Finding good content can be tough, especially if there is a certain someone that "does it really well". With the growing importance of making sure that our youth and emerging adults of tomorrow have holistic practices that we have learned from, who will be able to fill the ever increasing gap to these types of resources? Nuggets of Wisdom co-founder and co-owner Natalie Brobst joins us to discuss their website, the various resources that are available for both children and adults, and how this gap can be bridged with the right types of influencers at the helm. Who knows...you could be the next content creator!

Guest Bio

Natalie is the co-owner of a PDF and PowerPoint resource website called Nuggets of Wisdom. This company hires people who create original content, upload it on their website, and then sells the content for them. Natalie is also a homeschooling mom and loves to teach multiple subjects including ASL, Math, History/Geography, and much more.

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Intro/Outro By: Michael Dugan, Podcast Host: Voice4Chefs

Welcome to the podcast where relationships, confidence, and

determination, all converge into an amazing, heartfelt experience.

This is Speaking From The Heart.

Welcome back to episode number 44 of Speaking from the Heart.

Today we have Natalie Brobst who will be joining us, and she is the co-owner of

Nuggets of Wisdom in which is the company website that she has in which she and her

business partner, Elizabeth, manage PDF and PowerPoint resources for individuals

that like to submit creative content that is used in a Christian context.

This company hires people that not only create that original content, but

they upload it on the website, sell the content for them, and they receive a

cut of the profit that comes from it.

Natalie has four kids and is also a homeschooling mom.

She loves to teach multiple subjects, which include ASL or American Sign

Language, which we get into quite extensively in this episode, the subject

of math, which we talk about The Money Book in this episode, along with history

and geography and many more subjects.

this guest was somebody that was really inquisitive

about not only the things that we can potentially learn, especially as children,

but how we can continue to support each other even with all the different things

that we have to abide by, whether those are rules and regulations, but having

the free choice of being able to teach each other how to practice and how to

become able to help our kids become the best versions of themselves is really

the catalyst of what we start to learn at a young age, and I love the fact

that she does embrace that with not only her Christianity, but also the

ability to say what is the truth, which we talk about quite a lot of as well.

I think that for anybody listening to this, keep an open mind to

the fact that there are different ways of getting to your end goal.

It is really more important about learning from those perspectives so

that we can understand each other better, and at the same time, learn

some quality educational tools.

With that, let's go to the episode.

All right.

We're here with Natalie Brost.

Natalie, thanks for sharing your heart with us today.

I am so excited to be here.

Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely.

I'm so excited too.

I've just been fantasizing about your website because there's just so much

great stuff about it that as a business owner, I really have been interested

in diving into because there's been a lot of things that I just thought,

"Man, you are making such an impact", so I want to start off with this.

The audience already heard a lot about your business, about Nuggets of Wisdom.

Tell us a little bit about how you got the company actually started,

because I've been really curious.

It's a really awesome name because I've heard of that expression before, but

can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah.

Yeah, so I've been working with kids since pretty much I've been 13, 14 in

junior church and other places, and I went to college, got my education

degree, and I've been teaching sign language and other classes online.

I'm a substitute teacher for kindergarten through second grade

currently; just very part-time.

I will be teaching more full-time in the fall and then I also

homeschool three of my four children.

I'm actually probably taking on a couple more kids this fall,

so I have a nice little one room schoolhouse type feel to that.

Working with kids, I drove school bus for around six years;

six or seven, give or take.

It's just been interesting seeing the differences between the different

learning styles of children and not just from a private school versus

public school, but also homeschooling in that effect and just piecing it

apart to where Nuggets of Wisdom was a cohort effort between the other owner.

I'm a co-owner with Elizabeth McMahon.

She's the other owner of Nuggets of Wisdom, and we kind of

just thought, "You know what?

There's teachers pay teachers; there's education.com.

There's a lot of other websites that provide PDFs, but we are Christians",

and we decided if you want to offer Bible PDFs that are available, which

you can't really find a lot of for decent prices all the time, it's there.

We also are in contact with some other PDF sellers who are all other companies,

and so we hire people as contractors.

You don't necessarily have to have an education degree.

You can be a parent who's been homeschooling or teaching for

years and years and years and you create amazing content.

We have you sign a contract and then we put it on the website for you.

In other words, just so my audience understands, you make it a lot

easier for content creators to be able to publish and you manage all those facets?

Yeah, we actually put it on the website for them.

Cool.

And we do 90% of the work for them.

They create the content, they put it in a secure Google Drive that we connect

with, and then we have them double check when everything's done, make

sure the pictures are where they want them and everything, the descriptions

are correct, pricing is correct, but everyone sets their own prices,

and they promote their own products.

