Christy Faith: From 0 to 200,000

Our interview of Christy Faith for “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes, Spotify, and premier platforms everywhere. Christy is a TikTok creator with a unique niche: home schooling. Christy built her following from zero in July of last year to almost 200,000 followers.

Christy talks about how she studied her popular and unpopular videos to learn what to emphasize and what to change in order to grow her following. There is something every influencer can learn from Christy about how she built her following. And, along the way, you’ll learn a few things about home schooling!

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A transcript of the episode follows:

Jon Pfeiffer:
I am joined today by Christy Faith. Welcome to the podcast.

Christy Faith:
Thank you.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You have almost 200,000 TikTok followers.

Christy Faith:
Not quite.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You're getting pretty close. I just checked last night.

Christy Faith:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's been fun.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Okay. So I want to ask you about three big things. How you built your TikTok following, your background, and then your homeschooling journey.

Christy Faith:
Okay. That sounds good.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Let's start with TikTok.

Christy Faith:
All right.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Tell me about the moment you decided to start a TikTok channel. And just for reference, I looked at your first post is July 11th, 2021.

Christy Faith:
Yes. My real post, the first post that got traction was, I think October 25th. But I don't remember if I privated those and then unprivated them, those initial ones. But yeah, I-

Jon Pfeiffer:
Your very first one is you dancing.

Christy Faith:
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, during the pandemic, I just like a lot of people who are now considered older, we got on TikTok because we were bored and there were really cool people on the app. And I remember looking to my husband Scott, and saying, "This is what I've wanted social media to be my entire life". So what people don't know about me is I was never on any social media before TikTok. Not active on Facebook, not active on Instagram, none of it. But when I got my hands on TikTok and saw the realness there and how much fun people were having and how people could convey a message in a really compelling way, or just spread kindness and generosity, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

And I realized in that moment, wow, this is the future of social media when just the regular old girl who lives in Denver, Colorado can get on there and then go viral overnight because she has something to say. And I loved watching these people go big. I love the way storytelling is done on TikTok. There's some really big TikTokkers who got completely viral just by being good storytellers. And I also love short form. Maybe it's because I have the attention span of a gnat myself, but short form is really fun, and I find it challenging. It's really hard to write.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Now, TikTok, when you started was three minutes. Now it's been up to 10 minute videos. You have a sweet spot of what you aim for?

Christy Faith:
I have not done a 10 minute video. It's a goal of mine because I really want to start having a presence on YouTube, really only because I don't think it's smart to just be on one app. TikTok is known for just deleting people's accounts overnight. So I'm definitely, it's a goal of mine in the next year to work on more long form. But I believe that a really good TikTok strategy is to do it all. So people that only do trending sounds that are under 15 seconds, they stop getting traction. People that only do the long droning on, talking videos, people start to just scroll right along, because they're like, I don't want to listen to Christy again for three straight minutes. So I really mix it up and have fun with it.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So when the first videos you did were the typical TikTok dancing videos. Then when did you decide it could be a platform for your homeschooling?

Christy Faith:
Pretty early on. I remember within weeks I started doing talking videos because of the comments that I got. I woke up the morning after doing, it was a Reese Witherspoon voiceover, is all I did. And I did something about how homeschooling can be done and only a couple hours a day. And I woke up the next morning with I think around 15,000 views. But that, I'm a girl who's never been on social media. I could not believe that 15 thou... I mean, I was nauseous. I couldn't eat for six weeks. I just couldn't believe it. But what was really startling to me was the comments. I had thousands of women overnight asking me, How do I start? How do I homeschool? And I realized, oh my goodness, where are the other home schoolers on this app? And there weren't many, and there weren't many who were homeschooling TikTokkers.

