Flywheel Development Log

aka essential business logic for SEH 4 and its rollout for replicability.

Thu Jul 27, 2023

We agree that we have to prove the model now, there was some controversy regarding timing the builder (paid) - apprentice (paying) tracks. For the paying track, we can clarify the 'paying for what'. Are they paying for education? I claim our education is better (more applied, immersive, diverse) than tech school.

Let's keep clear on focus: next Seed Eco-Home build in Savannah in 6 weeks, with runway of another 6 weeks (3 month runway based on $50k net from sale from $200k revenue and repayment of $150k loans, and payroll for 4 of $16k/month). If we make it through this 3 months, then we have $200k in the bank AFTER repaying the last $50k of loan after the second house sells. At that point, I would consider this 'home free' as $200k in the bank allows us to operate comfortably) if we have only 4 employees ($4k/month/person) - so about a 10 month runway until the next house sale.

For 4 workers for now: risk is that some major fuckup on a limited runway of $50k for 3 months.

Assume we have $50k for 3 months runway after selling the Maysville house, what can we do?

1. Hire 4 workers. 40 hour week ($25/hr, whereas starting carpenter pay is $11-20 nationwide, $13 average for apprentices)
2. Recruit 8 paying apprentices - 4 in design, 4 in Movement Entrepreneurship

The brutal facts are:

1. I am working 40 hour construction weeks with the 4 workers, on a 4 day 10 hour week schedule for construction
2. I am spending 6 hours in the classroom. This includes 3 hours Friday teaching open source performance culture: collaborative design, heavy focus on design thinking, mental models, performance mindset, solving problems. Survey of Everything to get people onto the mindset of solving pressing world issues. I am also spending 3 hours on Friday teaching Machine Design (which starts with the House in Year 1)
3. I am spending about 16 hours with any due diligence on teaching prep, or getting permits for the next build.

Summary of tracks:

1. Builder - 40 hour building
2. Designer - 20 hr building, 20 hr study minimum (3 of this is class time)
3. Open Source Ecologist - 20 hr building, 20 hr study minimum (3 hr class time)

My duties:

1. 40 hours of participative construction management, easiing out of this after 6 months
2. 6 hrs teaching
3. 12 hrs teaching prep (this constributes to ongoing curriculum refinement)

And in this process, we go balls out (that's an engineering term) on building the Savannah house. We have 8 builder equivalent from 4 full time and 8 part time builders. If we get really good people, then I am inspired, not drained, by teaching. I have previously seen joy of pure inspiration upon me teaching workshops, but only when it came to edutainment. Here, it's more about getting shit done, so I really have to up the quality of the commitment/grit in the people i teach. That will be the challenge, my experience has been poor so far on people doing what it takes for the 1000 mile march. To summarize:

1. 12 recruited for 9 full time builder equivalent including me (360 hours per week), 4 week build time of the 2000 sf model)

No deadspots of effort as we now have full detail + CAD up to finish trim, and the lot we're building has no inspections required

1. I am inspired because with the build detail available, i can leave the role of designer/documenter which I am doing currently for the build detail.
2. The effort is based on 'everyone starts on the factory floor'. Reason is that Design-builders-entrepreneurs need to know how to build, otherwise they produce shit design like most of the world does.
3. The effort is

The above seems to address the intensity learnings from the last Apprenticeship, where information overload was complete for the participants. In the above scenario, we divide the issue into separate builder-designer-ecologist tracks.

I could envision that builders will want to join the designer/ecologist tracks, but I think the answer there is simply to charge them for the apprenticeship time, so that it's fair to the people who pay.

Do you think the above would work? Does this address the sequencing, regarding supreme focus on house build+sale cycles? Regarding risk of frustrating the build and money proof. You mentioned spending time teaching rather than getting performance from the people. It seems we have a workable solution:

1. Program makes no compromise on finishing the house, but only adds effort to it via the apprenticeship tracks (apprentices still have to have an interest and ability to build, that is part of admission)
2. Is my time taken away for teaching? I think if we do the 4x10 schedule for the build track, we are all good. Can I do it? I think so, I work all day already. The real question is if I lose house-building focus because I'm teaching? I don't think so - I can teach in my sleep. For teaching build skill - we have skilled people that our students learn from. For class time, we have tons of materials already available - the question is more the quality of the students who would have to have higher bandwidth to actually learn. And i plan on selecting only people who I think would be capable of rapid learning for those tracks. If they aren't capable, they are just builders, and can take longer to learn. I really think the success will be at the point of recruting, and if I don't think there are good candidates for the apprenticeship, we simply don't take them. I think we need to select for the quality of people for potential succession. Ideally the candidates are so good that it's a joy to teach, as people are not overloaded but asking for more tasty morsels.

Thanks for listening here - let me know what clarity I still need here.