The change is going to happen. As the legions of small firm architects begin to catch the vision of having profitable practice, in addition to having passionate practices, Hello, and welcome back architect nation. And of course, by nation, I mean, all the architects around the world designers, interior designers, landscape architects, welcome to the show, where you'll discover tips, strategies, and secrets, for pairing up your design expertise with monetary expertise. This is the Business of Architecture, how sell out architects are saving the industry. In this episode, you'll discover several things, including the false dichotomy between doing good design, and making a lot of money. How we as architects have abandoned our birthright of design by believing the narrative that other people give us that we are not valuable, as well as understanding at a very deep level, that if we're going to claim our value as architects, we are the ones who need to make the stand. So with that, let's jump right into today's episode today as a solo episode, I am Unixes your host, let's get right into it with any comments, questions, concerns or feedback, you can always send those in to us here at Business of Architecture you can write to support at Business of Architecture. And as always, we would love to get a review of the podcast, especially if you find that this podcast is helping you change your mindset. Empower your mindset be able to make more money as an architect. So with that, Here is today's show. Why are sell out architects saving the industry? In UK, what do you mean sell out architects? Well, let me define quickly what sell out means I looked this up on Google, by the way from dictionary.com. a sellout is a person who compromises their personal values, integrity, talent, etc, for money or personal advancement. Now, in the architecture industry, there is a divide between the academia between the architects who are self styled high design firms. And the other side, which would be we shall call more utilitarian or transactional architectural businesses. Now, this is a divide whether you call it a false or a real divide, there's definitely a bit of two sides of the aisle here. There are the firm's who are run as businesses. And you may look at their work and say, Hey, design is a secondary consideration. And then there are firms on the other side, where design is a primary consideration. And yet, the business if you look behind the scenes is embarrassing. It's in shambles. If you're in the architecture industry, you know what I mean? Now, is it possible to have a firm that is not only focused on design, but also highly profitable? Well, let's go back to the topic of today's discussion, which is simply this, why SELL IT architects are saving the industry. So I'm going to put sell out in air quotes here, right sell out, because from the design side, a lot of design focused firms look down their nose at the commercially based practices. And we look at commercially based practices, there are a lot of architectural products that are very non glamorous. There's infrastructure projects. For instance, I know a lady who made a lot of money doing power stations in urban environments. In other words, she would design power stations that were disguised to look at, there was a utility stations that were designed to look like buildings, not a glamorous job, not someone who graduate from a design focused Architecture School is generally not going to want to work on these projects, because the creativity of them may be questionable. Now, she had a lot of fun designing the facades of these buildings found it highly rewarding. And yet, it was a job that perhaps lacks some of the creativity that you might find in some other project types. So we see this across the board, we see there's a high need for building, let's face it here, the United States, there's a need for strip malls, whether you like it or not, there's a lot of strip malls going up. And probably a lot of these strip malls have an architect's stamp on them. Some of them have engineering stamps, though, as well. Now, there's also machine factories, there's warehouses, there's metal buildings, there's a lot of very non glamorous buildings that go up in United States. And so there's a need for this more utilitarian transactional type of architecture to happen. All right. Now, that's on one side that's on the design side. So if we look at design as a continuum, we can say, okay, there's very high design over here, where the aesthetic, the language, the ethos of the building is very important. This would be something like a Gateway project, something that has cultural significance. And then on the other side, we can say there's kind of products that are very utilitarian, that are meant they're basically just meant to get the job done. These might be things like factories, metal building, storage facilities, nothing glamorous about them, and most architects will want to stay far away from this, okay, now, we can cross reference that with the actual Business of Architecture. Within these practices. There are going to be practices that are very, very highly profitable. They're very well run businesses. They post high profit margins. They do great work, they charge high fees for their services. As such, they have a well run organization, they have a good culture, not all the time to the to coincide. But typically they might, they might have a good culture, they're able to keep people long term, these things are things that that lead a firm to be able to make