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The Good and the Beautiful founder Jenny Phillips is shown. (Courtesy Dara Johnson)

Courtesy Dara Johnson

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The Good and the Beautiful founder Jenny Phillips and her husband Daniel Phillips are shown. (Courtesy Dara Johnson)

Courtesy Dara Johnson

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Starting her own curriculum whose products have been used by millions of people was not on Jenny Phillips’ agenda when she decided to homeschool her kids more than a decade ago.

The Lehi resident and former musician found the existing homeschool curricula were not created by people who homeschool, and she wanted something different from teaching in a classroom and something that worked for her children. 

Phillips, who has a background in writing and editing, created a language arts curriculum that focused on family and faith and infused things she loved as a child, such as poetry and nature, into the program.  

She shared what she built with four families she was friends with, then placed it in a free PDF and watched it resonate with parents across the country. 

“I was just trying to solve my own problems because my problems are representative of other homeschool moms’ problems,” Phillips said.

“I think it’s important when you’re creating a product that it’s not just checking all the boxes, but I think you can really tell when there’s a passion behind it, and someone really cares deeply about it.” 

In 2015, she officially launched The Good and the Beautiful. 

In the last decade, it grew to become one of the largest Christian-based homeschool companies in the world, producing curriculums for multiple subjects and an extensive children’s bookshop. Phillips said they’ve released more than 100 products this year, and a third party, GrowJo, estimated their annual revenue in the tens of millions. 

“We’re trying to offer a resource for homeschoolers that actually works because it’s very overwhelming to teach so many different kids on so many different levels without prior teaching experience,” she said. “We’re trying to make it feasible and easy for parents to homeschool.

“The other is that we are combining strong academics with all the beautiful things that people want to have through homeschooling, like a focus on nature and on family and on faith.” 

National footprint

Phillips said they love Utah County and chose to make it the company’s home — and that it’s been a fantastic place to do so. Some of the parents she first shared the curriculum with joined the company, and many on staff are from the state. 

Perhaps distinguishing the company from other faith-based creators in Utah, though, is that it did not follow a linear path of growing prominently in the state’s Latter-day Saints community and then spreading outward. 

Instead, Phillips said once the curriculum was posted online, consumers bought it from across the country, and it took on a non-denominational persona designed to be used by all Christians. 

“All of our curriculum development directors are of different religious backgrounds, and we also have a very large group of reviewers, professional reviewers, expert reviewers that belong to many different Christian denominations,” she said. 

“We don’t feel that curriculum should be teaching doctrine, but so we just speak to the very, very basic biblical principles that unify all Christians, such as kindness, God created the world, God loves us. Those are very basic principles.”

Full commitment

The rapid growth of the company showed Phillips had created a product that other parents and children wanted. Early into the process, though, the growth became overwhelming for her. 

She went from being a traveling musician who quit her career to focus on her kids to a busy business owner. 

When the company outgrew her home and they signed a lease on her first warehouse, she saw forklifts, pallet racks and two dozen employees and had a moment of dread. She remembers crying in the bathroom ready to be done.

“I looked around and I thought, ‘I don’t want any of this,'” she said. 

Suddenly, she said she started thinking of all the letters she had received from kids who used the curriculum, talking about the program and how much it impacted their lives, and her perspective shifted. 

“I just all of a sudden started thinking about all of these kids and all of the good in the world that I have the potential to do, and I made a choice at that decision to put my whole heart into it and to go for it,” Phillips said. “I started realizing that it was something I was blessed to be able to do, rather than it being a burden.” 

Since that moment, she said she has worked her heart out, and that the company’s scaling has been crazy.  

The Good and the Beautiful recently opened a 100,000-square-foot warehouse originally designed to meet the demand of four times the growth. Phillips said by the time the facility was completed this year it had reached capacity. 

The company is looking beyond homeschool curricula to spread the good, creating books for all kids to read. This year, they gave away 200,000 free books for a summer reading program. The company has also built six schools in Africa and 50 wells for 50 villages, Phillips said. 

The company is rooted in Phillips’ desire to engage in her children’s learning experience. And her advice to parents is to do the same. 

“Don’t underestimate the influence that a parent can have on their children’s education,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you have to homeschool, but just being involved, becoming aware of what your children’s needs are and really pondering. You can have a great impact whether they’re in public school or being homeschooled by just becoming involved and aware.”