636 - Kevin Hittle

    8:19PM May 16, 2025

    Speakers:

    Rion Willard

    Keywords:

    Architecture firm

    property development

    real estate

    construction management

    financial security

    sweat equity

    tax increment financing

    remote teams

    construction experience

    developer mindset

    project management

    investment properties

    maintenance

    architectural services

    business of architecture.

    Take the academics and then immediately see the reality, so that you can make better improvements as you progress.

    Hello architect nation, and welcome back. Ryan Willard here, principal partner at Business of Architecture, today, you're going to discover how one architect turned $30,000 into a 1.8 million development deal. So let me ask you a question. Have you ever felt stuck trying to scale your architectural firm beyond a small practice? Do you wonder if there's a smarter way to leverage your skills beyond just trading hours for dollars? Are you frustrated watching developers and contractors make big profits while you're dipping into your savings to tide over the firm. Well on today's episode, you'll discover the unconventional strategy one architect used to launch a $1.8 million Real Estate Development with just $30,000 in cash, and how you can do the same. Why playing the long game with bankers could be the secret weapon that funds your next big project, even when you don't have deep projects, the real reason architects struggle with profitability and how shifting into a developer mindset could unlock a lifetime of wealth and financial security. In today's episode, I sit down with Kevin hittle, an architect, real estate developer, and a retired colonel who earned the Bronze Star and Legion of Merit, he shaped SSH architecture into an award winning firm and now teaches architects how to succeed in property development. Today's episode is a must listen episode for any architect who dreams of breaking free from the feast and famine cycle and building lasting financial freedom. Stay tuned. Today's episode is sponsored by World teams. One of the top headaches of running an architectural practice is matching work with staffing. What if there was a way to flexibly scale your workforce according to needs? A while ago, we began to hear reports of a company that was helping some of our clients build remote teams, world teams. Help small firms build qualified remote teams quickly and easily, saving you the hassle of sorting resumes and interviewing unfit candidates they work in your time zone, prioritize near native English speakers and offer flexible contracts so you can scale as needed, plus you work directly with your remote team, building trust and cutting costs without sacrificing quality. To download a free guide for building a remote team and for a small architectural practice, go to business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. That's one word business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. As a reminder, sponsorship is not an endorsement, and you must do your own due diligence before entering into any business relationship. Get the free remote teams guide by going to business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams, as always, make sure you listen all the way to the end of this episode to catch important listener only bonuses and information. Kevin, Welcome to the Business of

    Architecture. How are you I'm doing well. Ryan, how are you today?

    I'm very good pleasure to be speaking with you. So you are the sole principal in the architectural firm, SSH architecture, and you're also principal in Havelock 63 Real Estate Organization. And as the developer, you also perform general contractor functions. I know that you're a real estate developer, a veteran and an educator, so quite an impressive career, and quite exciting kind of mix of what you've been doing architecturally. So very interested to hear your story. So welcome to the show.

    Thank you. Thank you. Right now, I am the sole owner of the company. I actually started back in 1984 as a laborer. They had a construction arm of the company back then, and then while I was going to school, so I started construction, working construction with them at that time. And then when I graduated from college, I left the firm for a few years, and then I came back in 1993 as a full partner. So we, I had two partners at the time, and since then, we've had those two partners have left, left the company. So I'm the sole owner at this point.

    So So you became the sole owner of of the architecture firm. And was it a traditional architectural practice. We

    were traditional architecture. We had a construction management arm. I had two partners. One was an architect, the other was one was a construction manager. So we would do construction management for clients for specific. Projects and specific clients. And then we also dabbled a little bit in development ourselves, through the company, very limited but so that was part of where we've been trying to head. Also is to get more into the construction side of it and development

    and Havelock 63 this is the development arm that you've set up, independently or true?

