621: What Clients Really Value in Architecture (And What You’re Getting Wrong)with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard

7:51PM Feb 25, 2025

Speakers:

Enoch Sears

Rion Willard

Keywords:

Architecture practice

value perception

client needs

sales and marketing

emotional drivers

sustainable solutions

business context

pricing strategy

client communication

design intent

marketing scarcity

anticipation

client experience

professional development

architectural services.

In architecture practices where we're just assuming that the client wants something cheap, hello architect nation, and welcome back to the Business of Architecture, where we talk about running a profitable, impactful and emotionally rewarding architectural practice. Today, I'm your host, Enoch Sears, joined by the other principal here at Business of Architecture, Mr. Ryan Willard, Ryan, how are you today?

I'm fabulous. Thank you very much, Enoch, good to be with you.

Yeah, it's good to have you here now. As always, to our listeners, we want to remind you that Business of Architecture, not only do we have this podcast and we like to produce a lot of content around architecture, but we have developed a program for small architectural practices to free them from the shackles of chaos and overwhelm. It is amazing the results that architects are getting as they go through the smart practice experience that we've developed over the past 10 years here at Business of Architecture. So if you know that you get better results when you hire competent professionals, people to give you accountability, then I encourage you, with all the fervor of my heart and soul to go to smart practice method.com you'll be able to get access to a free 4550 minute video there that goes over the smart practice framework, and even if you choose not to work with us, gives you a framework for how a smooth running architectural practice can be run profitably, even if you just want to have a small practice and not hire a lot of team members and deal with all that chaos. So that's a wrap for our shameless commercial plug here at Business of Architecture, and today we're going to talk about a fun and exciting topic. And the topic is this the value of architecture, and we're going to relate this kind of in a different angle. But Ryan's had a couple experiences, a couple stories, he's going to share that really look at the idea of how value is perceived, and really taking this concept of value, not just it's past the dollars and cents, but down to a very psychological level of what's actually happening in our minds as human beings, as we have these Financial conversations, and how you can leverage this information to provide better service to your clients, to charge higher fees and ultimately empower you to be a free architect, which is our desire for you. And now a word from our sponsor, our cat. Have you ever been in the situation where you can't find the product data you're looking for? Maybe you're using the wrong search engine, broad searches result in consumer products, out of date information and websites that hide or don't have the information you're looking for. If you need specifications, CAD or BIM, rcat.com is your search engine find and download the up to date data you need. Fast rcat.com is free. Requires no registration for users, so try our cat today. That's a R, C, A T, dot, C, O, M. 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 scale. So

