Your ability to remain in equanimity is your is your greatest tool. Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host. Ryan Willard. I recently had the pleasure of joining Jason Owens on the Small Business Breakthrough podcast, where we explore some of the biggest challenges architects face when growing their practices. Jason specializes in helping small business owners break through bottlenecks and build more profitable, sustainable enterprises, this was a really enjoyable conversation for myself and for Jason about why so many architects find themselves overworked, underpaid and stuck in the weeds of their business. In this episode, I share insights from working with hundreds of architects on how to break free from this cycle, how to step back, streamline operations and build a business that works for you, rather than one that simply consumes your time and energy. If you've ever found yourself buried in project work, struggling to delegate or questioning whether all the effort is worth it, this episode is for you. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice business of architecture's flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how he might be able to help you. Please follow the link in the information. We have
a really special guest this week, because we've found somebody that is helping architects grow their businesses through the bottlenecks that they've created while they started to scale their business. You know, a lot of creatives, especially architects, they're focused on helping the client, and then all of a sudden the business comes up like, how do you handle the finances? How do you handle all of the details of the office management? Do you bring on drafters? All of those questions. And we're going to have a great conversation today with Ryan Willard, co founder of Business of Architecture, and we're going to dive in and figure out, Ryan, just let us know what your business is and the problems you're solving for your clients. Great.
Well, thank you very much, Jason, for that introduction. Absolute pleasure to be here. Yeah, the kind of things that we deal with with our clients, our clients are predominantly all architecture business owners, and they can be anywhere from solopreneurs to running teams or businesses of about 30 people, or that's a little bit, not much, not much bigger than that. And they fall into a kind of a number of different categories of problems. Sometimes they have been working for years on end and have become, like you mentioned, there the bottleneck in the business, and they've got a kind of flat hierarchy structure in the organization. Every decision that goes through the business needs to come through them. They haven't effectively delegated. They're the most experienced person inside of the business, which means that they will get called into every single little problem for consultation that happens in the organization, and it's just becoming very, very fatiguing and overwhelm. We have businesses owners where they've been working their asses off for a long period of time, and they just don't have anything to show for it, and the profits are pretty anemic. And, you know, a lot of architects at some point ask themselves the question is, is this been worth it? Or we have the other kind of business owner who has been doing they've been doing well, they've got a solid business in place. They've been doing decent enough work that they haven't frightened off many of their existing clients, and they've got some repeat business, but there are new sectors that they want to move into things like hospitality or the super prime residential sector or healthcare or whatever it is, and we'll often work with them to develop strategies and systematize their businesses to make sure that they've got the time in their organization so they can be going off and creating a vision and a strategy for going out of the business. I mean, I think in all three of those different examples, we're always looking at kind of extracting the business owner out of doing so much of everything in the business, which kind of leaves them, you know, often is running them ragged.
Yeah, absolutely, that's definitely something I work with business owners on myself and to be able to push forward. Now, a little curious on this one, what, where? So you're a co founder in this What led you to decide to create the Business of Architecture company? What was the inspiration behind it?
