Is the right move to teach what I'm doing before I've finished doing it

Question

Four townhomes under construction right now in Burleson and I am already getting DMs asking how I structure the builds, how I find the zoning pockets, how I handle the financing when I'm wiring to a title company I've never physically been in. People want to pay me to walk them through it. I quoted $500 for a two hour call and the first person said yes before I finished typing. The problem is I don't know yet if the four I'm building right now are going to close the way I planned. The Burleson sites penciled at a 22 percent margin in September and lumber and labor have already moved since then, so that number is softer than I'd like. If I teach this process and then the back half of the build goes sideways, I'm teaching from a case study that hasn't resolved. I'm not worried about fraud or anything like that, I'd disclose all of it, but there's something uncomfortable about charging someone to learn from a play that's still in motion. On the other side, the four I completed in Waxahachie last year did exactly what I said they would and I've got the HUD-1s to prove it. Maybe that's the curriculum and the current build is just the live example running in parallel. I don't know. The two-hour call is booked for Thursday and I still haven't decided if I'm going to take the money.

Rena Guide · Answer

The discomfort you're describing is actually the right signal to pay attention to, and I think you've already named the honest answer inside your own post.

The Waxahachie deals are complete, documented, and the numbers held. That is a real track record. The Burleson builds are live, the margin has already softened from 22 percent, and the outcome is genuinely unknown. Those are two different things, and the distinction matters for how you frame what you're selling.

Here is where the ethics become practical: if someone pays you $500 expecting to learn a proven, repeatable system, and you deliver a live case study with an unresolved outcome and a moving cost structure, that is a mismatch between what they think they're buying and what they're getting. Not fraud, as you said, but a gap that can damage trust and your reputation later.

The version that works is the one you already sketched. The curriculum is Waxahachie. The Burleson builds are a transparent, real-time illustration running alongside it, disclosed clearly as still in motion, margin uncertain, outcome pending. If your Thursday call opens with "here is what I proved last year, and here is what I'm testing right now and cannot guarantee," the person on the other end gets something honest and genuinely rare: a practitioner teaching in the middle of the work.

One thing worth knowing for the longer arc: the guide for this strategy notes that the education space rewards demonstrable results and suffers most when educators overpromise. Your HUD-1s from Waxahachie are the asset. The current build is context, not the proof of concept.

What does the person booked for Thursday think they're buying, based on how you described the call to them?

Rena Expert · Answer

The Waxahachie HUD-1s are the core of your case here. Four completed projects with documented outcomes is a real curriculum. The Burleson build is not the product you're selling, it's the live context that makes the teaching current and honest.

The assumption doing the most work in your discomfort is that your credibility depends on the current deals closing at 22 percent. It doesn't. Your credibility rests on whether you actually know how to structure a build, read a zoning pocket, and wire to an unfamiliar title company, and you demonstrably do. The margin softness on Burleson is a feature of the teaching, not a flaw in it. Someone paying $500 for two hours wants to understand how you think when lumber moves and the number gets soft. That's the part they can't get from a case study with a clean ending.

The risk you didn't name is scope creep on the coaching relationship. One person who said yes at $500 before you finished typing is also someone who may come back on Thursday, hear live construction detail, and assume ongoing access. What you're offering Thursday and what they're buying in their head may not match. Get that explicit before the call starts.

The other structural thing worth separating: a two-hour call is a transaction, not a program. If you're going to do this more than twice, those are different decisions requiring different infrastructure, and depending on how you structure ongoing coaching or a course, there may be consumer protection and securities-adjacent considerations your attorney should weigh in on. One question for a licensed professional there, then move on.

The Waxahachie outcomes are the curriculum. Burleson is the seminar running in real time.

What margin compression figure would actually change your thesis on the current build, and have you modeled that scenario explicitly yet?

Is the right move to teach what I'm doing before I've finished doing it

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