Ryan, again, welcome here to this episode. Thank

you very much. I'd like to start by making an assertion that as a business owner, we don't always know what the other person what our clients value as much as we think we do, and that we often conflate what we perceive as value and project it onto our clients, and then we communicate through our own value set or what we think is valuable about our service, and in doing so, we end up answering questions that Were never asked, and we come across unintentionally as salesy, and we think we're listening and we're not, we are coming across as tone deaf. And I would even assert that the longer that you've been in business, the more vulnerable that we come. Um, to projecting our own values onto clients like I'll give an example from from myself. Here is, I always prize sales and marketing as being the most, you know, some of the most valuable education that you can get, and the most sort of important thing in a business, or certainly one, you know, the kind of it's the driver of getting a good business working. And forget that that's not what other people are finding would be value. Would be valuable from working with us, right? Our our clients are architects, practices. They're dealing, you know, dealing with overwhelm, dealing with low profits, or dealing with transition, or something, something like that. And there's a whole world of pains and problems that come with that that might not be necessarily people are not realizing that it's to do with sales and marketing, what to do with sales and so to come from a perspective of shouting about how great sales is without visiting the problems or the pains that somebody is dealing with today, now, where the fire is, there's a bit of a mismatch. There can be a bit of a mismatch. So Ryan Well said, so as architects, we do this as well. And there's the common dictum that we hear all over the world of we've got to learn how to communicate our value better. And yes, that is true, but we also need to understand first, or a big part of communicating our value better is understanding, number one, what is valuable to the person who was going to pay us money. Okay, that's the first thing, and and that there are different stakeholders in architecture, which makes it a wonderful, rich, lovely topic. Okay, you've got the end user, the end user, the end user and the person who's paying the money are not always the same person. There are civic users of a building who just experience the architecture as a result of proximity or through walking in the city or being near it. And architects are often very good at kind of establishing or giving a voice to those third party users, if you like. And that can be very empowering, and it's kind of part of the magic of architecture with that kind of stuff. And then we can, we can project what we think are is really valuable about our service, like sustainability, or it's going to stop loads of problems happening on site. Okay, great, that's all correct. It's just not a problem that somebody who's looking for an architect or is designing something is typically dealing with right now. It's not what's keeping them up at night. And the same thing is true for money. So we can often worry about our clients having the same concerns about money that we do, and then we project our money concerns or where we think is value, ie, that's cheaper than that. You know, we can do it for cheaper. We project that onto a client because we're we're imagining that they are price sensitive too, okay? And believe it or not, there are some clients who are not price sensitive, or they actually want quality and they want to pay more. And I'll tell a little story about this, wanting to pay more today. So my wife and I, we've been designing our our apartment here in New York, and we've done we've had some amazing designers work on it. We've had an amazing lighting designer, Francesca, and site studio, they've been doing some really beautiful stuff, and we're getting all the lighting wired up at the moment, and I've done a little bit of the wiring myself, and now my expertise is running out, and so we've been looking to hire an electrician, and we've gone through. This is the third electrician. I don't know if I'm that bad of a client, but it seems to be quite difficult to get somebody to come in. And it's a small job for a lot of electricians, and we, you know, it's fiddly, etc, etc, but we've, we've worked very closely with with Francesca and her team, and we, we'd selected, you know, certain lighting fixtures that are not cheap, but they satisfy our architectural sensibilities, And it was really important that we had those lighting fixtures because of the quality of the light and the distribution, and we thought they were beautiful and all that sort of stuff. And that was the very much the focus of what what we wanted. We had an electrician come in, and he was looking for all of the fixtures, and he made an. Assumption that I was looking to, that I might have been looking to save money. And then proceeded to give me a sales pitch about how we could replace the lights, and with this, with a with, with a kind of just led strips that you get off a roll, and we could stick them inside of aluminum casing, and we could kind of make the lighting structure ourself. And I know that we could do that. And, and he was very proud of, like, you could save, you know, we could save $1,000 you could send these back, and then we could put more lights in here, here, here. And it was a whole sales pitch that was based on, you know, what he was viewing as, valuable. And was coming from the perspective of, like, we can save you, we can save you some serious money here. And it was like, they won't be the cheapest ones, but, but he didn't ask any questions about where, the what, what the decision making process had been about the lights that were that we'd already purchased. And I thought it was really interesting, because afterwards, I just politely said, No, we're not interested. We're quite happy with the selections that we've made, and we spent some time doing it. But it was interesting how the assumption was that I was looking to save money, or we were looking to do it cheaper. And I'm sure that loads of his clients were and yes, there have definitely been parts of this job that we've wanted to do cheaper, and to have gone have done very long winded things, to to save money on certain things and add materials delivered from other places and all sorts of all sorts of stuff. But it was, it was interesting, and it got me thinking about how often we do that in architecture practices, where we're just assuming that the client wants something cheap, or we set up our conversations with the client, which then allows the conversation to be price focused, because we're not really asking any questions. We're not finding pain, we're not establishing what their values are for the project. We don't know what the emotional drivers are for the project. We're nervous about bringing up a conversation of money. We're frightened or nervous or unskilled, perhaps in being able to talk about what a budget is. We get defensive and angry if a prospect comes into our architectural studio, and one of the first questions they ask is, how much it's going to cost. How many times have I heard architects say, you know, one of the disqualifiers of a client is if they come to us and they say, How much is it going to cost, I know that they're not the right client for me, and you're like, hold on a minute, like a billionaire would ask how much it's going to cost. It's a perfectly reasonable question. Your sales process just sucks, and you've allowed that question to come up, and you don't know how to deal with it. Okay? And so now you're getting all flustered, and it's pissing you off, and now it goes into this automatic they don't understand the value of architectural services, and we get all stressed out by it and etc, etc. So that was one story that I thought was, you know, a kind of subtle, subtle thing and interesting how somebody was trying to sell me something that had asked me any questions about what, what I wanted, what I needed. It was annoying. The experience was annoying. And also missed, missed some really good stuff, because he asked me some questions about the lights. Then there could have been, he could have got some more money out of me, for sure, if he'd asked the right questions, if he'd kind of was, if he's if he told me that there are different transformers that we should be using that would get a better performance out of these lights, because we put, we've made an investment into them, or he'd taken that, that tact, and there was some genuineness in what he was suggesting, I would have been very open to spending more money or investing into the that kind of caliber of kit, because it was really important for us. Yeah, yeah.

