Instead of having something hand at you on a platter, you can take action to go out there and create it for yourself. Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I am your host, Ryan Willard, and today I am joined by co founder, co host, originator of Business of Architecture, none other than Mr. Enoch Sears, how are you, sir,
Ryan? How you doing? I hear New York is kind of cold this time of year. It's, it's
crazy cold. It's like minus eight, whatever that is in your language, 20 something, 22 I'm
gonna guess. I don't I know. Yeah, it's mine, minus eight Fahrenheit, or Celsius Celsius. Yeah, it's about to say, if it's minus eight Fahrenheit, that's
freezing. That's another planet cold. So it's so
it's minus eight Fahrenheit. I think that's pretty close. That's pretty let's just say that's cold. It's gonna say that it's just cold.
That's more than my little English brain can can handle. But I have been impressed with the the efficiency of the New Yorkers and handling the snow
Well, since this is a Business of Architecture podcast, why don't you tell us about, we're all about process and efficiencies here preparation.
Like I was really, I was really inspired by, I mean, you know, I there's a lot of stuff in here that doesn't work properly, and I'm continually shocked by and sort of mesmerized at the levels of disorganization around it, like just trash or piling up on the street that aside, this particular thing with snow, so impressed, like before the snow comes in, people have gritted the streets and the pavement, and they come out on mass, and there's people in trucks with, like, shovels, and they're just shoveling grit onto all of the main avenues and the cross streets. Wow. Okay, that's impressive. Snow comes like two minutes later, three minutes later, you've got three snow plows going down the avenues, just moving the snow off onto the corners of the street, and then people are coming out. And I know that there's a law here where you've you've kind of got to keep your bit of the sidewalk clear of the snow, and so people come out, and they've got these big shovels. And clearly there's like arrangements with different communities where one one guy is going to go and do the entire street and and clears it out. And I was so impressed with the the seeming military esque kind of precision with the operation that it made me look back on England with a sense of, hmm, you know, the whole tube station and the schools, everything shuts down in the UK with just a little bit of snow. So I from a business perspective, the there's a couple of things there that are really interesting. One is just preparation and having a routine, a rehearsed routine and procedure. And this is, this doesn't the quite extreme weather, is not catching anybody off guard. There's
no routinizing, yeah, routinizing the routine, yeah,
just it being rehearsed and people are ready to to go. It's not the kind of thing that happens in in a business where, you know, sudden influx of work comes in, or you're about to go through a planning approvals, and it's like, oh, so much work. Everything is so much chaos, which is the, you know, the status quo of so many organizations. I was impressed. I was impressed. But today we were, we weren't going to talk about snow. We were going to have a discussion about
overlooked, overlooked, yeah, often overlooked strategies for for brewing profitability, getting more profit in your practice, without doing more work necessarily. Hacks.
Should we call it a hack a profit? Sure, hacks
look a little hacky. We get hacky today.
This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architecture's flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this. Please visit smartpractice method.com or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how he might be able to help you, please follow the link in the information 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. More houses, or you're working at a larger scale, yeah, let's
Okay, let's jump into this idea of, first of all, of price differentiation. And when we talk about like price differentiation is, is an important topic, because the perspective of value, when it comes to commerce, is very subjective, meaning $1 to you, Ryan, is not this worth the same as $1 to me, it's not the worst worth the same to $1 to another person over there. Now you may be able to buy similar things with that dollar, but money and as a term of exchange, has different value to different people, right? I can remember when I was a student, I was just thinking about this yesterday, like, because I'm talking to my daughters, they're in college right now, and I remember there was this down in college town in Ithaca, New York, Cornell University, where I went, there was this little Chinese restaurant where they stood for, like, 399 you could get some general challenge chicken, which is the breaded chicken and, like a sweet and sour sauce and or you could get the, you know, the teriyaki chicken and the rice and some chopsticks, you know, and a fortune cookie. So, you know, for me, it was like, Yeah, I know, it was like, wow, but I was, it was quite a lot of money. It was like, I was my $5 it was like, a $5 meal there, you know, it was like, nowadays that'd be whatever, no big deal. But back back then, yeah, back then, it was a, it was a king's ransom, you know, coming up with that money. So price differentiation deals with the idea that your clients have different appetites for how much money they want to spend with you. And one of the most common ways to implement price differentiation in your practice is to simply charge have different tiers of service, different levels of service. Now what this looks like for you? There's an infinite number of ways that this could actually be implemented, and not every way is going to be a fit for your practice. As a matter of fact, there are probably going to just be a very few couple of ways that might be a fit for how you want to work.
