597: Team Struggles Part 2 - Why Your Team Doesn’t Care About Your Firm’s Goals (and How to Fix It) with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

597: Team Struggles Part 2 - Why Your Team Doesn’t Care About Your Firm’s Goals (and How to Fix It) with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard

Enoch Sears28min

Enoch Sears

00:00

Your business is a reflection of you as a person. Hey. Enoch Sears, here, welcome back, and I'm joined here with my co host, Ryan Woolard,

Rion Willard

00:08

hello,

Enoch Sears

00:09

and today we're going to continue the conversation. This is just a brief break. We split the conversation in two because we wanted to make it more bite sized and digestible for you as we were going over some of the key insights and takeaways that we had discussed during our Design Council event in beautiful San Diego, California. So with that, Here is today's episode. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, the world's leading step by step business training program that's helped more than 103 architecture from owners structure their existing practice, so the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of their architecture. Because you see, it's not your architecture or design skills that's holding you back. It's the complexity of running a business, managing projects and people, dealing with clients, contractors and money. So if you're ready to simplify the running of your practice. Go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash smart to discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method for running a practice that doesn't get in the way of doing exceptional architecture.

Rion Willard

01:14

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.

Enoch Sears

02:04

Now, the other thing that you mentioned around which I love is beautiful is, you know, we love to talk about smart practice, and we love to talk about the promised land of having more free time and less anxiety and less overwhelm. The truth is, is that you're gonna have, you're always gonna have problems. This is life. Yeah, life is about having problems. The question is, which problems do you want to have? Same thing with working out, right? People talk about going to the gym. I don't want to go to the gym. It sounds difficult. It's tough. I don't want to wake up in the morning. It's cold. I hate exercising. I don't want to abstain from eating those foods. It's too hard. Well, yeah, all that's painful. It's painful to go to the gym in the morning. It's painful to pay a personal trainer to keep you accountable. It's painful to put a bunch of weight on those things and push it up and down, or go to CrossFit gym and do a bunch of clinging jerks. It's, it's, it's intense. You know, what's more intense? What's more intense is throwing your back out, yeah, throwing your back out and then not being able to move for a month and a half, or being on high blood pressure medication when you're in your late 40s. So it's like, Okay, we're gonna have problems. Which problems do you want to deal with? So with an architectural pro um practice, you could say, Yeah, look, I don't want to grow because I don't want more problems. I don't want to hire more team members because I want to manage more people, which is great. I mean growing doesn't mean you necessarily have to manage more people and have more stress. As a matter of fact, that's the whole thing about growth. That's why, in the business world, people try to grow, is because they know that, generally speaking, when you grow, you get leverage,

Rion Willard

03:44

momentum. Momentum compound. Powerful, compounding. Yeah, momentum

Enoch Sears

03:49

so powerful. Because when you're moving, you're rolling, you're moving forward, there's a vision. Things are clicking, they're moving ahead. Super powerful, yeah, so do you want to have money problems? I don't want to have money problems. I've had money problems before. It's not fun.

Rion Willard

04:04

I don't want to have not having money problems. You

Unknown Speaker

04:06

don't want to not have many problems.

Rion Willard

04:10

I'm like, That's the money the not having money problems, yeah, that's right, that's where they're having money problems, yeah, which is like, the higher caliber one, right? Gotcha. Obviously