So my co founder Enoch Sears. He started the business originally, and he had started so both of us are architects. He's based in Visalia, in California, and this must be around, over 10 years ago or so. I think he's. Started a podcast just for good, out of out of interest to do with the business side of architecture, and he was very interested in understanding what were the problems that architects were facing. He'd run his own practice for a short period of time. He'd been employed as an architect, and was certainly, certainly faced with a lot of issues that happens when you set up a professional services firm and you've got no business experience whatsoever, and there's been a complete, you know, neglect of that in your in your education, and I had a very similar sort of path, and I was in the UK, and I had, I was running my own architecture firm, and worked in some big architecture firms in in the in the UK, and set up my own firm, and immediately got hit with the enormous amount of energy and effort for a very small amount of money, to a kind of just disturbing amount, where you just spent 10 years of your life, you know, getting qualified. And then I'd worked in a in large practices, and was very unsatisfied with what I was getting paid, considering how much had been invested in the education. Thought I had a great idea. Thought I should set up my own business. Then I really learned what it was like to not have any money. And and that was that was brutal. It was a really brutal experience. And I one of the first things I did was I hired a business mentor, and I had, I did not have enough money to be able to afford this business mentor, and he was used to working with executives of top firms and things like that. But I, I became obsessive and and it gave me a very good goal, actually, because I just wanted to learn more about the business side of it. I just, I was so hungry for it, and recognized that this was a big sort of missing in my education. And also there were elements of it that really excited me, like selling and marketing and talking to people. And it was kind of like, oh, whoa. There's a whole bit of like, you can get paid for talking to people. No way I thought that was just a skill that was just for socializing. And he was very, very instrumental in kind of encouraging me to, like, let go of the of the drafting and the technical aspects of what I wanted to do, and actually allow me to evolve a career in a different in a different way. But one of those, one of the first things that we were doing was kind of modeling and looking at how successful architecture firm owners had actually been building their businesses. So I started to interview different architects about what they were doing. And as I started to do this. I thought, Well, why don't I, you know, record these interviews, perhaps they might be useful for somebody. And then I thought, Oh yeah, that guy, Enoch, who's got the podcast that I listened to, maybe, maybe he'll be interested in some of these interviews that I can do, and I can put them on his platform, rather than my rather than, you know, trying to figure it all out myself, perhaps you'd be interested. So that was the beginning. I reached out to Enoch on LinkedIn, and that was the beginning of our collaboration. And we started. I started interviewing these architects. I put them onto Enoch podcast, and then over a 10 year period, we Enoch ended up founding an arc, an architect's marketing company at some point, and I was kind of helping out with that. And then probably about six, seven years ago, him and I became more close, much more intimately, kind of connected, working together. And I was launching a Business of Architecture which was solely focused, focused in the UK. And then at some point, as things evolved, we kind of came together and and founded Business of Architecture, or kind of took it to its next level and created what we have now called the Smart Practice Program, which is a, typically a year long program that helps deal with those problems that architecture practice owners are facing. Yeah, yeah. So that
you dive into a lot there, and if, by coming from the history of Been there, done that, right? You, you, you felt the pain, and then you started to figure out, wait a minute, one my specialty, and what I love to do is actually over here, which is a fan, which is a whole different conversation on its own. We'll, we'll worry about that another day. But what, what I do want to go back to is in the first answer we talked about, you talked about one of the things you deal with is those overwhelmed architects and the the challenges that come into place when you're trying to build a business, because They're it's so important to be able to step up and say, Whoa, what? Wait a second. Does this what I want to do? And you went through that transition with a business mentor, which was where I wanted to go. At. The conversation was hiring somebody to help you see above the cloud, get above the clouds and look down or get. Above the forest and look down through the trees is a critical element, and you even though you said you couldn't quite afford it, how do you have that conversation with the architects? What's the trigger in the conversation that gets those them to start to realize that, oh, wait, I do need to go up above the clouds and or get up above the trees and look through the forest. There's
got to be some pain there to start with. And you know that that that's often the the reality check, if you like, and often in the conversations that we'll have with architects as they're onboarding with us, is, you know, it can be a very authentic conversation, where we're getting people to look realistically about where they're at, where they're at financially, get present to the like what that's been doing to them and what it will look like in the future If they continue on this way, and what's at stake and what's what's the impact, and often, these can be very powerful conversations that, like a lot of emotion can come up and a lot of frustration and and for many of our architect clients, you know, there's a lot of you know, architecture is a in A way, we're good at making stuff look good, and we're good at, you know, you can look at an architectural practice and they've got a fancy website, and certainly from the perception of other architects, and it looks like they've got beautiful buildings and beautiful projects, and they can go and give a public talk, and then I know from talking from hundreds and hundreds that often that's, you know, that's On the surface and and behind the scenes, they're working 7080 hour nights, and then you look at the financials, and there's they're barely, barely just breaking even. And sometimes