Love that, Ryan. Like the focus on your focus was on, you know, you're just your values in terms of what you valued in this experience, in the light was just different than what this, this electrical contractor, not saying he was wrong, but just your value was very different, right? You're kind of, you're kind of looking at this in terms of, how can I maximize the value for me? In other words, yeah, we would like to, we'd like to have, if you could do the same, the exact same setup that we designed for cheaper, we're all for that, right? But, like, substituting cheaper, quality stuff and, and, you know, kind of doing some home baked solution. And you mentioned to me earlier that he had, like, shown you pictures of, like, how he had done this in his space, or whatever, and you're like, oh, it's not,

yeah, well, exactly it was. It was like, that, you know, he said he showed me some pictures of where he'd done it, and it was, it was nice, but it wasn't, it wasn't the vision that we had. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't what we were, what we were going for. And so I was like, okay, that's not gonna, that's. Not gonna

that. That reminds me I saw, I saw a great one of these, one of these social media memes, Ryan, it must have been last year sometime, and it was an interior designer. It was a designer, right? And he was showing, he was on a job site where they had put in these look like marble, maybe marble treads on this beautiful staircase that was like this beautiful staircase leading up to the front entrance of a house, or something like that. So stone, marble, some kind of very expensive material, and they had specified a very particular way that they were going to put the lighting in the tread. So you get that really beautiful floating look where the light just kind of spills down from underneath the treads. Very, very fun look. Now, what the contractor had done was the contractor, if you can imagine the tread sticking out over the riser. So there's, there's a there's a bit of a lip on the edge of the tread. The contractor had basically routed out the underside of the tread. Just a very simple solution. We're just going to route it out. We're going to stick the LED in there. So the LED was directly above this. This, it was basically pointed directly down at the tread, but beneath it, if you can imagine that. Now, what this interior design? When this interior designer showed up on site, he wasn't too happy about this, because it was different from what they had actually designed. And what he showed is that, because they were using a highly reflective stone, that when you walked up the stairs, you saw the individual LED lights reflected in the tread, so it just doesn't look right, right? And, yeah. And of course, the contractors, as far as they're concerned, it's great they didn't notice any difference, because they're that's not their stick, that's not their expertise, right? Even the owners themselves, they don't know the difference of Matt thought that's the way it's supposed to look, right? But then, of course, the way they had specified it, if you imagine the tread kind of going out and then doing a little bit of a U shape at the end, so the lights could be recessed in a hidden groove inside the tread, so that the light spilled out evenly with no reflection, right? And, like, we know when, when he showed, yeah, when you see that, and, like, he explained it on this little, you know, kind of 45 second video, you're just like, Oh, it's just so sweet, so beautiful. So like, those are the touches that we know as architects, that you the listener. These are the kind of things you notice. These are the kind of things that you obsess over. These are the kind of experiences you want to deliver to people. And it is frustrating when other people, they don't really understand the design attempt of what, why something was done the way it was. And then a lot of times, sometimes even with the best of intentions, contractors can say stuff like, well, your architect did it this way. It's really expensive. We have a cheaper way of doing it, and then by doing it this cheaper way, they miss out on like, the really nice effect that was supposed to be had by doing it that particular way, right? So now, as we, as we said, I just want to interject to Ryan and say, both Ryan and I know that running an architectural practice is not easy. And you know, as we're talking about these slight distinctions and these slight little tweaks on how you approach this conversation with clients, we don't want to give the impression that this stuff is easy to do, or that there's anything wrong with the way to running your practice, because you don't do it this way. You've done it this way in the past, etc. Like we acknowledge that, you know what we're talking about here is very, very subtle, and it's, that's why we're bringing it up, is because it's, oftentimes, it's not, it's not second nature, right? Typically, we as human beings, we, as Ryan mentioned, we, we project, we assume that people see things the way we see them. And so we assume, for instance, in the case of this electrical contractor, that he was just approaching a Well, I mean, this client probably wants to save money like I like I do. And you know, there's a cheaper way to do this without, like you said, Ryan, without asking the questions to find out, okay, you have these amazing fixtures. Tell me, would you mind sharing more about, like, why you chose these fixtures. I've never seen this before. What effect we hoping to get from this, letting you talk about it, capturing the vision there.

