My issue with architecture more would be the indoctrination that happens from being at University for such a long period of time. Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host Ryan Willard. And today we've got a very special episode, because it's actually taken from a interview with myself with the brilliant Jason Boyles, Jason is a podcast. He's a fellow of the Riba. He's an architect. He's specialized in nuclear power station architecture, working up in Sellafield, I've had him on the Business of Architecture, UK podcast himself. He's been a brilliant advocate for mentorship. In the architecture industry, he has launched a successful podcast, which this interview was taken from called the broke architect, podcast. If you're not already listening to that, and subscribing to it, go ahead, go right now and hit subscribe, find that podcast, it's absolutely brilliant. But he's been a real advocate for the raising of fees for better working conditions in the architecture industry. And I was very privileged for Jason to invite me on to the podcast so that we could have a discussion about many of those things. We talk about the differences between the US and the UK and their business practices and Business Cultures, we talk about the similarities, we discuss about why so many business practices are missing from architectural firms around the world, we talk about the current state of education, and the damage that it's doing with its negligence and negation of anything business, and that that just gets tacked on to the end and the kind of harmfulness that that creates as a culture that we all end up living into. And we talk about the lies. And we're very direct about this, we're talking about the lies the myths, the cult, like nature of the architecture profession, that have been keeping the industry broke, that have been keeping the industry in a state of financial impotency, if you like. So I thoroughly enjoyed doing this interview with Jason. Once again, please go and subscribe to his podcast. And if you're not already subscribed to the Business of Architecture, make sure you do that as well. But sit back, relax and enjoy myself and Jason Boyle in conversation over at the broke, architects podcast. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architectures, flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment, and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com. Or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how we might be able to help you please follow the link in the information. How are you today? I'm brilliant. Thank you very much. Very ripe, privileged to finally be on the on the show. And following what you've been doing over the last couple of years now
or yeah, it's just this year. Yeah, justice. Yeah. Great. I think we should start, like a start with everyone really just if you could tell me a little bit about your background, and really why you wanted to study architecture.
So I started studying architecture as a result of probably poor, not poor career advice, just limited career advice that we all get when you're at school, and you display some semi aptitude for maths, physics, and have a creative bent and you enjoy drawing and art and music and those kinds of things. And somebody says, you know, you should become an architect, and that suddenly ticks all the boxes, and you say it to your parents and everyone's excited and happy and sounds like you know, right there, we can go off and do it as I was probably quite young. When I decided I wanted to be enough that maybe 14 I didn't know anything about architecture. I didn't know what architecture was about. I didn't particularly have any interest in buildings even I enjoyed traveling. And when I was about 1616, I had the great privilege of living in Hong Kong for a couple of years. And that really blew my mind because when I was brought up in South London, early Croydon area and hadn't really traveled at all until I got to Hong Kong. And so as a 16 year old, who arrived at chatbot calm I think I thought Hong Kong was in Japan as well, time arrived, and my mouth was just dropped as I saw the extraordinary skyscrapers of kind of Manhattan of Asia. And was very quickly seduced by the excitement of big buildings and also the kind of interest of how communities grow, build, develop and how people organize themselves. So I aspect of architecture community building travel was was very exciting. And then, you know, I did my I ended up doing an Art Foundation course at Chelsea, and then went into the Bartlett and again, my kind of architectural training for better or for worse,
II qualified as an as an architect. As I understand that, how long did you practice? Because you went to work for a really prestigious practice. Right? And didn't you? Yeah, so
I, my part one, I worked with Barbara architects. And I thoroughly enjoyed that. And like this is this is 20 years ago, pretty much. And he was doing some amazing stuff and really was very touched by the way that he ran a practice and the way that he looked after people and the sort of social mission that he had and kind of having, and also Pete runs a very kind of efficient business, just they're sort of building language, and you have to be with those kinds of projects, and they need to be things need to get built. That was very good. Then after my part two, which was also at the Bartlett, I graduated and started working at Grimshaw, worked there for a few years. And then I worked for RSA hp bodgers. Practice. And that was, I was amazing. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed my time there. And this was the time of kind of just post 2008, where we were dealing with recession. And, you know, it did take a good sort of, or five years after 2008, for things to become normal, I remember working, when I was doing my part two, I used to work in the summers, I remember just, you know, contacting a recruitment agent or something like that, and sending half a CV and then having sort of three options of where I could go to work. And I pick that one. And it was easy. Then when I graduated, it was it was barren, there was there was absolutely nothing. And I was very lucky to get a job at Grimshaw. And again, that the kind of finding jobs, you know, very, I mean, I sent loads of CVS off to companies and did all that kind of stuff. But every time I actually ever got a job, or even got an interview, it's always been through a network, that's
really important point isn't that really to say, networking, networking is really is really key. Because the chances of getting a job, just by sending your CV and portfolio is I was just, it's
just hitting a mess, it's just hitting mess. I mean, I always when I talk to students, I always say, you know, start your networking, build your personal brand online, start talking about your work connect with, with industry professionals, when generally, if a student approaches me in the right manner, on LinkedIn, or whatever, I'll always jump on a sort of 15 minute call with them and have a chat and, and, and whatever. And that's a very good way to start building a network and just introducing yourself and developing relationships into, you know, if you if you kind of focus on making five friends in the industry, follow their work, take an interest in what they're doing professionally. And certainly, if their work has a bit of relevance to what perhaps you're interested in the university, it's a great way to just to start cultivating a relationship, you know, be thoughtful of who it is that you're you're approaching and that can open a lot of doors.
It's just got one question that springs to mind. I don't know if you've got children, but if you had a child, what would you encourage them to do architecture and the interest in that your answer, I would,
however, I would ensure that whatever they did, that they are going to go through my school of entrepreneurship and business. So not particularly worried about what I might if I had a child what they would what they would do, because I would be wanting them to be very fluent in the world of business before they even do their A levels. And I mean, that means like, if I had a kid, I would be getting them into the workplace early, we'd be playing with ideas, you know, lemonade stands, I was in a very much encouraging of all that kind of stuff, I want to I wanted to be a musician and probably be my soft spot where I would be like, okay, you know, but again, you won't be a musician and you go you're running a business and get sucked into the lie of, you know, you're gonna get picked up by a record company and they're gonna look after you as the same thing with architecture don't don't get sucked into you're gonna be looked after by anybody understand business, understand how it works. It's a very useful skill base for your even if you just want to stay as an employee. Because if you start understanding the business aspects of it, and how to win work, your career and your salary can increase enormously. If you end on if you Want to go and be more creative and have more freedom great, and you can set up your own your own organization, my issue with architecture more would be the indoctrination that happens from being at University for such a long period of time, I'd be more my concern, because I feel that the university culture that we have at the moment negates the economic and financial forces that shape a building, completely ignored. And this has massive detrimental impact for the industry as a whole, and where people put their fake focus when they go into, and they go into business, and it's just massively irresponsible. And it's caused, you know, it's been going on for a long time now. And it's, we know, we've got all these problems, you know, the name of this, this podcast is a result of us, completely ignoring the the kind of financial forces that help create a building. And it's just negligence, really, it's just, there's no, it's just really, really poor. I mean, if people are investing large amounts of money for their, for their education, and then they're coming out, and number one, you're gonna get paid very lowly as part one. And there's loads of reasons for this one, I mean, my business operators perspective, you know, I will, I will actively encourage small practices do not hire part ones, you aren't generally not in a position to hire part one, unless you can train them, because they don't have the skills coming out of university, how to do what you want. So there's two things happening here. One is the art ones don't really have any skills, which are appropriate for practice, they've got loads of skills, which are great, and they've got great ways of thinking. And in reality nowadays, as well, you'll probably be better renumerated, the most thoughtful design skills in a different profession, quite honestly, in the profession of architecture, you don't learn much construction technology, you don't learn anything about money finance, working with a client working with a team, you know, any part of the business context of it and very idealistic in in the, in the approach, that's, that's good that has, it certainly has its benefits. But as a young part one coming out into a practice, the practice needs to invest in you for that, you can start making the business money. And again, when we're a business, we're talking about money, when you were when a business owner, employees, somebody, that person is going to be contributing their efforts and helping the business make money, and that money gets shared amongst the team and etc, etc. And so, when you're coming out as a part one, you don't have the kind of provide skills, therefore the practice needs to train you. And then that that's reflected in the salary, unfortunately. And yet, the other part of this is that we see business owners who are being either cheap, or they haven't really defined or understand what their business needs, then they think part one can do it. And yeah, we just get a good, really good solid part one that will fix it. Alright, good luck with that. It's just gonna be frustrating for both parties.
