June 2021 Newsletter
A Note From the Founder – Let’s Grow Together
by Kerry Cordy
I just finished reading the book, “Anything You Want” by Derek Sivers. It was an excellent reminder of why I started Curiosity Untamed and what is really important. 2020 and the COVID pandemic turned my business upside down. For more than a decade Frontier Girls and Quest Clubs, our original programs, were run pretty much unchanged from year to year. We grew slowly and stayed small so that I would have time to raise my kids and care for my mother who had Alzheimer’s.
When the pandemic hit and Frontier Girls troops and Quest Clubs couldn’t meet, my business crashed almost overnight. When schools around the country shut down last March, it was only supposed to be for a few weeks, or maybe until the end of the school year. I tried to help by giving away Quest memberships for free from March through May of last year. I knew a lot of homeschoolers had been using it as homeschool curriculum and thought it might help make the transition to homeschooling a bit more fun for families that were being pushed into it. By summer it became clear that this “new normal” was going to stick around for awhile and if I wanted to stay in business I needed a whole new business model. The new Curiosity Untamed website was launched in July 2020 as I shifted my focus from scouting style groups to homeschoolers.
I know the last year has been confusing and I appreciate everyone’s patience as I try to figure out how our three programs are now going to work together. What the book I just read reminded me though is that as long as I remember why I am doing this in the first place it will all work out.
I do this because I love it. I love to learn and I want to teach others to be just as passionate about learning as I am. I want to be personally involved and to get to know my customers. It is why I have always put my personal email and phone number on the website. We have always been a very grassroots community where members work together via our forums online and everyone knows they can call or email me anytime with suggestions or questions. It is because of our members and their input over the last decade that we have created something unique that appeals to so many.
If you are new to Curiosity Untamed, Frontier Girls, or Quest Clubs, I encourage you to reach out and say hello to me. My email is kerry@frontiergirls.com. Tell me what you think of the program (be brutally honest!) Let me know what works and what could be better. What is on your “wish list” of things we could offer in the future? Ask me questions. No question is too small. If you have a question, someone else is probably wondering the same thing. It helps me know what to make clearer on the website.
This is as much your program as it is mine. Let’s grow it together.
Curiosity Untamed Website Maintenance – June 4
As most of you know, I have started posting badge of the week resources on the Curiosity Untamed website each week. The Curiosity Untamed website will be down for several hours on Friday, June 4 while we migrate the site to our new domain. In case you hadn’t noticed, our current website ends in .net and we were finally able to purchase .com (I had to chase down the guy in Scotland who owned it!) We will be making the shift on Friday morning and I am not exactly sure how long it will take. Please plan ahead. I apologize for any inconvenience. The .net domain will simply redirect to .com so you will be able to enter either address to reach the website in the future. All direct links from the Frontier Girls website should redirect and you should not notice a difference.
Friends and Family Coupons
As most of you are aware I have had to dramatically increase my prices in order to not only keep up with my own rising costs in the last year, but also due to our new business model. In the past, most of our badge orders averaged 100+ badges at a time through our Quest Club and Frontier Girls troops. When COVID hit, we lost more than half our groups however and those still active have not been earning many badges. We started Curiosity Untamed last July to stay in business by marketing directly to homeschoolers and this has kept our business alive. Curiosity Untamed now accounts for more than half our business model. Unfortunately our average badge order with Curiosity Untamed is only 10 badges. This means my labor costs have increased dramatically as we now have to set up and ship 10 orders instead of 1 for every hundred badges or so. Many homeschoolers do not order badges at all and just love to use the program as a base for unit studies for school.
For those who have been members for awhile, you know how much I hate raising prices. For this reason, I have set up a Friends and Family coupon you can share with friends or with new members of your troop. This coupon will allow them to join at the $29.99/yr per girl or $59.99 per family through May 31, 2022. As long as they leave the auto-renew feature on, they will keep this price indefinitely just as those who are already members will.
If you have any questions, please email me at kerry@frontiergirls.com.
Individual Membership Coupon: GIRL2020
Family Membership Coupon: FAMILY2020
New Badge Posted
We Remember
Frontier Girls has always encouraged patriotism in our girls and support for our active and retired military. It has become tradition for many Frontier Girls troops to help place flags on the graves of our fallen service members for Memorial Day. Troop 159 was kind enough to share some pictures of their girls performing this honored duty. To all our Frontier Girls who paid respect to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms, thank you.
Binder Covers/Dividers Coming Soon
I added some printable binder covers and area dividers to the Curiosity Untamed website per the request of some of our members. I will be redesigning them with the Frontier Girls logo and adding them to the FG website in the next If there are other items you wish to see, please email me and I will put them on the wish list to add as I have the time and money. You can see the basic designs for the dividers that feature Badger, our badge hound, at: https://curiosityuntamed.net/area-binder-dividers/