632: How Passion and Process Built a Thriving Global Firm with Tima Bell of Bell Design Group

5:13PM Mar 26, 2025

Speakers:

Enoch Sears

Rion Willard

Keywords:

Bell Design Group

architectural practice

business development

global firm

talent retention

project management

client relationships

entrepreneurial spirit

cultural relevance

international offices

project success

leadership roles

financial transparency

marketing strategy

architectural innovation.

If you give up control, you will grow. Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host, Ryan Willard, and today I'm delighted to welcome team a bell founding principal of Bell design group whose unique journey brings us on artistic sensibility to the architectural landscape, hailing originally from New York City, with roots in Venice Beach, California and Peaks Island. Maine. Tema's journey began in the world of fine arts, exploring three dimensional space through his paintings, which naturally led him toward architecture, educated at Rice University and the Southern California Institute of Architecture, with additional studies across Europe and formative artist residency in Israel. Temas background is truly global. At Bell Design Group, he has developed an extraordinary practice that ranges from studios and tech spaces to residential hospitality, civic and commercial projects, all informed by his profound commitment to artistic exploration within architecture beyond his studio, team has lectured as an adjunct professor at Woodbury University and regularly serves as a juror at Los Angeles institutions. His contribution to the field have been recognized with AIA accolades as well as awards such as the boutique 18 Design Award, while his expertise have made him a sought after voice on industry panels and publications. Moreover, TEMA brings his dedication to the community as Secretary on the Venice neighborhood and council board of offices. In this episode, we discuss how tema has grown a global firm with offices in Los Angeles, Colorado, in Spain and in Argentina. We look at how tema has used a very simple business development strategy to build his firm, and we look at how to attract and retain talent, as well as a host of other fascinating topics. This is a real whirlwind tour with filled with goodness and architectural business wisdom. So sit back, relax and enjoy team mobile.

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Tima, Welcome to the Business of Architecture. How are

you I'm doing well. Thank you.

Brilliant. Well, very good to have you on the show. You are the principal and founder of the bell design group. You guys have got a really impressive portfolio of work. You've got offices around the globe. I know you're in LA at the moment, but you've got offices in Colorado, Madrid, Argent, Argentina, and quite an eclectic portfolio of work that spans hospitality, housing, institutional work, beautiful, family, residential and commercial work. So quite a diverse portfolio of projects. And perhaps we'll, we'll launch into the conversation with the question of, How did you come to found Bell Design Group?

Well, I've been practicing for about 30 years in the city of Los Angeles. Majority of the work early in my career was hospitality. So I got deep into hotels, both interior and architecture. About 12 years ago, I started a company with a partner called relativity architects. Yeah, 1212, and a half years ago, and we were quite successful, branching out beyond the hospitality, moving into affordable housing, motion picture studios, commercial projects, interiors, ground up, single family residence. And then about a year ago, my partner decided to step away, and we I needed to continue guiding us. And like Lennon and McCartney, I get to claim the parts that I was in, which was pretty much everything. And so I'll be able to restart my firm, Bell design group with a little bit of a different twist, relativity. Architecture is pretty much focused on architecture. Bell Design Group branches into, let's say, supportive arms, branding, brand positioning, marketing, disable, access analysis. There's a number of elements surrounding the practice of architecture that I have always felt that to be just an architect, you should. Miss out and can't support the projects fluidly and by by Bell Design Group, the intention is always going to be a base of architecture and interiors, but we branch out with our clients. And you'd be surprised how many clients are like, oh, I need a logo. That's something we're capable of doing. And actually there's a number of big clients out there with logos that we've put together for them and branding and marketing and so on, so forth.

And so within the the actual team itself, there's a mixture of architects, graphic designers, and kind of much more multi disciplinary practice. That's

right, one of the your podcast, the Business of Architecture. So one of the things I did realize is twofold. I broke off two ancillary companies that are support the architecture firm, but are also in and of themselves. One of them is called Accessibility consultants. It's a third party company that does disable access analysis, which is mostly prevalent in America of resorts, facilities, buildings. Basically, if you have a hotel, maybe you just bought it, and you need to upgrade the accessible nature of it. We'll come in and do an analysis with accessibility consultants and then say, hey, we know a great architecture firm that could design all of it for you. So we take the report into Bell design group and produce the architecture. And that's national. We actually do that nationally. And then the second company I started, one of the boy one of the things I learned early on in my career is architects are not good at business. Rarely. It's just a side of, how about to say this? It's not architecture. We're really, really positive and love what we do when it comes to architecture, but when it comes to contracts and invoices and all the stuff that surrounds it in order to make a business, it's sometimes it's gibberish, and a lot of times it's stuff you don't want to deal with. So I started another company called operations by design, which manages small architecture and creative firms that are between two to 10 people, because that's where I struggled when I was a smaller firm. I just didn't know tax filing. You know, all the different ways of employees and contracts. This particular company handles everything from payroll to HR contracts, invoices, everything in between, for small, small firms. And they also manage Bell design group as well. So while Bell design group is the main there are satellites that are starting, and all of them are under the umbrella and work in one of the offices, three up, three, four offices that we have around the world. That's

quite an interesting innovation. So that you did you start then? So you were solving these problems for yourself and your own business, and then just recognized, actually, there's a I could suffer. There's a need for this.

