Taxes and some happy news

Are home schoolers better equipped for entrepreneurship?

Did my taxes this weekend. Every year, no matter how much I prepare for it, the activity of compiling everything just takes the wind out of my sails. To combat this feeling, yours truly went on a search for some happy news.

It didn’t take long.

Recently, I interviewed a father and son from Colorado, Patrick and Ethan Unverferth, who had just purchased a Discovery Map franchise, Discovery Map of the San Juans.

For those who don’t know, Discovery Map produces colorful, hand-drawn maps that are a favorite of travelers seeking local dining, attractions, businesses, cultural experiences and great destinations. Discovery Maps are typically found on display in local stores, restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions. 

Now, a father and son going into business together is a nice story. What makes it a happy story is the son, Ethan, is 16 and is home schooled. And while his father is a partner, it’s really Ethan’s business to run.

As Patrick observed, home school students seem to naturally gravitate towards entrepreneurship. As an entrepreneur himself—owner of three American Mattress locations—he wanted to feed his son’s desire to run his own business. The seasonal nature of a Discovery Map franchise will enable Ethan to plan and manage his time—something he had already been doing quite a bit of as a home school student.

What warms my heart the most—and why its being talked about here—is how it addresses the biggest challenge of working from home and out of a home office.

Isolation.

Ethan will run the business on his own out of a home office. Yet he will have the support of his parents (his mother will do the social media) and siblings (if he can talk him into helping him with distribution). And since he recently got his driver’s license, he can do the deliveries to merchants and other advertisers himself.

Anyway, after a weekend of taxes and seeing the story in the Ouray County Plain Dealer, it put me in a much better place to power through and get my taxes done.

Do you know any home school families who run businesses from their home? Please leave a comment and we can maybe feature them in an upcoming My HOH.

Avoid the Amazon time suck with Camelizer

Define irony.

Discovering a product named the Camelizer while searching for a Camelbak hydration pack.

That’s true.

What does the Camelizer do? It’s a free app that enables you to put the name, URL or item number of something being sold on Amazon and then create an alert when it reaches a price where you feel comfortable purchasing.

For example, Camelbak Hydration Pack sells for around $80 or so. I have my Camelizer set to notify me when it reaches $60 or less.

It’s that simple and will probably save me the time of searching and searching for a better price.

Check it out.

What’s ahead for My Home Office Hacks.

In the coming weeks, My Home Office Hacks will be expanding our content to include more voices of other people who work from home or own a home-based business. That content will come in the form of interviews—print and video.

With the additional content we’ll be asking for a nominal fee to keep that level of content going. There will always be a free version of My Home Office Hacks.

Stay tuned.

Inspiring quote of the week

“Forever – is composed of Nows.” – Emily Dickinson