you've got business owners that are taking home less money than some of their some of their employees, and they're overstretched, and they've got no reserves, and the kind of continued stress of it all that can be really a lot, and often they've never spoken about it with anybody. Maybe they've never even admitted it, that that's, this is actually what's been happening, and sometimes people feel ashamed about it. But I mean, on the other side of that, we've got, you know, we've had clients come to us who are already bringing home $500,000 or more, and they're exhausted. They're absolutely fatigued. They've had enough. They're like, okay, great. We make, we're making good money out of doing this. But I mentally, I'm on the, on the brink here of I just need to lie down for two years. It's a bit of a wake up call. We have to have, we have to get real about what's going on. We have to get honest. And it's a, you know, sometimes we joke that it's like, we call it AA, but architects anonymous, and there's, there's got to be a little bit of this being authentic about what we've been doing in our businesses, what's been happening, how the businesses have become these beasts that are now controlling us, and the the initial reason why I set up a set up the firm has been lost, and I've just been doing, doing, doing on this relentless will. So that's the first kind of conversation that that needs to take place, is that sort of, here's where I'm at, and if I continue, I don't want to look at that future. That's not That's not who I am, that's not where I where I want to go. So there's a, there's a kind of just a seriousness of it, okay, without making it overly significant, people can't do anything, but I do it is very important for for everyone that we work with, just to take on board, like, yeah, if we don't do something about this now, then we're going to continue the way we've always, always been. And I'm now just becoming more and more aware of the impact that that's been having on me. Okay? And this is the beginning of starting to get leverage mentally, on on ourselves to make a change. And then that's then, that's when we can start to talk about strategy and and, you know, we'll often break up a business into, first of all, where, you know, we'll break up our business into three major parts. We'll have, you know, winning work, great marketing and sales. We'll have the production work. Okay, so everything that's involved in actually producing a building and the drawings that are needed for that. And then we'll have everything in, let's call it supporting the work. So that will be everything from HR and the financials and becoming financially literate and understanding where you are and protecting the profit that you've made in the in the sales. And then there's the fourth magic component, which is the entrepreneurial spirit, which is having a vision and leadership and being able to enroll other people into that. So we've got the, obviously, the pain of where we're at, and then there's got to be a vision of where they want to go, and at least an imagination of being able to. See something else, a better way of of living, and what they actually would like to do, and part of that might be more impactful work. Often, I mean, with architects, it's, you know, we're a very noble breed of people, if you like, and they're, you know, often, it's an artist mindset, and a lot of sacrifice goes in for the for the purity and the nobility of the craft. And that can be very problematic. And so, you know, I mean, certainly with me, I want all of my clients to be honest about, I want to make some money. And this can be a difficult conversation sometimes, but we need to be like, just honest about, yeah, I want to make some money. And it says, And it's okay to make money. I know that sounds bizarre for a lot of business owners, but like, you know, a lot of people really wrestle with this of the of a not feeling like they can make money, or we just need to focus on on the purity of the craft or or even that making money somehow corrupts my practice. It corrupts my my work.
Yeah, there's so much to unpack in that, and so we've with that. It's, I do agree business owners run into that situation of like, I don't that's, that's too much, well, dollars and charges for a product or a service are what the market can bear. You don't set the prices. The customer actually is the one that should be setting the prices. It's what, what does the demand there? And if you're designing multi million dollar houses, well, there's that should come into consideration. If you're designing entry level houses, similar situation, but they can be a little bit more stamped, right? They can be one design could probably be put out multiple times, where a very unique, multi million dollar house would take its own very customized approach. You're not using any elements of it in another custom house, at least not in the same area of services, which is where architects are typically licensed per state, right, and how they're there goes is very much like an engineer for services. For those of you listening that are unfamiliar with that, that they are in order to be a true architect, you do have to be licensed as a professional architect, and it requires a certain degree and working underneath other architecture firms. One of the things that you that you hit on in that though, was the talk about realizing that I've got to be humble enough to know and come to the spot where it's okay to make a change like this is it's, it's the way that we wanted to jump into this, and you didn't want to go that direction initially, but that's the decision that the client or the business owner has to come to realize. Is, I like to use the phrase they're sick and tired of being sick and tired, yeah, and and sick and tired could be that you're making a ton of money and working 100 hours a week, or that you're making no money and working 100 hours a week, but the end result is we weren't built to work 100 hours a week in this and grind through it is what balances need to be happening. Each one of those different problems requires a different approach, because one has money and one has no money. So the in the in the aspects of it, what, when you're looking at your industry, and you're you're hoping in architecture firms, this, this should be an interesting one, because I've had a lot of conversations with different companies that help. Obviously, we talk, I talk with small business owners or support small business owners, and the Where do you see your business going in the next five to 10 years, and how is your the industry you're in, specifically with architecture evolving, and how are you preparing to for those changes that are coming?