There's a need. And, you know, as I started operations by design and just told a couple of colleagues who had small companies, they're like, Please, can we? Can we? Can we talk to you? What do we need to you know, we're limiting it to smaller firms, because the bigger firms usually bring somebody in house, and they so not entirely necessary. But having having somebody that handles all of the what we call operations, frees up the architects to go get the work and to do the work, which I know if I had had early in my career, I would have been like Bjarke angles. You know, it's a different it's a totally different rise once, once the business stuff gets handled, the amount of time you're able to contribute to the practice is phenomenal. Theoretical, going out and getting work, digging into red line, and drawing site visits, all those things that are part of architecture suddenly become available because you're not, you know, four hours trying to deal with an attorney on a contract. You know? Why?

Why do you think that architects struggle with the business side of it? I

don't think they're taught. I wasn't and look, I sire was. I couldn't have had a better graduate school as far as training learning how to build buildings and understand space and phenomenology and all the different things that makes architecture wonderful, from esthetic to theory to actual construction. But nowhere in there. Did they talk about the AIA contracts necessary and how you have to pay for them? Nowhere in there. Do they talk about the cost of software, of running an office? Nowhere in there? Do they, I mean, on and on and on, we go down the list. So that's not taught. I suppose I'm unique. I have never worked for another art. I started my first practice out of graduate school and, well, I've had a number of different firms of my own. Since then, I've never worked for anybody else, so perhaps working for somebody else will will indoctrinate you. But I talked to you know people I hire. I mean, I'm a 6050, to 60 person firm, depending on how many projects are in the office, and almost none of them have an understanding of that. So I'm assuming that when you go work for a firm. Term. It's not like they open the books and say, Hey, this is how we operate. So it was a steep learning curve as we grew and and now I feel that we've stabilized, and I've got an amazing crew of project coordinators and bookkeepers and facilitators that that help, help with it. And I think that when you get out of school, no one, no one teaches you that. Even after working for firms, no one teaches you that. And there's no reason that that should be your difficulty, right? That's That's like, that's like telling an athlete the difficulty of your sports is the drive to work has nothing to do with with your you know, it's not, it's not, yes, you need it, because you got to get to the stadium. But realistically, your performance is what should carry you. So get somebody else to drive you to work, and all of a sudden you're focused on what, what should be, which is great great buildings and great

art for you, and your experience of actually having grown a number of businesses from inception into much more mature entities, and certainly with with design businesses, what do you think are the first things that you should get in place, business wise, that's just going to make life a hell of a lot easier?

That's a great question. Insurance. Obviously, you need to have insurance a good attorney. Ultimately, you're going to get a client who redlines or argues your contract, and you're not going to be able to deal with it, so you're going to need a good attorney. Interestingly enough, depending on the size of your company, a project coordinator is incredibly valuable, someone who can manage the flow of contractual and and financial information. Maybe, you know that person is also a bookkeeper. Ideally, those elements can, can kind of get you started, but, you know, it grows exponentially. You know, as you as you start off with maybe a $1 million house or or a $500,000 commercial job, and you know, the next thing you know, if you're grossing 5 million or 10 million a year, that's probably seven to 12 projects. That's a lot to balance. So having somebody managing the effects of business in behind you is really valuable. Making sure the rate gets paid, the insurance gets paid, the bills get paid, the software gets paid, someone to manage the the receivables and payable. So it's a bookkeeper, you know, but I think you don't need that full time. I think that person could also act as a coordinator. If I'm telling you, someone with a small firm, I say get get someone in who can manage the flow of legal information. Get a decent attorney, and you're probably in a decent place, or operations by design.

So in terms of winning work, what's your recommendation for practices? Because that's often that there are two kind of pieces here. One is, like, what you're saying, the kind of practice management aspect, aspect of it, the administration, there's a lot of, you know, certainly, for a small business owner, they start up their practice, and then, you know, now they're, now, they own a job. Essentially, they were, they were doing everything they were doing before, when working for someone else. Now they've got all the other legal responsibilities piled on top, and they've got to make sure that, they got to make sure work's coming in. And it can be, it can be, it can be, you know, a very, very harsh life as a certainly, as a sole practitioner. I'm

unique in that one as well. And then that is my, let's say that's my talent. I have the ability to get work, whether it's at a bar, at a wedding, at a courthouse, in a meeting I have, I'm pretty good about establishing relationships, carrying relationships and and offering offering security to people, because ultimately a client is going to be investing a lot of money and essentially putting at your disposal. Does court organize the the documents and the process with the hopes that it doesn't, you know, go out, go off the rails and cause problems, and you've got to be able to spot that. But it's a great question. I think it's unique. Obviously, there's, there's different methods, right? You can go the RFP route, where you can basically show your experience and the experience of that you've brought to the table apply for projects in municipalities or private requests for proposals and and, and then your personality isn't quite as important. It's more about your experience and your capability, which is a little bit easier to prove sometimes, but those are competitive. I mean, you know, I have found that the other side of it, which is achieving private clients or even institutional clients through relationships, is more consistent, because at the end of the day, it's a relationship, even though your firm may. Be capable, or maybe, uh, talented. The relationship you have with the person that's leading the project on their side, whether it's an owner or facilitator or construction manager, is incredibly vital. And for that, I would tell younger architects, uh, it's about passion and enthusiasm and a belief in in the project. If you don't believe in the project, just forget it. You really shouldn't follow it. If you're not in love with architecture, you're not the person to go get the work. You have to be in love with architecture, all of it, from the difficulty to the easy part, you have to be able to express just enormous passion for the whole process and enthusiasm. You know, clients want to know that their project is important, and that you are thinking of them and thinking of the project and focused on it, and you need to be able to do that. So it's, it's, it's not easy being able to express all those things. There are no bad days. And as I sometimes my my ex wife, would tell you, there's no turning off when you're out at anywhere. You need to be that person that's passionate and enthusiastic about architecture, even if it's not your project, because that is, let's say, infectious. You know people, people want to hear that. And when they hear how passionate and enthusiastic you are and you've got one or two projects under your belt, kind of the sky's the limit, people are going to believe in you, and they're going to they're going to follow your lead. I enjoy that relationship. I I can. I can't tell you how much I love architecture. I love it. I love practicing architecture. There are things that I don't get to do, running a big firm that I used to and that's sad and that bothers me. But even then, it's like I'm constantly peeling off a layer of an onion of architecture that I didn't know existed. You know, how does a panel discussion lead to a project? How does a conference visit lead to a project. How does it lead to an amazing vendor? How do you make sure to keep the vendors for future? Use that right now you don't need but maybe down the line there, there comes a need for somebody who builds, you know, aluminum sculptural fireplaces. I don't have any project. I have it now, but in four years, oh my God, my client wants an aluminum or this would be perfect, being able to make that phone call and have that person remember meeting you at a conference four years ago that only gets across by passion and enthusiasm. So yes, obviously the RFP side is valuable, and the sort of process driven ways of acquiring work are. They're excellent ways of acquiring but the other side of getting the private clientele, it has to come from something deeper than than just practice.

