623: Why Architects Struggle to Innovate—And How to Fix It with Josh Sanabria of GoArchitect | Otter.ai

623: Why Architects Struggle to Innovate—And How to Fix It with Josh Sanabria of GoArchitect

Enoch Sears1h 2min

Speaker 1

00:00

It would be helpful, I think, to a lot of people to understand more of the spec. Hello and welcome to the Business

Rion Willard

00:05

of Architecture. I'm your host, Ryan Willard, and today I'm delighted to welcome the visionary Josh Sanabria, founder and CEO of Go. Architect, Josh leads a truly pioneering team dedicated to reimagining how communities shape their futures, harnessing the power of design and technology to create lasting impact. In addition to his leadership in architectural innovation, Josh is an accomplished author of books like Norman's architecture adventure unexpected Salton Sea and visions of Notre Dame, each showcasing his flair for storytelling and his commitment to cultural and architectural exploration based in Chicago. Josh brings a passion for big ideas and a profound belief in the potential of education and technology to transform our built environment. With an Enoch from Andrews University, his journey is one of inspiring creativity and steadfast leadership. In today's episode, we will be discussing leading a startup and what a business pivot actually looks like. We discussed the gold mine problems of our clients that once identified, can be an enduring pipeline of work, and we look at the financial strategy that a startup can use to remain nimble and resilient. So sit back, relax and enjoy. Josh Sanabria,

Enoch Sears

01:20

and now a word from today's sponsor. A while ago, I began to hear reports of a company that was helping some of our clients build remote teams. We looked into it more closely and discovered the company world teams, that was helping small architectural practitioners build remote teams that were both capable and qualified. I was intrigued by another business that are addressing one of the critical pain points for small architectural practices, which is the ability to grow and shrink a team effectively, to be able to handle higher workflow without having to staff up significantly, and also being very sensitive about labor costs. World teams is built to address these issues. World teams is a small but mighty company that helps architectural practices build high performing remote teams quickly and efficiently, saving you the headache of sorting resumes and interviewing under qualified candidates. World teams operates in your time zone and prioritizes near native English speakers, ensuring clear and efficient communication with your remote team members. They have flexible contracts so you can adjust your team size as your needs evolve. Additionally, you're connected directly with your skilled professionals, which fosters trust and collaboration and world teams helps you reduce your operating costs without compromising the quality that is so important to a practice. To download a free guide for building a remote team 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. Go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. This

Rion Willard

03:01

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 are looking for architect developer stories for the Business of Architecture podcast. So are you an architect developer with valuable insights to share? We're always on the lookout for passionate voices in the industry to join us on the Business of Architecture podcast, if you're ready to share your journey lessons, strategies with our global audience, we'd love to hear from you reach out to us to explore being a guest on our show and help inspire other architect developers on their path. We'd be interested in hearing your story, whether you're at the very beginning of your development story or whether you have $100 million portfolio of projects already in the bag, completed, we'd like to hear from you, if you're working with the developers, or that you've developed a number of small houses, or you're working at a larger scale. Josh, Welcome to the Business of Architecture. How are you

Speaker 1

04:20

good? Just nice and staying warm here in Chicago. But yeah, doing well,

Rion Willard

04:25

excellent. Well, very good to have you on the show, an unusual guest, I might say, a little bit different from the usual firm practice owner that I normally discuss with, and I was very excited to be talking with you. You're the founder and CEO of go architect. I think you've got quite a unique take on some of the innovations that you're bringing about that kind of intersect the world of technology development in a more of a software kind of perspective. Perspective and the world of architecture, which is kind of where your some of your background lies. So perhaps we'll, we'll, we'll, kind of go straight into that about perhaps you could explain to us what is show architect, and how did you get to be doing, what it is that you that you're doing, how, where, when, where did you stray?

Speaker 1

05:21

Well, so go. Architect is a little different than a traditional architecture firm. Ironically, we actually don't do very much architecture in terms of opening up Revit and designing a building. I don't even have a Revit license, to be honest, because it's the world of architecture is so big, and that's one thing I did not know getting out of school. But basically, we help school districts do what's called facility master climate. So when a school district wants to build new buildings, they have to find those funds or get those funds, usually through what's called a bond. So a bond is essentially a loan that is paid off from the tax revenue from the properties that a school district is within the boundary of and these bonds can be very big. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on where the school district is located and how much work has been identified. So it's a big process. There's a lot of people involved. There's a lot of community input that sometimes needs to be gathered. There's a lot of facility conditions that need to be assessed. There's, of course, a little bit of the political aspect and communicating the need of the school district. So we've been working on this for quite a few years now. We've done something like 24 of these master plans, and traditionally, they were physically in books, or they were just very cumbersome PDS that people would try to search through. But we have worked with our other partners and worked ourselves, of course, to bring all of this online, help it be more interactive, engaging. Help provide it English and Spanish, other languages, so that more communities can fully understand and of course, there's lots of other things that go along with that, just in general, the internet is not a new thing, but surprisingly, it is still finding its way into these, let's say, very niche elements of architecture or urban planning, for example. So that's the type of work that we focus on. And through that work, we do a lot of software development, little experiments, just all kinds of things to find, add new ways to do well, hopefully do well by the communities that we work with. So