It is very frustrating for both buyers and I've heard lots of horror stories on the podcast, where ones have been, you know, designing details to swimming pools that are you know, within a day, so much pressure are running big projects, because one coming out of university has not got those skills yet, and they should not expect that. Yeah. Once put into them positions, some of them I've recently heard have been fired, you know, because they're not performing well. What's the right what's your expectations? So it's a very good point don't employ part one unless you've got that time to nurture that individual Yeah,
you're you're very clear on the things that they can do. I mean, if I look at what I did it Pete barbers for example, in my part one that was a very good sort of fit in terms of, you know, they had to learn he did loads of hand drawing in the office and sat me down and I did loads a hand drawing and it pretty pictures of lots of schemes. And it worked out worked out well. I mean, I do know part ones who, who have kind of remained part ones for like the best part 10 years. And this is another another thing because they actually then do develop really great skills and have been trained in the office then have kind of ridiculous gaps or kind of tax if you like, on their earning potential because they haven't got this silly word architect. And it's like, Well, okay, what's going on? What's going on here?
As you want to ask as well, because then we'll get into what you do yourself,
but the Miss designing buildings know what what's the reason why you don't? I am so personally, I've always found design, in practice a bit boring. And I'm not one for sitting behind a computer on CAD, maybe bits of conceptual work is still interesting. But I probably mine my nature, I like to do lots of things all at once. And talking and being with people was very important, I find my current career path is incredibly creative in terms of I'm helping loads of businesses design their businesses, and I get to sit down and we get to design strategy and things. And then I have the delight of being able to be involved indirectly with all of their building work, and all of their projects, I know that I've kind of contributed to them being able to fulfill on their kind of design ideals, as a result of having a healthy business behind them. And then, you know, it's well renumerated by what I do, and I'm able to kind of work with designers on my own house, if you like, or do other things. And that satisfies my creative itch. I mean, I've been doing, we've been renovating our apartment in the States over the last two, the last year. And I must admit, I haven't done barely any design on that, as in my, my partner, who's been the one who's kind of doing it, I might do some sketches every so often. But I've missed design, particularly. And it's interesting when I was at university, I did everything I could do not I was one of these weird students who kind of did everything they could not to design a building. So a lot of projects that I did, certainly my deployment project was so far away from architectural building, you know, it was kind of a bit, you know, pointless in a, in a way. But also when I look at it now, you know, I was interested in communication and how people develop rapport and was trying to express that as an architectural language. And if I'd had if there had been a business part of the school, they would have said, You know what, this is very akin to marketing and advertising and sales, perhaps you should go and do like a, like a sales module or an advertising module or something like that. Would have been a better fit. But I enjoyed it. And I enjoyed my time at the Bartlett. You know, it was a lot of fun. And don't miss designing buildings just yet.
Right? No, bullying went on? Of course.
No, I mean, I at the Bartlett, I mean, the but the just to talk about that a little bit, because I was guided both my degree and diploma there at the time where there was where a lot of this kind of controversy has happened. And certainly, certainly, I was aware that there were units that were not that were that had a heavier hand, if you like. And I would certainly say that a lot of us who certainly who did a degree and then went back for diploma, knew how to navigate it and which units to avoid. And, indeed, so.
Yeah, well, yeah, we won't we won't labor on that one. But it's interesting that you were around at that at that sort of time. Yeah, really interesting. I really interest is the big the big question to ask here. But this I'm sure you provide me with a good answer to this, you know, what are the common mistakes that most architects keep making relating to practicing architecture? Good
question. So from my perspective, the kind of fundamental mistake that the industry is making as a whole and that each individual practice makes as a whole was there is little priority put on to money, money and making making money making profit, looking after profit, generating profit in the front end of the sale, then tracking and recording profit as you go through your your project and your hours, protecting it with systems and automation, and processes and checklists, and then reinvesting it and growing it and sharing it. Okay. So that's the kind of lifecycle of profit that just doesn't exist in most practices. And my perspective, the majority of problems that we see in the architectural industry, overwhelm stress, unpaid internships, exploitation, low fees, is because no one's paying any attention to money. And even even when I talk about money, I get looked at like, I'm some sort of mad, greedy capitalist that's trying to turn the architecture industry into some sort of demented, you know, finance course, and it's just nonsense, and it's very frustrating, very frustrating. I think people can intellectually kind of understand where I'm coming from when we talk about the priority of focusing on money, but There is also like an emotional relationship that we have to money. And again, starting at university whole conversation is negated. And we don't talk about it. And when we come into the workplace, again, most businesses are not really focusing on profit margins or or money. And we never establish a healthy relationship to see how healthy profits actually impact and facilitate agency and great design as a very positive relationship, and I was at a talk recently, was a little bit perturbed by the general culture of the a lot of architects where it was just a general suspicion around focusing on profit and growth. We are not running behemoth corporations or fortune 500 companies in architecture, we're not talking about kind of on regulated profit making all expense to satisfy, you know, shareholders who have no direct input into into a business and kind of doing unsustainable practices with small businesses, even the largest architectural practice is a small business, in the world of kind of business, you know, anything under $30 million pounds in revenue is considered a small business, all architecture firms or small business, focus on flipping profit, it's like we need to grow up, industry needs to grow up and set proper healthy benchmarking targets, profit margins that are fiercely protected. For everybody. This is why we don't have diversity in the profession, this is why women leave. This is why we don't have many black and brown people moving up the ranks. Because if you're coming from a socio economic background, which is different from someone who's very, very wealthy, and has the kind of resources behind them, and you invest eight years to 10 years of your life, to come out and get paid, you know, less than a McDonald's manager, why the hell would you become an architect is utterly, utterly stupid. And the fact that we do not put money and profit, and the economics of the profession as a priority is impacting all of these things that we wave the banner for, that we're saying are so important.
