The problem is that, as leaders, we go through our business most of the time we're not aware of the triggers that are happening for us. In other words, these negative feelings and emotions we have. Hello and welcome back. Architect Nation. I'm Enoch Sears, and this is the show where you'll discover tips, strategies and secrets for building an architectural practice that lets you do your best work more often, as you may know, here at Business of Architecture, we spent the last decade assembling a team of experts to help small practice owners like you eliminate overwhelm, solve difficult business challenges like inconsistent workflow and lack of T rate projects, visit smartpractice method.com to discover more. In today's episode, I speak with Zeke Freeman. Zeke is an old friend of mine, and Zeke runs a small, giant architectural practice near Denver, Colorado, root architecture and development, and the development part of that name here is more than just branding. From the early days of his practice, Zeke knew his professional path would include more than solely providing architectural services. Zeke has developed small residential project as an architect, acting as the designer, developer and contractor. And in this episode, we discuss progress on a boutique hotel development that he is about to complete. This episode originally aired on Zeke's podcast radical hospitality, where he invited me on as a guest. Today
I am super excited to be having a conversation with Enoch Sears. He has been a long time mentor and advocate for building great, thriving architectural businesses. And we talk a lot on this show about building and investing in real estate. And I'm a huge advocate of also having active income if you're going to be investing in real estate that is involved in the real estate world. So for us at Smith building a an architecture practice that is that is thriving and a real estate practice as well. Enoch is really the expert in this area, in my mind, leading other architects to get beyond being the solopreneur to build thriving practices. He has founded the Business of Architecture and the Marketing Institute where he's coached firm owners on how to stop feeling overworked and underpaid. I've been in that spot. Really focuses on this idea of he calls this smart practice method. We're going to dive into that a little bit that helps build firms that are profitable, filling and and really just looks at this overall cycle of success. So welcome Enoch, super excited to have you on today. So thanks for being here,
seek, dude, it is my pleasure to be here, man. As you were giving this little intro, I was remembering one that we had that AI conference in Denver, or is it, well, I don't know if it is the conference, but it was, I was out there for some reason, and you and I, we hooked up. I went over to the office that you had way back in the day. Must have been like 10 years ago, and you took me around to see some of your developments. And dude, it's like bringing back old memories.
It is. It's been, it's been a long time. It's really good to do full circle. And you know that time when you came to our office. You know, we were pretty early launching root architecture, and, you know, I was kind of trying to figure out how to bring in clients like your your first unit. You know, big thing as a as a firm owner or business owner is, you know, how to bring people in the door. And I was probably one of the your early guys that hopped in on Business of Architecture and started learning going from the practitioner of working as a, you know, an architect underneath firms, to actually becoming a business owner. And you know, the work that you've done really helps architects kind of understand that mindset, you know, tell me a little bit about, you know, what, what your, what you guys do with Business of Architecture, and how that got started?
Yeah, absolutely. So what I, you know, I tried to, tried. I tried. I started an architecture firm at least two times in the past. And, you know, one thing that I find in common with architecture firm owners is that we we usually, if we're starting our own practice, we start it because we want something better or more than what we have right now. So for architects who start their own practice that they may get to like a glass ceiling, they might feel like there's not enough opportunity in the practice where they're working, they might like the appeal of the freedom of being able to chart their own schedule take off to the middle of the day to go to the kids soccer games, like all the benefits that supposedly come with having a business. However, as you know, when we if we're not taking over an established practice, when we try to start up something from scratch, from scratch, what we don't realize is there's there's systems that need to happen, there's processes that need to happen. There's specific ways to be able to persuade other people to give you their hard earned money in exchange for the value that you provide them. And like they don't teach any of this in architecture school. So for many small firm. Architects, which we define as anywhere from zero to 20 team members. 20 would be on the larger side of that. You know, when they actually get into running a practice, they find that more often than not, they're overwhelmed, they're underpaid, they feel like they're working too hard for the money they're making. They're sacrificing their desire. They're actually not doing as much architecture, doing a lot of admin, and they're just kind of asleep to the idea that there's a different way to do it. So they go years and years and years, making these trade offs, losing their health, dealing with, I mean, you know, a couple years ago, had one of the practice owners came to us, and he's like, he's like, in his mid 40s. He's our age, Zeke, and he was, he was on high blood pressure medication. And this is not, not uncommon, right? The stress of dealing with the deadlines, the stress of dealing with team members, the stress of dealing with proposals coming in, and the ups and downs and workflow, being able to manage all that without completely going absolutely certifiably insane, is, is it's, it's a lot so that, that realization, for me, was the genesis of our consulting company, Business of Architecture. We have a team of experts and everything from, you know, positioning to marketing, architectural practices to HR, to finances and operations. But that came because I realized that that my problem wasn't that I didn't know how to be an architect. My problem was that I had no clue how to run a business. And I think that's the conversation we want to get in today. Is like, what exactly does that mean? Yeah, yeah.
What do you see as the the biggest mistakes that a lot of first time business owner architects, solopreneurs are making as they're as they're stepping into starting their business?
