Little Hands, Big Plans - Motherhood and Business

Building Treehouse Schoolhouse: A Family Business, Vision, and Freedom

• Emilia Coto • Season 1 • Episode 27

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:04:36

Send us Fan Mail

What does it take to build a family business centered around family values and freedom? 

Join Lyndsey Mimnagh, a homeschool mom of four and founder of Treehouse Schoolhouse, to talk about what it really looks like to build a family business rooted in vision, faith, and freedom.

Lyndsey shares the behind-the-scenes story of how Treehouse Schoolhouse began, from writing curriculum during nap time and nursing breaks, to slowly and intentionally growing a business that now supports her entire family and a larger mission. 

We talk honestly about early sacrifices, financial risk, seasons of tight margins, and the mindset shift required to pursue entrepreneurship as a vehicle for family mission and a life of freedom.

We explore how Lyndsey and her husband have designed their life so both parents can be deeply involved with their children’s home education, how vision and willingness to “fail forward” shaped their journey, and why freedom of time, presence, and generosity defines success more than income alone.

In this episode, we talk about:

  • How Treehouse Schoolhouse grew from a simple Christmas study into a thriving family business
  • Building trust and serving your audience long before selling a product
  • Why preschool and early education should center on connection, stories, and joy
  • Living books, nature study, and biblical discipleship in the homeschool years
  • Designing work and income around family rhythms instead of the other way around
  • Navigating seasons of risk, sacrifice, and uncertainty as vision-driven parents
  • Teaching children creativity, entrepreneurship, and courage through everyday life

Exclusive Listener Discount

Use code LITTLEHANDS15 for 15% off your total order at Treehouse Schoolhouse.

Terms:

• One use per customer

• Cannot be combined with other promotions

• Expires six months after episode release

About Lyndsey Mimnagh: 

Lyndsey Mimnagh is a homeschool mom of four and the founder of Treehouse Schoolhouse. Before motherhood, Lyndsey worked in children’s ministry and special needs education, experiences that deeply shaped her approach to home education. Her homeschool philosophy centers on living books and ideas, hands-on learning, nature exploration, and biblical discipleship.

Through her Instagram and blog, Lyndsey shares encouragement, practical guidance, and inspiration for families pursuing home education. She also creates curriculum and resources used by families around the world. Some of her most popular titles include An Expectant Easter, A Connected Christmas, and Treehouse Nature Study.

Connect with Lyndsey & Treehouse Schoolhouse

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with another mom who needs encouragement. Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram. 

For other episodes and resources, visit our website at https://littlehandsbigplans.co/pages/podcast

To learn more about my law firm, Sisu Legal, check out my website. 

Meet Lindsay And Her Vision

SPEAKER_01

Today, I am sitting down with Lindsay Mimna. Lindsay is a homeschool mom of four and the founder of Treehouse Schoolhouse. Before motherhood, Lindsay had a career in children's ministry and special needs education. Her home education centers around living books and ideas, hands-on learning, nature exploration, and biblical discipleship. She shares experiences and home education inspiration through her Instagram and blog, as well as creates curriculum and resources for families around the world. Her most popular curriculum titles are An Expectant Easter, A Connected Christmas, and Treehouse Nature Study. Welcome to Little Hands Bake Plans, the podcast for moms who want to reimagine work after kids and build a life where family comes first without giving up your dreams. I'm Amelia and I know firsthand how much motherhood shifts our careers, our priorities, and our pace. But instead of seeing it as a setback, what if we saw it as an invitation? An opportunity to design a life with a little more freedom, a little more presence, and a little more fulfillment. Each week, we'll have honest conversations with moms who've shaped their work and business around what truly matters. Whether you're considering a career pivot, dreaming of a slower pace, or just wondering what's possible, you're in the right place. So grab a little something warm, settle in, and let's explore the possibilities together. Hi, Lindsay. Hi, how are you today? Good. So excited to get to know you a little bit better and share a little bit about your story. I would love to give you the opportunity to share a little bit about what you do and your family for anyone that might not be familiar with your work.

SPEAKER_00

Sure. Well, my name's Lindsay. I have four kiddos. I live in North Carolina with my husband and them. And we are an outdoorsy family. We live so much of our life at home. That's really that was our life goal. And we worked really hard to get here. So I love this conversation because I do believe that everybody has dreams and visions. And you can go through hard things. You can work really hard to get places. And I love inspiring people with my story, even though, you know, we still have dreams and visions. But part of my dream was to be able to homeschool my children alongside my husband and also to be able to create content and curriculum because I love homeschooling. I love family connection. It's my passion. And so that is what my life looks like is I homeschool my children. And then I also get to share resources and curriculum and reviews of curriculum, and then also create my own curriculum and resources for families to use all over the world. So I'm constantly creating and it's so much fun.

SPEAKER_01

We've really loved the Treehouse, Schoolhouse, Preschool curriculum. This is the first one that we're doing with my three-year-old. And the thing that I love the most about it is how simple it is to just open it. And it's very little planning at the beginning of the week, a lot of the stuff we already have. I would love to know more about how that journey started for you. And specifically, did you have a big following when you started? How did you start that part of your business?

