Download Otter for your meeting notes

610: Why the Public Thinks Architects Are Optional with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard | Otter.ai

610: Why the Public Thinks Architects Are Optional with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard

Enoch Sears1h 9min

Rion Willard

00:00

If all we've got in our winning work toolkit is to lower your price, that is a shit, shit life. Hello and welcome to Business of Architecture. I am your host, Ryan Willard, and I am here with the founder and CEO of Business of Architecture, the fabulous Enoch Sears. Welcome Enoch. Hello, everybody. Hello Ryan. We're gonna sit down today and we're going to discuss something that was recently in the Architectural Press in the UK, and a topic that always, always very near and dear to our hearts here at Business of Architecture, which is the salaries of architects. So this episode salaries, we're going

Enoch Sears

00:45

to be

Rion Willard

00:46

looking at the salaries of architects in the UK. We're going to be asking questions of why they're so low. We're going to have a little talk here and use our experience of working both with UK based architects, Australian architects, and, of course, architects in

Unknown Speaker

01:01

America

Rion Willard

01:04

to kind of paint as best as we can, a bit of a global perspective on the issues facing architects around around the world, and see if there's any difference.

Speaker 1

01:17

But let's jump into it. All right, let's, let's do it.

Rion Willard

01:21

This episode is sponsored by Smart practice business of architecture's flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how he might be able to help you. Please follow the link in the information we 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. So a few weeks ago,

Enoch Sears

02:38

yeah, you came across a you were browsing LinkedIn. I was and

Rion Willard

02:43

I follow the Riba, the Royal Institute of British architects. And there was a statement from the current riba president, moi Waki, which was addressing long hours and low pay.

Enoch Sears

03:03

So my hat is off to him for addressing that. For starters,

Rion Willard

03:07

yes, he's been very progressive, and in kind of highlighting some of these things, we'll talk a little bit as well about some of the things that the Riba does and doesn't say. And also, what is their role here. And I think, as a, you know, I've got a lot of criticisms, not so much of the RBA, but more of how us as professionals look towards our professional body to do everything for us. And here at Business of Architecture, we're interested in in business and wearing the entrepreneurial hat. And there's a very strong sense of individuation, if you like, or personal responsibility that you kind of have to have as a business owner. And if we don't have that, it's we're in a very, very vulnerable position. And whilst it's very noble and admirable to be campaigning, and we should be campaigning for, you know, top down

Unknown Speaker

04:03

change. Don't rely on it.

Rion Willard

04:07

Don't rely on it. You would. You wouldn't do that if you're running any other kind of business. So you could be waiting a very, very long

Enoch Sears

04:13

time, exactly, exactly, or go the faster route, which is what we're going to talk about today. So, so perhaps it's

Rion Willard

04:19

worth, you know, the complaint that exists across the globe, I think, is about architectural salaries.

Enoch Sears

04:27

So remuneration? Are we talking remuneration for individuals employed in the architectural profession? Yeah,

Rion Willard

04:33

we're starting compensation, compensation for individual employees. We see in the UK, you know someone who's spent the best part of 10 years of education, they'll graduate become an architect, and they may be on anywhere between 40,000 pounds, 45,000 pounds,

Unknown Speaker

04:54

if they're lucky, and

Rion Willard

04:56

we'll see is

Enoch Sears

04:57

that a starting, starting salary. Would

Rion Willard

05:00

be that would be kind of more for like a graduate, for an architect. So somebody's actually got themselves qualified, maybe yeah,

Enoch Sears

05:07

and and, and remind us, for listeners that don't understand in the UK, what's the what's the equivalent of being licensed in the US? So in the United States, to be a professional, you need to have a license, and that requires certain requirements to be able to achieve that and get that licensure, or registration, as it's sometimes called, yeah,

Rion Willard

05:31

so the UK and the US are very similar in the sense that there is a kind of component, which is at university. So in the UK, we do a degree, then you do your master's degree, and then you need to have at least two years, think it's two years of actual experience in practice, working in an office which has all been logged with a mentor. And then you can sit your exams. And then you have to sit some registration exams which cover all sorts of things like, you know, the legal side of the profession. They may touch a little bit on the business side of it. They'll certainly be talking about, you know, the Building Regulations and all of the kind of legal professional responsibilities of an architect and so, so, not dissimilar to your, you know, your end carb registrations and the ar e exams in in the US. So once you've done that, then and you pass the exams, then you can go on to the Registration Board, the architects Registration Board, which is the equivalent of N card in the US. And then you can call yourself an architect. So the quickest that you can do it is seven years. But usually we see people stretching it out. Maybe I took probably about eight and a bit years. I took a couple years more years in professional practice, and certainly in the US, I see a lot of people just not even getting licensed, which

Enoch Sears

06:56

is lollygagging. Ryan, were you lollygagging so long, eight years. Why? What happened there, my friend, I took a year out and did sales a year out, was

Rion Willard

07:08

this, when you were down in Australia, it was, yeah, okay, so rather than, rather than one year between. So normally in the UK, you do your degree, then you do a year out in practice. And so I took two years out in between the degree

Enoch Sears

07:22

and the Masters is that where you learned that amazing Australian accent too, right? Mate.

Rion Willard

07:27

That's exactly I was there on Bondi Beach. I tried to get a job as a, as a, as an architect, but they wouldn't have me. So I wonder why I had to do this. You had to do

Enoch Sears

07:41

it. And you're from the UK. You're a Brit. How do the how do the Australians view Brits in general? Is there some cultural way that they view Brits with

Rion Willard

07:49

it? I mean, we're very similar, uh, culturally very, very similar. Imagine the UK with beautiful weather, massive spiders and more free time. That's what you get in that's Australia for Australia, but it's very it's very similar. And there's a very kind of nice, um, kinship between the UK and Australia. Is there a nice kinship? And when I was there, this is like 20 years ago, they used to do a working holiday visa, so you could go out to Australia and you could get a job anywhere for three months, if you're a Brit. So that was one of the reasons why I struggled to get any architectural work, was because I could only be employed at one place for three months. And so

Enoch Sears

08:31

architects are like, that's just enough for you to learn how to do the cat the wear a CAD templates work around here

Rion Willard

08:36

exactly, exactly. But I had no experience of Australian building regulations or adding nothing about anything to do with architecture in Australia. That

Enoch Sears

08:46

doesn't even matter anyways. I mean, come on, it's the Outback down there, and just using sheet metal. Yeah, that's right, that's right. They're very