Now I know that you have four kids.

Yes.

And I'm just curious.

Yeah, first off, congratulations on that.

That's a handful for sure, and then being able to do this and all the things

that you said is really impeccable, so commend you and your husband for being

able to do that and balance everything.

Do you have your kids use your stuff that you do?

Obviously, since I imagining since you homeschool them, you probably already

do, and do you find it that there's a difference between like how your

kids use it and maybe like other kids in some sense, like, guess what I'm

trying to get at is, where do you see where this is really making an impact?

Is it like a certain age group that is doing really well?

Is it all age groups?

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah.

Actually my kids do go through some; not all of them.

It honestly depends on their learning needs, and I've worked with special

needs for a couple years, so I've really worked on the whole spectrum

of deaf and hard of hearing kids to kids that are wheelchair bound, to

kids that just need extra remedial help, and so I can offer these things.

For instance, cursive writing, there's a cursive writing workbook on that and

how many schools are not teaching cursive writing, and I know a lot of parents who

want that taught, and my kids do learn it.

My son, my oldest is 10, he learned it in kindergarten.

Now, he did go to private school for kindergarten, but first grade and on

last four years we've been homeschooling.

My daughter learned it last year; first and second grade.

She's a struggling learner and so my oldest is way ahead with school.

She's right where she needs to be.

That's great, so yeah, I do actually use, and depending on their needs,

for instance, the money workbook, is filled with activities that they

not only trace the coin, but it's a picture of a real coin, not a fake

plastic coin that you might find in a place because it's not realistic.

Kids need that realistic view because it's not only tactile

you're combining with, but you're listening to, "Oh, this is a nickel.

Nickels are worth five."

There's counting activities in there; count by fives up to a

hundred, which would be a dollar, and then at the very end of that

workbook, it's about 20, 25 pages.

It has a assessment to see how much they learn and what you need to still

work on with them, so that way you can evaluate yourself, "Is my kid learning?",

because I know some schools don't teach that until certain grade levels,

and so it honestly depends on your child because every child's different.

I can't give specific, like, every child should know this at

this age, unless you're an adult.

By then you should be learning things.

On our website, we pretty much have preschool, three year

old up to about eighth grade.

We don't really have a lot.

We have a couple things for high school, mid- upper middle school, but then we

do have some adult things like financial planners, which are really important;

budgeting planners, and undated garden planners, especially if you do a lot

of gardening and it's a hundred and I think it's 12 pages, 113 pages, and

it's undated, so you can use it year after year, so you're not having to

keep buying something every single time.

That's really cool because I know that a lot of people get concerned about,

"Well, do I have to keep paying for it over and over again, and most families

thinking about what kinds of activities they can do, especially when it comes to

continuously learning, even outside of an organized school setting, it's really

impactful to have that, and I have to tell you; I didn't even share this with you.

I had a lot of learning disabilities growing up, even with reading and

math and even speech, and most of my listeners have heard that.

They have even commented on, "Well, your syllables drop off here.

You could actually stop and maybe fix that a little bit.

It's just a grammar thing.", and I've said, "It's all about really our dynamic

or how we learn", and also I'm always learning to adapt to that which actually

leads me into this question because we just emerged, a few months ago, out

of the COVID 19 pandemic officially, right, and all I hear anymore is

about how kids are being left behind, and about 20 years ago, George W.

Bush signed, and I remember back in the day, the teachers

absolutely just lambasting that-

Yes.

Law, and how that really didn't help anybody catch up.

No, it doesn't.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely, so, do you feel that there's a crisis when it comes to not

only learning for kids, especially some of the things that you covered

here, because I was literally thinking of financial literacy, things of that

nature, and if so, what do you think your company is doing to actually change

that, because I think you're doing some work, but I'm kind of curious

what your thought process is with that.

Yeah, so first thing to point out is that we're not a curriculum company.

Sure.

It's more a supplemental if your child needs extra help with something like

the Money Workbook, history, geography.

I created a couple workbooks; ones on Australia, and if you do a country

study for geography for one year, but it covers information, reports, animals,

money, songs, recipes, national anthem, and a lot more; 64 pages, and so by

the time you're done studying this, you will know all about Australia,

their national anthem, what Waltzing Matilda is, which I love that song.

That song is absolutely amazing, and because we are more supplemental,

it is a good way to help people fill in the gaps with learning,

especially if a student is struggling.

For instance, I know a lot of kids that read Flat Stanley, and so we have

a unit study on Flat Stanley that a child can read and work through for

reading comprehension help and for dictation and for a lot of things, but

a lot of parents don't understand how most formal education shouldn't even

really begin until about six years old.