Origins Of Treehouse Schoolhouse

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so my story is that I before I was a mom, I was a nanny at one point in my career journey. And I didn't become a mom until I was nearly 30. And so I had a lot of my 20s where I was doing full-time career. I was working at a church as a children's ministries director. Another portion of that time I was a missionary and I was writing curriculum for our mission organization. So we would, you know, put on these skits or do these lessons with kids. And then I became a nanny that turned into being this child's homeschool teacher. So throughout my 20s, I developed so much curriculum for church, for missions, for this student. And it was just part of my life. It was just something that came naturally from me. So when I had kids, you know, fast forward five years, they're starting preschool, whatever. My two oldest kids, I actually believe they were three and four. And I thought, like, I think it's time to start exploring homeschooling. And so I used some preschool curriculums that are out there, but I just wasn't totally happy with them. So I was adapting them. I was changing them. I was adding things. I was spending nap times and nighttimes, you know, reworking the curriculum and writing my own thing for my kids. And the first curriculum I ever published and put out publicly was a Christmas curriculum. And it was a three-week guide that led up to Christmas that my preschoolers could use, but I also could adapt for older children because I wanted to do it year after year. And so when I wrote it in mind, thinking I want to do this long term, I want to do this family style. That was my vision. So I made this curriculum and my sister-in-law came on board and I'm the creative, she's the tech. And she's like, let's totally put this online. We'll just do digital. It's not a lot of overhead. Let's just see if this can sell and reach more families, teach the gospel to more families, and maybe put some cash in our pocket to buy Christmas presents. And so yeah, that's how it started. And that was in 2018. It was so successful and such a blessing to see that so many families were opening the Word of God with their children at Christmas time and creating memories and traditions and also reading the best of the best Christmas books. I remember just, I had babies, you know, I also had another baby at that point. So I'm getting all these library books and I'm surrounding myself at night and I'm writing this from scratch with no one teaching me how to do it. It was just, you know, Holy Spirit inspired. So anyway, from there, I wrote an Easter study that really feels a lot like that Christmas study that was very successful for the people who loved it. They wanted to do another one. Then after that, we created Treehouse Nature Study. And from that point, I started really seeing this as hey, this is a career. This is something that I want to continue to pursue. My husband was on board. We started bringing in, you know, part-time childcare like one afternoon a week. So I could really focus on writing. And just to give you the full vision, my husband was working 60 hours a week or more. We really financially were really in a tight place. We had two of our kids had special needs. We were paying out of pocket for services. And I had a baby. And I remember paying for the nanny was really just enough money to cover the money that we were bringing in from my company. So it was like this like, you know, striving at the beginning. And then she would have to bring me the baby to nurse. I would be in there writing and she'd have to bring me the baby every two hours. So it was this crazy struggle at the beginning. So fast forward to now, and I have a full team. We have our products in a warehouse. We have so much happening behind the scenes. I've have writers that help me. You know, we have a social media manager, so I'm not tethered to my phone. Just so many things that have happened since then. But my passion is in the curriculum development, and that's where I've stayed. So we've hired out all the other things to do, the website design and all the other things so that I can stay in my happy place, which is really talking to people, encouraging moms, and writing curriculum.

SPEAKER_01

That's amazing. I love how you just started without having this huge expectation and then kept growing from there. Did you have a background in business or marketing? How did you market your first products without having the following that you have now?

Serving First And Early Growth

SPEAKER_00

At that point, I did have quite a large following. I think I had at the time, I also think I got in right at the right time when Instagram was blowing up and also COVID hit shortly after we launched our first product. So, right in the growth of our company and us transitioning into maybe having part-time childcare and things like that was when COVID hit. You know, so many people were Googling, like, how do I homeschool? What do I do? Where do I start? And so the resources just started really growing at that point. And at that point, our blog and our website had gotten to a place where there was enough there that people were, you know, getting help. They were actually going there and finding answers. But I think I had maybe 15 or 20,000 followers when we released the first product. And the way I got to that point truly was just sharing other books or resources or homeschooling products that are out there that we were using in our homeschool, taking really lovely pictures, tagging other people, trying to network, and then offering a lot of free content because I had previously worked at a church as a children's ministries director. I had previously homeschooled a student privately before I had children. I had all this experience. And so I came to the table with free information and people started trusting my voice because at that point, you're right. I was not trying to build something that was a financial gain for my family. At that point, it was just fun. It was a hobby. It was a mom thing. It was like, I work with my kids all day. I'm kind of like alone at home. I love teaching. I love equipping. I love encouraging moms. So when the kids were taking a nap, I would hop on stories or something and be like, hey, this is something I'm learning, or this is a tip I have for you. Or here are five ways that you can, you know, integrate this into your homeschool today. And it just was fun. It was just really fun. And I started making those connections. And so once I finally put a product out, I feel like I had a whole bunch of friends that were like, I love Lindsay. I believe what she says. I've been helped by her for free for two years. I feel like I'm sitting at her table and she's putting a product in front of me. Of course I'm gonna buy it. Of course I'm gonna get on board because I trust her homeschooling methods. I trust what she says. And I want to have that in my home. And so it really is true that if you are trying to do something similar to really build trust and not with a motivation so that one day you can sell, like truly because you care to serve the people and you care to build that relationship.

SPEAKER_01

What really stands out to me is you can hear how much service and how much you poured into your community before you had the product. And I think you continue to do that because even when I when I went to buy the curriculum, you had a free week, which was the blueberries with Sal and my little loved it. So then it was so easy to buy after because I we already knew that it was such a good fit. What can you share a little bit specifically more with the preschool curriculum about the gap that you were trying to fill when you were developing that curriculum?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I love preschool. It is one of my favorite times, and my youngest child's five. So it's sad because preschool era is over in my house. But preschool is just, I'm so passionate about what we offer our children at that age. And sadly, in our society, if you enroll your child into a traditional preschool in America, they are focusing on the wrong things. They are so concerned with phonics, with getting your child to hold a pencil, with, you know, all of these things that used to be what they would put on a six-year-old. But now it's like they've just made it earlier and earlier. And then they're missing out on so much of the play focus, on, you know, falling in love with good stories of creating of fine motor skills, of dancing and music and movement and story. And so all of those things that I feel now that I have children that are in middle school, I feel like what I did was I took a step back when I started to create this and I asked myself, what are the core components that I think set myself, set my children up for success in their education long term? And if I could go back, what would be the main things that I would focus on to set them up? And then I basically wrote those that list down and then I built Treehouse Story School around that. And the number one thing being that your children want to come, that they want to gather, that they want to do school, that they think school is fun and it's inviting and it's connecting with mom and it's connecting with good stories. Because when people ask me, oh, my four-year-old, my five-year-old, even my six-year-old, they complain when I say it's school time. My my first reaction is, what is school to them? What is it that you're inviting them to? How it what is the method in which you're trying to get them to engage? Are you putting them in front of a workbook with a pencil and you're scrolling your phone while they're supposed to fill something out? That's not engaging. That's not connecting. That's not inviting. But if you put on some music and you dance around with your child and you bake blueberry muffins and you draw in sand, you know what I mean? I mean, you know, because you've been doing it. Yeah. That's fun. That's engaging. And it's like secret. It's like secret learning. They don't even know the depths of what they're learning when you go that route.