Rion Willard

08:56

nice, very nice architecture scene in Australia, I must say, a lot of very good designers, a lot of modern houses. You're just saying that because, you know, they're listening right now. Some of that exactly, exactly we want to get some more trying to pat them, make them feel good, tear

Enoch Sears

09:09

on their work. No, it is. It is true that, um, it's interesting. When you look at just the different kind of work in Australia, it definitely tends to be more, I mean, compared to what we do here in the United States, it's, I would say it's more, it's more avant garde, it's more contemporary. It's more. It

Speaker 1

09:24

just seems a bit more. I guess that's the best way to put it. Yeah, you know, they've

Rion Willard

09:30

got, they've got really good stomach for here. Yeah, they've got a lot of great modern modernism all over the place. Yeah, great designers down there. Yeah. The climate is very simple. Certainly on the east coast of Australia, the climate is very much like California. Sounds horrible. They've got great weather. There's loads of space, so a lot of creative people, good schools. Anyway, I didn't get a job in Australia, and that's why I took a couple of years. Took a couple of years out and learned sales, but that all goes back to say, you know, it's an eight year, seven year process to get graduate, you know, become an architect in the UK, it's not too dissimilar in the US, though I do see a lot of young architects in the US just not getting their licensure. And maybe that's a topic for another podcast, but I'd love to hear some of our audiences opinions on why that is, why we why we see that happening

Unknown Speaker

10:28

so often. Yeah,

Enoch Sears

10:30

it's a great so it's an interesting question, whether it's so salaries you mentioned, so for this 40,000 pounds, something like that, I'll love to 20,000

Unknown Speaker

10:40

British Sterling.

Enoch Sears

10:44

Let me just see, would be the salary for,

Rion Willard

10:48

yeah, a recently qualified architect.

Enoch Sears

10:52

When you say qualified, this would be someone who has been they've just got certified by the ARB

Unknown Speaker

10:57

correction, yep, yep. 40,000 pounds,

Rion Willard

11:01

so in the United States. So if I look at this actually, so I'm just looking at the RBA correction here. So the architect salary report, yes, it says, Here, this is in 2023

Unknown Speaker

11:12

Oh, dear. I shouldn't have brought this up, should I? It's even worse, I

Enoch Sears

11:17

don't know. I don't know. Let's, let's. The truth often hurts, right? But

Rion Willard

11:23

it's worth it. It's disappointing. Why did I look at this? So this is architects with five or more years experience, and I'm going to assume that that means that is someone who's registered as an architect and they've got five years post registration, the average full the average pay is 39,000 pounds a year. Okay, so it's like six grand less than what I was saying, 44 five, yeah, yeah. And the average earnings for early stage architects. So that's architects with who have just registered with the ARB for less than one year, receiving an average salary of

Speaker 1

12:03

34,000 pounds. Doesn't sound too bad, so

Enoch Sears

12:07

let's just put this into perspective. 34,000 pounds. What kind of lifestyle does that get you in different parts of England and the UK?

Rion Willard

12:19

You can be yachting, you can get out everywhere that

Enoch Sears

12:23

votes the jet set lifestyle, basically is what you're saying. We'll put

Rion Willard

12:27

it this way. Then let's have a look what livable wages in London,

Enoch Sears

12:32

and what would be some comparable salaries and

Rion Willard

12:34

other options. So the London living wage is currently set at 13 pounds 85 so if we did, let's call it 13 pounds 85 times roughly 2000 hours. Yeah, we're looking at, yeah, it's going to be about 26,000 pounds. Yeah. So 26 27,000 pounds is the is the living wage, okay? So obviously. So the idea is that if you're under that, life is very, very difficult, okay?

Enoch Sears

13:07

And we said for starting architects in the UK, it might be probably just above that. I would just, just above that, yeah, just above that. And then what does that mean for like, lifestyle? Does that mean you're, you're dining out every single week. You're, you know, what does life look like? You have to share a flat with someone else, to share living expenses. What does that actual life look like?

Rion Willard

13:27

So I can give you some examples of stories I've heard. I've got some friends who are working at practices, and it's not uncommon for me to hear of friends who have decided to move back home to live with their parents in order to be able to try and save up for a house. And as you know, that's admirable to do that, but it's also kind of demonstrating that, certainly in a city like London, which is constantly rated as one of the most expensive places on the planet to be living, you know, there's a quick disparity between your rent and I would make an assertion that your, that your your rent is going to be more than 50% of your of your monthly income. For sure. I know that we like to keep it. We like to keep it more like 25% or 10% would be ideal. But you know, when it's getting above 50% that's really squeezing things out. So trying to save for a property or a house becomes very difficult. To end up living, living at home. If you're single, sorry, more it's more of a stretch. If your work, if there's two of you, then there's probably a little bit more breathing space. We hear quite a lot of architects who get married to somebody who's earning a lot more than they are, who works in finance or tech or something like that, and

Speaker 1

14:47

their job becomes, you know, pay

Rion Willard

14:52

for the bills, and they live off the the other one. So there's lots of different, obviously individual situations, but it's not

Unknown Speaker

14:59

it. Certainly

Rion Willard

15:02

it doesn't have all of the freedoms that you would like to have as a young professional, and certainly with things like rent, that's going to be pretty difficult, not to mention how much money you would have spent getting your education in the first place. And I think that's one of the

Enoch Sears

15:23

sort of issues here, if we look to people, right, is it common in the UK? Do people pay? Do they pay? Do they take out loans to finance their education? Or do you people usually pay it for? Yeah, in advance or during

Rion Willard

15:37

so when I was at university, we only had to pay the fees for university had just come in. Okay? So historically fees, there were no fees for the education in the universe, for tertiary education for UK residents or citizens. And then they started to put a fee in place for tuition fees, which started off quite small, so I would have only paid a grand a year for full education. And nowadays it's more in a line with what you might expect to see in the in the US, like with non public schools. Okay, so now it's more like 1015, 20,000 pounds a year to go to a school, and probably the more elite schools the fees are, the fees are higher. And do

Enoch Sears

16:26

people usually find, is it common to finance that through loans? Yes. Okay, so they're coming out of school, they have loans. They're in an expensive city like London, where most of the jobs are going to be at, by the way, exactly, exactly. And they're probably earning 28,000 maybe 30,000 pushing it, but probably around that 26 to 28,000 pounds per year, correct? Which precludes them from, well, their their rent is going to be a large part of that. Yeah, I can't imagine you could find many places to live in London for under 1000 pounds per month.