Rion Willard

08:11

your background originally is in architecture, and you have a kind of more traditional architectural education. When did your sort of kind of Horizon Line begin to shift, and you started to see these other kinds of ways of working and bringing kind of architectural thinking and design thinking, but then actually applying it to projects in a different way and and start to utilize software. Because, again, you know the what you're describing is, is, is quite specific, a quite specific problems that you're that you're solving. So I imagine that there was either some sort of incremental thing or what, or was it that actually you, you recognize this particular challenge from from quite early on and just went ahead and started to innovate around it.

Speaker 1

09:04

I would say that the journey was sort of intentional and sort of on accident. So I did graduate with architecture degree back in 2014 I moved to California, and, of course, was trying to find work, things like that. And I ended up landing at firms, at companies that worked a lot with school districts right in Southern California where I lived, there's not necessarily skyscrapers, like here Chicago, things like that. Of course, working with the government is pretty stable, or let's say, consistent client type. So a lot of the firms did a lot of work, and honestly, I kind of just got lucky in that I was placed with project teams who were doing these types of projects, and they were very small. All, and so like any small team, the junior person does a lot of the actual work. So I just got thrown in basically, and had to do community meetings. I had to use Excel. I had to in that time it was still PDF, so I had to create these large documents on InDesign in general. I just was involved from start to finish up this type of project. And it maybe this is more of a personality thing, but I only have to do something once, and sometimes, not even once. Just start thinking about how something can be improved. And I think maybe because of the generation that I come from, the answer to a lot of challenges, at least historically, over last, let's say, 20 years, has been to introduce more technology. And so with that frame set or mindset, and while learning those skills on the side and things like that, I just started immediately thinking, Okay, let's go here. Let's do this different, etc. And you know, it was a it was a blessing that the people I worked with were open to try new things. And it was also a opportunity that was so niche that, to be honest, there wasn't a lot of competition, right? Any advancement that we made in this area was pretty much the first advancement that had ever been made. It's not, I tell people all the time, doing master plans is not like sexy work. You know it's you're not going to end up with this cool skyscraper yada yada. But you know what? It is work that has to be done. It can be done in new, novel ways. You can create things for it. And at the end of the day, it is a pretty good business, because it is actually a mandatory part for those different districts in order for them to get all this money. And we are talking about a lot of money, like I said, hundreds of millions dollars. So it is, it does have an impact, quite literally, for generations of students that will attend those schools. So it has that kind of social component also. So,

Rion Willard

12:33

so were you able to kind of start leading these innovations in the practices that you were actually working at because, again, you make a good point about, you know, it's the internet's been around for a very long time, but it's still surprising how underutilized technology is in construction in general. And architects, we like to think we're the most sort of enlightened ones, if you like, and and perhaps at university, there's a kind of speculative romance that happens with technology. And we get kind of Fanta, you know, we fantasize about how buildings could be using technology and stuff, but actually, the reality of the majority of architectural practices is that they're they're stuck. They're stuck with their technological resources. They don't innovate. They I mean, it surprises me how little practices actually invest in training staff on on the CAD systems that they have. So I So, so when you when you were kind of starting to see a kind of set of complex problems and and recognizing that there was, you know what, there's a, there's a there's a lot of different ways that we could be approaching that, was that something that you were able to bring to the practice that you were at, and they were, they were open to it, or was it, did it fall on deaf ears? And you were like, see you later. I've got, I've got an idea if we can do this externally, or a bit of both. Sure,

Speaker 1

13:56

it depended on who I was working for. So I started with a firm, you know out of college that first one and I was there for about two years, and they were, they were somewhere in between, right? I did get some time to work on some other projects. I actually programmed this iPhone app that was like Kinder for finding your future career. So it was for high school students, and they could swipe left or right on different jobs, careers, and if you tap the card, it would flip over and show you estimated salary, how long you have to go to college, if you would have to go to college, things like that. And we use that app as a marketing tool to pursue this one particular arch high school project. So the first firm was definitely open, but there was a, let's say there was a limit. I switched to the second firm, which I will give them a lot of credit. They're called DLR. Group. They're a large corporate firm in the US, and they were open to more ideas. They were open to experimenting. We were able to kind of figure out those first online plans. We were able to take some ideas that had already been done within the firm and develop them further. So I'll give him a lot of credit, and even though, when I did start go architect, I did not intend to focus on facility master plans. That's the kind of secret behind all of this. It's not a linear road. There was definitely a lot of right flips and turns. So I know it sounds very linear right now, but it wasn't. But anyway, after this, it's