Enoch Sears

04:19

there's problems of not having money. Those problems can be very, very stressful, and at the same time, here's here's what I find about growing to the next level of what's possible for us. Yeah, it's very easy to dead in the pain of a problem through ignoring it and pretending like it doesn't actually exist, or pretending like it doesn't bother us that much. I've done this. This is how human beings are the most prolific and prosperous entities on the planet, because we're a. Adaptable, right? So Charles Darwin, early on in his, in his, you know, evolutionary philosophy, scientific philosophy, you know, he said it was about the survival of the fittest, that it was the fittest they survived. And you probably know, you may realize that actually, later on in his later work, he actually kind of retracted that, and he's, it's not the survival of the fittest, it's the survival of the most adaptable. Yeah, who fits exactly? Who fits into the fittest? You fit in? Yeah, because they're adaptable. Yeah, right. So when we think about this idea, so going back to that, fit themselves to the situation, that's right. So human beings were very adaptable, meaning we can be in a really crummy situation, and we can survive in that, and we can be like, this isn't that bad, which is at the same time, in one hand, it's a blessing because it allows us to live decent lives, and on the other Hand, it's also, in a way, a curse, because it keeps us stuck and it keeps us from experiencing what we could experience that we don't even know exists. In other words, a greener pasture that truly is, a greener pasture, something that we did not even know could possibly exist. And I found this in my marriage. First 20 years of my marriage, I was like, this is this is what marriage is like. Like my wife and I, we hardly argued, you know, we we had six kids. We were dividing and conquering the different tasks of raising a family and being spouses and, you know, physically intimate a couple times a month, which at the time I thought was amazing, you know, but as I've grown and as I become like an middle aged man, I'm like, you know, we've worked on our relationship, and now the quality of connection I have with my wife because of the and this didn't happen by accident. It happened because of therapy we went to. It happened because of training and coaches that we hired in all areas of intimacy and relationship, and there has opened up a completely new level to my marriage that I did not even know existed before. I did not know a marriage could be like this, and I know there's another level beyond where I'm at right now. Yeah, so going back to architecture, it's easy to be so adapted to our current situation that we just, we almost become resigned. I'm not sure the right word for it, Ryan, but you you see what I'm pointing out, like, this idea of, like, stagnant, I'm stagnant, but I don't feel stagnant, but it's like, yeah, well,

Rion Willard

07:34

we're not, yeah, we're not exactly, we're not aware of the lack of growth. We're not aware of we've just, we've basically learned to live with the limp. There you go. And we've got no idea of you know that actually, we could be sprinting, climbing, jumping, but we're like, no, no limping. If I can cross over the road in 25 minutes, that's great. I'm all good. That's all good. Yeah? That's better than better luck. Better than last week we did it in 20 minutes, yeah? But it's like, there's a kind of transformative part of that was like, well, actually, you could, you can run and jump and you can sprint, as opposed to be limping. I think let's go back a little bit to the the commander's intent and what there's a few, there's a lot this has come out of the conversation, the I'm interested in us chatting about what's possible with commander's intent, and also this idea of, you know, the the intention of the Design Council really, is empowering people to design the problems, to choose the problems they want, to have to have some say in the problems that they're going to create for themselves, right? Actually, like, I'm gonna, you know what? I'm not gonna just allow the there's gonna be problems that you're going to come that are going to hit you from their field, that's, that's, that's, that's part and parcel of it. But also we can have a big say in the caliber and the kind of problems that we want to have, and actually start mentally going, I want to have that kind of problem. Because often what we see with people when they think about growing their business is they think about growing the existing problems that they have in their business. That's right. So they go, right. Why the hell would I want to grow it? That sounds awful. I want to take my prompts and multiply them by three. Exactly. That is how growth occurs for so many of us. And, you know, I think that's that's very problematic. I'm not saying that we all have to grow our businesses to 100 people or 1000 people, but I would also, you know, we're talking to an industry here where 85% or so of all architects are in micro practices or sole practitioners. Why it's really hard. It's really, really, really hard. It's really hard to do things on by yourself. And even when people do start getting a little bit of a team, they're still doing stuff by themselves because they're not delegating. Yeah, you know, I think there's, there's a lot to be said for the beauty of large practices in architecture like. What can be done the agency that comes with those kinds of, those kinds of businesses, and there's growth, obviously, in terms of people. We don't want to be creating businesses which are just fat for the sake of being fat and totally inefficient. And we want to have lean, lean machines that are either growing with the with with people and revenue, or you've got a lean team that is growing with with revenue and high profits, and you know, that's, you know, now, now we've got more choice to say in the kind of problems that we're having. So what? So what is possible? What's possible with this, this idea, again, of a designing problems and B command is intent. Well, designing problems, I think at

Enoch Sears

10:43

a very surface level, some problems are a lot funner than other problems, or a lot more fun, as my grammar teacher would have, would have told me today, right? Some problems are just fun. It's fun to figure out we have a surplus of cash this year. Where should we invest this money in the business? What should we do with it? That's kind of a fun problem to have. That's kind of cool. Yeah, right. On the other hand, shoot our client put that project on hold. We have another client who's not paying us this month, and, my goodness, I'm gonna have to end up putting some of my personal cash back into the business, or we're gonna have to dip into our line of credit, and it's already at 100,000 not fun. Those are not problems that I want to have and we'll deal with them. They might happen eventually, regardless of what we do, but that's the first thing that comes up for me. Ryan is like, which problems are more fun? Yeah, and which ones are more stressful? Which ones are more from a place of abundance and play, and which ones are more from just trying to get out of scarcity.

