Summer 2024 Progress Report: How to Navigate Summer Work Schedules with Kids at Home

Last Updated on September 6, 2024

Discover Rachel’s journey through summer work schedules, juggling work with kids at home. Learn valuable lessons on managing summer work schedules, adapting office hours, and maintaining momentum in your business during the challenging summer months.

Welcome back to the 5th installment in the Progress Report series! Last month, Rachel shared some exciting developments in her new business, Seeds and Stalks, as we continue to push the boundaries of traditional business methods.

If you’ve been following along, you know we’re following along as Rachel builds an online business without social media, which in itself is a rebel move!

Summer was a mix of triumph and trials, as Rachel faced the realities of Summer Work Schedules (juggling entrepreneurship with family life during the school break with kids at home), the challenges of migrating tech platforms, and the excitement of signing new coaching clients.

Get ready for another dose of real talk, fresh stats, and hands-on tactics from the front lines of a social media-free business. Let’s see what Rachel has in store for us this time!

Summer 2024 Income:

• Gross Income: $327.98
  • Current Offers:
    • Be Your Own Herbalist 6 month Coaching Program Founding Member’s Price $100/month for 6mo
    • The Fatigue Breakthrough for Moms Course – $197
    • Family Health Checkup Custom Video – $37
    • Build Your Home Apothecary Course – $27

• Expenses: $1476.70
  • ConvertKit: $53.41/mo (this is my email service provider but I switched to Kartra this month because I love Kartra 1000% more!)
  • Kartra: $778.59 (paid for Kartra for the year in order to take advantage of the 40% off the first payment deal through Success with Soul, which brings the cost to just $59/month, so almost the same I was paying for CK, plus I’m getting so many more features!) 
  • Loom: $15 (so I can record my Family Health Checkup custom videos) Actually stopped paying for this in August because I can record my videos in zoom or google meet then host them in Kartra!
  • Continuing Education: $551.62
  • 1:1 Coaching Revenue Share: $24.67

• Net profit: —$1,148.72

Oh my goodness, I signed my first one on one client in July and two more in August!

It feels so good to have actually closed some sales and to have people want to work with me. I am so proud that I validated my 1-1 coaching Be Your Own Herbalist offer and I can’t wait to work with more people.

This feels like a huge milestone and I couldn’t be happier. And the cherry on top, I have been LOVING delivering services and it has given me so much energy to work with clients. It’s a big win and I am CELEBRATING this milestone! Working with clients has helped me feel so much more connected and inspired to work in my business (despite a chill summer with the kids home). 

Despite a loss this past month, I wasn’t discouraged or derailed this summer. I made my last payment for a coaching progam from 2023 which was almost $460 in expenses this summer.

And I paid for the year of Kartra (more about that to come) so I should see a significant reduction in my monthly expenses in September. I have been extremely lean in my business and I think that it will start to be reflected soon! I set up my business account and seeing those recurring monthly payments come in is so rewarding. 

This summer, I also officially set up my business account through Relay Bank. I’m not yet set up with profit first but plan on getting that set up soon. (If you’re curious about profit first, check out our Scale Smart course which includes all the systems you need to scale your business- including setting up profit first!

Traffic Totals

Overall, I saw a slight decrease from last month in terms of traffic and users to my site. This is July’s snapshot and August was nearly identical.

This month I published one blog post on the Best Essential Oil Brands. While I’m proud that I did publish one blog this past month, I’m not going to lie, I’m a little disappointed in myself that I haven’t been able to consistently publish content and I know that it’s affecting my traffic and lead generation.

This summer has been really difficult with the kids at home and my time management has been lacking. I am trying to take small but consistent steps and I know that the end game will be worth it.

I wrote about it last month, but it continues to be on my mind that my business as a long game instead of a short game. I want to balance that reality with the other reality that if I move at a snails pace, my growth and revenue will also move at a snail’s pace.

