611: Why Chasing Big Projects Might Be the Biggest Mistake of Your Career with Marcus Gleysteen of MGA Architects | Otter.ai

611: Why Chasing Big Projects Might Be the Biggest Mistake of Your Career with Marcus Gleysteen of MGA Architects

Enoch Sears55min

Enoch Sears

00:00

When you're drawing, you're samurai with a katana, you know. Hello tech nation, and welcome back to the Business of Architecture podcast. Super excited about today's we have an awesome interview for you today, but before we jump into that interview, want to remind you, if you haven't already checked out our smart practice method training, go over and check that out at smartpractice method.com that'll keep you from sacrificing your life, your family and your health in the pursuit of doing excellent work, which is going to be one of the topics of our conversation today and now a word from today's sponsor. A while ago, I began to hear reports of a company that was helping some of our clients build remote teams. We looked into it more closely and discovered the company world teams that was helping small architectural practitioners build remote teams that were both capable and qualified. I was intrigued by another business that addressing one of the critical pain points for small architectural practices, which is the ability to grow and shrink a team effectively to be able to handle higher workflow without having to staff up significantly, and also being very sensitive about labor costs, world teams is built to address these issues. World teams is a small but mighty company that helps architectural practices build high performing remote teams quickly and efficiently, saving you the headache of sorting resumes and interviewing under qualified candidates. World teams operates in your time zone and prioritizes near native English speakers, ensuring clear and efficient communication with your remote team members. They have flexible contracts so you can adjust your team size as your needs evolve. Additionally, you're connected directly with your skilled professionals, which fosters trust and collaboration. And world teams helps you reduce your operating costs without compromising the quality that is so important to a practice. To download a free guide for building a remote team for a small architectural practice, go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. That's one word. Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams as a reminder, sponsorship is not an endorsement, and you must do your own due diligence before entering into any business relationship. Go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams.

Rion Willard

02:11

We are looking for architect developer stories for the Business of Architecture podcast. So are you an architect developer with valuable insights to share. We're always on the lookout for passionate voices in the industry to join us on the Business of Architecture podcast. If you're ready to share your journey, lessons, strategies with our global audience, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us to explore being a guest on our show and help inspire other architect developers on their path. We'd be interested in hearing your story, whether you're at the very beginning of your development story, or whether you have $100 million portfolio of projects already in the bag, completed. We'd like to hear from you if you're working with the developers, or that you've developed a number of small houses, or you're working at a larger

Enoch Sears

03:01

scale. Today, we're joined by Marcus gleistine. And Marcus runs Marcus glisten architects based out of Boston, Massachusetts, and it's really I'm excited to speak with Marcus, because he could easily rub shoulders with the top residential architects in America and the world with the caliber of work their office is doing. And so he has a expansive and very impressive portfolio of work they're doing, and he's here to have a real conversation with us about what it takes to run a practice and what what sacrifices look like, and and some of the things that he did and how that impacted himself and and just learning from everything he has to share. So Marcus, welcome to the show. Thank you. Was happy to be here. Yeah, you and I, we met back at the cran conference. It was several months ago and in Seattle, yeah, yeah. You heard me speak, and then we hit it off, and we got to go on this excellent house tour of Seattle. Saw some really cool houses up there, but during that, right after my speech, you kind of came up to me. Said, you said, Enoch, you know, I feel like I'm a poster child for what you had talked about. That's true. Yeah. So before we jump into it, give me a bit of if you would, give me a bit of con context around your practice. So how many full time team members do you have? Give us an idea of the size right

Speaker 1

04:19

now, we're there. It seven of us right now. We range in size from six to 12, depending on how busy we are. But we do that naturally, and we have been focusing on single family houses, primarily for the last almost 30 years. Okay,

Enoch Sears

04:40

and typically, what kind of revenue is your company bringing in on a yearly basis? I'm sure it fluctuates. But would you say, Well, you

Speaker 1

04:48

know, if you know it's somewhere, no 1.5 to 3 million, I mean a gross on a gross level, it depends on a lot of factors. And right now we're a little bit smaller than we've been but we're sort of waiting for normalcy to return. Now, of course, interest rates have a big impact on residential architecture, no matter what income level people are talking about, most of our clients are, you know, are high net worth individuals that, I hate to use that term, but they're, they still look at the circumstances that are, you know, guiding their financial decisions. But now we're, we're doing really well. We're really happy with the commissions that we get. They allow us to be very creative, and we can explore a lot of interesting ideas and uses of materials and and allows us to keep current on all the latest developments in relation to climate change and now on the on the outside, what's happening with AI and its impact on our profession?