    Yes, that's a separate company. It's an LLC. So we have an S Corp for the architectural firm, and then we have an LLC for it's a mixed use development. We have two offices. We actually developed the property because I needed a new office when my clients or when my partners left, and because we were leasing from them, they owned the the building that we were in. And then when they left, I decided that I needed my own office, so we developed this property that we're in now our office, and then we have another office on the main level, and then we have eight two bedroom apartments above, above our our offices here. So is

    this the the 1.8 million mixed use construction project, that's correct, that's, that's the one. And so how did you manage to do that then, with less than $30,000 in cash? Well,

    there's, it's really a long, somewhat of a long story, because it becomes a relationship with a banker to be able to allow me to do this in some ways, because there was a lot of trust built up on previous projects. But what we were able to do was I found a piece of property I'd been looking for several years to develop specifically in this area. And my goal, my minimum goal, was to come up with a location that I could have my office, and then maximize the use of the property to whatever is available. So I looked at about five different properties, and this one came up, and it was actually the best property that had come up. And I ended up buying the property within a week, because I've done, I completed so much due diligence on other properties in the area that I knew it was a good a good fit. It was a great price. It was actually at about 50% of value when they sold it. So the the main thing I needed to do was come up with a down payment to just purchase the property. And at that time, we purchased it for 47,000 I believe it was worth about 100 and then so when I went to the bank, they said, Well, you need about $12,000 to put down on the property just to purchase the land itself. And then we used sweat equity, talking to our bank, you know, the after we got the design done, and I did a pro forma, I took that to the bank. I said, What do we need to get this going? And he said, Well, we already have the property. We've got about $50,000 in equity in just the property itself. And then the the the appraised value, or my estimated value, was about 1.8 million. And the architectural value, the architectural services to that, were around 100 to 120 if we did the general construction ourselves, that was around 120,000 value. And if we didn't, you know, depending on how we worked, all the agreements between the architectural arm as well as the construction arm, and then the the LLC for Havelock 63

    so that's pretty amazing, that the that initially to be able to purchase a property that could have a gdv of 1.8 million, that you only had to put 47,000 was it $47,000 down to start with, that's that's extraordinary.

    It maybe, maybe it's a, I just fell into a very lucky situation, the the restaurant next door actually purchased two houses behind it, right? And this was 20 years ago. They had purchased the properties. There were two houses. They demolished the houses in preparation for a parking lot, but they never paved the parking lot or paved the property to construct a parking lot. So then, when the owners of the restaurant sold to another company, the new, new buyers did not want the proposed parking lot, so they sold this off, essentially as two residential lots. But it was zone b3 which is a commercial zone which allows for X use, right? I don't think they considered when they were selling it, so

    they didn't really know what they had. So you were, you found yourself an opportunity it. Yes,

    I fell into it. We worked very hard to find it and wait for it, I guess. But it was, it was certainly an opportunity that that we couldn't pass up.

    What sort of previously, as you were looking for other properties, what was your strategy for finding the property in the first place? Were you talking with brokers, or were you kind of scouting out around the city and had your eye on various lots and trying to find out who owned them.

    Well, I was doing everything personally. I didn't work with a broker. I just was trying to make connections and relationships with people in the Havelock district. Havelock is a district of Lincoln Nebraska. It's actually an old town that became enveloped, I think in 1893 was when it was originally established. So it has a a four month, four block Main Street. Lot of early, late 1800s early 1900s brick building. So I've always wanted to be in this area. We've renovated several for clients. And so what we were trying to do, I wanted to be in the area, and so I just took the area, and I just started looking at any properties that were vacant. I also looked at houses that were zoned in the b3 that were coming up for sale. I did a design on one decided not to do that. That would have been just our office and two apartments above that, there was another property that's actually slightly larger than ours, and I tried to negotiate with the owner at that time, and he had other plans, thinking that the city would buy it as a parking lot, and thought that he would make a lot more money off of it if the city would buy it, rather than if I would buy it. But, you know, I was offering him, you know, 100 220,000 for the property. And I also offered to partner with them. And said, Here's I sent him the design, and just told him that I would, you know, I would consider partnering, you know, 5050, or however we want to do it, if he would provide the the property. And he declined at that time. So when this came about, it's all it's about the same size. I'd already done the design for the previous property. It's about three blocks away. So you soon as you saw it, as soon as I saw it, I laid it out. It was a Saturday morning. It popped up on, I think, realtor.com or something, and I saw the property, I I was able to lay it out and show it to my partner, who's actually my wife, and said, This is what I want to do. And and Saturday afternoon where we were making an offer on the property, full, full offer.