Rion Willard

15:45

like the portfolio, isn't it? We made the portfolio look really linear, but actually we spent two months over here, three months over here. Oh yeah,

Speaker 1

15:52

for sure. We can go into that too if you want, but there were definitely a lot of roundabouts and dead ends and things like that. So I did not leave DLR Group intending to do these types of products. But there's a really good phrase from somebody in Silicon Valley that's like, when you have a product, are you pushing it onto customers, or are customers pulling it out of you, right? And if you're always pushing the product, it's definitely not going to be as successful as if the product is being pulled out of you, right, if people are wanting it and pulling out of you. And that was what ended up happening. We and the master plan, product or service just kept getting pulled out of me, and I was like, wow, this is the only thing that has consistently worked for many clients over and over again. We've made legitimate progress. So, you know, it's very securitis, but we did eventually reach where we are now, yes, the Go architect is about six years old, just to get context there too,

Rion Willard

17:07

and what kind of what So, what was your process then, of like, leaving where, you know, kind of the safety of a full time employment in an architect's office, and the kind of career path and And then to actually hedge your bets and start developing a software company. What was that? What was that process like, and what were some of the kind of personal challenges that you had to kind of navigate around? Yeah,

Speaker 1

17:33

well, you know, to be honest, the most challenging aspect, which a lot of people will relate to is the finances. You know, I earned. This was back in like 2018 I was not licensed or anything. So I, I earned about $65,000 US as a designer to if it was somewhat, some position like that. And to leave 65,000 and go to essentially zero, or at least the prospect of zero, is nearly impossible for most people. So that was 100% I recognize that now I am not, or I was not at all, independently wealthy, or anything like that. So what happened was, my wife was in grad school. She always knew that I wanted to start a business. I had always been starting businesses and random projects. Anyway, I that's a whole other tangent of all the random businesses that I've tried. So in

Rion Willard

18:40

20 pick a brain about some of those, actually, yeah.

Speaker 1

18:43

Well, the most exciting one was a security drone for construction sites. Interesting, brilliant. Love it anyway. So in 2018 she graduated from school and she got a job, and basically the idea was to flip so she would start early, and by chance, she basically earned $65,000 on her first job out of grad school, and I was able to stop working with the prospect of going to zero. But hopefully, you know, early, sure that was investor number one, and tell that story to a lot of people, because your partner or spouse, or whoever you choose to spend your life with, is probably the most important entrepreneurial partner you're going to have. Amen, you don't have to be in the business. They just need to support you emotionally, maybe financially, maybe logistically, I don't know, but the point is, they're going to be a route, and if they're not on board, you're either going to get divorced or separated or you're going to thrive. Five together, right? This really, it's a tough world, and if they're not, so thank God she was on board. It did flip, so that gave me time to figure things out. And then investor number two, which, again, is not a literal investor, but I did maintain DLR Group. So my previous employer as a as a customer, as a client, and they put faith in me and had trust that I would continue doing good work for them with these master plans. And so they were the first client. I don't think any of this would be possible without both of those elements

Rion Willard

20:44

and with your with your wife, did you, did you guys map out a timeline of like, how long you thought it was going to take whilst you're kind of, you know, you're you're in startup mode, and you're figuring things out, and you kind of, you know, and kind of prepare each other for, you know, I might have to the idea, yeah, for the journey. What was that? What was that like? And did you kind of have a deadline or a timeline, or was it kind of like you do what you need to do? And if it takes 10 years, it takes 10 years, yeah,

Speaker 1

21:21

you know, I'll be honest, I don't remember. I don't think we had any type of specific deadline. And I will say to her credit, it was probably because I had a relatively good idea where we gonna we were gonna go. Now, that idea turned out to be wrong, because that was the idea before the facility master plan sure took off, sure. But I wasn't just quitting my job to kind of explore. Yeah, there was at least a plan. Again, the plan was wrong, yeah, so there's that, but

Rion Willard

22:03

it was a singular vision. Yes, there

Speaker 1

22:05

was a there was a direction, right? Yeah, I would say, though logistically, things were going okay. And then obviously, you know, 2020, had COVID, so things kind of split, switched again. So there were these kind of moments outside of our control, aka COVID, where I had to reevaluate the business entirely, which ended up being a good fit. In our case, I think if I were still like struggling to figure it out today, she would probably be like, hey, go a regular job. Yeah,

Rion Willard

22:49

time to get a job now. Yeah, yeah,

Unknown Speaker

22:51

six years later.