Rethinking Preschool And Play

SPEAKER_01

It's really funny because my three-year-old, we've been doing this, these homeschool, you know, farm school and fun things like that. And they always, whenever they ask him, Oh, are you in school yet? And he always goes, I do learn like I'm in school, but it's a different kind of school. So he loves it. He definitely loves it. And I think something that stood out to me is the book list and the playlists that go along with it. They're just so thoughtfully curated that I'm curious to know, you know, how you put those together. How do you come to learn all those amazing books? And they're all the themes are really fun each week. I would love to know a little bit more about the behind the scenes of how those came together.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it was just me and hours of research and lots of library trips and hours and hours listening to songs on Spotify. That's it. It was behind the scenes, it looks like me sitting up in my guest room for hours on end with stacks and stacks of books going through books. The original book list, like the main book list, because if you're unfamiliar with the curriculum, it's based on 32 picture books. And each book has themes in it, and the entire week is surrounding those themes. It's not like all about the letter A or all about, you know, it's all about the book. And yes, you do learn your letters, but the main focus is the story and then the themes in the story. So I would, I first started with that and I figured out what are the 32 books that I want because I love them, because I've experienced reading so many children's books. And then another random behind the scenes thing that's tough for me is I have a lot of favorite books that I can't put on the book list because they're out of print, they're very hard to find, they're expensive. So I had multiple books that are my favorites get kicked out once they went through editing because, you know, my editor had to research and find out, oh, moms are going to be really upset, they're not going to be able to find this book. A not fun thing about my job is not being able to pick all the books that I want. But yeah, it literally just looked like sometimes I do have some of my team help me with some of the books, book lists, or the songs, but this project specifically was my baby, and I took complete ownership over it just because I really been wanting to develop this curriculum for years. So when it came time, I was like, I'm not sharing. I'm not sharing this one. And I worked really hard just doing all that research behind the scenes. And it's just exactly what you'd expect. It's Googling, it's researching, it's getting a bunch of books from the library because I'm very, very conscientious when it comes to what books show up on our lists. So hours and hours of reading books is what I do for a living.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I'm really thankful because I do think that it saved a ton of time off my plate. And I'm excited to do them every week with my little. And I love that the music that you picked is not the traditional, you know, the kid music that's very loud and beepy, and yes, it's not that. So I really style.

SPEAKER_00

So that actually, when we did, when we launched Treehouse Nature Study, which for those that are unfamiliar, Treehouse Nature Study is a seasonal curriculum. And so we have each season has 13 weeks and it's seasonal themed. So like in autumn, you're studying apples, the moon, birds of prey, you know, those kinds of things that are like more with the fall season. So years ago, I basically did a lot of research on like folk children's music artists because I don't like that music. I don't like the crazy, loud, wild, you know, gets my nervous system in a big tangle. I want to listen to folk songs. I want to listen to songs that I want to listen to too. And so, with you know, cars and harmonicas and yeah. Anyway, it started with that. So then when I developed preschool, I already had a list of artists that I liked. And so then I started there and I would just, you know, I would just research like songs about blueberries with these artists, and then I would go through lists and listen to them. And and then also in the playlist, there's also just some traditional preschool songs that you want to introduce your kids to that maybe if you weren't doing this curriculum or list, you'd forget about, like head, shoulders, knees, and toes, or an alphabet song, or you know, things like that I tried to incorporate as well.

SPEAKER_01

I also wanted to talk about how you've shared about now that your business is in a spot where your husband can also become more involved. And I believe you had mentioned he is transitioning to part-time work as well. I would love to learn more about that journey because at least in our homeschool circle, a lot of the dads are working really hard and long hours in order to provide for the family so that mom can homeschool to also learn about your story and how you've been able to also allow dad to be more involved in that journey.

Curating Books And Music

SPEAKER_00

Sure. So take it back to when I started the company. My husband, Matt, worked multiple jobs. So he originally was a firefighter and then that wasn't making enough money. So he started on his off days, he started a carpentry company. And sometimes he was also driving Uber, like literally piecing all of it together because I wasn't working. We like I mentioned, both of my older kids have hearing loss. They were going to therapy and it was specialized, so it was out of pocket, and we continued to have babies. Like it was just, you know, a lot when you're first starting married and married life. We did not start our marriage with wealth whatsoever. And so he was working so much for us to just do the bare bones life, you know, no traveling, no extra things. Christmas was used, toys, that kind of stuff. And so when I started my business, it was like this happy accident where he didn't even know that I put the Christmas curriculum online. Like it was just this thing that my sister-in-law came over one day with her babies and was like, let's just try this and share it on Instagram and see what happens. So when I told him, like, oh my goodness, like I think we're gonna be able to, you know, buy all the Christmas presents and actually put money in the bank account with this money. He's like, oh my goodness, do you want to do this? Do you want to continue down this road? And of course, there was so much conflict for years of I never thought I'd work, I thought I'd just focus on the kids. I don't want to hire someone to be with my kids. That's not what I want. Like, I want to be with my kids. And so we just decided that, you know, we would hire someone one or two afternoons a week. And it really became this like break for me, like this break from the normal mundane motherhood stuff to be like, oh, I get a few hours to write, I get a few hours to create. And it was really fun and it was life giving. And I didn't feel like it was taking from my family. It was giving to my family. So then over time, as the company grew and grew and blew up in a way that we could never have imagined, it got to the point where my husband and I just had many conversations. He at that point was a full-time cabinet maker. He left the fire department, started his business. It was growing. He had crews, he had a warehouse. It was like two huge businesses running. And we were both very stretched then. And at that point, we had a little bit of childcare, but it's just been this whole transition constantly of coming back to each other and saying, you know, what do you want to do about this? And never the pressure on me to make the income. It was still always, he's the breadwinner. I get to do this if I want to, just because that's what we wanted in our marriage. And so it just kept growing to the point where I was working not very many hours for the income. And so it just made a lot of sense. If we wanted to live more of our life with our kids, including him, that we focused on growing my business because I was able to work less and make more. And at some point in the journey, I was able to be the main income. And we decided that he would put his work on the back burner and spend about 18 months building our house. So that was the first step where we saw a huge shift with his time. So he went from working full-time and making income to working full-time, building our house, making really no income and me carrying the financial uh blessing of the family, really. And so then at that point, once our house was done, we moved into our house. Like he physically built the house. So it was like a full-time thing. So then once he was done with that, about 18 months ago, we sat down again and said, What do you want to do? You know, I'm working part-time, I'm homeschooling the kids, still making decent money. What do you want to do? And he wanted to go back to working part-time, his cabinet building company. So now we've just, we're still like in this process of transition because we're always ebbing and flowing and saying, God, what do you want this to look like? But our number one heart is that both of us could be very involved with our children for discipleship, for training, for relieving each other so that we can pursue our passions, so that we can reach out to people, so that we can do all these things, but also that we're both very involved with the kids, also that we can have freedom. We want freedom. We want freedom to travel. We want freedom to say, you know what, this kid's really struggling. We're going to take off today and just spend some one-on-one with that kid. You know, that's rich to me is freedom of time and freedom of finances so that we can be generous. I want to host people and feed them and not worry about not having enough money to feed them. Like those are the things that I care about. And yeah, we're at this place now where it's such a blessing. I get to homeschool in the morning while my husband does his hobbies or his work. He's working on building another business right now. He also still does some of the part-time cabinetry building and, you know, working on real estate and just other ventures. And then after lunch, we switch roles and he's with the kids in the afternoon, continuing some of their school, running them to extracurriculars, building stuff, going on bike rides, like whatever. And so we truly do both, we both work part-time and both are involved with the children part-time now.

