Shelter Institute
Founded by Pat and Patsy Hennin in 1974, Shelter Institute is a house-building school and design/build company, with a focus on timber frame construction. Thousands of people from all over the world have traveled to their campus in Woolwich, Maine for their Purely Post and Beam and Design Build classes.
They have been featured in hundreds of publications including PBS's This Old House, Popular Science, New York Times, and many more. More than just a construction company, the team at Shelter is truly passionate about education. They believe anyone can, and should, feel both confident and competent in taking care of and building their own homes. Liam first heard about Shelter Institute from John Taylor Gatto's book, A Different Kind of Teacher, where they were lauded as the perfect example of a hands-on education experience. (You can learn more about the beautiful and rich history of Shelter Institute on their YouTube channel.) Patsy Hennin sadly passed away in 2001 from breast cancer, but her legacy lives on. Pat now runs Shelter Institute with their children, Gaius and Blueberry.
Liam was personally interested in Shelter's educational offerings ever since he heard about their classes, and he and his brothers went to Maine and took the Purely Post and Beam class in 2018. The experience was inspiring and they left the class feeling truly capable of someday building a timber frame structure. But our business relationship with Shelter didn't begin until later.
When the three of us came home from California after filming an online course for one of our clients, Scott Groves, we wanted to find other ways to employ the potential of online education. Our goal was to find someone that already had an established and proven curriculum. That's when Liam first got the idea to pitch to Shelter: to turn their famous Purely Post and Beam class into an online course.
After exchanging a few emails, the Shelter team decided it was worth hearing us out in person. We drove from Philadelphia, PA to Woolwich, Maine, and met with Pat, Blueberry, and Gaius early the following morning to present them our idea. While they expressed excitement about the possibilities an online course would provide for them, they were hesitant to jump right in. Their biggest concern was to maintain the integrity of the Shelter brand, built over the last several decades, and they wanted time to think things over. We drove ten hours back home with little idea of whether or not they would go for it. (We later realized we spent more time in the car than we did actually in Maine.) A few weeks later, though, they called us to say they were on board.
The first part of our process with the team at Shelter was to produce a few smaller, informational-based videos so they could experience what it was like to work with us. They quickly published those proof-of-concept videos to gauge how their audience responded to the new type of content & to the idea of a video-based online course. These videos ended up receiving excellent feedback from their audience and beyond (in fact, one of those first videos we made now has over 1.2 million views).
Finally, after a lot of careful planning and preparation, we spent an entire week on the Shelter campus to film their Purely Post And Beam course from beginning to end. It was one of the most challenging yet rewarding shoots we've had so far. We ended up losing almost an entire production day because of heavy rains on the metal roof of the workshop we were filming in, ruining our audio. This put us behind schedule, so we had to rearrange our plans and split up into two teams to get the job done. Despite the odds, we had everything in the bag by the end of the week and we were ready to head home and edit!
The course launched in November, 2019, just in time for the Christmas season. Sales were steady, and the feedback Shelter received was encouraging. A few months later, however, the Coronavirus pandemic hit the United States. Shelter had to cancel all of their in-person classes for the entire year, and the future became uncertain. But what's a more perfect time to pick up a skill you've always wanted to learn than while you're quarantined at home? Gaius and Blueberry came up with the idea of promoting a sale for the online course inspired by quarantine, and we even edited a sale video from footage they recorded of themselves in Maine.
People from all over the world were enrolling, and they got dozens of emails from students who shared how much it encouraged and inspired them. Many people, even as far as China and Australia, sent pictures of the timber frame projects they were working on. The online course gave Shelter the opportunity to reach students even during a worldwide pandemic, and the revenue from the course helped make up for the loss of their in-person classes. This also brought traffic to their site where people ordered tools from their online tool store.
The online course also furthered their reach so that those who can't afford to fly to Maine for a week or more can still have the opportunity to learn from them. Their YouTube following has grown from 4,000 to 40,000+ subscribers, and their videos are among the most-watched timber framing videos on YouTube. We're looking forward to collaborating on future thorough, easy-to-watch online courses for Shelter Institute that will continue to educate people all over the world about timber framing and house-building.
Pat Hennin, Founder of Shelter Institute