Rion Willard

22:55

But I mean, I mean, you know that, that that you know you're quite right about the, you know, your partner being the most sort of important investor in, in any, in any business that you do, because they've got to be enrolled. They've got to be enrolled in the unknown of it, yeah. And to better give you space to be able, you know, and it takes something from a partner to be on along the ride or the journey, and they might not understand all of the intricacies and the nuances of the journey itself, but for sure, give you space to kind of go. I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. We're going in this direction. And then also the sudden change of it might appear like a sudden change of direction, where really it's an iteration, or it's a it's kind of the next step. But all the you know, it's an important pivot we know as business people, that's like, the pivot is always kind of, it's a it's a breakthrough in many cases. Um, first you could talk a little bit about what was the, the pivot that go architect went through, what was the original direction that you were, you were moving in, and then what led to the, the kind of, the the shift.

Speaker 1

23:57

So originally, go architect was going to be a publisher of books and online classes about architecture and design and basically art and creativity. So we had basically lined up authors that we were working with, and we would publish their books. We did online classes where we went to people's offices, where we filmed courses about their creative process. We actually did a class with more folkses with Tom may for California. We did one with this craftsman, Ben Abbott. He's on History Channel here in the US, and he does these incredible handmade like, literally, piece of metal to incredible knife with, you know, silver and gold and all this stuff we're talking like, you know, 1500 Dollar knives type of thing. So we did some classes with these types of people and others. And the idea was, of course, to sell them online and have this media slash education business. And that's a really tough business to do on a budget of very little. As I mentioned, I quit my job, so I add very minimal budgets and just some credit cards, basically, and a lot of time and

Rion Willard

25:32

so. And I guess you're in the world of filming and production, and it needs to be of a certain caliber, and that can quickly start burning through the cash,

Speaker 1

25:40

yeah, which, you know, fortunately, I was giving myself some credit. By the end, they were looking really good. I was quite proud of what we made towards the end. But, you know, it's, it's a high volume business. You need to sell, quite literally, you need to sell hundreds of 1000s copies of the book to really make any decent return for the online classes, those have much better margins. But, you know, online classes kind of hit their crescendo, let's say like 2020, when people are stuck home, and then, you know, they kind of tapered off. People wanted to do things outside. They have their challenges too. So that business was doing okay, but it definitely was not going to be a long term solution. Meanwhile, though in the background, right, I was continuing to do these master plans. And we would do, you know, one a year ish, and then all of a sudden, in like end of 2020, 2021 obviously, COVID gets you seeking all retrospectively and deeply. So I was like, Wow. You know, the only thing that's really worked consistently and where we can charge enough money and have done something that I would say is being pulled out of us is these crazy master plans. So what if we just focused on that, and we applied the technology, we applied the video, we applied all the marketing skills that we had learned with

Rion Willard

27:27

the books and amazing, yeah, and

Speaker 1

27:31

just in general, apply this, let's say higher production value, because obviously, you know, people don't buy online classes. They don't buy books if they don't look good, right? So we tried to apply that production value to something that had had very little production value. Wirelessly, is very minimal, right? And let's see what happens. And so that was 2021 and, you know, like any product that's being pulled out of you, you basically grow. It's so in 2021 we did like two master plans. So we double, you know, and then 2020 end of, 2022 2023 we did like six or so. 2024 we did like eight, I, you know, says, like, every year that we've applied ourselves to this, the product has gotten better, which I'm happy about, and the business case for it as also crop better, which is obviously good, really, it snuck up from The back,

Rion Willard

28:39

and it's quite a again, that's quite a courageous move, and takes quite a bit of entrepreneurial insight and wisdom to do that, because you would have sunk a lot of energy into the original business model, and we're trying to get a lot of energy to it, yeah, yeah. And to be able to, you know, kind of let go of that takes quite a bit of humility, and there's risk involved in making that and making that shift, but it takes a bit of kind of business wisdom, if you like, to be able to see this kind of, you know, how you're illustrating it with the idea of, you know, this the the original business model was a push model, where you're trying, you've got to market it. You've got to push it out there. You've got to get people to see it. You've got to whereas the other business model was just kind of naturally being pulled out of you, because there was a real, there was already in a very clearly identified pain, if you like. So was it? Was it? Was it a kind of Eureka moment when you were like, Let's go all in on this new direction? Or did it just happen more organically and gradually?