I think it's the idea of a price different differentiation as well. If we look at it in in different industries or products, we see it happening a lot, right? You've got your kind of the the classic bronze, silver, gold, services like software might do this Riverside. This platform that we're using right now has a similar sort of we see this in software all the time. The kind of basic setup is going to cost you 10 bucks a month, and then you've got the more premium service, which is 15 bucks, and then you've got the professional level one, which is like 50 or 100 bucks a month. And it becomes quite a nice way of just segregating, you know, here's how much level of service you're going to get over here. Here's the level of service you're going to get over here. And it also makes it easier for you to manage upgrades or scope creep, because it's like, well, actually, that piece is not involved in the tier package that you're that you're using. So if you want to level up, then it becomes quite important that if we talk about, can we talk about watches again?
We did talk about watches on one of our recent episodes. If you haven't heard that one, go ahead and do that while Brian is prepping his his watch story. I do want to, I did, I did want to point out that the the correct name for what we're talking about. I i made a misnomer, Ryan, it would actually be price discrimination. So today we're the strategy we're talking about. This is the the academic, erudite way to speak about this is in terms of price discrimination. This is what they would say within the hallowed halls of Oxford or Harvard as they're discussing the macro economic trends and the micro economic policies. So price discrimination, there are, there's, there's different degrees of price discrimination. But what we're talking about today fits into that idea where Ryan was talking about bronze level. We've all seen it silver level. That's an example of price discrimination. And yeah, so Ryan, we're still
in the same over to we're still talking about the same thing. Still talking
about the same thing, exactly the same thing. It's, it's, you know what? Different name, different name, same thing.
What do you think of the idea of of pricing being positioning?
I think it's, it is positioning, absolutely, it's a super important part of positioning. It's massive because, let's face it, like Amazon has a positioning, Walmart has a positioning. Nordstroms has a positioning like and a lot of that has to do with simply the prices that they charge. I think pricing is one of the easiest ways to differentiate a practice.
Yes, yes, absolutely. It's it. I like this idea of thinking about our pricing as part of our marketing collateral, right? It's, it's making a statement to the rest of the world about the caliber of your services. It's communicating stuff. Your price communicates stuff and. And to win work through, you know, reducing your price is communicating something else, and it normally doesn't work out very well. And your pricing attracts a certain type of person as well. Okay, so that's like, you know, you going after the premium priced products is going after a different market segment. And it's worth thinking about our pricing as being part of our marketing strategy. And then it kind of makes us really consider like, Okay, well, you know, who is it that we're going after, where, what are the people that we want to be attracting, that we want to be working with, and that the pricing is part and parcel of the communication that we're we're doing. I wanted to talk about watches again, because we speak about this a lot with our smart practice clients when we talk about pricing. And premium fees. And I always look at the example of Rolex, because they're quite an interesting company in the sense that even an entry level Rolex is still, you know, seven, $8,000 and then you've got the higher level ones at 15, and then they go up to 30, and then they go up to kind of ridiculous prices, but at the same level of as in a Rolex, like for seven grand Rolex, you could go and get a watch, which is as good mechanically, it does the same, does the same thing. You know, maybe a $3,000 watch, still expensive, expensive watches. And, you know, you've got a, you've got a product now which is cheaper, but it's, it's not in the same category.