Rion Willard

11:43

So in terms of the Design Council this week, this week, what have been some of the the the fun problems that we've been seeing clients deal with and some of our own that's we can share some of our own insights from how we've seen clients deal with more fun problems. Or, yeah, should, should I, um,

Enoch Sears

12:04

what does it look like to give partnership away in my business? Yeah, I think that's a very great problem. Yeah, like your business is now so abundant and so profitable, and you have a team member or a couple team members who you see a lot of leadership potential in. How do I go about giving them more ownership, whether it's legal ownership or a sense of ownership. How do I then nurture that? That's a cool problem to have.

Rion Willard

12:26

Yeah, I've got, I've got team members who want to be more serious. Yeah, I

Speaker 1

12:30

have team members who are more engaged. They're saying I want more How can I have better money members?

Rion Willard

12:35

I've got team members who want to grow. I've got team members who want to have who want to take on more responsibility. These are some of the problems that came up. Yeah, that's Yeah, and that's, that's a, that's a great one. And there was some really lovely insights in that. And also it was, what was interesting about some of those problems as they came up, how people wanted to, there was a pull to retreat back into an old problem. I'm like, of like, well, I actually, I'd rather stick with the old problems of not having enough cash. Or that's true. I don't want to. I don't want to. Why would I don't want to share anything just yet?

Enoch Sears

13:11

Yeah, there was definitely some, some expression of, what if I don't want to share the profits of my business? Yeah, kind of mentality which I get that, I can see, I understand where that frame might be coming from. But the whole idea behind a partnership is that it should, if it's structured correctly, it should grow the pie. That's why companies grow. That's why shareholders grow. Right? When a company does a stock division, when they sell stock, they don't want the value, the overall value, of those stocks, to decrease. They want the value to go up because there's more shareholders, the business is growing, so the pie is bigger.

Rion Willard

13:44

Yeah, I think this is an, you know, again, an interesting one, just talking about growth and the like. Perhaps a more powerful way of thinking about partnership and growth is like sharing and collaboration, and that's really what it is. I mean, look at Jeff Bezos, and he owns, what, 15% of Amazon these days, and is worth two, $50 billion and you know, he's, he's, um, got numerous, numerous shareholders which has allowed him to do what he's done in terms of just the absolute enormity. Exactly,

Enoch Sears

14:24

did he get poor by taking on more more partners? I mean, shareholders are a form of partnership. Exactly, it's a form of equity share in the business the owners. So basically, you're saying, so he multiplied the owners dramatically. And I guarantee Jeff Bezos did not get less wealthy.

Rion Willard

14:39

Yeah. Oh, and think about like Shark Tank or Dragon's Den, as we have it in the in the UK, you've got entrepreneurs coming here, ultimately looking for investment, but also looking for a partner. Yep, they're looking for people, looking for people who's got, who've got a new level of expertise, a different perspective, a different way of doing things. In the organization there's going. To be an initial cash injection to the company, but they're going to be giving equity away of the business. Sometimes, those dragons, those sharks there, they drive a hard deal, and they come in, you know, the entrepreneurs saying, I want to give up 5% of the business. And they're like, No, I want 30, yeah, and I'm not going to give you all the money that you're asking for. Yeah, if you're under the value there's still a value proposition there, which is and the clever sharks that they're able to negotiate. Yeah, you're going to be giving way more than you wanted to up here, but we're both going to be growing something bigger. That's right, that's right. Again, that's 10, 10%

Enoch Sears

15:36

of of 100 million. What's that? That's 10 million. That's a lot more than 100% of 1 million.