Enoch Sears

05:58

Yeah, and so like, 1.5 million to 3 million and a $3 million year for you, is that? Is that a really good year, or is that side of the pulling our hair out?

Speaker 1

06:09

No, that's a really good year. And the but the the way we run our firm. We're sort of a studio, and I've done some psmj stuff, like boot camp. I'm there. I'm a poster child for what one should never be. I'm like, a an art driven practice that puts design over revenue and the and you also got it, which I love. Yeah, like, this is so the, you know, a lot of my competitors are very, are very good at making a lot more money than I do, but I think I'm, I think I'm happier than they are, and I think I do more interesting work than they do. I think those two go hand in hand. Everything we do is a one off. And one thing that made the poor retirement consultant tear up their hair is that we don't have a design template or a stylistic template. So if you join my firm, we don't give you a shingle style house that we designed 15 years ago and maybe a modern house we designed 10 years ago and said, you're either doing this one or you're doing that one. Have fun, and if people do that, well, it's easy for them to become a partner. They can go out get more clients, and they're simply following the same old, same old. It's not that way with us at all. Every client is a fresh canvas, a new set of opportunities. Is it going to be a low budget greenhouse? Is it going to be a house where too much is never enough? Or somewhere in between? You know, we look at the circumstances and the opportunities and also the sense of adventure that that they're going to provide for us?

Enoch Sears

07:59

Yeah, and so there's architecture is one of those professions where there's a lot of adventure potentially. Well, tell me, when you look at the money versus design conversation, why not? Why not prioritize both?

Speaker 1

08:11

That's a really good question. And I'll say, from a philosophical standpoint, the more fun you have in your life, the less you're going to get paid. And unless you're very, very lucky, but that that, or you're very, very successful, the key to monetizing what we were at my end of the profession, it's extraordinarily competitive. And so there are those that have that have national renowned. They're part of this 100 best, or 200 best. And, you know, they're, they have marketing. I mean, they they are. They're firmly established in the firm of starch attacks. And they can charge within reason what they want. And problem is we're competing with them, but we don't have any of the other now, we lost a project to someone who we're working at it together as interior designer, and they took over the entire project after getting our clients, three kids front row seats to a Rolling Stones concert. Yeah, we just don't do that. I mean, it's crazy and the but if we get good enough and enough people think, if we're getting a lot of work and we can, you know, we raise our prices. We've been raising our prices all along, but, you know, it's to get more than 15% on a project in as a residential architect, is rare. And people will say, Well, we get more, but they're typically not being utterly truthful, unless you're one of you know, one of the people where you know you can get more, because the guy wants to the. Of the entity wants to hire you no matter what, and the and that we're not there yet, I mean, and part of me is glad I'm not there yet. I don't I'm pretty happy being a bit of a Modest Mouse. And, you know, another architect, I've been lucky. I've been mentored by a bunch of really great, very well known architects over the years. They said, you know, hogs get fed and and pigs get fed and Hogs get slaughtered. And that is all the people I know in my profession who have put profitability at the fore. They fall into two categories, people that are doing the same thing over and over again. So they have a really great brand, and people are attracted to the brand and that that makes them very successful, or they're completely focused on the business aspect, making sure that every every contract is initialed and signed, and as soon as there's an excuse for an additional service. They're they're they're setting a bill for that. And I've noticed that the second group, if you look at their year end statement, how what percentage of their invoices went unpaid, it's it's more than 10% because it becomes a game between them and the clients as to who's going to screw who the most. And you know, architects are we're supposed to be. You know, there's a lot of romance about what architects are. I don't wear a bow tie. I've never worn a bow tie. I don't think architects are better than builders. I think builders are typically better than architects, but we're all on the same team. And you know, the, you know, my attitude is, I want to have fun, I want to make money, and I want to enjoy the people that I work with. And you can put that in any order that you like, and it's hard enough to reconcile that with another three things, which are existential. You have to get the work, you have to do the work, and then you have to get paid for the work. So how do you balance those six things? And I don't think I'm a poster child for how to make a lot of money in this profession, but I think I'm a poster child for how to survive it and do some really cool stuff along the way. Okay, thanks.