Rion Willard

17:00

No, now we're starting to talk about maybe you could get a room for 750 quid, but you'd be sharing it with other people.

Enoch Sears

17:07

Okay, so you're looking at it basically either a single or shared room in an apartment and and that will allow you to then have another, basically another 1000 pounds of discretionary income, which means utilities, clothing, food, saving for the future. Yeah, excursions, nights out with that goes, that disappears very, very quickly. Yes? So, so it's and the architects in the UK are feeling the pinch. So they're feeling that, they're feeling like, there's, let's say, put it this way, it sounds like, based upon the comment by the current riba president, as well as the work that we do with firms, both in the UK and in the United States, there certainly is a conscious acknowledgement

Unknown Speaker

17:52

that

Enoch Sears

17:55

we should be getting paid more, or, man, I'm sure, not getting paid a lot. Or however, that story shows up for us, that the way it occurs for us, I'm working really hard, and I would think that, I would think that I'd be getting paid more. The finances aren't working here for me. Yeah,

Rion Willard

18:08

I'll just read what he said. He He said, a culture of long hours and low pay after a long route to professional qualification is an unreasonable reward for the effort expended to join our profession. It undermines our profession and excludes people, including those with caring responsibilities or disabilities. Attracting and retaining diverse talent is a prerequisite for delivering architecture that responds to the need of everyone in society.

Enoch Sears

18:37

Okay, so he, basically, he voiced a, probably a concern that a lot of people share. And then there was a number of and obviously it prompted a lot of comments below this particular post on LinkedIn, and I know that you commented some sage advice, as always, just some beautifully well, well put, eloquent commentary.

Rion Willard

19:02

I I tried not to, you know, get involved in the cesspit of commentary that happens on LinkedIn where people get very upset. And I tried to maintain as professional demeanor as possible and remain, were

Enoch Sears

19:19

there any, what were the, were there any inflammatory comments that were made, people expressing anger, outrage, frustration

Unknown Speaker

19:27

that you remember?

Rion Willard

19:31

Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot of frustration at the commentary around, you know, there's, there's kind of comments around, well, what's the RE what's the RBA doing about it? There's a lot of commentary like this one here, with the economy stagnant and costs of employment rising, and the need for to upskill, we need support for our practices. So there's a there was a lot of kind of, you know, we need support from the RB VA to to help us, because. So, you know, part of, part of how this was being interpreted was it landed a little bit kind of judging from the comments with a lot of business owners, of like, well, you guys are not paying your people enough, right? So you've and that lands frustrating for business owners, because they're like, we're struggling. We're struggling here. We're struggling. We're struggling, and now the RBA is kind of saying, We've got to make sure that everyone's getting paid properly. So sometimes this this comment can land like there's some blame being pointed towards the businesses or the business owners or the business owners. Might hear it as a, as a as a blame to them that you know you're not paying people enough and you should pay them more. And certainly from an uninformed perspective of an employee, I can appreciate that you might think that you know the employers are taking the piss with why they're paying paying so low, or they're taking advantage, because it's kind of something that happens all across the all across the industry. So people getting upset, it brings up a whole load of other comments about the increased liability that architects are under the new regulations the architects have to do the boxes that need to be ticked, and the additional work that is needed from an architect.

Unknown Speaker

21:26

And, you know, this is not our fault, okay,

Enoch Sears

21:30

you know, this is interesting, Ryan, I want to, let's, maybe we'll get in a little bit of politics here. But I was reading an article recently that talked about populist movements across the globe, yeah, right, and particularly with the Trump administration incoming in the United States, very much has has tapped into, tapped into, a lot of populist sentiment. And so for I use the word populism, but let's define that, because it deals with, I think, what this the prison the RBA. So let me, for those of you who don't know what populism, I'm even sure what I know, what populism, populism, I'm going to look it up here on Google. So it's basically okay, it's, it's, it's, it's a political term used to talk about stances that are in opposition to a perceived elite group. So populism generally talks about the difference between the masses and the elite, and it's frequently associated with anti establishment, anti political settlement. Oftentimes it taps into undercurrents of discontent, societal discontent, and things that people are upset and frustrated with in terms of their daily living conditions or their just their quality of life and their financial situations. So it sounds like this post from from the president is definitely tapping into a populist theme, which is there's an undercurrent of feeling like long hours and low pay after having given up a lot to pursue a professional career. Sounds like it's a dubious reward. That sounds like a kind of a populist message. And it's easy, you know, it's easy for political pundits to look at the populist message and say, Oh, that's just the discontented masses or but I think what it does is it, if we don't look at this seriously, populism is based upon very real and this is where I'm going with this comment, populism is based upon and tapping into those currents. Yeah, they're, they're they're based upon real people's ideas, real people's thoughts, like real human beings that are experiencing these things. That's why these leaders get elected. That's why these movements start. That's why societal change either happens or doesn't change because there's some unrest. So it's not the first time that we've talked about the remuneration of architects and but now we have to trace back. We have to say, okay, where does this begin? Where does it stop? You know, when you read that comment by the President, I was thinking that, you know, firm owners themselves are probably feeling like they're in that same boat as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, not just employees, but people who own firms. And oftentimes, in my experience, especially in the UK, it's not uncommon for us to hear of practice owners who are actually earning less, taking home less than their employees. And

Rion Willard

24:10

we've seen it many a time. Yeah, we've seen many, many which,

Enoch Sears

24:15

which, in a sense, is is admirable and noble. But it begs the question, does it need to be that way. And I think that's where your comment and the inner some of the conversation kind of went that

Rion Willard

24:27

direction. Yeah. So there was a number of people who were kind of echoing, perhaps some of the sentiments that I was trying to express. And and certainly as well, I would, you know, part of the the message of the president here, he also talks about

Unknown Speaker

24:47

one of the issues of long,

Rion Willard

24:49

long hours and low pay, is that it makes the profession from his, you know, it kind of excludes people. And there's a conversation there about. The diversity of of talent, okay? Or it kind of stops and that, again, that's something else. That's a

Enoch Sears

25:06

good, interesting angle, an interesting angle for higher pay. I mean, it,

Rion Willard

25:09

it's, again, there's this, there's stuff to unpack around, around that. And absolutely, that didn't necessarily land, depending on your perspective. So well with people, and my comment anyway, was basically fees. It's all to do with fees. Okay, everything else follows. And there are these wider societal issues of equality and equity and fairness and all these sorts of things. And okay, architects, we're not really in the best position to be able to do that much about these things until we've got money. Because everything we can, we can have more agency when we've got money. And where does money come from? Or money is going to be coming from, our fees that we set and negotiate with our clients. And when you say agency,

Enoch Sears

26:03

when you say agency, I heard a quote recently talking about, I think someone responded, the idea, Does, does money make you happy? And the person I was listening to said, Well, the thing with the thing with having money is it allows you to choose which misery you want to experience, whereas, if you're poor, there's only one misery you're getting experienced.