Speaker 1

29:51

No, I would say there was a pretty defined moment. Ironically, it came after the sale of. Our best class, best online class. So we made the class with Morphosis, yeah. And we also made the class with the Ben, with Ben the knife craftsman, yeah. And with the with the Craftsman class. I mean, we sold it was this was Christmas of 2021, we sold like, $10,000 a day for like, a couple of days, right? And then it went to basically zero. And I was like, waiting on as high as like, holy cow. You know, we can make a $10,000 a day. This is great. This is what an actual media company should make. And then, you know, after the Christmas season, it basically goes to zero. And you're like, Huh, okay, so if one, you know, one Christmas season brings in, you know, let's say 30, $40,000 but then we sell almost nothing in the months after that. This is really not going to go very well, like, you know, and that's assuming that you find a new batch of people to buy the same class next season. Also, you know, for $40,000 worth or more. So like, wow, this is really tough. You know, like, even our best class doesn't necessarily meet the expectations of what a media company should be earning. And it shows like The competition was master class, for example. Yeah, that's stuff with like, Samuel L Jackson and, like, really famous people, and they spent a lot of money, like, you know, they were burdened through investor cash and all this stuff for years. I'm not sure what their situation is now. Sure they've figured something out, because they have a large collection. But I didn't have any of those advantages. I couldn't get a list, like super a list people. I obviously didn't have all the investors. So I was like, whoo, you know, maybe this is not quite the right and so right after that really successful class launch, that's when I was like, okay, you know, maybe it's time to try something completely different. And then that's what gets you thinking, Okay, what has actually worked, etc. That was it. So it wasn't necessarily, like a specific day, or like, you know, sitting in a chair figuring it out, but it was definitely that kind of realization early, you know, 2021, 2022, period was like, Okay, we gotta, we gotta change something

Rion Willard

32:41

brilliant, brilliant. So, so then you realize that the kind of, kind of current business model with the master planning would be a lot more effective. And then how, how did you start to to grow and develop in that direction? And then, and then, did you? Did you start taking on more investors? And what was your or have you? Have you done that at all? Has there been seed?

Speaker 1

33:06

No new investors? No. Honestly, we don't need them. We have the advantage that just the next time I'm like a jack of all trades kind of person, so even if I don't do the exact work myself. I know how to manage somebody who does so. We've never really had the need for that. And then from the like, logistically, how do you actually expand if you have a business idea, or if you have a business that people are pulling out of you, basically all you need to do is tell people that you're doing that business right. There's many analogies like, I don't know if somebody's on fire and you're just walking around with fire extinguishers. Like, all you need to do is just tell them your affluent and they'll be like, give me that police right now, you know, like, you don't need to actually do as much as you think you do. And so literally, the first couple steps was just, you know, do we have a good web page for this on our website? Is there some maybe relatively simple email that I can send people that I've worked with in the past, and even that email could be something like, Hey, we're expanding our offering. Can you connect me to anyone else that is looking for XYZ? And literally, that was it. I just started asking people for more work and just telling people like, Hey, this is what we're doing. Let me know if you need help. And that was the pulley. Like, immediate, admit, huge difference, immediately. Yeah, so I don't even know how to, like, juice it up. That was literally so,

Rion Willard

34:49

so well, clearly, it's like, this is the kind of difference of having a pain orientated business or a business which is solving a very clear and need, which people. People are, you know, struggling with and so, yeah, we see this in the world of architecture so often is that, you know, architects are often, they're in a push method, kind of business model, where, you know, people don't necessarily want to have their buildings made out of cheese and and and pasta or whatever. And, you know, it's a kind of, you know, that you've got to be masterful or just very aggressive with your marketing. But there's a missing component of, like, well, what are, what are people actually dealing with? What are problems that people actually dealing with? And people who are, you know, in architecture, for example, we often see architects are very good at identifying broader societal problems, you know, and and kind of more philosophical problems, or problems of civilization. But they're not necessarily the people that are paying you money who are concerned with that. They've the people are paying me money normally have got some sort of business agenda that's, that's, that's happening or existing, or their or, you know, you know, the the whole world of how money works in architecture, for funding, for projects which is kind of what you're which are what you're talking about. But, but if every, every, every project has that, I mean even residential projects, you know, I'm always, I'm always surprised at how few architects I meet in the residential sector have made good relationships with either financial planners and had a discussion with financial planners about here, you know where, you know part of our service can protect a portfolio of property assets for somebody who's doing it. We're not a luxury expense. We're actually critical component. It's funny on the podcast. Actually, I've had a number of mortgage brokers, construction brokers, mezzanine finance people approach me to do podcasts on the show because they want to collaborate with architects. And no one's ever taken them up on it. And I find that amazing, amazing, because these guys are dealing with the developers, in many cases, who are, who are commissioning the work of architects and and so that, that, you know, that's a that's a real pain of the climb, if you like, is like, we're looking for money to build the project. And, right? So having some insight around that, that's, that's a, that's a real need, everyone's always looking for my so tell us a little bit more about then about go architect, and then we can kind of expand upon engage and and what that's about, sure,

