I never wanted to be a working mum.

My mum raised her three girls alone, often working 12 hour days to put food on the table and give us opportunities she didn't have.

Being home without mum so often as a child lit a fire in my belly to stay home with my babies and homeschool them.

I still remember my high school careers counsellor getting frustrated with me when I said, “but I just want to get married and have babies.”

My mum and twin sister told me I was crazy.

“You don’t cook or clean, and you have no interest in it. How do you think you’ll be a homemaker?”

But that’s exactly what I did.

My high school sweetheart Steve and I married when I was 19.

I quit my job and dove into life as a full-time homemaker.

The first stir-fry I ever cooked for Steve was a disaster. I drowned it in soy sauce because I didn’t realise you should thin it with water. Steve took his first bite and hesitantly said, “it’s… edible?”
“That’s generous,” I replied.

Fast-forward to four-days before our first wedding anniversary, I homebirthed our first baby Emelia.

I was 20-years old.
A new mum.
Living on $45,000 a year in family income.

But Steve carried me through it.

He got up early to cook me breakfast before leaving to work 9-5 in a factory.
On his feet all day. It was so busy he rarely stopped for lunch.

He’d regularly get home to find me in exactly the same spot on the couch, breastfeeding or quietly reading while our baby slept on me. Steve would make us dinner, clean the house and tell me I had the best job in the world and that I was doing the most important work.

When Emelia was 6-months old things started to change.

I wasn’t overwhelmed anymore.
Breastfeeding didn’t hurt.
We were in a groove.
I was cooking and cleaning again.

And I started to wonder what I’d do if we ever lost Steve.

Steve had miraculously survived viral myocarditis as an infant. An inflamed and enlarged heart.

I was smart. I’d ranked in the top 7% of students in my home state, with my final high school ATAR score of 93.45.

But I never went to University.
I had no skills outside the home.
I had no career.

No idea how I’d bring value in the world.
Let alone how I could possibly stay home with my baby if I ever needed to earn an income.

I’d grown up in poverty, and I didn’t want that for my family.

From ages 8 to 14, we lived rent free in a run down farmhouse that didn’t even have a flushing toilet. The drop toilet was so disgusting that my twin sister Sarah and I refused to use it. Mum had to get a camping toilet that she emptied and bleached every other night.

I remember seeing her wait until it was dark so the neighbours wouldn’t see. Mum would sneak out with a flashlight and a shovel like she was going to bury a body. To this day, if there are things I don’t want to do, I remember mum and that portable toilet and I pep talk myself, “mum would do it”.

I admire my mum’s grit.
I admire her determination to do whatever it took to build a better life for her three daughters.

But I didn’t want to find myself in a situation like that.

I didn’t want to be gone 8-12 hours a day just to put food on the table.

So I started searching “how to make money from home.”
As I nursed my baby and cooked and cleaned, I listened to the Smart Passive Income and Entrepreneur On Fire podcasts. Episode after episode, I filled my mind with stories of people doing interesting things with online businesses.

After listening to hundreds of stories, I finally heard an interview with Kevin Rogers talking about copywriting. How to sell with your words. The way he talked about understanding people and psychology, I knew I’d be good at it.

We were living below the poverty line, and I knew we’d need to invest in ourselves and our education if we wanted to break out of it. So I signed up for a $45/month membership to Copy Chief, and began my journey as a direct response copywriter.

We invested $30,000 in different digital marketing and business training programs before going all-in and betting on ourselves. My husband quit his full time factory job and we’ve made our family income from home since 2017.