Yeah, I would say. And this is one that I made myself. It's just waiting to get help. Waiting to get help. Because what I didn't realize is that a simple amount, like with with like a little bit of training, you can go with someone, you can go from an architect who's struggling to communicate value to an architect who's landing high dollar contracts because you know how to present what you do. And I didn't realize that there was their systems, there's frameworks for this, there's psychology. I didn't really understand any of that. So what I find is that even architects that come in and get help from us, oftentimes it's 345, or six years down the road, and these people are earning maybe pushing six figures, 100,000 you know, we had an architect just yesterday, one of our one of our group calls, and he made this funny joke. He said, You know what he was looking at? He was reviewing his employee salaries. And it was like, and he called me out. He said, Enoch, do you remember back in the day when like, $100,000 was a lot of money? And I was like, I do like becoming six figure architect, or becoming like six figures, that was like. I was like, wow, you made it. I mean today, especially if you live in a large city, just doesn't go as far, right? And so, you know, going getting by on $80,000 $100,000 $120,000 as an architect, if your solo is just, it's, it's a shame, it's a it doesn't need to be that way. So I think that, I think that ultimately, the biggest mistake is that we sell ourselves short. We just sell ourselves short. We sell our potential short. We settle for something that we think is great when it's not that great compared to what it could be. That's the biggest Yeah. That's
not Yeah. And I find, you know, a lot of that's mindset, right? You know, it's just being willing to, you know, put yourself out say, I'm worth this, and, and and asking for it. You know, you never get what you don't ask for, right? What do you see as some of the biggest mindset shift, mindset shifts that have to happen for, you know, owners,
yeah, I thought you said mindset shit there for a second. I was like, I'm like, Yeah, I mean, we all have it, right? We all have it, you know, like you said, number one is value, like charging ultimately, like, here's, here's the way, a lot of what I found architects, the way that they they perceive their value, the way that they decide what to charge, right, is they think about what are people willing to pay? That's in their minds. That's kind of how they how they position. Ultimately, they think, you know, when they look at their how the hourly rate or something, they might compare it with other architecture firms. But in the back of their head, there's this question, what are people willing to pay? What is, what is the market charging out there? And I think that's completely the wrong way to do it, right, because Henry Ford, when he came up with his new and improved assembly line for creating cars, he didn't go out there and, you know, he didn't try to look at how to make horses faster. There's that famous quote, you know, if people would have asked me what they wanted, they would have said, If I would have given asked people what they wanted, they would have told me faster horses, right? So I. Think a lot of times as architects, when we go into business, we're just looking to create faster horses. In other words, we look at the other architectural practices around us. We look at what they're charging, we look at how they're delivering their services. And this could apply to developers. It could apply to your hospitality clients that are listening as well, right? We're looking at everyone else, and it's like, okay, cool. As long as I'm doing what they're doing, then I'm good. But what that does, it excludes the possibility of doing something much better than what other people are doing. So architects, traditionally, they they think about how much they charge in terms of what they think people are willing to pay, as opposed to figuring out what are my expenses, how much money do I feel like I want to make that's reasonable for my industry? And then how much profit do I want to make on top of that? And what we what I would suggest is, in the United States, an architect who's a sole practitioner shouldn't be bringing home any less than $150,000 that's before taxes. That would be about the same they would be earning if they're working at another firm in the same capacity. So this is like on the this is like the bear. The bare minimum. It's like, if you're not earning this, like, go get a job at Taco Bell or something, you know, like $150,000 and 20% profit on top of that. So ultimately, I would, I would think that an architect who's running their own practice, they should be taking home a minimum of $200,000 you know, kind of that's gonna vary from cities in the US, but that's like a good benchmark. If you're not taking home $200,000 before taxes, then there's some real structural problems with the way that you are structuring your fees, the way they're structured in your practice. Because, you know, ultimately, it always shows up in the money and the measurables. Yeah,
yeah. So, you know, I know you, you kind of teach this framework of smart practice. Talk, talk to me about that a little bit what, what is outlined in smart practice as this systemized way of starting to, you know, build that 200 plus, you know, take home for practitioners,
absolutely. So what I discovered as I started to really dive in and try to figure out this thing called quote, unquote business, I went outside of the architecture industry. I joined masterminds, I hired consultants, I hired mentors. I went outside the traditional university school system to figure out what is business and what are other industries using that allow them to create a profitable business, a profitable venture. And as I begin to understand these different tools and techniques from other industries, I begin to understand that, you know, there's so many things that go into having and running a successful business that it can be very difficult for the human mind just to kind of conceptualize it in terms of a framework, right? So what smart practice is, is we took all these principles about running a business, all these skill sets, all these disciplines, all these systems and processes that go into running a business, create a framework around it, basically kind of categorize things in certain categories. And I'll explain what those categories are so that people could instantly understand, okay, this is my business on a piece of paper. These are the things that I need to have in place to have this thing running smoothly, right? So in smart practice, we divide a successful business up into four concrete categories. Okay? Number one, we call psychology or performance. This is all about the mindset. This is about our personal vision, our goals, where we're headed as people, how we get that vision and mission onto the team? It's like, what's going on in the head of our team members and ourselves? It's Pivotal, right? Psychology? What's the psychology of our team? What's our what's our personal psychology? That's pillar number one. Pillar number two is what we call people. It's the people pillar. Now, there's a lot that goes into that, but it's like, how do you hire people? How do you onboard people? How do you train them? How do you recognize who are the right people for the roles that you need? So many times it's easy, and we see business owners, architects, hiring people, but completely getting the role wrong. They don't really understand, really how to get that right fit between the person that they actually, let's put it this way, the role that they need, the things they need to have done, and the personality out there in the world who's going to come in and get those things done? So number one, psychology. Number two is people. Number three is process a business. So you're not going to go anywhere without process. And when we look up processes, we break that down into three main areas. Number one, how do you get the work? Number two, how do you do the work? And number three, how do you support the work? So in terms of what you do, investing, hospitality. We could say, look for an investor, it's the same business model, right? If you're developing, you need to be able to bring in the money. How are you bringing in the funds to fund your developments? That's bringing it in? How you then pull off the development, you know, go through all those soups to actually, you know, hire the architects and get the plans drawn, and get the thing, you know, the all the approvals that you need, the entitlements, and then get that thing built and then occupied, and then sold, or whatever your model is that's doing the work. And then the third part is supporting the work. This is on the admin side. This is all that stuff that the accountants and bookkeepers absolutely love, the office managers love, which is, you know, making sure that all the numbers are in the spreadsheets and making sure that emails get responded to. Adequately, and everyone gets paid on time. That's sort of the administration needs to happen the last area, or the last pillars, we call it in smart practice, seek is what we call profit. So it's everything that needs to happen in a business to allow there to be a profit, because if a business doesn't have a profit, it's going to be susceptible to falling over with the nearest the next wind that blows by, this little house of cards will collapse. And so we look at profit. We're looking at things like setting goals. We talk about perspective, right? Being able to plan out, okay, what do I need to do? Where's my business headed? Understanding the lay of land. We're talking about things like tracking financial metrics. Key financial metrics. You know, how much are you paying people? What profit margins are you shooting for? List goes on and on on. So to keep it simple, four basic pillars of smart practice, psychology, process, people and profit. And if you just focus on these four areas, and we teach architects a framework, we show them specific systems and processes in each of these areas that are simple to implement, but if you just take care of those four areas, then you can have a reasonably successful practice without killing yourself. And if you're above average, you can have a fantastic practice without killing yourself.