SPEAKER_01

I completely relate with that dream and your definition of wealth. And I do believe that more parents, especially homeschool parents, would also love to have the option of having both parents be more available, more present. But it does sound like it takes a lot of careful planning to make this work. I was wondering if you had any practical tips or steps that families that are just starting down this path can take to make that a reality for themselves as well.

Sharing Roles And Buying Back Time

SPEAKER_00

I'm a huge advocate for entrepreneurship. I think that there are lots of jobs that would, you know, you could go this direction depending on how it's structured. But entrepreneurship always just makes sense to me because you get to be your own boss and you get to decide what your priorities are. There have been so many times that we've sat down and it's a lot of communication and it's a lot of being honest with each other. And we've sat down and said, what do you want? Do you want to work full-time? We've even had that question that he's asked me like, would you rather work full-time and like I homeschool? Or would you want to consider putting the kids in a part-time school so that you could focus on your business? And always just being honest with yourself about what your true, what true success is in your life, and then being honest with your spouse about what you really want, and then keeping a clear focus on your goals and making steps towards that because it'd be really easy to get caught up even in wealth. Like he could go work full-time, we could hire a nanny, which we had child care help regularly for a long time while he was still working full-time and I needed to build my business. But what we really wanted was it to be him and me. And so we made a decision to move away from having a nanny so that we could work towards that. But there are steps. There are lots of steps in between where you are now and where you want to be that aren't ideal. And a lot of hard things too. If this is the route you're gonna take, if you're gonna be dreamers, if you're gonna be visionaries, you have to be willing to take risks, you have to be willing to even fail, you have to be willing to, you know, stick together. We've had a lot of failures. At one point, we lived in the RV thinking that we were gonna sell our house so that we could start our house build. And it was miserable. Like I was so lonely, like I didn't want to live in that RV. And well, looking back, it was a step in the wrong direction, but we thought it was right. And so what did we do? We went back, we pivoted, you know, and it's like you just learn from things. You like that's the kind of people that we are is we're willing to take the risk because we have dreams and visions and we know that there's no way we're gonna get there if we just go the easy route. So we'd rather take the risks and do the hard things and stick together and stick with God and just keep trying with a vision of what we really want. And we still have visions, we still have plans that we're talking about today. What if we did this? What if we took one more step and we we did that? So yeah, I think just keep dreaming, keep being honest with each other and not being afraid to take those risks.

SPEAKER_01

I really like that you mentioned the willingness to fail. Because when I speak with someone that is really frustrated and feeling stuck in their current situation, the unwillingness to fail, I believe, is something that keeps people stuck because there's always gonna be risk, especially if you're gonna go on the entrepreneurship route. You have to commit to trying and figuring out, even if it means multiple failures along the way in order to make your vision a reality. In homeschooling, because you mentioned entrepreneurship, how do you incorporate that into your kids' education?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, first of all, it's about a mindset. You know, in our family, there's nothing off limits. Like you can bring any idea to the table, and we try to cultivate this culture of freedom to say an idea. There have been many ideas that my children have had of wanting to create something and sell it or wanting to start a ministry or wanting to, whatever these ideas are. And it's just there's a culture in our family that that is welcome. And that mom and dad will come alongside. It's funny, they'll say, like, mom, anytime that I get excited about a hobby or a new book series, I know you're gonna buy me the stuff. But if they're getting excited about like a toy, I don't go buy them the next toy. You know what I'm saying? They know the things that I'm gonna support and I'm gonna immediately be like, oh, like my daughter's really into sewing right now. My 11-year-old daughter is like becoming a really great seamstress and she's been, she was selling some of the things. And of course, I'm like, oh, girl, I will get you what you need. And of course, when it comes to entrepreneurship, then you're also teaching them about putting money into it to make money. But at the initial onset, it's that support, it's that coming alongside, it's that saying, you know what, buddy, that might not work, but let's try it. Let's figure it out. And I think that's what I go back to what rich is, because when you're working full time and you're just juggling everything and you're running on no sleep and you're just frazzled all the time and you have no space, how are you going to help your child when they come to you with an even wild idea that you know in the back of your head that's not gonna be successful? But you want them to see it through so that they can learn their lessons through the whole thing. It really requires a lot from a parent. And I don't say yes 100% of the time because that's not reality. But there have been a handful of times that my kids have come and said, Oh, mom, I wonder if I could sell this thing or I wonder if I could offer this service. And it's being willing to say, let's do the math. How much would it cost to buy the things? Okay, let me take you to the store multiple times. Let me coach you as you're losing perseverance, let me sit with you at that market and see how it goes. And so my kids are still quite young to be doing these things. They're 11 and 12, but that's what we see in our future for homeschooling high schoolers is opportunities for them to push into their passions to walk out that entrepreneurship. Matt and I are always thinking of ideas too, like, what if we just got a golden retriever last year? And we're like, what if we like did the breeding process just one time so the kids could be in complete control of caring for the puppies and then selling the puppies, being a part of that whole process just one time? We don't want to do that as a living. It would be a lot of work, but it's it's for the the skills that they're going to gain in that process. So I'm not saying we're doing that. That was just an idea that we threw out the other day. But I'm just saying it's a mindset to always be thinking outside the box of what they can do and encouraging them to think that way.