Speaker 1

37:36

yeah, well, I would say, to start off, I definitely agree with everything you were just saying. You know, architecture, at least on in its purest form, right? It's more about design and the human element, which, of course, is extra important to you. Can really see the difference in something that's been cared for, versus, not sure. I would say the difference in what makes some firms or some people more successful is how they view the entire in software. You have something called the software stack. So that's all of the different technologies that stack on each other to make the app or website or whatever possible. And so very literally in architecture, of course, you have the physical stack of all the products or materials that go into building, but you also have the process stack of the owner, the financer, the insurance, the architect, the engineer, all these stacks of people. And of course, the architects are one layer in that stack. And it would be helpful, I think, to a lot of people, to understand that more of the stack. And I'll use that analogy, actually, for go architect also. So because, you know, K 12, so school district facility master planning is such a kind of niche world, the stack of the process is relatively small or relatively defined. And so what we've tried to do over the years is be at least aware or involved in more of the stack, so vertically integrated components. So a perfect example is what you just mentioned, software engage. So engage is a community survey tool that we made because we noticed some things that were missing from that core shape of the stack. So for some context, when you do one of these plans, you are typically contractually required to get community. Feedback from parents, teachers, staff members, etc. Now that can be you literally going to each school and surveying people. That means maybe sending them a digital survey all kinds of stuff, but it's tough to get people to respond to those surveys if they're not in your language, if they're not very visual, if they're too complicated, I'm sure you've faced, or people have faced things like this. So one of the most popular activities that it's done in person is sticky notes. You print out a giant board. People write out their sticky note, they click, put it on the board. Great. You have all these sticky notes. It's very visual, interactive. But how do you do that activity, not physically? How do you do it digitally? How do you do it in Spanish, right? What happens to those sticky notes after the do you give them to some core intern to type up? Do you take a photo of the board? It gets lost in some project fire or it hurt that particular seat again, there's some mismatch between the benefits of the physical reward and then what actually happens to the information? Second all that those sticky notes are very subjective. People could be writing about literally anything you there's no rating system. There's no quantitative element to those sticky notes. So we took that idea engage is a online sticky notes survey tool where you can view an image on your screen. You can click anywhere on the image to lead your sticky note. You can write in whatever language you feel comfortable. And then those results, that sticky board results can be downloaded. It can be translated. It can be embedded onto a web page. You could share it in the social media link. And then, on the flip side, you could also have kind of these reverse sticky notes, where the Creator writes the sticky note, and people rate it from one to five stars. So now you can imagine, if we have an image of a site at let's say the sticky note represents different projects that you want to prioritize, and people could rate those projects one five stars. Well, now you know what projects we are going to prioritize in this kind of very open, visual way, and when you combine that with gathering people's emails, maybe asking demographic questions, like, Are you a parent or teacher or student, all that kind of stuff, you begin to get this very granular, very high quality information that represents more of the of the group, rather than who can just show up on a Thursday night at 7pm for a half hour communion meeting. You know that that's a very small group out of the total that you actually represent. So we created this software to solve those challenges and to be part of more elements of the stack the tired process.

Rion Willard

43:11

So is this a piece of software as well that you could imagine having a kind of other applications in terms of community engagement. So it kind of, you know, probably a common one would be arguments over density in local municipalities, when there's housing, developers trying to build more housing, and you've got kind of NIMBYs who don't want to have see the project, and does it have that kind of application where it could be, you know, because at the moment, am I getting this fight that it's, it's kind of the the audience is everybody in and around the school,

Speaker 1

43:48

in this case, yeah, people that correlate to whatever school the surveys are talking

Rion Willard

43:53

about, okay, I gotcha. So there is, so there is feasibility that this could move into other sorts of forms of engagement.

Speaker 1

44:02

Oh, 100% I mean, anything. Just think of it this way, anything that you can print out and put sticky notes on you could do that year. Yeah. So whatever that image is going to be, it doesn't even have to be in the architecture or in planning world, the image could literally be a collection of clothing or something, and you are using the sticky notes as feedback on the design. You know, it could be almost anything, where it's important what you said and where you placed that note.