Oh, absolutely. And you look at the awards, so people, you know, obviously attend early and prizes and awards. And a there's never any discussion or any criteria on the What's that? How was that building procured? Did it make money? You know, we're people working crazy overtime to get that. Oh,
absolutely. Absolutely. That you're bang on him. And there is no the way that we rate and revere design is very myopic. Yeah. And, you know, I often have people with my non architect friends, they'll often say to me, and this is before I got really interested in business, and you know, kind of a little bit into my early career, people will say to me, what do you think of this building? And I'd always be like, I don't know, I don't want to make a judgment on the building. So I don't know the story of how it was made. And what were the problems that the architects were solving, I can give like an aesthetic judgment of it. But I know that even some of the ugly buildings that sit down that you that you come across, there's something there that's interesting, where problems have been solved. And you don't necessarily know that at first sight. And I think the way that the profession often evaluates design can be it negates a lot of the the kind of backstory or the financial story, or what's been happening with clients or how financial problems have been solved, or that you're working with really tight budgets here? Or, you know, was it a profitable project? And that's never spoken about for the business? Was it? The and we did almost seem kind of gross to even be suggesting that.
But yeah, no, but I think that's a really important thing that we really need to bring into the mix. Because the one that won this year, we don't know whether they made any profit, they might have been working at a loss and supporting it with other projects. They'll know and I think, I think if we were grown up people, kind of industry, we could have them discussions about you know, was it profitable, and that should be in the mix.
It's very interesting. At Rogers, and Rogers is to get criticized quite a lot for doing number one Hyde Park. And it's a it's a, whatever you might think of it it's it's a classic Rogers building with all of their kind of principles put in But inside of it, and it is catering to the elite wealthy of the world. And obviously, that's where the controversy comes in, certainly Richard's political, kind of left leaning more socialist values, if you like, were, he was very vocal about that. And I can remember the labour Labour Party. And when they engaged in that project, they were, you know, the practice was often faced a lot of criticism and, and certainly internally as well, that would have had some kind of tension that would have arisen from it. But the reality of it was was that project, you know, it kept the business going, during very difficult times, it facilitated the business to be able to engage in other research projects that perhaps weren't making money at the at the front end, such as a lot of their modular housing research that was going to be looked at was that was being applied to affordable housing. Number one, Hyde Park itself as a result of the 106, that was done with the candy brothers, you know, facilitated a whole load of affordable housing that was built not on site, but somewhere else. And I think, you know, personally, I think that's, that's relatively reasonable thing, those those, that wider context is never spoken about. And it's easy to kind of attack somebody and call them hypocritical when it's in it's not true. And so the financial context of buildings is, is important and needs to be spoken about, and architects, you know, I think it's, we need to have a more powerful seat at the table with our clients, when we're more financially fluent. And were kind of more transparent with talking about the economics behind the building and actually demonstrating that we're not just people who are here to make things look good, but actually, and provide very good strategic thought on protecting the business agendas of the of our clients, and also upholding our own values as architects, and making sure that this is done responsibly, isn't
it obvious, architects are bad at business, when we get no training in business? Shouldn't we spend a year part two, or maybe you even think part one, and kind of really focusing on the business side of architecture,
I would like to see the business, I wouldn't want to see like a business course at university, because I think it would be done very badly, probably be run by academics. And it would be another course that's like, on the side, that gets in the way with design. I'd rather see business principles and economic principles, being integrated into design projects, and encouraged so that people are starting to and I've and yeah, the stuff that Rob has been doing up at Manchester, I'm a big fan of that some of the things the LSA are doing, they're just kind of bringing in a more of a sense of reality to design work. I've interviewed people in the past who have run units in the US on design courses, where they've actually had students design, the business model for the practice that would be delivering their project, then how that practice was negotiating with the developer client that they were using. And that kind of speculation is really, really good. And we can take the kind of same creativity that we have, were testing all of our kind of architectural ideas in the safety of university, and we should be doing it with business. As businesses creative, it's not a boring, static accounting thing is like the generator of freedom. If you want to play the game, it's the is the it's the thing that can unlock, you know, value communication, you know, ensure that we're getting well renumerated. So, using the university environment as a safe place to test, you know, financial idea is brilliant, because you're not actually dealing with any real money here. We want to we want to stop divorcing business and finance from architectural production, because the negation of it at university is unintentionally creating this avoidance culture, where businesses a bad thing where profit is a bad thing for making money is somehow evil and greedy and horrible, and that we mustn't be aspiring to grow in our in our organizations. That mindset is very troubling. And if we don't if we're not interested in growth, if we're not interested in money, and we have the current situation, it's almost
like we've been conditioned. Yeah, yeah. I'm late to the university.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, again, I do. You know, I do think that the the architectural education is very powerful. And looking at the world through an architectural lens is incredibly rewarding and an interesting and we're starting to see you know, The kind of the benefits of of that training being well renumerated outside of the profession. Now, I don't know what to do about that, particularly, I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. And we'd like to see universities being more proactive in establishing relationships with with tech. And, you know, kind of helping structure pathways of having startups or incubators, kind of like what MIT does, and with the American universities, where they the universities become breeding grounds for new business ideas, and you can have other industries coming in. But then maybe we should stop calling it architecture. And we should call it architectural thinking or design thinking. And have it as a different course. And if you want to become a practicing architect, and either you don't need to go to university, you can be educated purely in practice, or there's, I don't even think I wouldn't be against the idea of having 15 different ways of becoming an architect, and all of them being a lot more, you know, entrenched in reality of working in a practice, and actually learning the craft in practice. And why do we Why do we prize design as being the first thing we learned, as opposed to the rules of like how architecture was working in practice, and then design becomes the thing that we then spend the rest of our lives developing, that seemed to work fairly well for these Bandura and the co za? And all these others? And, yeah,
I'm glad, right? Yeah. You spend a lot of time in the US and you have an American business partner. Yeah. What are the big differences between the UK and the USA in terms of how architects operate successfully?