SPEAKER_01

At what age do you think is appropriate for children to start learning about that? Because as an entrepreneur myself and my husband is as well, I think we're always thinking about it. But then sometimes I think he's three. I need to relax a little. He's obviously has all the time in the world to figure it out. But I'm just, I'm curious because you have a little bit older kids. What age you started just having them think about how they might earn a living in the future.

Entrepreneurial Mindset For Kids

SPEAKER_00

I think it's at that age, it's more about providing a space for them to be creative and for them to be confident in their ideas, no matter what those ideas are, and just following their lead and just having conversations. I love talking to my kids, including my little kids, my youngest is five, about my business. I'll explain to them what's happening behind the scenes. I'll say, oh, mommy needs to, you know, work a little bit on this and I'm taking pictures for this because I was just telling my daughter yesterday, I said, Oh, I need to take some pictures because I'm gonna share this on the blog and what a blog is, and I explain it. And then I'm like, then I'm helping mommies know if this is a good curriculum for them or not. And then if they buy the curriculum from Amazon, then I get some money back. So it's good for them and it's good for us. And like just these little conversations that I'm explaining all the time, just to get them thinking at that age. But as far as like really empowering them to sell something or to start something or do something, depending on the kid and their passion level, I wouldn't force it. But if it came out of them naturally, because I do think some kids are more entrepreneurial-minded, I would come alongside my child and help them really start something around age seven, six or seven.

SPEAKER_01

Another thing you mentioned that made me think of conversations I've had is you mentioned ministry, you mentioned business. I I truly believe that you can incorporate both, like business can be your ministry. I was wondering if you ever had to deal with the mental block that I think sometimes comes from charging. For example, someone might want to start something, but feels that because it's ministry and you want to have the chance to pour to as many people as possible, perhaps don't want to charge because then it could prevent others from accessing the ministry.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like a couple things here. Number one, as a business owner who shares the gospel openly in our resources, but also on our website. So I think that it's really important to realize that you can give a lot of free content to people who aren't able to purchase something that provides these resources to families as well. I have so many free resources on my website that will help a mom start homeschooling, or will point them to the gospel, or will give them free book lists, or, like you mentioned, free weeks of curriculum. And so that's really important to note that you're giving people a lot of free information, a lot of free content and encouragement through your business. On the other hand, if I was not earning an income through my business, I would not still be here. I would not be able to be here because there were many years where the only way that I could carve out time to spend writing these resources is because I was using my income to feed my family, to pay for childcare, all the things I was providing for my family. And so the reality is that's just the way that business works, is if I'm not getting paid, I can't keep creating. That's the bottom line. And I have no shame about putting a price tag on resources because I also know that for a homeschooling family, there are tons of resources out there that are free. And you can homeschool on a very tight budget. You can homeschool by just using a library card. And a lot of the tips that I've shared on my website, what we provide is not a necessity to homeschool. It's fun, it's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's an amazing resource. Utilize it if you can, but it's not a necessity. So I don't feel like I'm robbing someone of a home education or something by not giving all of our stuff away for free.

SPEAKER_01

I really liked how you phrased that too, because it also allows you to be able to pour into and minister to your family the fact that you were you've been able to grow your business to a point where your spouse and you can you can do this together as a family. You know, you're able to serve the people that buy your resources, but you're also able to serve and minister your family through the business.

Pricing, Ministry, And Sustainability

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And I think that's the life of a follower of Christ, right? It's like everything we have, we give back to him and we offer to him and we say, thank you, Lord, for freeing up my time. How can I serve you with my time? Thank you, Lord, for the finances. What do you want me to do with my finances? How can I be a good steward of what you've given me? Thank you, Lord, for my influence. Because everything that I have gotten through this business, it's a sacrifice back to him, it's worship back to him. And that is the life of a Christian. It's not just me gaining all this money and hoarding it and building a kingdom over here or something. It's thank you, Lord, for building our home. How can we invite people in? Thank you for providing the freedom. How can we use our freedom of time to bless other people who are going through a hard time? Can we watch their children? Can we bring them a meal? So the lifestyle that this business has provided for our family opens up opportunities for us to continue to pour out things that you guys don't even see. You know what I mean? Like one of the people in our, and I shared this on stories recently, but one person on our team, she is the customer service manager. Her name is Julie. We've been best friends for 18 years. And I hired her as my customer service manager three or four years ago. And her family are full-time missionaries and have adopted twice from that country on the income that she earns from Treehouse Schoolhouse. And so she's able to go be a missionary on this income. So it's like when you're purchasing something, you don't know what that's doing behind the scenes for more than our family, you know, more than just people's pockets that are on the team, but the world, the mission.

SPEAKER_01

That's so encouraging. I love that you shared that because the reason why I started this whole podcast is because I wanted for other moms to see what's possible and not feel stuck because I kept having these conversations with moms that felt stuck, just working long hours or having to spend a long time away from kids. It's very common in law. And I wanted to have these interesting conversations with other moms like you that have done it. I have trouble sometimes explaining why I'm so passionate about it. But that is a perfect example about the things that if you feel called to start a business, just the possibilities that come from that and the ability to bless others, your family and others through that business are beyond sometimes what you can even imagine. And if God places that in your heart, just the possibilities of saying yes are really incredible. And that's a perfect story to illustrate that point. What strategies and growing your business do you think have been the most effective for continued growth and to be able to now have a team that you have?

