00:00  Welcome to Diary of a Dreamer, where resilience unlocks your potential. I’m Tasha Eizinger, and each week I’ll bring you powerful stories and practical insights from my own experiences and inspiring guests. Whether you’re facing challenges or chasing dreams, this podcast is your go-to for motivation, building confidence, and practical tips for transforming obstacles into opportunities. Be sure to check out my website, TashaEizinger.com. 

00:28  Let’s dive into today’s episode and start turning your dreams into reality. Today we are with Jamie of Humble Heart Press, which is an online printing company for smaller businesses, which we will dive into that because I have utilized the services and love the company and everything Jamie does. She’s also a homeschooling mom of five boys. She also co-directs a thriving, what’s it called? Charlotte Mason co-op. 

01:04  Community, yeah. Okay, which is amazing. And then not only all of that, she is leading a movement called Homeschool Unburdened. So I’m excited, Jamie, to visit with you today and learn so much from you about how you’re able to juggle all of this. And I just love it when I meet people who are… 

01:31  going out and making a difference. And that’s exactly what you’re doing with everything that I’m seeing you do. So let’s, let’s dive into how we met, right? We met because of the Midwest Homeschool Expo through Jean Lee. And I highly recommend everybody goes in 2026. It’s June of 2026. I’ll include links. But Jamie, you did some printing for me. 

01:56  It was beautiful. Like you made sure you understood what the job was. You made sure it was professional, shipped timely, everything. I always get nervous when it’s paper stuff and I opened it and it looked great. Yeah. You got it down to a science. So thank you for doing your job so well. And that made my job a lot easier too. My pleasure. I absolutely love what we do. 

02:23  um we just take this one skill that we have which is to print and bind things really really well and we serve the homeschool community as well as like small entrepreneurs um i have partnerships with homeschool moms really that have a business of creating some kind of digital resource and i get to partner with them 

02:44  And I’m so passionate about people doing what they’re good at and teaming up in community with other people that are good at things and doing it better so that we are all kind of living more abundantly and less burdened. And so that’s kind of what the company is to me. I’m helping homeschoolers be able to be focused on the things that are most important on teaching and parenting and just doing daily life. 

03:07  And I’m helping entrepreneurs focus on the creation and the homeschooling and taking care of their home. And isn’t that enough? Like they don’t need to do the whole back end printing and shipping operation. And so I love what we do. I think my job is the greatest. I get to look at awesome homeschool curriculum and resources all day long. So it’s kind of a dream. And it’s just a joy to be there for people. So you’re like learning as you’re like flipping through like, oh, this is good stuff. 

03:35  Yes. Oh my gosh. I mean, it’s literally a homeschool mom’s dream. I get to just look through curriculum all the time. It’s a little bit dangerous. Let me tell you. You’re taking like, you have like post-it notes everywhere. Like this is good. Except it’s all really good. Like it’s all so good. I love it. Well, and so I’m an author of a picture book series. So I print through different sources there. And then through my little shop publishers workshop, it’s a different type of printing. 

04:04  What people don’t realize is it is a lot more complicated than just sending a document, first of all. And secondly, printing is so expensive. Yes. Like I work with my mind. Yeah, I work with a bigger company because they can also distribute my books as well for libraries and places like that. 

04:31  COVID and then a year later, like within that timeframe in one year, printing costs per book went up two bucks. Two dollars. No, this all came about because I fell in love with like a digital curriculum that was only provided digitally. And I was just in Facebook groups and people were like, I love this so much, but I took it to Staples to get printed and they quoted me $200. 

04:54  and we had actually moved and set up a semi-professional print shop to print gospels we were gonna we felt like a ministry had been put on our heart and then covid shut down the world and that wasn’t gonna work out i’m like what are we gonna do and i saw these comments and i was like wouldn’t that i mean we could do that for like 40 why why is staples charging 200 and i was like what if we became a homeschool printing company 

05:20  And so then I went and searched for other homeschool printing. I’m like, is there already, is the market saturated? I found one company that had been long established, but their turnaround time was two to four weeks from the time they received a document and an order to shipping. And I was like, okay, like there’s going to be a lot more homeschoolers. I think there’s room in the market. And our main goals are going to be, we’re going to make the ordering process really, really simple. We’re going to keep our turnaround time really, really fast. 