That's, that's really interesting. So the majority of what I do these days is US based. So I run on the US or the UK, POA podcast, I also do a lot with the the American author, the global podcast, and the majority of my clients. So Business of Architecture in UK and I run business architectures has grown into a consulting agency where we've got about 6065 clients all over the world, probably 75% of them are, are in the US. And my, my role is dominantly. I'm the sort of the partner involved in business transformation, and consulting and working one to one with architects every single day. So I spend a good eight hours a day talking with architects very intimately about their, about their businesses. And yeah, 75% in the US, probably about 20%, here in the UK, and the rest are elsewhere. And there are some very key cultural differences. One is that, in general, I mean, in the architecture world, wherever you are, wherever you are business, and money, and profit is still a bit of a dirty word, that the Americans certainly do have a little bit more openness when talking about business and money and aspiration. And often I'll talk with business owners, and they'll be very proud left very proudly tell me, I'm from a family of entrepreneurs, from a family and my father owned this type of shop, my mother did this type of thing, that added deck. And they're also a little bit more open to kind of business, investment, and business education and business knowledge. They're more enterprising, in many ways, and more kind of transparent and open about it. I mean, it's the it's the kind of the concept of freedom that's built into the, into their constitution and, and the kind of culture of entrepreneurship and, and, you know, searching, searching and creating and bettering yourself, so there's definitely that and that is reflected in the business. In the UK, I find the industry is, in general, is a little bit more polarized. So there's a lot of really small practices, and then there's the behemoths big sort of international global practices. And, you know, there's not much there's not that much mid ground, if you like. And I guess in the US it's a lot more diverse, you've got more different cities and different parts of the parts of the country and there is a lot more concentration of wealth in the US as well. So I mean, it's very unlikely it's very rare in the UK that you'll hear about new build houses being constructed for like 100 million pounds or something like that, where in the US that happens quite a bit. So there's there's definitely there's definite differences but there's there's also a kind of cultural difference and us Brits were masters of self depth Patience and sarcasm and suspicion and cynicism, to our own detriment in many ways, and I one thing I really and why I've deliberately kind of focused a lot of my attention on the US is that in if if you come up with an idea in America, and just I want to do this, this and this, there's usually an attitude of like, yeah, you can do it. Whereas here there is more of an attitude of why would you do that? Yeah, very true. I mean, I was I was at the AIA annual gala. In New York, the other day, I was very moved by the the sort of rallying cry of everybody of just No, people were standing up and saying, New York is the most creative center in the entire planet. And this city is the best. And there's a kind of a real kind of togetherness. And I found that actually quite impressive for a city of 13 million people. And I was like, I've never heard people talk like that in, in, in London. But on the other side of it, the Americans work very, very hard. And probably don't take as much time off as they should. And that's certainly something that I encourage a lot of my, my clients to do and to, and to kind of prioritize rejuvenation, I think us in in Europe were a little bit more, no, prioritize our, our leisure. And I think there's definitely, I don't know that, that there's certainly a lot more history and past to contemplate, if you like, which adds to a culture of us slowing down a little bit, Americans
aren't taking as much leave and holidays, they don't get to travel as often, and see the rest of the world. Yeah, but
it's also very difficult in the US to when you when you go to the US realize how enormous the country is like California is bigger than the UK, pretty much not from the top end to the bottom. And Texas, we'll just double up England, you know, these, these states are enormous, and either side of the country are these enormous oceans. So just getting out of the US is no easy. It's not easy, you know, and it's and it's expensive to kind of leave, the country itself has so much diversity inside of it. Each state is really fascinating and has its own rules and its own regulations. And, you know, you can imagine maybe maybe maybe 40 years ago or so that each state was kind of competing with each other to attract entrepreneurs and businesses and lowering tax rates. And there's a very interesting kind of no kind of flavor, if you like, structurally in the in the US, which has kind of created this market of, of healthy competition, which we don't have that all here in the UK and London's a little bit of its its own island, to the rest of the rest of the UK and a little bit of an out and like a London doesn't represent the UK. There's a there's a load of other stuff that's interesting and happening in New England, and people tend to be very myopic on the UK, and the US is a bit more kind of better spread. The other thing I would say is that in the US, there's certainly a polarized a perhaps that's the kind of media at an agitation as well. So it appears very polarized. And they kind of they can often be quite opposing opinions, when I guess it's like that here as well these days. But it's very, it's interesting. I'm in the process of I want to write a book about the US and architecture practice in the US from the eyes of a Brit. And one of my goals is to visit every single state and interview and liaised with an architect and every single one of the US states and then compile it into a little book. That
will be fascinating, really word, really word, maybe this can this. This next question is, you know, what are the good and bad things about British and American architects and what can we learn from each other?
That's a good question. I think for us, I mean, the US has this wonderful heritage of, of like the big corporate practice, and the heritage of you know, the kind of California and Case Study houses and you look at Foster's and Rogers, they were massively influenced about what was happening in America and modernism on the west coast and the kind of implementation of new manufacturing and industrial techniques and how that could be applied to, to actually the fabrication of business and business and architecture and architectural language. And you look at the high tech movement here in the UK, and it's got its its DNA in the US, I mean, fosters and I just studied it was it at Yale or more which university it was Yale. Yeah. They studied there and kind of were deeply influenced by it and spent a long time traveling around and looking at the work of Mies van der Rohe and the names and all these people, and kind of, you know, really riff on a lot of that modernist philosophy that was that was taken a lot of it was about kind of efficiency systemization automation processes, and developing an architectural language that was, you know, that was utilizing the new fabrication techniques of industry that were happening. And that kind of opened up a whole new world and that that kind of architectural language lends itself very well to business. Both reflexively so applying that architectural language to yourself, and having your own business, automated and systems and lightweight and efficient. And actually having a kind of thinking of buildings like components and sets of components as a kind of efficiency that comes with that. And, and also, like, you know, where's the expression Where's, where's, where's the delight in that as well, which those kind of high tech prices are very good at playing with. And then we see the rise of some of these great behemoths in the US, the you again hustlers and you're so wham and Pedersen, Fox, these, you know, big practices are good examples of very well run corporate businesses. You know, put aside what you might think about their work, okay, because we need to kind of just divorce that there was really, really powerful lessons to be learned from how those businesses operate, and how they're very financially astute and how they're very unrefined in their, in their programs and their processes and how they maintain a profit and how they deliver good service. I was chatting to the the CFO of Manzini Duffy recently and the president there's practice in New York, and CFO bola she had spent many years kind of cutting her teeth at I think it was SLM. She was telling me about the things that she's been implementing at Manzini, Duffy. She's like lip lifted from SLM and was very grateful for the experience of actually being trained, there was things that she you know, happen in enjoy every aspect of it, but the kind of rigor that they had around financial intelligence and being very, you know, very observant to profit and having accountability for profit. And having project managers be, you know, having every week, they'd have to report back, though, they'd have like an hour allowance of how much they were doing. Now, this might sound kind of horrific, for some for some practices, and I can see people just go no, that's, that's, that's terrible. But it doesn't need to be as like, so it doesn't need to suck out all of the creativity. But it needs to be there. It needs to be there. Like it's like, creativity flourishes really well on top of good structure and good routines and good discipline. And so just having these pieces in place, and again, recognizing the relationship between that kind of financial rigor and discipline, it starts to cut starts to give well needed constraints to creativity, creativity, lights, constraints, it doesn't like just being totally free and open, it needs constraints, we always hear architects talking about, you know, well, architecture needs constraints, that's how we get good design, well then bring it into your creative process as well. And use finance as a creative driver, not as something that's going to inhibit your, your design processes, and everyone will appreciate it. And it will raise the level of the of the profession financially enormously, and also give us the confidence to be able to have financial conversations with our clients. I mean, I, you know, just on a bit of a side here, the negation of, of business and talking about money in architecture school, and then that kind of filters through through to all practices. You know, we're in many cases where we're kind of in charge of a client's budget, we haven't got flippin clue. We don't understand. We've got no idea how the client came up with the money, what their financing process has been, like, what their financial cycles are, like, we've got no idea about how to look after cash, got architects who are just like, you know, we're just gonna go blue sky thinking and then we'll reverse engineer it to make it fit to a budget. Well, then look what happens when you've got enormous amounts of scope creep, and people are getting pissed off and upset and blah, blah, blah, blah, doesn't work. And it all comes from a kind of lack of confidence around talking about money. And you know, the architecture when we look at the incredibly well curated and compiled statistics and numbers from architecture from the RBA, that kind of benchmarking numbers is just reflecting on us our own financial impotency
absolutely spot on. And this leads nicely into the next question, you know, if there's something wrong with architects, you just want to make money. So for example, churning out McDonald's and big sheds is not sexy, but you can make good money. And these buildings are still needed, right?