Rion Willard

26:28

It's your choice. You have a choice. You have a freedom in your misery. Have a freedom in your misery. You have a freedom and misery that you choose agency. I mean, I've often used the quote money is an index of agency, and agency being your ability to do something, your ability to have freedom and something, your ability to take action. And so money is the great facilitator of all of these, of all of these things. So it's, whilst it's very admirable to have these wider societal campaigns and things that you're committed to, there's not a lot that you can do about them just by waving placards. And you've got more agency. You've got more ability to do stuff in that direction if you've got money. And this then opens up the conversation that we're not helpless in the fees that we set. It might appear that way, and I totally appreciate it. We've spoken to 1000s

Speaker 1

27:31

of architects, 1000s and who tell

Rion Willard

27:35

us stories, I can't do this. We're being undercut, and a lot of it is that there is an art and a science to raising fees, right? There's marketing, the whole world of psychology and marketing and behavioral economics and positioning yourself. It's a an enormous field. And then, of course, in the negotiation, the actual salesmanship, the actual talking to another person, dealing with their objections, negotiating, listening, being artful and precise with it this. These are two huge business skills that

Enoch Sears

28:13

we never let. Me tell I'm gonna jump over the story, Ryan, go for it. That just came to mind here about this idea, because in architecture, it's not uncommon to feel like we don't have any agency or any options when it comes to fees, almost that we're forced to take the fees that our clients mandate to us at To a certain degree. Recently, I heard a story from a friend of mine who said he was working at one of these sales organizations where it was down and dirty selling. I mean, every day on the phone, just cold calling people, just the kind of work that no one wants to do, you know. I mean, you only end up there if you've exhausted every other possibility for your life. So and he was, he eventually, he was, he was serving some time, shall we say, as a manager in this particular call center, and he remembers doing a review with a young, kind of college age student that had was feeling very, very frustrated because he's like, you know, the people just don't want what we're selling. Like, I can't do my job because everyone turns me down. This isn't working. It's too hard. Obviously, people don't want what we have. Because he wasn't making any sales. He wasn't progressing and the things that he was tasked to do, right? So the manager was thinking about this, and he said, Well, let me, let me give an example. Let's do a little experiment, right? So the very next day, this guy came in, and he took their top sales rep, and he put him on his phone account. I'm gonna, I'm gonna switch your guys's places desk. You basically get to go to his seat with his list, and now you're over there, and this guy's over here on your list in your seat. And then they did the same thing throughout the day. Can you guess the results in terms of they did? Well, what happened? I. Yeah, yeah, the guy who was striking out all the time, of course, he switched desks. Now he's in this other desk, and he started making sales right off the bat, right? Different list. Just kidding. No, that's the cynical No, no. Of course, he's the same guy. So again, he's experiencing the same defeat, whereas this other salesperson who had success, again, he was, he was knocking it out of the park, right? And so that story came to mind because, you know, oftentimes we we can believe the evidence that we see. So when we're presenting fees like, there's a lot of evidence that this particular sales rep had, that people didn't actually want what he had, that success was impossible, that he was being tasked with something that which to which there was no solution for. And he had to see someone else actually doing it, making it work, to have his mind opened up to the idea that actually he had more agency, as you mentioned, in the situation, than he actually thought he did. And this is a catalyst for him. It was really a turning point, because then he was able to take the turn the light on himself, say, Okay, well, wait a second, what is this other guy doing that I need to know about? And that's what started to change things

Unknown Speaker

31:07

for him. Brilliant. Love that. And,

Rion Willard

31:10

I mean, it's interesting, because the this idea of consensus, we've got to be very careful within the profession. And, you know, let's face it, we're a bit of an insular, inward facing profession, like we talk a lot to ourselves and we complain a lot to ourselves, and we complain a lot and justify that it's impossible to get good architectural fees,

Enoch Sears

31:37

and we've reminds me of about 10 years ago, This girl wrote this blog post about going to a party with a bunch of architecture. Remember that it's very cynical, very comical, and Ryan, you don't remember it, do you remind me? I wish I could. Maybe we'll have to follow up in a different episode. But it was so poignant and so hilarious she was and she was commenting on this, on the fact about how all the similarities between us architects, how a lot of times we are insulin from the outside, it can be very comical, the way that we start to see the world from this insulated kind of viewpoint looking out,

Rion Willard

32:11

yeah, and so we've got to, we've got to be just careful about that, because we end up making reality out of something which is,

Unknown Speaker

32:21

which is just an opinion,

Rion Willard

32:25

okay? And we can, we can find consensus and a lot of agreement about it's impossible to make, it's impossible to get good fees. Okay? Now, I don't want to underestimate that. It is, it is difficult to get decent fees in architecture, but it's not as difficult as it's not impossible, and it's not as difficult as is often made out. And it's not not within our control. It might mean making some major changes and some letting go of some of some of some viewpoints and paradigms. But there is certainly, with what you know, what we talk about here, Business of Architecture, that the art and science of, say, marketing and sales, this kind of massive engine that needs to be invested in, studied, learnt that goes at the front of every single business. Okay, failure to a failure to approach that with with some commitments