And you wouldn't compare these two. I mean, you just wouldn't compare them. You'd be like, well, they're completely different. Well, that's just, they're they're not,
yeah, that they're kind of people want to pay, people know and will willingly want to pay for the Rolex brand, because there's something more. What's the word? It's a Rolex. It's the brand. It's Rolex. Rolex is an amazing company in the sense that it's producing more watches than most companies. They produce, like, a million watches a year. So they're not that scarce, wow. But if you want to get one, you have to wait for one. You have to be put onto a waiting list. So this is idea of scarcity. We've spoken about that before. They're at a certain level of, you know, you can get an equivalently, like, you know, you could get a watch, which is as good as a Rolex in terms of its mechanics and its operations. And the
citizen, I love citizen watches, example, right? You get a nice citizen for $400 300 bucks,
yeah, or, or, like, maybe more comparably, like a Tudor or something like that, right? It's still a really good watch, but it's not, it's three grand as opposed to seven and a half. And they're both, like, you know, product wise, very, very, very similar. But Rolex, they protect their whole, their whole brand, by being expensive, like you cannot get them cheap. And if they were to go cheap, it would just lower the caliber of the whole of the whole thing,
dilute. Call it dilution. They would dilute their brand. It would
it would dilute it. It would dilute the prestige of of having it and so and so. People are happily willing to pay more because of the brand. And there's something about it's now appealing to it's got status attached to it. It's, it's it's a it's more transformational as a product because of the brand identity that you end up associating with it, but the pricing of it is, it's just elevating it. Yeah,
this is where, this is where marketing gets so interesting because it's so tied into human psychology and one of my just passions in life is learning how human beings think, how they make decisions, how that relates to their to our emotions. It's just it's a psychologist, psychology of the mind. They call it like the final frontiers, the the human mind, the brain, and understanding that, right, if an alien came to our planet, or a baby or child that had no context for branding and anything like that, a robot, they might say, Well, why would I pay $5,000 more for a watch that can do the exact same thing as this one that cost me half as much? Right? Or handbags. I mean, look at how much people pay for handbags, right? I mean, shoot, there's probably no limit. I don't know the most expensive hand. Bag ever sold, that's probably over a million dollars, and it's probably designed by some, you know, jeweler, and it's a one of a kind piece, right? And then you have the hand, but you go down to your local Walmart and your your local variety store, and you pick up a handbag for $12 right? That's, that's like a massive difference. That's a massive difference. So the principle here is that price discrimination, by price discrimination, you're speaking to different parts of the market, right? You're just, you're just saying, okay, in a big market, so let's say, in hand, bad market. In a handbag market, there's a whole lot of people who they just want a $12 handbag. Nope. Nothing wrong with that. They just want a $12 handbag. And a lot of them couldn't afford anything more than a $12 handbag, or wouldn't want to. And then you have a very small, minute, very select group of people who willing to pay 5000 $10,000 for a handbag. And then, of course, the one off just crazy out to the moon situations where someone's gonna buy a handbag for a million dollars, right? So if we shrink down this great macro principle and we look at just your architectural practice, this is where there's another principle called The Pareto principle that we've talked about before, you should be a if you're a listener, you should be a stranger to this idea that 20% of your clients likely possess 80% of the wealth of all the clients. So let's say you had, you had 100 clients. I know, I know you wouldn't have that many, but let's just say you did. Let's just say 10. You have 10 clients. That's more realistic, 100 clients, that sounds like a nightmare. I'm gonna go jump off a bridge. So you have, you have 10 clients. And out of those 10 clients, if we took all their bank accounts, all their investments, all their wealth, what you would probably discover is that it would be unequally distributed, meaning that two of those clients, 20% of those clients, would possess the lion's share of the wealth of all of those clients, right? So that's the idea here. So along with that idea, we can also we can also assume that as clients come into your practice, that they all have different appetites for how they perceive money and how they value their time. So for instance, just one example, some clients will be willing to pay a lot more money to shorten the time that it takes to get their project done. So the question that you need to face as an architect is, is it ethical? Maybe we could discuss this right? Is it ethical to charge a client more if they want to get their project done faster than is our standard, or something of the sort. What do you think?