Absolutely. I mean, I don't have a problem with people. I mean, actually, I've got a couple of clients who do some fantastic sheds. And again, Rogers and foster started off doing big shots, as there's a lot of there's a lot of space there to kind of have a business that operates. We're not We've had clients in the past who have had a, you know, a business model, which is less sexy, and less, you know, architecturally interesting, that is providing, you know, well needed important infrastructure for other businesses. And as done as it was, you know, it's done responsibly. And it aligns with their values, what they're doing, and they make good profit off of it. And then they use that to use a kind of the very profitable aspect of their business to support more research, or more research and development. And when they're able to do that, then they can, they can start to make more money out of the more glamorous projects that they want to do. Often the glamorous projects aren't what they thought they were going to be either. In I interviewed them from kundig Molson kundig. I've spoke with him a couple of times. And he always talks about when he first joined Jim Olson, that, you know, there was a practice of seven people they'd kind of shrunk down, they were on this precipice of financial collapse, and the business was in a really bad way. And for the next sort of seven years, all they focused on was building their financial foundations, and building up their kind of design philosophy. And those two were like, That's it, that's what we're going to do, make sure we've got money in the bank. So that when the right opportunity comes, we're ready, we're ready financially to take a risk with the design. And we're ready philosophically, because we've been testing design ideas we've been talking about where we want to put our design, but the two are intimately related, you know, that might have meant doing projects that you don't see on a portfolio, it might mean, doing other things, that it's, you know, it's massively massively important that, again, that the financial responsibilities is there, in a, in a business. And I think if you know, if you find yourself, and you'd be surprised, as well, I've learned to negotiate, and learning how to sell and to market, that actually, there's a lot of very fulfilling design projects that can be very well paid, you know, I've got a number of clients who do fantastic, you know, I would say most of our clients do brilliant design work and make a lot of money from doing it. And certainly, when we start moving into self initiated projects, so if you've got a business has been running very well. And you've been putting aside a certain amount of profit every single year into a bit of an investment fund. And great, why not get yourself into a position where you can wear the hat of developer. And again, if you start learning the language of business and being confident in raising finance, you can partner up and then you can have total, total creative control on a project. Now I've got clients in the US who are, you know, kind of forwarding affordable housing agendas. I interviewed space and Mater in Holland, a little while ago, what they're doing is extraordinary, in terms of, you know, self initiated projects, they're raising the capital and the finance, they're building kind of sustainable communities with a kind of circular economy or as working, looking great. That's what's possible. When you're being sensible with your business. If you love designing sheds, and it's making the good money, and right, I was I was accused the other day on Instagram. When I posted something about you know, here are some six ways to make more profit in your business. And somebody wrote to me, and accused me of advocating that architects should be involved if you're just focusing on profit and it means that architects are just going to be designing things like restock home and terrible poor housing and To know this kind of nonsense, and I was like, What a stupid thing to say. Because the reality of it is, is that those projects are not using architects for the most part, and that's a, that's a problem. And when we see the into the architects who are crap at business, they end up doing shift work, because they've got to take lead, because they're getting squeezed on fees, they don't know how to negotiate, they don't know how to focus on the profit, I'm going
to say something here to give you a little bit of a breather. But when I when I started practice, my first practice was working for ACP, architects cooperative partnership, and this was an old practice set up by ex students of the AAA. And I remember them telling me this third rule 33% goes out and salary 33% of overheads and fee 3% profit. So you know, if you're in an architecture, you're in the office, you've got to make three times his or her salary and fees for this to happen. I don't hear this. I never heard that ever, you know, from that practice going forward in my career, it was never even discussed. Do you think we've lost sight of this? Absolutely.
I mean, I mean, this is one of these old rules of thumb that I mean, I expand this all the time with our, with our clients. And we'll often talk about the rule of thirds. That 30% profit is that's what we should be aiming for, and make everything else fit with the overheads third, and the salary a third. I mean, I recounted a story of the day at the talk, I was giving the RBA of our young architect on my phone number, I don't know how they got my details. Online, obviously, it's floating around there. They've been listening to that they've been listening. Even listening to the podcast, and he rang me up, and was like, I need to talk to you about about the business side of it. The business I'm working for is, is terrible. My boss is exploiting us. And it's really, it's really, really awful. And I was like, Wait, hold on a minute, buddy, what are you talking about? How did you get my phone number. And he said, he's I just found out how much my boss is, is charging me out. And it's disgusting. As that right, he says, My boss is billing the outer three times what I'm getting paid. And I was like, of course he is good for him. It's working. That's exactly what you should be doing. Now. That's that that little kind of anecdote illustrates a lot of things a illustrates a lack of transparency in that particular business. And that that business was not explaining and keeping the finances so close to they're so close to their, their cards to the chest that the rest of the team didn't understand the context with which they are operating. And that's very infuriating for a young architect, if you're, if these secrets are being kept, that doesn't work for me, I mean, I'm a big, I'm a big fan of like, you know, start getting transparent with numbers here to tell people how much everyone else is getting paid. But you can certainly start having mature conversations about how your hours and why we do timesheets and the relationship to why we want to keep 30% profit, because we want you guys to have a good life, and we want to better pay people at a good rate. And here's a career track. And, you know, the partners end up making a lot of money because they're taking more risk, and they bought into the business and they bring in work. And if you develop sales skills and marketing skills that help us bring in work, guess what, you can start earning a lot more cash than just, you know, there's there's other there's other ways of value creation here in the in the in a business, and there's different career career paths, and so you can start having that conversation. The other aspect of it was clearly at university and, and school, there was no discussion about the rule of thirds, or the fact that, you know, the architects working, that's the only point where the businesses is making money is that the hours that the architects are working, but you got to pay for, you got to pay for your office manager, you've got to pay for the PAs, you got to pay for the HR department, you've got to pay for the marketing department, you've got to pay for all these other overheads you've got to pay for the rent and the software etc, etc, things like that. I mean, people should not be, shouldn't be getting shocked at it. And I have heard lots of stories of this where younger architects have been exposed to the finances of a practice. And then they've been very shocked at it and have misinterpreted it. And again, there's there's two people responsible here. One is the sort of education that the younger architects have gone through previously, as the architect themselves not being responsible with the information that they've just been shared. And then the leadership of that organization, not having been transparent and kind of, you know, created an environment where this person now has, you know, checking it this person is going to be responsible with information and they're going to be shown and I know that's there's quite a lot of stuff there. But you know, it's massively important to start have In this kind of financial conversation, and again, you get people interested in it at university, and it's not siloed, as is the business course that you've got to attend, that's going to get getting away of your design practice for an hour each week, and then people just do it on the side. And it's really boring spreadsheets and stuff like that, that's not going to, that's not going to cut it needs to be integrated into into design, or we have the training of the architect happening more in the office.
The reason why I asked that question really pull out before this podcast and asked what healthy profit margin was for an architect's practice, and the majority voted at 20%. I
mean, if businesses were actually making more than 20%, and I'd like to like to see them. And when I look at, you know, majority of practices, it's more like 10%, profit, sometimes five, and then it helps to sell it, what is the other thing, it's kind of like, it's 10% have a very low, have a low turnover in the first place, and everybody else is getting very low, low salaries and low fees. And it's kind of like that also can be quite distorted. And we have a benchmarking figure. This is for architecture, called the 200 Club. And the 200 Club is a high performance metric, or a business that's doing very, very well. And it's expressed in dollars, and it's $200,000 per full time equivalent employee. So for every full time equivalent employee that you have in your business, the business should be turning over $200,000. And when we see businesses who are kind of hitting that benchmark, that's often a very good doesn't tell everything about the business. Okay. And there's often little bits of nuances that we need to unpick, but it gives it that, for us is a high performing business. And that's been a number that we've come up with through looking at hundreds of architecture practices, and also looking at other industries that are that are delivering complex services. Because, again, when we look at the RBA, or the AIA benchmarking surveys, that again, very well compiled, they are reflecting, in my opinion, an underperforming industry economically. So why would you compare yourself to somebody else who's doing badly, we need to be individually looking out elsewhere. So the 200,000, which is about 160,000 pounds, it's aggressive. Okay, but there's no shortage of businesses that are doing that doing great design work having an impact doing, you know, leading with with purposeful, profit and reinvesting back into their team members and paying team members well, and we've got clients who are well in excess of that as well, we've got, you know, a handful of people who pretty much double that. So I know, you know, when I when I when I talk about that number, often people are like, what, what are you talking about? And then when you start seeing businesses that doing it, then it's like, wow, okay, why are we talking about this more, I want to I want to make it like normal for architecture practices to be striving to be in that 200 Club, for them to be normalizing 30% profit. You know, that should be a standard. That's what we're that's what we're operating at, and that the architects, you know, in a relatively short period of time are able to have a six figure salary.
