Defining the Milestone Path

Humble roots

It was winter 2023. The whole family had suffered a very nasty flu. The kind that gave me the (slightly guilty) relief of a few quiet days because everyone was sleeping off a fever. But now it was my turn and I was SICK.

I spent nearly two full weeks in bed. For context, my grandfather once literally chained my grandmother to her bed to stop her getting up to work in the garden against doctor’s orders when recovering from surgery and I am my grandmother’s daughter. This was no ordinary illness.

But between bouts of fever, I had just enough energy (and boredom) to begin playing with desktop publishing software. And I had an idea.

I had already begun writing custom worksheets for my little one who was desperately trying to catch up with his older brothers in “big homeschool” and, now that I had this shiny new software, I began to wonder, “Could I actually write books that other homeschoolers would want to use?”

I wanted my 18+ years of homeschooling to come shining through.

Once I recovered, I began fleshing out my idea more fully. My older boys contributed design and artwork. I worked on getting the ideas across for people who have no idea how to teach maths or who might even suffer from maths phobia.

I wanted to create something that a busy homeschool mum could make work with kids at all different stages and levels. It needed to be affordable and portable. It also needed to be truly Australian. Not something from overseas that had been “adapted.”

But most importantly, it had to be rooted, heart and soul, in homeschool. Not something written by a teacher who has tutored homeschool students. Not something that was written for a classroom but just “happens to work” for homeschool. I wanted my 18+ years of homeschooling to come shining through.

Finding Our Feet

By Spring I had the outline of the first year and I was beginning to think logistics. I looked at the self publishing industry and it just didn’t “feel right.” I couldn’t get the flexibility I needed to make this work at a price that was affordable and sustainable. I rang local printers: none could help me achieve my vision.

And then I remembered a conversation I’d had a few months earlier. I had gotten into deep discussions about all things reading and spelling with John who taken over stewardship of the spelling curriculum his mother had written and I decided to ask where he got his materials printed. “We do it all inhouse,” came back the reply along with the offer, “and we’d be happy to publish your materials for you.” The “we” was the small homeschool curriculum supplier (we’ll call it HCS) he worked for.

I was all set and I had a deadline: I needed to get at least the first term of year 1 ready for my little one by the start of the 2024 school year. I worked round the clock and managed to get the first volume of Milestone Math B1 ready just in time.

At the time we were still very much in “prototype” stage. John was handling printing for my own “testing” purposes. The first print run consisted of two copies: one for my son and another for a friend’s son.

I was determined to launch Milestone Maths fully by the end of 2024 so I continued to work tirelessly. By June I’d entered a formal agreement with the HCS and we were ready for launch. It was one of the most exciting and terrifying moments of my life. I really didn’t know what to expect but, worst of all, just before launch John announced he was leaving the HCS to move interstate for family reasons. John had been the one that really made Milestone Maths happen and I was nervous about the future but, having stepped on the road, I was determined to complete the journey.

I spent the second half of 2024 writing Level C and nervously watching sales. They were a little underwhelming but I could see promise. But most importantly, I began to see results in the students I had close at hand: some of my tutoring students, my own son and my friend’s son. The sample size was small but the results were amazing.

The Turning Point

In the summer of 2024/25 I attended the first Gold Coast homeschool expo. This turned out to be a major turning point for Milestone Maths. Firstly, I was overwhelmed by the response I received from parents. Sales on that one day eclipsed the entire 6 month period before it.

But, most significantly, I was approached by one of the “matriarchs” of Australian homeschooling to provide a mathematics component for her “all in one” program. To say I was excited would be an understatement. After the noise and excitement of the event had faded, it was time to talk business, and disappointingly, discussions ended with no deal. But the soul searching that was sparked by those negotiations revealed one key principle I value above all else: freedom.

soul searching … revealed one key principle I value above all else: freedom.

Editorial freedom to produce the books in a format that fits all my design goals. Economic freedom to make the curriculum accessible to as many homeschool families as possible in a fair and sustainable way. And intellectual freedom to design the curriculum to accord with the decades of engineering, tutoring and homeschooling experience that have made me who I am.

I sat down to write a difficult email but one that had been niggling the back of my head for some time. It was time to thank the HCS for their generous and invaluable help and ask to be released from our agreement. In the end, I think it was as much a relief for them as it was for me as we had outgrown each other.

In February 2025 Milestone Maths received its first order from a loyal user who had read about us in the HCS newsletter and decided to give us a try. She and her two boys have a special place in my heart and I believe they are still the biggest fans of Milestone Maths.

Then came… nothing. With no mailing list and no idea where or how to market a curriculum I felt at a bit of a loss. I vainly hoped that the Kevin Costner rule might kick in, “If you build it, they will come.” I queried AI, I searched websites, I spent sleepless nights trying to learn as much as I could. In the meantime, orders just trickled in.

And then it happened. Even in my thirst to find a “tribe” that I could share my curriculum with, my Facebook footprint remained characteristically tiny. But I did follow one key group: Homeschool Resource Finder. Just about the time I was wondering if I would ever get noticed, Kylie Rayner announced the launch of her website of the same name. She had an amazing founding members deal, and I was all in!

The second half of 2025 was a whirlwind of activity at Milestone Maths. The most significant events were:

• July 2025 officially became the last zero sale month on the spreadsheet.
• Sales began to come in through “organic Google search.” This is apparently a tough nut to crack so I was over the moon when the first sale came through that channel.
• ChatGPT began recommending Milestone Maths to parents searching for an Australian Maths curriculum. This was even more of a delightful shock than the Google win. It seems my instincts that Australia needs a homeschool-dedicated pencil and paper maths curriculum were on the mark.
• Kylie Rayner approached me about piloting her “parent review panel” with Milestone Maths. The feedback from this review process was very encouraging and helpful for refining some of our customer information.

2026 has opened strong. Our sales numbers are still looking like a seismograph taken on a Tuesday in Tokyo and are barely paying for snacks let alone a wage, but they are definitely trending in the right general direction.

Defining the Path

Now, as Milestone Maths has clearly begun to settle into a new phase of growth, we have taken some time to reflect on our core values. When I first set out on this journey, my aim was clear: to provide homeschool families with a high-quality maths curriculum at a fair and sustainable price.

But how to achieve that aim if no-one knows about you? That was a burning question for those first lonely months of 2025. So, I did something that was completely out of character: I tried to become a salesperson. I’m ashamed to admit it: the sleazy kind. I offered sales, discount codes and tweaked prices in all the “right ways.” But I soon discovered that, if those tricks work at all, they attract the wrong customer.

I don’t know what the future holds for Milestone Maths but I do know that it will be built on my core values: fairness, integrity and doing to others as I would have them do unto me.

So it’s time to start a new chapter: one that will form the foundation of all that follows. Milestone Maths has adopted a “Fair Price Promise” with a “no sales” policy. We will no longer run sales nor will we be issuing discount codes.

Sales and discount codes can only happen if “regular prices” are over-inflated and this tends to penalise the loyal customers who order when they have need: not when a sale is announced. I am personally uncomfortable with that dynamic.

I believe that every family using Milestone Maths deserves the same honest, accessible price, whether it is their first order or their tenth. By keeping our pricing stable and removing the “discount” layer entirely, we can ensure that we remain fair to our long-term family.

I don’t know what the future holds for Milestone Maths but I do know that it will be built on my core values: fairness, integrity and doing to others as I would have them do unto me.