    So amazing, amazing. He was ready, ready to go, and kind of already, literally had done designs for a similar sort of property. So

    right, right. So we had done a lot of due diligence for the area and what the possibilities were. And then

    in terms of the the financing, then for the rest of the projects, you put in about 360 of your own sweat equity in terms of architectural services. Did you have to borrow money in terms of like construction materials and pieces like that? Were there any other investors involved? Or

    no? Well, I guess I should say that we did get tax increment financing from the city, because it's in a blighted area. So they were able to provide $110,000 to cover site improvements and energy efficiency improvements. So that did cover some of our costs, but there were no, no partners financially, other than my, my wife and I

    and and so that was that alone, or was that kind of something to help regeneration in the area?

    It's, it's a, it's essentially a grant, I guess, but it's paid back through the taxes. You know, the tax base for the property was, say, $47,000 for that property. If somebody built a house on it, it'd go up to 200 and then. But if we were able to put 1.8 million on to it or and that isn't quite what it's valued now, but it's but that tax base then increases, and then there's actually a line item on our when we receive our taxes, it there's a line item that says it's paying back that tax increment for. Financing Loans. So it's kind of a loan that gets paid back from taxes that you're already going to pay anyway. That's my understanding of

    it. And then you were then wearing multiple hats here, one as architect, one as the developer, and then one as the contractor. Were which of these roles was the most alien to you, or were you relative? Had you done similar sorts of projects in the past where you were kind of well versed in each of the components? Well,

    I like said, I started construction when I was a kid. My father was a contractor. I actually started working for this firm as a laborer or carpenter. Did some finished carpentry, and then I've stacked. I call it stacking, I guess is I've had 10 properties in my life, and a lot of those were we would do renovations ourselves. So the construction part of it was pretty it was bigger than I was used to personally, but it's certainly smaller than what we do architecturally, right? So, and we see that all the time, you know, we I, and I would take notes of, how are the other the general contractors working through this, who are the subs that they're working with the developers? Then I do as far as investing or developing, and there's a distinction there. We've invested in different properties, and then we've also developed. And when I say develop, it's actually full renovations of single family residences and and duplexes. So I started small, and then this is and then it just grew to this because of the opportunity of the land. Actually, it didn't the this was to maximize the property, essentially.

    So, so, so prior to this particular project, then you'd, you'd cut your teeth on smaller, single family residential projects. Were they? Were they flips those ones, or were they ones that you kind of kept in a portfolio, renting out, or

    I've only done one flip, and it really didn't work out that well for us. It did okay, but, you know, I actually started off in in college and bought a mobile home. I and I house hacked that I had a roommate, and then I pretty much lived for free, you know, and so I I didn't have much for student loans when I got out. And then I house hacked. I before I graduated, I got into a single family house with a friend of mine, and we purchased that together, and then then we purchased a duplex together that I lived in and lived for free, while the other paid for the the other tenant paid for The mortgage, and then the, probably the biggest development earlier. Biggest early development was our personal residence. We ended up having four kids, and we were living in a three bedroom house, and we needed to expand our living area, so we purchased a piece of property and I built the house there. And, you know, my function in the construction of that was digging the basement, forming the basement walls. I did all the framing. I windows, siding, painting, roofing. The only thing I pretty much didn't do was the MEP in the drywall was, was kind of so that was my first ground up development. So I learned a lot through that, and built the relationship with my current banker at that point too, so he saw the process. And then we've also have two, two single families that we own personally. And those were 1910 houses, maybe in our hometown, where we live in Wahoo. And those were the first one, I completely gutted the second floor and renovated that. The second one, I completely gutted the entire house and renovated that. And then so it's, it's really just been stacking both experience and knowledge and just the process of how to, how to make that work

    amazing. So right from the beginning of your architectural career, you've been doing interesting living hacks and development projects and getting your hands dirty as well, really kind of being very practical. Well,

    yeah, we, we were not extremely, i. Guess we were, we were poor when we growing up. So when I went to college, I didn't have a lot of a lot of funds to be able to go to college, so I had to find a way to reduce the costs. Part of it was joining the Army National Guard, and they paid for some of those, some of the the the tuition, but some of the things that I did was just being able to work construction, work design, and be able to to reduce the cost wherever I can. I'm I'm not a huge fan of debt, and I certainly don't like risk, so I try to put as much sweat, sweat equity into anything that I can, that I can make work, is my goal.

