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Give Me My F*ing Money Part II with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

Give Me My F*ing Money Part II with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard

Enoch Sears27min

Enoch Sears

00:00

You feel energized and passionate because you're valued because you're standing for your value. And because you're realizing that having these conversations isn't as hard as you think. Hello, architect nation. Welcome back to the show today is part two of the episode that we talked about last time, which is, give me my fucking money. And as an architect, you may not have said this out loud, but you've probably thought it at one time or another. Have you ever had trouble finding an architectural photographer who can really make your project shine? Today's episode is sponsored by renowned architectural photographer Tobin Davies, Tobin Davies eliminates the hassle by travelling to your location to create the stunning photographs your project deserves, and we are happy to support him here on the Business of Architecture podcast, visit Tobin davies.com, or Bayway photos.com To book a shoot in less than 10 minutes and ask about the special offer for Business of Architecture podcast listeners. Again, that's Tobin. davies.com, or Bo a photos.com.

Rion Willard

01:00

And it's time to announce this month 200 Club. If you missed our episode on the 200 Club, listen to VOA episode 485. To learn more about this new initiative to benchmarking small firm performance, the 200 Club is a metric of your net operating revenue per annum per full time equivalent employee. Those who enter into the 200 Club are those who are producing $200,000 per annum per full time equivalent employees. So it's a really good and a tough metric, but plenty of practices who are able and who are actually doing this and beyond I must say that we might have to introduce a 300 club very shortly because we've got a number of of our clients who are up there. So this month, everybody who is in the 200 Club is performing at $200,000 per full time equivalent employee per annum or more. And a big congratulations to mark Elster of a oh me, Drew and Justin Tyndall, Chris Brandon areni Adams, Christopher Rawlings, Lina Bo Ella, Sven Levine, Thomas Naughton, Charles scram, Ryan Salas, Yost, Ben de Kimberly Doakes, Molly will lock in, and Tony Wilson, Judy and Larry apple and Gilbert A teak. So congratulations, everybody, keep up the good work. And look forward to seeing you all shortly.

Enoch Sears

02:39

So today, we're going to be talking about this idea of collections. What happens when you don't get paid? What are some solutions? What are the impacts? When your clients pay you late? Or when they don't pay? What does that say about the way they respect your work, how they value as an architect, is it just something that we need to accept just because it's just the way the industry works, and there's no way around it are actually some solutions to this. In last episode, Ryan was just telling us out, we hear a Business of Architecture, have a call called Project reclaim, where if clients have a certain amount of accounts receivable that are late, it is mandatory for them to attend this call, so we can train them and coach them on how to reclaim their money. And Ryan, during this process put together he thought, You know what, just like any good movie has a musical score, I think we should have a musical score for Project reclaim. So before we jumped into this, here's I'm going to summarize what we talked about last time, here's some of the problems that exist in the industry with not getting paid. Number one, you feel like you're making a lot of money. But where is it? It's not in the bank account? Well, it's because it's in someone else's bank account that leads to problems. Number two, clients treat you like a bank, they may not call you a bank, but mentally that's what's happening. And certainly you're probably not charging interest or getting paid interest for the money that you're loaning them. By not getting paid for your work. Number three, resentment can begin to build up you can start to resent your clients, which then festers like an inner cancer. And problem number four, ultimately, this leads to your energy and passion instead of being enthusiastic. You start to get disillusioned and burned out with architecture start to go into victim mode, instead of being empowered No. Ryan, what is this about? Reclaim playlist.

Rion Willard

04:20

So so I thought it was we needed to have a kind of empowered soundtrack to this that would actually get us a little bit aggressive. Get us a little bit kind of just psyched up. You know, it's like the music you put on to go to the gym this is the music that you put on before you're gonna go make these you know, because sometimes these these are the difficult phone calls to have. And the world of hip hop has no shortage of fantastic tunes. So I dug in deep discovered we discovered this, I dug in deep and made a made a playlist which is primarily probably memorably hip hop from the 90s.

Enoch Sears

05:03

So beautiful. So how do our clients use this?

Rion Willard

05:07

So sometimes I will give them a track to listen to, and they have to listen to it every morning. Or they have to listen to it just before they get on, on a call with one of their clients. Sometimes we have them look over the lyrics, the lyrics are explicit in most cases. But you know, they're, they're talking about gangster life. They're talking about people owing them money. And there's a very unrelenting negotiation that happens that I think we can all kind of lean into and take a little bit of this of the spirit. I'm not suggesting that we have to be as aggressive as some of the descriptions in the songs.