Enoch Sears

12:23

And so just to dig into a little bit deeper, when you say you prioritize design over money, what does that mean in your world? And tell us a little bit about that. Okay,

Speaker 1

12:31

so prioritizing design over money means that you work on a design until you're happy with it, and then you sell it to the client. And sometimes you put so much time into developing the idea or elevating it, you realize that you can't charge for all the time you put in. That's probably the best way of doing it. The key to making money, if you do that, is you have to prioritize thinking over over design visualization and my my secret is I'm very fast. I can draw. Drawing is the reason why I've Trimble brought me in to speak in their their convention in Las Vegas was, I was talking about how fast your hand is in comparison to tapping commands out on a keyboard or using a mouse. And the other thing is that when you're drawing your samurai with a katana, you know, and when you're at a keyboard, you're a clerk at a keyboard, you know, and there's, there's that brings in the entire non verbal side of the equation. When you go, like, when you make a sweep across a roll of tracing paper in front of a client, they get really excited by that. So that guy is passionate when it can drop, you know. So those things help mitigate the impact of that. But the other thing is turning down or walking away from projects where you know the client is going to pay you a lot of money, but they're going to, like your make your life utterly miserable in the process. And so we ask, we don't ask our clients this, because it would be kind of rude, but we ask ourselves about the people that we interact with, does this person have the capacity for happiness? A lot of people don't. A lot of very wealthy people don't, and one reason why they're wealthy is they're trying to make up for the fact that they can't be happy. That might do my my my office for the next 15 years. But the thing is that when you work for people that that are that have the capacity to be happy, that means they can be pleased. That means you have the opportunity to please them. You. And please. People are happy. People please. People pay their bills on time, you know, and they recommend you to their friends so you get more work. It all sort of balances out. But, you know, that's key. I got roped into a four year relationship with it was just like sheer masochism on my part, and the day I walked away from that project was, why did I subject myself to that? Well, because we needed the money. And you know, part of the downside of this profession is if you have good people working for you, you don't turn if you know, one of the things that comes up against the capacity for happiness comes up against the happiness of your employees and their livelihood that you don't if I if I can do a good job for a bad person and keep good people employed, you know, that's a road I have to travel, whether I want to or not. I'm sure a lot of people you know can identify with that situation. Oh,

Enoch Sears

15:59

absolutely. It speaks to, I mean, it speaks to a lot of the challenges in the industry, which is the cyclical nature of it, the the demand or lack thereof, choosing whether to keep employees, like you said, engage gainfully, choosing the line about design. How much do we want to spend of our time getting this design to the next level when the client might not even appreciate it, or maybe they will so Marcus, what would you would you like to talk to our audience about? What would you like to share? Well, lessons learned. You mentioned you're 68 years old now, yeah. And one thing that I, that I found impressive interacting with you, is your your thirst for new knowledge, that you're not remaining resting on your laurels. Not only can you sketch, obviously, very, very well, like second nature, and very quickly, as you mentioned, traditional skill. But also you've been playing around, you're on the cutting edge of AI, just just soaking up as much information as you can to stay across to that.

