Rhea's story.

Our family's story

We homeschooled our children for 29 years. In the early days our family represented Lifetime Books and Gifts in the Southeast, and serving that company as a curriculum counselor gave me a remarkable education in this thing called home education.

My husband Wendell had been a public school teacher. He wanted our children to be more than educated. He wanted them to know how to live financially free, so they would not end up as educated and as poor as he was.

In 1997 we left town for a farm in southern Tennessee we call the Backside of Nowhere. Our oldest son, Drew, was 14 and decided we needed to bring his dad home from corporate America so he could share our life with us. He tried raising dogs. He tried selling junk from the basement on eBay. When he found real estate investing at 18, it took him three more years to replace his father's income. He sold over 70 houses on eBay, 12 in one auction, and Wendell came home.

Our second son, Will, apprenticed with a commercial roofer and started his own commercial and industrial roofing company with his younger brother, Forrest, serving north Alabama. Forrest died in an accident at work in October 2015. He was 19, and he owned a house, land, a company and a truck.

When I told a Yahoo! Group what we were doing for school, they wanted to see it. So in 2001 I invited them to the farm. One hundred people from 18 states came, and four flew in. By the third year we had to rent a university down the road for 220 people from 21 states and Canada. We have hosted a live event for families every year since: the only one where families bring their teens to learn how to be godly business owners who make serious money and a serious impact.

In 2010, Wendell lost his battle with cancer one day after our 33rd anniversary. He was 59. I was 55 with four children still at home, and I had to grow my little Internet business fast. It carried us. That is why we now have a program for widows, and why I keep telling families to build multiple streams of income at home before they need them.

My goal is simple: encourage families to seek God first, discover their gifts and talents as early as they can, and get the education they actually need for the life they want. This community exists so nobody on that road has to walk it alone.

Rhea Perry