Yeah, absolutely, and that as a conversation, if that, if that happened, you know, I would have been very ready to accept solutions or alternatives, or even have another conversation about a further scope of work or something. So I love that.

And what another thing, another thing I love Ryan is the idea of linking up. Because my imagination tells me that our listeners, they want to deliver the best experience possible to their clients. They would like to convince their clients somehow to invest in in in solutions that bring the design level up to a very, very high level. Right? They would love to have their clients invest in solutions that that are those little those little moments in architecture that might cost a little extra, but that really make up. Project unique, really make it pop, really add something to it, right? And so these things can happen if we approach the conversation in a certain way.

And it's interesting as well, because as architects, you know, we're selling a client all the way through the project? Yeah, absolutely. Like, the sales process never really stops. You negotiate the first contract and the agreement, and that's where, like, a lot of you know, where you can build in your efficiency on the project and how well it's going to be done, and set expectations, and then all the way through there is the sales process of, you know, if you've done a good job at the beginning, and you know what the problems are and the pains are, and what the kind of emotional drivers are for the for the project, then there's, at least, there's an opportunity to be able to stitch back some of, you know, design intent in their language, or make it relatable, back to what their kind of, their vision is or was, and have them, you know, go with something that was more expensive because you've, yeah, that's,

that's the thing like, like, the question is, How could you as our listener, how is you as a designer, as an architect? How can you link up the high end solution that you would love for your for your clients to actually choose? How can you link that up with what they actually want? That's the magic. If you can just link these things up, show them how doing this flourish. That's probably a terrible word, because these usually aren't flourishes. These, they're

normally, we say they're normally concealed, hidden, sleek, minimus, minimal, exactly

these little, these little accents of these little special moments, is probably what we would say in architecture, right? Well, probably

what a very relevant one is that a lot of architects wish for these days is that their clients choose more sustainable options for the for the project, and that they and they have sustainable so. So sustainability is very valuable to an architect. And we have lots of our own clients and lots of the architecture industry. And in the UK, certainly, I know in the US, there's, you know, part of the your continued professional development, compulsory parts are always about sustainability now, and there's the constant frustration of clients not wanting sustainability in a project. Or they say they want it, and then then it gets kind of torn out. Or a client, a client says that they want it, and there isn't any more questioning about, why do they want it? Like, why did that? Why are they saying they're wanting, wanting it? What's driving that desire to have sustainable is it to look good? Is it a kind of collective guilt around the destruction of the planet? Is it something they're genuinely committed to? Is it more to do with reducing longer term bills in the house? Why would the bills be problematic for them. What's their philosophy around it? If there are, if they are asking for it? Okay? So there's a whole world of just making sure that we're on in line with it there. And then there's the how do we how do we bring it into how do we sell sustainability to a client who has no interest in it. And that's our kind of architectural, yes, architectural agenda, and we want the client to be doing it, and we know that there's an opportunity for it, and part of it, I'm not, again, not going to say that it's going to it's like a foolproof way of doing it, but we're going to have more we're going to have more chance, at least when we are well more aware of the emotional drivers of the prospect, and that we've had had a little bit of skill in asking questions that might seem peripheral to their project, so just so understanding, so understanding the business context of the project, understanding, you know, if you work under the commercial client, understanding a little bit about and you can do research in this, so your questions aren't completely naive, okay, because that's not the way that questioning strategies can kind of fall on their ass. A little bit is that you're asking questions that, and you've got no idea about a client's business problems, for example, you you know you're just you can go off on a different tangent, but a little bit of understanding and the kind of problems that they might be dealing with just at least allows our questioning strategy. To be a bit more refined. And so being able to ask questions about the business agenda or the business context, or the other commercial struggles that they might be dealing with, or some of the challenges in their business there might be, it might seem like peripheral questions to the actual project. Yeah, but it's, but it's very useful, because inside of that kind of questioning, we start to get clues of other problems which we can dig into. And that just gives us more opportunity to make a link between Okay, here's the How can I present this solution to the client, like the context of sustainability or whatever kind of lead or passive house, or whatever technology we want to be we want to be kind of making sure that we're executing on it just starts to give us more of a chance.

