But you're not having those conversations upfront, you're not having a structure put into place. You're just not communicating about it. Hello, and
welcome back architect Nation. I'm Enoch Sears. And this is the show where you'll discover tips, strategies, and secrets for doing your best work more often. And of course, the thing that facilitates you to be able to do your best work is that cold, hard, dirty thing we call cash. So today we're going to be talking about give me my fucking money. And joining me today is my co host, Ryan Willard, by the way, adds up this is an explicit episode so if you have little kids in the car, I probably should told that ahead of time, we will be using adult language because this is an adult subject. Ryan welcome.
Thank you, Nick. Pleasure to be here as always. Now
in in let's talk about language first of all, is fucking Is that is that such a terrible word in England as it is here in the United States of America?
No, I think the English were far better at swearing and the Americans actually
have so many more words for just all sorts of nonsense.
We use this we use swearing much more affectionately. You
do you as an art form. It's the Queen's English let's face it.
Exactly. And the the we use the C word which is I know in the America is incredibly rude. But we got some word that's reserved for your your greatest friends and allies.
Yeah, we don't want to use that on here. That would be taken a step too far. I'm gonna keep this you know, just. So Ryan, today we're talking about this idea of collections, right? We're talking about when we don't get paid. What do we do when we don't get paid. And this is something that is, this is happening all over the architecture industry. It's so antiquated. And there is a better way, you don't need to deal with this anymore. As a matter of fact, my very first project when I was let go from my my architectural practice that I was working on when I started my own firm, and I'm like, Okay, that's it. Second time around, I'm doing my own thing. Now, you know, we're making this happen. I had a fun friend of mine, who was a contractor, and it was just a small little job. It was a little cafe. And all we were doing is he just wanted me to draw an exhaust vent because they were out of compliance. Right. So it was a tiny little job. So I did some mechanical drawings, little as Bill and got it all drawn up. It was $1,000. This was this would have been about 10 years ago. $1,000 I mean, a drop in the bucket, you know, but having just been laid off from my job. It was like $1,000 is a lot of money. For me that was like that was like my house mortgage. You know, this, this money matters to me. And I can still remember the indignation. I felt. I mean, I was so pissed off. When I go to collect, he's not paying, he's not paying me. So I'm chasing him this contract. Like I'm having to chase him. I'm having to call him having to text him. Now fortunately, he's a member of my church. So I had a little bit of leverage on him, but still not enough. So I like bumped into him in the hallway. And I was like, hey, what am I going to get my money? I've done the work. I gave you the drawings. everything's good to go. He's like, Well, first of all, he kind of put me off and he said, Well, I haven't been paid yet. So we're playing the whole, I'll pay you when you pay me game, which that's that's a non starter. We do never do that. Never do that. This is not we do not do that. Okay. And it was then he finally said, he's like, okay, yeah, they decided that they're, they're not, you know, he didn't pay me like the, like, the contractor didn't get paid. So he's all there for I'm not paying you. And I was like, bloody hell. There's my British warning for you. I was like blood. I was like, like, seriously, I have three small kids to feed. I'm basically making, I'll be lucky if I make $4,000 this month. And I just got fired from my job, like, you won't pay me $1,000. Like I did my job. I was like, how does this work? So from the very start of my own practice, I was slammed face into this reality, which is common in architecture of people not getting paid. And I mean, you'd be surprised by how many small practices deal with collections issues. I remember my mentor back in the day, most of the time, he wouldn't even bother collecting data, he'd stick his wife on him if it was a lot of money, and she'd get it because she was the Bulldog, but he probably let 10s of 1000s of dollars go every single year, because it was just like, well, c'est la vie. I'm just going to go on to the next job, no sense and trying to collect that. Now it's wild, there's four specific problems that that potentially firms are dealing with around this idea of not getting paid. Problem number one is you're making money, but where is it? In other words, you're doing the work, you're anxious, you know, you're actually engaged in a good cause you're actually doing the architecture, but then you look at the bank and like Damn, why are we why are we low this month? Where's all the money? And you know, in the back of your head that there's some invoices that haven't been paid, and they're 30 days overdue. They're 60 days overdue. They're 90 days overdue. And the impact of this Ryan is
your your cash flow gets impacted your ability to make payroll, your stress levels are going to increase the clients is effectively leveraging their risk on you, certainly with developers, and they're ultimately treating you like a bank. And except you're not making any interest on it for most for the most part, even though you might have a clause in your appointment contract that says that you can collect interest very rarely do I ever see architects actually execute on it or hold a client accountable? Will our clients do because we forced them to hold their feet to the fire? We made them, we made sure that they do do that. But most of the time, we'll see architects who are not who are just collecting stuff late, if at all?