I am still trying to find that balance of not hustling and getting stressed out, yet not taking things so easy and slow that I don’t make progress. I am hoping with the start of school, I’ll be able to get in to a consistent schedule.

Email List

Note: This screenshot comes from my dashboard in Convertkit.

• Email List Growth: 14 new active email subscribers in July/August 2024.

My email marketing has been lacking this month to be completely honest. I am in the middle of migrating everything to my new favorite platform Kartra and I haven’t been emailing my list or pursuing visibility opportunities. And it’s definitely shown. 

I’m moving to Kartra because it’s truly and all in one platform that is going to make running my business so much easier. I am really looking forward to having all my courses hosted in Kartra, plus having the payment processor integrated, it is going to make everything seamless. I also love how the landing pages and sales pages will be inside Kartra (instead of my clunky Elementor pages that I’ve been using). 

But you know what, migrating is a pain in the ass, y’all. I really wish I had bitten the bullet and just used Kartra from the start. But I was being cheap and it is ending up costing me more time and I’m only spending $6/month with Kate’s special promo rate! And if you want to read more about what Kate and I love about Kartra, see these posts: 

The way that I was able to grow my list by 14 people was to continue having coffee chats with other business owners who might be my ideal clients. And it’s important for me to remember to humanize leads. 14 leads means that 14 more people found out about me. And I didn’t have to pay for those leads! 

My biggest takeaway from all of this is that email list growth needs to be active, at least at the beginning.  What I mean by that is that I am actively searching out visibility opportunities. I’m not waiting for people to come to me. If you want to learn more about how I set up visibility opportunities and find aligned partnerships, checkout our brand new course: Painless Publicity! 

My current list building Freebies are: 

• Build Your Herbal First Aid Kit
• 5 Day Energy Kickstart mini-course

Domain Authority

Note: DA is a ranking metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a site will rank on Google, and is measured on a scale of 1 to 100. The closer you are to 100, the more traffic and better ranking you’ll have.

Clearly I have some work to do in this area! One way that I’ll be working to improve my domain authority is by following the advice and teachings found in the SEO Course (also in MBA) about publishing high quality consistent content so that I can show Google that I’m a reputable website and increase my E-A-T!

Summer Work Schedule: 40 hours worked for the entire summer

I’ve been working only about 5 hours per week on my business this summer. Not going to lie, it’s been rough with the kids home.

There has been a shift though, that most of my time has been on client service (with my new clients) plus in conversation with a couple more potential clients.

The rest of the time was spent networking and collaborating. I am loving my networking community, BossMom+ and I’ve been attending the networking events. This has given me tons of new content ideas as well as helped me connect with people who are my ideal clients.

I’ve noticed that the more I talk about and tell people about my business, the more connected I feel towards my business. I’d like to continue that connection and momentum into next month!

Rachel’s Takeaways

What I focused on this month: Keeping my head above water – haha.

But in all seriousness, Summer Work Schedules are rough in terms of making progress and moving forward with my business for a couple of reasons. 

One, working with kids at home is no joke. Juggling work with kids at home, especially over the summer, has been incredibly challenging. The constant noise and interruptions make it hard to focus, and finding time to balance both work and family responsibilities feels like a never-ending struggle.

It’s been difficult to maintain productivity, while also ensuring my kids get to and from activities and that the house gets managed. I overestimated how much I’d be able to do without childcare.

In hindsight, I wish that I would have set up a few more blocks of time each week to work on my business, and gotten a little more support at home. 

Yet, amidst the chaos, I’m learning to be flexible and patient, embracing the small victories and finding creative ways to integrate family time with work. And we did have an amazing summer. A few highlights:

• More time for creativity and pleasure – I’m on track to read 200 books this year
• Less stress – This has been the least stressed I’ve ever been my entire life
• Quality time with my kids, including a 2-week trip, which I likely wouldn’t have been able to do as easily with a full-time job

Reason number two is a bit more vulnerable. I’m not sure if you can relate but this summer, I’ve been feeling a lot of uncertainty in my business and it’s been tough trying to figure out whether to keep pushing forward with my own business or do something else with my career. 