Absolutely. Well, this, this leads me fantastically, and somehow next question, the salaries in the industry have stagnated. And I think we know many of the reasons why we've talked about it, the 20 years ago, I remember I saw a job for 40k in Manchester for an architect 10 years experience. And today, I'm still seeing and you're experienced architect 40k. So what we have going on here, is this
is disgraceful. It's absolutely shocking. What has happened. absolutely shocking. And again, this is going to be as a result of this complete financial negligence and inability to negotiate and prioritize profit margins and fees and communicate value and being able to have a kind of strategic seat at the table. This is a result of years and years of neglect with just being reactive and how we win work. So just always waiting for projects to come following RFPs or competitions, never actually going and developing new relationships and being inventive with business systems. It also comes from a lack of transparency and conversation within the industry, about finance and about fees and how people are setting their fees. There's still a lot of kind of closed doors. It's interesting in the US a very sense the AIA is very sensitive to kind of any kind of fee Russians, because they got sued by the Department of Justice in the 80s. And think it was. So they got, they got sued for being a monopolist basically trying to create a monopoly. And so now you have this kind of culture of like, we do not talk about fees in the industry. So it's very useful for us as a kind of independent agency that we you know, that we can talk about fees. And, you know, there is a process for working out your hourly billing rate per employee sitting down speculating how many hours are going to be on a on a budget, and if you've got good data, then you can look at it, and now we're looking at 30% off it on your on your projects. And, you know, again, if you've been if you've been active in, in your positioning in the marketplace, then absolutely, then you can you can, you can start making a lot more a lot more money. I mean, again, in the in the US, there's a lot more variance, if you like as well in terms of salaries. And I've certainly seen lots of examples of architects who are on like, $150,000. So, which is you know, that's a great salary, and no, here or here or in the US. That's not the that's not the standard by any by any means. But they are they exist. So I would like to see more of that happening here in the UK. And the businesses start to grow up and become much as an industry become much more rigorous, and focused on making profit, because it will be able to elevate everybody. Again, I think there was I was watching Erin Pellegrino, I think you've had them, I think you've spoken in on my podcast, yeah, she's a She's fantastic, coincheck Brilliant, and love what they're doing out of architecture. And she was talking at a, an AIA conference, perhaps I'm not sure where the clip was taken. But it was a great little speech that she was giving about profit in architecture. And she was equating it to, you know, in a law firm, or lawyers as an industry, they are very aggressive about protecting they're 30 to 40 to 50% profit margins, and that's part of their business culture. And, you know, people go into law because they want to make money, because it's deemed a sensible investment of time and resource because as a structured path there to becoming qualified as a lawyer. And then there's a predictable outcome of being paid well. And so this is why people from different socio economic backgrounds will invest time to become a lawyer or a doctor, because the outcome is predictable. And when we're talking about architecture, the outcome is perfect is predictably bad at the moment, which
is a more diversity in professions like doctors and lawyers. Yeah,
yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So this is something that we again, as a as an industry, we need to grow up those who are listening to this as well, business owners, and you know, okay, let's, let's start getting real about my profit, and start looking at how I'm selling and marketing. And we need to hold up the mirror of truth, and kind of just admit, alright, it's not working. It's not working as well as I'd like it to know, I'm, I'm justifying mediocrity and justifying this kind of low level of of pay, and it's no longer acceptable. And employees as well, like, you know, that this is time to start to understand, Okay, what's going on here in the business? How can I also help empower the businesses that I'm working in and make the connection between, you know, my own my own contributions and how the business operates? And what things can I learn about business that can be it can help elevate the organization I'm working at? Or perhaps I want to go and start my own business? Again, I would, I would also know, I do think that one of the things about the architecture industry is that we have a lot of people starting up their own businesses that really shouldn't start their own business. And that starting your own business, and architecture is a very sexy, attractive thing, cool thing to do. And actually, I think being intrapreneurial is really undervalued and underrated. And I often kind of wish or look back in my sort of past career, that if I'd learned a lot of the business skills, whilst working in a practice, I would have been way more valuable. Yeah, way, way more valuable was an employee and I would have been able to have a lot more kind of say in things and advocate things I think would have been easy to kind of convince people that you know, I think there's no, it's, it's it, there's definitely a kind of negotiation process that would need to be involved. certainly think it's, again, these business skills are very, very valuable and we need to grow up as an industry.
Last couple of questions. Really. If you Iraq VA president, what would be your top three things that you would change right now that you're on the spot there,
that's a good one, I would start to look at a multitude of ways of becoming an architect, I would start to have, I would have asked me, I would have business and economics as a priority in architectural education. And was, would start to like, kind of pick apart the educational process, and have a multitude of ways of becoming an architect and start to make a distinction between architectural thinking and architectural design. And then what it takes to become a practicing architect is gonna be delivering buildings, and the core content, I know that Alan Jones did a very good job of kind of starting to outline the the core competencies of, of an architect. And I feel like the business aspect of that is the one thing that I would, I would focus on massively, I would like to see the ability for architects to become qualified much, much quicker, no need for it to be this long drawn out 10 year process, it's absolutely it's stupid limited. Part Two was very repetitive. And I don't even I mean, I could see an education where you don't even need to go to university or an apprentice. Yeah, more like more like an apprenticeship. And then also, if that was the case, as well, then that start to empower businesses of how they could become more centers of learning, and how that like kind of educational design can be, you know, more more in house, all of that, again, is going to come from more profitable, more well funded, better businesses. Or I would make a campaign or wealth creation being possible as through architecture, and start to have like development and investment strategies being taught at university that being part of the kind of riba remit of responsibilities, if you like, or promotion would start some sort of campaign that was, you know, kind of encouraging architects to become financially fluent and also start a campaign with, with potential, you know, developers and client of clients of architects, that demonstrates the architects strategic ability to deal with business agendas, and in kind of use the RFA as RBA as a platform to help encourage better quality clients and fees definitely like a fee, like a fee campaign, and and just have like, industry wide look, visit. These are the standards that we're, we're doing be very honest about the benchmarking that no, we're not happy with these benchmarks visibly want architecture practices to be out. And I would facilitate that. And obviously, if I was the president of the RBA, then I would I have Business of Architecture, to consult with loads of practices and
