What it takes to offer Enki - history of business

[bas]

Detailed Overview of the Business: 

In 1991, having seen Beth's work with children and the vision she was unfolding, a group of parents asked that she start a school with her unique approach. Enki began in response that request and with it, the Shambhala School and the Enki Teacher Training, both in Halifax NS,  began. The notion from the beginning was that Enki would start paying its staff (Beth, Blake, and Christina) when the school was on its feet. Until such time all money went to expenses and the school teachers' salaries. 

For the first 4 years there were no written materials, just the training. This was, in large part out of concern that, once written, Enki would become dogmatised. As we grew, people needed and requested more support so the initial guides were written, but only for those who had done the training. Then other people asked (persistently) for those. We resisted releasing them because of the hardening that the written word alone stirs, but eventually gave in to the repeated requests.

We resisted creating resource materials for another 5 years for fear that people would mistake the support material for the heart of Enki. Then we developed the resource books because people were burning out trying to reinvent the wheel and because it is hard to go from vision to reality with no support materials - but we were still concerned about these being misleading, leading people to mistake content support and suggestions for the heart of the work. Finally, in response to parent need and requests, we added the Instruction Manuals - and we were that much more concerned about rigidity taking root, and still only sell them within the packages. All the way, we have held concern that once one offers materials, people mistake that for the heart of the approach and a lot of "shoulds"" and dogma is the result – encapsulated in the phrase “not Enki enough.” 

So selling materials was not the goal or the impulse through which we began Enki. Since our original focus was on bringing the education to schools, we all thought that the schools would grow enough to support the work done by Enki Central. We all assumed the lack of pay would last a couple of years and we were willing to put in that time for the sake of bringing Enki to birth. But we learned, repeatedly, that schools never feel they are on their feet and after 4 years, we brought in management consultants to look for ways to make it all more viable. 

The management consultants had ideas, which we tried without success. This cycle continued through 4 business consultants, 3 Charter School Proposals, and 2 more Enki schools - with never enough money to pay the Enki staff at all. During this time we also worked with 4 fundraisers (2 experienced parents, and 2 paid professional fundraisers). The conclusion of all consultants and fundraisers, after a great deal of work on their parts and expense on our part, was that Enki is not viable as a “business’ in today’s definition of that term. They, and the Enki leadership (directors and board), also felt that it was not in anyone's interest for the faculty to work for free and that it was important that a significant part of work time be considered as deferred payment. We moved to that structure with all work done in the first 5 years seen as a donation, and much of the payment for the next 10 years earmarked as deferred, (one third viewed as a donation and two thirds as deferred). For the last 6 years, and still today and for the near future, all faculty are paid for 1/3 of their work, 1/3 payment is deferred, and 1/3 is donated. Each of the faculty works a very different amount of time, but the time paid remains proportional as does the pay rate.

 

Suggestions from the management team included the above, and: 

• making schools pay in dues (we tried but it never worked);  
  
• cutting back materials so that the price reflected industry standard on mark up (that would undermine Enki as that would mean 2-3 books and nothing else in a package); 
  
• raising the price to the industry standard (8 times individual production would be about $3200 per package – so a “no go”); 
  
• running Enki as an online teacher education program (only now do we have the video conferencing capability for this to make sense and we hope to begin trying it out next year);            
• include video demonstrations as no one else does (did, and it made no difference to sales and though useful to families, caused a greater financial and work time loss for Enki); 
• selling online digital books (tried and lost $11,000 on that as the current systems cannot deal with the complexity that IS Enki); 
  
• reselling books to lower cost (tried and found the checking each page and replacing and updating as needed was far more costly and a waste of important creative time for Enki central);
  
• work with an SEO company to get us better marketing (did and lost $10,000, then we did it ourselves through a paid ad on mothering.com and got Enki to page 3); 
  
• work more with charter schools as they have more money (we have - several times - and they all don't feel they have the money to invest in ongoing mentoring and training, and they are looking for financial deals). 
  

The fundraisers all concluded that schools, and not curriculum companies like Enki, get grants. And, further, that our curriculum is too far ahead of its time to get even a second look by foundations. They all felt it not worth pursuing - and we were down $7000 for that information. They suggested raising the price of materials to market top (which we did).

 

Production of Materials: 

Some have asked why, with such costly materials, Enki must depend on so much volunteer help and the cooperation of the full community in the CBE policies. This is a straightforward situation with 4 elements: 1) the sheer amount of material; 2)  the nature of ground breaking material, 3) the small size of the group we serve; and, 4) the standard cost of running a business. 

1. Because Enki is such a profoundly different approach to education, we have found that teachers (whether at home or in the classroom) need detailed guidance and accessible resource materials to support their work. This means that we provide a lot of material and all books are sold for 1/4 the mark up considered the industry standard (you can see this in that you get about 10 times as much material in an Enki package as you do in a package from Live Education).
   
2. Enki resources are unique and ground breaking and involve many, many cultures; they are not a repackaging of materials that are already on the market. As a result, the time and care it takes to develop and authenticate them is phenomenal. 
   
3. Though we are a lively and engaged group, in business terms, we have a very small community to whom we sell. We hope this changes over the years and that one day it will allow for payment of deferred wages, but for now - and the last 20 years - our group is a small, though ever growing, one. 
4. The nature of running a business is that it usually takes 50% of the net for operating expenses (after the hard costs of production of each package); this is industry standard. This means that, for example, for a $700 package, about $300 goes to hard costs for the materials a given person receives (not including the costs of the original writing etc.), and of the remaining $400, $200 goes to operating expenses exclusive of salaries (we run under the norm on this closer to 35% than 50% or about $150). That leaves $250 per package to pay for the administrative and consultation work. At the numbers we sell, this covers just under half the time that actually goes into this. So half this work and all of the original research and writing for each book is done as donated time.