Why? Why wouldn't it be ethical? What
would what are the philosophical and ethical considerations at play here?
Yeah,
well, I, I mean, I don't think it, I don't think it should be. But, like, I someone could. Someone could just raise up the question, why would I charge? Why would I charge one client more, or give one client more for being able to pay more than another client?
Yeah, because we've there's a distinction in the value proposition to that individual. Okay, there's, there's certainly, you know, I know people can misinterpret this as, like, price gouging, okay, I mean is,
like, that's when there's a hurricane headed to Florida, and you're out there selling the last piece of plywood for the last, yeah, the last 10 sheets of plywood for 100 for $200 a piece, $1,000
or, like, people buying up all the toilet Paper during COVID and then selling it. Or hands. I had, I
had, we had a toilet paper auction happening here in front of my house. Man, we had a little stand set up. Kids are out there and said, they chucked the lemonade stand, and they're like, toilet paper now.
Were they selling it for like, 400
quid? Yeah, it was like 400 quid. We were actually taking great British Sterling, because we're, like, the United States dollars. It's going downhill here. We need to, we need to, we need to capture all we can.
So there's, there's, you know, there's, there's supply and demand, which is the kind of underlying principle of economics, there's, then, you know, whatever ethical dilemma you might end up getting yourself into if you're, if you're like, mass, bulk buying a, you know, a kind of staple good that's needed for people's health, and then selling it back to people who are in, in need of it, at a massive diary of it. That's, there's exploitation, yeah, there's people questions around around doing that. And that's not what we're talking about here, but, but it is. I, you know, it's interesting to consider in terms of time. Let's say that you're charging by the hour, and you get the project done within a week, and you get paid 10,000 bucks, and then your competitor, who's also charging by the hour same price as you, let's say, but they take two weeks now they're getting paid twice the amount that you were getting paid to do the project. That's more ethically challenging, like for the for the client and the architect is like, well, it now benefits the architects to take more time to do the project. Okay, so what are they. What are they doing? Are they inventing? Are they inventing services? On the other side of it, you've got the architect who's was had the skill set to be able to deliver it much quicker. The client had, you know, a need to get it done much quicker, because they were going to lose money, for example, if it was done within the the two weeks. So it makes more sense that there's a premium attached to that service. Of it being in a compressed timeline, because there is more value associated to it, with it, with that client. And there are going to be clients who for them, you being able to do it twice as quick is going to be massively valuable. We see this with our clients, where they negotiate deals, sometimes with developers, where the developer will often be willing to pay a much higher premium for the service, if the client, if the architect, can adapt their fees so they slow down how long they have to pay it for. Okay, so we've got a client, and they'll often do they'll charge a base rate, so they're kind of collecting some money up front, and then when it gets approval, they might even put a risk clause into the approval. But if it gets approval, or they start getting bonuses for each unit that they're that they're getting approvals for, and you know, a well run practice that can take that risk and has a lot of detailed knowledge about the context they're operating in, that can be a very good strategic play where you're creating a lot of extra value without any additional work on your side, because it's so valuable to the to the client to not have to pay all the architectural soft costs up front before they've secured their investment Exactly,
exactly. And here's here's why this is a win for our listeners, this idea of price discrimination, and why we're talking about this is overlook strategies for increasing your profitability or practice, because just, let's just say that you added so this is a common thing. It's become more more and more common now. It used to be uncommon about 10 years ago, but it's become more common having different pricing tiers for your architectural services, whether you call that a bronze, a silver and a platinum, or something like that, but just having general, different levels of service, you know, a lot of architects maybe don't know how to implement that, don't know, don't know how they would split that up, but, but here's, here's the very interesting thing about this is when you start offering that kind of service, level differentiation or price discrimination, as we're talking about here, then what ends up happening is people generally go more towards the ones that they're most attracted to, and the overall average, so the overall sum of money brought into the practice is actually greater than it would be is if you just charged everyone a flat rate. And so that's why we're talking about how to increase your profitability here without working more, because who wants to work more to be more profitable? I mean, I meant at the end of the day, do you want to do you want to earn more money just because you work more? No, I could go get a second job and a third job and a fourth job and and who wants to live like that? So this is why all of this is couched in the idea of value pricing, separating the time that you spend on a project from what you charge for it. Being able to do these different variety of strategies around price discrimination. So and of course, all of these, all of these strategies, have one sole purpose, reducing overwhelm, reducing stress. Because let's face it, when you have more money in an architectural practice, you're operating less out of scarcity, more out of abundance. You're operating more out of freedom and ease, and less out of fear and scarcity.