So I'm interested. I know you, you help all and work with a lot of architects, you know, and I imagine that 200,000 you can correct me if I'm wrong, it's probably that, you know, going from the zero to a million, you know, kind of mark of gross income. And, you know, I think there's, you know, if you can do good sales and marketing, and I kind of learned to do that with architecture and marketing, you know, you can get that. You can get up to that relatively easy. The group that's going from a million to 10 million, what do you think is the leap that has to happen to get over that glass ceiling? Ah,
Fantastic question, Spoken like a man who's been there himself,
just curious, asking for a friend, you know? Yeah, exactly,
exactly. Man, well, that is, uh, that's our I love this question. It's a great one. And you know, most small practices just for for everyone out there listening, most small practices stop below a million, like the vast majority, you know. So what Zeke is asking here is a very pertinent question, because most architects, number one, they don't know how to get past a million or 1.5 million or even 2 million had don't have a clue. Number two, it terrifies them. Because here's one of the big problems that that I find that keeps architects from being able to grow to the five or six or seven or 8 million is, I think, damn it was. It's so freaking hard for me to sit here at 1.5 or 1 million, or whatever they're doing where their their hair's on fire. They're managing everything they're like, they got their fingers and everything they're like. Getting the business beyond to more seems like more stress.
There's a max capacity as the master puppet, you know, tier when you have a team of, you know, you said zero to 20, you know, I you know, and I'm guessing that ratio is, what I have found is, is, you know, one principle to about 10 team members. And you know is about what you can handle. And I imagine going from 10 to 20, I would guess, is two principles, and they're just sliding it off, at least that's how it's kind of ended up in root. And so you're kind of creating these little these little hubs, and at some point, you know, it's like, okay, we could continue to scale that add more principles, but does that actually add much to the founders. Bottom line does, is there a diminishing return? Is it, you know, for us, we've kind of looked at, okay, this is good. Let's go into real estate, invest some, you know, profit after that, you know. Or is it, is it worth it to keep pushing up the hill, and, you know, get to the genslers levels and the, you know, Tom COVID nicks and, you know, bigger firm scale like, is it adding that much to the bottom line of the founders? A
great question. Look, if we're looking, if we're looking at specifically from a monetary financial The answer would be absolutely yes. But it depends on everything. It's very situational, right? Getting, getting a strictly residential practice to ten million is a huge feat, because with the nature of residential practice, you're typically working with one off projects and one off clients, which means that you're just on this constant marketing hamster wheel of looking for the next project. Now, if you have access to another project type, like maybe some school districts or some hospital work those practices, it's going to be a lot easier to get to the ten million mark if you're dealing with institutional clients, because typically they don't want to have to hire new architects for every job. They want to find a firm or two firms that they like working with, and they'll keep on feeding you work. And so then it's simply it's a matter of adding a few more of those clients. Clients over time to be able to increase your revenue. The other key here is that, yeah, the project type is key. The other thing, the other thing here is that, like, you have to manage the you just have to manage the finances, right? And there's, there's a quote by Gary Keller, who was all your real estate listeners will obviously know who Gary Keller is, co founder of Keller Williams real estate. I just you know he's I really like his philosophies. And he said something once that really stuck with me. He said my business philosophy was always this. I wanted to make my world so big that everyone within my organization could build out their own world within it. Okay, this is not the attitude of many business owners. They are scared of competition. They're scared of being out shown by their employees. They're scared of giving away control because they fear, you know, being stabbed in the back, or having control rested out of their hands, or having something go south with someone that basically they don't trust. Gary Keller had the completely opposite. He's like, hey, look, identify the right person, and if you have the right person, you can trust that person. And then what does it start to look like when you're just coaching them and providing the vision, and that person is then growing underneath the umbrella that you've created so that right there, Zeke, figure out how to do that or implement that. That is how someone grows from 3 million to 10 million, which is, you're no longer pushing it forward like a single person. What I found is, like a single founder can push the business to about 3 million maximum. Okay, beyond 3 million. The only way you're gonna get past 3 million is if you have highly, highly lucrative projects. So there are a few people out there that do that kind of work, and they have the team of 10, and they're just pulling in really highly profitable projects. That's a rare thing. The other way is that you've actually empowered people, and you have other people pulling the business forward. And that's a beautiful place to be in, because when you as the owner, can then start to relax, inspire their people. People want to come in. They're motivated a lot of people, especially younger who may be younger than the owners. They want to make their mark. They want to increase their salary. You're hungry, you know, I know back in the day, you're still hungry, but even back in the day, I'm sure that your firms, you were that hungry guy that was like, chomping at the bit, you know, wanting more opportunity, wanting more more ability to contribute to the firm. My guess is, I don't even know, we haven't talked about this. My guess is that the owners you are working with there was no room there for you to grow, and so you bailed and you started your own thing. Do I have it wrong?
Oh, you're right on it was, you know, either spend the next 10 years climbing up a ladder of somebody else's ladder, or, you know, let's just take our own ladder, put it on our own wall. One so I like, I love that you brought up Gary Keller. And this the I've looked a lot at the real estate business model, because my wife's in real estate at root team, you know, you'll go on our website. We have architecture in real estate. She's beginning to build out her brokerage. You know, same we've been building out the architecture brokerage now. And one of the things I like about the real estate model versus the architecture model is, you know, they're purely commission based. You know, you eat what you kill as a as a broker, you bring on other realtors, and you're overseeing them, you're managing them, and you're sending them, you know, you're empowering them to go out and get work and and bring in new clients. It's a little different in the architecture model where, you know, typically, you know, you have one Rainmaker going and getting projects, you know, handing it out to other architects. And we begin, you know, as we've brought on another principle, kind of setting up that real estate model of, you know, kind of commission based architecture, one of the things that's, you know, glass ceiling that we're, we're approaching on, is, is this liability that happens with As, as an architect, you know, as as the principal architect of record, you're really responsible for everything that goes out the door, and that becomes really tricky on growing more projects, adding more people. You know, that's a little different than a real estate brokerage, where the liability actually falls onto the realtor. They each carry their own insurances, and the the broker is just an oversight. You know, architecture, everything coming out the door like really belongs to every stamp or seal on it. How are you seeing architects that are, that are growing, getting getting past that model and maintaining we're doing more work, but But minimizing their liability, any thoughts or patterns or or models that you see out there.