Enoch Sears

05:48

No, no drive by shootings? Exactly. Well, no,

Rion Willard

05:52

we don't need to do anything like that. And, and Roy,

Enoch Sears

05:54

you who are getting ready to go out there and storm the developers office, we don't need to

Rion Willard

05:58

beam to the breaking any fingers or anything like that. But yeah, I do want to communicate the seriousness of it. And they're just not being fucked with. Stop it. Yeah, just stop it just stop allowing it to happen. Have these grown up conversations with other grown ups, stop allowing this just to piss away. I can't stress the amount of danger that it puts a business into when we haven't got our collections under, in place. Right. You know, such as sometimes what happens is that you've got clients, they're working with investors, they don't pay. You know, and we don't do anything about it. Now, we're being leveraged. Sometimes we've got clients who have a dispute about what it is that's actually owed, okay, fine, just deal with it, you've got to get on, if you've got to get on a call, if it means you've got to go through each in invoice and have a conversation or you have your bookkeeper do that, then just grow up, you've got to go up and you've got to go and get that done. Right, it's your money, go and sorted out. And if there's something that's wrong with your communication, like you're doing, you know, extra ad services, and the client didn't know what they was, what they were signing up for, then you need to get that process tightened up, you need to send out a memo, a conversation that we had today, we reckon it's gonna be between 10 and 30 hours worth of work, here's what it's gonna cost, are you still happy for us to go ahead with it just put some kind of mechanism for tidying that process up, it makes life so much easier, have an expectations meeting, we might talk about this a little bit later in the kind of solutions. But, you know, wherever you're well, you're just outlining what you expect from the client in terms of fulfilling on their responsibilities. So there is a little bit of there's a little bit of conflict and collision that's in the nature of these conversations. It doesn't mean Nene needs, which be a massive argument, but we can't work this out and ignore it. It doesn't work. And it certainly doesn't work when architects you know, when they're just late with their invoicing. Okay, if you're just not if you're just not doing invoicing, because it's too clunky on your site, that doesn't work either. And you might have had the experience with one of your own consultants who you're asking them, please send me an invoice, please send me the invoice, please send me an invoice. And then 10 months down the line, they send you a big invoice for everything and you're like, I can't pay all of that right now. You're gonna have to wait. Okay, so we've that just the movement of money, and making sure that it's flowing is one of the most important priorities we've got in the business. They call it currency because it flows. So we've got to make sure that we're keeping and protecting that flow of, of money. And all of these songs here on Project reclaim, are kind of testament to that flow of cash. And there's a reverence for it. And that's what they're all about. So sly, give us what the songs are. Yeah,

Enoch Sears

09:05

listen to thanks. And we'll put a link to this in the show notes. I'll put a link to the playlist for those of you who want to, you know, just just kind of thump every now and then to some some good tunes that inspire you to put on your your battle armor and have these challenging conversations.

Rion Willard

09:22

So the first sharing is the is the classic one and it's the theme of project reclaim is where's my money by Busta Rhymes? So you can't get much more classic than that. Where's my money and money then we've got get paid by young young Dolph we've got the 90s classic got your money. old dirty bastard and Kelly's we've got bitch Better Have My Money Rihanna song.

Enoch Sears

09:52

Which doc you're very cool.

Rion Willard

09:53

Yeah, we've got we've got payback. kJ radical Knucks we've got where's my money? by Tc and Caspar, we've got 50 cents I get money. We've got get paid by Wiley This is a UK drill artist or grime artist here. You've got NAS you owe me and genuine. We've got the money collector. Forever Nova pay your debt. Pay up by Rhapsody give me my cash. ZZ Top song here I got to get paid. There's another song I just called called reclaim. Buy back our Killer Mike pay up. Pf Pf V and grizzy Hendrix what I mode we've got our this is a classic tune, the payback James Brown. And then money collector

Enoch Sears

10:49

from juice Brown is that the classic James Brown? Yeah,

Rion Willard

10:52

this is nice. This is that old old tune that you're seeing lots of gangster gangster movies. We've got money collector, d double and pay up. So there you go, you can go and check out that playlist and use it as your your theme songs to get you psyched up again, have your