why not? Why Absolutely, why not? And I think you would get a lot of people revolt in for anyone who came up with that, and I don't see it. I haven't seen it for many, many years. I mean, Alan, yeah, it was probably the closest in the last kind of 10 years. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Spot on there. Can you please share with me an example of where the Business of Architecture has transformed the practice, if you can at all possible? And I obviously, this is confidential, but there must be something you can share with us?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. with it. So if you go, if you go on to the business architecture podcast, there is probably about 20 different interviews that Enoch and myself have done with our own clients, where we've outlined their very specific stories of how they've transformed their their businesses through kind of becoming, you know, business educated and how that's helped them negotiate higher fees and how that higher fees has helped them produce better caliber design work and how they feel more empowered as an architect. Here in the UK, Chris and Kathy hunts, niche, niche design architects, they're up in Yorkshire. They've been working with us for for about a year and a half now also, really great practice and, and Kathy wrote a wonderful article in building design recently that was kind of outlining our becoming a better business person had empowered her as an architect and kind of gave them more freedom, more creative freedom, more freedom to take on and pursue the sorts of projects that they wanted to pursue, give them a kind of structure for a career plan. And you can see you can see in their, in their numbers in their in their business and how their pipeline has begun to grow. How they've, you know, they've been very diligent in restructuring how they do proposals and implementing like a tiered pricing system that helps them close more projects. They've kind of reoriented their time, so they're spending at least 20 5% of every week, there marketing and selling, and all of that is laying a foundation for way more freedom and where they want to go and know how they want the business to be supporting their lifestyle. And again, it kind of reflects back onto their, you know, they've got now more choice and how they want to be creatively in in the US. So one of the springs to mind, because I was I was there recently, and is a client, Michael Marina Robina. And she's in based in Princeton, and she is just an absolute powerhouse of architectural and business combination, if you like a great union, and she's very, very committed to gentle density and kind of affordable housing and good quality housing to be made available, out of, in her own words, out of her own kind of frustration, of developers not kind of taking more risks, she took a risk and started doing her own development projects, and an audit about do her own development projects. Again, her sort of finances and business needed to be in a in a place where it was like she was able to kind of take those kinds of risks that she she started on the path of doing her own her own developments started with a kind of a small, a small lot in Princeton, very challenging site. And she was deliberately looking for a site that had, it was going to be legally contentious, because she felt that there was a lawsuit that that they'd be able to pursue, because Princeton or the municipality prison wasn't upholding their end of the bargain in terms of what was what was allowed to be permitted. And so this was a kind of thing that lots of developers were like, No, we're not going to, we don't want to get involved with that. And she very courageously did it, she ended up in a legal battle ensued the municipality, and one basically, and ended up rewriting the zoning laws. So that these potential plots that all around the city could be unlocked and start providing valuable housing. And she's on a mission to transform, you know, her local local area, she puts, she puts her own money at risk, she negotiates deals with developers where, for example, she might negotiate a base level of fee for a development project. And then she'll negotiate a kind of bonus for every unit, she gets approved on a particular site. And you know, that kind of deal structuring enables her to play a higher level of value and a higher level of fee. And she would be if she was just charging it at a regular rate, she's a really good example of someone who's purpose driven and using profit and the business to kind of, you know, have good quality housing built. And you know, she works with, she works with developer clients as an advisor, she keeps a very lean, and of business model. And, you know, the kind of success of doing her own project opened a lot of opportunities to be working with developers, who are now willing to take more of a risk of a kind of unknown entity, if you like. And she's positioned herself as a an advisor, or a consultant with these practices with these development companies that have got their own in house architecture teams. And it's very impressive, very, very impressive. So we've got a whole load of wonderful kind of stories. I mean, it makes me endlessly happy when worked with a business that's been leaking money. And then we stopped the leak, and then the leak turns into profit. And then all the freedom that emerges from her now having a profitable business and, you know, people being able to take long vacations with their, with their children and participate in more of the kind of design work that they've been wanting to do, because now they've got more money, people being able to hire and pay their team properly, and very proudly, you know, be paying well above what the what the market rate is. So it's it is that the whole economic empowerment and focusing on profit and money is, is miles and worlds apart from this idea of the greedy capitalist, there's an incredible amount of economic empowerment that really can benefit people to be able to do what you want to do and make the impact that you want to make
fantastic and I will definitely check out them, um, episodes and encourage other people to do so. Are you still doing any sort of practice in architecture? Are you doing any sort of project?
No, not me. Personally. The last project I did was a private house in a ruber and a little, it was a refurbishment of an outhouse in Kent. And I got to a point with both For those projects, where the consulting work that I was doing was definitely like, me personally, that was my calling. And there was no, I didn't have any questions about that. And I had to make that I don't, I always thought, oh, I kind of want to have the architecture practice running as well. But it was, you know, half my income was marked up, my income was from consulting. And it was just, it was just kind of the Business of Architecture opportunities, was the 22 unique paths up, so I had to make a choice and kind of go full in with one of them, you know, it was very quickly, I replaced my architectural income, with consulting income, and I'm much happier, as a result of it. Maybe in the future, I would like I don't have any desires to get back into doing any design work. So I love working with architects, I absolutely adore working with architects. And I in the future, I mean, I have started a development company. And this is something that in over the next few years, will become more and more kind of serious about. And we'd love to be working as an architect, not as an architect with architects, and only being involved in the kind of front end or, or just learning to be a good client, really, and being able to be involved in contributing to the, to the built environment through working with architects and I would, I would like that kind of involvement with design, my own personal practice, but me being involved or delivering, delivering projects, it's, it's not something I miss or care to do anymore. Unless it's my unless it's something where I'll be making back end profits on it.