Well, and that's the thing, right? It's like, what I've seen in myself, as well as other firm owners, and I see this in myself in all areas of life is until the pain gets large enough, I won't do anything to change it. So a lot of times, we see that firm owners, they don't actually worry about collecting unless they actually need the money. Like if they need the money, then they'll go round all the doors, and they'll like be, you know, choking people out to get the money. But if they have enough money in the bank, if you have enough money in the bank, if you can do your payroll, and you know, you don't see a huge impact, then, you know, I don't know, maybe they'll say they won't say like, Whatever,
whatever. No, well, we'll see clients sometimes and they're like, Oh, well, you know, it's like a bank account that we've got like a savings account. That's how people relate to it. Ah, it's like a, it's like a savings account. They like to mentally they're like, Oh, it's okay. We've got you know, we've got 100 grand that's coming in. It's like, we've put it away for savings. You go out, yes, we can run a lean mean machine here. We don't need the money. It's okay. Or people will soften the reality of not have these kinds of late payments with. Yeah, yeah. It's like, we've got a we've got a bank account, and I don't want to appear needy. I don't want to appear like, you know, I don't want to appear like I need the money right now. Well, that's because we've got problems in our own business, which is kind of just bizarre. And basically, yeah, because it's, it really does start to set up a relationship with the client, where the parity is no longer equal.
You know, what I find that people who are most worried about appearing needy are the people who are the most needy. So if you want to stop feeling needy, stop being needy. Yeah. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And you just give me a broad idea, right? I mean, this is the first I had heard this before, but I never put two and two together, I'm a little slow, let's face it. But what you talked about, you know, counting on this as like a savings account, you know, so I have collections. And mentally, I'm going to say in my mind, while there's outstanding money, and I'm going to kind of count that as money. I've done this in the past as well. Like when it was outstanding money. I'm like, Well, I know if time gets tough, I can go collect from those people. It's sort of like a account. So what I'm proposing, right, what if we, I'm going to start a Kickstarter, it's going to be a new bank. And the way the bank works is you do free work for me. So if any of my listeners want to take me up on this, you do free architecture for me, I will, and that will be your bank. And I'll just hold that money for you for a long, long time. But it sounds like this
is a great, I like it, this is this is gonna be this is it. This is
the next big thing. Yeah, exactly. Well, and like you said, here's the flip side is that clients treat you like a bank. Right. And this is what let's face it, this is what's really happening is other other especially, I mean, even even homeowners do it. But other established business, people don't want to play this game with you. Like they're gonna play the game. It's just the way businesses work. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I remember talking with one of the clients who joined our program years ago, Canadian firm, high end design firm, they were doing great work, right? It's just like, like, you know, these are your archetypal designers. And, and I was talking to them, and they talked about collections, just like, Yeah, we just, we just have a frequent problem of not getting paid for our projects, we'll do these restaurants will pour a heart into them. We get published in the magazine, you know, the local AI, they do a tour or in their case, the Canadian Institute of Architects, rural architects, rural architects, will, you know, there would be the OAA. And their case, you know, comes by and organizes a tour to see their project. And they're like, but yeah, it's kind of embarrassing to admit that, like, we usually don't even get paid the last invoice or maybe the last two invoices, we don't get paid. And, and they said, I said, Well, everyone else is getting everyone, no one else is getting paid either. Right? Because they went under or there's no money in the bank. And there's like a signup pause. And like, no, well, I think everyone else is getting paid. I was like, Well, why? How does that work? You know, like, How many times have you asked and actually tried to get paid? Like, well, you know, I mean, a couple times. More the story is, if you're not the squeaky wheel, you get you'll get pushed down to the bottom. The Yeah, the the,
I mean, I think and I don't want to justify it I want, you know, we've women think we've probably done. We've, we've spoken about this before on the podcast. And it's such a common issue with architects and it really does reflect a whole load of, you know, a lack of confidence around money, and a lack of assertiveness and personal power around negotiating and just, you know, just just in terms of feeling indebted to the client or feeling like we need the client, there is this kind of neediness of the architecture industry, with with the client. And then secretly, we don't like the client, because they're the the obstacle for us doing the great work, but they're a kind of necessary evil. All of this is just unhealthy psychology that we've got in the industry, and it reflects itself into these, this poor mechanism for making sure that we get paid. And other industries, particularly developers, they're very, very well aware that the architects are gentle, agreeable people, and they know that it's probably a lot easier for them to just not pay the architect than it is to try and increase their financing with the bank or investors. So why not just leverage the architect because they're going to be happy, we can pay them late six months? They won't, they might, they might charge us a little bit of interest on it, but they probably won't, because they're just, they're just grateful for the work. Exactly.