I know a lot of parents that want to force their kids in at three years old.

What can we do for school?

My mom motto for homeschooling is: "Let the children play", because how

much does a child learn by playing versus trying to make them right

when their hands are not even big enough to hold a pencil correctly?

We're forcing these ideas and ideologies that, it took me as an educator, it took

me at least two years to start thinking outside of the box of education, and

what we were forced through in school, I mean, I was not homeschooled, so this

is a whole new topic for me to where I have to think outside the box with

my educational purview from having a degree in education has completely

changed the way that I view how I train my kids, how I teach them things.

My husband was in the cooking industry for 20 years almost, and my eight-year

old, who is my struggling learner, she knows how to make spaghetti

by herself from start to finish.

She knows how to make homemade macaroni and cheese by herself, you know, things

that are simple, but enough to where a lot of adults can't even boil water.

Well, yeah.

And they burn the boiling water too, right?

Wait, how do you do this?

It's a shame because I do not appreciate what George Bush signed, because the

district I specifically live in on the niche website, niche.com, it ranks

the schools from best to worst, and let me just tell you, the graduation

rate for mathematics, I think is 6%.

Mm-hmm.

21% for language arts; that's not good.

The math used to be 7%.

It's down to 6% now.

Wow.

Because as a teacher, I can tell you right now, that

educators are not allowed to teach the way it was back 50 years ago.

Once certain laws and rules changed, teachers are not allowed to teach

the way they want to because you have to get testing done, you have to get

testing done, you have to train to test.

All those other facts and important things like the Constitution and

the Declaration of Independence that actually matter, which keeps us free

as citizens of the United States, they're not teaching that anymore.

Most people can't tell you what states are 50 states.

They call them countries or continents.

They'll name a country like Africa, for instance.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talking

about calling Africa a country.

I'm like, no, not quite.

There's 52 or 56 countries within Africa, and these kids have no idea, and to help

that along, there's a 50 states activity research book that we have on the website

that, what they can do, summer activity.

If you're traveling, it's a great way.

It's blank.

There's little cute shapes where they can fill in facts about each state.

There's a picture of the state that's colored in.

It's blank; doesn't name may say except for the state, but it points

where the capital is, and then they get to draw or color in or put picture

of the state flag on that page.

They can learn about just a little bit about each state, and then

they can know the 50 states.

I am loving what you're talking about because it's so wide

spectrum, like you said, because there are so many different things

that, as a kid, we growing up, you and I definitely had those advantages

of being able to be taught all those different things, and actually picked

up earlier about you saying cursive.

I remember having to write those cursive letters, practice them over and over

again, trace them out on a piece of paper that was for that type sort of thing,

and I always think of Billy Madison.

I don't know if anybody's a fan.

I don't know if you've watched the movie yourself, but with Adam Sandler,

he's up in third grade and he has to go write the word Rizzuto and he

doesn't know how to do the letter Z, like, that's what I think of people-

Yeah.

When they are talking about cursive because they don't know how

those shapes are, and, I have to point out to you, I have to commend

you because I fell across this as I was scrolling through it too.

There was somebody that has something called the Bigger and Better

Speaking and Debate Extension Game.

As a Toastmaster, which my audience clearly knows I love so much because

I've had many guests that have that background, thank you for having

something about public speaking because I can't tell you how important

that is, especially even for me.

Yeah, so that's Melissa.

She actually lives, I believe, in Peru.

She lives in a different country, and she actually has Spanish versions and

English versions of those activities, and she is a phenomenal content creator.

I absolutely love her material.

I haven't had a chance to use them yet, but being the owner and putting them

on the website, I browsed everything before I put it on because it's

fun and I don't use it on my own.

I make sure I buy it or whatever to make sure they get the income

with that and everything, but, I completely agree; debate, logic,

that's been thrown out the window.

Yeah.

People, if you don't agree with somebody, something someone

says, you're getting named called.

It's funny because I've had a guest that actually talked about that too.

They didn't care anymore that people were just bashing them because,

really, it was just an opinion.

It wasn't trying to make a statement or inject that into someone's life, but to

just have an opinion and, you're right, there's a lot of that and I even have

said to many people on this show, it's all about understanding that diverse

viewpoint, because in order for us to have a great conversation, we need to

be able to understand both sides of it-

Exactly.

And be able to articulate that, so I commend Melissa and Peru and all

the content creators for your website.

This is going to be a very hard question for you.

Out of all these things that are on your website, what do you think is the

most favorite thing that you have on there that someone has created or maybe

you haven't even created that you can share with us, and I'll say this as

you're looking it up real quick too.

I'll give you a moment, but, for all those that are already interested.