    And so now what, what does your kind of what are your investments comprise of

    we have right now, we have Havelock 63 and that's doing very well. We also have two single family restaurant or two single family how residential those are? Those are doing well, just be primarily because when I renovated the entire both houses on those everything's new, with the exception of the primary structure, and I repaired a lot of this primary structure, also where there were some deficiencies in the floor, floor rating capacity, as far as the floor loads. So we don't have, we self manage all of these also, so I know when the faucet isn't working, I'm like, I'm the guy that repairs everything. If there's a not, the only thing I don't do is the mechanical systems, but everything else, I'm pretty much the maintenance guy also, in fact, the people around the area here consider me just I'm the maintenance guy that takes care of the snow removal and everything else that happens in the area.

    So, so with Havelock 63 that's where you've got your kind of your architectural office in there, there's a retail component to it. Is that? Right? There's a commercial component to it, yeah,

    there's a commercial component. We have another office that has a financial institution, also an investment company, and they came in right away, basically as soon as we started construction, and they found out that we were going to have an office available, they were already located in Havelock, in a very small old office, and they wanted to upgrade, and so they've been a very good tenant, and it's been really a blessing through COVID, where other people were maybe having problems. The you know, the the investment company did not at that. They were they were doing they were holding their own. I'll say that I don't know how they were doing, but they didn't close down and leave the office for us.

    So the the investment company itself is a separate LLC from your architecture firm and and is that? Well, all your properties are held inside of that. Oh,

    I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the confusion. The the other office is actually a lease to another company. Oh, I see, okay, so we have two offices. One, one is our office, and then the other is the is the investment company that we just went to.

    I see great, amazing one when you did the Havelock development, what were some of the biggest challenges that you experienced and and, you know, what's the difference between the different hats? Because you're wearing the architect hat, you're wearing the contractors hat and you're wearing the developer hat, how would you describe the differences? And what were the challenges?

    I think that we had the design down. I had designed. I had the basic design down of the building, and it's, it's a the design is such that I could take this and squeeze it down to a half this size, or I could double it very easily. It's, it's kind of a plug and play design. So I think the the architectural side was was fairly easy. This is what we do. We've designed 1000s of apartments and offices through the region. Construction was a little bit different, just because it's the first time that I'd actually been the general contractor for a commercial size project. And so I had a little bit of learning curve there, but I also had some great relationships, and I had four general contractors that I've worked with for 1020, years, and I just would call them and I I showed them what I'm doing. I told them, I apologize, but I can't. That contract with them, but I was wondering if they could help me find the right subcontractors for this type of project, because we did bid it out once, and it came in over budget with the subcontractors that I was using, and so I needed to find some costs to cut. And there wasn't really much to cut. It was kind of a very basic design, nice finishes, but not extremely high end. And so I just needed to find some some subs that would help me out. And I did find subcontractors through other generals that were able to come in and save some costs through various various ways. One of them, primarily is my framer. Did an excellent job in that I didn't have to have we've got some steel structure that goes through the middle of the building so that we don't have to have a bearing wall through in the offices. And the nice thing about that framer is he was willing to set the steel along with the framing, just because it wasn't extremely complicated. You could do it with a lull and you know. And I think in that instance, he saved me around $50,000 or something, and not having to bring in a steel erector and having the framer do it. So it's, it's a commercial project that is just a very large residential structural system, I should say.

    And then in terms of leasing out the spaces. Are you the one that has to go and find the tenants? Or has it been fairly easy to do that? Or have you worked with a broker?

    We self manage everything. We were extremely lucky on the other office. Like I said, they the that company came to us right after we broke ground, and they said, We want to be in your new building. And we took a look at the space it was available after we had designed our office, and they said that works perfectly. So they they signed a lease or a letter of intent. Almost immediately we made, negotiated and did the letter of intent, signed a lease, and then we provided architectural services, well as construction services for them, which helped across the entire project. And then, as far as the residential it's extremely easy. Night life. It's it's easy to find tenants. Now we use apartments.com. There are all kinds of advertisement websites out there. The problem is, is finding the right tenant and making sure that you have a really good screening process, that you make sure that you get somebody in here that you can rely on to take care of the property as well as pay their pay their lease. And I

    guess, because you're in the building as well, that it's relatively easy for you to be able to identify issues and fix things and have them addressed and sorted out

    when there's a faucet that's not working, I just make an appointment with myself at two o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, and I go up and I repair or replace the faucet. So yes, it's, I wouldn't say it's, it's, it can be frustrating sometimes, because it always happens when I'm busy, but, or we do it on the weekends or the evenings. It's but, yeah, we do everything ourselves.