Rion Willard

44:38

Gotcha. And then so the the kind of original go architect platform, how does that kind of segue into this and, and perhaps, um, perhaps another way of talking about this would be if you were to identify the pains of. Of of a client that go architect and engage a solving what would they be?

Speaker 1

45:08

Well, I think at the core the pain is that the school district has very, very, very few ways to raise money for capital projects. So for example, in California, every school district has an operating fund which only covers the costs to teach students. It does not cover new classrooms, new gyms, etc. That school district, essentially, unless they get donations or something, they must go after a bond from their community to raise money for future developments or for major repairs of facilities. So there is really no other funding mechanism, or at least not common funding funding mechanism for that. So that is a huge pain. I mean, when you think about that, if you only have one way to raise money, well, you've got to raise money, right? So that's one component.

Rion Willard

46:20

And I suspect then, traditionally, it's, it would be, then very slow for schools to be able to actually raise the funds, get any work done. They end up stagnating. Services begin to drop, etc. There's a kind of, well,

Speaker 1

46:35

you know, different states do different things, for example, like, you know, here in Chicago, at least last year, it's changing a little bit now, but most of the budget came from the mayor of Chicago who, like, basically wrote this line item for for Chicago public schools. I handed down, but California doesn't quite work like that. You the school district is basically its own little fiefdom, and they can do all kinds of stuff within their little kingdom. So, you know, it depends on the state, obviously, in the city, but yeah, I mean, they're essentially, they're pursuing the future of their of their community, of their students, and in order to do that, by law, they have to do a plan to communicate the vision to that community. Because what's going to happen is that community will vote in the next election whether to approve this bond or not, I see, I see, and if the bond fails, you don't get the money. And if the bond is successful, you can issue the bond. So the stakes are, you know, millions of dollars. So the stakes are really high, right? You're talking about all these facilities, all this money, so and so you want to communicate the vision well, also there's some there's some kind of components that are interesting. The school district cannot promote the bond. They cannot send you flyers that says, Please vote for this, they can communicate the value, or they can communicate the plan, but they cannot promote the bond itself, I see. So it's this very kind of interesting line where you have to communicate the value, communicate what's being done. Communicate that you've thought through all the elements, communicate that you've gathered people's opinions and all this kind of stuff. But you cannot be like. You cannot get up and be like, rah, rah, rah. Please vote for this. So this funny little area close than the lie, very nuanced, very nuanced, right? So there's also a lot of that, like, you need to be aware of those rules, you know, expensive time, like actually reading the real documents, which are never exciting. I mean, if you've ever read, like bond, fundraising, management laws, it's like the most boring paperwork you could possibly imagine. But you know, it helps me understand the stack, right? Because it helps me understand what they're thinking about. Helps me understand the people afterwards in the process who are actually putting together the bond, all that stuff.

Rion Willard

49:39

So that makes it, I don't know exactly your question, no, that it does, it does, and it brings a lot, that brings a lot of clarity, actually, in terms of how engage also operates as a kind of another level of communication, in terms of being able to to communicate the value of this, of this proposition, without it being a, you know, a kind of, what. Whatever the criteria is for if you slipping into overly promoting the bond itself and the kind of financial aspect of it, yeah. What's interesting then is where do architects traditionally get involved in this process? And I know you alluded to this a bit at the beginning, with your kind of initial role, but like it sounds like that an architect would be wise to who architects who are interested in working in these kind of school districts or working on these kind of school projects, would be wise to be engaging with something like go architect in order to facilitate and help their own clients. So is it architects that use your platform? Was it the clients that use the platform? And would it make sense for architects to bring your platform to a client as as a way of kind of going? Hey guys, this is how we should be approaching this, this situation, right?

Speaker 1

50:58

Yeah. So traditionally, the architect would be the, let's say, manager of the facility master class. So they would maybe sub sub the group that goes and assesses each facility like literally walks around. The architect would lead things like the community engagement. They would be the ones producing the PDF, you know, or printing off the book if you really wanted somebody print it. So they're kind of the managers of this clan creation phase. So in our case, basically, we work with the architect to help them do a couple things. So we do communications, engagement. We are, let's say, the universal source where all data from the entire process comes to us so that we can clean it, reformat it, and put it into interactive charts and tables, things like that. We create the final deliverable, aka the interactive website, specifically for that plan for that district. If there's maybe a video component, maybe we'll record video graphics. In general, we help out with the graphics. I mean, I've done site plan creations. I've had other people do site plan creations. We just kind of include them in the data, just another data element. So basically, the end of the day, what the voter sees is what we have created and gathered information to create

Rion Willard

52:52

amazing, brilliant, brilliant. So what is the plan for 2025 Where do you see, go architect and engage evolving. What's that? What are the next steps in terms of the of your business and your own growth?