It's interesting you say that the kind of just, you know, having an having an ability to be excitable or excited, to communicate with with passion and sincerity, and also put yourself into a situation where you can actually speak to people, you know, that is, you know, we see a lot of architecture business owners who do not want to talk to anybody, or the idea of having to, you know, you know, we, we live in the dictum of like, if you just do good work, then the work will speak for itself, which is, It's a harder, harder truth nowadays, because it's so competitive for that just to stand on its own two feet, there needs to be some energy behind getting in front of the the right people in in your practice, has way that you've been facilitating projects or winning work? Has it changed a lot over the last you know, since you were a smaller outfit to now, yes,

the bigger projects are harder to establish through a relationship like, I'm not gonna, it's, it's doubtful. I'm gonna get a stadium in Spain by meeting the owner of the the football team at a bar, right? Even if we get along, he's still gonna do a process of where he's going to invite three architects to compete, so it doesn't the the bigger projects now for the size of my firm, now, the ones we're going after do require qualitative presentations of the work I've done to date and the staff I have on hand. So there is a point, let's call it an inflection point where just that relationship is not going to trigger into some of the let's call it more cultural, municipal projects, stadiums, museums, libraries, things that are a larger scale, maybe a bit more public. You're going to have to present your firm and qualifications in a different manner, but the act of supporting a client's vision hasn't changed, and I don't think that's ever going to change, I mean, that's ultimately, isn't that the brutalist strike, isn't that the movie. It's not so much about brutalist architecture. It's about an architect having a vision that supports what the client was dreaming of. But. Didn't know they were dreaming, right? That's that's the conversation that needs to have. So I can give an example. Yesterday, I got a call on Friday last week saying, Hey, we have an opportunity to do a food all in a project in her most of each we're gonna meet with city officials. Would you join us? And I said, I don't even know you. And they said, Look, we'll send you over. What we have, what we put together ourselves, and I got it, and it's all wrong. Can't doesn't really exist, but they had some nice renderings. I think they did it themselves. And I said, Okay, I'll come in. I don't have a condo contract. They're two young guys, 30 year old, trying to make a name for themselves. They have reasonable capital, and they saw an opportunity, went into the meeting, and I was the architect, and I made a very kind of solid presentation about the way we would approach the project and how we would move through the process in the city. And after I walked out of there, I got a contract. You know, guys are like, you're our men. We would love to work with you. So there is a bit of an extension on an architect side to offer the ability to engage with beyond just the client and show your worth. It might be a site visit. It might be a city, city relationship that establishes that you know what you're doing and you're there to see their vision come through. And it's that only that's changed from the day that I went out of graduate school that's sort of always been an M always be there for your clients and and they'll reward you with project after project after

Do you think there's a kind of a balancing act between, you know, when? When does that kind of activity turn into doing free work, or becomes like a loss for you? Or where do you have to be careful, as a as an architect, not to be taking advantage of or to be under, you know, unconsciously devaluing your services, because now you've done something for for free, if you like, or you've done a you've provided a report or something, and I would

say, earlier in my career, I did a lot more for free trying to get a leg up. Now it's pretty much the initial gesture, and then I'd have a conversation and I say, Look, I can't do this unless there's some speculative work where I can get involved with the equity that's been exciting and very lucrative. Clients love it when someone who is contributing has, maybe skin in the game, as they say, it's some responsibility to the project, other than their typical architectural responsibility that that reflects really well. But you know, it's, it's, we have a saying, I think amongst architects, if they knew that how much we loved it, we wouldn't get paid at all. It's, it's, it's too it's enjoyable. So there has to be a point where you are a businessman and you need to make it clear to a client, I'm sorry that this is far more of an extension than I'm capable of, and I'm gonna have to get compensation for the for the time and work. It's not the easiest conversation, because a lot of times clients, you know, they don't want to pay or they're developing and they don't have soft costs up front, or they're waiting for some financial windfall sort of towards the middle of the project. And you just have to be straightforward. I'm running a business, I have to pay people, or I have to live and if you're not capable, then I have to remove myself from from this. And the hard part is not to make it personal, because, again, these are relationships, and they tend to get personal, even though it is a business relationship, but you're seeing someone's vision with millions and millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, of dollars. You need to be able to disengage but maintain a personal relationship, and that that's probably where the fine line comes. But I'm far more better than I was when I was younger, at expressing the the basically, the the business aspect of, hey, I perform a service that you're going to pay for, and if you're unable to do that, my sort of extension only goes so

how do you know when to say no to a client?