    And the what were some of the lessons that you learned from doing this project that fed back into the architectural services that the traditional architectural services?

    You know, I talked to my team about that quite a bit, and it

    you learn,

    as an architect, you learn more about your design during construction administration on a traditional project, because you you get those questions, you see the things that aren't going together extremely well, or you see the things that are working very well. And you'll reuse those again, but I keep telling them that you architecture is about learning all the time about the best processes, the best connections, the best systems, and trying to make that easy for the client and the contractor, when you're the developer, then that just adds another layer, because you're although cost is important to us when we're the architect, but when you're the developer, it's extremely important, because you want to make sure that there's a return on investment there. Mm. Uh, you know, we if we put a right now, we're dealing with carpet. We're we've been in the building for seven years now, and we've got a little bit of carpet in there, in the bedrooms, and some of that carpet is not in the best shape. And now I'm thinking about, well, I didn't spend the extra money for hardwood now I'm thinking that I probably should have, right, you know, because, because now the cost of replacing that carpet is more than it should be. And so those types of, those types of issues, become very apparent when you're when you're managing the project also. So there's kind of four phases, there's design, contractor, developer, and then there's the management and maintenance of the building. And so those four phases, when you pull those all together, it really helps you understand traditional architecture as well as traditional construction.

    Well, yeah, that's quite a unique opportunity, actually, is to be the sort of a long post occupancy review of the of the building, because you're the actual manager and user of it, and you can see the long performance of it,

    right? And that's, that's something that I try to do now and or it becomes more apparent when we're talking to a client. I also want to talk to their maintenance people when we're doing design, and just ask them, what has been performing well, what's not performing well in our climate, one of the issues of snow removal and where that snow is going to go. You know, it's ice issues where, how's the how's it draining? Where are we going to have problems with slipping and falling and deterioration of concrete and those types of things. So it, it everything. Thing builds, and it helps you become a better architect, I think on the front end, better contractor, and then, and certainly, personally, I'm on the back end. Also,

    when you work with developers now, are you what kind of additional expertise do you bring to their projects, or what sorts of things are you now able to kind of steer them towards with the with this experience, I

    think it's, I think it's the return on investment of every decision that we make, and it's we actually had a, we have a restaurant that we're designing right now. And the question is, is what type of flooring to use. And it came up because he's experienced. He's now a three, three or four years, and after three or four years into his first restaurant, he's finding out his own experiences of maintenance items that are not working extremely well. So he has his list, and then we have items on our side that we're making suggestions to him that we can provide. And so I think it's that long term thought process, rather than just a I've got a one year warranty that I have to get through. And then it's the client, the client's problem after that. And I don't think any architect probably has that attitude, but certainly we don't see those issues after that first year, because the client's not going to call us after the first, you know, in seven years, and say, I'm having problem with this tile, or I'm having problem with these faucets, but to be able to work with them continuously, and that's another experience, is to work with developers that come back to us routinely, so that they can also teach us what's working for them and what's not working right.

