We recently connected with Bethany McCarter and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Bethany thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How do you think about spending on things like coffee when times are tough?

When I was teaching full time, my husband and I had a hard time making ends meet. He was a teacher, too, and we were in the process of buying our first house, and it was really stressful coming up for the money for a downpayment and closing costs. Even though both of us were teachers, we didn’t qualify for any teacher downpayment plans because we supposedly made too much money. I remember trying to get gas on my way to school one day and my card getting declined. It was really rough. Then we had two kids, and it became even harder to support our family on a two teacher income. I left the classroom to stay at home and save on childcare costs and work part time as a daycare teacher. It really would not have been possible if I didn’t have the support of both my parents and my in-laws.

Today, I work two part time jobs while managing my online email marketing business and homeschooling our two kids. Once I get our debt paid down, I will hopefully be able to go down to one job outside the house. It’s really tough, because our expenses have gone up every single year. Our mortgage, home insurance, car insurance, and our health insurance have all gone up hundreds of dollars this year alone. We’re about to get priced out of our home.

I dream about moving to another country, like Finland, that values educators and has a strong government support network for low-income families and free college education. Maybe then, my children won’t have to take out loans for college and work as hard as I do.

I am immensely thankful for the support of my family, because I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without them. Anyone who claims to have ‘made it’ on their own is lying to themselves; we all are supported in some shape or form by someone else in our lives.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I stumbled into email marketing by happenstance. After I left the classroom during the pandemic, I was researching online things that I could do to earn money online. I came upon a course for blogging and signed up for it even though it was an enormous expense. During the course, I was exposed to email marketing for the first time. I could tell that it would be important to understand email marketing if I wanted to eventually own my own business, so I took another course specifically on email marketing. After that, I started implementing what I had learned on my family’s small e-commerce business, and had immediate success. I quickly built a small but impressive portfolio with a variety of clients who needed email marketing services.

Now, I work 1-on-1 with bloggers looking to implement email marketing into their brand. I help them use convertkit effectively and get confident with automations. Eventually, I’d like to offer a small course on convertkit.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

There are multiple facets to my business that bring in modest supplementary revenue streams. I have several affiliate posts that bring in a $30-150 a month. I also have some low cost digital products that I sell to my email list. I’d really like to expand on my affiliate blog posts because they have been pretty consistent and it would be nice to have more passive income, especially because I homeschool my kids and don’t have much time left in my day.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Although it sounds cliche, I had to unlearn comparing myself to other business owners, especially those who were younger than me. I read a book called ‘Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream’ by Alyssa Quart, and it helped me realize that uber successful people aren’t totally honest about their journey and don’t credit all the times they had to lean on others for support. Now, I realize that it’s OK that I’m not as far ahead as other business owners not because I’m not as smart or not as hardworking, but because I’ve got some handicaps (low-income, two kids) that other business owners don’t have. I also had to recognize my own privilege, like having very supportive parents who are available to lend us a hand financially when times get really rough. That is a huge advantage that many people don’t have, and I don’t ever want to take it for granted.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bethmccarter.com
• Instagram: n/a
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwmccarter/

Image Credits

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