Enoch Sears

11:11

ration. Okay, so we've talked about some of the problems. We've identified the impacts of what happens when architectural practices are being stiffed when they're being shortchanged when they aren't getting paid. So here's some of the possibility you're making lots of money and you have your money, which then allows you to invest, invest, invest in the business, invest in yourself,

Rion Willard

11:39

money, take some time off,

Enoch Sears

11:42

go on vacation, pay bonuses to staff, high invest in hire more people

Rion Willard

11:51

hire the app, graduate, more people in finance hire someone

Enoch Sears

11:54

experienced. So you're not depending upon a bunch of low salary workers to try to do all the work, which then pulls you back in as the bottleneck. I mean, the list could go on and on and on and on. Money gives you agency possibly number two, instead of you being the bank for your clients, clients are your bank, meaning they pay you in advance. So this is a strategy that we teach in smart practice, and which is a movement, we're trying to create the architecture. And so it's like, get paid up front, get paid up front. And this is a strategy that when we present a lot of times to architects, they say, well, that will work with my clients, I don't understand how that would work. And no one's going to do that, you know, all my competitors do something different? Well, you know, do you want to be like your competitors? Or do you want to be wealthy and have your clients respect you, and come into the office every month already having the money in the bank for the work that you're going to do that month. So that's what we mean by clients being your bank clients or your bank, they pay you in advance, they're funding the growth of your business, instead of you funding the growth of there's possibility to number three, you're empowered to do your best work? How do these two relate Ryan, in your experience?

Rion Willard

13:04

Well, when you get paid upfront, there's a few things that happen there. Number one, just practically, you've got more resource available to be able to put onto a project before you start doing it. So number one, you can practically do your best work because now you've got the resource to be able to put onto it and invest into the project and make sure that the client is well looked after. Secondly, there's an appreciation and I love that develops when clients pay us, it feels great, you feel happy. There's a good community, there's just a good vibe, a good energy. And, you know, the client has paid you money you've now got, you've got you're motivated to do the work as well, when someone pays you to do to do the stuff, then great. There's a there's a leverage there. Now for you to get started and to do the work to bring your best self to it. And it's there. And I think it just overall just really improves the relationship. And it kind of keeps the flow of the work happening. And everyone that we've seen who's doing it is feels very empowered to do the work and do it to the best of their abilities. There isn't this kind of dread or resentment that happens when you've done three months worth of work. And now you're still fighting with the client to pay you for it. That's when the you start slowing down. You don't want to engage with the project, you have to take your resource off it. The client's lack of communication with you means that you're starting to fall out of favor with them, they're falling out of favor with you, etc, etc. And just look at the team spirit that emerges around projects like that it just becomes much more difficult to be performing at a high level and it becomes the hole. Let's face

Enoch Sears

14:50

it when you're dealing with this. You just turn out to be a miserable human being. Let me give an example. So Ryan, you know that last summer I purchased that BMW eight which is a card had my eye on for a long time convertible. How

Rion Willard

15:06

can I forget? Yeah, how

Enoch Sears

15:07

could you forget we went we went, went riding up to the majestic sequoias you know speeding around the corners in that beautiful hot rod. It's a roadster. And you know what one thing that was willing to sing for me driving that car around was how many people gave me thumbs up how many people gave me kudos how many people, you know, kind of did little fist bumps and they were appreciative. They said like at the gas station, I'd be gassing up and some guy would come and be like mad, nice car. Wow, that's a great car. Right? And what this what this did it for me as it actually it raised my view of humanity. I'm like, Okay, wow, human beings are actually kinder and and more enthusiastic and more, more compassionate, and more supportive than I had previously thought. Now, the opposite is true. When we're not getting paid when we see the worst in people and we're not getting paid, then we can start to develop this sort of pessimistic view about the world like, damn, no one wants to pay me. I mean, I, everyone's treating me behind my back. They don't respect and value what I do. And so we end up walking around with that little devil in the back of our mind telling us that, you know, humanity is doomed. People aren't good business people are thieves. And then we start to build this false narrative that ultimately impacts every other area of our life. It's quite insidious, it can rob our passion for doing architecture, which is where this resentment starts to build up.