I will have this in the episode notes to go check it out because it is the

site that Natalie and her co-owner Elizabeth have, so I will be making

sure that you can view all this as well, but sorry, Natalie, go ahead.

I know you have it ready.

No, that's fine, so I would have to absolutely say the most viewed

product we have and the most purchased product we have is the ASL ABC alphabet

tracing book, and the reason being I started learning sign language.

My college actually required it for four year majors for the girls

and was a private college, and let's just say that it taught me so

much learning sign language as an interpreter, and then I went on to work

at a deaf and hard of hearing camp.

That was life changing.

Yeah.

We had a group from The Bahamas that was there that summer and

I learned some Bohemian sign language.

It was absolutely phenomenal.

They're more what's called English word for word.

They do more as we would talk instead of the syntax being

different with sign language.

It has its own grammatical structure.

It is not like English, and I will say, I hate the term baby

signs, because it's sign language.

It's not baby German or baby Italian or baby Russian.

We don't use it with any other language, but sign language, and why is that?

There's no need for it.

Yeah.

Just throwing that out there.

That's just one of my pet peeves as an interpreter and someone who's been doing

sign language for a very long time.

The one thing, I looked on Amazon, I looked on just typing in Google, other

places, and I use real people hands.

Not cartoon hands, and the reason why is because children need

to see real things like money.

We talked about cooking.

You can have a picture of a wooden spoon all day long, but until

you see it actually being used correctly in a real life situation,

what good is it all the time?

It really doesn't explain what this wooden spoon is going to do, or a

masher, or whatever it is you're talking about or trying to explain.

It's not out there mathematical concept where it's a physical visual

thing that you need to see, and so, yeah, I use real people hands and

so there are four pages per letter.

The first page is a picture of the handshake.

The letter being signed with the capital upper and lowercase letter beside it in

print, and then they get to trace it.

Then the second page, they actually spell short vowel.

I tried to keep a short vowel words because, if you're learning sign language,

it's a whole language to begin with.

I'm not going to try and do long vowel short vowels all mixed together,

because these are kids that are probably going to be doing this, so they can

trace the short vow, like for a, we have at, ant, add and and, so they

repeat a lot of the same letters that they see over and over again as well.

The third page then is they circle out of three options, which letter

is correct and it has a letter beside it so they can see it.

More tracing, and then the final page is tracing some words so it's not just sign

language, but it also includes ELA or language and whatnot for those skills, for

learning how to hold a pencil correctly and learning how to do those things.

Is there a certain subject on your website that you wish you had more content

creators to provide material about?

I'm kind of curious if you are seeing maybe having more options for a certain

sort of subject matter, because I know that you have a very diverse set of those.

Right.

Now we are Christian based, but math is math.

I don't expect someone to Christianize Math.

One plus one is two, so it doesn't have to be all Christian,

this or that, and that's fine.

I completely understand.

I will say high school material, we don't have any content creators

for really high school material.

I do have a Christian history timeline, which is more of a year-long project

that the student has to not only cut out the different facts in history,

they have to look up when they happened, and then they also have to paste it and

write in the date of when it happened.

It's not just all Christian history, it's also about Nero burning Rome,

historical facts that happened in history.

They talk about more than just Christian based facts, and then also too, I

would love it, this is a weird thing.

I think one of my things that I've been hoping for secretly is that because

we are Christian based, having people who have been in ministry for a very

long time create material for high schoolers and adults on what is the

reality of being a pastor or a minister, because it's not all peaches and roses.

Yeah.

I can tell you, I grew up as a deacons kid.

I was in church my whole life pretty much, and I can tell you, pastors

aren't just there just for money.

They're not in it for the money.

A lot of pastors I know don't make hardly anything.

They're not in it for the money.

They're there because they love people and they're there to help people, and there's

a lot of friends I have that started out wanting to be a pastor or in ministry of

some way, and they're not doing anything remotely close to that, and that's fine.

My husband was in the food industry for 20 years.

He's not a pastor, but that's fine.

We need good cooks.

Yeah.

You know, and stuff, and I don't know.

It's just something that's been on my heart, I guess, for a long time

that because I know that people have a skewed view sometimes of religion,

and I understand why, because of all the pedophile reports and all the

pastors getting arrested for sexual scandals and, yeah, rightfully so.

They should be in jail.

I don't applaud that at all.

It's horrendous and horrific and yeah, they should be in jail.

I was going to say that I know that that's been a big crisis within the

last two decades, just all these scandals being unearthed and my heart does go out

to all the families that have that, or any of my listeners that have known somebody.

I definitely have sympathies for that too, but it definitely has painted a

picture of organized religion as being this sort of toxic environment, and

I think you're right is that we need to have more self-awareness when it

comes to understanding that with not only the materials that we provide-

mm-hmm.