Enoch Sears

33:24

well. And let me jump in here, Ryan, you know, years ago and this, this was the, this was the start of, this is why I began Business of Architecture. Was because I was like, there has to be a different way. Like, I'm not there's this. One of my favorite movies is Gattaca. Have you seen it? No, it's the movie. I it's, it's almost, I go so far to say it's almost an architectural film. It's actually directed by Danny DeVito. It's like a sci fi, yeah, it is sci fi Gattaca, and it has Ethan Hawk in. It has Jude Law, I mean, you has Uma Thurman. I mean, amazing cast. You can't go wrong watching these beautiful people. I mean, just if they didn't even say anything that made sense, you just want to watch them because they're beautiful, right? But the whole point of the movie, I'm not going to go into that. By the way, this movie, for those of you who may have interest, was actually identified as the most likely science fiction movie of all time, in other words, the one that most likely predicts some future event in any case, and it talks about kind of genetic manipulation in a future whereby people with money can selectively modify the genes of their children to prevent things that us normal humans have to deal with. But the point was, architecture. It's beautiful. All the scenes are just this crisp cinematography. It's a beautiful film to watch. Some of it was filled at Cal Poly Pomona, just some incredible architectural sites. But there's a line in there where the whole movie is about Ethan Hawke's character. He is born as kind of. He's a natural born person. In other words, he was not born through this genetically modified way in which these new race of superhumans are being born. So he's kind of your average Joe. He's the underdog in the story, and he dreams of going to outer space to be an astronaut. But of course, you can't go to outer space and be an astronaut if you're not the perfect human being, and so he has to conceal his identity. And there's this line where he's talking about, he says, you know, a lot of people believe that they have to deal the hands that they're dealt. And he said, I something along the lines of, I'm not willing to play the hands that I was dealt. Okay? So when that was my attitude, when I when I began this journey of business, of architectures, like, okay, I can see that yes, clients, a lot of times, mandate fees. I can see that yes, it seems like architects are not only experiencing, you know, long hours with low pay, but also that there are hidden, invisible impacts that these things are happening to them, health issues. Architects coming down with things like afib, high blood high blood pressure, other sorts of health problems, relationships that are impacted and effective because the lifestyle living in financial poverty in retirement, because of the stress and the lack of financial abundance in architectural

Unknown Speaker

36:18

practice. So

Enoch Sears

36:21

all that to say, Ryan is that there was this hunger and this desire that, like, I'm not going to accept the status quo. There has to be a different way to do things. And as I begin to really go outside of architecture, as you have as well and and learned about business from other sources, attending other seminars, going to workshops, hiring coaches. I began to I began to realize, and I saw, very quickly that the sales process that we use in architecture is almost the

Unknown Speaker

36:51

polar opposite

Enoch Sears

36:54

of what one would want to do if one was wanting to capture the maximum value for their services. And I was like, wow, we have somehow let other industries, clients, people around us, anyone but ourself, basically determined the way in which we will present our fees and our services. And the impacts of this were devastating, because, as we can see, that's why we're having this conversation. Is it not in your comment on LinkedIn, you said, fees, fees, fees, fees, fees. That was the very first, first thing you said, which makes sense, because fees are the things that come into a practice that allow it to pay the expenses and employees and everything on down the line now, for using an old model, an antiquated way to present our fees and prevent our services, what chance do we have of capturing higher compensation for the value that architects provide? So is the issue that architects just aren't valuable? Is that the issue here is that the issue that the services that architects provide simply aren't valuable and can be replaced by a commoditized solution, is that, is that why compensation is depressed? Absolutely not, but it's how it's being, how we like to think. It's just because of the public, how they perceive it.

Rion Willard

38:10

So it's interesting. There is a part of the commentary here was, you know, making this call to arms, if you like that. There is this art

Unknown Speaker

38:21

marketing and salesmanship

Rion Willard

38:23

around raising fees, and actually, we have some dominion over that, like we can break out of the way that we've always done. We've always put together fees, and if we're just copying what everyone else is doing, clearly it's not working. So why do we keep copying what everyone else is doing and we're getting frustrated from it? I know you know from our own personal experience, experiences, we would both have a similar sort of story of being very upset. I, you know, I personally, when I first set up, my set set up, my own practice, was just sort of

Unknown Speaker

38:51

flabbergasted at the

Rion Willard

38:54

kind of just, you know, looking at other architects and what they were doing and then coming out of the career, and, you know, there was literally, there's got to be a better way. Got to be a better way.

Enoch Sears

39:05

And I was like, why have you settled for this? Yes, what is going on here?

Rion Willard

39:09

It was like, I can't, I can't settle for this. This is, this is, there's no way. You can't, can't do that. And again, you know, both of us paid a, paid a price to kind of

Unknown Speaker

39:19

take a different,

Rion Willard

39:22

perspective on it, you know, both in terms of lifestyle for a period of time and and financially. And I remember kind of one point I was looking at, should I become an riba member, and I've got 500 quid here for a year, and I didn't really know what I would get for my money. And then there was a, like, a marketing course might have been one of your courses. Enoch, actually, in the early days, probably

Enoch Sears

39:45

was. But story I

Rion Willard

39:52

was, I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend the money on something which is not done by architects. I. Let's see how marketing

Enoch Sears

40:01

forces definitely go to a marketing conference, and see how many architects are in the room. Let's,

Rion Willard

40:05

let's, let's see. Let's see if there's something out. And then that was the beginning of like, whoa. There is a whole world of marketing and sales, and it's not only is it fascinating, you know, it's innovative. And there are loads of other businesses that are doing interesting, creative things, even developers. These people that we'd classified as non creative Luddites, were some of the most creative deal makers you could, you could imagine, and the way that they're playing and, you know, bringing about money, and the whole, the whole perspective on money, just the whole thing just kind of started to blow open my unlock. Unlock something Yeah, unlock something new. So, you know, we'll make a stand here that there is a whole world, which is people don't know about. You know, marketing isn't just putting an Instagram post up or doing a newsletter. It's, it's very, very deep, as is sales. They're very, very deep life skills about communicating and to underestimate them, undervalue them, or not engage in them as a business owner. Then all we've got left, and this was the nature of my argument, was, if all we've got in our in our winning work toolkit is to lower your price, that is a shit, shit life.

Speaker 1

41:30

It's terrible. It's terrible. And if that's all you've got, the only way is down. There's no, yeah, there's only ways. You don't have any other options.

Speaker 2

41:45

So again, it was, it was interesting. You know somebody a, I think he used to be run an architecture practice in Wales, and he's now a lecturer at a university, clearly, someone who's had a lot of experience in the architecture industry. He was very in disagreement with my argument, and he was making, he was making some good points

Unknown Speaker

42:12

about

Rion Willard

42:14

what's happening and why the architecture profession is in such a bad way is because of unregulated, unprofessional, unlicensed competition. Oh, there we go. Now it turns into

Enoch Sears

42:27

another conversation,

Rion Willard

42:28

yeah, who are undercutting architects? Yeah? And that's why, and those, and if we got to eliminate them, and we can eliminate them through regulation, and then we're going to be in a better position. Ooh, sounds like a horrible idea.

Enoch Sears

42:45

I don't know. What do you think that sounds horrible?

