Being a stay-at-home mom and a Millennial, whenever I had some time on my hands, I would scroll through reels and wonder:
Is it really possible to make money through the internet?
I’d see reels saying, “I earned in dollars doing this online,” or “I made money doing this simple gig from home,” and I’d be fascinated.
But also sceptical.
I’m quite cautious when it comes to the internet. If something sounds too good to be true, my first thought is usually, Where’s the catch?
I didn’t want to get scammed. I didn’t want to spend money chasing some online dream that went nowhere.
So I watched.
And wondered.
Until, somewhere along the way, I downloaded ChatGPT.
It Didn’t Start With AI
I didn’t download ChatGPT because I had some grand plan to build a business.
I started using it for something very simple: my writing.
I love writing, but sometimes I know exactly what I want to say and yet struggle to put it into the right words. So I started using ChatGPT to polish things I had written.
Then I started using it for other things.
A prayer.
A tribute.
An article.
An idea I couldn’t quite organize.
Sometimes even a conversation about something happening in my life.
Slowly, without really realizing it, I had started using AI as an assistant.
And then one fine day, I asked it a completely different question.
Can you help me build a business?
That question eventually became The Flexing Mom.
Not immediately, of course.
There was a lot of brainstorming. Ideas came and went. Some sounded exciting for five minutes and terrible the next morning.
But slowly, something started taking shape.
A blog.
A place for mothers.
A place where I could write about motherhood, rebuilding yourself, learning new things and hopefully, eventually, building financial independence too.
And here we are.
But I Am Definitely Not an AI Expert
The internet is now full of AI.
Which AI should you use?
Which tool is better?
Which one will make videos?
Which one will build websites?
Which one will automate your business?
Honestly?
It feels like a lot.
So for now, I’m using ChatGPT.
That’s it.
I haven’t tried my luck with dozens of other AI apps. Maybe I will eventually. But right now, I’m learning one thing at a time.
Through this journey, I’ve used ChatGPT to help me brainstorm ideas, polish my writing, think through my website, and figure out things I knew absolutely nothing about.
I even created my first reels and my first Pinterest Pins using Canva while ChatGPT guided me through the process.
They may not be the greatest Pins Pinterest has ever seen.
But they’re mine.
And I’m proud of them.
Because a little while ago, I didn’t know how to do any of this.
So How Do I Manage All This With Three Kids?
I don’t.
There. That’s the secret.
I don’t have a beautiful routine where I wake up at 5 a.m., drink something green, journal for twenty minutes and then work peacefully on my business before my children wake up.
I work whenever time permits.
Even as I’m writing this article, as much as I’d love some calm and quiet to gather my thoughts, I’m constantly checking what my four-year-old is doing.
I’m answering her endless questions.
I’m checking that she’s being gentle with her two-month-old brother.
Thankfully, my elder one is sleeping right now.
So I’m sneaking in a quick article.
That’s how I’m building this.
Not in eight-hour workdays.
Sometimes not even in one-hour workdays.
It’s twenty minutes here.
Half an hour there.
An idea typed quickly before somebody calls, “Mama!”
And plenty of unfinished things waiting for another day.
AI Hasn’t Given Me More Hours. But It Helps Me Use the Ones I Have.
That’s probably the biggest reason I’m interested in AI.
It doesn’t magically make motherhood less demanding.
It doesn’t give me six uninterrupted hours to work.
It doesn’t build a business while I sleep.
But when I do get twenty minutes, it can help me do something with those twenty minutes.
Instead of staring at a blank page wondering how to organize an article, I can brainstorm.
If I’ve written something but it doesn’t sound quite right, I can ask for help polishing it.
If I don’t understand something about blogging, Pinterest or websites, I can ask questions until I understand it.
And perhaps that’s where AI becomes interesting for mothers like me.
Not because it’s going to make us rich overnight.
But because it can make starting feel a little less impossible.
Maybe We Don’t Need to Know Everything
For a long time, I think I believed that starting something online required knowing everything first.
Blogging.
SEO.
Pinterest.
Affiliate marketing.
Websites.
Email marketing.
And now AI.
You look at that list and think:
Where am I even supposed to begin?
I’m beginning to realise that maybe we don’t need to know.
We just need to learn the next thing.
I didn’t know how to build a website.
Now I have one.
I didn’t know how to create a Pinterest Pin.
Now I’ve made one.
Actually, I’ve made more than one.
Small achievement?
Maybe.
But when you’ve spent years focused primarily on raising children, those little wins start to mean something.
They remind you that you can still learn.
You can still create.
You can still start something that belongs to you.
I Started Because I Wanted to Make Money
I won’t pretend otherwise.
When I started exploring all this, one of my biggest motivations was money.
I wanted to know whether I could actually earn something online.
Could I build something from home?
Could I create an income while still being there for my children?
Could this little blog eventually become something bigger?
I still want that.
I want The Flexing Mom to earn money.
I want to build something sustainable.
But somewhere between building the website, writing the articles, learning Canva, creating Pinterest Pins and figuring things out one small step at a time, something else happened.
I started looking forward to doing something productive with my life again.
I wake up thinking about what I can build next.
What I can learn.
What I can write.
What I can improve.
Whether this blog will resonate with you, I don’t know.
Whether it will become the business I hope it becomes, I don’t know that yet either.
But I know what it is already doing for me.
It’s helping me see my life in a new direction.
And that alone has been worth starting.
So Should Every Mom Learn AI?
I think every mom should at least give herself permission to explore it.
Not because everyone needs to start a blog.
Not because everyone needs an online business.
And definitely not because AI is some magical shortcut to making money.
But because the world is changing.
And becoming a mother doesn’t mean we have to watch that change happen from the sidelines.
Maybe you use AI to update your résumé after a career break.
Maybe you use it to learn a new skill.
Maybe you finally start that small business you’ve been thinking about.
Maybe you use it to organize an idea that’s been sitting in your head for years.
Or maybe, like me, you start by asking it to polish something you’ve written.
You don’t have to learn everything today.
Start with one tool.
Ask one question.
Learn one thing.
Take one small step.
Because I started this journey thinking:
I need to make money as soon as possible.
I still want to build that financial independence.
But now there’s another thought waiting for me when I wake up:
Maybe today I can create something that inspires another mother to start too.
And perhaps that’s what The Flexing Mom was supposed to become all along.