Yeah, that's actually interesting. I'm, I'm, we are. Just had that discussion amongst the principals in the office. I suppose there's a morals clause that's in there a little bit. There's the claw, there's a there's understanding who your client is. In basketball, we say, know who you're passing the ball to. So you have a client who has a history of, let's say, negotiating contracts at the 11th hour of the project. That's not a client I want to deal with. So I will look at past history. I might talk to other people that have worked with that client. There's a feel of understanding it's not perfect. I probably say, out of every 20 there's there's two that that are that I make a mistake on and agree to a project and realize that that particular client wasn't the right one. And so. Sometimes you lose money and sometimes you're able to pull out beforehand. So there's a bit of a an understanding of who you're dealing with, with the ability to say no, there's an understanding of what you're capable of in your office, to be able to say no if someone came in and dropped, you know, a megaplex or a hospital, as much as I'd love to do a hospital, I don't know how. So, I mean, I would basically make it clear I just don't think we're the right architect for you. We could work at maybe in some capacity of design, but we don't know how to make hospitals we've never done. So there's a there's a there's honesty that needs to come into play. More often than not, the no comes from our position of maybe not being able to provide the client what their expectations are, rather than the client themselves. It's rare that a client comes out and talks to an architect without the backing to move it

forward, right, right? And in terms of how your leadership has changed over the years, how would you describe your role early days versus now? You were mentioning earlier that there were a few things that you know you regretfully you've given up. What does your role? How has it shifted?

And I'm glad you asked, because there, there happens when I was a sole practitioner, obviously, I'm a sole practitioner. I'm in charge of three to four employees to do the design work and drafting work within the office. Maybe outsource a little bit, but it also runs through me, and that limits the ability of being able to to do the work. It also a lot of elements dropped off by the wayside, sole practitioner. I had very little PR, no marketing. These were elements that just I couldn't fit in the bandwidth of being a being a sole practition. Once I made my partnership with with my ex partner, and we started relativity, it started to shift, because he was much better at handling, sort of the, let's say, the interior office administration and the growth of the company, and I was much better at handling clients and management of projects, and so between the two of us, even though nothing was done without the other one's knowledge, we were able to blend on that level and feel comfort that the other one was not going to make mistakes or screw up, or if they did, there would be a conversation about it. And sometimes I did things within the office, and sometimes he became outward facing, and we found a good blend that way. So when he had to step away, I'm back in the position of sole practitioner again, and that was untenable with a 50 person office. So I immediately elevated someone who had been our studio director to be a principal. There's a woman named Jenna. She manages everything from, let's say, the studio direction, all the way through to monitoring finances into marketing. And then I recently brought in a principal who worked for rimshaw, also a woman Deborah, who is going to manage some business development and design, and little by little, I'm rounding out a team that can make it so that it's not all on me, and then I'm able to function in the best way possible for the firm, because there are things I can do that probably I don't know other people can do. And by bringing these two super intelligent, motivated women on board, they are, they're, they're doing element, doing elements that would have gone by the wayside, and growing the ability of the company in those areas, Deborah's ability to engage with high net worth or high high municipal clientele is phenomenal. It's something that, while I have the capability, I'm drawn thin and they typically need attention and and since I brought Deborah on, we've won two RFPs out of three that we submitted for. So that's a change in the direction of the company as to getting those larger projects. And our marketing from Jenna, and the stability of our firm has been maintained, maintained by her. So really and grown, our marketing is starting to go out in underground ways. So that's it's exciting to hand out responsibilities, and then, yeah,

sorry I give Did you ever, did you ever struggle with that, like at the handing out of responsibilities? Because it's, it's quite interesting. You know, when, when, when I talk to smaller practices, you know the we didn't, we didn't set up the business. Lots of architects didn't set up a business to become a managing partner of a business. They, they set up business to have more architectural freedom, and then to let go of some of that design work, or the responsibility which perhaps you were, you know, in some cases, people have left a previous employment because they weren't getting enough of that. And now to let go of it can be quite challenging. What kind of struggles did you have? You had or wrestled with in terms of that, because people don't often realize how. Difficult, actually, is the humility that it takes as when you're leading a business of letting go of these things and the

Yeah. I mean, again, excellent question. I think I alluded I can, I can point to one element that is in my favor of doing that and that I love all aspects of architecture, like I mentioned earlier. So I Well, when you consider an architect, you think of the sketching, the drawing, the discussions around code, sort of the thematic elements or esthetic elements, and all of that is absolutely part of architecture. And I love that part of it. And I do, unfortunately, I do less of it, but it is not architecture. There is as much architecture in reviewing the budget and telling a contractor how to resolve a financial mismatch. There's enough. There's architecture in getting a municipality to get a permit for your drawings. There's architecture in getting a client to understand that there's a cost overage of 20% and making them okay with it. So I'll start off with that, but it's still not easy. And I think every small business owner, even if they're an architect, has difficulty with delegation, because we all think we can do it better ourselves, right? It's the adage, right? If nobody can do it better than you, right, you're going to do it. So it is an understanding that someone can do it better than you. It's your understanding that you're not removed from the process that that even though I don't sketch and draw, I still sit in with our projects and discuss the direction, and I'm able to offer my 30 years of experience in ways that are really precise and Con and concise, that allow the growth of the project, and you'd be surprised how a design will come across. And I'll offer just a few bits of information regarding context, maybe program, maybe code that I've gleaned over 30 years in my experiences, and the project suddenly morphs and changes into something spectacular. And even though I'm not the designer, I know that my input shifted, and you don't lose that entirely. I mean, yes, I'm a business manager. I still practice architecture. It's still part of part of my role, but I won't deny it. Letting go is difficult. I did find that once you do, growth is inevitable. And that's that's something that's the biggest fear, right? Like, if I jump in the water, Can I swim? Yes, if you give up control, you will grow. So you have to choose what you want. I want to grow. I want a 300 person international firm building motion picture studios in Dubai, right? This is my vision. So in order to get there, I've got to give up some control to get to that position. So how

