Today's guest is a Lived Life Expert that takes her lived experience helping others and creating streams of income. She is a social entrepreneur. best selling author, WIFE and a MOM (Multiple Operational Manager). I'm excited to introduce you to, Teresa Wright Johnson.
In This Episode You'll Learn
- Multiple Streams Income
- Ways to Make Money Thru Your Lived Experience
- How to Work Effectively from home
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Transcript
[00:00:01.530] - Meg Brunson
Welcome to FamilyPreneur, the podcast for busy parents building profitable businesses. If we haven't met yet, I'm Meg Brunson and we are about to simplify business and marketing strategies, because balance was never about spending equal time between your business and your family. Nope. You want to spend previously unimagined amounts of time making memories with your kids, and the only way that's going to happen is if we get your marketing under control. I want to take a minute to acknowledge that Black Lives Matter, that love is love, and that inclusivity is essential for success. So I welcome all colors, genders and cultures to join us for today's episode.
[00:00:49.730] - Meg Brunson
Today's guest is a live life expert that takes her lived experience helping others and creating streams of income. She is a social entrepreneur, a best selling author, a wife and a MOM, which I love that she uses as an acronym for Multiple Operational Manager. I love that. I'm excited to introduce you to Teresa Wright Johnson. Teresa, thank you so much for being here today.
[00:01:15.740] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Yes. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.
[00:01:18.650] - Meg Brunson
Well, we are both super busy and I feel like this took us a while, but I'm glad it's finally here. And we finally get to talk about multiple streams of income, what it really means to make money through your lived experiences, and then, of course, how to work effectively from home. I feel like when you think of multiple streams of income, you think of lots and lots of work. So I can't wait to dive into this topic with you. Why don't you tell me a little bit about how you kind of started your entrepreneurial journey and maybe how you started your first stream of income and then made the decision to keep adding streams?
[00:01:57.810] - Teresa Wright Johnson
I think I've always been an entrepreneur since I was a kid, actually, so the first thing would be baby sitting. So that's probably why I loved motherhood and children, right. But as a young adult, I realized I was working in corporate America and there were a lot of moms there and they would have to take off work and stuff. And it was interesting because I was not a mom at that time. I remember becoming a wife and hearing them complain like my child is sick, I can't come in and that kind of stuff.
[00:02:27.240] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And I'm like, oh, yeah, whatever, you know, because you're single, you don't have kids, you're just making your paycheck, living that lovely life. Until I had my own child. And when I had my own child, I realized that that was going to be a little of an issue. But before I even had that child, I ended up not being able to carry children well. And so I ended up being on bed rest for the majority of my pregnancy with my first child- one of my first children.
[00:02:56.400] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And unfortunately, when you go on bed rest, that corporate American paycheck went from one hundred percent to 60 percent. And my husband and I, our bills didn't change, but my income did. And I had to figure out a way to make some extra money because that long term short term unemployment stuff wasn't kicking the money I needed to help with the household, like many women now do. And so I started looking online for work at home opportunities.
[00:03:25.080] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And this is before- way before work at home. I know I look so young, but I'm not. This is way before. And I got schemed. I got scammed all kinds of things. And then I started finding real work at home jobs like in customer service and sales and just follow up and talking to people. The same stuff I did kind of for work. And so that's where it began. I started finding work at home work while I was on bed rest.
[00:03:52.410] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And that was wonderful because then that allowed me to still use my skills, not be bored laying in bed, make sure I take care of my baby and financially help with my household. And so that's where it all began and they had direct deposit. I was like, hey, great.
[00:04:09.270] - Meg Brunson
Right? So you like you basically found a job that would let you work from home.
[00:04:15.920] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Yeah, so I still had my little- my job, in corporate America, but then I found all these work at home jobs like customer service. One of them was like answering calls like, "Hi, thank you for calling. This is Theresa with the power chopper, blah, blah, blah." And I mean, it's no way back. Like I said, I know I look young, but it's so way back in the day I didn't even have a laptop.
[00:04:39.500] - Teresa Wright Johnson
My husband at the time pushed the rolling cart computer to my bed. So I could work from my bed. And so, yeah, that was one of them. And then I think I also get like credit card sales, all sorts of things, because my background was a call center management, call center, a customer service team leader stuff. So I just use those skills and found work at home.
[00:05:02.240] - Meg Brunson
And then when did it transition into entrepreneurship?