Speaker 1

16:52

Well, the AI is still got a long way to go before it has, like profound impact on our lives, but it's, it's, it's coming, and whether it's in three years or 15 years, probably closer. Somewhere in there, there are a lot of developments. And the thing is, AI right now is simply machine learning. It. It's a it's a smart machine. It's not that. It's not an independently thinking machine. And a lot of people get confused. You know, it's like, you know, what's AI is, are computers thinking for themselves? I mean, what am I missing out on? And if you read all the articles there's, you'll see that in a nutshell, there's nothing there, other than a lot of people trying to figure it out, and the there's a lot of hype about it, the more you know, hype helps invest in, you know, brings investors in and everything else. But the key is that they're, they're tools that are being developed that are helping us communicate really effectively with each other and get our points of view across. And one of the you know, AI is, I mean, I'll use the term AI is really great for helping people sell product. And what I mean by that, if I design a really cool building for a developer, and the developer wants to go sell it to a company so they can lease them half a million dollars worth of office space. AI, it's doing a really good job of, like, showing what that building is like in the winter time, in the summertime, with a lot of people with, you know, in the fall, with lead and animation with snowstorm or leaves going by. But it's not good at generating ideas. And one of the things I talk about in it's important in this discussion is that AI is focused on rendering. Renderings are designed visualizations that are used to sell a finished product, like a house or a car or a building or a toaster, and that that level of reality, of realism is of no help to a designing architect, because when you're designing something, the more unformed your idea is, the more abstract your rendering, your design visualization, should be. And by being abstract, they invite the client into the into the interaction of imagining what it could be. We actually got fired from a project because I, I decided I'm going to try this out. I went to a meeting. It was our first design meeting, and I went in with photo realistic renderings the inside and the outside of this house. And it took me no time at all to do it. I basically did, you know, quick SketchUp model, imported some realistic looking stuff, you know, did a quick AI overlay in terms of lighting and. And, you know, outside landscape stuff. And it was a very frustrating series of meetings after that, because all he could talk about was, I don't like the color of this. Why did you pick that chair? Why did you spend time picking out a chair I don't like? And the car, it went completely sideways, and it went sideways so fast there's no way it could recover and you know, but I think that happens a lot so, but we have done something that's really kind of fun. I love using mid journey blend. The journey is a AI that's available on Discord, and basically you can take any five images that you like, and mid journey will put them together. So if you like really famous architects, I started out by taking a condig house, a Cutler house, Peter Bolin house, and a couple of others, and it came out with a, you know, a house that you would probably see presented to you when you're at the next cran conference in Alexandria, Virginia. That was kind of cool. So then I next thing i did was i I cooked some of my houses, this sounds really sick, and combined them with houses by my betters. And that was kind of cool. But you know it I felt kind of stupid doing this, and the results were kind of silly as well. But then I did something even more interesting. I started taking my old stuff combining with my new stuff. And that was interesting because the computer cell we ever thought about, the thing is that when you do that, the computer's coming back and saying to you, have you thought about doing it this way? And it's looking at things in a non human way, and you're you're seeing, it's acting as a catalyst for new ideas that we never would have come up with by yourself. So that was kind of interesting, but it wasn't quite there. So the magic ingredient was to, if you I'm on Pinterest, and if I have, like, I have like, 25 fat 10s of 1000s of images on Pinterest, but my favorite board is a board called miscellaneous art. And whenever I see a piece of sculpture, I started off as a sculptor. I went to art school. I swore I'd never become an architect. John Hey, Jack the Cooper Union offered me a position in the architecture school, and I told them, hell no, I'm going to go out and fight the good fight. Columbia was very happy to accept my tuition a couple of years later, which luckily, finally paid off. But the you what I do is I take two images of stuff I've done, and it could be a SketchUp model, and I combine it with a sculpture by Tony Smith, who was one of my teachers in school, or a sculpture by Giacometti or Michelangelo or Anthony Caro or Henry Moore. And that stuff is really cool. And it's we do it now, when we're designing furniture, we'll put a SketchUp model together, and then we'll go out and we'll look at some really cool sculpture and, know the stuff of Richard Serra or David Smith, or any of those, you know, heroes from the 1960s 70s and 80s. You know, you end up with some provocative things that you then have to go and make your own. Here's another crazy analogy for those that it's not Top Chef, it's the show where four people compete, and there's they have a mystery mystery basket. You know, it's like going to mid journey is like opening up a mystery basket of weird ingredients. Oh, I've got Rocky Mountain Oysters. What am I going to do with this? You know, throw them away. Oh, here's from caviar. I think I'll combine that with this, you know. So it's those are some of the ways that we are playing with it. But the other thing that we're trying to do is build our own large language model to train a an AI element, to only look at the things that we wanted to see. So and that's important, because architectural ideas come from our visual memory, I mean our visual knowledge and our memory. And it's also mixed up between what's in your head that you're conscious of, but also what's stirring around in your subconscious. And a link to your subconscious, which people don't understand is your hand. If you draw stuff with your hand, stuff's going to bubble up from your unconscious and say, Hey, why don't you try this idea? Isn't it really cool? If you're at a keyboard, the the chances of that happening go down substantially. But if you're doing that, playing with a blend thing, that kind of helps. But in the end, you're basically asking a computer to act as your cultural, historical, personal, visual. Full memory, that's where your stuff comes from. You know, that's where ideas come from. Oh, this reminds me of that thing I saw when I was a student studying architecture in Rome, you know, 45 years ago. Or wow, you know, you can make connections, because what I there, what I tell people, you know, when people ask me to what does it mean to be a designer? And I say, well, designer is someone that looks at a situation and figures out all the problems that have to be solved, but more importantly, he figures out in what order and in what priority the problems are solved. So the biggest problems get solved first, and the minor problems get solved last. That's key. Most, a lot of architects don't understand that. That's why they don't get to be designers. They get to be project managers and draft people. And the second part of it is, design is about creating relationships between anything and everything. No. So it could be between a visual memory of mine and a visual memory of yours, or it could be a common source, like perhaps we both like Paul Rudolph. So if I design a building that looks like Paul Rudolph, you're going to like it, because they already like Paul Rudolph. And that's where, you know, AI, gets a little bit murky. And then add into that the fact that 90% of human communication is non verbal, and 100% of computer communication is verbal, you know, or numerical, you know, so, but you know, it's making sense of all that that's that that keeps me vital. But the other thing I'll say about No, you have to have fun