do you relinquish control? What's the process you go through with relinquish and control? Let's say that you've given something, you've given a task to somebody to do, and you brief them, and you feel like they are empowered, and then it comes back, and it's not, let's be polite, it's not what you imagined it to be. And like, how do you, like, you know, do you have to go for a process of, of, like, holding yourself back? Because, you know, a lot of architects here, they would jump in and rescue the situation, and then it hasn't. You haven't empowered that person to kind of take the task by themselves. What's, what's that process like? Because that's a continual kind of negotiation of leadership, of letting go. I

run a unique I weren't a special firm. Bell Design Group is special in that we're not interested in what you're already capable of doing. By all means, bring that to the table. Well, we want to put you in situations you're not familiar with, and we want to see you succeed and fail. And I'll never put you in a position to fail so bad that the project goes sideways, but I'll always put you in a position where you might not know what you're doing, and you'll have to research and understand and communicate. And so one of the big things in the office is mentorship from the from the older or more experienced staff, collaboration, even the younger staff is going to find a gold nugget and be able to bring it to the table and shift a project into success. And everybody has a voice, and we all listen and look again. I have 30 years of experience, but, you know, there's 60% of architecture I don't know. Like there's so much I don't know that I'm constantly learning. So I'm assuming everybody else is learning too. And as long as there's collaboration and transparency, and really, the hardest thing, and what we really try here is a reduction of ego. If you sit and come to a project with ego, you might create something amazing, but you'll probably only create one or two things that are amazing. We build 150 projects a year. So we're not we're. Time for ego. In this case, the conversation has to be about what's exciting, what's innovative, what's successful, what's thoughtful. And everybody comes to the table and puts that into play. There's rarely been a position where I've looked at a project and go, oh god, that's awful. It doesn't exist because I'm part of the process, and I've entrusted people with certain goals, and I give enough parameters that I'm get a sense of what's going to be able to come back. And more often than not, I'm surprised that the quality and the and the ability of the people of my staff, again letting go is giving someone else a chance to succeed. And that was actually a remark on the previous question when my partner stepped away. That was actually a big conversation I had with the staff, which was, you guys got to step up. We as partners are not going to hold your hand. I can't do it. I'm drawn too thin. So now's the time for you to start flexing. Show me what you've learned in the past year or two, five years at relativity, at Bell Design Group. Show me how Bell design group can support and support you, but how you can support it back. And it's amazing when you give people opportunities to succeed, at least the ones I hire, they take the mantle.

Well, let's talk a little bit about that and the the process for actually finding rock star team members. Because, again, this is not, not the easiest thing, and it can be incredibly expensive for firms, and certainly in the in the US. Over the last few years, hiring has been pretty difficult in in certain sectors and certain in certain places, and there's been a lot more sort of demands in terms of, you know, much higher salaries for a lot less of a lot less experience. How, how have you guys managed to kind of maintain and attract and retain talent? So

a couple, a couple of methods. Number one, I don't work with recruiters.

Interesting, I know I

I've actually on on on days where I don't have much going on, I will spend an hour talking to a recruiter about how unethical their business is for architects, not in general. I mean, you know, you want to move a business person around, fine, but architects succeed with with with staying power. If I, if I'm talking to someone who's been at a firm for 358, years, I feel really confident that they're going to bring something to the table. If I'm talking to someone that's been one year, one year, one year, one year, their grass is greener and they're not learning because it's rigor that a big project is done in a year. So you are, you're probably only piecemeal through a project. And I think, as I said, we kind of train architects here. So the idea of coming to work for Bell Design Group is you're going to be put into a situation where you're probably going to get a project you're not familiar with, you're probably going to get software that you're not familiar with, and the expectation is for you to succeed, or we're going to give you every aspect to get there. So the conversations with prospective employees is, come with your talent, come with your enthusiasm, come with self motivation, and come with the ability to collaborate, and you will absolutely love working here. Now, the flip side of that, obviously, is the importance of culture, establishing culture. We have, you know, Thursday night trivia sessions to go through for people taking the test, we'll have, you know, throw out a few beers and some snacks, and people stick around for a couple hours, and we play Trivia together, architectural trivia. We go on workshops. We've got a desert workshop regarding cartography and various building methods that can be done in the desert scheduled for later this year. The whole company goes out and does this bowling, softball. I know they all sound kind of silly, but it establishes a relationship within the Office of the team members that goes beyond good morning and how are you? We don't micromanage. You're not productive. That's going to be the call to Gus. You know, the productivity and the ability to carry your projects forward. Again, self motivation. It comes back to that thing. I find that most again, most people, when they're left to their own devices, at least in architecture, they don't slack. It's not how we're trained in school, right? School is just endless hours of all nighters and and putting projects in front of, you know, design a museum in three months, and then everyone's going to talk about it, and you breathlessly hope that you're going to have a great conversation about your work. That angst about getting something done so you can produce and talk about the work doesn't disappear. We're kind of trained in that way. So the we have extremely low turnover. I think it's typically five, 7% a year, which is unheard of in architecture firms. We reward I'm not greedy. I make a good living. I don't need to be on yachts. I want my. Family to be healthy, I want to be able to travel, and the rest of the money can go to the people that work in the office. There are difficult years which you know, you have to have conversations, and then when the years are good, hand out the cash. I mean, there's What are you trying to do? You know, the idea is, again, if I got somebody who works for me for eight years. I know I can hand that person a two, $50 million project, and it's going to get done if I'm constantly hiring firing and there's a turnover, it's really hard to put that