So there are women on there with pretty big followings that they have their platform and they happen to homeschool and their more lifestyle. But in terms of homeschool TikTokkers, there wasn't really anyone. And I was thinking to myself, man, what if this could be a business? Because I come from, and we can get into that later. I come from an educational background, so I have the credibility to speak on things of education and explain my own journey as to how I went from supporting conventional education with my whole heart to then deconstructing and entering the homeschooling world. And that ended up moving us to out of Los Angeles and into Denver even.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Let me pull back. You talked about comments.

Christy Faith:
Yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Do you have comments enabled on TikTok now?

Christy Faith:
Comments on everything, yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Okay. On a scale of one to 10, 10 being they really, really, really affect you, and zero being whatever, how do comments affect you?

Christy Faith:
Interesting. I love this question. Okay. Negative comments? Zero.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Okay.

Christy Faith:
Positive comments. Six.

Jon Pfeiffer:
How have you been able to develop that filter to just let the negative comments float off your back?

Christy Faith:
Part of it, honestly, is I realized very early that fights, when people are having fights in my comments section, it just is a magnifier for my message. It just makes your video go viral. And so I stopped being scared of what they... First off, because I am an educated woman who my career was in education, I'm not just spouting opinion. I'm very careful that everything I say, I can back with research. So I always have that. I used to comment back to the trolls and the naysayers with all sorts of statistics and all of that. I stop. I have too many commenters now. I just do a video. You can do a video response on TikTok. If I'm tickled, I'll do a video response on it.

But overall, most people who, okay, so there's a comment last week, and this comment was, "Okay, never let my kids have friends. Check". And then the person did a check mark, and it's like, how ignorant? How could I be offended by that? Because if you think that homeschool families, that our kids have no friends. It's so ignorant. How could I even possibly be offended? So most people's comments, when they are homeschool haters, it's really out of ignorance. So yeah, they don't get to me. They help me.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Do you have a schedule of when you upload?

Christy Faith:
I do. I try to upload every day. I do not upload on Saturdays. When people first get on TikTok, all of the experts on TikTok, the growth experts, and I listen to all of them. They say, oh, post three to five times a day, and whatever you do, be consistent. I've never posted three to five times a day ever. In fact, in the beginning when I didn't know better, before there were all of these experts on TikTok saying, telling people, creators, what to do, if a video went viral and it was getting good views, I just took the next day off and didn't post anything. So I was pretty inconsistent. But then I started to just get really great ideas. And so I generally post once a day and then I never post on... I shouldn't say never. Sometimes if I have one, just a very relaxed thing that I just want to put out there, I'll put it out on Saturday. But I like having one day off where I don't look at the app too.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Which leads into, what strategies do you use to build your [inaudible 00:09:01].

Christy Faith:
Yeah. So I am extremely strategic when it comes to TikTok. I was a student of TikTok for a while before I even made my first video. And when I first went viral, the first thing I did is I analyzed, why did that go viral? Why did that pop? Then I viewed it as a game. I'm naturally a pretty competitive person. And so I would look at videos that had over a million views and I would ask myself, why? What about that? And so there are components, depending on the length of your video, as to how to structure that particular video. So on TikTok, and I don't know if you want me to go into this-

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yes, please.

Christy Faith:
But there's several... Okay. There's several-

Jon Pfeiffer:
A lot of our listeners are creators, so this is very helpful.

Christy Faith:
Okay. Oh, fantastic. And they might disagree, but this is just what's worked for me. It's pretty cool that a homeschooler has this many followers. I know it's not a lot of followers in terms of what is possible on TikTok, but I do think for my niche that I've kept things very homeschool and educational, I am pretty proud of the following that I've been able to gain. So in terms of strategies with TikTok, let's see. Where were we? I generally do post during primetime. I feel like videos do better during primetime. And you can look in your analytics and see when your audience is on the app the most.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And you mean TV primetime?