Leading questions are beautiful. For instance, something you could ask your client. So you're like, take them through a little quiz. So do you enjoy destroying the Amazon and and basically create accenting the the ozone layer hole? What are some other ones? Ryan, do you? Do you? Do you relish the fact of creating more smog from materials that are taken over large distances you take you take pleasure in reducing the United States energy independence by consuming lots of petroleum products.

Have you guys ever complained about the cost of your of your heating bills,

right? So some of mine are tongue in cheek. But Ryan, here's asking something that you know could be you can have fun. The point is, you can have fun with these questions and and you can ask questions in a way that that causes people to be introspective, right? Have you ever been frustrated with the high electricity bill? This could be part of your intake questionnaire. Like, let's say you want to have a conversation with a homeowner about some of these sustainable strategies, right? And if they check yes, then in one of the initial interviews, I noticed that you said that yes, you do get frustrated by high utility bills. Can you tell me more about that and then walk them through? That could be a pain, but damn, yeah, in the summer time, Jesus last year, it was $1,000 and so we installed solar panels, but then they changed the regulations, and now, you know, we can't get credit for all that energy we're producing, and it's, it's just annoying. I mean, we have the money, but, man, it sure is frustrating, right? You start to take them down a journey just to understand what's in their world?

Yeah, no, absolutely. And then, you know, I like that kind of the playful approach with it, because you can be tongue in cheek, and it's a it's a nice way to get people talking about the the environment, or that kind of sustainability agenda. There's questions about their brand and their perception, again, kind of more business related questions and and we often encourage our clients here at Business of Architecture, you know, part of the smart practice program is we get well versed in lots of different parts of business, from sales, marketing, branding, processes, systems, profits, inefficiencies, where business and we get very well versed in, you know, in our own problems, like, what, what are my challenges that I'm dealing with as a business? And that's really useful to be able to talk about your own problems as a business, because guess what? Other businesses often have the same problems that you have. So you can ask questions about them. You can ask questions about their, you know, retail environment, and the challenges that they've had with letting out spaces in the particular market. And there are, there are kind of roots there that where which can at least start to prepare a scenario where you can start making a link back to, well, what's the perception of of being a scumbag, Amazon, destroying commercial client who doesn't care about the environment, right?

Uh, before this episode, you, you showed me this beautiful watch that you got through the mail, and I was thinking that that, you know, we had a chat about that, right? So, Ryan purchased, he likes fine, the finer things of life, shall we say, the finer accouterments that don't necessarily always have to be extremely expensive, but certainly have flair, certainly have personality. Arguments. I like design. Have design. They have design in them. Do we both love design, and this, this experience with this company, was quite unsavory and right to say the least. And I think there was a couple important psychological kind of. Of things that were that kind of brought up about around that do you want to give us the the shortened version Ryan or the extended version? I'll

try and give the shortened version, okay, of the of the story, and then we can, again, we can kind of relate it back to this conversation about where the value proposition was, in short, a little micro brand of watches here in New York, and made a purchase, bought the watch. And then as soon as I bought the watch, some security thing got flagged up, and I was asked some questions. I said, Yes, it's me, or the sort of double checking that you have to do nowadays when you this

is some serious, serious security procedures around purchasing a watch. It

just there was loads, you know, they sent me an email, and I said, Yes, it's me. Blah, blah. I was all excited. The watch was Watch has been ordered, and I've been waiting for this watch as well because it'd been sold out for ages, and have a little like an email sign up. So when the watch comes back online, then I get an email and I can go and so that's what happens. The email came in. I was like, Yes, I'm gonna go and buy it. And there's a good lesson there marketing, scarcity, scarcity, scarcity. Okay, always, always, put me on a waiting list. And

that's the classic waiting list, man. Do you remember when Gmail came out for the first time, there was like a waiting list for Gmail? No. Do you remember that when they first opened up Gmail, Google's like, we're gonna release this in tranches? I only let on so many users at a time. Oh, wow, I don't remember. Yeah, yeah. Same thing with the latest. Remember? I mean, Tesla, you look at all the brands, eventually they do this at one time. Another tested with their what was it? The model 30 the the most recent one, yeah. Like a to your waiting list and the

cyber truck. Cyber truck people were paying $1,000 to be put on the waiting list for the truck.