in terms of, if you're not using recruiters, how do you normally attract talent, or how do you find them? Do you have another way of, kind of building relationships with other architects, or you're, you're kind of quite a visible firm. So when

we post online our work, I think you mentioned at the beginning, we have just a wide array of work. So you know that when you're going to come work at Bell Design Group, you're not doing schools only schools. You're not only doing hospitals or healthcare, you are a broad spectrum. You could be working on a motion picture studio or a high end restaurant or a hotel or single family residence. I mean, there's the spectrum. Is really broad across what we're capable of, and it's, I think that's important to architects. So for instance, we have wrote work. We call it rote work, bread and butter. We work for a particular resort. We do a lot of work for this resort. It's not exciting work, but those people who work consistently on those projects, I'm able to throw them a restaurant or some a beer garden, or a small a small motel renovation, or something that's outside of what they're working on. And again, similar to the firm in Argentina, there's a joy if you're able to find your way on a number of different projects.

Perhaps we could talk a little bit about that, about the international offices that you have, because we were talking to before I hit record, that you've got offices across the US and also in Argentina, and which is quite a different kind of climate and economy than perhaps we have here in the US. Yeah. So how do we have, how do those come about? And we

have a farm in Spain, and we have a firm in Argentina, and we have an office in Colorado, a Colorado one, I'm going to say is nebulous right now, because of the ability to attract work in we don't need to be in Colorado to work in Colorado. So maybe not quite as important as it was when I first started Spain. Is important. We were up for two projects, and we lost one to big and one to grim shop, big names for a small Los Angeles firm, and both times, the client indicated that it was because of the broad support that those firms had, international support Grimshaw, with its London office and and Australian office and big with its Chinese office and and European office. And so I have, my best friend is from Madrid. I have excellent contacts in Madrid. And I had two employees that were I had one employee who was Spanish Madrid. And the determination was, you know, we need an EU office. We've got to show that we're capable of branching across the Atlantic. Madrid is an excellent location. We got an amazing space. I don't know how we found it, but we found an amazing space to rent. And I talked to one of my employees, who was a an associate, who had been with me for six years, and her husband was an architect at a different firm, and I said, Why don't you guys go be principals of the Spanish office, and we'll do a three year run and and I'll come over and we'll find work, and we'll make it happen. And so we started, and now we're five people strong, and we're doing a resort in Greece and a studio in Switzerland, and we're talking about projects in Madrid and in northern Spain. And the intention was not to be an office, to do Spanish work, because there's a lot of great architects in Spain. Competition is pretty high, but to do EU similar. So what happened here? Backed by the Los Angeles office and vice versa. And so while they're looking for work, or while we're engaging and getting things rolling and work over there, they support the projects that we have in America. So it's amazing how that works. And Argentina was the same fashion. It was an employee that worked here once and went back to Argentina, and we started him as a sort of outsourcing, and sooner or later, you have all four or five friends that needed work. And I'll believe in outsourcing. I think it's I understand the necessity of it to reduce cost, but I also, again, the joy of architecture needs to be part of it. And if they're just working on projects in America, doing drafting, it's non fulfilling. It's not how you retain employees. So we started looking for projects and competitions for the Argentina office to do. And now when we have our Monday, what we call group hug, where. All the firms get together and we're all online together. It's it's actually really amazing when they people show the projects or the competitions that they're working on it. It's pretty remarkable. And the whole office feels the energy of the global positioning. So it started off to compete with bigger firms, but it's kind of grown into just a wonderful branching of ethos around the world.

And I'm sure you have a good kind of knowledge exchange between different offices as well. When you start working in Europe and a kind of European and the South American.

It gets even better on culture. Ryan, I send people to these places, so people from the LA office go to Spain for a month, or go to Argentina for a month. Someone from Argentina comes to Los Angeles for a month, you start to again. We talked about culture building. All of a sudden, I've added travel to the culture. And that is, that's the there's not a lot of firms that offer the flexibility of being able to do that. And if anything, the pandemic taught us, it's you don't necessarily have to be right there to be able to do your work. So the ability for a staff member in in Los Angeles to be able to go to Spain for a month, phenomenal. I mean, I got, I got a list of people that want to go so and same and vice versa, the Spanish people would like to come here, and you just end up with with remark, remarkable exchanges.

It's also as well. I mean, I know, I know, from my own experience of places like Grimshaw and rshp, that having that broad, like having that global portfolio of work, is pretty good in terms of diversification. So you can, you can diversify your portfolio in terms of sector. You can also diversify in terms of geography. And it's not uncommon that when, like, if the US is going for a recession, then China or the Middle East is booming, and then and vice versa. And you now got this kind of

and we have the capability and typology, the broad typology from, you know, one of the other thing was motion picture studios. We saw the departure of studios from Los Angeles, and we said, oh my goodness, let's get an EU firm underway that knows how to build motion picture studios, and so as studios had sort of grown in Europe, we're a part of the discussions. We're working on one in northern Spain. We're working on Switzerland is an interesting one, because they don't have the tax credits, but we actually met with the government officials, convinced them of the tax credits, put together some renderings of what a studio and Interlaken would look like, and it's got legs, and it's likely that next year they'll approve tax credits, and we will be building the first studio as much of the first real one. I mean, look, I don't have contracts yet, but that the idea is, is that there were capable of carrying typologies that are unique and that that we can bring to the table. There's also a bit of Los Angeles, Southern California ethos that's kind of nice to share, because the world loves Dennis beach in Los Angeles. And if you can come into a resort project or hotel project, and bring that kind of vibe to the table. It carries some weight.