It feels like every step I take brings a new challenge, from finding a rhythm in my work to managing the stress of future uncertainties to actually making money.

Despite the fact that I signed 3 clients and made more money in my business this summer than in months past, it still feels like something is missing and that things are hard. This is a feeling I’ve been struggling with off and on since I started my business.

I realized though, that one of the positives of the uncertainty is the possibility for unlimited potential.  Even though it’s hard and doesn’t feel good, I’m reminding myself that this journey is a chance for growth and discovery.

Every obstacle is a step towards clarity, and every decision I make is shaping my path. I’ve faced tough moments before, and I’ve come out stronger on the other side. I’m learning to trust the process and stay open to the possibilities that lie ahead. I’m embracing the messy middle and trying to focus on staying present and not future tripping. 

Despite a rough summer, here’s what I was able to do: 

• Focus on service delivery to my clients (plus continued sales and marketing to potential clients.)
• A guest presentation in another coach’s parenting membership. This was a question and answer session (as opposed to the talk I gave last month on 3 easy steps to using natural remedies to care for your family) and it was such a fun experience. It was amazing to get in front of a new audience, share my expertise, and feel like I was really helping people. The talk was well received and I plan on giving it again for my own audience in the near future. I love teaching and helping people and I want to incorporate doing more of that in my business. 
• Embrace a “done is better than perfect” mentality with blogging and was able to publish one blog post this month. I continue to remind myself that my blog posts don’t have to be perfect and I don’t have to spend hours optimizing for SEO. What I need to do is focus on publishing high quality content and starting to let SEO work for me. I was proud that I was able to get the entire post written and optimized for SEO in just a couple hours. 
• Schedule coffee chats with other business owners and discuss potential collaborations. 
• Joined a peer led mastermind with 2 other entrepreneurs. This is going to be an amazing opportunity for brainstorming and accountability. We are meeting twice a month and have an ongoing voxer chat. It’s already been so helpful in feeling like I’m not alone.

Hence why I am challenging myself to make the direct offer/ask to each and every person that I talk with about my business (if I can really help them). I know that it’s a numbers game and the more that I talk about my offers and how I can help, and the more that I connect with my audience, the more results I will see. 

I participated in a networking event on the platform, BossMom+ that I’ve been using and that was really great practice talking about my business.

One thing that we did together was share an opinion about our industry in small groups. It was amazing to see the conversations sparked by sharing and opinion rather than just telling someone about your business. I’d like to see how I can share more opinions in my weekly emails because it was a profound exercise. 

Summer 2024 Goals

• I signed up for a 30-Day Free Trial of Kartra and I want to make the switch! This means moving my email list over as well as moving all my landing pages and courses over.  🟧 This is in progress!
• Participate in the Get-It-Done-Week Tripwire week and create a new tripwire in Kartra! 🛑Nope, didn’t do this at all. I was very inspired by our guest speaker, Sage Grayson, and have some plans to implement $7 tripwires in my business but I didn’t get to it last month. 
• Participate in the Get it Done Week Instagram 9 Grid! 🟢 Check it out at here.
• Make at least 10 direct offers to work with me 🟧 I signed 2 new clients, bringing my client load to 3 people. I did make offers to work with people but I’m not sure I made 10. 
• Write 2 blog posts 🟧 I published one blog post last month. 

Goals for September 2024

• Finish Kartra Migration! (This means moving my email list over as well as moving all my landing pages and courses over) and participate in the tech stack get it done week! 
• Make at least 10 direct offers to work with me
• Write 2 blog posts 
• Get a set schedule established when the kids go back to school. 

• My guiding wisdom for next month:
  • It’s OK to feel uncertain. 
• My guiding feeling for next month:
  • Contentment 
• My mantra for next month: 
  • When I’m in the mystery, I have unlimited potential. 