Rion Willard

15:44

Exactly, exactly, you know, like,

Enoch Sears

15:48

if I'm on Shark Tank, and Damon John, he's the guy with all the connections in the in the garment industry, and I have some garment prod, who's like, man, yeah, let's do this. But I want 50% of your business, and my business is struggling at one and a half million right now, I'm like, let's do this, brother, grow this thing with me to 100 million. You have the connections, you have the garment suppliers, you know, the marketing. It's like, yeah, yeah. But the problem is, a lot of times we focus on the percentage of something as opposed to focusing on running the numbers and seeing what does my share look like as it grows to 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, 5 million, and only that, but like in cash flow distribution. So these are cash flow would be money taken out of the profits distributed to partners. But what does it look like when there's an equity event? What does it look like when an H Okay, comes in and acquires this company, or the other architect across town decides he wants to buy us out, to purchase all of our clients and some of our team members. Yeah, right then you got cash flow for that entire amount of time, plus you get the equity event. You get the money from the valuation on the company right now. It's an expansive thinking, and it's definitely not something that comes naturally when we're coming from a place of wanting to

Rion Willard

16:59

go around and yeah, cling, cling

Enoch Sears

17:02

so tightly yeah to things Yeah, which is one of the major leadership fails that we see inexperienced leaders make, which is wanting to cling to things very tightly, instead of Having a more expansive and and open perspective on sharing with the caveat that when you do empower people that you're not, and this is another leadership mistake. Number two is empowering people who are not ready to be empowered. So a lot of firm owners, what they end up doing is they empower people who aren't ready to be empowered, and then they're disappointed when these people don't measure up to what they were hoping they would do. Well, if you're going to empower someone, you also need to give them the training, you know, vet them, make sure they have the skills to be able to succeed at the thing that you're giving them to do. And if you do both of those things, yeah, there's something over there's

Rion Willard

17:56

something wonderful about this idea of sharing and doing it and doing it well and in an empowered sense, whether it's an investor partner, which all partners are really but, you know, let's say it's a it's a kind of investor in the Shark Tank sense, or whether it's a new partner who's coming up from through the ranks in your in Your organization, is that the for the right people, that ownership, that sharing in it is an it's a new level of responsibility that opens up a totally new world to that individual, which can be really magical, can be really, really magical. And there is, there is like, yeah, you are taking a risk here and giving something away, and it might not always work out, but the upside of it working and you're growing a bigger piece of your pie. You're going to have more ability to have impact in your architecture and your design. You're going to have a better quality of life. You're going to pay the rest of your team better, because now you've got two people who are in alignment and building stuff. Yeah, I

Enoch Sears

19:06

heard one of my favorite business mentors that I followed over time and gain knowledge from is Gary Keller. Right? He formed Gary Keller real estate, and I just love how clearly he talks about specific business principles. And one of the ones that he said that really stuck with me when I first heard it was he said I wanted to make my world so big that anyone within that world could build their own world as well, like there is deep wisdom there, because so often team members end up leaving. Why not? Because they're unhappy with the practice, necessarily, because maybe they have a bigger world that they want to pursue. And if you're not expanding your world to allow them to build their world within that world, what's going to happen to your practice? You're going to experience brain drain. You're going to all your best people who have. More aspirations are going to leave. And so that's what we can see, that there's a symptom in architecture of so many small micro practices being started because they don't have growth opportunities. They don't have leadership opportunities in the practices where

Rion Willard

20:11

they work. Yeah, this is so interesting that you know, one of the big reasons why there are so many small micro practices is because there's so many, there's a lack of opportunity for them, like this, this, this is not necessarily a great thing that there's so many little practices, particularly when there's so much potential, when and so much easier. It's an easier profession when there's more people working together.

Enoch Sears

20:32

Absolutely. I mean, what would happen if you had, if you're an architecture firm owner, you have a team member, they give, let's say you had a crystal ball. They were going to you knew they were going to give you their notice in six months, but you can see the potential in them. Maybe they don't have the skills yet, but what if you sat down with them and you said, hey, look, I don't know if you're planning this or not, but you're very smart, you'd probably be very successful starting your own practice. What would it look like if you built that practice here, within this practice, using our resources? You may not like the work we go after right now. You may not like the clients we're working with right now. These may not appeal to you, but what would it look like if I could support you in building your dream and the practice we have right here? Love it like, what would what would happen? I mean, you follow that to where it leads. You're like, Okay, this architect, then is empowering these other people. They're growing. They're growing. They're not having to do the hustle and grind that typically you have to do when you start.