[00:05:05.660] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Well, that was interesting and actually I had already I think I had already started being an entrepreneur before I got put on bed rest, but when I what really happened with that particular child? She was born with multiple disabilities, unfortunately. And the company I work for, they started a work at home department. So now I had my full time income back. I had all these other streams of income that I figured out about because now I'm doing mystery shopping, and merchandise, and customer service, I have my job. And I was like, hey, I think I want to start like a answering service, a telephone answering service. It was called Total Teleservices. And I just answered calls for small business owners at a- similar to who I am now that couldn't answer their phone calls and sent them messages. I was so- I got a text messaging, like when you call them pagers or something. So it was really that's where I started. And then I just decided one day I wanted to work for myself.
[00:06:06.650] - Teresa Wright Johnson
It was still like, if I work for this company, I was the employee of the year. All the time, employee of the month. I will drive up just to be seen every now and then. And they would say, hey, you can't park there. That's the employee of the year or the month or whatever it was. I was like, that's me. They never saw me. But I still had all of these rules and restrictions because I worked for a company.
[00:06:27.920] - Teresa Wright Johnson
So I decided at some point, hey, I want to just do this. And guess what? I was a mommy now, so I couldn't schedule all my appointments. I had a special needs child, lots of time, lots of appointments. So I figured out a way to take all those different streams of income and create the main income I need and have the flexibility I need as a mom as well as have this small business on the side.
[00:06:49.880] - Meg Brunson
So now let me take a little step to the side, a step back maybe. I want to know for people who are listening, who like those multiple streams of income, where did you find them? Like this- is the stuff that still exists. Like if somebody right now wanted to do something like that, how would they find those things today?
[00:07:05.690] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Oh, there are plenty of ways to find them. And I actually will go into this in a minute. But later on, because I was working all these streams of income and now I'm a stay at home mom, I met all these other stay at home moms. And they wanted to know the same question. So I said, hey, I want to write up a list and sell it to them. And that's when I started doing so. They're just different websites like the one a lot of people use now is rat race rebellion.
[00:07:30.650] - Teresa Wright Johnson
It's called rat race rebellion. You can find all sorts of work at home jobs. They're really great ones on there. What is the other one? Is it the penny hoarder? Yeah, the PennyHoarder.Com. They have a list of work at home jobs. The thing is, you need to really read and research them. And what I would suggest one is look and see if you see people that have reviews on them, like type in the job with the company or the organization, because I've now helped hundreds of women and men work from home on their own.
[00:07:59.570] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And I have girlfriends and ladies that I've known for fifteen, twenty years now that all they do is a majority of these different things. They pay for their kids to college. They're paying their house notes, their car notes. It's just about being diligent and doing the research, and knowing that it still is work. It's not like a lot of times people say, oh, that's cool, you get to work from home. Well, yeah, you still have to have something called discipline.
[00:08:21.740] - Teresa Wright Johnson
You still have to know how to sell yourself now, virtually, which many of us should have this down pat. And you have to have some kind of organization as well.
[00:08:31.100] - Meg Brunson
Yeah, working from home is not code for, like, watching TV all day and getting paid. You still have to work. But there are perks, of course, to having some additional- and I think the level of flexibility and you can probably speak to this better than I can, but that also changes because some work from home jobs have set times. Right. And others you have a little more flexibility.
[00:08:55.190] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Yeah. So you definitely need to know who you are and what works for you. So a lot of the jobs that I took at that time were very flexible because I had a little one and then I added another little one so I could not sit at the computer for eight hours. However, if you had older children, like right now I'm talking to a lot of people say, for instance, they got laid off because of the pandemic or something is going on.
[00:09:19.160] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Maybe they have a sick family member, maybe they have older school children. They need to be at home and they can sit there. You can do, you know, a job like that. But there are many companies like some of the ones that I used to work with, where you can actually log in and look at the schedule and choose your hours. So, you know, OK, I'm working twelve to two this day, six to eight this day.
[00:09:41.300] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And so it's amazing. The flexibility will really spoil you like it will really spoil you. I never wanted to go back to work for anybody full time after that. And quite honestly, I never did.
[00:09:53.170] - Meg Brunson
Now, with those jobs, are they like contract type positions or is it like a full time job where you you're hired, like indefinitely and then until something changes, or does it vary?
[00:10:05.180] - Teresa Wright Johnson
So right now, there are companies like United Health Care, UHaul, the Hilton Hotel, those are companies that actually hire employees and they're going to have certain specifications for you as well. Of course, of qualifications. They want you to have, like on your career, from your career and on your resume. But they're also going to want you to have certain set ups and computer systems and so forth. So that's the other thing about the work at home jobs.