Christy Faith:
Yeah. S between seven and 7:30, some between seven and nine. Those are my sweet spots. But here's the thing that I want, if your listeners hear nothing, this is what I want them to hear. TikTok has more control than you think they have. You are not really in control. You don't even own your own platform. So one thing that's really helped me relax and be able to have a lot of fun on the app is knowing that I could put out amazing content. And if it's just not the day, or unfortunately, this is an example when there was the Uvalde day shooting, that's what's going to be put out on TikTok. News regarding that. So creators that maybe are doing other content, it's just going to be stuffed. It based on world events, based on their own algorithm, based on all sorts of things.

There are even people that think it's like every 50th video will pop. I know they are in control, but I just focus on making really good content. And on the other side of that, in terms of what a creator can control, we can control the quality of our content. We can control the structure of our videos. I feel like I'm responsible to make a video that's compelling, that someone wants to watch. If I have a video that bombs, I analyze that too. Okay, what exactly was wrong with that? But I also think a great strategy is doing, touching all of the bases. So doing a three minute video, then a one minute video, then doing a trending sound, doing duets, doing all of it. It also helps you play an experiment, which is another big factor about TikTok that I love.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And how much do you incorporate storytelling into your videos?

Christy Faith:
Not as much as I want to. It's been an area that I really want to grow in, and I have that whole imposter syndrome. What story do I have to tell that's anybody would want to hear? But everyone I think has that problem. Unless you have this amazing story of I was on drugs and on the street and now on this. I don't know. But yeah, it's an area that I really want to grow in. I also think it's an area that is smart to grow in strategically for the TikTok accounts. It's definitely in my plan.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What has surprised you about this whole process?

Christy Faith:
What has surprised me? How my life literally changed overnight.

Jon Pfeiffer:
How so? Tell us about that.

Christy Faith:
I went from being nobody to then I'm at a conference and they're like, "Hey, wait, are you"? So first of all, just being recognized at places, at homeschool conferences. It's not like I go to my local grocery store and they're like, "Oh my god". Yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Let me stop you because I want to know about the first time somebody recognized you. Tell me about that and what that felt like.

Christy Faith:
Yeah. So I was nervous because I had a feeling someone might, when I was just at. I flew to a homeschool conference that I was planning to go to with my sister. We bought the tickets even before TikTok even happened. And I had a feeling, because some of my followers said, I mentioned on social media, I'm going to be there. And some of my followers were like, I'm going to be there too. But no, there was a lady in a hallway and I was walking by and she goes, "Wait. Wait a minute. Wait, are you on Instagram"? And I said, "Yeah". "Are you Christy Faith"? And I said, "Yeah".

And then she was sitting down, she had a stroller and a baby, and I just sat down with her and I said, "Are you one of my followers"? And she said, "Yes". And so I made sure to find her. And then I followed her back. And then it was really sweet because later on she wrote, I saw in a comment section, if anyone's embarrassed to talk to Christie Faith, please do. I'm so glad I broke through my nerves and talked to her.

Jon Pfeiffer:
[inaudible 00:14:55]

Christy Faith:
No. I mean, at homeschool conferences, two people recognize me, Jon. Let's be real.

Jon Pfeiffer:
We all have our audience.

Christy Faith:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But that was strange. That was strange. And then in terms of everything else, I've always been an entrepreneur. So I realized the day after I went viral that I should probably start a business. And I didn't know what that was going to be. That's still always changing. But just once I got to about 50,000 followers, I started being invited on podcasts and just all brands approaching me for making content for them. And the process has been fun, but it's been a challenge because it's been a year of everything new, even meeting you. All right. I guess I need an entertainment lawyer. All right. Okay. I guess I need this. I guess I need that.

Jon Pfeiffer:
That's the full disclosure. We work together.

Christy Faith:
Yes. Are we allowed to say that?

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yeah. Yeah. You just said it.

Christy Faith:
Well, I don't know if you edit this after, do you?

Jon Pfeiffer:
No, I rarely do. I rarely do, unless somebody really says something I don't want on the podcast, then I want the flow.