05:49  And we’re going to have our quality be great. And one of the things that I do that I think is really smart for this space is that I don’t provide every single option under the sun. All of our stuff is 28-pound paper. It’s the best blend. I get it at a cheaper price because I’m not switching things. I save time in production because I’m not offering three different types of paper. And it’s just better. 

06:15  And I’m like, if you’re paying for a better product, give them the better paper and we get it for the cheaper price. I love that you say this, Jamie, because I noticed the quality of the paper. I’m not kidding. Like that was one of the things. And it sounds so funny because before being an author, I never paid attention to paper weight. And I was like, this is good paper. Like you do not mess around on quality. And it makes sense because you’re not, like you said, you’re not wasting any time. 

06:41  Exactly. I don’t want to waste time in production. You know, we’re a small family business, and I kind of, as the professional, want to make some of those choices for you so that the things that you’re choosing from on my website are all good choices. But you’re not overwhelmed with 100 different options either. Like, I understand what it is to be a homeschool mom. You probably have about 4.7 minutes to make an order before a child needs something. So I try to make it as simple as possible. 

07:10  Which I love. I’m not a homeschooling mom, but as a small business owner, nothing is made or created until I do it in my business because it’s a startup, right? So whether you’re a homeschooling parent or a small business owner, it’s such a great fit to work with you. And I love that it’s all online. You kind of hit on it already, but can you talk about the publishing partnership program you have? 

07:37  Yeah. So basically, I kind of thought to myself, like if I was a homeschooling mom and I create digital products, what is the number one thing that I need? And the thing that I need as a homeschooling mom who runs this printing business is I need help getting the word out that I exist. Right. So I just teamed up. It started as like. 

07:59  If you send your customers to me, I’ll give all your customers a discount and they get professional printing and you get to outsource all of that as the entrepreneur. I’ve since, I’m going deeper and creating more options for this. So I create hidden store pages now where you buy the digital, you get a link. It opens up to that product already set up for printing. 

08:23  so you don’t have to answer all the questions is it color black and white double-sided single-sided how do you want it bound like me and the publisher have already gotten together and be like here’s how it should be printed so it’s a way easier checkout process amazing um and we have over like 40 brands already that refer all their printing to us which is amazing and 

08:46  I just take their trust and their faith that they’re sending their customers who they want to take really good care of to us. And so it’s just a very high responsibility that I have to serve them really, really well. And I think it’s just a partnership made in heaven. I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s brilliant on so many levels. You are really good at knowing where to focus on. There’s not too many. 

09:15  entrepreneurs that I talk to that sound as honed in on what you’re doing. Part of it is like, even Darren Hardy says, if you want things done, hire a mom, right? You don’t have the time to just be wasting. So I think there’s an element of that, but how do you know which areas to focus on? Do you just like sit around and reflect for a while? Like, how do you figure all this out? 

09:43  So to be fair, I started out a mess and I want to be really transparent about this. I am a child, a first born college, not first born, a first generation college student. I went to UC Berkeley, but I come from a broken family, lots of trauma. My family were hoarders. And I just started out adult life with a great resume with zero life skills. 

10:11  So I did all this work in school and they told me you’re going to be successful. Like, this is what you need to do. And I did all that so that I would have the freedom to choose to be a stay at home mom and be present for my children. And then I start having kids and it’s all, I don’t know how to manage a household. I don’t know how to cook well. I don’t know how to like, how do you clean an oven? I had no basic life skills. So this all comes from kind of starting from scratch. The one skill that I do have is how to 

10:39  research the things that I need to learn and go find them. So I have taken courses on minimalism, which I think is a huge part of being able to manage everything is to have less stuff to manage. I mean, I’ve taken courses on everything, really, like how to do it most efficiently. And because I had three children in under five years and a couple years later had two more children, you know, 18 months apart. 