So there's a kind of multiple questions there. One is, where do I see our business going? And then also the where, where's the architecture industry going? Yep. So I'll start with the with the first one, where was, where I see our business going, and it will kind of lead into where the the architecture firm I I'm very, I'm very pleased with what we've kind of created over the last decade or so, and the program that we've gotten has become more and more refined, and we've had maybe 350 clients go through the program in between us, Enoch and I, we've interviewed over 1000 architects. And you know, on our on our podcast. Channel The Business of Architecture. We've invested, you know, close to a million dollars in our own business education over the years. And it's all kind of been distilled into this one, into this one program. And I see that are, you know, us being able to reach more and more architecture firms as a result. I'm really happy, actually, that the coaching industry for architects has grown. And when we first started out, there was only a handful of us doing this, and there was fully a lot more corporate financial help or a lot more corporate business help, and now we're seeing a lot more kind of business coaches that are specializing in architecture. And that, for me, is great, because it means that the conversation around business education is becoming more and more kind of, you know, normal in architecture. I mean, I get, I get a lot of young students who are now connecting with us, who they're frustrated at university that there's nothing, there's no business education, and they're talking about becoming developers and starting their own practice and setting up construction firms to work along their design firms. They can do design build. And we have some of these guys and and girls on our programs, and they do, they do incredibly well. But the idea that the that there's more conversation about business education excites me, and that there's more coaches that are doing it and serving the architecture industry is very exciting, because it means that the competency gets better, and so and often when we have a new client and they've already had some business education over here and a business education over here, great. That means that they're at a higher level already, and then we can, we can capitalize on what the good work that they've already done, which means they get better results and everybody's happy. So I see there being a lot of a lot of growth and space in the kind of consulting part for architects and for us personally, you know, moving into bigger, deeper engagements with practices. So at the moment, we've done what you might call a done with you service where we're kind of, you know, we're coaching and we're giving advice and we're giving strategies, be it in marketing, be in the setup of of systems and processes to protect profit that you've created in the sale to leadership training with with individuals. What becomes interesting now is actually being able to move in with a practice and help them actually do the setup for them, for, say, a financial procedures, or for setting up a system like monograph, with their with their clients, on a unique on a particular project. So we're starting to develop our own, what we call a done for you team. And we've started off with finances. We're moving into virtual assistants soon, so office management and those kinds of administration tasks, then we'll like to move into actual appointment setters and sales, so business acquisition team, which can be a done for you service. And then that allows Enoch and myself that we're starting to do more, very more involved engagements with bigger firms where actually going physically into their into their firms, we're training the next level of leadership, so succession planning, you know, we might do, like a weekend experience with a particular firm inside them, and then train their leadership team to be, you know, taking the reins of The company. And we also kind of expand those conversations out to to the business owners become more entrepreneurial. So they're setting up construction firms, development firms, they're becoming investors and kind of just being a partner in those kinds of firms. That's that's very exciting. And I also see them there being massive opportunity in terms of AI and being able to have, like, software help. So we've got an enormous amount of content and advice and, you know, and also client stories. I think that's one of the interesting things with with our firms, we've got a big community of hundreds of architects who all share their you know, 3040, years worth of experience with us, and I'll often do a deep dive with certain clients. And they'll they'll go in and show us details of how they've set up specific systems for specific items in their in their businesses, and how they delegated it. We'll have a look at how people have done exact wordings for for contracts and things like that. We'll have people come in and show a behind the scenes of how they've actually won certain projects and how they've how they've gone after new types of sector work. Or we'll have for. Kind of personal conversations with practice leaders about how they had to make difficult decisions when restructuring their firm, the process they went through of letting go of people. And so there's a really nice kind of body of knowledge and experience that we record through conversations like this on Zoom, or sometimes that we do them in person that I can see in the in the very near future, us having the ability to customize, what's the word, a kind of a customized, curated menu of content for a specific individual when they're asking, asking a question. So there might be a lot kind of a computer interface, and they ask for a particular question. And the AI says, Here you should check out this, this, this and this, and have a look at this. And here's a generalized answer to that, so I can see the kind of the curation of the knowledge that we've been collecting over the last decade or so becoming very powerful. And you know, want to make that more, make it more widely available for people within the within