mean, it's such a goodquestion that should have like
an easy answer.
My husband does like he'll comefrom home from work and cook,
or my oldest son loves homecooked meals, so he would often
do something.
Everyone just kind of pitchesin.
If nobody started cooking andsomebody's hungry, then somebody
will just start making the food.
We try to eat pretty healthy.
(33:10):
We grind our own wheat, we havea Nutramil, we eat healthy.
We just don't have a plan.
We're totally the type B family.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
That's so funny.
I know it's like my biggestthing.
I mean, I love and I've triedto make meal plans too, like,
let's you know, every Thursday Isit down and like, okay, what
are we having every night forthe next week and what do I need
for those ingredients and whatdo we already have in the pantry
.
So I'm not overbiting, butstill it's like just to figure
(33:48):
out what you're doing for sevennights of meals that you didn't
just have the last seven nightsis so hard, especially when
you're getting interrupted andyou're.
So I'm like, okay, I'm justgoing to have like 14 meals and
we're just going to rotatethrough them all.
But still I have yet I've likeput stuff together.
But yeah, it actuallyimplementing it has been hard.
Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
I just don't have there's not nine people in my
house and I find it hard withfour.
Yeah, I don't know.
I can't even tell you what weate yesterday.
I don't know.
We've all we eat every day.
I just don't know how it endsup happening.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Somebody just ends up doing it that is so funny and
are there like always dishes?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, that is so funny, and are there?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
like always dishes?
Yeah, are there always dishesin your sink with nine people in
your house?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Well, my third oldest .
It's his job to do dishes afterevery meal, so he does the
dishes and we rotate that outseasonally.
So currently that's his job,but we don't always make it that
way, like, at one point it wasmy oldest, and then it was my
second oldest, and now it's onmy third oldest oldest and now
we're transitioning to it beingmy fourth oldest job what are
some of the other jobs that theytake on?
Speaker 1 (34:50):
what are some of the other jobs that they take on in
the household?
Speaker 2 (34:52):
um, my oldest has switched to the laundry so his
job is just to keep it running,because he's got the most going
on, so he just makes sureeverything goes through the
washer and the dryer.
Um, my oldest daughter her jobis to unload the dishwasher.
In the morning she's supposedto unload the dishwasher, the
oldest loads it.
But even worse, transitioningnow our twins and our
(35:15):
seven-year-olds so ourfive-year-olds and
seven-year-olds do the unloadingof the dishwasher.
Now they're like learning howto do it and then our
seven-year-old sweeps.
We really should have moreresponsibilities for them.
Like when we first had ourfirst three so my almost 16,
almost 15, and my 13-year-oldthey had so much more
responsibilities than my youngerkids do now.
I think that's just whathappens naturally, right, like
(35:36):
you end up getting more relaxedas time goes on.
So I wish we had more chores,because they had tons of chores
growing up.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
You guys know I am a big fan of the Tuttle Twins.
I had Connor Boyack, the writerof these books, on episode 24.
I reached out to his companyasking to let me be an affiliate
because I strongly believe intheir books and their message.
In the H5 through 11 bookseries, which I read to my son
all the time I mean, he actuallyasks us to read these books
with him.
Book five, road to Serfdom,talks about what happens to a
(36:07):
local town with local businesseswhen corporations start moving
in.
Book six, the Golden Rule, talksall about Ethan and Emily's
experience at summer campthrough a series of cheating and
manipulation on certain racesthat they're required to
complete.
It talks about how the goldenrule of treating others how we
want to be treated ourselves ishow we all should be conducting
(36:29):
our lives.
Education Vacation talks aboutJohn Taylor Gatto and the
creation of the school systemand what it was actually
intended to do, which you get tolearn about by following Ethan
and Emily on a trip to Europe.
And book 11, the Messed UpMarket, takes you through the
journey of kids trying to createsmall businesses as they learn
all the laws and rules thatgovernment has put in place to
(36:52):
actually make it very difficultfor them.
You learn all about interestsavings versus borrowing, low
interest rates versus highinterest rates and supply and
demand, and these are just someof the books in that series.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or at the
homeschoolhowtocom under thelistener discounts page.
I also want to let you knowabout some other books that the
Tuttle Twins have out America'sHistory, volume 1 and 2, which
(37:16):
teaches all about the inspiringideas of America's founding
without the bias and hiddenagendas that's found in other
history books for kids and mostlikely in the schools.
There's also books on how toidentify fallacies, modern day
villains all stuff that we wantto be talking to our kids about.
Whether you homeschool or not,these books bring up important
(37:36):
discussions that we should behaving with our children.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or, like I said, at
thehomeschoolhowtocom underlistener discounts.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
But we also had like homesteading things.
