A Little About Laura

This website is the brainchild of Laura Wheeler. It came about like this:

I flunked a computer course in high school. Ok, it was only a two week quickie, but I still failed miserably to even begin to understand a command line.

In 1995, my father-in-law gifted us his Mac Classic computer. To my utter surprise, I took to it rather naturally. By this time I had given birth to 5 children, and my husband was a teacher. We got by.

Within six months, I had reformatted the hard drive just to see if I could. After a year and a half, we purchased a better Mac, and I was offered a teaching job at a nearby school, as a computer instructional aide to the 5th and 6th graders. It was fun until we moved and I could no longer do it.

Two more children followed, and my husband went from teaching to law enforcement. About that time I realized that I had learned enough about using the computer to hang up a sign offering printing services to the local population. They did not exactly rush to make use of my services, but little by little a business began to build.

In the fall of 1999, I was awarded the web design contract for the Town of Medicine Bow, to redesign and then maintain and improve their website on an ongoing contract. I also began to repair and upgrade computers. My home began to get rather crowded and confused. In addition to this, we had begun to homeschool a few years earlier, so it was also getting full of books!

Fall of 2000, I became involved in the promotion of a local building called the Village Square. It was the old school, which had been bought by the town, and was now used as a community center, as well as offering several offices for rent. One had a kitchen in it (the old home ec room). On a whim one day I asked how much it was per month. I was surprised at how low it was, and so Kevin and I discussed it.

The plan was, with a kitchen there, we could bring the kids to the office with us. We could section off part of the office area for homeschool, and in this way, combine the office and school, out of the home. This worked well for a year and a half, before we made the decision to close the office. We did not close it because it did not work, in fact, it did work well. Having a storefront office meant that we got walk ins that we did not get from our home. The reason we closed it was the same reason I decided to start this website.

I went to a seminar on adopting special needs children. My sister was in the process of completing her paperwork to be able to adopt, and as she is single, I went along to offer moral support. The longer I sat in there, the more I felt like the Lord wanted me to do it too. But I felt it was impossible for us. Consider:

We had seven kids already.

We were living in a 3 bedroom doublewide mobile home. A big one, sure, but still a little cramped.

We were heavily in debt, and our income barely met the basic needs. In spite of the business doing fairly well, my husband's job had been unreliable that winter, and things were very hard.

One by one, thoughts came on how to address these problems. The solutions were difficult, and would require a lot of work, but I knew absolutely it was what I wanted.

One of the things I noticed about the other women at the seminar, is that those who had jobs wanted desperately to come home, but did not know how they could afford to. I told two of them that I knew from my association with many people, and from my own experiences, that there are solutions! There are creative and wonderful options that people never even begin to think of until the opportunity niggles at them, and they take it and go with it. These women were very interested in knowing what the real choices might be.

One of the goals that came out of that seminar was to streamline the business, and move it back home. Yes, the office provided certain benefits, but if I concentrated more on writing, and did some analysis on what gave me the best return for the least amount of time, and focused on the more flexible aspects of business instead of the ones that required me to drop everything and jump to someone else's whims, then the business would still work, in a smaller space and without needing people to come to the office.

Other goals were to work harder at getting out of debt, finish my book, remodel the house in a few simple (inexpensive!) ways to use the space we have better, to get our budget functioning, to learn not to yell at my kids, and to get our home organized and more efficient so that we can bring in children and integrate them into our home with the least amount of disruption. These goals could better be achieved from home.

My experiences have been wonderful. We have found unique solutions to our problems, and the outcome has been wonderful. I do not regret having that office for a year and a half. It WORKED. Not only that, I tried and learned things I never would have if I had kept it at home. But I also know that it works in the home also, if I focus on the things that work best here.

The neatest thing I learned, and the great piece of wisdom I feel I have to offer is this:

Get out of the box.

Don't be afraid to go somewhere new, to try unusual solutions. Think them over carefully ahead of time, but have courage and seize opportunities when they come! The great thing about our solutions is that they worked for us. They may not work for anyone else, and they have not even worked for us at all times, but I now know that other people can find unique solutions that do work distinctly for them. Put aside criticism, doubt, and the efforts of others to get you to be predictable, and go with what you need to do!

This website came about from things I never could have guessed at ahead of time. Possibilities are lurking there, just waiting for you to find them. Be bold and daring, and courageous enough to get outside the box of predictability, and make it work for you.

I look forward to helping you succeed!

Laura Wheeler