So what does price differentiation? How can it look like in a practice. What sorts of examples?
Well, like we discussed Ryan, I thought we'd just throw in one example here that anyone I don't I think most practices could implement this tomorrow. And this, this came actually to my mind, because we hired some architects here to work on our house. And as I was talking with them, I was like, Man, that's going to take a long time. I wish they had an option whereby they would fast track one of their clients and that person could pay a little bit extra for that, that that that ability or that advantage, right? So
just imagine, were you that client Enoch with? I would
have been, if they would have pitched me with, like, we can get this done in half the time. It's going to be 20% more I would have been, like, done. Let's do it, you know, and, and that's the thing, a lot of clients will be that way. So what right and I were discussing is the idea of creating some sort of cone Sears level, or a prior. Level, just one slot. So let's say, you know, in your architectural practice, again, this is something you could implement tomorrow, and likely there would be clients that would find this a huge value. Because, let's face it, as you're managing projects, typically what happens in an architectural office is you're juggling all the projects equally. For instance, if you get some design changes that come in, but you're working on another project right now. You're like, Okay, well, I'll wait a couple days to get those design changes made, because I'm already committed to working on this particular project, and you're just kind of juggling projects like that amongst yourself or amongst your team members. So everything's kind of flowing equally well. Why? Why do it that? Right? If there's a client who comes to you and say, Hey, man, I've really, I really want to get this done more quickly than you guys have generally turned projects out. Yeah, there's a premium that that can be charged for that, and there's a value there. You know, if your project, if you can offer to one client, that when we get, when we get your project back, for any revisions, for any design changes, for any approvals, for anything we're gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have a team member. I'll put whatever he's working on on hold, because that would be, you know, we're gonna slot you in there. You're gonna be a priority client, and you're gonna get priority access, which is ultimately going to shrink down the amount of time that it takes to get your project done. So it could be things like, you know, you know, a reduced like you respond to them, you have, you have a higher level of service when it comes to how quickly you respond to their requests or their emails, things like that. And all these are just simple they're just simple tweaks to the way you currently do your process. But literally, you could charge 20% more. And it's not just that you could charge more, but here's here's the key, and this is why all these strategies so beautiful. There are clients who would love to pay you more, and that's the key, because they'll feel like they're getting a lot more value, which ultimately means that, right now, there are some clients who are getting under value of what you could provide them if you're to offer such a solution.
Do we see this good working in lots of different sectors? It's going to
be easiest in the residential sector, because you're working with homeowners, but certainly, anyone who's doing tis, you know? I mean, it would be interesting to find out. I think that any client could be approached with this idea, they might not be amenable to it. You'd have to approach it sensitively.