Rion Willard

21:27

They can go to another level, which they would never really love. They would never been able to reach, just setting up by themselves.

Enoch Sears

21:33

But the architects not going to do that if his or her ego feels threatened by someone else coming up the ranks and and and shining their beautiful glory and all their talents like so a lot of this comes down to again, which is something we focus on, Design Council, which is your business is reflection of you as a person. There's no getting around that. You can say it's the economy. You can say it's my clients. You can say 1,000,001 different excuses your team members at the end of the day, who was the one who built a business, who was the one that chose the niche, who was the one that brought on those clients, who was the one that managed those team members? It's like, Well, you look at that person every day when you get up and you look into the mirror. So the most powerful work we can do in resolving a lot of the challenges that we have and we experience when we're owners of businesses is our own personal work, our mindsets, our ideas, our insecurities about shining light on other people like I've experienced that myself in my businesses, that I've grown like you and I have talked about this, you know, I've been In business before, as Ryan has grown in his leadership within Business of Architecture, I remember there are times when I see Ryan. He's being brilliant. He's saying something absolutely super smart, way smarter than I could ever think of. And in my weaker moments, I'm sitting there thinking like, kind of shrinking, like, oh my goodness, this guy's getting all the spotlight. He's He's smarter than me. He's brighter than me.

Rion Willard

22:59

So if we're not aware of those conversations, they begin to run the show, right? Which is exactly one of the deeper things that we talked about at Design Council for these past couple of days. No, and I think really going back to this idea as well Commander's Intent, that you can have a really powerful commander's intent when you know what, when you're aware of your own hidden intentions, like these kind of hidden insecurities that might come up, and having the courage to be able to communicate them that is so super powerful, so super powerful, and having the commander's intent to create something which is encompassing and and being you know they're having, having the commander's intent for like, my own leadership, is also to get my own ego out of the way, to be able to create a space for other people, other other team members. That's, that's, yeah, that's creating leaders. That's what we're trying to do here.

Enoch Sears

23:54

Your team members will be deflated if you give them an objective and they complete it, but not in the way you wanted. And you come in and you correct them. You say you should have done it this way. They will stop bringing you suggestions. They will stop suggesting the way that they think she thinks should be done. If they feel like, whenever they they bring something forward that it always gets shot down. Yeah, and the crazy part is the owner doesn't feel like as an owner, it's just like my marriage, like I had this experience in my marriage a while ago where it's like I always felt like my wife was attacking me. She felt like I was attacking her when we'd get in these arguments. And then one day, I just had this like split second realizations like, Oh my goodness. Like, if I was to step into her shoes, what I'm doing right now feels like an attack. I'm like, oh damn Wow. So from if you look at a firm owner and someone working in a practice, the firm owner may be like, not thinking about shooting their ideas, just thinking, that's not going to work. I've tried that before. It doesn't work like that. You know, here's the way it should be done. That's what the firm owners thinking. But the junior staff member come in and they're thinking, You know what? Man, this, this firm owner, is not open to possibility. They just want to do things of the way they've been done, in the old way, you know, and then. But these complaints, as we call them, these conversations, never actually happen, which is another Leadership Challenge, perhaps for another conversation.

Rion Willard

25:13

The other heart of this as well is also the managing the conversations from the from the upcoming leaders and the younger team members, which, again, we'll leave for another podcast. But there's, there's part of being a good leader here as well as being a great follower. So true. So we're even there for today, and

Enoch Sears

25:34

that's a wrap. 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. 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 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 wish they would have known 20 years ago, and the other 1% well, they just didn't even know that. They didn't know. Head over to iTunes and leave us a review. Now this episode is sponsored by Smart practice, the world's leading step by step business training program that's helped more than 103 architecture firm owners structure their existing practice so the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of their architecture. Because you see, it's not your architecture or design skills that's holding you back. It's the complexity of running a business, managing projects and people, dealing with clients, contractors and money. So if you're ready to simplify the running of your practice, go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash smart, to discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method for running a practice that doesn't get in the way of doing exceptional architecture.

Rion Willard

28:02

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. At businessof architecture.com the

Enoch Sears

28:26

views expressed on the show by my guests do not represent those of the hosts and I make no representation. Promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you conquer the world. Carpe Diem.

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