Email, Newsletter, And Evergreen Content

SPEAKER_00

I would say, like initially, when I was sharing earlier, I talked about the partnerships, the product sharing, the networking. That was really important for growth, for gaining more following. And then also really having a strong voice and having a strong brand almost. So like people knew what to expect. And it's had to change over the years because I've had Instagram, I've had a blog since 2017. And so it's changed drastically. And just continuing to learn what is happening out in the world in social media or what's going, you know, what are the trends, what are the things. That was me a long time, and then hiring someone eventually to do all that research for me and tell me what to do. This is how we have to do it now. And as far as like marketing, it depends on what your product is, of course. But for us, a lot of our marketing came through Instagram for a really long time. That was the main funnel to our website. Building a website where we made a commitment to not have ads. So if you ever go to trialschoolhouse.com, you are not gonna get pop-ups of ads of all kinds of cars and all these random things. That's not what you're gonna find at our website because we want people to come to the website, read the blog, peruse the products, and have a peaceful experience. You can make a ton of money through those ads, but we thought, let's do it another way. Let's figure out how to point people to the product and also through Amazon links and all other, there's tons of different avenues. So the best things that we did a few years back is really started focusing on our email list. Because if Instagram goes down or if I lose my account tomorrow or Facebook goes down or I lose my account tomorrow, I have an email list and nobody can take that from me. And so we really started building our email list through getting people to put in their email in order to get freebies. That was like our big strategy. And so we've been doing that for years. Almost any time that we have a freebie out, you have to put in your email. And then you're going to be LinkedIn to all the sales and all the fun stuff that's coming up. And then also one thing that's really worked well for us is I write a weekly newsletter. I don't know if you read it. It's called Inside My Homeschool. It comes to your inbox every Sunday morning. So I'm committed to writing no matter if I'm traveling, no matter what's happening in my world. I sit down at the end of my week and I write what we did in our homeschool, what God's teaching me, what I'm reading, what I'm eating, questions people have submitted. I do two questions at the end. Sometimes it's silly stuff like where do you get your clothes? Or other times it's product related. And then we just put in there all the different sales that are happening or products that are coming up or things we're excited about. So it gives people that personal touch because the bigger we've gotten, the more I'm not constantly on Instagram on stories every day, all day sharing a day in the life. I did that for years and it was a lot. So now I'm like pushing people over to my email where I can do a roundup. I can do a roundup of my week. I can show some pictures inside my home, inside my school. Feels like you're having coffee with me. And that's been really effective for really keeping people connected and wanting to hear, being encouraged, finding out what the latest thing is happening on the website, what products are coming out, what blog posts are coming, where I was featured on a podcast, things like that. I would love to hear from you what you love about the newsletter and you know how it makes you why do you come back for it?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, my favorite thing that I like that you share is I do enjoy the personal parts about the journey that you share. For example, you are both looking to transition to work part-time. You know, that's something that I related to. So I really like that. And then I also love when you post to your blog, but sometimes there's so much resources that I like the newsletter to give me a summary because it's less overwhelming to read the newsletter. It reads like you're having coffee with someone, and then I can pick and choose what I want to read. So you have a lot of resources on your website for how to get started. I also like that family style now that we have too, the content that is geared for that preschool age. But sometimes I still will peek into things that are beyond that because I want to see what's ahead, what things I can start. Even if it's not targeted for my kids right now, I still enjoy learning about it and thinking about how we might want to structure in the future.

SPEAKER_00

That's helpful. Yeah, we have so much blog content that it can get lost because I've been doing it so long. And then there are new faces, or there are people that are just starting to homeschool. And so one of the strategies there to answer your question is just constantly pointing people on our end, it's like I have been talking about that blog post for five years. It doesn't matter because there's somebody now that needs to hear it that hasn't been here. So constantly creating new content, but always remembering that this content's great and you got to point back to it because there are new families all the time.

SPEAKER_01

Something that also jumps out at me was I had come across your content and had signed up for your newsletter, I believe, through a freebie, but then I wasn't opening them. And then you shared about it on your Instagram and you teased some of the content. And then when I went to look to my email, I had already signed up, but I wasn't opening them because I wasn't enticed to. You know, like it gets lost in the shuffle. So another strategy. Yeah, good strategy. You talked a lot about seasons, you know, in your content, in your curriculums, you have the nature of studies, and in life, you've talked about how as a family you've had to shift. How do you know when it's time for a shift? When it's time to, okay, as a family, we need more rest. As a family or in the business, we need to pivot. Do you have any strategies for following those seasons?

Seasons, Pivots, And Family Rhythms

SPEAKER_00

The first thing that comes to mind is just constant evaluation, constant communication. So for my family, it's constant evaluating my children. It's constantly evaluating our schedule, our capacity, and our calendar and how all of my children are responding to their load, their homeschooling load, their extracurriculars, just what our life feels like. Because my husband and I are both dreamers, as you can see. And so we're always putting things on our plate because we love to be active, we love to be involved, we love to travel, we love to host. We can go for three or four weekends in a row where we're hosting a big party, and then the next weekend we're traveling, and then the next weekend, you know what I mean? It's a lot of evaluating and keeping pulse on everybody in the family and even just like the practical things, like areas of our home that are getting out of control. So my husband and I have regular meetings, and I don't even, I'm not even gonna say it's a date because it's not, it's a meeting where we genuinely will go through. We do this yearly very intensely. Like in January, we'll get away for a night and we'll spend two full days writing down everything, discussing, okay, in our spiritual life, in our community, in our homeschooling, in our business, in our home, in our travel, let's evaluate everything and talk about our goals for the year. So we do that in January, but then just regularly throughout the year, I'm talking regularly, like a couple times a month. We sit down and go, okay, here's a problem. How do we evaluate? How do we shift? What can you do? What can I do? Who's responsible for what? What do we need to change? And I think living that way of constantly evaluating and being willing to change, being willing to pivot, being willing to try again. The thing that comes to mind for me right now is like the order in our home, because we built a large home so that we could have all the people, we could host all the things, we could grow old here with all of our family, kids, and all things. And with more space comes more stuff and more organizational needs. And then also our house is still in some places under construction because we built our house and we're still building it as we go to do it debt-free. So we don't have every area complete. So then things get out of control. So we're constantly saying, if I got a temporary solution for that, that could fix that. What if we change this and then you try it and then it fails? And then you're like, oh, that didn't work. Let's try again. What about toy rotation? What about purging? What about shifting this the way that we store these things? You know, all of that. So that's one thing is like the constant evaluation, trying new things, being willing to change, evaluating your kids. Then when it comes to business, I mostly have those conversations with my sister-in-law, who's still my business partner. She lives in California. I live in North Carolina, and we talk every day. We're still in business doing this together. And she does so much behind the scenes as far as like data research and speculating sales and the count, the sales calendar, and all of that stuff, so that we can make decisions for the business. Because we're both moms who want to live a life of freedom. So we take that into account when we're making business decisions and saying, like, she just had twins this year. And so it's from this month to this month on the calendar. Let's make sure that we're not doing any major launches because I would like to spend time postpartum not being stressed out. Okay, we can do that. We are the bosses. We don't have to make a new product for that season. There's just different things that we look at our life as a whole and we'll say, this year we're going to focus on curriculum development, but next year we're going to focus on marketing and growth or whatever. So just lots of evaluating, lots of open communication, and a ton of meetings.