Yeah, and I can imagine developers would. There are certain developers, developers having the priority slot. Or, you know, we've spoken a kind of riff off this would be the exclusive, the exclusivity spot. So we often hear our clients, they sometimes complain of, you know, their developer clients not wanting to share them or not, you know, not speak about them, or anything like that. Or they don't want them to work with other, with other developers. And it's like, Well, okay, then there's, there's an exclusivity charge. If you want us to be your sole practice in this area, we won't work with any of your competitors. Okay, well, then there's a fee that comes along with that, and then we'll work with just you
absolutely. And the other thing to say here, Ryan is that all of these strategies, it's you need to be very careful how you communicate these and how you position these to your clients, because it's super important that these things don't occur to your clients as the opposite. So let's say, for instance, right? You don't want your clients to perceive that everyone's getting slow service, but one person's getting normal service, and that's why they're being charged extra. It's like we have a special promotion here at our office. Everyone's slow, but if you pay us Extra, where you're gonna get normal speed, you know? So it's it matters how you talk about this, it matters how you conceptualize it in your mind, and it matters how you communicate it to the client. So want to make that very clear, yeah, we're not oblivious to that, and that is really where the art comes into it.
Yeah, there's a lot of space here for for, like, for being creative with the way that you present and package your your services, and something like the priority client, like, it's got to come from, you know, you're making the client feel special. There's loads of there's these benefits. There's an additional level of care and concierge type service. It's not going to be something that you're going to be able to just negotiate through a contract or through emails. I find that very I find that very difficult to kind of comprehend how much architectural negotiation, if you like, or or it's not selling. But I'm going to use the word selling, the selling of architectural services happens through the writing out of contract clauses in your agreement, your appointment agreement. That's not
going to do this sounds like a very difficult way to try to come to an agreement. It's, yeah, not, not fun at all. I. I
mean, you know, our contracts have a very important role to play with people, but they're not the thing that's going to be selling people stuff exactly,
exactly that. That is a key. That's a whole nother 10 podcast episodes right there. Yeah, give us. Give us the short. Give us the short. Like, what do you mean, Ryan,
the you talking about the priority client service, for example, I imagine that that would come out of you having conversations with the client that are specifically pain orientated, and you've done your research and or at least you know how to ask the right kinds of questions to have a client share with you what their priorities are, what their main problems are. You've been skilled in being able to help a client articulate the problem of going slowly in a project. Okay, like, like to do that? Well, I could imagine you're having a conversation with a client, and you've you've managed to have them discuss the issues they've had in previous projects going slowly. Why it's so important for it to be done within this time frame? What happens if it doesn't get done in this time frame? What are the risks? What's the cost to them, what's going to happen to the project, what's the long term impact of not meeting that at that timeline, in those conversations done? Well, you'll be able to find people who are, you know, you know, there's a differentiation between the client who's just got unrealistic expectations and they just want something done that time, because it's something arbitrary, versus the client, where it's like a real pressing need, they've got, they've got an opening, or the queen and king is coming, and, you know, they can't mess that. They can't miss this date. So it's got to be done and opened on opening day, otherwise the the amount of money is just enormous, that's going to be lost, or whatever individual circumstances that kind of makes the time deadline real. And, you know, it's of massive value to to that client, or they, it's just, you know, they've got a whatever, whatever other reason they have for wanting to be the in the priority or to it might just be to fill a level of status, yeah?
I mean, and here's the thing, some people always buy the best, yeah, like, some people, if there's, if there's a more, it's like a car. Like, another graphic thing about this, another, I mean, all industries do this, and any mature industry does this. But like, you know, when you go shopping for a car, there's the base model, there's the mid level model. And there's the high end model that has all the bells and whistles. It has the the TVs on the the seat, the headrest of the seat in front of you, it has the the sun roof or the moon roof above it has the 21 inch wheels. You know, there's just so many upgrades and add ons. If you ever had to purchase a new car, you know what I'm talking about, your mind is just blowing you're like, Well, you mean, I pay extra for the trailer hitch, you know, it's like you can add a tow package for this much, get the premium sound for this, you know. And this is just, you know, the other thing to say here is that this can be taken to extremes. It can be taken too far, right? So we've all booked airline tickets, and we've all been annoyed that we have to pay extra money to bring on our bags. And we didn't have to do that 10 years ago. Or some of the airlines, where they nickel and dime you for everything. It's like, Would you like a bag of peanuts? That'll be five extra dollars. And when it gets internet, yeah, there's, there's a coin slot and to use the the facilities, yeah, you open the window, it's gonna cost a million dollars in five years in prison.