    And have you done any more projects since

    on the books. We move into Havelock 63 in 2017 and, of course, COVID 19 hit. We were from 17. My goal was to really replicate this wherever I could. And I do have a property that I'd really like to buy, and it's close to a university, I think it would work really well to put a similar building on that property. But COVID 19 hit, of course, everything kind of slowed down. Nobody knew what was going on, and then the cost of construction skyrocketed. Cost of property skyrocketed. So my and actually we, we became extremely busy after that, and I haven't had time to do anything with it, but I haven't found a I keep looking at properties to see if there's something that I can do with them, and I haven't found, hadn't found. On anything. Until recently, I have one piece of property right now that we're looking at. It's in an area that has a lot of new houses and a lot a lot of residential that's for sale, or residential lots that's for sale, but it's a commercial zone property. It has some storage units next to it. So we have new residential on one side, we have some older residential on the other side, some storage units to the to the south or to the north, and then there's industrial across the street. So the zoning in here is a little odd. Uh, what it's there's a it needs to be a transition of some sort. And so we're looking at some some storage slash shop, automotive shops, and being able to break those up the I think there are probably some people in the area that are looking that they don't have enough space for possibly their vintage car that they work on all the time, or something like that. They maybe they have a camper that they like to need to have stored. And so we're looking at that as a possible option. We're not very far into it. In fact, I need to make some progress on that shortly. But so those are the types of things we're looking at. I'm always looking to see what we can do at anything that may come up for sale, I guess. But I'm always looking for something that is it's on sale. I'm not going to pay retail price for probably anything when I'm doing this. But I think what helps me too is now I've, I have other people, you know, in the beginning, it was just really me trying to get through the process, trying to urge myself and find the courage to go through with some of these items, some of these projects, and now I have other people that I talk to that we support each other and give each other tips, what we should do. I have my interior designer, actually, we've had meetings over the last, I don't know, three to five years, and she's been encouraged to purchase her own property and renovate that. And actually, she partnered with another architectural firm. They renovated it. And so she's ancient, and then she bought a residential lot also, or I think she has a condo. So we trying to develop these groups that we support each other?

    That was gonna be my next question, actually was, do you recommend that architects pursue doing their own developments and and if so, what advice would you give them?

    I talk to my team here all the time that architecture is is a wonderful profession, but it's not something and you can make a great career out of it. You can do financially fairly well if you work hard, but sometimes you have to work 6070, hours a week. It's not and I know that what that you have a process, hopefully that your architects that you're working with are trying to get away from that, yeah, from my standpoint, I think that an architectural firm should have a construction division. They should learn that being a contractor makes them a better architect. Having a better architect makes a better contractor, and then they should start developing themselves. Then once they develop, is it for sale? You know, are they going to flip it, or are they going to keep it as an investment? And we were talking about it the other day, and we said, well, if you, if you let's if it's residential, which I don't recommend, just because we don't have that experience and that doesn't give us as much leverage and sweat equity in Nebraska, you don't have to be an architect to design a house. So Right? So I tell everybody that they should do that, and it should be kind of a master builder concept of see the entire process, and then what they keep for investing is is really up to them based on what they feel they have for a level of risk. And maybe it's, you know, how much cash they need versus how much equity they want in a property so, and I think the best way to do that, and I hate to say this, but a lot of my projects were somewhat selfish in the fact that it's something that I needed to do for various reasons. You know, built a new house ourselves. We. The two houses that we have, I actually renovated for my daughters because we couldn't find a three bedroom house for them to live in, so they rented from us for a couple of years after we got them done, and now we have other people in those you know Havelock 63 is is because we needed a new office. But I think if you have other people that will help you in the process and give you support and maybe hold you accountable, I think that would really help.

    It's interesting you say about the kind of imperative of having construction experience, and this is something that I hear from architects all over the world, not just in the US, about so many younger architects just don't have the construction knowledge that they need in the in the profession. And obviously, depending on which university you go to nowadays, universities can either be much more academic or intellectual, and the construction science, part of it has disappeared. And also, you referenced there the master builder. You know, the idea of the master builder was that they were a builder, and they understood all the different elements of construction and were able to oversee the everything. But they had, they had kind of expertise for how do you think that architects should be getting this kind of construction knowledge, and how would you like to see the training of architects kind of incorporate more of that?

    It's been a long time since I've been in college, obviously, so, but I do, I do agree with you. It's become more intellectual. I think there are some professors out there, and we've seen that at the University of Nebraska with some of our interns, that they are getting the students out to the field. They're designing actual projects at UNL and then they're going through the construction process, either with a contractor or they're actually building some of the items themselves. So I think that's extremely positive, but they have so much to learn in college just to start to be an architectural intern, there's only so much they can do. And as you know, being an architect is kind of a lifelong learning process. And I think that one of the things that I benefited from was working construction before and during college and seeing that. You know, it's more of a personal it wasn't necessarily a goal. It was a necessity for me, yeah, but I think that when I do have people that come in, I have high school students come in and tell me, ask me, What should I do? I want to be an architect. We go through the academics, and then I say, and then, you know, go be a laborer for a general contractor or an electricians helper during the summer. You know, if you're sweeping floors, that's fine, but, but watch the process. See how those things are coming together. Watch the people, how they're interacting, and see how that works. And you know, one of the things when I hire an intern or an architect here is I'm actually looking for somebody that has construction background and it doesn't have, you know, it's fine, hard to find someone that has a lot, but if they just have some interest, if they just have some experience, somewhere, some, some of them have just, you know, they've painted houses exterior and interior. You know, we had one young lady here that helped her dad on their rentals and doing repairs and renovations. And just knowing that, it gives you more confidence and gives more real world experience. Certainly

    Did you. Are you an advocate for the kind of apprenticeship model of learning for architects? Is it something that you've been involved in yourself?