Rion Willard

16:29

Yeah, so absolutely. I think it's really interesting when you know, when you are getting paid healthily, and you're getting paid promptly, that you there's an appreciation and gratitude that emerges from doing that, when we're not getting paid on time when we have to, you know, and then we don't do anything about it, then we become very vulnerable to falling into any number of kind of victim mode mentalities that ultimately become very disempowering for us to take any action about it. And then we become blamed full and resentful and then just perpetuates the same cycle. And we're more likely to set up and attract those kinds of clients who are going to take advantage and not pay in the first place.

Enoch Sears

17:13

And one thing we would ask you is one thing I've learned over time is, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So if you're letting a lot of invoices slide out there if you're letting collections go uncollected. The question we would have for you today as a listener is, where else in your life are you not having or you're avoiding difficult conversations that need to happen. Let's face it, not all of us. So a lot of us are what we might call conflict avoidant. We don't like conflict. So we avoid it, we avoid the difficult conversations. It's tough, it makes us feel uncomfortable. So though the flip side of this is being a people pleaser, I mean, if I had $1, for every time I heard an architect told me that there are people pleaser. Well, we could probably build a chain of dollar bills to the to the moon. But the flip side of like people pleasers, one way to say it conflict avoider is another way to say it. So we have to be able to separate ourselves and our friendships from the business. Because so many times I hear I have people say, Well, I don't want to endanger the friendship. We're like, hold on a second. You don't want to engage with why they're not paying you. What relationship is there? There is no relationship, the relationship has already been damaged. This person is not paying you. They basically said fu to you, and there's no relief, what relationship you're trying to protect here.

Rion Willard

18:37

Yeah, it was like the fundamental of the relationship with the business business relationship is you pay me when I've done my service. It's like the fundamentals of of a marriage, that it's monogamous. You've got a wife or a husband who's just sleeping with anybody that they choose. That's what kind of marriage is that?

Enoch Sears

18:56

Don't know, like a fun one. I mean, even if even if I'm the one sleeping around, it still doesn't sound fun, because that means that there's something missing from my own marriage. Yeah,

Rion Willard

19:06

exactly. So yeah,

Enoch Sears

19:08

that, that, that that's, that's what we're that is what we're here to have a conversation about.

Rion Willard

19:15

I did the project reclaim group. I think one of the things that's really wonderful about it is that we've had so many clients who would go through it, we've got one person at the moment who's going through it, and they've never, they've never had these kinds of conversations with their clients before. And each week, they've been really worried and nervous. And I don't want to have to make these phone calls and I'm just gonna let it slide. And each week, they get held accountable. What did you do? And then eventually, they're like, I can't keep coming to these classrooms and have nothing to report and then we practice. You know how they're going to have this conversation. What does it look like what they're going to say what they're going to say if the developer says this and then they get on the phone, and they start having these conversations and they come back next week. And they're like, Wow, I felt so empowered doing that, I feel like a million bucks, I feel powerful. To standing my ground standing in my power. I was ready for the client. And the client said, I'm sorry, I gotta wait. We're gonna get your money. And here's the date we're going to, we're going to do it. And it wasn't like this massive argument or a conflict or anything like that. It was just holding your ground, holding your power. And having somebody else go sorry, we're out of integrity with you. Apologize, we're going to sort this out. Not going to happen again. Just power power. Yeah,

Enoch Sears

20:42

the worst case scenario rarely happens. I mean, the fact no one's going to raise their voice at you, you know, the people they're going to understand. They're going to feel if they're, if they're halfway human, they feel some tinge of guilt. I mean, every but every one would a developer probably, I mean, developers, we know they're, they're just above lawyers on the evolutionary food chain. But I mean, even they probably have some compassion in their hearts, you know? So the possibility here is, you feel energized and passionate, because you're valued, because you're standing for your value. And because you're realizing that having these conversations isn't as hard as you think, yeah, it doesn't matter of fact that you're actually devaluing yourself. When you're not collecting and standing for your value, you're basically saying, hey, look, I agree with you, I'm not that valuable. And I should just go away, I love my work.