Speaker 1

53:06

Yeah, well, you know, there's so, as I mentioned, with the different parts of the stack, there are other parts I would like to pursue. There are some very complicated ones. For example, after a school district is successful and raising money, they sell the bond, all that kind of stuff, and they get this, you know, they get the money to do the projects. I think it'd be kind of cool if there was a bank for capital projects within school districts. That one seems really complicated to do. I don't know where to even start on that little so if that's like the most complicated one, you know, I think in general, we can always improve with communication. We can always improve with creating the site plans and like, how are we explaining what's happening at your school? Because that's kind of the other component of this. People care about the district on a like, oh yeah, that's education is important. But what people really care about is what is happening at my kids school, you know, Sue and so explaining what has happened yet ABC elementary or ABC High School is particularly important because that's the first thing that people want to know. So I think we'll probably find different ways to improve that communication element, to make it more engaging and faster, to create faster to understand. Course, there's a bunch of stuff with AI. How can we use AI to maybe have an interactive chat bot or something like that, where you. Can answer people's questions. For example, they could ask something like, you know, how much money will be spent at schools with, you know, a lot of disabled students or students with physical needs, because that is something that we we do track. We do show what schools serve students with physical needs on a higher basis, you know. And are those schools prioritizing those projects, for example? So I think there's a lot of that kind of component for go architect, though, on a general sense, I think we're ready to take this to the next level. You know, right now, it basically only work with California. We could we go course grow within California, but there are 49 other states with 10s of millions of students, and I would like to see, see what can happen next. Because I we do a little bit of an audit every year or so, where we look at what other master plans are being created different states, even in California, and I am usually shocked how rudimentary they are, and I think we could add a lot of value to a lot of different institutions. So, yeah, try to go national, I guess is the answer to it. 2025,

Rion Willard

56:32

I love it. Brilliant, well, very inspiring story, Josh, and really wonderful entrepreneurial journey. And you know what you're doing with go architect and engage I think is incredibly innovative and incredibly valuable to facili, yeah, facilitating architecture ultimately, like facilitating projects getting getting done, schools getting built. So thank you very much for coming on the show and sharing your story. It's been really insightful and wonderful to hear. Thank

Speaker 1

57:05

you. I still sell books, by the way, I still just on the side, you know, maybe, maybe it will go reverse. Maybe we'll have, like, a really successful book and be like, oh yeah. You know, we used to do these millions of copies of books.

Rion Willard

57:22

Is that is the Morphosis? The Morphosis, course, the long line, then we can still get hold of

Speaker 1

57:28

that. Yeah, no, no, we, we paused that. And to be honest, they got a little grumpy. I think they had higher expectations. I warned them. I was like, you know, you're not going to be able to buy a new house or whatever with this, with this class. But no, that one's not public anymore, but the rest are free. On YouTube, you just type in design class, like one word, design class on YouTube, you could be all yellow ones for free. The only one exception is the knife class. That one we actually, uh, sold, like we exited that knife class specifically, and that was the asset, the one asset that was actually sold off. Awesome,

Rion Willard

58:18

amazing. I'll check those out. Yeah, and that's a wrap.

Enoch Sears

58:23

Hey, Enoch Sears here, 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 of 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, and now a word from today's. Sponsor. A while ago, I began to hear reports of a company that was helping some of our clients build remote teams. We looked into it more closely and discovered the company world teams, that was helping small architectural practitioners build remote teams that were both capable and qualified. I was intrigued by another business that addressing one of the critical pain points for small architectural practices, which is the ability to grow and shrink a team effectively, to be able to handle higher workflow without having to staff up significantly, and also being very sensitive about labor costs. World teams is built to address these issues. World teams is a small but mighty company that helps architectural practices build high performing remote teams quickly and efficiently, saving you the headache of sorting resumes and interviewing under qualified candidates. World teams operates in your time zone and prioritizes near native English speakers, ensuring clear and efficient communication with your remote team members. They have flexible contracts so you can adjust your team size as your needs evolve. Additionally, you're connected directly with your skilled professionals, which fosters trust and collaboration. And world teams helps you reduce your operating costs without compromising the quality that is so important to a practice. To download a free guide for building a remote team 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. Go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. Hello, listeners.

Rion Willard

01:01:39

We hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it about the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month. Interested in becoming a sponsor, please send us an email at support@businessofarchitecture.com. The views expressed on this show by my guest do not represent those of the host and I make no representation. Promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you be unstoppable. You.

00:0000:00