[00:10:31.760] - Teresa Wright Johnson
You have to realize what companies are asking for and what you have in your little toolbox of career technology, information, discipline. I cannot stress discipline enough because when I first started this work at home stuff, I told you a bit back, the company I worked for when I was on bed rest, they started a work at home department and the only reason I knew I could be is because I had already worked at home. But I ended up being the one in charge of that department, the first one, and then they let other employees come on.
[00:11:02.990] - Teresa Wright Johnson
All of them got pretty much hacked because they thought they could- because I was telling them, they were like, "this is so cool Teresa you can work at home, I was like, um-hum, but you need to be disciplined." But they thought they could forward the phone calls to their cell phone, all these different things. It's still a job. I don't care if you're only working two hours a day, it's still a job. So the flexibility is great, but you have to treatn it just like a job.
[00:11:27.980] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Also, you have virtual chatting. There are companies that hire people just to chat now as well, and they answer customer service questions. For instance, I know are certain even insurance companies, one of my insurance companies is Progressive and it seemed like this older guy was talking to me one day, was very laid back, and I'll asked him, hey, do you work from home? And they'll say, yes, Weight Watchers, whatever the new W now, whatever. I don't remember the name, but they hire from home.
[00:11:53.840] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Because I would ask when I call places, I would listen and I could hear in the background like, hey, do you work from home? So I started also researching and asking people about, hey, do you work from home and kind of get information like with the Hilton Hotels or the Hyatt Hotel. There are so many different ways you can make money or even enterprise car services they hire from home.
[00:12:15.530] - Teresa Wright Johnson
So it's not just like these rinky dink jobs over here, because guess what? Why do people want to hire from home or organizations? Because it is a cost saver for them, not only a cost saver, because you think about all the overhead, you know, you ain't got to have to pay for the office. You don't have to pay sometimes for all the benefits depending on what you're offering. And there's so many benefits for the company. But on the other side, you have to also realize that it's a job and you just have to kind of be flexible with it yourself and realize that it's not going to be like I just get to sit and eat bonbons while I work because people might be listening to you.
[00:12:53.330] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And some of them actually some some people I've talked to, they have companies that are actually watching them virtually visually. So you never know.
[00:13:01.880] - Meg Brunson
Yeah. And I feel like it's you also need to have family who gets it like. Like your kids, your spouse, your significant others, whoever it is. I feel like that's something that we struggled with. What I came home and started working at home, was like, I'm here, but I'm not here. Like, I needed quiet time and time just in my office with the door closed and every job is different. You might not need that. But setting the expectations so like your kids understand and the other adults in your house understand.
[00:13:36.480] - Teresa Wright Johnson
I would definitely say that's true. I've done I actually have a book called Making Money Out the Box that I sell. And we talk about these different things. And one of the things we talk about, of course, is how to find jobs, but also you have to be disciplined. And then, of course, people have to respect that you're at work.
[00:13:53.840] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And so I've done a lot of speaking about working at home successfully, and I'm loving- for me, I'm loving being at home for the pandemic. My spouse is working at home downstairs. The kids were in their room. We have no kids this week, though. Yay, they're away. But everybody has their own vibe of things. But I've been working at home since my daughter, who is turning sixteen pretty much was born. So she understands mom's at work, but also doing simple things like signs, letting your family know when you're working, what you're doing, especially right now with so many more people working at home or looking for work, at home opportunities.
[00:14:33.500] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Because if you're working on the phone, all that background noise or if I'm doing Facebook lives, I do a lot of speaking and training. And so I have to tell my girls, like my office is upstairs, their bedrooms are the other hallway. No, you can't be over here. And so that's another thing that I did, too. I realized that there were ways to make money outside of just working for those companies by using our own lived experience and knowledge.
[00:14:58.430] - Meg Brunson
So tell me a little bit about that. Go ahead. What do you mean by lived experiences and how does that translate into making money?
[00:15:05.080] - Teresa Wright Johnson
So how that translates first, was that little list, those ladies that were asking me about buying a list and it was so easy, I remember the first list was just a word document and I don't remember how much I sold it for maybe twenty five dollars or something. And that's your lived experience. That's your information. That's your intellectual property. That's something you learn and you've been through in your life that you can now regurgitate from your own experience. Put down into a document, a course, go speak, and make money with it.
[00:15:36.520] - Teresa Wright Johnson
My e-book also another thing that I've done is I have an event now called Making Money Out Of the Box. I've been doing it for three years. We go around to different cities and states and we have people come to teach people all sorts of ways of making money. I'll talk about work at home, making money somebody else might talk about. Oh, we have one coming up. The guy has been on Shark Tank and just and won money from Shark Tank. And so he's going to talk about inventions.