So there was like gathering thechickens and cleaning out the
chicken coop and all of thosethings um doing the gardening.
But we don't do that as muchanymore yeah, our chicken coop.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
It's pretty gross, but I don't even want to send my
son in there.
He wants to clean it out, butit's like there's so much
ammonia from there.
I'm like, no, I feel likeyou're gonna get a disease or
something.
I'll let me get the disease.
So, because he won't even weara mask for that, we've like just
put such a bad like inklingabout masks on him so that he's
just like, no, I'm not wearing amask for that.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I'm like, well, this it might actually work, for
these are particles that can'tget through it's gross in there
is like when we don't have achicken coop at our new house.
But yeah, it does get gross ifyou're not on top of it, for
sure all right.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
So what are?
What are some of the otherthings that you were kind of
thinking about, that you wantedto talk about while we had you
here, as we're running up on 40minutes or so, oh sure, yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
I just like I just kind of wanted to inspire and
encourage the person who feelslike they want to homeschool.
They have a passion for youknow, I think for me,
recognizing that I had a passionfor business and that that
doesn't have to die or go on thewayside, but that there is a
way to do it, like with yourkids and homeschooling.
(39:04):
I just think that it'simportant to learn that you
don't have to and you push thison your Instagram page a lot
Like you don't have to sit at adesk you shouldn't even sit at a
desk bringing the public schoolto your house, um but that
they're like don't underestimatethe power of just like teaching
your kids alongside you andincluding them in what you're
doing, and like how much theylearn through that, and then
(39:28):
being a realtor is a great wayto do it.
If anybody's interested inbeing, you know, doing that like
that's such a great way tolearn all the things in public
school.
So that was just what I wantedto kind of encourage people in.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
I love that.
Oh, you know what I was goingto ask you too.
How did you get your kid?
You said that you got all yourkids reading at early ages, and
so you know, especially withhomeschooling, you hear the
whole like well, wait untilthey're ready and their synapses
are connected and don't push it, because if you push it they're
not gonna like it and then theywon't end up being kids that
love reading.
(39:59):
So what was your approach tothat?
And then how did you get themto actually love reading where
they like?
Do you guys read all the time?
Do you do screens at all?
Or they got nothing else to doother than open a book?
Yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
So it's funny, I don't.
I wish I had it in here.
I don't know where ourhomeschool books are.
We we moved like six months agoand some stuff still in boxes,
but when Noah was little.
So my mother-in-law actuallyhad this great reading program.
I'm so thankful she came acrossit because I feel like all my
friends have overcomplicatedteaching their kids how to read,
(40:33):
like they have these littlemini flashcards and all these
things and their kids struggleand they're so upset they don't
get it and I'm like, oh mygoodness, I just want the world
to know about this program.
So I'll tell you about it.
(41:03):
But the way it started out wasthere's this woman named Char
Lockhart, I think it was.
She was extremely passionateabout teaching kids how to read,
but she did it with like a bigchalkboard and she'd have the
kids first learn how to do it in.
I think she taught does yourconsonants and then one vowel.
So your first week or howeveryou break it up learning is B, d
, f, g, a, and so you'relearning the sounds of those and
look how to write those.
And then, once you have thosedown, then you go to the next
five consonants and vowel, andthen after that you do your
(41:23):
blends but she just breaks itdown in such an easy way.
But it was was like super oldschool.
She typed it up on hertypewriter and it was in this
orange book called um, somethingphonic I can't remember.
I'll send you a picture of itbecause you have to see this or
this thuring binder, and um, ithad an audio cassette tape in it
.
But then this company calledand you might have heard of them
before reading horizons.
(41:44):
There's other horizons programs, but that's not this one
reading horizons and they bought, after char died, they bought
her, her, the rights to herprogram, essentially, and then
they turned it into a digitalprogram online, and the customer
service with this company isbeyond exceptional, so good.
And they basically just tookwhat she did and sort of
(42:05):
modernized it.
And so I didn't use the orangetheory binder with my last three
, my most recent three, whateveryou call them, right, I'm done
having kids, but my youngestthree, that's what I'm trying to
say.
And so if you go into ReadingHorizons, they do the exact same
things.
It is in front of a computer,which I'm not a huge fan of, but
(42:26):
we don't do anything else infront of the computer.
So that's fine, but the bestthing about it is like teaching
my kids to read was like I don'tknow.
It was super easy.
But I also love that with myolder kids, I can focus on them,
and my younger kids can do thiswithout anything.
So they are done with the likebig first part of the program,
and they just brought me booksand they just started sounding
(42:47):
them out and reading them.
So all I had to do was helpguide them through what they
knew, so they'd start soundingout the words, and then I was
just able to refine it a littlebit.
I'm like this is the program.
Nobody.