Christy Faith:
Well, since you don't edit it, I just want your audience to know how appreciative I am of you and how generous in spirit you are, and how you have really provided comfort for me in this journey. And I thank you.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You're welcome. It's great working with you.

Christy Faith:
Thanks.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Which is, let's transition.

Christy Faith:
Okay. We are going to talk about you. We can talk about you.

Jon Pfeiffer:
No, no, no, no, no. This is about you. This is about you. Okay. So let's transition. Your background, you have an undergraduate degree in history.

Christy Faith:
Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:
A graduate degree in history.

Christy Faith:
Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And then you started to teach. How many years did you teach?

Christy Faith:
I taught two. Well, I mean, I taught my whole career, but I taught in a classroom.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yes.

Christy Faith:
For two. And we were young, poor, married, and I was in graduate school, and we had to pay the bills. And so I taught while I was doing graduate school.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And that expanded into tutoring.

Christy Faith:
It did.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Can you talk about that.

Christy Faith:
Right. So initially, my life aspiration was to be a college professor and to be a historian, that was my plan. I even did a little bit here and there of adjunct stuff, right after I graduated and got my masters. Real days, realized quickly I did not teaching higher education and I missed my seventh graders. And so that's how I just got the teaching bug. But what I will say is I never thoroughly enjoyed classroom teaching. What happened is I was a decent teacher, and parents started asking me if I could tutor their kids after school. Well, my very first tutoring session, I came home and I said, Scott, this is what I'm going to do. This. I loved this. I've done in 50 minutes what it takes me two weeks to do in a classroom. That was so fun. And then interesting, what's really cool is that particular tutoring session was a fourth grade little boy. We tutored him and helped him with everything, even all of his text prep and everything through UCLA. And so-

Jon Pfeiffer:
I heard that. I had heard that the very first tutoring pupil you went through UCLA with.

Christy Faith:
Yep. And what's crazy is we're going to be in LA and we still text him and we're going to drinks with him. It's like you're old enough to have drinks, man. But that's going to be so fun to see. And there's another kid that we're seeing too. But they're adults now. But-

Jon Pfeiffer:
Then you started tutoring. How did that grow?

Christy Faith:
It grew. Within three weeks. I had a waiting list, and I think it was one of those things where when it just is right, it just clicks. My enthusiasm, I think was just contagious. My happiness and my satisfaction in doing that, I think it was just evident and I loved it. And so within three weeks, I had a wait list and I started out going house to house quickly. Scott said we should hire someone that can do math. So we did. Within a couple of years, we opened our very first location. And at one point we had, I think it was like 25 or 27 specialists working for us. We did it a while.

Jon Pfeiffer:
I mean, you have a history background, but the subject you felt the most comfortable tutoring were what?

Christy Faith:
All the humanities. All the humanities.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You currently homeschool your children, correct?

Christy Faith:
Yes, I do.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And you have four children, including twins?

Christy Faith:
Yes. Well, you've done your homework.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yes, indeed. I told you I was going to do a deep dive. And tell me how that process works. I'm pretty sure it is all in the same room, ala little house on the prairie, or do you have them separated?

Christy Faith:
Yeah. I love this question because people are very curious and also I work. So how does a working mom homeschool her children. By the way, a lot of working moms do. It's just this day and age.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Well, I'm going to ask you to answer your rhetorical question. How does a working mom homeschool her children?

Christy Faith:
Yeah. You have a messy house. No, I'm just kidding. We have a strategy. No. So the way homeschooling works is nothing like what you see in conventional schools. So if you want to do it without being miserable. So yes. Can you buy a program that has each and every kid separately in that school year in front of a computer screen all day doing all the subjects and spending seven hours doing them? Yes, you can homeschool that way. It's a style. There's six different styles of homeschooling. That style is called traditional.