The best one I've seen is just they hire people they trust, so they hire qualified people for the task. Yeah. You know, like when, when they're hiring, they're not looking at like, who's the cheapest person I can hire, what's the littlest I can afford to throw at this position? They're looking at like, no. As a matter of fact, I want to, I want to be on the high end of compensation here. And then they thoroughly vet the people they bring on to make sure that they're qualified. I mean, how many horror stories do we hear about firm owners who bring people on who represented that they knew how to do X, Y and Z. You know, within the first month, it's clear that they do not how to know how to do that. There was a firm owner. I love it. His name is Jeff. He was in our in our program. He was in one of our masterminds for a while, and he always used to joke around when about hiring. He said. He said, Yeah, when, when I'm sitting down in job interviews with potential candidates. I hold up their resume, I hold it up like this, and I point at it, and I say, I want this person. This is the person that I want. Where's this person? You know? Because we know, we all embellish, so, yeah, the liability, that's always a bummer. I mean, it's just a difficult part of the of the profession. It's a blessing, and it's difficult. It's a blessing because, look, let's face it, who wants buildings falling down? Right? It's nice that we have protection so that we know the buildings we go into aren't going to collapse, their safety, stuff that's met, that's that's in place. But arc, ultimately, you know, architects, they they do, bear the brunt of that responsibility, and hopefully they're carrying enough insurance to take care of any mishaps. But ideally, you know, mishaps happen, and you do the best you can, but that the biggest mistake you could make is hiring under qualified people. So then you start missing stuff on the drawings. You Make, make careless mistakes, and then it's just, it's disaster ensues. It's not fun. Yeah.
I mean, do you listen to any Dan Martel stuff and buy back your time?
You know, I used to follow him way back in the day, but I haven't tell me what's, what's Dan Martell talking about, so he's
kind of on the other side of this conversation. And I go back and forth of like, do you, you know, do you hire the project manager that's qualified and that, you know, you know, you can hand stuff over to, and they're going to take care of it's going to come, you know, come back at but at a premium level. And or do you look at all the things that you're doing as a business owner, as an architect, and you say, you know, what is the thing that's taking up the most of my time? Is it admin? Is it bookkeeping that I shouldn't that is not the highest use of my time. And hire out those, those pieces that are, you know, maybe lower level, uh, administrative costs, or even architecture costs, you know, drafting, rendering, you begin to sectionize that, and, you know, have multiple people that are good at one thing that you can train up or that are less costly, and you build a team up. And obviously that probably changes over time of where your firm is. But what's kind of your thought on that of like, I'm a, I'm a mid size architecture firm, do I go and hire, you know, the qualified, you know, good project manager, that's six figures, or do I hire, you know, three or four, you know, that can take over some of this administrative task, things that I'm Doing this taking up not my highest and best use of time. Where would you lean?
I mean, I would say both. Zeke, I would say both, right, because,
you know, hiring someone who's highly qualified. Now here's the key with this, not everyone who commands a high salary is going to be top caliber material, and not everyone who is wanting a high salary is necessarily qualified. So I have heard many reports of people, they went for that supposedly highly qualified person, but they didn't know how to vet them. They didn't know how to test to make sure they were really the real deal. They were really the person who they saw on the resume. You know, they didn't know how to tell that. They didn't know how to tell that before they hired the person. They ended up getting burned because, for instance, another story, right? So we had a firm owner. These are not, these are not stupid people, for starters, right? Typically architects, you know, shoot, if you just look at the the IQ of a lot of architects that are kind of academic, right? So we're not talking about idiots here. We're talking about smart people. They've been through college, they've typically had graduate degrees, they they're not, they're not stupid people, right? And yet, we make these mistakes. So as a matter so, as I was mentioned, there's one architect who, you know, he had the business development role that he wanted to bring in someone to, like, take care of that role. So he hired someone who talked a good talk, said he was good at business development. And then it was a slow, painful death of 18 months, discovering that this guy was not bringing in any work. He just wanted to sit around, call people and have coffee dates, but he didn't close any projects. He was a six figure plus salary, right? And it was a terrible experience for the firm owner. So I do want to qualify that when I say, go out there and hire the most experienced person like you need to be able to wreck. Recognize who's a fit for the role. And this is a huge mistake that a lot of people make, because they don't even they don't understand how to identify who the fit is for the role. So going back to your question, absolutely, stack your business full of highly capable, highly qualified people. But if you can imagine, like a tree that's bearing fruit, like, we have a lot of orchestras around here in the Central Valley, and like, one of the ways they like for nuts, for instance, the way they harvest the nuts is they just shake the tree, and then all the nuts that are ready to fall off, they just fall off, right? So if you think about that, think about all the things you as a firm owner are doing, we kind of want to shake you a little bit so all that admin stuff that you shouldn't be doing falls off and it goes down to someone else who has a lower pay grade. Same thing for your project manager, right? So everyone in the office is actually really spending most of their time doing their highest and best use and then delegating everything else. So I think you need both. I don't think it's either. I don't think it's like, hire the highly qualified people or, you know, just hire the admin help. You gotta, you gotta do both of them. You know, your project manager shouldn't be filling in spreadsheets. They she should have a person who is at the pay grade of someone who fills in spreadsheets and who enjoys it filling those spreadsheets and the project manager is just looking at a report every single week and making the critical decisions about where to allocate resources and what needs to shift and zig and zag to be able to keep things on on task. So who
comes first? The chicken or the egg here, the admin, the project manager, the business partner.