11:05  I never had extra time. I never had extra mental energy. So I always had to turn and say, what is the one thing that I could do today to move the needle? And then I started reading some business books, and I found this common thread of some of the best CEOs, and it was they know how to say no, and they know how to target the one thing that’s going to move the needle. And they never get bogged down in the weeds of the busy work. 

11:31  they’re constantly thinking like a ceo what is the ceo’s job and so i started to apply that to my daily life like i’m the mom i run the home school what are the things that absolutely i need to do so i’ve learned how to really target um the things that i shouldn’t be doing and then the most high value things that i should be doing because some days i only have 30 minutes to walk into the office and be like what’s the one thing that i need to do today um 

12:00  and so i have this mind map exercise that maps out the things that i’m really skilled at and enjoy doing and must do or the things that i dread and i’m not skilled at doing so for a time i used meal service boxes because thinking about dinner was just way too much and then i learned kind of the pattern of what they do and how they utilize the ingredients and i absorbed that and then i didn’t need it anymore and then at another season of life um 

12:26  I eventually was able to hire a production manager who handles based production so that I can be focused on the higher order of how does this company grow? How does it scale? How are these partnerships going to work? So as soon as something can be offloaded, I’m the person who’s trying to offload it. You know, I am the person that’s teaching my children to fold their own laundry and to do the dishes. The dishes and the laundry in my home are on an automatic. 

12:56  loop schedule. It’s, uh, their habit training based on their morning routine and their dinner cleanup routine. And these things become automatic because another thing that I have life skills that you were not taught. So done. Well, I don’t want you to forget or miss that aspect. You’re raising children who someday, instead of learning how to do those things, 

13:25  they’re going to be able to take what you’re doing to the next level. That’s what we want, right? Is that we do better than our parents and that our kids do better than us. And then you’ve just like elevated it light years for them because of everything you’ve done. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. That’s a really great compliment because that is something I’m really passionate about. And so. 

13:48  I found a couple resources early on. Laying Down the Rails by Sonia Schaefer is all about habit training for children. Atomic Habits by James Clear recommend every single person should read that book. And then Home Management Plain and Simple by Kim Brenneman. She’s a homeschooling mom of 10. She teaches these systems of how to put every single task in your home on an automatic system. 

14:13  So I took her system and she groups everything by day. So I can share pictures of this if you’d like. But there’s kitchen day and there’s town day. So you’re grouping all your errands together and you’re saving all of the time that you spend getting shoes on everybody, getting in the car because you’re being more efficient. There’s planning day where you make all your phone calls, you do all your grading, you pay all your bills, you set up the next week. 

14:40  Um, she had a laundry day, which I like to do one load a day. So I changed that to a business focused day and then a cleaning day where you do some of your more deep cleaning things. And there’s a few tasks that you do every single week. And then you do the quarterly and monthly tasks and you might just pick one from the next list. And so can I interrupt for a second? Yeah. Cause I’m hearing this absolutely loving it and see where you’re going. And I always like to think. 

15:07  of the people listening who are like right but right there’s always somebody that’s gonna okay but what if you don’t feel like it or you don’t have time that day or your family gets sick right so yes so the beauty of the system is that it takes into account that you’re gonna fall off the wagon it takes into account that your whole family is gonna have the flu for a week or you’re gonna go on vacation and the beauty of it is that wednesday kitchen day is gonna come around again 

15:36  And you just pick up where you left off. So, you know, where schedules and all these things fail, because if you get behind, then you’re behind forever and the whole thing falls apart. A system, a loop system like this, it understands that you’re going to fall off and you just get right back on wherever you are. And so that works for my life because I fall off all the time, but I know how to get back on, you know. 

16:05  I like that because it takes the pressure off of being perfect. And moms are already, no, and moms are already, we’re so hard on ourselves. Yes. To keep it together all the time. And even the moms who say they aren’t, I see them. They’re trying to keep it together all the time. Right. So this teaches more like realistic way of living. Yes. And this is another big thing that I want to get across is that. 