Most families, if they start out that way, they don't end up that way. It doesn't last. You either quit homeschooling or you burn out. The way homeschooling really is done across America and elsewhere is very much one room schoolhouse. So there are many subjects that do not need to be taught by grade level.

So history is the perfect example. Science in the elementary years, that's not a grade level thing. You can just gather all your kids and do science together and that type of a thing. And then there are grade level subjects like math. Each of my kids is in a separate grade level for math. When you teach your little ones to read, that is one on one, right? You got to do that. It happens pretty quickly though. And basically I have, by the age of about eight or nine, I have my kids pretty much on the road to being autodidacts. Which is what we want.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Which is what?

Christy Faith:
And autodidact is basically a self-taught person. So I don't believe that, I don't like the idea of a kid plopping down in their desk and staring at their teacher. And they even need to be told what page they're on. They wait. I believe in self-directed learning. And I think that it sparks curiosity a lot better too. So I make sure to buy materials that foster that. Where if I am busy like on a podcast right now, you can still open your book and do that lesson to the best of your ability. And then I can check on it later. So not that I'm ignore, I meet with all of my kids. In fact, with my oldest, we have an appointment time every day and we go over all of the work. And then we also have the in-depth discussions regarding the literature, for example. We have that at our appointment time. But overall, my oldest can do 90% of his school day on his own with world class materials.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And what is, well, two questions come to mind. How did you develop the curriculum? I assume this is an evolving thing over time. And then two, I'm going to throw out both questions at once. I hate doing this, but I'm going to do it before I forget them. And then two, take me through an average homeschooling day. So let's first go with the curriculum.

Christy Faith:
Okay. First off, we don't write our own curriculum. We buy it. And there are even free options online. If parents are really on a budget, you can even get homeschooling done for absolutely free. So basically what homeschooling is, a parent is sourcing the materials. And this is what is really wonderful because all the time, almost on every single live, I get a parent asking me, "But I'm not good at math. What am I going to do when my kids in high school"? To which I say, "None of us teach high school math. None of us do".

Jon Pfeiffer:
What do you do? So if you're a non calculus person, what do you do

Christy Faith:
Yeah. So there's so many options. One, there's live online academies that are at... So the woman who teaches my child Latin has her degree in classical languages from Stanford. So unlike public schools or even private schools, you cannot choose your teacher. You cannot choose even your curriculum. You have to go with what they're going with. When you are a homeschooler, you have their freedom. You can decide what language you want your kids to learn, with whom and with what book and what materials.

So the different ways that we outsource our homeschooling is live online academies. Most of us are in co-ops. A lot of us do cottage schools. A cottage school is, there's different versions of it, but it's where you send your child somewhere maybe twice a week. And there is a teacher that's teaching a small group, like a little house on the prairie situation, like a one room schoolhouse.

And then you're doing homeschooling the other days of the week. It's very common for private schools to offer homeschool enrichment days. And there's one five... We don't use this one, but there's one five minutes from our house where the child goes two days a week and they're doing the heavy hitter subjects there. And then you're doing homeschooling on the other days. That's more of a part-time homeschooling situation. But it's still wonderful because the parents are in the driver's seat.

And then of course, there's scripted curriculum. So parents who are very insecure, for example, about teaching their kid how to read. There's amazing resources where you literally read the script, you cannot mess it up. You read the script. So it's a misconception that... In fact, I think homeschooling high school is one of the most important times to homeschool a kid.

Jon Pfeiffer:
No, I mean, in hearing this answer, I don't homeschool. We send our kids to traditional school, but it just made my shoulders relax because I'm thinking I couldn't teach chemistry.

Christy Faith:
No, I can't either.

Jon Pfeiffer:
[inaudible 00:26:51]how you could do it. So now the second question is, take me through an average, your typical homeschool day.

Christy Faith:
Okay.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Okay. So I'm your kids. What time do you get them up?