But the education of it, which is why I love that you provide this

sort of service to help others, which leads me into my question because

you definitely have talked a lot about the Christianity aspect and

we haven't really dug into that yet.

Has that been something that, especially growing up, as you mentioned

with your father being a pastor.

I said that correct?

Correct.

He's a deacon.

He was a deacon.

Okay.

Yeah.

Ministry type stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you for correcting me because I wanted to make sure I had that right,

but being a deacon, do you see that there is a struggle even nowadays with people

finding their identity, whether that is outside of religion, within religion?

Do you think that you have an indirect effect by having these materials out

there with maybe bringing some awareness, because I find your story unique in

that you have this focus, along for your business partner, to kind of

move this quote unquote conversation along where you could easily go into

really anything with sharing that type of content, so why do this?

Why with Christianity, because, and I'm not asking you to debate the merits,

because we'll be here for hours, but, but I'm kind of curious what you think

because I know that everybody has a different story when it comes to how

they got to be, and I've had authors on here that have talked about that

experience, kind of curious about yours.

As a Christian, people don't always understand.

They base Christianity off of things they've heard.

And one problem with society today that I've learned and seen and heard

time and time again is, "I haven't ever read the Bible for myself.

I'm going off hearsay."

Now, if for instance, you were to apply that to a judge in a courtroom

and it's hearsay, what happens?

It gets thrown out.

Exactly, so if you're only going by hearsay when you haven't

actually taken the time yourself to read through the Bible and learning what

it says, I can't do anything for you.

That's not my job.

My job is just to talk about what the Bible says, and yes,

the Bible was meant to convict.

There are things in it that I don't always like what it says, but it's there because

God wrote it for us to learn about and to realize and a lot of people don't

realize that a lot of laws we have are based out of the Book of Proverbs in the

Old Testament and the things that people talk about, I'm like, "Oh, the book of

Proverbs says that", and people don't realize that we've said it throughout

history by Christians and non-Christians, but it's actually in the Bible.

Yeah.

And the laws we follow and stuff, and so people have asked me like,

"Do you believe on this specific topic", I'm not going to name any specific topic

because they're so a plethora, and it also comes down to which group you're in

as far as doctrinally because you have Catholic, you have Christian, you have

Catholics who say they're Christians, you have Mormons, and the list goes on

and on and on and on, and so pretty much our standards are, "Is it in the Bible?

What does the Bible say about this?", and if it goes against the Bible,

then we won't allow it on our website.

It's just very simple because we believe that the Bible is our

final authority, and that's what we preach from the very beginning.

I'm not a pastor by any means, but that's what we have said from the very beginning.

We do some interviews sometimes if they want to just to get to know us

better before we hire people and stuff.

It is more unique than, say, Teachers Pay Teachers where they hire anybody.

We like to make sure that you can write about math PDFs.

You see our website, it's very diverse, it's not all Christian based because

not all learning is Christian based, but at the same time, our focus is

more towards allowing people who are religious to be able to create content

to put on our website to allow them to do that, because a lot of people

snub at that and don't like it, and don't want it, and that's fine.

That's their view; that's their capability of logically being able

to decide, "I don't want that."

"Okay, fine.

This is what we're doing."

Yeah, and believe it or not, there are clients that I have even

through my business that sometimes have had that drilled into their head and now

I have to undrill whatever nail, screw was put in because it was, it might not

been just religion, it could have been any plethora of sort of issue, so I

have to take a step back and ask them, "Well, what makes you believe that?

Is that something that is true?

Is that something that makes up you and who you are?", and first off, I

want to say thank you for sharing that, because it is very brave in 2023 to

be sharing those sort of things, and I know that that seems really crazy to

say, because even for me to say it out loud, I'm shaking my head as I'm saying

it because, I think it is about, and kind of like we said earlier about the

public speaking when I pointed that out-

Right.

It's really important to be able to have that, and I always have believed,

even with this podcast, to have that sort of opportunity for dialogue so that we

can continue to have that conversation.

One question I always ask people is, "What are you afraid of?"

If you bash the Bible, but you've never read it for yourself,

what's your reasoning behind it?

Right.

Why won't you read it?

Are you afraid it's going to change your life for the better?

It just makes you think, because I know people bash the Bible all the time.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard, and that's fine.

I can't change your life.

I can't make you change.

You have to decide to do it on your own bike.

You study it yourself, so when people start to bash the Bible, say, look until

you've read it yourself, then come back and talk to me, because you can't prove

facts until you've done it yourself.

You have to study facts.

That's what science is, right?

Yes.

Hypothesis, and the end product.