They're just so grateful for the work. And I've been there. I mean, I remember sitting across from clients delivering proposals, and just feeling that and mentally like I'm, there's like a gret. This is where it gets a little twisted, because it's like a gratitude. Gratitude is awesome, right? Gratitude is a powerful place to be at, but it wasn't gratitude, it was more like, it was more like obedience, or I'm not even sure if I said that word, right. But it's like sort of this obsequious. It's like this, this, this, I'm putting myself on a lower pedestal, like, I'm so lucky to have you to be doing your project. And I'm gonna go all out and do it. Right. So it's so important to have parity. So what ends up happening clients treat you like a bank, meaning they don't pay you, they kick your invoice down to the bottom of the heap until you ask for it 6090 days or even further out. Ultimately, what ends up happening potential is you begin to resent your clients. So these kinds of don't pay you, you find excuses not to follow up, it's uncomfortable following up. You don't want to be that annoying person, you don't want to damage relationship with them. And so ultimately, what ends up happening is like internally, this resentment and just starts to build inside. Because it's like an inner cancer,
it's like, it's it's so passive aggressive as well, because it's, it's really twisted our hair, people say, Oh, I don't want to rock the boat, I don't want to upset the relationship. Oh, you know, we've been working with them for a long time. Oh, they're a new client that we want to work more with all they've got some fantastic projects, there's always some sort of excuse, and some sort of, I don't want to rock the boat, I don't want to upset them. And the reality is, they've just rocked the boat. They're the ones that has been out of integrity with not with not paying you. They're the ones that have damaged, the professional code of conduct and levels of integrity that you brought the team so talk about it, have a grown up conversation about it. So it really just doesn't work for us to cower away and not have these kinds of conversations. I mean, prevention is always better than than the cure. And I totally appreciate how difficult some of these conversations can be but then often not as bad as we think will
rain What is it when what is it when human beings in a relationship and one party blames himself for everything? Is there's there's probably psychological term for that. I'm not sure what it is maybe our listeners now
as a sudden, it's it's some kind of abusive relationships, I'm
sure. Well, when you were saying that I was like This sounds very similar to like these women who get in these relationships with these men who beat them, like women who are in abusive relationships. Like they get beaten on a daily basis. And then you ask them I know some of these women personally, that I have seen, go through this experience is very painful, very jacked up, very messed up. But it's a codependent relationship. They're like, you know, sort of, like, if I don't get my beating for today, then I don't feel loved or some. It's, it's crazy. It's insane. And you said, Well, why don't you leave him? Well, he, you know, he has trauma from his past, you know, he'll change some day, you know, he doesn't mean it. You know, I give him grace. Now as jacked up as this analogy is, and you know, this is horrifying. This happens in the world that like people are in these kinds of abusive relationships, psychologically shown that these women will stay there. I mean, maybe it's maybe it's maybe I'm taking this way out of context way too far. But it seems like there's some similarity here with architects and clients that don't pay them. It's like you're kind of taking a financial beating, and then you're the one blaming yourself Oh four, oh, I should have spoken up, oh, this is what the woman says, Oh, it's my fault that he beat me, I should be more submissive, I should do this, I did this wrong, bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, instead of like, forget this, I'm out of here, man. See you later dude, you know, but it seems like
with this suddenly kind of survival mindset that kind of comes into this, and with the architects, I would certainly say that, you know, a lot of this dependency is coming out of scarcity and coming out of the fear of not being able to survive without this particular client. And it comes from a lack of esteem, if you like, of being able to generate and find projects and negotiate and have that kind of, you know, that kind of personal power where you can go off and feel like you can create those these scenarios, or create abundance situations or create and find clients, it comes out. And it comes out of some kind of scarcity, whether it's a scarcity of, you know, financial and resource, or a scarcity of feeling good, or whatever esteem is needed in order to be able to be empowered in life if you like, I
think you hit the nail on the head there because when we look at these codependent going back to marriage or boyfriend, girlfriend, like these kind of romantic relationships that are messed up, like I talked about, like a lot of times whatever party is being abused, oftentimes it comes down to their esteem. It's how they see themselves, they don't see themselves as worthy of more. Right, they don't see that they don't have a higher self regard. And so we see this in architecture and why it's happened. Who knows, but it seems like we've bought the, the narrative of the other people outside of our and so we bought the narrative of the developers, we bought the narrative of the homeowners, here's the problem and architecture for us, for people practicing architectures that generally the lay public, they don't they don't get architecture, you know, they don't understand all the training like what architects do. I mean, we know we talk about this a lot, and a lot, there's lots of complaints about oh, no one understands what architects does, etc, etc, etc. But the fact is, is that there's an oversimplification of what architects do, that we need to face that you know, it's easy to look at what an architect does, and let's face it, because contractors do a lot of work out there like contractors, you can understand what they do and you know, I mean, you can have someone with very little