Yeah, it's a case by case basis. As you as you know, Zeke, you know, typically what I recommend for 90% of solo practitioners when they're making that first critical jump to like, actually getting some help. Usually the first hire is always going to be an admin person, like a part time VA, or something like that, is always going to be the first admin. Then after that, you want to get someone who's qualified to actually do drawings as soon as possible. So if I was starting out an architectural practice tomorrow, the first thing I would do is I would go out and I would find a qualified and competent architect who could produce drawings A to Z and actually loved doing that, and I would hire them.
Yeah, I'm interested. We haven't chatted much post, you know, COVID here, and we've had a remote team for a while. Who's winning out there right now, are you seeing remote teams or in house architects looking over the younger architects desks, like, What model do you see? That's, that's, that's really thriving.
Curious, yeah, the home team has always had the advantage, which is, you know, it's the old school. People are coming to the office where you can look over the shoulder. Mentorship happens like that's very entrenched for number one, and it's very successful number two when done, right? So it's hard to dislodge that, but what I've seen is, I have seen these outsource teams like you, you mentioned you have an outsourced team. They're nipping at the they're nipping at the heels like they are like in the past, I would say that an office where people came in and there was hands on, mentorship and there was collaboration, if that office was operating at the highest level, it could possibly operate, and you compared that with an outsourcing team that was operating at the highest level, it could operate. Typically, the in person is always going to win out, just because there's that X factor, there's that human element, but I'd say that gap is decreasing. Zeke, I've seen it sounds like, from your experience, it sounds like you're happy with having an outsourced team, and so that's what I'm saying. I'm just seeing the tools for outsourcing getting better. The tools for collaboration are getting better. You know, people are learning better how to work remotely, how to work around schedules, and starting to take advantage of some of the things, like people being in different parts of the world, so these people can be working when these people are sleeping. So it's, I mean, it's, it's the, it's a very valid before it seemed to be cutting edge, right? Which is like it was like, only the outliers who were like, starting to do outsourcing. I think that's starting to tip now, where people are starting to be like, Man, if you don't have at least some outsourced people on your team, you're missing out big time.
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, we, I like the, you know, hands on, you know, working with younger architects, but you know these conversations like, now you can, I mean, in an office, you're oftentimes just doing that as well, like you're hopping on a quick teams call and chatting and looking at drawings, almost as efficient. So we looked at one of the reasons I was saying before we were getting started here is the red hotel we were looking at strongly at putting in our architecture office at the base of this project actually started out as a architecture office, and let's do some Airbnbs up above to pay for the architecture office. Escalated to a boutique hotel, as it is, and I found most of our what I need is a good place to meet with clients, good place to, you know, show up and show off some of our work, and we ended up. In the architecture office out over the last year, we built out a home studio to do the podcasting. And the more I think about it, it's just been like, man, do I want to go back into that and hovering over, you know, employees, and do my employees want that? And the answer was, for us, at least, was no. And so that's, that's what we've decided, that's what we're charging forward with. And we are, you know, focused on just building the, you know, the the best, not just outsourced team, but integrated team, like we do daily huddles. We follow the Rockefeller methods. And, you know, really are looking at, how do we continue to, you know, give our team places to grow. So it's, it's a learning practice, but I only know what I know. So it's interesting to hear. You know what other people are are doing, what's working, what's not
well. And you mentioned, you mentioned you follow the Rockefeller method. And this is so critical that you know, if you have an outsource team, it's going to be that much more important to make sure your systems are on point to make sure your communication is on point, because people start to lose the relationship aspect very, very quickly, right? Like, I know if I don't talk with one of my team members in a week, I can feel that we've lost a little bit of social capital. Yeah. So there's definitely something to say for like, being in constant contact. That's a huge part of outsource team. That's one thing that I've seen, see you were mentioning earlier, at the beginning of this episode. You were like, Yeah, you know, you you mentioned talk having to learn how to get clients and how to bring people in the door. I was wondering, could you share with us some lessons? I'm going to show the question around here. Could you share with us some lessons, what you learned about bringing clients in the door,
you know? So I think for architects, like, our natural inclination is to not be salesy, like, you know, that's kind of considered a bad word. But reality is, like, you're not gonna have a business for long if you're not able to do sales so one taking that out and doing a bad, you know, out of a bad word, and and learning how to do that well, and so education and really just talking about the things that are important to our clients, I found to be like the most important scale. And so early on, one of the things we pulled from architecture Marketing Academy was just doing like this newsletter that we'd write up, here's what we're doing, and send it out that has progressed into more what we're doing now is once is setting rhythms to go to our project sites and highlight the real heroes of the story, which are our clients. And so once a month, we designate a, you know, an afternoon shoot date, and we'll try to go to many active projects as we can, have as many client conversations as we can. And that does a couple of things. So one, while we're out at the job sites, we're talking about, you know, what's the waterproofing doing? What are the struggles that you're seeing, seeing on the job? What are the things that you would do different? Not, hey, client, tell us how great root architecture is. Now we're having real conversations. What are your struggles to create real projects, and what are the things that you are seeing that you know could do and improve? And so that allows us to kind of create some educational content to put out there for other people that are interested in doing that type of work. And so we're helping to, you know, pull the curtain back, reveal a little bit what's going on, give some education. And then, and then two, you know, this last year we started podcasting. And so for as another layer of, you know, just going to job sites. You know, this is having the deep one on one conversations with architects, developers, hospitality, which is our niche, and what are the things that they're struggling with. And that does a couple of things, you know, one, and we're connecting with, you know, experts in the industry. We can that we're already having conversations with, with our hotels, sharing our struggles. Other people can learn from that too. It connects us with potential clients. So we're having a conversation with, hopefully, people we're going to be doing work with. And, you know, so, you know, it's really flipped from like making blanket sales calls to how do we become more deeply ingrained and educated and, you know, share what we're doing with with public so I don't know if that answers your question, but to me, that's been kind of like the most important thing of learning to build a practice is, you know, you can't just wear the the one practitioner hat of I'm going to, you know, draw, and the client that I did the last project is going to refer me to the next one. You really have to be willing to put yourself out there, engage with the community, figure out what's what's new and going on,
yeah, well, you drop some solid gold there, Zeke, and I really hope that our listeners can pick up on that. Because what you said in one simple sentence sounds easy, but like doing it can take a lifetime. And you said, I learn to speak my clients language. I learned to talk about their issues, their problems, their challenges. I put myself in their world. And it's like, you know, you know how to do it comes naturally, because you spend a lot of time doing that. But what I find is sometimes, a lot of architects, they think they know how to do that, but they don't. And that's the word place to be in, because when you have a blind spot, when you think you're good at something, but you're really not, that's that's the most dangerous place to be in, because then you're going around, it's like you're going around at the part of the spinach on your teeth, and no one can see it, except for, you know, you can't sleep, but everyone else
can, yeah, yeah, you know, I and so for us, that looks like, you know, a little bit of putting on some of our clients hats and understanding what they're going through, is the reason why we continue to push into development is So, you know, we understand some of the real life pains that they're going through, how to solve some of those problems. A portion of our business is always going to be dedicated to that. It also fills in gaps. So if I have, you know, full staff member, I can always have one project I'm, you know, filling in that I can use my staff members on, and then, you know, it's our own little, you know, experiment pool over here to find out what works and doesn't work. Back to you know, business of of architecture. I'd love to you know, from your side, I know you, you do the same, like you're helping teach architects, but you've done practice and been in the world. I'm interested in the business of Business of Architecture. What what does that look like behind the scenes as you're growing up a team, you know, back to this kind of remote versus local, you know, what? What are the things that you're your your team is looking like, and how are you using that to practice what you preach?
Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's, it's fun, it's fun. It's fun. What we do, you know from the outside, I know some people may look at consulting businesses like ours and think, Oh, that's easy. They're just consulting, right? But there's a lot more that goes into it, you know? Because here's the thing, people today like we were brokers of information, but not just information. What we help people do is we help them embed the information, apply it so that it sticks. That's the key. Because today, anyone could go online. You could go watch some YouTube videos about how to run an architectural practice shoot. We have tons of free PDFs and tons of free tools that we give out the same things we use with our clients. You could kind of hodge podge together the smart practice method on your own, just by like following our podcast and downloading free resources and stuff like that. But what you won't get is you won't get one on one mentorship. You won't get people giving you feedback about how you're approaching your conversations with your clients or your team members, right? So what's lacking is that ability to, like, embed. So we, I'm very, very proud of the ability, and like, we've fine honed, like, a very, very good process for helping our clients get embedded transformation into them so they pick up the skills of being a successful business person that they can layer and use as a foundation for being a good architect. So that's kind of what we do behind the scenes. Is like we really see ourselves as people that are that understand psychology. We understand human psychology. We understand the difference between coaching. We understand the difference between training. We understand the difference between understand the difference between consulting. All these things are different, right? So when you hire a company like ours, ideally, they understand how to coach and when that's necessary, they understand how to consult and when that's necessary. Coaching is like, Zeke, you have the answers within you. I'm your coach. I'm helping you find the answers that are already within you, right? And I'm helping you believe in your own answers. That's like what a coach does for us. They may tweak us a little bit, kind of a justice here and there, but it's more like a man The answer is, in you, we're going to help you find it. Help You Get certainty about what you know you actually want. Put you in that direction. Consulting, on the other hand, is different, right? So consulting is literally giving you a solution and saying, Hey, here's here's the solution that you should implement based upon our experience, and then we look at something like training. Training is completely different as well. Training is like, Okay, here's something that you need to do, here's a habit you need to have, and what we're going to do, we're going to reinforce this, we're going to embed it, we're going to add accountability. So all these things are different. And the beautiful thing is, like all these things that we teach our clients to do, it's the same thing that we do here internally as a team, right? So I have to learn how to delegate to my team. Right? We have right now, we have seven full time team members around the world with different areas of expertise, like I said, everything from finances. We got a full time CPA on our team, so someone who is an expert in the spreadsheets and the finances, the numbers, the profitability, how that works together. You know, we have some with the background in sales that worked in the construction and engineering industries for over 20 years. He's really a pro at helping people represent their value, you know, and all these people earn a lot more money than I ever earned as an architect. So what that means is that me, I'm paying them two. Very highly, I'm highly they're highly compensated. They're well compensated, right? And so, like, being able to, like, delegate something, letting someone else do it, compensate them highly for what they're doing, for their skill and their expertise to actually stay they get involved in the mission. That's what's going on behind the scenes here at Business of Architecture, we're having a blast. We have an amazing team. All of our team members are a players, like, they're the kind of guys and ladies, like, if you're something's going down in the world, these are the people you want to have on your back. We don't have one single person who's complaining, who's upset with their job. Everyone here at BEA loves what they do. They're excited to be here, and they're moving forward the mission of what we do here at Business of Architecture, which is ultimately eradicating architectural poverty and helping architects become free.
Yeah, love that. So if I heard the business model behind that, are you focused on? It sounds like building a player, teams in remote locations, or do you guys do the in office thing as well?
That's a good way to describe our business model. Yeah, we are. We are. It's a player remote teams. That's how we operate. In terms of our service offerings, we do take advantage of we like live events. So we like hosting, like in person workshops and seminars, and we couple that with all the online kind of interactions that we do. So that's kind of behind the scenes. And, you know, we follow the smart practice method ourself. So we have our own version of what you talked about, you have like the Rockefeller method. You know, there's Eos, there's different business frameworks out there. Smart practice method is one of those frameworks specifically for architectural practices, and we follow that as well for our team and for our business. So we know it works, right? And so that's why we can fully understand it and help architects implement it in their business.
So, you know, same with an architecture firm, you know, whoever the head of the practice or starting, you know, can often become the linchpin. You know, whether it's you know, amount of things that you can do, the liability the you know, coaching expert like yourself and everybody wants a piece of, you know, Enoch time. How are you getting past, you know, that lunch pin and making your your business more scalable with framework that you guys are implementing?