more money. Now on the other side, we might have a firm, there's much less profitable, maybe they undersell their services, they give away their services to when projects there's not a lot of money in the practice, people work for a pittance, sometimes people go to these type of firms. Number one, these firms could be very poorly run. Or they could just be firms that are just scraping by because they're trying to get the work and they're trying to get the lowest fee so they can get the best projects, you know that you know what I'm talking about. They try to go in and let Atlanta the very important design project by offering to work for very little money. And so we have an we have a culture in architecture of even professionals, students and people who graduate and go on to work in the industry, of being able to work for a firm that's doing significant, important, exciting work, and being able to sacrifice the money side of it. In other words, I'll be willing to work for very little compensation to be able to do work that I love and work that I enjoy. Now, in cocktail parties in inner circles amongst architects, I have heard the term sellout bandied about in other words, the architects who feel like they're living up to higher ideals, the ideals of sustainability, the ideals of design, the ideals of high design, which indeed are high ideals, oftentimes look down their noses at the commercial firms that are doing the run of the mill architecture, and often view them as Sella architects. Okay. Now, this is not what I'm talking about here. What I want to focus on in terms of the quote unquote, sell out architect is the idea that affirmed that's making money, whether they do good design or not, is a seller architect. All right. So oftentimes, we like to justify our own failures, by blaming others and giving excuses. So one of the ways that we can, can justify our own failures, in other words, our lack of ability to make money is to say, well, the only reason that they're making money is because they're doing crappy design. Now, there may be an element of truth to this. But what if this, in its of itself was actually a false narrative? What if it were possible to be able to earn great fees, great profit, and do great design? Would that not be a beautiful thing? Now, let's look at this broader conversation of Why sell at architecture saving the industry? Let me ask you the question. What is it that keeps professionals in the industry? What is it that keeps professionals working in architecture and what is it that causes them to leave? Well, after having talked and spoken with many architects, and based upon my own experience in the industry, some of the things that can cause architects to leave number one are difficulty for women to be in the profession. For instance, women who want to have a family or want to be a mother, oftentimes, the architectural profession, the waste firms are structured, the ability to take time off is not conducive to the responsibilities of a mother. So oftentimes, women might end up leaving the profession for a while, and then they have a hard time getting back in. So that's one form of leakage in the industry is a woman and we see this, we see that architecture is predominantly a male driven profession. Now, in addition to that, we have recessions. So when recessions happen, large numbers of professionals leave the industry, or maybe they go into affiliated jobs and affiliated positions. This is my own personal story. So I trained and licensed as an architect running my own practice, laid off during a recession eventually transitioned over into what we do now, which is consulting on the business side of architecture. But I have friends who are working in Hollywood, now I have friends that are working for rendering companies, I have friends that have gone on for my graduating class at Cornell and working for, you know, LucasArts, industrial lights and magic in the movie industry. They've gone on to the banking, they've gone into real estate. So we can see that, like when I look at my architectural class, a very small percentage of the people who graduated from college with me, are still in architecture.
Why is that? Well consider that there's two things that cause people to want to be in a profession. Number one, would be the psychological and emotional value of enjoying that profession. In other words, just a job that I love. It's just something that I like doing. And fortunately, there's a lot of people out there who are working in jobs, they just like they're like, you know, it doesn't matter how much money I make, I just enjoy this job. It's fun. I like being a librarian. I earn $20,000 a year but at least I'm doing something I love or architecture, you know, I'm earning $40,000 a year, I'm earning 20,000 pounds in London, which is barely enough to have a living wage, even if you're sharing a flat with someone but I love the architecture so I'm willing to do it. Okay, so there's that aspect of the Passion loving the job. Now the other side of it is the profit, the money, the liquidity, the finances, and we can see that there are architectural opportunities There's jobs that pay more, and there's jobs that pay less. Now, in my experience, architecture, generally speaking, can be a fairly rewarding profession. A lot of architects, we're in architecture, we're there, because we enjoy, design we love, we bought into the idea of architecture and what it represents. Now, where it seems to fall down a lot is on the financial side. And this is another reason why