Rhea Perry
Rhea Perry has home educated her 7 children since 1987. Although she earned an education degree from Auburn University, she encouraged her children to think differently by educating them to be leaders and thinkers instead of following the typical educational path.
Her husband of 33 years, Wendell, held almost two master's degrees in education and encouraged her for years to educate their children differently so they wouldn't end up as educated, yet as poor as he was.
By the time her oldest son, Drew, was 20, he had created a system for selling houses on eBay and created a passive income that allowed his dad to come home from corporate Amercia. He had bought and sold over 70 houses on eBay, 12 in one auction. By age 20, he was worth $1.4 million. Today Drew is married and has 7 children which he and his wife, Carol, home educate. Rhea's second son, Will, started a successful commercial and industrial roofing company with his brother, Forrest. The company was doing well and operating four crews across north Alabama when Forrest, 19, suffered a head and neck injury in an accident and died. The shock affected everyone in the company yet it still faithfully serves its clients today.
Because Rhea took her children to live conferences to learn Internet marketing and real estate investing, she became interested in online business and started Educating for Success, Inc. In 2010, she won Armand Morin's Better Your Best Contest for the most improved online business of the year and $25,000.
Now that all of Rhea's children are on their own, she teaches others the secrets of entrepreneurial education that she has learned from 30 years of homeschooling. She is a featured speaker at homeschool conventions across the country and hosts two annual conferences for home educating families.
My Family's Story
Our family homeschooled our 7 children for 29 years and represented Lifetime Books and Gifts in the Southeast for five years back when the concept was in its infancy.. During the time I served that cutting-edge educational company as a curriculum counselor, I got an amazing education in this crazy thing called "home education."
In trying to find answers to some very serious questions, I soon discovered how extremely important it is to prepare young people to step into the world as leaders in business, arts, entertainment, education and government. So I started studying education.
In 1997, we left society so we could focus on raising the children and moved to a farm we call the Backside of Nowhere in Southern Tennessee.
Our oldest son, Drew, was 14 and decided we needed to bring our dad home from corporate America so he could share our wonderful life with us.
He tried everything from raising dogs to selling junk in the basement on eBay. When he discovered real estate investing at age 18, it only took another three years for him to figure out how to replace his dad's income. He accomplished his goal and is now married with 8 children and a successful business.
Our second son is now married and also has a successful commercial and industrial roofing company.
When I told the members of a Yahoo! Group what we were doing for school, they wanted to learn more. So I invited them over to our farm back in 2001.
100 people from 18 states attended our one-day event and four even flew.
The same thing happened the next year with our own Yahoo! group, even though we invited half as many.
The third year, we rented a university down the road and 220 folks came from 21 states and Canada.
Every year since then, we've hosted the only live event of its kind where families take their teens to learn how to be godly business owners make serious money which allows them to make a serious impact in their world in whatever way they desire.
Some of our keynotes have been Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of The Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Sharon Lechter, co-author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, the Benham Brothers, Joel Salatin, Richard Paul Evans, Hank the Cowdog (John Erickson), Josh Tolley, and Jim Cockrum and others.
Our Company
We started Educating for Success, Inc. to help families learn how to educate their teens and themselves to have home businesses instead of being employees.
To become financially free requires learning to think differently than how we've been programmed by our government education system.
My main goal is to encourage families to seek God first, then to discover their gifts and talents as early as possible. Yet how can we do that when we haven't been educated or trained? We find ourselves learning as we are doing it with them.
Sometimes we feel that the burden is too heavy. That's why I created this virtual community so those of us on this journey can encourage each other and share our secrets along the way. And the Internet makes it sooo much easier! Those who learn them prosper.
So I started helping students of all ages discover what they want to be when they grow up and get their appropriate education and support they need.
We Also Help Widows
In 2010, my dear husband Wendell lost his battle with cancer just one day after our 33rd wedding anniversary. He was 59. I was 55 and four of our seven children were still at home. I had to ramp up my little Internet business to be able to take care of the family.
So now we have a special program to help widows overcome depression and learn how to build home businesses so the family can remain at home.
Here Are a Few of Our Success Stories
Dave Mitchell of Monterrey came to me years ago wanting to leave his job as an engineer in corporate America to start a business from home. He wanted to help his wife, Kay, raise and educate their six boys. I helped him figure out how to start an online recording business called RecordedMoments.com to record conference calls for Internet Marketers. Today, they serve marketers all over America.
In February of 2007, Dave was diagnosed with liver cancer. In April, he died. He was 50 years old.
The business he left behind has continued to provide a steady income for Kay and the boys. If he had not stepped out in faith and started Recorded Moments, the family would have been left with no source of income.
Michael Schultz of New York left his job to support his family of 13 by selling books on eBay. Yes, he and his wife Julie Anna have 11 children. Through implementing the principles we shared in my Yahoo! Group, they met their goals in just one year to live debt free with Michael at home coordinating the family business.
While working with Lifetime Books, I continually shared my new-found knowledge of the Internet with owner Bob Farewell and his wife Tina. As a result, they eventually sold their business and today Bob has a successful mentoring program at his home in Lake Wales, Florida.
Mary Jo Tate, a single mom home educating four boys, went from being unemployed to editing major publications, then on to helping others write their own books. She was soon awarded Protege of the Year 2006 and received a standing ovation at our annual Entrepreneur Days when she cut up her WIC card on the stage because she no longer qualified for it.
Karen Brunet, who was forced to move from Southern Louisiana to Tennessee because of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, became a successful webmaster after taking a few of our classes.