I think people like to dothings the hard way, though,
because people prefer theflashcards, they prefer the
little tiny, you know whatever,antonio, this program I think
every parent should, and, and itworks really well with dyslexic
(43:09):
kids too.
I have one kid that started outreading backwards and they just
didn't get it for a while, butit was easy for them to fix.
So, anyways, if there'sanything anybody should ever buy
, as a homeschool parent, I amtelling them they should go to
Reading Horizons, because it isbeyond exceptional.
All right.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
I'm going to give that a try because we are, yeah,
my son's six, and we've been,you know, trying, we've been
working on it for, you know, twoyears now and it's, it's not
like he's not making progress,he sure is.
But I just don't want it to bedifficult.
Like, I want him to enjoy itand it just seems like you know,
I keep switching around whatwe're doing, enjoy it.
And it just seems like, youknow, I keep switching around
what we're doing and you know,and I don't want it to look like
(43:50):
school at home either, which,like you know, I, like I really
liked the all about reading whenwe did the pre-reading course,
I liked it.
But that is, it's school athome and that's fine.
But like, yeah, there's I don'tknow I now I would love to have
something where he could be alittle bit more independent with
it, because then it could belike okay, go work on that while
I do this, or something.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
And my kids they wake up, my twins they wake up every
day asking to do it.
They want to do reading all thetime.
They love it so much.
The way the program has beendesigned is remarkable and I
think not enough people knowabout it.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
I've never heard it.
This is the first I've heard ofit and I've talked to a hundred
homeschoolers.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I know.
But people I think people justlike you know there's so many
affiliate programs out therethat people make money off of,
so those are the ones thatpeople hear about.
I'm not aware of any affiliatemarketing with this one.
Maybe there is, I don't know.
Maybe I can be the first know,maybe I can be the first, I'll
be their affiliate marketer forthem.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
It's just so.
Yeah, this is cool, right, andI've asked that too because I
have the curriculum series.
I mean, I literally interviewpeople just on curriculum.
No one's ever talked aboutreading horizons, um, but yeah,
I've said that like, okay, allabout reading and the good and
the beautiful.
Are they really the bestprograms or are they the ones
with the best marketing strategy?
Yeah, I don't know.
I I liked them both, but Idon't know if there isn't
(45:08):
anything better, you know yeah,um, so I will definitely try
this out.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I like that.
We have, like our family hasfamilies that have gone before
us that have homeschooled all oftheir children and graduated
them.
They have successful businessesand they have all like they all
do things Like we learned howwe do what, the way that we do
things.
We learned from those familiesthat went before us and I'm just
so grateful for that, because Iknow there's families that are
(45:34):
just trying to do their hardest.
They want to do what's rightand they are doing all this
research and figuring it out.
I'm like you guys, it's reallyjust so much easier than you're
making it, and Reading Horizonsis definitely one of those
things, so you should try it out.
It's not expensive and theircustomer service is truly
incredible.
Give it a shot.
I would love to hear what yourson thinks of it.
Oh, awesome?
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah, that would be great.
And then so the second part ofthat was how did you get them to
just love reading Like, isthere a secret?
Speaker 2 (46:05):
I hated reading growing up.
I wasn't a reader, I didn'tread, so they certainly didn't
learn it from me, I guess I justI think it's the program that
my mother-in-law taught them,like the Shars program they once
you, I think, because it's nota stressful way to learn how to
read.
They have the desire to read.
(46:26):
When it's being pushed and youfeel like you're not enough or
you're not learning it right, oryou're being told you know
you're dyslexic and so you can'tget it right, you kind of just
lose the excitement for it.
But if it's something thatthey're learning to do in a fun
like the girls waking up beggingto do their stuff and then they
bring me books then they'resounding them out and reading
them to me.
Like I didn't teach them that,I didn't try and push that.
It's just something, I think,because they enjoyed the process
(46:49):
.
That's how it happened.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
I don't know, that's my best guess yeah, I'm sorry,
and it sounds like you.
Let them read the things thatthey want to read.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
So, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, we do
have rules about what they canread.
Um, yeah, they know there'sthings that we don't want them
to read.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
So they'll bring me books and say you would want me
to get this right.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
So like we don't do magic at our house, kind of
stuff like that.
So there's no magic, there's no.
You know, we try to be reallycareful.
And there's books.
There's books like the SugarCreek Gang was revised at one
point.
Those are really fun books forboys and at one point they were
revised.
So we have all the books fromthe series when it was first
(47:30):
made, and so that's reallyimportant too, because people
come in, change it up and thenit's no longer really that good,
because a lot of our booksfocus on character building.
But yeah, we let them pick outwhat they want.
It just has to fall under ourcriteria too.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, well, that makes sense.
That makes sense, but you'renot like here.