the architecture industry itself. I think the the firms that are business minded are going to be the ones that prosper. Um, we're seeing more and more architecture firms as again, as I said, getting interested in in business. And there's often been a complaint that lots of you know, there's no it's difficult to hire at the moment, and it's been like this kind of since COVID. And there's this idea that there's been a great exodus of architects who are in their late 30s, early 40s. And I think perhaps some of that is true. And you know, certainly architects who in my age, you graduated in 2008 and you graduated into, you know, one of the biggest recessions in the last 40 years or so, and that really impacted the construction industry, and it meant that a lot of younger architects, it was difficult to get experience on projects that you wanted to get experience on. It was difficult to to garner actual construction experience because so many of the projects just went on hold. But just went on hold. It meant that people had to kind of flit around and perhaps leave the industry and do something, do something else. So there's that kind of void, and then that's kind of that kind of movement has also been compounded in the architecture industry, where the businesses that are successful, the ones that have been very business focused. They're the ones that are able to command and have high fees and high salaries as a result of that. So we see this kind of, you know, this separation, where the talent ends up being collected into the firms that are doing really, really well, or industries or businesses that are kind of collaborative with architecture so sometimes developers or sometimes product manufacturers, they can command high fees, or they've got a very good business model that's making them more money, they end up attracting architecture firms, which means that the firms that aren't doing anything business wise, and Who are just doing what they've always done, it's just going to become harder and harder and harder. So I think that's a that's a that's a challenge and but the education is there. There's a lot more business education, and for the architects who engage with it fruitfully and with a sense of commitment. I think there's a lot of opportunity for the architecture industry, and of course, with technology, again, the AI, the architects who decide to master AI, or certainly have it integrated, will be in a much more beneficial situation than those that don't. Yeah,
absolutely great to hear. It has been great to have you on the podcast today and be able to hear how you impact architecture firms and how you're helping the small business community in the professional services realm of business, and helping those that are struggling with it, because as we've talked that is definite, a definite need, and impacting the youth as they're coming up in the through the programs, and understanding that, oh, wait, I need to understand business to be able to get in and go about it. So it has been a great conversation. How about we move on into our lightning round? Are you ready? Sure. Let's go for it. Okay. Questions. There first couple questions are pretty quick and easy, coffee or tea, coffee, cats or dogs.
I probably go for dogs. I'm not a big animal lover, to be fair of you, pets should be outside.
That's fine. That's fair. That's everybody's everybody wasn't open to their
own No, I'm definitely, I've never. Had a dog. I've only ever had cats, and I don't really like cats, but those, those are the only pets I've ever had so but daughter dogs, dogs certainly relate more to me as a personality wise fair
enough, if you could grab only one weapon or item during a zombie apocalypse, what would it be?
Oh, like a samurai sword. Okay, for sure, samurai sword, and then just go around chopping heads off and chopping limbs off by arm to arm combat.
Favorite quote or phrase that you think about often, slow down to speed up. Slow down to speed up is a good one. How about one book that has influenced your life the most? Oh, that's
the power of now. By Eckhart Tolle, Okay, how
about the biggest obstacle you've had to overcome, and one lesson you've learned from it,
the biggest obstacle I've overcome has definitely been being broke, and the lesson that I've got from overcoming that is one of enormous gratitude for all the abundance and that everything will will pass, and that your, your ability to remain in equanimity, is Your is your greatest tool.
Yeah, it's very powerful, very powerful. If our listeners want to get a hold of you, Ryan, how would they collaborate with you?
So you can find us at the Business of architecture.com, the our website, or you can follow me on LinkedIn. Just type in my name, and I'll I'll pop up. My name is spelt in a unusual way. It's R, I O, N, or you can follow me on Instagram at Ryan Willard, shoot me a a DM, and there's and also tick tock. And there's lots of ways for us to connect, but LinkedIn, Instagram, those are the common ones, and I'll okay you.
We've got it all here. The all of that information will be in the show notes or the description. If you are watching this on YouTube and reach out to Ryan to get more information, especially if you are in an architecture firm or know an architect that needs some business help, it would be a great resource to have a conversation with and continue forward, and
that's a wrap.
And I have a request, since you are a listener here of the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of, to bring it back to empower you as an architect and a designer. One thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast, simply because it helps other architects stand for more their value spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual and so here, my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast. And as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit. But more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us a review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training, you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wished they would have known 20 years ago.
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