What do you do?

You provide facts, not theories, facts.

People say the Bible's a bunch of archeologists, my husband actually knows

a guy who found Sodom and Gomorrah, bits of pieces, archeological digs from

Sodom and Gomorrah that actually exist proving that did happen, and there are

other archeological events that have happened that archeologists have found.

Are you going to say they're lying?

I'm not in this for debate, but you know what I'm saying, it's just, it's

crazy that if you say the Bible's wrong then you're saying archeologists who

have found to prove the Bible's true are also wrong, but yet they found this

stuff, so who's right, and who's wrong?

It's always been about who is right and who is wrong.

Right.

That's been the testament for all of civilization because we have

fought wars and things of that nature over such silly things sometimes too.

Yeah.

And even in, if you want to call even social media the modern

warfare, sure, we could, but I think it's really about and I love

the fact that you're doing this for your company to kind of take it

back to that, to the original point-

Mm-hmm.

Because it's really about being able to have that access.

As we're getting close to the end of time, I have one last question for you,

Natalie, because I really appreciate our conversation because of just how

open you have been with me and just hearing this, it really refreshes

me to kind of think about myself.

What are some ways that I can put this into practice, even with some of the

things that you do, and maybe one day I'll have some resources that I can put

on there on your website from my business.

Yeah, but my question is this.

You've been doing this for a while now, I would say.

How many years have you been doing it by the way?

We actually opened November 22nd of 2022.

Okay, so that's a while from me because I've been open less, so we're

going to go with that as my definition.

You almost approaching a year.

We're pretty much on the eve of that as we're getting ready to enter in November.

Do you think that there is an opportunity here to not only expand our knowledge

when it comes to some of the things that we're challenged with today, but more

importantly, and to get more specific with this question, do you think that our

children will ever be equipped, especially with the way things are going, to be able

to help improve the quality of their life?

Improve the things that they can learn?

Do you think that there's hope for that, because sometimes I think people want

to say, "Well, there probably really isn't any hope", but I think your

business actually says, "Yes, absolutely, by providing this sort of stuff."

I am not here to bash public schools by any means, but I

can tell you, people ask me all the time: how do your kids socialize?

That's the big question, and if you're a homeschooling parent, you've heard

it, you're probably laughing right now listening to this because you know it's

true and, yes, we go to the grocery store, we go to the doctor's office,

we go to church, we go to the gym.

My daughters takes Tae Kwon Do, so yes, my children are socialized.

I don't understand how children can sit in a classroom when there's a list

sit quietly, don't look at your neighbor, eat your lunch

quickly and quietly so the next group can come in, stand in line quietly.

That's not socialization; that's what prisons do.

Forgive me for being blunt.

My mom worked in a prison.

Yeah.

That's what prisons do.

My dad had a brief stint at a prison himself working there, that

is, not being a prisoner, but working there, so I know what you're saying.

As a homeschooling parent, it breaks my heart.

It really does, and I realize that it is not for everyone.

Every child is different like we've talked about their styles

of learning are all different.

I feel like public schools need to take a step back and look at the failed

amount of kids being pushed through this government system and looking at why so

many thousands and thousands of parents are leaving the public school system.

There's a school district near here, up north of us, that is actually

closing their elementary school because they have lost that many students.

Oh my gosh and I don't think I even heard about that.

You can tell me later.

There are that many students that are now homeschooling and

doing charter schools and people ask me, "What's the difference?"

The people call cyber schooling and home and public charter school, but

we don't get government assistance.

We get 0%, zero, nothing from the government, so we pay thousands of dollars

out of our own pockets for curriculum that we want to use to teach our own

children, and cyber schools, I've helped-

All ages in all groups-

All the school, whatever it is, I don't care who you are.

If you need help with your child and with their learning and figuring out

their style of learning, because if a textbook's not working, there's

a lot of other options out there.

Please utilize them.

Help your children get to know your kids.

It breaks my heart hearing parents say, I can't stand my kids during the summer.

I'm with them 24/ 7.

It's kind of funny to laugh at.

Do you really hate your kids that much, like, what?

Please, no.

Why did you have them in the first place, is really the question to ask.

Yeah.

Because you're the parent.

You're in charge of their life growing up and if you don't enjoy them

while the little bit they're home, when they're 18, they're out, man.

They're not going to want to hang out with you.

I've seen it time and time again, and it breaks my heart because that's

not how we're supposed to do it.

I think you are changing that trend though, and I have to think-

I hope so.

Elizabeth and you.

I think you are because you are providing that content so that people can have

that conversation with their children.

Natalie, I'm going to give you the last few minutes.

Can you tell us how to access Nuggets of Wisdom?