Unknown Speaker

42:50

Sounds terrible. I mean,

Enoch Sears

42:52

it's a few, I'll give you example. Here's, here's why you're you're cutting Okay, so now this is not the first time I've heard this argument. And I get it, I get where it's coming from. It's the idea that a fenced garden is protected. So in other words, if I put a fence around my garden, if I make it more difficult for competition to come in, basically what we're talking about is kind of economic isolationist

Speaker 1

43:17

policies. I'm going to put up barriers based upon

Enoch Sears

43:23

time or experience or passing certain certifications that keep competition out of the marketplace. Okay, now in the short term, this can work right. In the short term, it can allow certain individuals and certain professions to prosper. But guess what ends up happening anyways, people find their way around it. Let me give you one example. Okay,

Rion Willard

43:46

so California, yeah, I can totally imagine this. Yeah, yeah. We, we are

Enoch Sears

43:51

in a in California. We're in this constant battle with the minimum wage and living wage, right? And it's a very, it's very difficult situation, because minimum wage here in California, if you're just a restaurant or service worker and you're getting paid minimum wage, you're not, there's no way you can live independently. I mean, again, it's the same issue of depressed wages. So policy makers and people in California are constantly trying to raise the minimum wage, and recently they took a massive hike in the minimum wage here in California. Think it went from, I'm probably off on this, but it went from somewhere around $16 up to, I think, like $20 let me see current minimum wage in California. So as of January 1, 2025 the minimum wage in California was, will be 1650 for all employers. This increase applies to employers regardless of size. Now what's interesting is that there are what what ended up happening is, and this is, this is what happens. Businesses find their way around these cost increases because they have two options. Number one, they can pass on these costs to the to the consumers, or they can find other ways to keep their costs down. And so nowadays, like when I go into the low. Go fast food restaurants, I'm now like, they're they're being run by skeleton crews, and they have digital kiosks in place where you place your orders right now, nothing wrong with that. I mean, perhaps it's a it's a technique. We're using technology in wise ways. I know when I went to the UK, I was surprised when I saw this in grocery stores, they have these digital checkout cows that That's brilliant, and we do that here in the US as well. But the point is, if we just look at the original conversation here, which is that creating more regulations is a way to increase architects compensation, I would say that, that. I would say that that is not a proven concept. And I would say, as a matter of fact, it can backfire, because if wages, if you're forced to pay your architects more, you're going to cut back in some other way. It's just have to, I mean, the water needs to level out some way, somewhere, somewhere along the line it's going to get cut. They're either going to, maybe they'll say, Okay, now what we're going to do, because architects are so expensive, we're going to hire one architect just to stamp the drawings, and we're going to get a team of outsourced, you know, people, civil engineers in Ethiopia, to do all the drawings for us. Okay, so what ends up happening is that it actually ends up hurting the people for which the regulation originally was instituted to create.

Rion Willard

46:17

Well, it's in the same vein. If we one of the arguments that this gentleman was was bringing up was kind of economically depressed areas in in South Wales, and was saying that, obviously there's a very there are his own words. Here they were. And what did you call How did you describe them? The the public are not well enough informed to make a decision. And the obvious factor is going to be cost related, especially in deprived areas. And without that knowledge they get, they make poor choices to their to their own regret and to the detriment of the built environment. So there's an architectural kind of consideration there, which, again, I appreciate that, but you're now, if you were to regulate it, so clearly, there's a there's a service that they want, or they want to do some some work to their house, and if they're being forced to use an architect, and then the architect's fee is way higher, then, okay, now we've got a bit of a disparity here with the with The market, and they're gonna, they're gonna, what

Enoch Sears

47:22

would happen? Know what happened? They would there would be the first, there would be the first generation immigrant who lives in that part of Wales, and he or she would be like, bottom barrel prices and and always, Well, exactly, you're just gonna just, you're just gonna get architects undercutting architects Exactly, yeah, which is that doesn't happen in America, does it? No, we, no, no, absolutely. We on each other's fees. We make sure we never undercut each other's fees. Never compete on price. Know what happens? And it's unfortunate because I don't see lawyers ever doing that. Like, I never see attorneys competing on price, like, shopping around your legal fees to like, Oh, can you beat this guy over here? He said he'll do it for this. And maybe that happens, but in my attorney, friends that I talk to, they don't experience something similar to that. Now, there's another distinction here, Ryan that our listeners may be thinking about, and I think it's important to make that there are within the realm of architecture. So in the realm of architects, there are some parts of architecture that are very, very well protected, like there are fences, there are definite fences around them, and a lot of times they deal with the safety and the life safety, health and wellness of the public, which is why those bearers are erected. So for instance, in California, an architect is needed some architectural stamp, although it could be a professional stamp, in some cases, like a structural engineer, stamp is needed for anything over a four Plex residential project. So basically, in California, a single family residence up to a certain size and a duplex, these could be a triplex, and I believe even a quad Plex, these could be done by someone who doesn't have an architectural license or a structural engineering license,

Unknown Speaker

49:06

if it's conventional construction, okay,

Enoch Sears

49:11

but on the other hand, like hospital work, school work, like these ones are all very they are highly regulated, And the fees in those particular industries and particular niches within architecture are substantially higher. You know, architects are doing healthcare architecture, they make good money here in the US architects who are doing educational work, oftentimes they make good money. They make decent money. Some are do better than others,

Unknown Speaker

49:37

right?

Enoch Sears

49:41

But I think that that's not so much due to the regulations as it is the lack of architects in those industries and the higher standards to which those architects need to inform and the

Rion Willard

49:51

specialization, and it's interesting here in the UK, is in in those kind of specialized niches, you don't have so much of the same. You. Issues. So this particular person was kind of complaining about, you know, regulation at the very lower end, where you're scrapping around for kind of home, home improvements and renovations and and that kind of stuff. Like, are our architects needed for that kind of work? Well, no, that even begs the question, why should they be part of my argument here would is that, why are you? Why are you going for that kind of work? That's not work for an architect. I appreciate an architect can bring a lot of value to the built environment there, but the current high touch service that an architecture brings to a project shouldn't be applied to that. There needs to be a different solution. There needs to be another innovation where there's high building standards and high construction standards that an architect can do, and that's going to take a business innovation, like a different approach, which is scalable, and a different type of product and etc, etc. And we see businesses who are who are kind of engaged with that, but as a independent architect, complaining about the unregulated other service providers who are kind of eating up all of this, all of this work. I mean, this is, this is, I