Read this book on the aztecs,you know if they're not into it.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
I've never given them any books to read, ever.
They all choose their books.
So the boys tend to pick, soour kids from.
So my 10 year old reads chapterbooks she's really into like
babysitters club, hardy boys,nancy, drew.
And then my older kids, um,like olivia she's, she reads
like books this thick and Idon't even know what they are.
(48:13):
But, um, they check it there,do, they go through them so fast
they can't even keep up.
But then my boys really steerto towards just his real life
history.
Like malachi will readtextbooks for casual reading,
like you know, the big books.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
So there's your knock grass history, you know like,
okay, that's amazing, that'sawesome, all right, uh, where
can people find you?
If they, you do I.
I like your Instagram page.
I was looking at it today andactually you gave me an cause.
I was, you know, you have oneof your pinned posts, kind of
like what you didn't know aboutme, and I'm like, oh, she sounds
so interesting and I was like,geez, I should have this.
I paid, I paid this company tolike help me organize my
(48:52):
Instagram page a couple monthsago, and so they did that for me
.
They like interviewed me and Ididn't know what this was going
to turn out like, but they madelike a post, kind of like that,
and I'm like, oh well, that'swhat you were going to do.
Like I could have done that Meand chat GPT could have like
hooked up and made a nice postfor Canva, but no, but they,
they did some other things toothat that worked out well, but
(49:15):
it's just kind of funny CauseI'm like, oh, I love the way
yours is put together, so nowI'm going to have to copy on
that.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
But I paid.
I pay a coach a lot of money togive me guidance on that kind
of stuff.
I don't focus a lot on growingmy followers when we're just
like nurturing the people who dofind me and that was my best
performing post and my coachtold me it would be because
she's tried it on hers and theneveryone asked for me to do it
again.
So I've been trying to make youknow 12 things.
(49:40):
You don't know me brown too butI haven't had time yet.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
All right, so I'll have to put that and you have it
like pinned up to the top.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
So that's one of the first things people see.
Yeah, it's up there.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Oh yeah, no, I really like that.
So, yeah, where can people findyou?
On Instagram or any socialmedia?
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, I only use Instagram, and they can find me
at thethoughtfulrealtor.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
And so where did they come up with thoughtful?
You said that your communitydubbed you that.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yeah, I well I'm.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I'm very intentional about making other people feel
thought about and um well, yousend thank you cards, so that
might be where it came from.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Thank you cards, we do thoughtful boxes, we just I'm
really big about being thechange that we want to see in
the world and being superauthentic and so just supporting
a lot of local small businesses.
I mean that's just like a wholenother conversation, but just
really, really, really investingin people and making sure
(50:40):
you're taking note of.
Like you know, I know one ofthe one of the girls in town.
She's 21.
She started her own boutique onMain Street and she just
celebrated her two-yearanniversary and so knew her
favorite coffee drink and ranacross the street to the local
Cedar Press Coffee instead ofCaribou.
Right, you get her favoritedrink, you bring it over there.
It's just stuff like that.
But you're doing it all the timeand I actually just hired my
(51:02):
assistant.
I know this sounds a little bitdisingenuine because it's not
me doing it, but there's justwhen you get to the point where
your business is so big you haveto get more people to help you.
So I just hired an assistant toactually help me with all the
people I couldn't get to.
So the notes are still from me,like I text her what I want
them to say, but now she willhand deliver things for me with
(51:22):
a note from me, or she'll mailpackages off that I've picked
out.
So just be.
You know you have to expand tobe able to keep going.
There's just not enough time inthe day for me to get to
everybody personally, but itdoes come from me now.
It's just somebody elsedelivering.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Oh, I love that.
Okay, so I will link yourInstagram and the Reading
Horizons website in the show'sdescription.
Anything else that you want tolet people know about that
you're working on?
Speaker 2 (51:49):
They can DM me.
If you're interested in being arealtor that homeschools their
kids, you can send me a DM atthe thoughtful realtor and we
can chat Awesome.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Awesome, Natalie.
Thank you so much for joiningme today.
This has been so fun.
I'm excited to try the ReadingHorizons.
I'm definitely going to do thatand get on my post about how
crazy my life has been.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Yes, I can't wait All inspired by you, girl, I'm
going to watch for it.
Natalie, thank you for joiningme.
All right, have a good night.
Thank you, you too.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the
Homeschool How-To.
If you've enjoyed what youheard and you'd like to
contribute to the show, pleaseconsider leaving a small tip
using the link in my show'sdescription.
Or, if you'd rather, please usethe link in the description to
share this podcast with a friendor on your favorite homeschool
group facebook page.
Any effort to help us keep thepodcast going is greatly
(52:41):
appreciated.
Thank you for tuning in and foryour love of the next
generation.
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