Speaker 1

26:52

if you're working really, really hard. Know the adage that you know, I work hard, but I play hard to always live by that. That doesn't mean drinking hard, because that brings up its own set of problems. But you know, I I've been a competitive sailor, I've been a competitive race car driver, I've been a rock climber, I've been a mountaineer. I used to be able to jump a three foot log on a horse without falling off. I love hiking. I love being out in the woods. And I walk my dog for an hour every morning in the woods behind my house. No matter what the weather. It was snowing today. We were kind of miserable, but the I get all my best design ideas when I'm walking my dog, I come back. I can't wait to sit, you know, hit the desk and start trying, and it keeps you fresh. That's the key.

Enoch Sears

27:47

What advice would you give to architects who are younger in their career now based upon what you've experienced? And you gave us some advice already, do what you love, make sure you're having fun when you're doing it. Yeah.

Speaker 1

27:58

What else you have to develop skill. There's no, there's no. You have to have craft. You You know from skill comes speed. From skill comes people, understanding that you're reliable and you can get things done. And you have to be a develop skill, develop your imagination.

Enoch Sears

28:28

The What have you found to be useful for doing that, for developing skill and developing imagination?

Speaker 1

28:33

Well, the way to not develop your imagination is to play a lot of video games. And I love playing video games. I've gone through a whole bunch of them from start to finish. I became a amateur race car driver in reality by spending 10 years driving race cars on a computer. And once you do the real thing, you're never going back. You know, so. But developing the imagination is doing things that require your imagination to do some work like and I have a you know, I was brought up in Europe, primarily till I was 10 years old, which meant that I was brought up without TV, and when I was in high school, we went back to my vacations were spent behind the iron curtain in what's now St Petersburg. There was no TV. There was no nothing there. The only thing I could do is either go to Museum, of which there are a lot of really good ones, like the Armitage, or I could read and looking at paintings, looking at sculpture and also doing a lot of reading, helped me develop a pretty active imagination. And I won't tell you, tell you how many times I've read Lord of the Rings, but that was a, you know, a good deep dive for my imagination to have a, you know, play a lot with. But if your idea of The Lord of the Rings come from watching the movies. You know, my favorite toys growing up were Lego blocks, but they came as squares or rectangles. Rather, that were either white or red, and they're all rectangles. There are no special pieces if you know there were. And I remember watching my nephews going through building the Star Wars. You know, the big Star Wars thing. You know that. You know they're going page by page. Do I have to find this piece and put it there? What is that doing, other than making you a good future insurance company salesman? I mean, I don't get it. If that

Enoch Sears

30:36

could follow instructions, really, really, well,

Unknown Speaker

30:38

yes,

Enoch Sears

30:40

do what you're told. So you talked about so you had a you had a health crisis a couple years ago, and that sort of, it sounds like it changed the way you approached work. And tell me about your careers, the way you approached work before that and after, and lessons you've learned from avoiding burnout while still doing what you love.