Rion Willard

21:27

I love this, you see not in, hit the nail on the head there, you're standing for your value, right? Even if it's for like $200 $50 $10, right, you're standing for your value. Right? You're making a stand, you're, you're kind of you know, you're deeply programming something powerful into your mind every time you do this. And it's communicating, broadcasting something to the universe as well. And I do believe that you start having these conversations, you start practicing, you start holding people accountable to them, holding your clients accountable, you start attracting higher caliber clients, to you. Now, it's interesting because often, sometimes we have to deal with late payments. With our own clients. It's very rare, I must say, it's very rare and we've got a lot of good systems in place. And our clients are normally very, you know, they'll they'll get in communication, but every so often it will happen someone pays us late. And Jackie's normally our first port of call, and if it escalates beyond that, then either myself or or integral will get involved. And a few weeks ago, just before Christmas, we had somebody who was delinquent or had gone delinquent, and we had to do an intervention. And I had to do it publicly, in in a classroom with 20 other people and hold that person accountable and work through an agreement right then and there with everybody else. But it wasn't a you know, it wasn't like a massive argument or a clear or like a what's the word? confrontational?

Enoch Sears

23:00

It wasn't enough to account you were just holding to account to something they said that they would do. Exactly. That's that says nothing and nothing shameful. Nothing. No guilt. No, no blaming just yours.

Rion Willard

23:10

I had to you know, what you said you would do? Exactly, and I had to check in with them. Is everything. Okay? Is there any reasons why this has happened? Is anything that we need to talk about? No. Got it. Okay. Then when can we expect to get the money in our bank account? They were like, okay, end of the week, end of the week. What does that mean? Friday? Yeah, Friday. Okay, what time would we be expected to look at that? 3pm? Friday? Okay, great. Not that it's recorded. Everyone's seen it. Any reason that you can proceed between now and Friday? 3pm that might get in the way from you being able to pay that? No, no, no. So it will be absolutely fine. Are you sure? Nothing at all? No, no, no, definitely. It can be there. Supposing it did happen? What are we going to do? How am I what do I expect the communication to come from you? I'll get in contact with you. Yeah, you know, I'll get in contact with you. It won't happen. Blah, blah. Okay, great.

Enoch Sears

24:04

Beautiful. And that will that and that is a great place to cut the episode because I gotta jam. Gotta run, Ryan. And here's the other thing about this conversation is it's about actually being able to handle the objections that your clients will give you when you try to collect because, you know, you've probably heard a lot of these, the checks in the mail, or waiting on payment from the project, where, you know, our financing got shut down. There's like 1,000,001 reasons why they'll try to convince you that you don't deserve to be paid. This is where smart practice helps you out. This is where it's important to have responses, important to be able to handle the so called objections that people have, so you can get paid what you're worth, and that all architects everywhere can start to stand for the value that they have as architects.

Rion Willard

24:51

Awesome. Go get your money. And

Enoch Sears

24:53

that's a wrap. Oh, yeah, one more thing. If you haven't already, head on over to iTunes and leave a Review. We'd love to read your name out here on the show. Hello Enoch Sears here with a special announcement for you our diehard podcast fan, listen on for life changing opportunity for the right person. Have a question for you. Did you know that Ryan Willard, who's currently our Director of Education and consulting, here at Business of Architecture started out listening to the podcast? Well, we hear Business of Architecture, we're looking for a new team member. And I have a feeling that our next team member currently listens to the Business of Architecture podcast. Perhaps you enjoy architecture, but something tells you that it isn't right for you or you're looking for another opportunity. In any case, we're currently hiring a detail oriented enthusiastic person to be the glue that holds our team together by managing internal project deadlines and communication. If you are someone you know, is a spreadsheet wizard thrives on Listen deadlines and knows how to organize and influence a team and you want to learn and grow professionally as well as personally, you could be our next project manager go to business of architecture.com forward slash pm position. To find out more once again, that's business of architecture.com forward slash pm position without spaces to find out more. Have you ever had trouble finding an architectural photographer who could really make your project shine? Today's episode is sponsored by renowned architectural photographer Tobin Davies, Tobin Davies eliminates the hassle by traveling to your location to create the stunning photographs your project deserves, and we are happy to support him here on the Business of Architecture podcast, visit Tobin davies.com, or daily photos.com to book a shoot in less than 10 minutes and ask about the special offer for Business of Architecture podcast listeners. Again, that's Tobin. davies.com, or doa photos.com. The views expressed on the show by my guests do not represent those of the hosts and I make no representation, promise guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment except to help you conquer the world. QRP DM

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