16:33  Your prefrontal cortex is an energy hog. I learned this. It uses like 90% of the energy of your brain. And so when everything is in your head, a loop, okay, then I got to do this, then I got to do this. And what I’m going to do next, it is draining you. But when it becomes a habit, it goes to a completely different part of your brain that uses a fraction of the same amount of energy. And so when you create a system like this, you are paying yourself dividends of time and energy. 

17:02  And mental load, your mental capacity, these are all limited resources. We cannot treat them as if they are unlimited. What we can do is steward them intentionally and wisely. That one thing right there, Jamie, if everybody heard that and actually just applied that one concept of your prefrontal cortex requires 90% of your brain’s energy. And if we can move things into habits and use less of that. 

17:29  You have just helped so many people with that one thing. That’s life-changing. I could just give anyone those one thing. It’s get it off your mind. Get it onto a system. And I have kind of this thing that I teach at convention of all the different ways that you can outsource things. There’s paid outsourcing, but there’s also trade. There’s your community. You have skills that you can trade for time and other people’s skills. 

17:55  Family delegation. Too many moms are just doing everything themselves. I mean, if you have a partner, if you have extended family, and if you have children, everybody should be doing their fair share. And laying down the rails. Just going back to this whole thing of your kids need to learn how to do this stuff. Yes. Like if you want them to be capable, independent adults someday, which I. 

18:22  would venture to guess that we all do. They need to learn how to do it. So it’s not even just like, well, mom doesn’t want to do it. So she’s passing it off. It’s like, no, we’re teaching our children how to be part of this family in this home, but also so that when they’re adults, they know how to do it. Yes, absolutely. And here’s a couple of tips on this that really changed my life. Number one, when you’re training a new habit for a child, you’re focused on that one habit for six to eight weeks and you are making sure 

18:51  that that child is progressing and consistent and you never want to let it slip but that means that you can kind of let some other things slide while you’re focused on this one habit and here’s the thing once it becomes a habit they do it almost automatically without thinking so in my house everyone has a morning chore a dinner chore and an anytime chore because habit stacking is helpful but i also want them to realize that they just need to be ready to help when something needs to be done 

19:20  So my oldest son mastered the dishes. He did the dishes for about a year. I don’t like to change it up. I only change it up every six months to a year. And that makes it way easier, way less mental energy going into accomplishing the same task. And they master it. So he can load a load of dishes in 10 minutes. And he really is not even thinking about it. And he learns the way that he likes to load the dishwasher. 

19:45  and he learned that he could listen to a podcast and make it more enjoyable and now if he needs to step in for his brother maybe his brother’s sick his brother took over the job he can do that without almost thinking about he’s not expending the same amount of energy as when he was first using it and so i’m going to rotate my children through all of those house chores so when they graduate and they’re 18 they can do everything and maybe they find a different delegation system 

20:13  One person wants to do the garbage and one person wants to do the dishes. That’s fine. But at least they were exposed to everything. And that’s kind of how I approach education as well. We don’t have to master every single subject. We don’t have to know every single fact of history, but we need to be exposed to everything and then know how to dive deeper when that need arises. Right. Yeah. Learn how to use our own brain. Yes. Learn how to learn. Yes. Which you are a master at that. 

20:42  Like I know like you’re thinking and you literally said like you didn’t have life skills. What you had were survival skills growing up. Yeah. Right. Those survival skills were teaching you how to sort through what’s most important. And it’s unfortunate you had to learn it that way. Like that’s really not fair that that’s how you had to learn it. 

21:10  But you took that thing of that one thread and are like mastering so many different things and benefiting yourself and so many people around you. Thank you. And, you know, it really worked out because Humble Heart Press has grown, I mean, 50 to 100 percent year over year. We’re only growing going into year six and we’re scaling. 

21:36  and since i started humble heart press i know of three or four similar printing companies that have both started and closed their doors in that time and so i’m kind of looking back and going okay what did i do differently and how can i keep doing it so i can be the one that’s here for the long haul and i really think it’s because i had so many children i went in every day and was like what’s the one thing i needed to do 

22:02  You know, I tried so hard not to get, I couldn’t basically, I didn’t have the luxury of busy work. I did not have the time. My children needed me. My husband needed me. My house needed me. And so I only did the most important things. And I think that’s where so many entrepreneurs struggle is they’re doing tasks that they could be outsourcing. And then who’s doing the CEO’s job? Who’s got the bigger vision of the company? 