Speaker 1

30:56

Well, the way to avoid burnout is to realize that you're not invincible. And you know, when you're in your, you know, in your 20s or 30s. I know, I started my own office when I was 40, and so I spent 15 years, you know, working in big firms saying, hey, you know, it's Thirsty Thursday, or it's, you know, let's know, have happy hour in the office, then go let you know, get a couple of drinks. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of, you know, sort of bro culture, or because back in those days, there were a lot fewer women in architecture than there are now, and they weren't very happy watching us gallivant either at that time. And I apologize for any role I might have played in that but you know, the back then the urine curve, I was brought up encouraged to smoke as much as I could, to drink as much as I could, and work as hard as I possibly could at the same time, that was what my father did. That's what my grandfather did. You know, that's what my uncles did, that's what my older siblings did, and it's like a great way to just put a lot of load on the body, yeah, but, you know, luckily for me, when I was, you know, in not lucky my poor mother, but my mother was diagnosed with substance abuse, and She opted to go into a four week recovery, no, a diplomat's wife, no. Washingtonian notes, social person. She was hanging out in New Hampshire with with drug dealers that have been sent up there to avoid going to jail. And I remember seeing her for the first time, you know, wondering if I was going to survive beating her friends, but I got exposure to Al Anon for the first time, and probably the only time, and Al Anon told me I'd been a bad boy, and the you know, I was in their terms, I was like a severe substance abuser, based on what they were doing. And I decided that's time for me to clean up. That was cleaning my ACT UP. Number one, cleaning my ACT UP. Number two was when I started my firm, I had to get life insurance. My insurance company refused to give me life insurance because I, you know, for last six months, I had been doing the two miles of walking that commuting required, and I'd basically put on 15 pounds and was drinking too much and everything else. And my doctor said, by the time you're 65 you'll be dead. And at that time, my daughter started taking karate. I decided, well, I'll take her to karate. That looks like fun. I'll put on a white set of pajamas and start doing the same thing. No. So no. Eight years later, I had a black belt, I was weighed 20 pounds less, you know, and I could actually run five miles. So it was that was, that was good. And that kind of held me for a while. Then my bad habits sort of re emerged. And, you know, especially running an office, you know, you have you always have to stay up. You have to do whatever has to be done. If there's a deadline, permit set has to go out, you got to go to a public hearing. So you put a lot of hours in. But as a result, three years ago, I had all my systems basically said we've had enough. I had a I had a stroke. I had severe inflammation that turned into arthritis throughout my entire body. And the only way I could, you know, cope with this was, you know, part of it was surgery, you know. And luckily, I had a type of stroke that is treatable with, no cardiac cath lab procedures. So I'm stroke free and I and I have no medical restrictions on me whatsoever. But part of that is due to the fact that I exercise. You know, you have to stay in shape. You know, getting old is a. Guilt. No, you have to stay healthy. You gotta stay I do yoga every day. I mean, not very No, 15 minutes of yoga is about as much as I can stand. But you know, you have to do all those things to keep your mind fresh. And if you know, I know, if I'm, you know, three weeks ago, I was in Zion National Park hiking by myself. And after the trip to Seattle, I went up to 8000 feet on Mount Rainier by myself at twilight and and on my way down, I wasn't thinking about my heart rate or the fact that had a stroke three years ago. I was thinking about, were there any bears around. So that was a rather frightening but, you know, it's that kind of, you know, no try and find a balance, no matter how wildly the pendulum is swinging. No, you know is that you figure out where your center is and find your way back to it when you need to. And because, if you maintain a sense of invincibility, it's life is going to catch up. But I had a my last wake up call was the summer where I had built a really fast race car based on a 2016 Mustang GT. And I was I've had accidents driving before, but it was like, I'm fine, and my race car hit a patch of whale that then dropped by the car in front of it and spun me into a concrete wall, and the this was the first crash where I experienced intense pain, and it resulted In my left eye retina starting to detach and a concussion. And as an architect, you know you need your brain and you need your eyes. It's like that was the last time I haven't been in I haven't gotten into a car since that diagnosis. And it's you know, you're you have to adjust.

Enoch Sears

37:20

How? Just out of curiosity, how do they how do they treat a retina that's detaching? Is there anything they I was

Speaker 1

37:25

lucky. I it was in the process of detaching, and it was right before the trip to Seattle, so I was able to get it worked on, and they cleared me to get on an airplane. But if your retina is fully detached. What they do? They have to press the retina against the eyeball to get it to attach to the eyeball, and the way they do that is by putting in a little bubble of gas. It's like a balloon, and it presses the eye back in place, but it means you're immobile for two weeks. It's a very, sounds nasty, very thing. And once that happens, that happens again. So I know a guy who's, every three years, he's, you know, lying face down, you know, for two weeks. So I don't want to go there, but, you know, I'm lucky. You know, I know we're all, if you're happy, you're lucky. And one way to stay happy just to remember how lucky you are,

Enoch Sears

38:32

that's, that's a good, good, good, solid advice. Marcus, in in terms of, in terms of winning commissions, winning projects. You know, if you could sit down with yourself 15 years ago and give yourself some tips or tricks for landing the right commissions. Anything you'd share,

Speaker 1

38:47

I would, yes, I would share that the fact that I wish I had done a better job of vetting my clients. No, not in terms of, you know, are they, you know, working for the Soviets, or, you know, are they working for the mafia? But you know, it's not that. It's more. You know, can you make them happy? You know, can you What are you know, I believe in hard work and fair play, and i Nothing makes me angrier than being bullied or feeling like someone is dealing with being unfairly and I get angry. I get angry at my clients when I think they're pulling a fast one on me and they don't like it, and that makes it more difficult, because they're in a position where they don't have to take anything from anybody so they can give out what they want, and you either take it or you don't. And part of it, you know, is learning how to convey your contempt for their behavior at a level that prevents them from kicking you out the door and not paying your last invoice. That is very stressful, but those. Are the sort of things you have to deal with when you're running a company and people rely, you know, you have people that rely on you for their livelihoods. You know, it's like, there, there's no, there's no trust fund behind me, or any, I mean, the money I make doing what I do is what I live on and what I'm going to retire on. And, you know, so you there's a lot of hard reality that has to, you know, be baked into the cake. And that's why pretend you're being chased by bears on Mount Rainier. You know, back in October was a really great experience. You know, walked into the lodge, there was a fire going. I got a drink. I sat by the fire and really enjoyed the fact I'd been doing something incredibly stupid for the last couple of hours, but that made me happy, but that, you know, those the key is, like, you don't have to take every job, and the job that you take that wears you down might be at the expense of a job that would have uplift uplifted, you know, so nothing worse than working. What Go ahead, yeah, just