Christy Faith:
So my kids have alarms and there are different times of the day. And what I'm going to include, I'm going to tell you everything because I think that anyone who's considering homeschool, it helps to have a window because you also, especially since I work, you have to be organized. And so I can share how I've done that because we don't really separate schoolwork from kitchen cleanup. It's all part of our day. So my kids wake up to alarms. They're expected to make their bed and pick up their rooms. We let them play in their rooms at night. And so their rooms get thrashed. And so at least when they wake up in the morning, their room has to be tidy and they have to make their bed. My oldest starts math. My oldest does math twice a day. That's just the policy because math is important to us, and we use a very rigorous program. My younger ones, they start something called memory work. Have you heard of that before?

Jon Pfeiffer:
I have not.

Christy Faith:
Okay.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Or if I have, I don't remember.

Christy Faith:
Okay. Memory work is basically, think of how Abraham Lincoln was educated, and even Frederick Douglass educated himself. He memorized. He memorized. The reason why Frederick Douglass was such an amazing orator is because he had a book of the best speeches of all time. And he memorized those speeches. And so I definitely believe in memory work. So my kids memorize math facts. They memorize basic Latin foreign language declensions and things like that. They memorize little history sentences to jingles so that they can remember things about history. So that when later on in the junior high and high school years, they have this framework that they can plug in because they have this understanding from their early childhood.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So the memory work, does that include when they're younger? The math tables?

Christy Faith:
Yep. Yeah. We do skip counting and all of that. That's all included in memory work. And if you are a faith based homeschooler, usually you memorize little Bible verses. What else? Oh yeah. We memorize science. So Newton's law, even though they might not fully understand it, when they get to it later and it'll be easier to comprehend later because they have this piece memorized when they're younger.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Foundation. Now, as I was talking to my wife about this, she said that means that Christy has to be the lunch lady too.

Christy Faith:
Yes. I just-

Jon Pfeiffer:
So you get all aspects of homeschooling.

Christy Faith:
Yeah. And I just did a TikTok on the downsides of homeschooling and food preparation was one of them.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Okay. It just popped into my head. But do you allow your children unsupervised time on the computer?

Christy Faith:
Unsupervised.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Unsupervised?

Christy Faith:
Yes. Yeah. In a limited capacity.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Do you allow them on social media?

Christy Faith:
No.

Jon Pfeiffer:
At what age? At some point they'll try to sneak on social media.

Christy Faith:
Oh yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:
At what age are you going to sanction and say, okay, it's okay.

Christy Faith:
We haven't decided. But what I will say, my general parenting philosophy is not to shelter, is to, while I want them to experience things, like experimenting. For example, how video game addiction is a big thing among kids now, rather than me controlling video games and saying, you only get this much time and rather than me imposing that on my kids, I want to teach them to make healthy choices for themselves while they're still under my roof, even if that includes failing. And so in general, that's how we view our parenting.

So when my kids get on social media, I think we will give them probably more freedom than maybe some people are comfortable with because I want to train them while they're under my roof. I don't want them to leave my house and have no skills, life skills or coping skills to manage those things on their own. But Scott and I haven't decided about when they're going to get their first phone or when they're going to get their first TikTok. I do think social media, and if I think having the internet in your pocket is dangerous. I do know, I have read the research on child development and brain development and that a lot of kids do not have the ability to stop themselves in that. So I think all of that needs to be taken to account along with your kids' level of maturity as to what they're ready for.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Shifting gears again. Just the home schooling in general, of the demographics, men versus women, what percentage of the home schoolers, the primary teachers are women versus men?

Christy Faith:
The majority are women.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And is there an age when most people start homeschooling?