22:29  Right. So you’re saying like you focused on the one thing I could imagine there’s a lot of people that are starting up because a startup business is very different because nothing exists until you do it. Right. So and you don’t really know what’s going to work, what’s going to stick, what’s not. You don’t have enough data at the beginning to know. So how do you figure out, OK, this is this is the thing that matters. This is what the CEO is going to do today. I mean, in the beginning, I did do everything. 

22:58  right i did 90 of the things um and it was i always prioritize the people addressing emails um and then i was doing all of the orders and then you know every week i would try to do one thing to to market or share on social media Or I would just have a time block of like 20 minutes. I’m going to go in and answer people’s questions on Facebook. I mean, we literally, I grew this company one comment at a time, answering one person’s question at a time and serving them really, really well. And the word of mouth growth from that, I don’t advertise. I don’t even have an advertising budget until now, basically. So for five years, it has just been operating based on my true principles, serving people really well. 

23:45  focusing on the high level tasks and then we scaled fast enough thanks to our partners but i was able to then hire a part-time who turned full-time production manager so now i’m focused on what are the most important decisions of this company day to day um and i’m answering her questions and i keep all those things going and we’re managing okay now we’re scaling so what is our quality control process going to look like 

24:13  um how can we make these partnerships better how can we make sure our customer service experience is still solid you know all these bigger questions but i don’t have to be the person that executes that 24 7. and honestly the company does better when i don’t um because you know my first ministry will always be a mother and then i have the homeschooling and so i have all the things um so it 

24:39  it my weakness turned into a strength really um and then i love to teach that to other people because we take on the world you know we think we have to do everything and you will burn out if you do that like i speak from experience protect your own heart protect your mind protect your energy because you know charlotte mason says education is an atmosphere a discipline and a life 

25:04  and that is what i hold so near and dear to my heart because the atmosphere of your home is literally one-third of your child’s education and how we show up our facial expressions our tone our energy our curiosity for learning that sets the tone for our family in a big way you know and if we’re tired and we’re burnt out and we’re dreading the homeschooling that’s that’s you’re gonna feel that 

25:32  And then the discipline or the habits. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, and also it’s just not fair to us to live that way. We’re just like hanging on by a thread, which impacts our own health negatively. We’re not going to live as well or as long. Like what kind of life is that? Like we need to be able to live fully. Yes. And our kids and your children. 

25:58  Your children need to see you modeling because, you know, consciously or unconsciously, you’re giving them permission. You’re either showing them that to perform is to live a good life or to live that we’re all born persons. We’re all worthy. And, you know, your kids catch a lot. You know, they say more. So are you modeling the kind of life that you hope for your children to have? 

26:27  And I hope that that really allows a lot of moms to just let go of that guilt and that burden that they’re putting on themselves. You know, if you don’t like teaching math, don’t teach math. Get an online program. Find a friend that loves math. If you love art, teach her kids art and let her teach your kids math. There’s co-op communities. There’s classes. There’s so many resources. And on the same vein, like if you don’t like printing your own curriculum and spending a whole evening or three, 

26:56  printing curriculum for the year then don’t do it i provide this service because it helps people it saves time and another thing people don’t really do is they don’t weigh the true cost of things so i want people to remember there is a sunk cost so when you’re weighing a service like meals meal boxes or you know printing services you have to think about what you’re already spending on those things 

27:24  and what you’re saving by using a service, right? So when you print at home, you have sunk costs of your own ink, which is much more expensive, your time, your energy. You have to weigh all of those things against the cost and the time and the energy, right? And the mental capacity. Is that really the best use? Sometimes it is. If you love doing it and… 

27:49  you make a night of it and dad takes the kids out to the movies and it’s fun for you then that’s one thing if it’s stressful if it’s time consuming if you have better things that you can be doing with your time so i want to just uh invite everybody to really make every decision so intentional of time energy mental capacity and money not just money 

28:19  Yes, you’re right, because we forget how much like our energy can cost us. Yes. Or it can be an investment. Sometimes I look at, you know, what I’m doing, whether it’s time or money. Is this costing me or is it an investment? Exactly. And if I can save some of my energy, like, for example, you know, I go for walks in my yard as part of my. 

