When I look back over the past twenty years of homeschool marketing, it almost feels like I’ve lived through three or four completely different industries. The pace of change has been relentless, but also exhilarating. Every time the ground shifted beneath us, I had a choice: cling to the old way of doing things and hope it still worked, or roll up my sleeves, experiment, and build the systems that homeschool families and vendors actually needed.

In the early days, marketing a homeschool product meant relying heavily on word of mouth, postcard decks that landed in crowded mailboxes, and the big annual homeschool conventions where everyone hoped to make enough connections to fuel sales for the year. Those methods worked for a season, but they were limited. Families were scattered, hard to reach, and information traveled slowly.

So I tried something new. I built one of the first dedicated homeschool email lists, back when “email marketing” wasn’t even a phrase most people used. Then I launched the first online homeschool convention. People laughed at the idea — who would ever attend a “conference” on a computer? But parents showed up in droves because convenience and connection mattered more than tradition. After that came the magazine, a full-color publication that families held onto for years, passing it around co-ops until the covers wore thin.

Each step felt like a leap into the unknown, but those leaps became the foundation of what would eventually grow into Well Planned Advertiser. And here’s the truth I’ve learned through all of it: homeschool marketing never stays still. What worked five years ago won’t work today, and what works today may not even exist tomorrow. That’s not something to fear. It’s an invitation. Every shift gives us the chance to explore new possibilities, to spot patterns before others do, and to chart a path where none yet exists.