education startup a general contracting company tomorrow now they might not be building skyscrapers but they're they can be build it it can be in business pretty quickly right? But with that contractor will never understand is that contractors never got understand, you know, proportions of spaces, never got understand massing, never gonna understand circulation patterns at the deep level, the architects do probably doesn't even know about some codes like egress, how far you need to go to be able to have an exit, how many exits are required for what occupancy, like all these things, which is just on the health and life safety side of architecture. So let's face it, if you're an architect, you're listening to this, you're probably an architect, so you get the complexity of being an architect. But what ends up happening is, your clients in their own minds, oversimplify what you do. And so there's a struggle there for you to get compensated for the great work that you do and for all the value that you bring into a project.
And I wonder as well, that it may be at some level architects, there is a psychosis and industry psychosis of just feeling like we don't deserve
it. Absolutely. We're, there's a mental illness. Yeah.
And there's, there's a, there's definitely if we look at education, a kind of narrative of the impoverished architect or the penance that we need to pay in order to be able to do good architecture, we've looked at this before the psychology of, you know, some of the hidden belief systems that end up manifesting in architecture around you know, profit and Ark, good architecture don't go together, if you're making a lot of money out of architecture, then the initial assumption is that, obviously, you're doing either morally corrupt work, or the work that you're doing is crap. And it's just cheap. And you're just kind of scooping off all the profits for yourself, and you know, blah, blah, blah. And the reality of it couldn't be further from the, from the truth, but were brought up with this kind of education. And these belief systems end up finding their way into our, into our minds, and they all come into play when it's when there's money on the line, and somebody hasn't paid us and then we choose not to do anything about it.
100% and I don't know about you, Ryan, but the way that I can speak about this, like you just did so eloquently, is that I've thought and believed all these things myself.
You know, when I first started working with a business mentor when I was running my architecture firm, I had, I had a situation with a client where they refused to pay my final part Have the bill. And at the time, we were going into planning permission for something and I was charging 50% upfront for each stage of work. So at least that was something I had some sort of, you know, bit a bit of protection. And the final 50%, the client said, we're not going to pay you on this, because we don't like the design. We don't like what it's what's what's happened. And what happened in the project was, it had been, we'd gone for what's called a pre planning process in the UK. So pre planning is like a tester, you show the planners, here's what we're planning on doing, and submitting, tell us if we're going to get permission for it. And they sent back and I said, you're not going to get permission for this. But if you change xy and z, then you're better get permission. So we adapted the design, changed it all we're about to submit it, and the client says, We don't like this design. That's not what we wanted. And guess what we've spoken to another architect who used to work for the council, he used to work for the local authority. And they say that they know how to get us permission for exactly what it was that we wanted. So we're going with them. And we're not going to pay for this, because this is not the design that we wanted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at the at the time, I remember having this argument with the guy on the phone, and I was just I didn't know where to go with it. I didn't know what to say. I was just kind of quite cut up about it. And I blame myself. I was like, oh, I should have known better. I'm clearly I'm an architect. I don't I don't know what I'm doing properly. I you know, if this other architect, yeah, it's my fault. If this other architect can do it, he obviously knows more than I do. He's worked for the council. He knows all the rules. There's something I've missed. I've let these people down. And I started working with the business mentor. This was maybe 10 months later. And first and then one of the first things was Johan. Yeah, he asked me, he was like, right, so have you got any outstanding bills or anything? You know, whereas Is there any money that's owed to you? And I was like, Well, he was like, what does that mean? I said, Well, there's this one client who never paid and told him the story. And he said, he said, Okay, so were you in the wrong? And I said, I don't know, I don't, I don't think I was actually. And he was like, go get your fucking money, go get your fucking money, they owe you money, go get it, right. You do, you did your your, your work. You did the drawings, you did what you said you were acting with your best intentions. You know, go and get it. And I ended up looking on the planning website just to see what had happened. And I saw how this other architect they paid had submitted all these other designs, which I knew we're gonna get, we're gonna get rejected. And guess what had happened. rejection, rejection, rejection, I was so happy when I saw this. i It was literally I told you, it was like I told you so. And this, this other architect, you know, had had made a real mess. Anyway, I remember I sent a message to the to the client at that point. And I said, Hi, just checked in and looked online. And as we discussed those proposals, we're going to go and get rejected, which I've seen that you've seen, you've had, please you, you now have 14 days to pay me the remainder of the fee, which I attach the invoice for here. Pay me this money, or I'll see you in court. And 14 days went passed. And it was literally one hour to midnight. And I was like right, I'm gonna have to get I'm gonna have to get get legal with these guys. And then their money came into my my bank account. And that was it never spoke to those guys again.