Enoch Sears

41:13

gonna say, what kind of warning signs would you give to your younger self to help recognize when you should disqualify a client

Speaker 1

41:22

if one way is that they're talking down to you. You know, we do not live in a feudal society. And the only way in residential architecture, you're a combination of you're primarily a therapist, you know you're a marriage therapist. You're you're you know, you're providing, you're guiding them through a mental process that's extraordinarily difficult, and the it takes a lot of time to convince a client they have to build trust, and they're not going to, they have to believe in you, and you have to think of how to convey authenticity and authority and talent and vision. And, you know, it takes time for that. That's when I go back to skill, you know, but now we've been, you know, I said, I've been lucky. We've had most we've had great clients, and we still, we have, we have clients that we've been working for for 30 years, and, you know, they're, you know, from the beginning of our firm. And hold on to the no matter, if you have a good experience with a client, write them Christmas cards. Send them a bottle of wine. Keep in touch with them to know. Get them vacant. Them stones, concert, yeah. I mean, yeah, you can. You could do that too well. The guy in question, he paid a $10,000 fee to a PR company that had relationships so and based on that, he could get anything. He could get a hotel reservation, a dinner reservation, or a concept ticket, but it cost him 10 and that was 20 years ago. Imagine what it cost today. And just I want to go see Bruce Springsteen. How much is that? And he's playing tomorrow. How much is that ticket could have cost me, but the but those are the take care of the people that care about you, and clients, good clients care about you. And you've done a you've designed a nice house for them. You're part of their family. I mean, just in part, but you know, they're, I say this a lot, but you're very if you're good at what you do, you'll be taken for face value by the most famous and most powerful people or the richest people in the world that value talent, authenticity, fairness and hard work, and they're surrounded by enough people that have none of those qualities that when they see it, they're very happy. And those are the people you want to work for. You know, imagine that I talk about something I call the Medici bubble. Imagine Leonardo da Vinci crossing the piazza to signorella in Florence to go see Lorenzo, the magnificent to talk about something. I'm making this up, but, and I might, they might have been missed each other by but 50 years, and on his way in, Raphael is walking out, and he's shaking his head, and he said, Man, Leo's in a bad mood today. Da Vinci, be careful. And while you were there, while you're walking across the courtyard, some poor schmuck was being hung, drawn and quartered, because that's where they did that stuff on a daily basis back then. And, you know, Leonardo walks into Lorenzo the magnificence study, and he pulls out a really cool drawing and and Lorenzo says, Man, that's just what I want. Here's a billion. Buckets go out and build it. I mean that that is kind of like a, you know, you're dealing with someone really powerful who can snuff you out, no and, and if you draw something really cool, they will build it. You know, that's, that's, that's the ideal. Or the reality is, I don't like it. It's over budget. Why do you charge so much? Can you cut your fee? You know? Can you figure out how to value engineer this? I mean, one thing is, get really good at Value Engineering.

Enoch Sears

45:36

Yeah. What would you say to So, let's say again, you're speaking to your younger self, or maybe a younger architect, and and they get the wisdom of that advice to qualify and vet your clients. But they say, Well, you know what I mean? Just I'm worried that I won't get another product. I kind of need the money right now.