Thoughts + Self-Coaching on Summer Work Schedules

In looking at my goals for last month, I didn’t set out to achieve what I wanted to. I severely underestimated how much work I could get done with the kids at home. And, that’s OK. It’s my business and I can move at the pace I want. 

One thing that came up for me last month was just being in a funk about my business feeling so hard. I’ve shared a little about it being hard vs uncomfortable in the paragraphs above as well as the shift to thinking of my business as a long game.

Those two things have really helped me work through the funk and the feelings of giving up and just looking for a different job. I’m still working through some of those feelings and reminding myself to take small steps in the right direction. 

I’m incredibly excited about the client work that I’ve been doing. It makes me feel connected to my business, and I’m so happy that I’ve been helping people. Hearing things like this from my clients has meant everything: 

After just one meeting with Rachel and applying her remedies and strategies I have more energy, my digestive system is more balanced and I’m even more hopeful! I’m learning so much AND Rachel makes applying it all doable in my busy mom life!

Kate’s Takeaways

This month was really interesting coaching Rachel because what I observed was a deep discomfort with uncertainty that causes her to constantly question everything and hastily look for a job just to stop the bleeding (aka uncomfortable emotions).

But interestingly, having a regular “job” is actually not any more certain (companies can downsize/relocate, industries can shift, economic downturns happen, you can “age out”, etc. Nothing is certain, it’s all an illusion). So how can she (and you, dear reader!) create a sense of security within herself, rather than relying on external factors like a steady job or guaranteed income?

Well, here’s my two cents that will hopefully help anyone reading who might relate to some of the feelings Rach shared above:

• Entrepreurship is hard. It’s supposed to be hard. You’re not doing it wrong; you’re just doing something that requires a ton of courage and patience. Hard is normal, not a signal that you’re on the wrong path. Sometimes “hard” feels overwhelming because you’re thinking about the enormity of the big picture, rather than breaking things down into small, manageable tasks you can get through each day. And also, is it really that hard? Or does it just require an abundance of emotional intelligence, nervous system regulation and mindset work? Is it the actual task that’s difficult, or is it managing your thoughts about the task that’s challenging?
• Pace Your Expectations. Rachel had no childcare this summer and two kids at home with her, two dogs and a house and life that needs constant attention and maintenance. Of course she didn’t accomplish all of her tasks, reach all of her goals, and grow her business at a rapid pace. And I bet if she was honest with herself at the start of the summer about what she could realistically do, she would’ve set some different goals and had different expectations. I see this all the time with our clients. Think about adjusting your expectations based on your current life circumstances rather than ideal scenarios. It’ll save you a whole lot of disappointment and mind drama.
• Just Decide. When you decide to start a business, you think that’s it, one and done. But actually it’s a choice you have to recommit to every single day. Because this is hard. And if every time something hard comes up, you immediately jump to “why am I even doing this?”, you will never move forward. Whether you’re struggling with tech, time, sales, whatever… you will hit bumps in the road. Don’t question everything and all of your life choices, especially when these are solvable problems IF you are willing to work through them. So I recommend anyone struggling with constant existential crises while you’re trying to get your business up and running do this:

• Trust the process. Most businesses don’t make any profit in their first year of business, according to Forbes. In fact, most new businesses need 18 to 24 months to reach profitability. So not making money right away is NORMAL! I encourage everyone to develop strategies for when the uncertain/doubtful thoughts arise, such as reminding yourself you can handle the uncertainty (or whatever anxiety is coming up), connecting with your business, and reaching out for support. Acknowledging your track record of success, even when facing challenges, will also help you trust in your abilities to handle the uncertainty of entrepreneurship, especially if (like Rachel), you’ve been telling yourself stories about not being good at or experienced enough for running her own business.

Reader Questions

Each month, I feature one question about online business from a reader. Submit your question in the comments and I’ll answer one next month!

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