[00:16:01.300] - Teresa Wright Johnson
So it really grew because if you think about it, we all have something that we've been through or that we're expert at that you might think doesn't matter to anybody else. But when I started talking to them, lil mommy's about me mystery shopping and having my baby in the stroller with me and taking calls. And when my ex-husband saw all those little checks coming in from everywhere and I saw them in direct deposit, that mattered then.
[00:16:28.570] - Teresa Wright Johnson
So that's one thing. Those are good things, but what about the hard things you've been through? You know, some of the tragedies or adversities we go through. And so I mentioned early on, I was a mom that had to stay at home and be on bed rest because I had trouble carrying children. So I had several early term miscarriages or late term miscarriages. And that made me, you know, sad, of course. But guess what?
[00:17:00.340] - Teresa Wright Johnson
I also had a child with a developmental disability. I have a child now with ADHD. I could sit in a corner and cry about that if I wanted to, or I could do the same thing I did about figuring out how to bring more income into my home. Let me take the brighter side of this. Let me research and let me learn for myself. And not everybody is going to do that. And then they're going to say, hey, how did you learn about that?
[00:17:26.680] - Teresa Wright Johnson
What did you learn? And just take a little further. You can go and get training and certifications. And that's what I did, for me. I believe your lived experience- that we're all lived experience experts, that we can take our information, our knowledge, our struggle, strengths, successes, and education and monetize from it and/or help other people. So some of the things that you can do, you can speak, you can speak on your story. You can find ways to make money just speaking on your story, whether it be you're speaking at events, you know, as a speaker, you create your own events.
[00:18:01.210] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Number one. Number one, as you know, because sometimes everybody isn't going to create a for you. Create that event for yourself, bring those people to yourself. And then the other thing is maybe you write a book. I said I'm a bestselling author, but I haven't wrote a whole book yet. Because I'm in a bunch of collaboration books. Right. And I still get to tell my story, but it's my lived experience that I'm getting to tell my story.
[00:18:26.200] - Teresa Wright Johnson
I'm helping other people do that story, but I'm also being able to make income and bring back to my family. So your lived experience could be from cooking? Like I have someone that I told her last year, like do these cooking shows online. That's what she's doing. And she's being paid for it to be cooking. It could be babysitting. Remember I said I was a baby sitter when I was a kid. Unfortunately, in life I've been through a divorce.
[00:18:50.500] - Teresa Wright Johnson
I had to figure out how to make up his income. I started a nanny service. I started an in-home daycare. Just went and got the certifications. Take that live experience- You're a mommy, if you like children - now, if you don't like your own children. No, don't take anybody else's children - but for me, it was a great deal because I even got a husband out of it.
[00:19:12.110] - Meg Brunson
Like a BOGO and get a bonus.
[00:19:13.990] - Teresa Wright Johnson
I got a bonus. But it allowed me even with that, that was my lived experience. I was going through a divorce and I tell women this all the time. I went from like I live in Atlanta. So I definitely was more like an Atlanta housewife and doing all kinds of great things and just out and about. And then I had to transform and still take care of my children, and I was like, I couldn't go and get a typical job, number one, after working for yourself, you're never really going to want to do that.
[00:19:42.690] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Just honestly. Don't want to. Don't have to. If you do, you figure out a way that makes you happy, you know, and so you can be different. But anyway, I started an in-home daycare in my apartment because I had a child with special needs, I had to go to her appointments. And I took my lived experience of being a mom with a child with special needs. And I serviced other moms with children with special needs. And I didn't do that just on my own knowledge.
[00:20:09.510] - Teresa Wright Johnson
I went out and got training and did research. And now I am a certified special needs advocate, a certified mental health instructor. So that's the other thing. You know, go get those certifications and credentials that are out there. They're free ones out there, all sorts of things that you can get, especially some of us that may have taken a break from our career, because now we're moms, you know.
[00:20:31.580] - Meg Brunson
I love that, I love how you basically have taken, you know, the curveballs that life has thrown at you, invested in yourself to learn more about how to cope or manage those situations and then turn around and realize that you can also monetize off of that by mentoring and helping other people. And I think, like, as I was listening, a really easy way to kind of gut check and figure out how you can monetize is to think about the things that people ask you about all the time.
[00:21:05.540] - Meg Brunson
Like, I don't monetize anything right now about RV travel. I don't.
[00:21:11.110] - Teresa Wright Johnson
We need you to.