How can we get in contact with you if we're interested in

submitting content for the website?

Tell us all about it.

The last few minutes are all yours.

Sure, so like we said before, we are PDF; mostly 99% PDF, online website,

and when you purchase something, it is a PDF that gets linked, sent to your

email address that you sign up for.

As far as what we need, if you are interested, you can email us.

Our email address is nuggetsofwisdom4you@gmail.com; so nuggets,

plural, of wisdom number four y o u at gmail.com and our actual website is

nuggets, N U G G E T S, of wisdom.com.

One unique feature we have that I don't know of many other websites that

do, but we have, when you sign up as a content creator, because we're not

all teachers, I am, but I know some people are just moms that have been

homeschooling for a long time, so we call 'em content creators, or little nugs,

we call our nickname is Little Nuggets.

I love that.

Because it's wisdom.

It's information to help children grow and adults grow and succeed, and that's

what we want to see on our website.

We have a cool area called "Meet Our Sellers", where you can actually go and

see a bio picture and a screenshot, and a little bio three, four or five sentences

about who they are, what they do, what they love, what they teach, if they do

that, and then they can provide a link to classes outside of just selling those

PDFs that they actually teach, and so we actually are kind of like a hive

hub for other businesses and content creators, if they teach outside of

just selling PDFs, they can offer that.

Here's a link to their website.

Go find it.

If you're looking for these kind of classes, here you go.

Whether it be out school, whether it be Elizabeth owns Teach Me Truth.

Abby, she does art and science she mixes together, like the life cycle,

and so she draws and they has some color and they, but they go outside

and find leaves and they find lifecycle and different animals and farms to be

able to look at the chicken and let's talk about the chicken egg and how it

grows and the life cycle with that, so hers is called art adventurous animals.

We have a lot of over 200 products on our website.

We have a ton of different things to choose from, and if you have an idea

of saying, "Hey, I need help with this certain topic", let us know.

Send us an email, we'll work on it.

Most of us are teachers and educators, so we have the background to be

able to do that, and we love what we do, so I'll leave it at that.

Well, Natalie, I know that there's so many different resources and I

encourage my listeners to go check it out.

Don't take her word alone because there is so many different things and whatever

you can think of, it's probably out there, and if it's not, definitely see

if you have something that you could submit, but Natalie, I want to say this.

It is very important to have these sort of materials.

I think there is still a need.

I love the fact that you have both free items that people can invest in along

with then the paid aspects too, and I love the model that you kind of give,

not only that content back to people, the monetary aspect for a small fee of that,

but you run this as if it's almost like a cooperative, and I love that because

everybody gets to be able to share in that and I appreciate you doing that.

I appreciate you being part of this show.

Thank you for Speaking From The Heart with us because it is something that

we truly, truly need and we need to continue educating the future.

Yeah.

So thank you so much for being part of this.

I appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

I want to thank Natalie for being on the show and being really insightful

and sharing the variety of different viewpoints that she has about not only

education, but also some of the things that have allowed her business, along

with Elizabeth being the co-owner too, to pick up and just be so successful and the

almost year that they've been around, and I think that for many of us, especially

even if we have kids that can use the content that's available there, I think

that this is also important for adults to realize that even if you are struggling,

if you have a GED or don't have your GED yet, this is a great place to use some of

those things too, for your own edification and to move forward with, so if you know

somebody that can go to Nuggets Of Wisdom to use some of that material, you'll

be supporting a small business that supports other people that are content

creators individually too, so I really want to thank Elizabeth and Natalie for

creating this business because let's face it, all of us need help, even our kids.

We need to be real about that because we all need to have a stable foundation

so that we can continue to support each other no matter where we are, no matter

what places, persons, or things that we go through, can create some of those

opportunities to excel, and I love the fact that she's even talked about being

able to work with the deaf and hard of hearing through ASL, and for those that

have not heard in other episodes, I've had the opportunity for a few years to

work with blind entrepreneurs as they ran Food Concession stands and state and

federal facilities under the Randolph Shepherd Act, which the Randolph Shepherd

Act is a piece of legislation that has gone through many evolutions over the

years, over the various decades, to help provide opportunities for blind

individuals to excel; to give them fair chances at employment, because

we all need to have a shot at what that is that we can do and I've been

fortunate enough to meet some of the best people through that experience, but

sometimes maybe the not so good people.

The not so good people might not have had the best intentions in the first

place to provide some of those things that are needed for what the purpose

of what that legislation was passed in the first place, but that's the whole

point, is that sometimes we think we have the right solution to a problem,

but it might even make things worse.

I know we could have ended the episode with, "Wahhh, bash the United States.