It's a valuable export itself in terms of identifying the next kind of leadership, because now obviously the firm's gotten to a certain size, and it requires a kind of level of maturity to be bringing people up. And it's, you know, not everybody is designed to be a partner or an associate. It takes, and there's a there's a lot of, you know, as a firm gets bigger, you can, you've got more space for people to kind of go deeper into a niche of expertise, and then you've got people who could become more managerial or leadership, how do you identify what makes good kind of associates or partners or or people, and how do you help direct the team so that they can see a kind of fulfilling career path forward?

Great question, because I can, I can give you sort of the how we got to where we are. Initially, associates were just by the length of time they were with the firm, right? And that within it was five years, right? So after five years, you became an associate, but in this last two years, we realized, well, just because they've been here five years doesn't mean that they have grown, that they should be in the position of profit sharing, because our associates get profit sharing and they're not making money for this company. They're not while they are decent at their job, maybe they're not going over and above. So there's a conversation of how, how do your projects do you know, you start to look at the financial success of the projects. We bid them out. We're pretty fair firm as far as fees go, so they're given opportunities for success. And project managers may not manage that well. And if there's consistency of their their projects losing money, it's a conversation. Don't think that person should be an associate. What we do is have an honest conversation. Hey, you've been here five years, and you're good at what you do, but if you want to be an associate, you have to be great at what you do. You have to make the company move forward. And that goes the same way for directorships. There's actually directorship opportunities of all kinds at the company, but you have to take the reins and put in that extra effort to get there. So first it's sustainability. I feel like I'll probably have to bring someone on, because no one's taken that mantle, and it's an important aspect within the company, besides just sort of being inherent, but it's open, if someone in Office wanted to be the sustainability director and showed that they had the metal and the organization and the ability to bring that to the table. That's an open position. If someone has an idea of marketing director. I mean, there's any number of what we call directorships that if they can bring it to the table and it grows the firm financially, they'll be compensated, and obviously they get to put it on their card. And we had one gentleman came in, and after two years, he was our project director, because he's just unbelievably organized, and he saw there was some lapses in our organization. And next thing I know, things are like, he's staffing and running, and he was associate in three years because he took a mantle that that he saw and took advantage and loved it, and he got a raise, and he got associate, he got profit sharing, and that's and a directorship, you know. So there's opportunities always to do it. I'm not always aware of them. I even say to my team, think of something you can contribute. Take the mantle, take take it on yourself. Show me that you're capable of doing it. I'll spend money to see you be successful, and then you'll recoup. For instance, if someone came in and said, I want to build a modeling room, you know, and we need to buy this three printer or this CNC machine, and the budget is going to be $6,000 and I'll manage it, and we'll build models out of the office. Man, I would absolutely love that, but I don't have the time to do that, and I don't want to pay someone $150,000 to come in and do that. It's got to be someone who's already managing doing a great job that feels the need to have it within the office. So it's almost

like kind of creating an intrapreneurial environment, kind of giving people that space to launch their own ideas within, within reason, and kind of, you know, come to you like an investor, almost of a as an idea, and they create, that's

right. And within Bell design group and Ryan, as I hear myself say it, that's probably a reflection of me, because my entrepreneurial spirit that I believe that's how things should move forward, not stupid. There are elements that you have to hire for. I need a CFO. I'm gonna hire a CFO. You know, that's not gonna come internally. I probably need a director of marketing. I think marketing, Director of Marketing always like a drummer, you know, from from spinal tap, like they just probably gone through seven. It's so hard to get someone who knows who you are and can grow with you and produce wonderful people, but stagnant at certain times or wrong direction at others, and it's just difficult someone in that position. But that's an area where realistically, I'll probably have to hire but there are internally, there are so many areas of architecture that could be grown that I'm open to supporting, you know, and even obscure. If someone came in and said, I want to do a natural building materials, I want to understand it, I'd find a way to make it happen. Because I I've learned something else, and the office grows with that cash ability.

How do you kind of nurture a culture which is got a flavor of business inside of it, because it's because it's quite interesting. A lot of companies, you know, they might the the owners of the practice might be very secretive about business mechanisms, about money, about profit shares. Some practices are even secretive about the vision of the practice. You practice, owner doesn't tell. And you know, in order for someone to have that kind of buy onto something, on entrepreneurial there needs to be they need to either have gotten some idea of the business outside, or it's kind of coming from from above. How transparent are you with kind of finances and, and the business side and, and is it actively I mean, I was very excited to hear about how you actually keep people, you know, keeping the projects on budget, because you might be surprised that that's quite an alien thing in a lot of firms. It's hard