There you go. So don't let that, don't let that little tip. We'll leave that with you, listener, to decide how you can utilize this psychological espionage in your advantage, to your advantage.

A little, a little lesson in in marketing scarcity. And again, it's interesting because it's a it's a value proposition, right? So my buying temperature of the of the watch had risen because I liked the idea of the that the watch was scarce, and that and that me having it would make me more unique.

Yeah, you don't want to go to the party. You're at the club in New York, and you look around and like everyone's wearing one of those watches, you would just be crushed

Exactly, exactly, a terrible experience. I was, I was, I was happy that they was, they were in. They were scarce. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so they came back online. I went and purchased the watch. Had some security checks. But then a few moments later, the, or maybe it was the next day, I think, a kind of email got sent to me, and it said, Hey, your order's been canceled for due to unforeseen circumstances. Don't you

hate that? It's like, the unforeseen circumstances. It's like, what does that mean?

So I'm emailing, I'm enrolling my wife into this conversation about the watch. She's sick and tired of it. She wants she wants to hit. She doesn't want to hear anything about this stupid watch. And my and my, my purchases, and I'm like, No, it's ruining your love life. Exactly, she's she's getting frustrated. Washed stupid. You've got enough watches. Why are you

this one was on a waiting list. This is a special watch. This one's beautiful. It's got nice little green dials on it and everything. And it's

beautiful. Hold it up to the camera, by the way, for those of us who are our YouTube listeners, you can fast forward, if you go to YouTube that is a beautiful watch, okay, subscribe it to us, Ryan, just describe it to us for the podcast listeners,

I think it's a coronagraph. It's a it's a brew watch. It's a mechanical it's a little micro brand here in New York. It's a retro dial. It

definitely looks it has like a bit of a Casio feel, like the old Casio, kind of like metallic wristband watches, that same kind of shape to it. Yeah, yeah.

It's got, it's got that kind of old, retro, sort of, like 80s, sort of, like, look to it. Yep, beautiful, kind of, it's colorful. And it has, it does have a date dial, a date in a year. It's got a little smaller, it's got a day. It's got, like, a stopwatch. It's actually, the company is called brew, and they, and they design their watches to do with coffee. So it's got, it's got, like, a little coffee bean on it, and it's got a timer, which is the timer is kind of designed, like the whole design of it is inspired by the look of those kind of retro Marzocco coffee machines. And, yeah, it's got a little timer on it. So when you're brewing your coffee, hence the name brew. You can see how long. And I'm a big coffee fan as well, so God, we're going

to reach out to them and see if they'll sponsor this episode after that little product placement we just had there. They're very cool brew watches, the crews watches of New York City, for the connoisseurs of coffee and

timepieces, exactly, they're very cool. They're there's an. Every week. Well,

I mean, let's face it, like, like you said, the likelihood of you running into another person that has one of those.

I mean, Enoch, yeah, unlikely,

but you'd be very disappointed if you walk into Starbucks and like, every freaking person's wearing one,

hold on a second.

I want a refund. So disappointed, but it got

the Rolex too. Hold on a second. Don't Rolex, don't they also, hey, don't you need to apply to buy a Rolex. At least they used to do that for some other time. Yes,

nowadays, yeah, you have to go into, I'm already in conversations about my Rolex, but you have to go and have a conversation with them. You put your name onto a waiting list depending on what kind of Rolex you want, you have to have spent a certain amount of money in their store. So Rolex have authorized dealers, and in order to get like a Daytona or kind of very desirable Rolex, you have to have spent like, you know, 10 grand or something in the store before you can even be put on a waiting list to get that watch. And the marketing with Rolex is so interesting that it's one of these objects that if you buy at retail, it increases in value on the secondary market. So the secondary market for these sorts of watches are higher than what you would get them at retail. So they put all these obstacles, and they market it as being scarce and it's difficult to get hold of them. So when you do buy one, like a kind of entry level Rolex for like five, six grand, or whatever it is that on the secondary market that watch will be eight or nine grand. So the price kind of smart, very smart. I mean, it's that's pretty amazing. And there's no shortage of Rolexes. The company's making, like, a million of these watches a year, but they still manage to kind of create

some scarcity around it, yeah, and people

want to spend money on it, because the whole kind of brand of it is like it's a flex,

absolutely, absolutely, which is a good, a good point to interject that we do not accept every firm owner who applies to be part of smart practice. So practicing, what we preach to be in smart practice, you do need to apply. You do need to, we do need to pass our qualifications to be allowed into the program.