But I got paid with last minute. Yeah, he's going Wow. Well, good job right. Now. One of the things we do here and smart practices smart practice program. So if you're listening to this, and you feel like you need a little ass kicking to actually collect and stand up for your own value, well come join smart practice, have a chat with us reach out to us, we can see if smart practices a fit for you. Now as part of the program we have, we have a call that's called the project reclaim, which is a brilliant idea that Ryan came up with, and it works very, very well. Now also, Ryan, tell us about Project reclaim, and you also came up with a playlist commemorating this call and I'm just excited to write
what is allowances. I love project reclaim. It's like one of my favorite calls that we do in the week. And basically, you know, we started seeing a number of different practices coming into the Business of Architecture program. And you know, a recurring problem was this late payments. I think the worst we ever saw was somebody had about $2 million worth of unpaid fees and their business was doing around about $1.25 million gross sales Every year, so this was like nearly double their entire revenue. And that was one of the things when I saw that that was just like bloody hell this this, this is ridiculous. And we keep track on everybody's AR. So as part of the program, you have to submit what your total account receivables are. And then you have to tell us how much is over 30 days, okay, so when our if you're, if it's over 30 days, we consider that late, even if you don't call it late with your own with your own clients, we're going to consider it late. And so then we want to know what the percentage of how much is late is of your total AR. And we've got a couple of grades in place. So if you're 0%, well done, you are what we call a high performing business, you don't need to attend the project reclaim classroom, if you're between zero or one and 15%. That is acceptable. Okay, but just keep an eye on it, watch it. Okay, but between one and 15%, that's kind of what we would expect in a, in a business just naturally operating it. There's a few people here and there that are that are late. And there's some sort of structure in place between 16 and 25%. This is risk, now we're getting risky and come into the classroom now becomes optional, anything above 25%, it is mandatory for you to be coming to the project, reclaim classrooms, until you have reduced that amount.