We know that they're not doing very well and that's what is really causing all

these issues", but can we really just take a step back and stop with the negativity?

Can we really stop with thinking that this always has to be the

way that we solve problems?

I learned quite early on in my life that it's about moving into different

directions, especially if you feel uncomfortable with where you are at.

That's what's allowed me to be in several different state agencies,

even in my career, to allow me to understand fully the true potential

that I have inside of myself.

It wasn't because I had bad bosses, which I did.

It wasn't because I didn't like the work, which sometimes I did.

It was about learning and growing and experimenting with all the different

types of things that are available to us and learning how we can do that.

Can we play and be able to also relax and create engagement, because

there are all kinds of different balances when it comes to that.

Having that material that's available to us so that we can mentor those

types of people, those different types of ministries, as Natalie

put it, can help us to really grow.

It can help us to really not just go off of hearsay, but

to actually seek the truth.

It's always about evolving.

It's about creating some of those things that inner lives are

truly important, because it is about continuously learning more.

It's about looking at the world in a curious sort of way, and I know that

for all of us, we might not often have those opportunities, but the

best things that we can do is read.

To learn and read and grow in all kinds of fiction and nonfiction books, which

we have featured plenty of different authors, of all kinds of different

backgrounds, that have all kinds of different writing styles available to

you, but that's the point, is that we need to be able to have access to it and I

think that this portal, essentially, that Natalie and her business owner friend,

Elizabeth, have created, Has allowed us to create so many more opportunities for

delivery and engagement because it does help us to understand and learn more

about the ways in which we can improve.

That's why I create original content for Your Speaking Voice as well, to

work with my clients so that they know where I'm coming from, from a certain

perspective, because let's face it.

One way of doing it does not necessarily mean that we always

have to do it the same way.

As the old saying goes, why tear down a fence that works just fine and

just put up a completely different fence that doesn't work as well.

Now, I know I'm paraphrasing that phrase, and you might have heard some

sort of adage related to that, but maybe you've heard of it this way.

You shouldn't replace non broken things.

You shouldn't do that, because it's working, but it doesn't mean

though, that maybe it's truly working in a way that other people

can appreciate and understand.

That's what the true essence of coaching is, is that sometimes you have to

have that connection with somebody else in order to understand and fully

appreciate what those people can do.

That's what I really try to do at its core, because that's not just about the

money, which, yes, I do have to pay bills.

I do have expenses, but I know too that I need to learn to appreciate

that there's different ways in which to tackle a certain problem, but that's

what is really important about growing, is that you gain those connections

and you network through those people so that they can give you that.

Even the people that I have met in my life have given me nuggets of

wisdom so that I'm able to learn and appreciate differences in this world.

I would've never went to school for the number of years that I did after high

school if I didn't appreciate that fact in itself, because that's exactly it.

Those facts, those things in which we can look back at history can

help us to learn and understand how we can move forward in the right

direction, and that's why I really appreciate Natalie having this website

so that other people can understand and create that opportunity too.

Even with all the different subject matters and all the different types

of materials that are still needed, especially for high school students,

even for all the different things that we try to do in order to

incorporate that vision of what we think can become the best version of

ourselves, it needs to be modified.

We need to continue to have that conversation.

That conversation can be very tough at some points, and other times it can be

very easy to have that conversation.

It is really about understanding what is really important for us to work

on first, and it doesn't mean diving all in and getting overwhelmed and

then you don't want to do it at all.

It's called being able to incrementally increase as time goes along.

It means taking one baby step forward so that we are able to create that

content in our own lives, because we all have our unique stories that we

share as I've mentioned many times.

What if the story would be a little bit different?

What if we were to take charge of our own story?

What if we were able to help influence those people that are necessary too?

Which has always been a plea, from my perspective, to all of you, to be able

to do in your own way, but what if you did it in a way in which it allows

people to freely access it on their own?

What if you created that content so it's ready to go whenever that

person is ready, instead of thinking that they have to always go to you?

What if we could embrace the potential power of leveraging all the different

types of resources that are available and utilizing that to our advantage?

That's why this website, Natalie and Elizabeth designed and has worked with

clients of their own to do and create content with, have been very successful.

That's what makes this really unique is that we all have different

answers to maybe the same problem, but it's about collaborating.

It's about learning those differences, and it's about understanding how we can

navigate through them together, because we're all on the same journey; that

journey of self-empowerment; to learn how to become the best version, to be

able to understand fully what is truly necessary for us to learn and grow.

That is what's really able to define the next generation, and that's something that

we need to grab for ourselves as well.

Thanks for listening to episode number 44 of Speaking From The

Heart, and I look forward to hearing from your heart, very soon.

Thanks for listening.

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