[00:21:12.450] - Meg Brunson
I Know and part of it is, I've got my- I've got so many buckets. Right. But we've been on the road full time for two years. I get a ton of questions, a ton, and so it's like that's an opportunity that I have, should I decide to add that additional stream. And I think everybody can stop, reflect right now, take five minutes or whatever, and think about what are the things that people ask you about the most.
[00:21:37.670] - Meg Brunson
That you're helping people with the most. And then, it doesn't have to be- you don't have to necessarily get rich off that. But could you just put together, like you said, a little cheat sheet, a course, guidance, whatever, 10 bucks, 20 bucks, start small and just see if you can start making- supplementing your income a little bit from that knowledge, I love that.
[00:21:58.480] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Or you could be building on your platform like later on today. I know that I have to go speak somewhere else virtually. And because I have all those stories and all that lived experience and those certifications nationwide now, people are like, hey, can you come speak? And so I might be going to speak at a no cost event or a for cost event, but I'm still able to build upon that. And I look at it like this. My story sometimes I'm just telling people different parts of my story and I might be an event for something else.
[00:22:29.110] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And this just happened to me here in Georgia with this organization for mothers and children. And the lady was like, we would love for you to come and teach our support group for moms that have had children, miscarriages or loss, you know, so you never know. As women, we are nurturers and we want to help many of us. And sometimes monetizing sounds like, oh, no, I shouldn't make any money off of that. But I can guarantee you, I do more helping a lot than just monetizing.
[00:22:57.340] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And then you can even create your own tribe like you have done here. I remember when I saw you and I was like FamilyPreneur, sounds like something I am, I need to go over there. And then I have my organization Mom Biz Boss. Right. Because I know that what women ask me the most about was this: how are you able to be a mommy, have a business, have a family and still make it all work and be happy.
[00:23:23.570] - Meg Brunson
Yeah, and every answer is a little different, but you can you can get little nuggets from everybody's answer.
[00:23:32.450] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Right. And everybody has- just like I was telling a few ladies about FamilyPreneur, I was like, y'all, did y'all, go find Meg she does FamilyPreneur, she has all this stuff over there... You never know because there's another mom right now wondering if you decide ever to do the RV thing. Like, I would love to live the RV life, but how would I fit that in? And then even if you didn't do a business on it, I know that I have a connect of someone else because that is your lived experience.
[00:24:00.170] - Teresa Wright Johnson
So those are those are some of the ways that I used my lived experience to make money. But I've now partnered up with different national organizations like NAMI, the National Mental Health Alliance, Mental Health America, the Federation of Families. So I've partnered with other organizations that do this on a grander scale.
[00:24:18.890] - Meg Brunson
Awesome, well, I love this conversation. I love all the tips for income streams and lived experiences and we talked a lot about discipline and being able to work effectively from home. Where can our our viewers, our listeners, connect with you, learn more about you? I know you mentioned Mom Biz Boss, drop some links for us.
[00:24:41.850] - Teresa Wright Johnson
OK, so the best way to probably find me is through Mom Biz Boss, which is m-o-m-b-i-z boss and you will be finding or very easily find us @MomBizBoss on social media on Instagram and Facebook. And then my overall business is TWJME Enterprises. Yes, it's an alphabet full of words. I just had somebody help me rebrand that, so it'll be different. But for now it is what it is and it stands for this, just like I say, moms are multiple operational managers, because we are. We're each an enterprise, all of us, walking around with knowledge, value, worth, strength, struggles, successes that we can monetize or help other people with.
[00:25:25.560] - Teresa Wright Johnson
And I know that I'm an enterprise. So that stands for Teresa Wright Johnson Multiple Enterprises. And you can find that at TWJME.com.
[00:25:35.670] - Meg Brunson
I love that. Thank you so much for that explanation too. I feel like that makes it even more powerful. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know you're busy, to be here today to share this with us, to share this with all of our viewers and listeners and to be a member of this community. I just appreciate you so much.
[00:25:53.670] - Teresa Wright Johnson
Thank you so much for the opportunity, because I'm definitely a FamilyPreneur myself.
[00:25:59.550] - Meg Brunson
That's it for this episode of FamilyPreneur. You'll find all the links mentioned and the show notes at https://MegBrunson.com/podcast. Until next time, I'll see you over in the FamilyPreneur Community. Bye for now.
Meet Teresa Wright Johnson
Teresa Wright Johnson is a Lived Life Expert that takes her lived experience helping others and creating streams of income. She is a social entrepreneur. best selling author, WIFE and a MOM (Multiple Operational Manager)!