Yeah, man, easier said than done. Easier said than done. And here's why. You know, psychologists tell us that most of our daily activities, most of and thus most of our results, are determined by our non conscious programming. Okay, so our non conscious programming. So to give give our listeners an example of what I mean by that, let's say that. Well, I'll give you an example, right? So my wife and I, we were camping the Mojave Desert here over the past weekend, and on the way there, my wife, she's sitting in the silence of the car, right? And, bless her heart, she's like, Okay, I want to connect with Enoch. And so she pulled up this little, like, one of those little trivia games, you know, we can, like, ask questions, like, find it more out about each other, like, what animal would you be, or whatever, something similar to that, right? And she did it purely for the purpose of, like, engaging with me and getting that conversation and connection happening. So as she was doing this, like, I wasn't responding the way she wanted, I just, I wasn't saying the right things. I was I was kind of joking around and stuff. And so ultimately, she's like, she kind of got frustrated with me. She put down her phone. Said, Fine, if you're not going to participate, then I'm just going to go back to read my book. Right? So she puts her phone down, and she, like, pulls out her book, and I'm feeling hurt because I'm like, damn it woman, you know, what did I do wrong? You know, you don't want to play. I do want to connect with you. I want to play the game, right? And so what happened? I've done enough marriage therapy to, like, recognize that. Like, what happened here is that there were triggers involved in both sides, right? So my wife, first of all, she got triggered. What does that mean? It means she had some sort of negative emotion in her body, some frustration, some annoyance with time. Was behaving. Now I got triggered at her as well, right? The problem is that, as leaders, we go through our business most of the time we're not aware of the triggers that are happening for us. In other words, these negative feelings and emotions we have. And so what ends up happening is that we are ruled by these unconscious kind of program that we have from the past, these negative feelings and emotions. And so to give you an example, Zika how this could play out in an architectural practice, an architect might feel very, very uncomfortable delegating a certain task and not and even though this task needs to be delegated, right? And because this architect is not necessarily aware of the uncomfortableness that's happening in this architect's body, the architect then is just operating on autopilot, saying, well, I'll just do this. It's going to take me less time. I'll just do it myself, and then staying trapped as what you call the linchpin in the office. Now that's a long way of saying that delegating is very easy to say, but what we find is it's hard to do. Because I find we have architects who are very successful. They have teams of 56789, 1011, 12 team members, and they're still struggling to delegate a lot of things they should be delegating. You. And they were still dealing with blind spots where they're doing things that there's they should not be doing, but they're doing it out of habit and out of past programming. So the key for music to be able to like and what we teach our clients to not be the linchpin anymore, is you have to start become aware of your own subconscious programming. Where am I self sabotaging? Where am I getting in the way? Where are I responding out of fear, as opposed to being a powerful leader who maturely knows how to coach train and when to do each one of those and how to make sure that the company operates better without me. The second part of that Zeke is that it's very real that we will if you're human being, you're going to feel a little bit of threat if you get out shown by one of your team members. This is not it's not uncommon. There are, maybe, if there's, there's a salt small select portion of humanity that will be completely fine having team members who outshine them. But most human beings are going to feel, whether they're conscious of it or not, they're going to feel a little bit of threat by a team member who's outshining them, who's doing something better, who comes up with the right answer. And so that's another area which we can subconsciously kind of diminish our team members. And you and I, we've probably been on teams like that, where someone was really that was a big thing for them, where they actually cut down people in front of other people. You know, they pointed out mistakes publicly. They did all sorts of things to kind of belittle people around them. But we all have a little bit of that, so that's another thing to be aware of. Zeke is like, you know, am I? Am I feeling threatened by having smarter people around me? You know, do I need to be the person in the room that has the answer, or can I celebrate other people for having the answer? You mentioned art Gensler earlier. You talked about Gensler. Jason Gensler, right? And you know, in my interactions I've had with him, and I know he's passed away now, but he really came across as the kind of person who to that came more naturally. He wasn't threatened by having smart people around him. He kind of had that kind of servant leadership persona. And look at what happened. I mean, it was just that, that seed of letting his own ego take a back seat to let other people shine. That's why they call it the they call it, I think a constellation of stars. They actually have it as part of their core principles. In their company is not built around like one powerful figure, like like Frank Gehry, but we want a constellation of stars, means we want to have a lot of stars in our organization, and they don't outshine each other, but they all contribute together. So it's just different ways of approaching business. But it can be challenging if you're wanting to have all the here's here's another way. Another, another one of my mentors said it. He says, don't go to work to get your needs met. This is, if we had to summarize it, that would be probably the key piece of advice there. Don't go to work to get your emotional needs met. Get your emotional needs met at home. When you're in business, you're not there to get your needs met. You're there to meet other people's needs.
That's right, yeah, showing up. I love Yeah. You mentioned Gensler and one of your mentors here you know you're often helping and kind of the mentor for a lot of architects, who are you learning from these days, or what are you reading these days, is having an influence on you?
Oh, man, dude, I've been like, right now the mentors who I'm listening to let me see on the business side, can't say I'm really, I've really focused on any business mentors right now, what I'm really focused on is more what people might call the spiritual side of life. And I hate kind of labeling it that way, because I don't think there's any difference between spirituality and secularism. I think they're both the same. But I'm listening. I'm like, reading and listening to, like, dead Indian gurus who are like enlightened individuals. I'm, like, deeply studying Buddhist principles and practices. So that's, that's kind of my journey right now. You know, it's like, really, and not just, not just learning about those people, but but looking for those same experiences for myself. Because I found that that's like, a shortcut to, if I get the inside right. Let's put it this way, if I get the inside right, if I can focus on me on the inside, then everything else on the outside of me lines up right? It's very frustrating to live life thinking that other people around us or other situations around us are responsible for our struggles, for our stress, for our unhappiness, for our frustration. Once we start to understand that no, all the answers are here within me, and if I do my own internal work, then everything else doesn't even matter. It's gonna fall into place. So that's the kind of stuff I'm doing now. It's like, far out there, kind of existential, you know, nature, reality, existence, kind of stuff.