And reminders, the percentages of what
the percentage is the of your total AR, how much of your total accounts receivable is late. Yep, there you go. And by late and by late, we're defining it as over 30 days. Okay, so if you're above 25% of your total AR is late, this is urgent emergency problem we need to get we need to get addressed and you're not allowed to leave the classroom, you've got to keep coming to it week after week until you have reduced those numbers. And we've had some extraordinary kind of stories of success. And I think people find it really, really empowering, it's not uncommon that, you know, people will come back. And they'll just be like, I've never had that kind of conversation with a client. And we had one client recently, I think that down in, in Washington, or somewhere on the East Coast, somewhere down south and east coast. And they were owed $70,000. And they hadn't done anything about it for weeks and weeks. And they were worried they didn't want to upset the client, they'd sent an email, the email had been ignored. They've maybe made some tentative phone calls. And it was like, right, okay, you need to eat, go and get the money. And so we actually practice some of the conversations that they might have, with the with the developer, we always train people to have these conversations you don't need to be it doesn't need to be massively confrontational. But it does mean that you don't leave the conversation until there's a very clear agreement in place, ie, a date, and a time of when the money is going to hit my bank account. Okay, or if at the very, very worst scenario, that you've got a date and a time for the next conversation. And and that next conversation, they'll be able to put into place, a commitment of a date and a time for when their money is going to hit your bank. Okay, so each client, you do need to have a bit of a individual circumstance to see what's the best and appropriate strategy with that is at your discretion. But with this particular client, it was really empowering. She sent off these emails, he jumped on the phone, she started, you know, basically standing up and respectfully demanding where's my money, and the CEO of the company, the development company found out that they were late with the payments. And he directly got on the phone with her, and was incredibly apologetic, and said, Let me meet up with you. I'm so sorry about this, this will never happen again. He wrote a check for her mediately got her paid up and gave her his personal phone number and said you send all invoices now directly to me, this will never happen again. Now, that's great, because that shows, you know that's a client with integrity. And, and you know, it was really great. She's and she was saying actually afterwards, that the relationship now with her and this client is better than it's ever been before. Because he really understood that he didn't want to be disrespecting his consultants like that. And she was just proud that she actually had the confidence to have the conversation with the people that she was dealing with and to escalate it and managed to escalate it to as far up the food chain as possible. And she got paid. So that's the kind of thing that we have happened on the project reclaims and we've got a number of people in there at the moment Who, every single week, they report, what their percentages that's late. And we're looking to decrease that down to, you know, 15% or 0%. And we will train people in what kind of conversations to have, you know, what's happened to the client, sometimes if you've got a client who's ghosting them, then we'll have to have more extreme forms of action. You know, sometimes it might need to get legal. Sometimes we've had people, our clients actually go to the places of work of these clients that owe the money, and knock on the door, and have a conversation right then and there. As you know, sounds, for some people that might sound kind of totally extreme, but it gets your clients, you know, people, people will respond to when they know that you've come looking for your money. They don't want that to be happening. It's not good. It's just there's all sorts of, there's all sorts of stuff, like just just being you don't be rude, you just want to deal with it. And you know, start getting very awake to how much it's impacting somebody else. And of course, it works the other way, because when architects are paid late, often what happens is now they can't pay their own consultants. And we work with a lot of what we might call sub consultants, as well, who, often they're working with architects who are getting paid late, and then they get paid late. And, you know, our our advice is often just bypass the blooming architect, if you can just go and get a direct agreement with the client themselves, because my own in most cases, you know, the architect who's got the cheek of making a markup on the reason why I say that it's a cheek for them making a markup, because they're not doing anything to ensure that that person gets paid on time. And all consultants are just in this kind of like paid won't get paid acceptance. And good luck trying to keep hold of a good consultant if you're constantly paying them late, because of your own ineptitude, of being able to hold your client accountable to paying you on time and you're not having those conversations upfront, you're not having a structure put into place. You're just not communicating about it. And again, prevention is so much better than cure, but we need to take this really, really seriously. So coming to the playlist.
Ryan, what we'll do here, let's well let's This is we'll wrap this episode for now. We want you to come back next week. Well, we're going to jump in, we're going to talk about the playlist because Ryan set up, let's call it a musical theme for this call. And so we'll share that with you on next week's episode. Well, actually, it might actually come out this week depending on our schedule, but it will be the very next episode we're going to jump into. So today we've gone over some of the problems and challenges that happen when collections need to happen when your AR is getting when you're not getting paid for the month for the work that you do. Are you getting paid late? Next week we're going to talk about some of the are in the upcoming episode, we'll talk about some of the possibilities. What does it look like when you make this problem disappear forever? 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. Hello, Enoch Sears here with a special announcement for you our diehard podcast fan, listen on for life changing opportunity for the right person. Have a question for you. Did you know that Ryan Willard, who's currently our Director of Education and consulting here at Business of Architecture started out listening to the podcast? Well, we hear Business of Architecture, we're looking for a new team member. And I have a feeling that our next team member currently listens to the Business of Architecture podcast. Perhaps you enjoy architecture, but something tells you that it isn't right for you or you're looking for another opportunity. In any case, we're currently hiring a detail oriented enthusiastic person to be the glue that holds our team together by managing internal project deadlines and communication. If you are someone you know is a spreadsheet wizard thrives on lists and deadlines and knows how to organize and influence a team and you want to learn and grow professionally as well as personally, you could be our next project manager go to business of architecture.com forward slash pm position. To find out more once again, that's business of architecture.com forward slash pm position without spaces to find out more. 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. Carpe Diem.