SPEAKER_01

That's amazing that you have a family as a business partner. I completely relate with that because the thing that I struggle the most with, and I would love to improve this for my kids because I think my mom is like this, and then I'm like this, and I don't want my daughter to necessarily do this. But I have trouble saying no to things because so many things sound fun. And especially in business, as you start growing, you start getting these opportunities, and this sounds fun, and oh, this sounds like a great opportunity. Right now, I'm really learning about how important it is to also practice Sabbath and to practice protecting rest, not saying yes to all the things, and trying to model that so that my children can also see that that is important as well. Yeah. In seasons where perhaps growth was slower, or you mentioned failure before, where where things weren't working, would you be willing to share how faith sustained you during those hard times, how you found direction through those seasons as well? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So specifically, this question reminds me of more of like my life during our business growth. A lot of things, a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure because my business was growing faster than I could handle at the same time that I had toddlers, at the same time that my husband was still working and building our house. And so there were a couple of years there that were incredibly hard. And I feel like every other month I would sit down and look at my husband and say, I don't want to work anymore. I love my job. I love what God's done here. I love creating, but I'm just too stressed out. I can't carry all of this and do anything. I can't be in a million places at once. I've got toddlers crying when I go to write, I'm not sleeping, and then I have to get up and create. It's just too much. My homeschool's suffering. I'm suffering. And so there were multiple times where we would pray together and just say, Lord, if you want me to shut this door, I will. And I just always felt like the Lord guided us to maybe say, just don't do as much, just let it like sustain for a while. Don't show up as much. Don't, don't try to like grow right now just so that you can catch your breath, but don't close the door. And that's always what it was is don't close the door. So there are gaps in my blogging. There are gaps in our creating, not anymore because I have a team and we're in a good rhythm now. But there were years where it was like, I don't know if I can do this. I want to do this and I can see a vision, Lord, but I don't know if I can keep going. And so really it's back to what I was saying is like surrendering. Like I would easily forget what the point was. Like, is the point just for me to have an outlet? Is the point for me to make money? Is the point, what is the point here, Lord? And I'm just always going back to, you know, with him and saying, God, what do you want, what do you want Trial Schoolhouse to do? What do you want it to do for my family? What do you want it to do for the world, for families? You've given me this gift. You've handed me this business. You've given me the gift to create. So what do you want me to do with it? And just trying to hear him and cling on to him in seasons that were really tough. I will say that there was, it was very helpful that my husband never put pressure on me to do anything. You know, from the beginning, our vision was that he would work full-time and that I would raise the children. And so when this started to grow, it was kind of a shock for both of us. And I've asked him many times, like, do you want me to lay this down because you can tell it's like stressing me out? And he just always would pray about it and he hears the Lord and he would say, No, I don't think the Lord wants you to lay it down completely. I think that you need to make sure your priorities are straight. You need to make sure that you're taking care of yourself and that your priority is the family. And then we'll let the Lord grow it if he wants to and when he wants to. And so I think it was a unique situation because I wasn't starting from scratch in a desperate place to earn money, unlike a lot of men or, you know, single mom or something where it's like, I have to start this business now and it has to make money soon. Like in our situation, I was truly able to grow it organically, freely, and with my passion leading the way, not a paycheck. And that really did help.

SPEAKER_01

Looking back, are there any mistakes or warnings that you would give to homeschooling parent entrepreneurs that are looking specifically to embark in an entrepreneurial journey that supports the family, where the family is prioritized?

Faith Through Pressure And Pace

SPEAKER_00

Yes, I have a lot of mistakes. Boundaries and time blocking have been the number one thing that has saved my sanity and really made this continue to work for me. It's very hard when you are a creator or you are like your business is ran from your phone essentially to not feel like you need to be available 24 hours a day. It was very hard for me because when the business started, it was like I could answer every DM thoroughly from my heart. I loved it. It was like I get to talk to moms, but it just scaled so big that I physically could not answer two to 300 DMs a day and still focus on my family. I couldn't do that. And so at some point I had to say, I either stay small or I find someone else to help me that has the same heart that I have. And so having to give some things away that I even loved so that I could maintain my sanity so I could keep creating and stay in my happy place. The mistake would be that I had very little boundaries at first. And I would basically be tethered to my computer, tethered to my phone while also trying to be the best mom I could be. And so my big takeaway is I needed time blocking. I needed to just be mom for a portion of my day with no strings attached, without trying to make that my business. I just wanted to be mom. I needed to keep my phone away from me for a while. And then a time where I could really focus on work and I can even set that boundary with my children, having them with another person, either my husband or childcare, and saying, this is now mommy's time to work, and I can really focus. So it's more about my focus because I feel like I wasn't doing anything well. I was doing everything scattered in half when I didn't have good boundaries. The other thing is it can be really vulnerable, especially if you have a lifestyle-based business to put yourself out there. There are so many mean people that will criticize you, that will tear you down, but your appearance, the way that you say something, your belief systems, your relationship with the Lord, anything you can imagine. I've had some mean comment said, and my real life friend told me once, then I still think about it. She's like, if someone says something to you, and that person wouldn't bring you a casserole if your dog died, then you don't need to care about what they say. Oh, that's great. She's like, the people that you should really care about their opinion of you should be the people that also lift your arms up, should be the people, your best friends, your sisters, your husband. Like, if one of them is gonna say something to you that's a correction, hey Lindsay, you're getting off balance with this or something. I want to be a person that can receive humbly, you know, like the constructive criticism in my life. Yeah. But I'm not gonna receive it from somebody in Iowa that doesn't know my heart and who's misjudging me and says something to me online. But I'm a sensitive person. So it's hard. It's hard sometimes. So a couple things I've done to combat that is have filters in my life. So I have a social media manager, I have a customer service manager. So nine times out of 10, if someone's gonna say something mean in an email or in a comment or in a DM, I don't see it.