Yeah, you know, I think it's Hal Elrod that says, you know, you're in your outside world will reflect your inside world. And it really is like you got to do that work on the inside. And it is, it is so strange how, you know, sometimes you will, you know, push and push on trying to change. You know, everything your team members happening out here. And you know, until you begin to, you know, take that time to really look inside like it's surprising. Exponentially, you know, magically, like, the things start to happen out here that you know, become, you know, less of an issue, and solve themselves when you've, you know, taken the time to do it internally. Jesse, you started another podcast on on this kind of subject. Yeah, listen to it yet. Yeah, I've
had a couple false starts, like, kind of starting other podcasts and stuff. The podcast that I did start that I haven't, haven't been consistent with it, but I'm excited about the topic. We'll see where it goes. It's called, it's called atonement, the path of wholeness. And atonement can be like a kind of religiously charged word, and I use that word because it's going to be familiar to like Judeo Christian kind of context. But ultimately, what that word really means is that word means integrating or bringing together all of who we are into like a full package that's devoid of shame and guilt, right? So really being like a fully embodied human being, and that's what that podcast is about. It's about being able to, you know, take the parts of ourselves that we're ashamed of, or that we think are too much, or that might scare other people, and actually bringing those things to the table, integrating them into our consciousness so we can be the best and fullest version of ourself. So that's that podcast. It's, yeah, it's called atonement. You can look it up on all your favorite podcast.
Are you doing that as a solo shows? Are you bringing in gurus? And, yeah,
it'll be interview. You know, like, I really struggle doing just like, talk, just talking. I don't really like just sitting there and being like the talking head. I find a lot easier to engage like this in a conversation. It's funner, more fun, and I just enjoy that more. So that's that'll be the format. It's a lot easier.
Yeah, who are some of the guys that you're interviewing on that that you're excited about. Oh, man,
I haven't even reached out to interview anyone at the time. Like, I grew up Mormon Zeke, and that's still kind of the religious that I kind of identify with. So a lot of the people I might invite are like, within that context of people from that religious persuasion, but I haven't reached out to any yet. You know, a lot of them are people who deal with things like guilt and shame, mental health, sexuality, like all these things that are just so important, like on the inside that you mentioned, to be able to, like, be more fulfilled and happy, because we, let's face it, we can have the most profitable architecture business, we can have the best clients, and we can still be completely miserable.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, a successful life, you keep pushing, like, if you haven't figured out the inside, it's like, then what's the point
exactly? And is there anything else other than the inside?
Yeah, yeah. Well, cool, man. I'm glad you're leaning into that and continuing your adventures and growth. What? What else is new on on your Business of Architecture or work or life that
we've missed, what we're gonna get back into, on the head, on the in the distance, we have a live event happening. I know you attended one of our live events we do with the AMI, yeah, right. So we're gonna do, like a larger, a larger in person event. That's cool. Another thing we're looking at doing is we're looking at, is
that open to anybody, or that's the AMI, members only,
clients, yeah, open to
anybody. Cool. Where you gonna do that anyway? Doing that, it'll be, it'll
be like San Diego area. Okay, nice. My favorite place to hang out and do conferences. So there's that we're looking at putting, we're looking at building out or creating a little event center. So that's something that we're looking into, your own event center, yeah? Like our own event center? Yeah, let's go, Yep, that we can, yeah, that's right. We can hold retreats there, and other people can hold retreats and stuff like that. So that's one thing we're looking at
in San Diego area,
where you guys doing that, yeah, yeah. Well, we're looking at San Diego. We're also looking Costa Rica. Is something that we're looking into as well, and that's I was actually excited to talk to you about on this podcast, because it is sort of like a hospitality project that we kind of have envisioned. It's like a retreat center, yeah? Like healing retreat, healing modalities with, like, residences involved and stuff like that. So have you talked
to our mutual friend rotary down there about this? Oh, yeah,
no, no, I haven't. I haven't, not, not yet. I haven't talked to him about it. We actually have another friend who is connected with my my business partner, Ryan Willard. They went to school back in I think they worked together at a firm. It was Rogers back in the UK. He's another Costa Rican architect who does great work, just like, just like Roderick does. And I reached out to him, and he kind of gave us a low down. What I'm funny about Costa Rica is, like the flights getting there seem to be a pain in the butt. Like, meaning, like, there's, there's not a whole lot of like, I mean, there are direct flights, but, like, a lot of the flights that we looked at, like the direct flights, I don't know, I was just looking at the logistics of what would take to run a center down there. And, you know, you start to see the obstacles and everything. So, like, your project, it sound like you you had a. Vision. And then it sounds like, over time that vision changed. It you modified, you ran the pro forma. And instead of becoming, you know, Airbnb is on top with an architecture practice on the bottom, it became a multi use project with, you know, 20 something units in it. And then I think you said there's, like a space on the cafe on the bottom right. So, yeah, so we have, I have no idea what I'm doing in terms of development, you know, proceeding cautiously, with an open mind, and just kind of seeing what, what unfolds there. Yeah, we probably going down to Costa Rica at the end of the year to scout out some properties. And, okay,
do you have a city or location that you're looking at? Well,
I don't want to. I don't want to. Alright,
we'll take, we'll talk about it after the podcast. Yeah, there it goes. We're planning a trip down there too, end of August. Yeah. So okay, well, let's, let's talk about it. Yeah, for sure. Well, cool. Well, lots of exciting stuff. Enoch man, always appreciate connecting with you. Appreciate all the value you've given to our firm and life. And I know so many others out there, always acting in a way of just giving. So appreciate that. Glad, glad to see what your where your new podcast is going with, kind of the soul journey. So all good stuff, if people want to get in contact with you. Enoch, what's the best way for them to connect up with you.
Yeah, it's like two prongs. So number one, if you're into all that spiritual, existential stuff, just go to Enoch sears.com, I don't talk about a lot of architecture there. If you're more like, I don't care about that. I don't want you proselyting to me or anything like that, then I head over to Business of Architecture. The only thing we talk about there is making lots of money and becoming absolutely free and living your vision so it's Business of architecture.com.
Love it. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Zeke, and
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 of their value spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast. And as an expression of our sincere thanks. We would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit. But more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us a review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wished they would have known 20 years ago. But.