about guitar and frankly, you know, not all are successful. If I have a project manager that has two on budget and one off, that's great. Sure. As far as transparency goes, I'm transparent about the health of the company. I'm not granular. It's my company. I don't need to be granular. I'll tell you if we're doing well, because you'll know. Because. You're going to get a bonus or a raise, or, you know, I'm going to spread it around. We discuss new projects, even if they're outside chances, every Monday. So everybody knows what's all, what's what could be coming down the line. So there's a sense of excitement about opportunities that might step in to the firm, everything from, you know, hey, we might have a 22 acre motion picture studio campus versus, hey, I've got a small 500,000 training mate gym in the valley, you know, where everything comes on the table as a possibility of a new project. So people hear it and they're excited, and there's conversations about it. Uh, one thing I did into in Institute is, when there's opportunity for equity, I now, I now share it with the company. So in the past, I would do it myself as the owner or my partner, and I would do it, but at this point, I believe the that everybody should be able to take part. So for instance, if we get an opportunity to invest in a project and it's $100,000 I will put it out to the office. As you know, does anyone want to contribute 1000 5000 or $10,000 I'll make up the rest. We start an LLC, and as that matures and and delivers it, when it I don't think I've ever had one not deliver, but when they deliver, we turn around and give the money back to the to the employees. So that's also exciting. So the transparency of the company health itself is sort of on a high level. Project managers know their projects financially. They are in the contracts, budgets, overages, work, all of that stuff is done with the project coordinator. And they are aware of all of that. So there is some level at the project manager level of the health of the firm, but on a on a higher level, I basically just explained, hey, we're having a good year, or this was really tough. And they know, because we're every Monday, we talk about, hey, sign this project into contract, or hey, I have this project come down the road, I have few more meetings before we see the reality.

Brilliant. What's the plan for 2025 I know you've, you've spoken there about a

300 person firm that's doing motion picture. That's my vision board, right? I love it. I love it.

Plan for 2025 I want, I want bigger projects. I want more culturally relevant projects. I want the outside offices outside of Los Angeles to grow to be successful on their own right. In addition to support, I'd like to open another office in another location where I'm not sure whether it's East Coast of America, China, Dubai, I don't know, but I'd love to open another office. Typically, I'd have to have some reason for doing so, ideally, a project. And yeah, I mean, along that lines of growth, I'd like to see that, because bigger projects are going to mean more staff, the growth of the EU and Argentina firm are going to mean, typically, projects in those locations to grow from. So we're really doing a global scale and a global spread of work. I'd love to find a marketing director, if that's for one that doesn't lead, yeah, along that line, I'd love to do that personally. There's elements of architecture I love to explore. I love ramberth. I'd love to figure out how to put RAM birth into a project we're starting to get back into single family residences, which are difficult because of the amount of time and attention it takes to to deal with that particular clientele, but with the fires happening in Los Angeles, which is my hometown, I want to be part of the rebuilding. So we're going to do some single family residences, ethically and responsibly and honestly, I'd love to see the growth of my other two companies. I'd love to figure out a third one. I'm sure there's more that I don't know about that can support. So 2025 Can it hold all those things? I'm not sure, but I do. I do actually, I'm kind of the overachiever, or at least, I take on a lot of things, and they may not be achieved in 2025 but if I think of them now, they're likely to come into vision.

You mentioned

just there about the Los Angeles fires, and this is often, this has obviously been a quite a hot topic for a lot of architects in the in the area. And obviously there's, and you mentioned the words to do it ethically as well. What does what does that mean? Because obviously there's a lot of kind of vultures around the ashes, if you like, in terms of real estate and there. And there's a sensitive thing, because people are grieving.

It's saying, Go to the vultures. And that's that's what you know. It's unfortunate, because I know that when I say no, that someone else is going to step up. It just is the nature of of humans, the projects that we do get. I want to fight for you. The ability to do them well and honestly and financially reasonable. It's hard. I'm already facing it. I don't know if you know much about it, but the FEMA is supposed to come in and and clear the debris, which takes forever, and $32,000 that you might have been awarded by your insurance company basically goes to pay for FEMA. Great. You want to get started on it early. You can you basically waive FEMA, and you'll hire a contractor to come and remove the debris. Now, none of this is happening yet, right? Because they haven't even figured out how to remove the debris yet or where it's going to go. But when that happens and prices are already hovering around $150,000 it doesn't cost $150,000 to remove this debris, but there's only so many contractors out there that are capable of doing it, and they know it. And so we get price gouging. And so what I'm trying to do is set up a team of subcontractors and contractors as many as possible, that will agree to do projects ethically, so that, like me, I don't need to make everyone else suffer so I become richer. I want to make my wage. I want to make what I was making. I want to make inflation, but and maybe a little bit extra to deal with the difficulties that are outside. But I don't want to make so much that that I'm ruining people's lives and making it hard for them to get their homes back. So little by little, with the 30 years of working in Los Angeles that I've done, I'm starting to put together those teams that I can then say to a client, I've got a I've got a team that, for the most part, is not going to put you in a difficult position regarding your homes, but it's not easy. It's hard. It's hard to tell someone, you know, hey, last year, you would have done this for 50 grand, and now it's 150 he's like, Yeah, but that guy's getting it, yeah, but I need you not to so that these people can move back in their homes, and forever, you'll have my loyalty, the contractors loyalty, and this homeowner is going to express unbelievable thanks, you know, the appreciation for the effort that you do, and they're going to be the one that talks about you. And maybe you get six jobs at 50 instead of two jobs at 150 but, but you've gained amount of people and a support system that will carry you well into the future in your career. I'm not gonna say it's easy. I don't have the full roster that I would like to have, but little by little, I'm trying to build that up

amazing. I think it's perfect place to conclude the conversation team at what I absolute delight. And thank you so much for giving us a tour of the practice and your kind of biography and your career. Really great question. I appreciate it My pleasure. Thank you, and that's a wrap. Hey,

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