And so we even do a kickstar process where we, where we, we test and challenge clients in a week long kind of series of activities. And if people fail the activities, or they don't want to participate, or it's not a fit, then we we're clear it's not a fit, and we'll refund your initial commitments, them, release them, and we say, See you later. It's not going to work.

Have we ever had anyone that hasn't passed that process, Ryan, we have, haven't we? Yeah, once, Yep. There you go. So maybe you listening, you could be the next person to be rejected. Yeah, what an honor. Well, and there's there's other. So here's the other thing about this psychology, Ryan, is that as as silly as it is that we're not rational sometimes in the way that we approach things because, let's face it, you desiring this watch more because you're on a wait list. Has zero rational logic behind it, none whatsoever. It completely emotional, right? Completely irrational, right? But here's the crazy part about this that's so fascinating, is it actually heightens your experience.

Oh, yes, right. Oh, my goodness, absolutely, absolutely, like the part of the thing I really enjoy about watches is the anticipation of like, which one you know, looking at them, watching videos on YouTube, about them, reading all the specs, all that kind of stuff, and then then being kind of unattainable, if you like, because it's not necessarily about the money always, right? So, I mean, some watches are like, you know, 150 grand, and

some it is about the money, yeah, absolutely. Those

are, those are like, I mean, those are those, those have those sorts of levels. But, you know, this was only a few 100 bucks for for a watch, but it was the the anticipation around it was good. It was a good, good marketing, and it heightened seduction. There was seduction involved. Let's face it, there was waiting as well. I want to be seduced? You know, there's, there's fulfillment in kind of posting, yeah, and postponing something pleasurable. So sometimes we you can, you can see something, and you can buy something in a in a frenzy, or you kind of get seduced by it, and you make a purchase there and then. And then, there's this kind of marketing. Which makes you wait for it, and then you think about it, and then you desire it more, and there's an enjoyment. It's an enjoyable buying experience. It's fun. It's fun, exactly, it's fun. There's, there's, there's an enjoyment to it. And you can it turns into a little bit of a treat. And I think for a lot of people who are into watches, the the anticipation around it is part of the joy and part of the pleasure of collecting them for this sort of stuff. But

I think that's, that's important point to make, Ryan, because a lot of times when we're cynical, we can look at this marketing psychology, especially as educated, erudite architects, and we can say, well, that's that's crass, that's manipulative. We can discount it without realizing that it when done right. These things can be wins, wins. They can be wins for both parties. It's a win for you as a business when you create scarcity around your offering, and it can also heighten the experience of the person on the receiving end of your service, because it just makes it more enjoyable. They feel like they're getting something special. And so there is this just kind of wanted to highlight that, that it's not all the time about, like, this cut and dry experience of it's just very transactional. No, there's more. You know, when we talk about a sales and marketing process here at Business of Architecture, I would say it's, it's much more akin to a dance. It's much more akin to a nice waltz where there's a give and take between both parties. And when you're in that energetic dance with another person and a and a purchase actually happens, both parties are excited about it. And there's an art to doing that. There's an art and a science. I

absolutely, I think that's a really important, you know, kind of part to make here that your your good questions when you're talking to clients, when done well, can be a really enjoyable process. And you know, like, if that electrician had asked me about the lights, I would have been really happy to tell him about the lights, because he would have tapped into something really important to me, and something I wanted to talk about, and I was proud of, and, you know, etc, and all this, all this sort of stuff. And I would have there would have been a lot of allegiance and Alliance if he'd asked those questions. And then I would have been much more susceptible, if you like, to upsells or further products or something else, because I would have felt kind of heard and the same with the watch, right? So the watch, the kind of, the anticipation of it, is all part and parcel of this enjoyable purchasing experience. And that's

a wrap. 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 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 wish they would have known 20 years ago. And now, a word from our sponsor, our cat. Have you ever been in the situation where you can't find the product data you're looking for. Maybe you're using the wrong search engine. Broad searches result in consumer products out of date information and websites that hide or don't have the information you're looking for. If you need specifications, CAD or BIM, rcat.com is your search engine, find and download the up to date data you need. Fast rcat.com is free. Requires no registration for users, so try our cat today. That's a R, C, A T, dot, C, O, M, the views expressed on the show by my guest 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, D. Them, amen.