Enoch Sears

51:09

don't know. And here's the thing about this too, is there will always be people who are willing to skirt the skirt the bounds, and do things in an unconventional and maybe even illegal way. I remember for a while, there I was. I was a con. I was a licensed contractor, and I started to dabble in building and considering getting into the building industry. But I was licensed. You were a licensed contractor? I was, indeed, I was a licensed general contractor. Yeah, absolutely, I know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Ryan is we have, we have many stories that I haven't never shared with you. There's more, there's more, but I'll tell you one. One of the things that was like I decided it wasn't for me, was when I began to understand what common practice it was for residential architects to do, to use cash. I'm sorry, did I say residential architects? I met contractors, and basically they use cash as a way to skirt immigration laws and skirt taxation. And like, I just, I'm like, I don't want to be in an industry where literally the only way to survive is that you have to pay your contractors cash because you're not going to report it on your taxes. I'm like, that does. That's not cool. That's not cool at all. And so the contractors would have this problem as well. Like, if you're a legitimate contractor, and you're not, and you're putting all your money on your books, and you're paying taxes and all that, your fees are going to be higher. And so then you come to a similar situation, it's like, wow, how do I compete? How do I compete when I do things the right way? And I think this is part of the conversation that architects get frustrated about, that we get frustrated about, is like, I want to do things the right way, but I get frustrated when I see other people who are not as committed to doing things the right way, who are looking just to make some money, or maybe they think they're doing it the right way, but they don't have the education experience or design skills to be able to pull something off like I could, and then they're undercutting me, and it just, it's unfair, it's frustrating,

Speaker 1

53:10

and it's a real it's a real thing, yeah?

Rion Willard

53:13

I mean, it's, it's, it's interesting, particularly on that kind of the lower end of the of the market, where I know architects will often say, Yeah, well, I was speaking to one client, and they went offered this other builder and a plan drawer, and they didn't use an architect, and now they regret it, and they wish they could have they wish they could have used me instead. And you're like, I'm sure that happens quite a lot, and there's no shortage of evidence of it, but there's also loads of people who just don't care, and they're quite happy with the route that they took and they got their little extension. And it's not architecturally beautiful, and maybe it's not, probably bad, it just about meets all the Building Regulations that it had to, to be legal structure, and they are happy with it, and they use it, and it serves their their purpose.

Enoch Sears

53:56

Yeah, it's frustrating. It's, it's reality of life. It's,

Unknown Speaker

54:00

you know, there's, there's,

Rion Willard

54:03

you know, anyway, anyway. All of this to say is that the wishing or wanting for, certainly in the UK, for kind of further regulation, it's admirable to be campaigning for that, and it's interesting, and I'm sure in certain circumstances, it's I'm not against it, not against it, but as a practice. Who is struggling with low fees or is caught up in this cycle of only being able to compete with or being undercut, then that wishing that regulation was in place is a really bad strategy to raise your fees.

Unknown Speaker

54:40

It's terrible.

Rion Willard

54:43

It's terrible. And if you want to be remain committed to that complaint. Okay, there's going to be a consequence to it. On the other side of it, there is agency in learning about marketing, positioning, communications. Leadership, identifying the profitable markets in your in your in your business, this whole strategic conversation of where, where you could be making money, putting profit and money as a as a focus in your business, because you're

Enoch Sears

55:16

responsible. I got into architecture because I didn't want to have to do those things. That's why I got into architecture. Catch,

Rion Willard

55:22

oh, I got into architecture. Yeah. Jump, then,

Enoch Sears

55:27

that's right. So once you're running a business, once you're running a business, you're taking on all hats, you're really taking on all responsibilities, right? And one of the things about a business is that a business really requires so many different skill sets, so many different

Unknown Speaker

55:46

abilities.

Enoch Sears

55:48

And if you're a business owner, you know, whether you're a team of one or a team of 50, you gotta have some of this. You gotta have some of all of it. You gotta have some of the marketing. Gotta have some of the sales. If you don't. Now, when I say you you have to, you don't have to, you don't have to, right? But what it will do is it highly increases your chance of having more freedom as an architect. It highly increases your chances of being able to not only do better work, but also to do that work in a way that is less stressful, more fulfilling, learn business. So, yeah, so that's where we come to isn't it Ryan? It

Rion Willard

56:30

absolutely? Is it Ryan? Absolutely? Yeah, there is, there is a path. There is. It's not easy. I'm not going to say any of this is, is easy, and running a business is never without

Unknown Speaker

56:44

challenges, but with

Rion Willard

56:48

business education. And, you know, the RBA are not going to the RBA, the AIA, this is really not their,

Unknown Speaker

56:57

you know, they've got, they've got a different role to play. And

Rion Willard

57:01

if we've taken, if we're wearing the hat of a business owner, then we've got to learn about all the mechanisms of of our businesses and get focused on on profit, because profit is the thing that's going to feed great design. What was it we were having a conversation about Louis Kahn and how he produced, like a handful of

Unknown Speaker

57:21

a handful of masterpieces and

Rion Willard

57:26

and then died penniless, broke in a toilet at Penn Station, a very sad end to what's only one of my favorite architects, and I wonder how many more masterpieces we would have on earth if Louis Kahn had had some

Unknown Speaker

57:42

business education,

Rion Willard

57:47

there wouldn't be any wars pieces. Well, no,

Enoch Sears

57:52

we would just have, we would just have the we would have the Salk Institute stamped in 20 different locations. Now. Well, it's interesting to think about that. It's interesting thought experiment, like, I know, you know, look at what Frank, Frank Lloyd Wright, on their hand, was very prolific, very prolific. And he wasn't good at managing money, but according to reports, he was good at making it Yeah. In other words, people paid him well for the work that he did, but he burned through money like crazy. He didn't really value he didn't manage it well, yeah. And as such, I've heard.

Rion Willard

58:20

I've heard stories of him preferring to be on the bread line or the cusp of being broke because it made him more creative.

Enoch Sears

58:28

Spurs the creativity, sort of like the stories about how he he'd walk in before a client presentation the night before, and he'd be like, Okay, I guess I better do these drawings, these presentation drawings for tomorrow, and he got to be very, very good. So there's something to say for that as well. You know it, it highlights, really, the one of the challenges of having what we when we use the word success here in architecture, we use it very loosely, because everyone's definition of success is different. And for you, a success may be simply having enough to provide for your very modest needs and doing work that you love. And that is a fantastic I think that's a fantastic measure of success, right? Some of you want more. Some of you want to have more agency in your life. Some of you want to do things like develop. Some you want to do things like being able to influence and impact the world in ways that go beyond just a nice quality of life.