I spent the shutter. No, okay, okay, it's
like he's gone rogue. He's opening the door, holding back.
What's he doing?
I'm exercising my right, yeah. So, you know, obviously, like, I know we need, we need to say this because, you know, just, just as a general disclaimer, right? So no one assumes that we're talking about, you know, charging people for every paper clip that comes in the office. But what we find is architectural practices generally are on the far extreme of having zero price discrimination at all in their offerings, in the way they structure their fees. So all we're at all, we're at all, we're saying is like, hey, let's take a little bit of the knowledge of other industries and proven models that we know work because, you know, we teach them as part of the smart practice method. And they're, they're easy ways, as we talked about, fairly simple ways to increase your profitability without working more. And let's just use some of the psychology to give your clients a better experience. But let's not take it so far that it devolves into a negative experience where they then feel like they're getting, you know, it's just a bad experience for them. So this is, this is the art. This is the art, right? You can, you can give your daughter feedback about her crayon picture that she came home from school, you know, in second grade. Is showing you this her beloved drawing, and you can either make her beaming with joy by the feedback you give her, or you can make her cry. And it all comes down to how you deliver the message and the words that you use,
yeah, the the delivery of this, I think, is quite important. You know, it's like the the project upgrade or an upsell. There's a difference. Another fantastic idea, Yep, yeah, there's minutes. There's a difference. Well, you know, there's lots of different ways of doing that. One is obviously something simple, like, just break out your interior design service package. So many architects just have that
as landscape design services contract with the landscape architect, all sorts of opportunities,
and there isn't any distinction sometimes, and it all gets melded in, you know, it's very easy just to do that and have that as a value add, and everyone could be happy about it. There's, you know, just making sure that you're, you've got some diligence over scope creep. And there's a there's a difference as well between, you know, you having a conversation with the client and saying, I'm going to charge you extra for it, and then loads of things just kind of totting up, and then you doing extra work and then billing the client additionally at the end of it, and there's been no conversation about it, and then the client's like, Whoa. What's this, versus packaging up the additional service as a up as an upgrade that has a level of experience to it, and it's a new service offering. There's, again, there's a there's an art in that kind of communication. One one might get you in a bit more trouble than the other.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. So stay out of trouble, please. Well, with that look, Ryan and I, we're obviously wearing our fall colors here. Maybe we're a little late. We should be wearing our instead of our autumnal color palette. Maybe we should be wearing our spring
our spring colors or snow colors or winter
colors, as the case may be. So the the question we always want to leave you with, a thought provoking, intriguing question here for you as a listener, and the question we'd have for you is this, we've described this principle, this idea of price discrimination, and we've talked about at least one strategy, very clear strategy, about how you can instantly in start using price discrimination to bring more money into your practice. So the question we'd have for you to consider is, how else do you suppose that you could use price discrimination in your practice to increase your profitability without actually working harder? Because that is the core and the bones of the smart practice method, meaning that you're not wearing your life out, overworking, giving up family vacations, but you're actually able to get the economic and the emotional reward that you deserve. And I mean, let's face it, I don't even know if people deserve it. What do you think, Ryan, I probably misused that. I don't think anyone deserves anything. Where do you sit on that
line? No one doesn't have anything, yeah, so let's
not say it's that you deserve it, but let's say that it's possible for you that's even more powerful, because instead of having something head at you on a platter, you can take action to go out there and create it for yourself, for sure. Hey, Enoch Sears here, and I have a request, since you are a listener here of the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of. To bring it back to empower you as an architect and a designer. One thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast, simply because it helps other architects stand for more of their value. Spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here my 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 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 wish they would have known 20 years ago. Hello,
listeners, we hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it without the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner or know someone who would be an excellent fit. For our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month. Interested in becoming a sponsor, please send us an email at support@businessofarchitecture.com the views expressed on this show by my guests do not represent those of the host and I make no representation. Promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you be unstoppable. So.