Christy Faith:
There really isn't it. Some people plan to homeschool from the very beginning and then some people homeschool because the school system is no longer serving them for whatever reason. Either the kid has special needs and they need to find another situation. What I will say is that what the pandemic showed parents and why homeschooling. Homeschooling grew, but not why you think it did. Because the numbers, when schools reopened, the homeschooling numbers were still larger. Parents saw what their kids were learning and they had realizations. So one friend called me up one day and said, "My kid was just assigned to read an unbiased news source on this particular topic. And the list of approved news outlets were all leaning to one side". She's like, "I had no idea". And so things like that, I think parents saw what was really happening. They could look at the curriculum. Parents also realized, we don't need seven hours for this. We don't.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What is your view of, because it happened for about a year and a half, in some places, two years, schooling on Zoom.

Christy Faith:
Yes. So what that was is not homeschooling.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Right. Oh, I'm a hundred percent aware of that. I was up for a year, for two semesters, I taught my class at Pepperdine on Zoom and it's complete... It's obviously not homeschooling and it's a completely different experience, but I'm curious your view on it as somebody that is knowledgeable about teaching.

Christy Faith:
Yeah. Well, I think that it didn't work out well. I think teachers were really struggling, kids were struggling, parents were struggling. I think it was really unfair because here we have parents who are trying to work full time and then this is thrown on them. So it was very overwhelming. And I think if you have your kid on a screen all day for learning, I think you're missing out on what homeschooling can be because it can be a rich experience of family connection. And if your child is on screens all day, it's not really homeschooling. So that made me sad because a lot of kids can't learn that way either. So it was unfortunate, but everyone did their best.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Well, again, from a personal level, it happened overnight and we're talking, Pepperdine professors had 10 year old Dell laptops that they were going to do this on. You can't. You have to have the equipment if you're going to do it right. And that took everybody a good four, five months to get set up.

Christy Faith:
Yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And you roll that out across the nation. Okay. So let me get back to demographics. Are there areas of the country where homeschooling is bigger than other areas?

Christy Faith:
Yeah. I would say that in the South, Bible Belt, Texas. It's interesting though, the majority of all of my most recent consultations have not been with faith-based families. I think homeschooling is growing outside of what people traditionally think that homeschooling demographic is. Interestingly, homeschooling started in the 1960s with hippies. It didn't start as a religious movement. 40% of home schoolers are not white, and people don't realize that. And homeschooling among Black families has grown exponentially. Exponentially. The numbers are crazy. I think it's like it's grown 500% and I can double check that number, but that's the last number that I checked. Maybe I checked it about six months ago. So Scott just gave me a thumbs up that number was right. It's pretty exciting-

Jon Pfeiffer:
She's getting [inaudible 00:36:38] from the sidelines.

Christy Faith:
Yeah, he's right there.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So you had mentioned earlier a homeschooling convention.

Christy Faith:
Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What kind of resources are out there for people to utilize?

Christy Faith:
There's too many. There is too many. There are too many resources. Man, if you are a secular homeschool, you can buy all sorts of curriculum. There's even a curriculum called Woke History. There's so much out there. And you can find faith-based curriculum. There's six different homeschooling styles. And within those styles, there's curriculum companies that serve families that educate in that style. And one thing that's really interesting that Americans don't realize is the education that is occurring in our both public and private school system, is largely one style out of the six. And that's called traditional schooling, where you have different subjects, blocks of time, everything's separate. Whereas there's other styles of homeschooling like Charlotte Mason and Classical, even unschooling that are a completely different approach.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So this is my second to last question.

Christy Faith:
Okay.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What questions I asked that I should have asked?

Christy Faith:
Oh. What questions haven't you asked that you should have asked?

Jon Pfeiffer:
That nothing is coming to mind, it puts my mind at ease.

Christy Faith:
Okay. Yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Now, here is my last question. Where can people find you on the internet?

Christy Faith:
People can find me on my TikTok, which is Christie Faith and on Instagram, which is Christie Faith Homeschool. And I'm also on Facebook and YouTube and all the things. I go live every Friday. I love going live. I love connecting. And yeah, people can reach out to me. Thank you.

Jon Pfeiffer:
We'll be right back.