Speaker 1

45:57

You have to, this is the hardest thing to do. You have to walk away from certainty and security and do the best on the on the Gateway project that you're given, and do everything, no matter what, to make that project a success for you. I had that project. Happened to me in 1996 a guy drove by a house had done on a moonlight basis. He stopped and asked the owner, who the architect was. They called me up. They were about to hire, you know, a top Boston architect, and they hired the hired me instead. And this is in 1996 I was making $160,000 a year in a large office downtown. I was their key designer. We started with at five people when I left. You know, they were almost 150 and my future was assured as a Senior Project Manager, junior partner, whatever, or the rest of my life, although I probably would have gained another 50 pounds, never got a black belt in karate, never coached soccer, and probably got the worst along the way. But the key is that you you have to just get through all that stuff and and move on. But you know, so make long story short, we, we my income for the next year was not 160,000 it was 65,000 and the year after that, it was 125,000 and then the dot.the.com, uh, bubble around, you know, came in and we were for the next 20 years. We were 12 people, and so it just exploded. I mean, part of it is timing and being in the right place at the right time. But because we did those houses, there were people the newly minted bubble, you know, tech bubble guys were calling us. You know, one point we had eight, $4 million houses in the office at the same at the same time, we called them the eight sisters. And believe me, we were working 80 hours a week back then. But, you know, were they the right jobs? No, if I was going to do a lot all over again, I would have stayed at six and turned half those projects away. That's probably the most important thing. The biggest mistake I made was go too big too quickly and do a lot of crappy work as a result.

Enoch Sears

48:34

So why do you why do you say that you would have turned those projects away? Or what if you had to do differently? Why would you do it differently?

Speaker 1

48:40

I would have I was doing what was marketable and I knew would be successful, what was safe and easy, rather than what was difficult and stressful, making the transition from being a very good shingle style architect, and the house I did in 96 was one of the first, you know, along with work by Tom Catalano and troprena Wharton, we both started with the three different firms started doing shingles style architecture, sort of independently, simultaneously, no and shingle style seemed to be a great way of introducing modernism to a traditional building form, and it got me a lot of work. But I went to California for the first time despite being a world traveler and never been to California. And I came back and looked at my wife, Judy, and said, How many freaking shingle style houses do I have to do before I retire? And the answer was not that many. And we made the transition to modern architecture, which is kind of scary, because for every architect that wants a NEO Georgian or a NEO shingle style, I mean, there. For every modern architect, there are like 15 people that do the other stuff, because that's what everybody wants. I mean, look at the shelter magazines in your town. It's all shingles still. I mean, it's all traditional stuff. But Yep,

Enoch Sears

50:11

absolutely. Well, Marcus, you've given us a lot of, a lot of insight here. If you had to summarize, just kind of repeat again, just to kind of summarize your advice, based upon what you know here as we wrap up this interview, would

Speaker 1

50:25

it be? Yeah, I would say, be aware. Be aware of the circumstances that are affecting your career. Be aware of the circumstances that are affecting your family life. And the other thing that if you like to do residential architecture, you have to have a lot of empathy for everybody, the client, your family, the people that haul plywood on your jobs. All that you know, this job is all about understanding people, everyone that's involved in it. You could get everyone to love what they're doing and be happy about it. And you're what, you know, I'm a I'm a project leader. So I jump, if I walk in the studio and I'm happy, or I walk onto a job site and I'm happy, it makes everybody happy. And if I'm in a bad mood, you know that's 10 times worse. So now you have a lot of now this is all about, this is a conversation about how to how to be as happy as you can under trying circumstances. And the happier you are, the luckier I think you'll be in terms of getting the kind of work that you want, because happiness draws people.

Enoch Sears

51:45

That is a great place to end the episode today. Oh, that was fun. Marcus, Yeah, appreciate your time, and it's been great connecting. Yeah, you too, and that's a wrap. Hey. Enoch Sears here, and I have a request, since you are a listener here for the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of. To bring it back to empower you as an architect and a designer, one thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast simply because it helps other architects stand for more of their value. Spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast. And as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit. But more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us a review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training, you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wished they would have known 20 years ago. And now, a word from today's sponsor. A while ago, I began to hear reports of a company that was helping some of our clients build remote teams. We looked into it more closely and discovered the company world teams that was helping small architectural practitioners build remote teams that were both capable and qualified. I was intrigued by another business that addressing one of the critical pain points for small architectural practices, which is the ability to grow and shrink a team effectively, to be able to handle higher workflow without having to staff up significantly, and also being very sensitive about labor costs. World teams is built to address these issues. World teams is a small but mighty company that helps architectural practices build high performing remote teams quickly and efficiently, saving you the headache of sorting resumes and interviewing under qualified candidates. World teams operates in your time zone and prioritizes near native English speakers, ensuring clear and efficient communication with your remote team members. They have flexible contracts so you can adjust your team size as your needs evolve. Additionally, you're connected directly with your skilled professionals, which fosters trust and collaboration. And world teams helps you reduce your operating costs without compromising the quality that is so important to a practice. To download a free guide for building a remote team for a small architectural practice, go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. That's one word. Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams as a reminder. And or sponsorship is not an endorsement, and you must do your own due diligence before entering into any business relationship. Go to Business of architecture.com, forward slash world teams. 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.

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