many architects end up leaving the profession, why many professionals end up leaving is because there's just not a lot of money to be made. And when you're having to sacrifice your health, your relationships, your well being just to do work that you love, well, it's going to be very tempting to find work that you love somewhere else. And let's face it, there's a lot of other affiliated careers like architecture that offer the same intrinsic value. In other words, you can have the same kind of passion, but they pay you a lot more money advertising, for instance, working for an advertising company. Now, depending on what kind of advertising you're doing, it may be humdrum or it may be fun and exciting. When you go into the tech world, there's high demand right now for the people that have architectural skills in the technology industry. Okay, this can be highly rewarding work because you're doing problem solving, and can also be high pain. So if we look at the fact let's just pretend a thought experiment, let's just say that every single firm in the architecture industry was a firm that was poorly managed, that was not making a lot of money, what would happen to the industry would be a terrible place, it'd be a terrible place, because it'd be difficult to hire. We have extreme shortages of architects, the architects who were in this industry would not be earning much money. And we would have people leaving to go to other professions. So when we look at architects who are profitable, aka sellout architects, we can see that at least they're bringing money into the profession. This is not to be understated. They're providing jobs. They're providing profit. And what would it look like if every firm started to become a firm that was highly profitable? If architecture because architects actually stood for their value, architects stood for not only sustainability, not only high design, not only buildings that meet the occupants, needs, and actually innovative strategies that continue to push the Building Sciences forward. But what would happen if in addition to that, architecture became a highly profitable field? What would the industry look like? What if we just weren't depending on the aka sell at architects to pay the wages and to keep architects in the industry? You know, there's a lot of architects I talk to they look down at their nose at the the larger firms, the gamblers, the H O K is the HDR and they say all those firms are all about the business, they kind of lacked the design edge, right? Well, let's face it, these architectural practices, these large conglomerates, these large businesses are producing buildings that are impacting the landscapes, the Skylines, the offices, the environments in which we live. And in addition to that, they're also providing the intellectual capital, the resources to keep architects in the profession of architecture. So as we wrap up today, talking about why, quote unquote, sell out architects, in other words, architects that actually care about money. And I'm, I'm using this term very liberally, because there are there are there are architects, there's an ethos within the industry, of course, that looks at sellout architects as being, you know, if you earn money at all, you've sold your soul to the devil. Okay? So what I'm not talking about is architects who are doing unsustainable projects, architects who are, you know, have have completely given away their values in the sake of money. No, no, no, no, let's not do that. That's going too far to the other side. Let's find the beautiful, beautiful point of not compromise, but actually Pinnacle on both of these both the purpose and the passion. What would the industry look like? Would we be able to attract talent? Would we be able to attract women into the profession to be able to give them more flexibility with the way that they interact with their jobs, will be able to give man opportunities will be able to give people of color opportunities in the profession where they want to come here, immigrants that come to the United States from other countries, where they want to work in architecture, because they know it's a highly paid profession. It's time for the highly profitable firms to stop being the only ones who are bearing the brunt of pushing the architecture industry forward. It's time for architects to take a stand. It's our times for architects to rise. And when we look at architecture firms, and I'm going to speak in the US because that's what I'm most familiar with. The vast majority of firms and I know this is true for Canada as well as United Kingdom and Mexico most places actually, the vast majority of architectural practices today are small practices respect this is from anywhere from one to nine people and he The more are one to five person firms. So the change is not going to happen from the Gensler. It's not going to happen from the H O case. They're doing their work. They're operating according to good business officials, they're doing their best to create case great cultures, they're setting the fees at a reasonable amount because they're responsible to a large number of state shareholders. I would submit to you that the change is going to happen. As the legions of small firm architects begin to catch the vision of having profitable practice, in addition to having passionate practices. This is Enoch, you know what to do? Head over to smart practice method.com. I look forward to seeing you over there. And good bye for now. 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. Carpe Diem.