Unknown Speaker

59:20

And

Enoch Sears

59:23

you know, one of the things about the architect or kind of persona people who are drawn to architecture, oftentimes they're artists, and the artist's mind is typically not a mind that grasps very readily or very easily or even with much excitement money, because money typically is going to be more analytical. It's very black and white. It's bottom line. And so in a sense, there is some validity to the idea that design architects and commercially focused architects are not compatible, right? And I just say that based upon pure psychology of how. The creative process works because an architect who is developing amazing, incredible, innovative designs is going to be innovating, is going to be doing things that someone has never seen before. You know, this kind of architect is probably, you know, I was reading recently that, um, a lot of the great inventions came out of the use of psychedelics. I imagine these architects are, they're probably high on weed. Who knows what they're doing to stimulate but the reason why psychedelics actually matter, the reason why I bring it up, is because they've been shown to connect different parts of the brain in creative ways that might not normally happen, right? So some people have that gift naturally, where their brain automatically kind of sees in these different ways. For instance, my daughter, she's dyslexic, but she is so brilliant in some particular areas where her mind just makes these connections that I would never even consider. So gotta recognize that someone like Louis Kahn, who's the consummate artist, and he focused exclusively on the craft, asking him to learn business is like asking a fish

Unknown Speaker

01:01:01

to climb a tree, you know. But if we, at least we

Enoch Sears

01:01:06

have that awareness, can we surround ourselves with people that have those abilities? And that's where I would say that yes, you can. And we can look at Bjork Ingles, I think he's done an excellent job of doing that. He comes from. He's a very driven man, obviously, but he obviously comes from a very high design background, and he values that. But instead of deciding to run the business himself, he's hired. He brought in from outside the industry, A, C, I don't know if she's the CEO. I think she's the CEO. Sheila is, if she's still the CEO of Bjarke Ingels group, but he invested in people that have these talents and skills to build out a team. And because of that, whether or not you like the work of Bjarke Ingels group and what they've done, they have made a massive impact in the way the built environment works, in cityscapes, in architectural thinking, right? And and that was to back to your point, Ryan, I know, for instance, that was fueled by Bjarke and his partners, by their focus and not negligence of the business side of architecture.

Rion Willard

01:02:12

No, absolutely. You know, there's, I like, where you're what you know, the this idea of you being self aware enough that you're of the creative persuasion and have a have a repulsion to anything to do with the finances. Then it takes a little bit of wisdom to make sure that then you that you recognize that that is a lack and that you got to put somebody in place around you to do that,

Unknown Speaker

01:02:41

to help. Yeah, I love and I love,

Rion Willard

01:02:43

and it's the two wings, right? And then people, then we can do that. And we see all of the the kind of famous design practices have at their core somewhere, there's been some sort of move like that, where they've got an innovation with, you know, vannoli is another practice where they've had their Managing Director, CEO, who was just purely the business guy, and then Villanova became the studio director, the creative director, and could just he created an environment where he could just be the architect.

Enoch Sears

01:03:13

Absolutely. I mean, another example, one of my favorite architects is Lawrence Scarpa, him and Angela Brooks, Brooks Scarpa, they, I love, I've always loved the work they do. But in the documentary that we produced about their firm, by the way, which still has not been released, and we didn't get that, it's like the missing tapes. Oh, man. But in the interview, when I was talking to Larry and Angela about their process and their methodology, she's like, Yeah, you know, Larry's the design guy. He'll, he'll, he'll design. He just get he'll just design away. He'll keep on designing, like, he'll keep on searching for the excellence, like, he'll keep on pushing and pushing and pushing until that thing is, like, where he feels he's comfortable with it being but Angela was like, I keep spreadsheets of everything, so I keep very detailed notes, and I calculate how much did it did our last project take? How profitable was it? So, you know that rigor, I think that they had a great example of they're not like when you talk to them, they're like, No, we're definitely not in it for the money, right? They're not in it to just purely to get wealthy. They're in it to do great work. But they realized that

Unknown Speaker

01:04:25

the the financial

Enoch Sears

01:04:30

maturity and responsibility goes hand in hand and empowers the work that they're able to do. Yeah, so it's, let's just pretend like it said, let's say it's a Yeah. It's not, either or it's a yes and

Speaker 1

01:04:43

it's a yes, and which one's more important, business or design, yes, both, yeah,

Rion Willard

01:04:51

no. And I like to think you know that the business a well functioning business. This is the this is the environment where great design can happen. And

Unknown Speaker

01:05:00

can be looked after

Rion Willard

01:05:02

Olson couldn't, you know, when we've had Tom kundig on the show. Is another, another good example of, you know, when he he often tells a story when, when he joined Jim Olsen, that the practice was in a financially really bad way. And, you know, they had a lot of soul searching to do, and whether the business was going to go going to go bankrupt, etc. And for the next seven years, those early years of the business, when you first came on, they just focused on two things. One was refining their kind of design manifesto, if you like, their design philosophy, through however ways they could, even if they didn't have the projects, thinking about it, talking about it, drawing. And then they were very astute about building up a financial base, because they knew that in order to take some of the design risks that they wanted to do, they were going to need to have some kind of financial security to be able to do it. And that kind of became part of the philosophy of the practice was to ensure that there was the business components that were being looked after in order to be able to support more more innovation in the design aspects of it, and certainly, as they were refining their design rhetoric or their design aspirations, then the two become quite synergistic, because it's like, okay, well, if we Want to, if we want to be creating that kind of work, then it's, it's just increasing the importance of how the business needs to be working and solidified otherwise. You know, we see it so often. It just, just the cycle goes around of neat, of neither of them being very good. So it goes back

Enoch Sears

01:06:39

to fees. That's where we started the conversation today, Ryan, get his fees.

Rion Willard

01:06:43

There is there are tried, proven, tried strategies, tactics that you can adapt to make them work for yourself. There are more profitable markets than others. There's way more options than we're often led to believe about fees in the architecture profession, and there's no shortage of business advice out there these days, from chat GPT to obviously, people like ourselves and all of our colleagues in the In the industry that support architects and support services. There's so much so rich nowadays, but really, we don't have an excuse, and that's a wrap. Hey,

Enoch Sears

01:07:29

Enoch Sears here, and I have a request, since you are a listener here, for the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of to bring it back, to empower you as an architect and a designer. One thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast, simply because it helps other architects stand for more their value spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast. And as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit. But more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us a review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training, you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wished they would have known 20 years ago.

Rion Willard

01:09:02

Hello, listeners, 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 guests 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