SPEAKER_01

That's great.

SPEAKER_00

Someone else sees it, handles it, moves on. If it's really serious, they'll pass it on to the team or to my sister-in-law because she has tougher skin than me. And then I can stay happy. I can stay lighthearted, I can stay myself. I need to show up as myself when I get on and talk and share and love people and write my newsletter. I want to be able to be myself and not be asking constantly, oh, what is somebody gonna think about that? What is somebody gonna judge me about that? Because that's not freedom and that would not be fun anymore.

SPEAKER_01

Those are really great tips. It made me think of that Bible verse about how there's a season and a time for everything. Can you share a little bit about what is next and what future plans you are holding hope for in the season, either for your family rhythms or for Treehouse Schoolhouse? Sure.

Boundaries, Focus, And Team Filters

SPEAKER_00

We are trucking along with homeschooling. I've got, you know, my five-year-old up to 12. So we're entering the middle school phase and I'm have a kindergartner. So school's really fun right now. And I'm just really exploring what it looks like to have such vast ages and try to still keep everybody together as much as we can with learning because that is my favorite thing about homeschooling is that family connection. My husband and I have a vision to travel more. We want to get an RV next year and maybe do some road schooling for maybe six weeks or a month and do some maybe history trips or some national parks while we're homeschooling on the road. So that's just a fun vision dream that we are thinking, praying about. And then as far as for the business, I'm currently writing a book. It's not going to be published till 2027, but I am signed on with Harvest House Publishers. So I've never written an actual published through a publisher book. I've written lots of curriculum, but nothing like this. So this is a very different project for me. It's uh, I can't give you too many details, but it's going to be for the mom who wants to cultivate creativity in rhythms in their home. And it's going to be a lot of inspiration and a lot of stories from my life and from my family. And so I'm excited about that. That's something I'm working on a lot. And you might be interested in this. I don't think I've shared it maybe once in a newsletter, but we are adding a component to Treehouse Story School where there will be a kindergarten add-on. If you've already done it with your preschooler, it's the perfect thing to transition into and take those stories a little bit deeper and add in some writing and advance in the math and continue some of those same songs and those traditions, though, as they enter into their kindergarten year. And if you're a brand new mom of a kindergartner, it's also great to just start out with it. So that's something that I'm also writing right now.

SPEAKER_01

Wow, Lindsay, there's so many exciting things coming up. And the book, that's amazing. Thank you so much for the time that you've taken out of your day to share about your story and your journey. I've enjoyed it so much. Where can people find you? And if there's anything else in your heart to share, please feel free.

SPEAKER_00

You can find me at treehouseschoolhouse.com. You can also find me on YouTube. Just search Treehouse Schoolhouse and on Instagram, Treehouse underscore schoolhouse. And again, you can go to our website and get so many free book lists. There's a lot of holiday book lists, holiday studies. We have so many resources on the website for families of children of all ages and also for families who don't even homeschool. We have a lot of good resources and information there. If you're just looking for family connection or things to do on the weekends or all kinds of things like that. And the other thing I wanted to share is that if you find something on there that you would like, I do have a code for you. Um it is Little Hands15. And so you'll receive 15% off of your purchase. I'm sure you'll put that in the show notes as well.

What’s Next: Travel, Book, Kindergarten Add-On

SPEAKER_01

I will, yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Lindsay. For today's episode takeaways, I have several. One thing that stood out is that Lindsay didn't begin Treehouse Schoolhouse with a massive business strategy. She simply started serving, creating, and sharing what she genuinely loved. And then she paid attention to what families resonated with. The business grew out of consistent serving in small steps, not a huge launch. The other thing that stood out about her story is how one of the major reasons that her business was so successful from the start is that she had built trust for a long time before she started to sell anything. She had poured into her audience for years through free content, encouragement, and practical homeschooling help. So by the time she launched her first curriculum, it didn't feel like a cold pitch. She already had a trusted audience that she had been building, and her audience trusted that she would bring something valuable to the table. Lindsay follows the seasons. She shared how in the early years she was creating during nap times, nursing breaks, that was a season where her husband had to work long hours and carried the financial pressure and special needs expenses. This story is a reminder that before the harvest seasons, often there is sacrifice, narrowing, and endurance to push through. And I really enjoyed this part of my conversation with Lindsay around the definition of wealth. How it's not about bigger lifestyles or hoarding wealth, but about the time freedom, the margin, the presence that can come from building a business, and also how much we are able to pour into others. She has been able to employ a solid team now, and the things that her team is accomplishing, like adoption, missions abroad, is incredible and another blessing that comes from the business. Treehouse Schoolhouse works because it is not recreating institutional school at home. Much of the curriculum is built through story, through music, movement, play, and connection. It's simple, but it's effective. The kids are also learning from Lindsay's entrepreneurial journey. They are learning that their ideas are welcome, creativity matters. The entrepreneurship mindset is something that they are growing with and learning with. They are seeing it lived out, not just learning about it in theory. To close, I just want to remind you that business can bless your family and also become such a big pipeline of generosity. One of the most meaningful takeaways that I had is that when a business is built with faith and stewardship, it can bless far beyond the buyer and the seller. It can fund childcare so a mom can continue creating without burnout. It can open margin for a husband to step into part-time work and have deeper family involvement. It can create jobs that support ministry and missions, like one of Lindsay's team members that is able to serve overseas. It can enable hospitality, practical care, and hidden acts of service that people may never see. And so a healthy business can become a multiplying tool for kingdom impact. One that through the income it generates, the people and employs, and the families it strengthens creates generosity far beyond what we can imagine. So faithfulness in business means giving your business to God and trusting Him to take the lead. Asking, thank you, Lord, for providing, and what do you want us to do with this. And I hope you're walking away feeling encouraged to dream a little bigger about what's possible for your work and family life. If this episode spoke to you, it would mean so much if you shared it with another mom who needs this kind of encouragement. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you want to keep the conversation going, connect with me on LinkedIn. Just search Amelia Koto. That's E-M-I-L-I-A-C-O-T O. Until next time, remember, motherhood isn't the end of your dreams. It's just the beginning.