28:48  health and wellbeing. It’s very important. I want my girls to see that I do get an exercise and all of that. And especially with my younger one, when she was littler, like she just stands at the door, like crying, like, no mom. I’m like, I’m literally walking in the yard. I’m not even leaving the property, you know? And, and it would kind of break my heart, but I thought, okay, this is important for her to see like, no, this is how I stay healthy. Yes. Right. It’s an investment. 

29:17  And now that she’s a little bit older, she’s like, okay, see you mom. And I’m like, okay, you can see me through the window. Right. But sometimes I think we choose those short terms because short term, it would have been easier for me to just say, okay, I’m so sorry, baby. I know you missed, I’m coming back inside. But long term, that’s, that’s costing so much. Yes. I mean, the mental health of the mother and the primary parent that’s in the home. 

29:45  is one of the top predicting factors of the mental health of the children. So if you need permission, I’m here to give it to you. Homeschool moms, you deserve time off. You deserve, you need to find a way to get yourself time off. I don’t care if it’s a half hour a week, an hour a week, a day, two days a week, find a way. I mean, there’s a wonderful book called Introverted Mom. 

30:14  And it has a list of things that you can do to refill your cup with five minutes, 10 minutes, one hour, one day a week, just list upon list. So go grab that book if you need ideas. But it is so, so important to me that you know that you deserve that and you need to give that to yourself, not just for your own sake, but for your children’s sake. Yeah. And I think that like. 

30:39  Let me rephrase that for homeschooling moms in particular that I don’t know if people quite realize completely because motherhood’s hard. I’m not comparing like what’s harder and what’s easier because it’s all hard because we care about our children so much. Okay. If we didn’t care, it’d be easy. But homeschooling moms. 

31:02 : you’re in the home with your children 24 seven, even if they’re going to like a programming or something, you probably still have a kid with you or you’re helping other people’s kids. You really don’t get a break to just be. So I like that suggestion of the book and then like the five minutes and stuff that’s more doable that I appreciate that you, you mentioned that and gave these. 

31:31  incredible women like give yourself a break you need it yes and and having the proper mindset about these things like you know invest in yourself invest in your own education invest in your well-being you are the teacher you are the principal you are the janitor you are everything to this home and you would invest in that in any other circumstance so don’t forget to invest in that for your own home and your home school 

32:00  so jamie thank you for all of the tips great recommendations i know that you had shared there’s going to be a promotional offer for the listeners so if you could share that and like how can people get in touch with you that looks like for you you know target the things that would be most life-giving to get off of your plate and if for example that is some of the administrative tasks of homeschooling i would warmly invite you to try out humble heart press 

32:28  our website is humbleheartpress.com we are giving away five dollars for your first order with a coupon code that will be linked in this podcast and then if you subscribe to our email list you will get 15 off your next order we are confident that if you try it you will love it and if you don’t that’s okay too 

32:48  we also sell keepsake journals for homeschooling that are completely customizable one-of-a-kind exclusive on our website so i encourage you to check those out as well and i will be around for any questions i would love to share my template for how i manage the home as well if anyone would love that so it’s been a pleasure and an honor to be here with you and i hope it just helps somebody today 

33:14  If anybody was listening, it did. This was a great interview. So thank you, Jamie, for being here. And I feel very confident if anybody wants to print, they should print through you. It’s high quality, incredible professionalism. So I hope everybody checks out Humble Heart Press. And thank you again, Jamie. Thank you, Tasha. Bye. 

33:45 : Thank you for tuning into this episode of Diary of a Dreamer. I hope you found the stories and tips shared today to be a source of motivation and strength. Remember, every challenge you face is a chance to grow and move closer to your dreams. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this podcast with anyone who could use a boost of encouragement. Please check out my website, TashaEizinger.com.