    Kind of a Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin, exactly? Exactly? Yeah. If that were available to everyone, I think that is the best way. I think, I think that you need to take that, take the academics, and then immediately see the reality, so that you can make better improvements as you progress. I think that's one of the things that Taliesin, they were trying to do, was to, you know, right now, that's a the traditional education is you, you go to school for six years, and then you come into the office for three years, and then, you know, you can be an architect. Uh, and those timeframes change depending on on where you're at. But I think that that helps I I think that helps you academically, but it doesn't let you see the realities of what you're actually doing until you get into the construction administration phase. So if you can at least design, it'd be nice if they could design and then go to the construction administration, and better yet, if they could design build themselves, they would learn so much more. And it doesn't have to be a big, a big project.

    So in your architecture firm, then with the construction side of it, do you do you actually do construction of projects that you're designing still, or you tend to bid out?

    We haven't done that for a while, and primarily because we've been doing government projects we've had, we have, right now, we have about 70% government projects, and those are required to be a design bid build. And even if it was a design build, we it would be a different process for them. But we have kind of not gotten into that process. Of the projects that we could do, we've been so busy on the architectural side, and I don't have a someone in construction that would be able to take that on, take the construction arm on. So right now, we're just focusing on architecture, traditional architecture, in the office, and then I'm adding on the construction and development side, but that's outside of the architectural firm, even though it's all tied together, just because I'm part of the architectural firm,

    brilliant, amazing. I think that's the perfect place to conclude the conversation. There Kevin, a really inspiring story to hear, actually. And so I thank you very much for your your time today, but really amazing and from some wonderful insights on the industry.

    Well, thank you. Thank you. I one thing I'd like to say is I really appreciate what you're trying to do too, Ryan, and is, you know, I'm, obviously, I'm a lot closer to the end of my career than I am to the beginning. And I'm hoping that there are younger architects that are seeing that we don't have to be a starving artist to be an architect. We can make a decent living as a traditional architect, but there are also other avenues, and I think you're showing that through this program that you're you're using now, and I think that they should find mentorship somewhere or a group that will that they can build each other up and try to support each other, and both depending on what their goals are. And there's some, you know, in the in the development side, certainly, if that's the place they want to go, I have a one of my favorite architects actually left the traditional profession, and now he's designing commercial furniture and doing extremely well in Chicago. You know, I wish he was still an architect, but I can't fault him for what he's doing both, you know, he's an inspiration, and in what he's doing with the business, in in growing the business, he's a businessman, he's a designer, he's manufacturer, and he's doing a great job. So there are a lot of options for us out there to do something in the field that I think that we should all look at outside of the traditional services. Absolutely.

    Yeah, that's really the the intention of these stories is hearing people like yourself just, you know, using that architectural skill set and applying it into associated industries. And, yeah, there's, there's lots of different ways of of doing an architectural practice, and it can be

    a lot of fun. Sure, it can, yeah. And I can Yeah, and, you know, I've also told my team here, I said, if you if you like architecture, you should try developing your own project. Because one of the most gratifying thing you things you can do is to design it, build it, own it, and see the financial benefits that come with that.

    Yeah, it's interesting. We just recently did our renovated an apartment in New York. And, you know, I don't do that much architecture these days, but that particular project just going through the construction of it. And, you know, realizing, you know, there's just. The practicalities of little things, when you're putting the walls back together and you're casting the form work on the floors that you know that, and when it's your own money as well, that's the other thing, is that there's such a it's such an interesting experience that's really it's very valuable. It's very illuminating. It's

    and it's exciting through the entire process, frustrating too, but once you get past the frustration, then it's it's very exciting,

    brilliant. Thank you so much. Kevin, you bet Thank you,

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