I've got two more, two more questions to go. And they you've been talking today about making profits and you know, having a business ed and being in the right mindset, but what is your experience with financial hardship? Today in your career,
when I first thought my Well, this whole journey came as a result of being broke, when I was working at Rogers, I was probably getting paid just shy of 30 grand into 28, grand, something like that. And I was always contracting as well, sort of post 2008 stuff wasn't never stable. At the time, it was frustrating and never really felt stable. And, you know, jobs job could have stopped at any point. And it did at times. And, you know, had to muck around with that actually, on reflection. Now, I was really grateful for that, those kind of conditions, because it was one of the things that kind of prompted me to set up my own my own business. And with my first year of running my own business, I kind of you know, my contract didn't get renewed when I was at RSA HP, after about a postdoc play there. But I've been a bit years, forced me into, I'd already started my own business. And in my mind, I didn't really want to do an architecture practice, I had this kind of, you know, this nebulous, creative practice that was going to do I don't know, stage design and graphics and whatever sort of idealized idea I had. And I was also a kind of a musician as well, where and I was in a band, and I was very, I was I said to myself, if if the music can make any kind of money for me to live off it, that's it, I'm out of architecture, the music kind of came to a natural completion, and I set up my own my own architecture business in the first first year, was pretty rough. And I seem to remember the first year, the second year, it wasn't much more than 10 grand or 11, grand. And it was just the most brutal experience, my relationship went, I had to, you know, I've got myself into into debt and had to borrow bits of money and take loans out and all this and it was just it, I was so upset. By the whole experience. I've just, you know, spent all that time at university, which is very difficult, graduated into a career that I that I didn't feel like I fit in and wasn't happy in it. And there was no people. No, I like talking to people. And I was suddenly in this kind of profession where you're spending eight hours a day in front of a CAD drawing and didn't really understand how my drawings related to something bigger. And it was just like, I can't This can't be it. And then I think at the beginning 25 grand seemed like a lot of money when you're a student. And then you suddenly realize how quickly it dissipates in London. And you're like, Oh my God, and you kind of look it and also I remember my brother worked in works in finance. And I remember having a conversation with him, and I told him how much I know In the first year, I was like, Yeah, this sort of 10 grand or whatever. And he just looked at me and he was like, Are you serious? That's like a monthly wage for, for our slot. That's, that's insane. And in the end, he was telling me about how much you know, university graduates would get paid in at UBS, for example. And they'd be walking into a 45 50,000 and above salary at the age of 21. And I was just like, what the like, they're no smarter than than us like what decision have a Why did nobody tell me this? Why was I like how like, and it was kind of like a guilt or shame, a sort of frustration, anger resentment at the world and then kind of like, how could I have been so stupid? How did I go for 10 years and not and not like be aware of this even though there was tutors and people who would tell you in a kind of a kind of try and make you brace the discomfort of it by saying you never been earning money much money as an architect, you don't do this for the you don't do this for the money, you do it for the love of that mentality doesn't hold up. Like, I don't care, I don't care. You don't you don't put your lifestyle and your well being at risk to do some for a hobby, basically, I don't know. It's just it's not it's not sustainable. It's really unhealthy cult like, mentality to be sacrificing your life and relationships for the greater good of architecture while no nonsense and also you don't produce better architecture as a result of it. But this, this whole experience of really rocked me to my core. And no, and I was looking for a way out of the industry. And I was very fortunate to meet a business mentor, who I ended up hiring. And I remember at the time, I you know, his fees were just, they were mind. bendingly expensive, I just couldn't fathom them. I just bought, I just wanted to learn, I just wanted to learn. And he sent me a little he said, Okay, look, if you can get together, I think at the time, it was like five grand, if you can get to five, you can bring five grand, I'll do a few months work with you. I was like five grand, and I was earning 10. US that I was I was like, I've got to figure this out. And he gave me six months. And I just went into I mean, that was the first experience I had of having like a financial focus and a target. And I was like, Okay, well, if I win this, this, this, and this projects, and if I go and speak to this, this and this person, and I can do that, very quickly, a raise the finance, yeah. And then I spent it all on this business consultant. But relatively quickly, I started to make a turn around in my, in my own business, he just opened my mind up, I ended up working, you know, I still medication and work with him today. And sometimes we you know, he works with some of our clients or Business of Architecture, but it was just revolutionary. And then I ended up working with him for a year and raised more money to be able to do that. Those kinds of financial goals really gave me an incentive. And also, he helped me identify skill sets that I was good at, and talking and communicating with people. And he was like, you know, this being with people and communicate, and that's a very good business skill. One of the best business skills you can have, and I was like, Really, I thought it was just that was party time. And it wasn't, it wasn't valuable skills, and it was something in architecture, sometimes, you know, you're kind of criticized for being like, Oh, he's just a good talker. And it's, it's not, you know, anyway, and that was very good. Just of having somebody like an independent outside, I helped me evaluate where my career strengths were, what was what was good. And he taught me how to negotiate, like face to face selling spent months and months and months, like training and then hundreds if not 1000s of different phone calls and things like that learning face to face negotiations when I learned negotiation and sales, then my brain just went off so much as possible here. Wow. Okay, that's, that's extraordinary. I've had like a previous sales experience being a Chugga if you like on the on the streets, and how to kind of naturally gravitated towards that but always, always felt like it was a it was a kind of shameful thing to be doing. But again, kind of realizing actually that that being able to be with people and lead people and again at the same time I did like seven years worth of leadership training and personal development and learn how to manage people and To be with people, again, I wasn't intending on being a consultant, this was all for my own benefit. And it came to a point where the podcasts really started taking up and no. And again, the podcast started as a result of me wanting to know, how are architects making money in their business? They start talking about finance, lead, tell me what what are you doing? How are you negotiating? How are you selling? How are you marketing. And so that whole process was really insightful. So I'm very grateful for the experience of being broke, because it was very humbling. And it was at that time as well was what I needed to kind of just relinquish a lot of entitlements and, and to grow up. And so there was a lot of, you know, it was very painful. And it made a lot of disruption in my personal life. And there was a lot of shame involved in it. But I reflect back on it. Now, my business mentor told me this, he said, he said, you will look back on these times with a great fondness because it really shaped you. Yeah, and so and so anybody knows going for that kind of financial difficulty time that there is like a silver lining out of it, because it can really, you know, it can wake you up, and and take responsibility for your own financial future. Because the RMA is not going to save us, the IRB is not going to save us University is not going to save us, we've we're kind of here to take a level of responsibility for our for ourselves, we've got to put our own oxygen mask on first, once we do that, and we're able to help other people much more effectively.
Absolutely. And the Brock archetype podcast is trying to help people that is the purpose like your like your your podcast and your business. My final question to you is work life balance that was being discussed. So my question to you is, how do you de stress also,
when I started playing, I started playing golf, I started playing golf, because actually, because I wanted to use it as a way of networking, probably not the sort of thing that I would normally participate in. But I started learning that and now I play maybe once or twice a week and play with my dad. And this is just a great way just to be outside, have a chat, now is a really lovely way to socialize with people. And so that I do that to de stress, I meditate a lot. So I don't drink alcohol, and don't do any sort of intoxicants or anything like that. And that was something that happened probably about 1010 12 years ago, when I was beginning my sort of business journey that made a decision to sort of relinquish those sorts of substance substances, because they weren't helping me get to where I wanted to go to, and they were kind of inhibiting a lot of no awareness, if you like self awareness. And so a kind of meditation practice, I'm a trustee of a monastery up in Northumberland, and a Buddhist monastery, and I like to go and visit them and spend a week just in silence and having that kind of practice in my, in my, in my daily activities, I find that really helpful just to de stress and to unplug. And of course, I like to, I like to socialize, I've got a guitar just sitting over there, that's the other thing I like to do in between meetings is play a bit of a bit of music. So I like to kind of nurture myself like that. And, you know, obviously, health and fitness is, is really important. And certainly when I'm not traveling so much, I'm a lot more well behaved with that, but I do the work life balance is is really important. And one thing that Business of Architecture is that we have a kind of a set of areas or domains in life that you must look after, or the core for as your body is your being as balance, which has kind of intimate relationships with family and spouse than as a business. And that when one of these becomes out of whack, then it doesn't help. And we were interested in becoming better human beings. And as you become a better human being, and you can become a better business person, a better business being. And so much of running a business as well as mental. There's so much psychology behind it. There's so much the importance of actually becoming self aware.
And fantastic. You know, I just want to thank you for being on the third series of the Brock active podcast. This
has been a lot of fun. My absolute privilege and pleasure. So thank you so much, Jason. Appreciate it and keep keep doing what you're doing because it's well needed and massively important.
Yeah. And same, same to you as well. But yeah, I really enjoyed it. And yeah, I'll let you. I'll let you go.
Awesome. Great stuff.
All right. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers, Jason.
All right.
And that's a wrap. Oh yeah, one more thing. If you haven't already, head on over to iTunes and leave a review, we'd love to read your name out here on the show. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, the world's leading step by step business training program that's helped more than 103 architecture firm owners structure their existing practice. So the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of their architecture. Because you see, it's not your architecture design skills that's holding you back. It's the complexity of running a business, managing projects and people dealing with clients, contractors and money. So if you're ready to simplify the running of your practice, go to business of architecture.com forward slash smart to discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method for running a practice that doesn't get in the way of doing exceptional architecture. The views expressed on the show by my guests do not represent those of the hosts and I make no representation, promise guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you conquer the world. QRP DM
